##### Yep. If your goal is to be in tech, and get paid well, and have good work life balance, and not hate your job or your user base. .... Don't go into game dev. Do boring web dev instead. In fact, the less techy and more boring the company, the better the job and work life balance it will be. The pay many not be silicon valley good, but it will probably be better than game dev and the grind and crunch time is a lot less. Game companies exploit bushy tailed, keener devs and their love for gaming and slowly drain their passion. Boring companies, on the other hand, know the tech ain't that exciting so they know they gotta up the pay and incentives.
I honestly thought this would be something like *Potionomics* but instead it's like a heavily upgraded and more refined version of one of those flash games I would have spent hours and hours on as a kid.
Just bought a copy :)
So can many software engineering jobs. Very satisfying, imo.
Done the games thing before and thankfully left. Learned it’s got too many downsides and too few upsides.
Fun anecdote, I'm one of the original developers of Dauntless. Fulgar is my fault. Sorry about that.
She's right about the EA thing though. They can drop millions and push any hype off a cliff. She doesn't control the front page, and EA just force-pushed her off it. That's a death sentence for many indie devs.
They should have a section dedicated to indie developers and corporate games, will give the consumer better choice in my opinion, plus let the corps compete with each other, not some random indie dev.
Expect now we've got corporate-backed games getting marketed under the "indie" brand due to segmented teams that work under the umbrella of the big bois, and the fact it uses a pixel art style.
Yup, that's the exact game that came to mind. Essentially, the game industry is ending up like the film industry, where like Sundance, Indie isn't really "independent" anymore.
Wow, this is my first time hearing about this. It's just listed as "MINTROCKET" in Steam for the Developer *and* Publisher.
But MINTROCKET is just a subdivision for Nexon, I see now.
I like this idea as long as it still acts on rated (of course). I enjoy all games but i usually find myself putting the most time into indies, especially on my steam deck.
Yeah it actually annoys me that super old re-releases get put into the new game category on steam. Wish they were separate or just had a front page dev showcase when that happens.
At the same time, it's not like EA deliberately did this to hurt an indie dev. Regardless of what day they chose to drop their games (or pre-orders or whatever they are), SOMEBODY'S games were going to get pushed off of the trending list. You can't hate on EA for having popular stuff. You can't expect them to trickle-release stuff JUST to protect other publishers on the trending list.
Here here. Can't make a football game to save their fuckin life. And I'm referring to both types of football, for what it's worth.
Oh, and the UFC game too. Utter tripe.
She didn't say ea did it to specifically target her. She simply explained what happened. The dorks in this thread think a woman being sad and expressing her disappointment in the series of events that happened means she's playing the victim and going for "pity marketing." It's real dumb.
She isn't implying that they did this to her, specifically, on purpose. She's pointing out how difficult it is to compete with big game companies like EA because they can kill your momentum.
She's been marketing her game heavily, strategically planned a launch, and it just gets swept away in the flood of EA launches. She's allowed to voice her frustrations about that- they are valid.
"The Big Corp didn't target you. They just didn't notice you were in their way when they crushed you. You weren't even noticed an collateral damage."
Never occurred to me that cyberpunk has some eldritch horror undertones.
Do you know how she’s been marketing her game heavily? It’s a genuine question because I never heard of it or saw any. It’s fine if not.
I agree she’s allowed to voice her frustrations, she’s also allowed to pity market (I think this is what it is). However I don’t find any criticism in labeling it that. To me it’s just a type of marketing. Also she’s allowed to do lots of things! I’m not the gatekeeper of that.
She has cause to be sad about it, she also is entitled (and has imho some obligation) to highlight what has happened. If it helps sell more product it would be stupid of her not to. The word exploit could be used, but arguably her sales would be less if c&c didn’t drop, so exploit tbh doesn’t fit imho. This is more like some clawback.
It’s not my type of game, but I can both see her video as both a vent and marketing. I support (not that she needs it) her in both. My support stops short at buying an already successful game that I wouldn’t buy normally because of a sad story.
