So, I’m working on prepping a platform release. Adding achievements. Fixing little bugs as I can find them. Today, I have fixed a bug regarding guess result coloring in WordCrystal. Generally, though, it has been a marginally unproductive day. This is also, largely, because in a publication rejection letter from an unnamed platform they mentioned that I needed to stop mentioning OTHER platforms in my in-game dev notes.

It’s actually a great comment to have; I believe that on a more impersonal distribution channel they might simply de-platform me and go from there. But it brings up an interesting problem:

I’ve tried to build a reusable marketing system into my applications. It’s…. A core component of my marketing ‘plan.’ I cannot rely on any single platform to market my games for me, because the platforms themselves are too big. So I hooked up an RSS feed and threw it into my game. And it will be easily inherited into the next game, etc. All the pieces continuous, all the pieces working together.

The idea was to build reusable parts to allow me to focus on making a game rather than on selling a game. But that is in opposition with the platform in question’s goal of keeping all their customers siloed. Sooooo…… Here we are, and my releases are now split into parts. My DevLogs are going to be platform-blind (and not mention releases) for the foreseeable future. And there will be more DevLogs.

It’s fascinating to me to see the tension between what I need to do to build an audience and what the platform in question wants me to do. Not that they’re going to be unique in this.