How to promote your game?

[rubenwardy]

Who's "we", and what do you provide?

Minetest

I hear that people these days make a build container (usually Docker) to circumvent this issue and have a clean & reproducible build environment. It can also be used to compile on a older LTS system like Ubuntu 16.04 even if your dev. system is more up to date.

Docker is typically used for server deployment and such, rather than user facing stuff. Canonical are promoting snaps heavily, a (shallow) containerised distribution method: https://snapcraft.io/

There's also flatpak

[fluffrabbit]

I don't think "snaps" are a good idea.

[Julius]

Yeah, snaps and flatpaks of FOSS software are a pretty bad idea on desktop systems for various reasons, which are really OT here.

But the use of Docker is not as a distribution method, but only as a build environment. The normal binaries build inside the Docker container can then be distributed as usual. It is a way to prevent the typical issue of the lone developer saying "but it builds on my system"...

[smcameron]

I think it would be better to get other developers involved in the process early as possible so you can at least do some bug testing. If it is complex to compile it should come with directions. If no one else can compile it, it comes with a bus factor of 1.

There are build instructions, and plenty of people build it. The github repo gets cloned by random internet people a few times a week. Typically, though I don't hear anything from 99% of them. Getting other developers involved is pretty tough, as generally nobody's interested in working on someone else's baby, and I cannot really blame them, I'm the same. That being said, the project does have 18 contributors, but besides me, only one other person has really gotten into the code in much depth, and that was back in 2014, and happened to be someone I know in real life. At this point, it's a big enough project that it's hard for new people to get a toehold and be able to contribute, though I have made a document aimed to help people understand how all the pieces fit together and gain that toehold.

[Lyberta]

Deleted.

[fluffrabbit]

Now I feel like an idiot. LXC is (I guess) a container system like Docker but lower-level. There is no package manager, it's just a container. Cool. I don't have a clue how to use it though. So I guess you are locked into the kernel version and physical hardware of your host machine, but things like the filesystem and OS can be whatever, like Qubes or something, but in userland. So it's a VM that shares your desktop. But I still don't know how to use it, how to build software in it, or how it applies to things like reproducible builds.

[Lyberta]

Deleted.

[fluffrabbit]

Thanks, that gives a lot of insight. I think a frontend would be nice, else the user would have to edit these configuration files for everything rather than using good defaults.

[Lyberta]

Deleted.

[fluffrabbit]

I'm sure it's something stupid like people confusing LXD with LXDE. To have a fully decentralized, non-root Docker would be fantastic. Maybe that's what this is, I'll just have to wait and see. I'm sure the use cases will become more complicated as build systems get harder to deal with and everything becomes as complex and terrible as Emscripten and Android. It's inevitable in this post-IoT world.

[Wuzzy]

Hey, this thread started pretty nice with some advice that seems helpful, but you managed to go completely off the rails. Why is it so hard to stay on topic?

[anon666]

normies are basically force-fed with games and other media
you can never compete with that

also most of good things were/are rarely popular
mindblowing music usually has like 40 followers, theres just so many examples

[Jastiv]

I admit that the idea of "make something good and users will come" isn't going to cut it. And also that "Marketing is (almost) everything in accounting for the popularity of something.

[dulsi]

What bloggers/web sites might be worth reaching out to? Gaming on linux posts mostly about commercial games but does post about some open source projects. The Linux Game Tome has been continued here. There was another game database site but can't seem to find it at the moment.

[SteveSmith]

I have a theory that the reason most OSS games don't take off is because people mostly don't want them: gamers want a game that "just works" and looks good. And developers prefer to write their own game, maybe extending from an engine. Add to this the fact that most FOSS doesn't have a marketing budget (whether in cash or in time). A lot of OSS games don't even have a screenshot on their repo.

[dulsi]

Boston has Boston Festival of Indie Games. I'm going to it this weekend. I'll let people know what I think of the event. I wonder if open source projects should try to get included. I believe this one is free for the developer in the show although I'm not certain of that. There is also a Boston game dev group on meetup.com. I have yet to join up because I don't really want to be on that site. I have been giving demos at a local linux user group although the members aren't generally gamers.

[Julius]

Make some quick FDG stickers to place on that event

https://git.freegamedev.net/FreeGameDev.net/Branding

[dulsi]

The Boston Festival of Indie Games was fun. To my surprise there was one open source game in the showcase. It was called Alike. The developer said he doesn't have instructions for the game as learning how to play is part of the game. I was dragged to other games by the kids before I was able to talk to him about this forum. You get tickets to vote for your favorites at the event. I'm afraid Alike didn't make the cut for me. I definitely think there is potential to promote open source games at this event.

I wish I had more time at the event. I didn't play any of the board games. Playing a little of a video game is easy. Sitting for a half hour or more for a game is a harder sell. My wife's anxiety was high but with time hopefully she will be calmer at such events.

[Julius]

Page of Alike is blank for me... and horrible unsearchable name. Like did the author spend even 5 seconds on thinking about discoverability

Edit: it actually links to the HTML5 (?) game itself and just took a long time loading

[dulsi]

I agree that Alike is a horrible name to search for. I didn't write down the url and it took me a little time to find it.

Vegan on a Desert Island had a lightning talk at the last LibrePlanet. I've decided to try submitting a full presentation about open source game restoration based on my work on Ostrich Riders, Shippy 1984, Open Alchemist and Mojotron.

[Jastiv]

Alike is a pretty cool game. Its so simple and yet I would have never thought of the concept. It is a puzzle game however, so if you aren't a big fan of that you may just hate on it.
I would love to see your presentation at libre planet. I don't know what they will choose but that sounds awesome.

[zzo38]

I also had this problems of promotion.

I posted on this forum, on some IRC (including one IRC/Discord bridge), some other forum, and I do have a web page for this project too now, including explanations and also a few screenshots. Not much has been done, though. (There is no mirror on GitHub yet, although it is possible that I might add in future (as long as it is not the only mirror; I do not want to rely on GitHub, but mirroring projects on there is OK).)

Is there any suitable newsgroup on Usenet to mention such projects?

One thing that someone mentioned is to make a compiled program available. This is not currently done and I do not guarantee if the compiled program will even work on a different computer (although someone else has been able to compile it themself too, and I have managed to compile it on Raspberry Pi too, even without installing fossil).

Another thing that someone mention is if there is a HTML version of the game. In my case, I have not done this (and do not intend to do), but I will accept contributions of such a thing, and I had also written a PORTING file with some details that might be helpful if someone is to try to do.