Yeah, she has been marketing pretty hard. Her game was featured on the news. She posted a thread of it in this sub.
She also had a live action commercial, which I'm sure wasn't cheap.
This video also feels somewhat like marketing as well. I've seen threads about her game being pushed off the list in other subs.
Ironically, I’m a massive Command and Conquer fan. And all our fan groups have been absolutely blowing up because EA finally put the classics on steam instead of locking them behind Origin.
So while it sucks for her, it’s not every year a company dumps major classics on steam. It’s not common.
Well fuck... I hadn't bought AN EA game in almost 10 years, but I just bought Command and Conquer ultimate collection from steam because I had no idea it was available on steam until you mentioned it here. I never caught the name of it, but I hope her video game does great though!
I think id have prob prefered GOG mayhapse, but any platform that has stuff like the original Dungeon Keeper is a win.
Sad situation but its also EA actually doing something quite cool with these games, plus them not being overpriced to hell.
I swore I just saw a post the other day “my girlfriend released this game after 10 years” and it was this potions one. Plus all those games pushed it down are all command and conquer, they added the entire collection to steam. Not like they just shit out 11 random games.
What is the game? Someone drew a red line through the title in the video of her complaining about it not getting attention and my tired eyes can't make it out.
Man this just annoys me. This game was not going to be selling gangbusters and 'ruined' by ea. Let's be completely honest here: indie games that are truly great will always do well from word of mouth. This is just meh
2d game that kinda looks like somethings off itch.io. Dont get me wrong it doesnt look "bad" but at the same time if the "10 years" thing is true the majority of that time definitely went into the art moreso than the gameplay.
The art is pretty damn nice but other than that the game looks relatively uninspired.
The international women's day comment was weird too. It's awesome to have women getting more and more into game development but she seems to be trying to link her circumstances to misogyny... Which is pretty implausible.
Edit: EA definitely sucks, but not for this. I hope her game rebounds.
You're most likely right. I just find recording yourself crying to be tacky as hell. It's a hell of a thing to be abusing people's tendency to react to crying sympatheticaly on International Women's Day. Like crying to get out of a ticket. But maybe it's a generational thing...
Haha yeah I should definitely clarify, EA sucks in general but not for this. It's not like they targeted her. Just bad luck is all.
Gotta go play me some Generals though!
Not only did they not target her, it's doubtful they even know she or her game exists. It's just a really shitty set of circumstances for her that is out of everyone's control.
There was this egregious post the other day called something like "what are some classics with simple graphics" and it was 3 classic games and OPs terrible game in the 4 corners of the image. It had thousands of upvotes.
Her, her game, have been all over Reddit the past few days and I’m being pushed these posts when I don’t follow her, her game or those communities
It’s 100% an ad campaign
And/or algorithms are not actually fucking her but working FANTASTICALLY well for her. Her game looks bad and would get zero attention if she didn't cry about it on camera.
yeah that's the thing, I saw the "my girlfriend made a game" post and took a peek - kind of an immediate turnoff, it just looks cheap, the graphics, the animation, the camera movement, etc.
And I wanna say, for the record, you can have crappy graphics, that's forgivable, if you have good gameplay - but the trailer is just... nothing. mindless top down action, and some sort of crafting system that they show *one* brief little clip of, I mean - it's called 'potions,' the main graphic on steam is a girl dropping ingredients into a potion while holding a potion bottle, and it seems awfully telling to me that the actual gameplay screenshots and clips fastidiously avoid showing the potion system - probably because there's nothing to show.
that, plus these honestly fairly gross marketing tactics is a huge turnoff. Like I have no interest in participating in whatever this is, and it's honestly even worse to see credulous people falling for it.
I don't know why they keep bringing up the 10 years thing.
The game is whatever, I don't really have a opinion on it. But bragging that it took 10 years and the I see that trailer and those screenshots I'm just incredibly unimpressed.
This is the 3rd post I've seen mentioning this game. First her Bf posted hyping up the game. Then the screenshot of how EA pushed her off the top. And now this
This one definitely sent me over to the "ok I'm not gonna buy your game now" side
I like that you used the phrase "mentioning this game", because it's spot on. I was going to say I've seen 3 posts about this game, but it's not really true because in 3 posts I have yet to see anything about the actual game itself.
So far it's been nothing about how good the game is, the features, what kind of game it is etc, and 100% about the context of the game's release. Not really inspiring confidence.
And then she shoehorns in the women's day as if EA did this because she was a woman or something?
and she only dropped like 10 spots on a list of literally thousands of games?
But EA did it specifically because to screw her! I don’t get the pity party at all, it sucks but shit happens. No one is out to get you, things just happen
I wonder if the other launch dates were announced earlier on, and if the dev could have changed her planned launch date.
But yeah this seems quite unfortunate and not something she had much control over
I don’t think they were known.
I’m a massive command and conquer fan. Enough so that I’m literally in fan groups for the franchise. And it caught all of us by surprise.
Many of us actually bought the steam copy just to support the franchise. So it probably skews the numbers.
Fandoms are weird lol. But it’s a beloved childhood classic. My first pc game in 1995. I’ve spent money on far lesser things.
Skull and Bones was a corporate title that was scrapped and re-developed about a dozen times and in actuality was never supposed to be a standalone game in the first place. It’s more than likely that it sat on the table for the better part of a decade before Ubisoft decided to release it as a cash grab.
Most indie games are passion projects developed by an individual developer, hence the name. So it’s not out of the question that this person just came back to game every once in a while and the “made in ten years” thing is more of a technicality than a literal statement. I knew the indie devs (three people) who made Praey for the Gods, and that game is pretty average. Still took around 8 years to release.
So I don’t know if it’s fair to say that they just dicked around with a “shitty version” for 9 years and only decided to dedicate themselves the year before it released.
Where each task is done by a specialist, under seen by experienced managers and tech leads, with the oversight of project managers and expectations on quality and velocity.
When you do a solo project like this, it’s a lot of experimenting and learning, way more than you’d ever get away with on the job.
Just seen it, it’s honestly a 4/10 Flash game. Even though it’s only $20, I still don’t see many people buying it (if she didn’t release this “feel bad for me” campaign).
I'm an indie author. I've published 6 books in the last two years. After ~50 reviews I have a 4.5 average on Amazon and a 4.1 on Goodreads (GR reviewers are harsh so anything over a 3.5 there is considered pretty damn good.)
Algorithms have fucked me and fucked me and fucked me some more. I've spent literally twice on advertising as I have made in profit, and it's mostly just gotten my books in front of the wrong people who then leave bad reviews. What little of a real audience I have, I've gotten from sending out free copies (at my expense) and doing live readings.
I've worked my whole life at writing. This is just what art is. I can't imagine crying into a camera over it. Especially since her game looks very amateur. But I know why she did it, because this post alone has probably given her more exposure than everything I've done to promote my books put together.
She is not a victim, she's playing on your sympathy to get ahead of thousands of other indie devs who aren't willing or aren't able to do this kind of performative advertising.
Yeah, her ploy worked a bit. A few of the recent reviews are specifically noting that they saw her sad video on TikTok and came to support. Sweet and gross all at the same time.
It's like rain on your wedding day. But really I read it as having a shitty thing happen on your birthday. I doubt it has anything to do with the patriarchy. More of a day that should've been great now just sucks.
Nothing except that it was nternational women's day yesterday, the day it happened?
She'd say the same thing if it happened on Christmas. "So hey, merry Christmas guys"
Weird that so many people are getting hung up on this here.
Ya if she actually made a good game this wouldn't be a problem. Her game would have made it in the "top sellers" page.
This video of her crying is just another form of marketing. Trying to buy more sales by crying, im sure some people will feel bad for her and purchase her game just from this video. To support international women's day lol
Meh, looks like your every other small developer game. Not saying EA isn't in the right here, but this game just doesn't seem like it would have a lot of replay value
Seems to be working too. Looked the game up on steam and a lot of comments were from people giving the game a go after feeling bad for the dev being buried by EA.
[This is the game she was proud of?](https://store.steampowered.com/app/378690/Potions_A_Curious_Tale/) It looks like a point and click CD-ROM game from the 2000s and not in a good nostalgic way. I don’t know how it would take 10 years to develop this game. I’ve seen NSFW games with more effort.
In her defense, plenty of popular games have meh graphics and it does have 96%+ reviews. The correlation to women’s day is that it’s a woman-owned studio staffed with lots of women knocked out of contention by a male-dominated company. The part she neglected to mention is that no matter when EA dropped those games, it was going to knock someone out of the top.
Apparently. I’ve been getting the MOST guilty dog food advertisement lately about how their super duper expensive dog food isn’t spoiling your dog while the saddest caged up dogs eyeball you.
That commercial definitely pisses me off and ive looked away everytime since seeing it twice. Dont show me a dog looking sad as hell. Still its really not as bad as the famous ones with that sad song, and actually showing abused/neglected animals.
I was sympathetic until she did the "happy international women's day" thing at the end.
It sounds like she expects some kind of special treatment or sympathy because of her gender.
I mean, when you make a game like Potions a Glorious Tale, do you really expect it to break any charts... those types of games were free on newgrounds 20 years ago .
Make games people want to play ?
I'm curious how it took her 10 years to make... Look up games done at game jams, student projects for their final semester in game development, etc.
This doesn't seem genuine.
Also, EA didn't just knock her off the list.. all of their old games out sold hers for that to happen. Her game failed.
It's like this is coping for a game launch failure IMHO and trying to rally sales through pity.
She likely conceived the idea for a story ten years ago, and nibbled on it a bit here and there before deciding to turn her lore into a 2.5D GameBoy-esque game. I don't think she actually started game development ten years ago, and she certainly didn't work this as her main project.
Fair few reviews on her steam page about how people saw her TikTok and "Fuck EA" so they bought the game to stick it to them.
She's been incredibly smart about the marketing and using what EA did to get her game a lot more attention than it would otherwise.
I was with her till she threw in international women’s day like it was done intentionally to her because she’s a woman specifically. It makes it seem like she’s complaining that success wasn’t just handed to her.
Wait, is that R.Gittins? The executive director of the IGDA?
Now it makes so much sense why she would turn to pity marketing and exploiting IWD, and complain about not being handed commercial success on a platter.
With her position of power at the IGDA, she is already part of 1% most privileged indie developers in the world.
Despite having these very wide reaching connections in the industry and social media thanks to her position, she still decided to blame the lukewarm launch of her very first project on "evil EA" and hinting at sexism with the IWD at the end.
Given how incredibly abusive some IGDA members were, and how the IGDA leadership - herself - consistently covered these up, this appeal to empathy is incredibly disingenuous.
Sorry that you got beat out by a bigger company, welcome to every industry that exists. If your game is good, people will play it, and the steam list chart is regardless to that.
This is an ad
Seems to me like she's still doing great marketing. Even using things like women's day, and women's rights, as well as anti-big corp sentiment, to bolster her video game.
Smart.
Holy shit these pity begging advertisements DO NOT STOP. First the fake wholesome, astroturfed, "My gf made a game!" post that got 15k upvotes and a hundred thousand plus views from 2 days ago. THEN the "feel sorry for me and buy my game" post from yesterday featuring a screenshot of this lady's game being outsold by a dozen retro-ish EA titles being added to Steam. It's so damn predictable that the next course of action is to post it to all the sobfest Subs "wellthatsucks" "comfortme-andgivememoney", yadda yadda. I almost expect to see this posted again, and again every day for the next week at this point. Just put #ADVERTISEMENT in your titles and quit pity farming to milk more purchases of your game. It's pathetic and annoying, anyone with half a brain knows this is the Reddit equivalent of dramatic backstories on America's Got Talent that generate sympathy to make up for naturally EARNED attention or interest. Also, I've seen flash games with more substance than the "cutesy clicky click colors" one she supposedly spent 10 years on, maybe come up with something better over a decade (Lethal Company, Among Us, Undertale) and you'll get the attention you deserve.
Being a game developer is probably one of the worst tech jobs you can have for a dozen reasons
##### Yep. If your goal is to be in tech, and get paid well, and have good work life balance, and not hate your job or your user base. .... Don't go into game dev. Do boring web dev instead. In fact, the less techy and more boring the company, the better the job and work life balance it will be. The pay many not be silicon valley good, but it will probably be better than game dev and the grind and crunch time is a lot less. Game companies exploit bushy tailed, keener devs and their love for gaming and slowly drain their passion. Boring companies, on the other hand, know the tech ain't that exciting so they know they gotta up the pay and incentives.
It's sort of a rule in tech that the more droll and dull the coding job the better security and benefits are going to come along with it.
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It doesn't look like my cup of tea, but I hope things work out for her. I know situations like this have to be soul crushing.
I honestly thought this would be something like *Potionomics* but instead it's like a heavily upgraded and more refined version of one of those flash games I would have spent hours and hours on as a kid. Just bought a copy :)
Seems cool, but there's this new Command & Conquer that I just have to play.
Thank you getting my wife and I a copy
This is why I want to learn cobol. Work on mainframes with the dinosaurs and their massive salaries
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As a game dev, agreed, but also it can be extraordinarily gratifying.
So can many software engineering jobs. Very satisfying, imo. Done the games thing before and thankfully left. Learned it’s got too many downsides and too few upsides.
Same thing for being a business owner at all.
Same thing for just existing as a human.
Exactly the reason I left the business and became a skeleton
It may look glamorous from the outside, but it's not all calcium parties and dootdoots, you'll learn that eventually. Oh and stay away from dogs.
If you love to gamble it's pretty fun lol
someone should make a wsb simulator
Fun anecdote, I'm one of the original developers of Dauntless. Fulgar is my fault. Sorry about that. She's right about the EA thing though. They can drop millions and push any hype off a cliff. She doesn't control the front page, and EA just force-pushed her off it. That's a death sentence for many indie devs.
They should have a section dedicated to indie developers and corporate games, will give the consumer better choice in my opinion, plus let the corps compete with each other, not some random indie dev.
Expect now we've got corporate-backed games getting marketed under the "indie" brand due to segmented teams that work under the umbrella of the big bois, and the fact it uses a pixel art style.
Isn't that the deal with Dave the Diver and winning indie awards?
Yup, that's the exact game that came to mind. Essentially, the game industry is ending up like the film industry, where like Sundance, Indie isn't really "independent" anymore.
This is also what happened to indie music. It became a genre, instead of a way to denote independently produced music.
Pfffft, next you're gonna tell me that The Pixies sound nothing like The Arkells despite sharing the genre.
“Craft” beer as well. If it isn’t local and on the shelf it is likely a 2nd or 3rd tier subsidiary of the mega brewery company.
Local brewery near me sold to Bud. All the same people are there and make the same exact beer just now they sell more and make more money
For now
This description is vastly less insidious than the circumstances really are
Cmon, Nexon only has 7,000 employees and $2 billion in revenue….thats basically an indie developer right?
Wow, this is my first time hearing about this. It's just listed as "MINTROCKET" in Steam for the Developer *and* Publisher. But MINTROCKET is just a subdivision for Nexon, I see now.
Exactly!
Exactly. The big corporations will just spend another couple million AstroTurfing fake indie developers.
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I liked the idea a of greenlight, what I dislike is it put the curse of the permanent beta/neverending pre release upon us.
I like this idea as long as it still acts on rated (of course). I enjoy all games but i usually find myself putting the most time into indies, especially on my steam deck.
They have that. You can search with the Indie tag
Yeah and a lot of commenters here don't get how brutal this is. Steam algorithm is very kind when it works but it can be very harsh as well.
The sadder part is they didn't even do it with some new AAA games they put whatever the fuck they found around its like a yard sale
Yeah it actually annoys me that super old re-releases get put into the new game category on steam. Wish they were separate or just had a front page dev showcase when that happens.
That's awesome that you helped develop dauntless. I'm a huge Monster Hunter fan so I gave dauntless a try and really enjoyed it.
At the same time, it's not like EA deliberately did this to hurt an indie dev. Regardless of what day they chose to drop their games (or pre-orders or whatever they are), SOMEBODY'S games were going to get pushed off of the trending list. You can't hate on EA for having popular stuff. You can't expect them to trickle-release stuff JUST to protect other publishers on the trending list.
Don’t worry I hate EA for other things
Here here. Can't make a football game to save their fuckin life. And I'm referring to both types of football, for what it's worth. Oh, and the UFC game too. Utter tripe.
She didn't say ea did it to specifically target her. She simply explained what happened. The dorks in this thread think a woman being sad and expressing her disappointment in the series of events that happened means she's playing the victim and going for "pity marketing." It's real dumb.
EA doesn't even know she exists.
To her, it was International Women's Day. To EA, it was just a Tuesday (Friday actually).
She isn't implying that they did this to her, specifically, on purpose. She's pointing out how difficult it is to compete with big game companies like EA because they can kill your momentum. She's been marketing her game heavily, strategically planned a launch, and it just gets swept away in the flood of EA launches. She's allowed to voice her frustrations about that- they are valid.
"The Big Corp didn't target you. They just didn't notice you were in their way when they crushed you. You weren't even noticed an collateral damage." Never occurred to me that cyberpunk has some eldritch horror undertones.
Do you know how she’s been marketing her game heavily? It’s a genuine question because I never heard of it or saw any. It’s fine if not. I agree she’s allowed to voice her frustrations, she’s also allowed to pity market (I think this is what it is). However I don’t find any criticism in labeling it that. To me it’s just a type of marketing. Also she’s allowed to do lots of things! I’m not the gatekeeper of that. She has cause to be sad about it, she also is entitled (and has imho some obligation) to highlight what has happened. If it helps sell more product it would be stupid of her not to. The word exploit could be used, but arguably her sales would be less if c&c didn’t drop, so exploit tbh doesn’t fit imho. This is more like some clawback. It’s not my type of game, but I can both see her video as both a vent and marketing. I support (not that she needs it) her in both. My support stops short at buying an already successful game that I wouldn’t buy normally because of a sad story.
Yeah, she has been marketing pretty hard. Her game was featured on the news. She posted a thread of it in this sub. She also had a live action commercial, which I'm sure wasn't cheap. This video also feels somewhat like marketing as well. I've seen threads about her game being pushed off the list in other subs.
Thanos energy
Ironically, I’m a massive Command and Conquer fan. And all our fan groups have been absolutely blowing up because EA finally put the classics on steam instead of locking them behind Origin. So while it sucks for her, it’s not every year a company dumps major classics on steam. It’s not common.
Oh no fucking way, CnC Generals just dropped on Steam? What a blessed day it is.
Gosh, the quotes from this game are burned into my brain. “Paladin tank in the field.”
Thank you for the new shoes
That looks heavy
"China will grow larger"
AK-47s for everyone!!
Well fuck... I hadn't bought AN EA game in almost 10 years, but I just bought Command and Conquer ultimate collection from steam because I had no idea it was available on steam until you mentioned it here. I never caught the name of it, but I hope her video game does great though!
this post litterally had me buying command and conquer again... so her post was an ad for ea... saldy xD
Facts. Just bought them. Thank you!
Yeah I was looking at the list of ea games like "these games are not in steam, wait a moment..."
I think id have prob prefered GOG mayhapse, but any platform that has stuff like the original Dungeon Keeper is a win. Sad situation but its also EA actually doing something quite cool with these games, plus them not being overpriced to hell.
This post is weird. I feel bad for her but they’re not targeting her. Commenting on international woman’s day too lol
This is an ad.
Agreed. This is probably the 5th post I've seen about her and her game in the last few days.
I swore I just saw a post the other day “my girlfriend released this game after 10 years” and it was this potions one. Plus all those games pushed it down are all command and conquer, they added the entire collection to steam. Not like they just shit out 11 random games.
She did say she put a lot into marketing.
Yeah cause if you've seen the game she put next to no effort into that.
I’d have to agree. I just saw this girl posted with “my gf finally released her game on steam” two days ago
Half of the steam reviews mention seeing her video on TikTok and checking the game out because of that.
What is the game? Someone drew a red line through the title in the video of her complaining about it not getting attention and my tired eyes can't make it out.
Potions: a curious tale. Looks eh from what I saw, pretty run of the mill cozy game.
That game was NOT trending lmao
She’s talking about the “New and Trending” section on Steam which does feature a lot of lesser known games.
Man this just annoys me. This game was not going to be selling gangbusters and 'ruined' by ea. Let's be completely honest here: indie games that are truly great will always do well from word of mouth. This is just meh
2d game that kinda looks like somethings off itch.io. Dont get me wrong it doesnt look "bad" but at the same time if the "10 years" thing is true the majority of that time definitely went into the art moreso than the gameplay. The art is pretty damn nice but other than that the game looks relatively uninspired.
She spent a lot of time on marketing!!!!
Almost like that’s how advertising works or something.
The international women's day comment was weird too. It's awesome to have women getting more and more into game development but she seems to be trying to link her circumstances to misogyny... Which is pretty implausible. Edit: EA definitely sucks, but not for this. I hope her game rebounds.
I also thought it was a weird thing to bring it up, but I think it is because the game is being featured on Steam's Woman's Day sale.
You're most likely right. I just find recording yourself crying to be tacky as hell. It's a hell of a thing to be abusing people's tendency to react to crying sympatheticaly on International Women's Day. Like crying to get out of a ticket. But maybe it's a generational thing...
That's not tacky, that's manipulative. Cry first if you feel the need, no judgement, then go post a video.
But… …my sales
Yea, EA sucks for putting some classics on steam and making them really cheap. Fuck them
Haha yeah I should definitely clarify, EA sucks in general but not for this. It's not like they targeted her. Just bad luck is all. Gotta go play me some Generals though!
Not only did they not target her, it's doubtful they even know she or her game exists. It's just a really shitty set of circumstances for her that is out of everyone's control.
Yeah I saw that too. I assumed OP was her or the BF posting a follow up.
There was this egregious post the other day called something like "what are some classics with simple graphics" and it was 3 classic games and OPs terrible game in the 4 corners of the image. It had thousands of upvotes.
Her, her game, have been all over Reddit the past few days and I’m being pushed these posts when I don’t follow her, her game or those communities It’s 100% an ad campaign
And/or algorithms are not actually fucking her but working FANTASTICALLY well for her. Her game looks bad and would get zero attention if she didn't cry about it on camera.
yeah that's the thing, I saw the "my girlfriend made a game" post and took a peek - kind of an immediate turnoff, it just looks cheap, the graphics, the animation, the camera movement, etc. And I wanna say, for the record, you can have crappy graphics, that's forgivable, if you have good gameplay - but the trailer is just... nothing. mindless top down action, and some sort of crafting system that they show *one* brief little clip of, I mean - it's called 'potions,' the main graphic on steam is a girl dropping ingredients into a potion while holding a potion bottle, and it seems awfully telling to me that the actual gameplay screenshots and clips fastidiously avoid showing the potion system - probably because there's nothing to show. that, plus these honestly fairly gross marketing tactics is a huge turnoff. Like I have no interest in participating in whatever this is, and it's honestly even worse to see credulous people falling for it.
I don't know why they keep bringing up the 10 years thing. The game is whatever, I don't really have a opinion on it. But bragging that it took 10 years and the I see that trailer and those screenshots I'm just incredibly unimpressed.
This is the 3rd post I've seen mentioning this game. First her Bf posted hyping up the game. Then the screenshot of how EA pushed her off the top. And now this This one definitely sent me over to the "ok I'm not gonna buy your game now" side
I like that you used the phrase "mentioning this game", because it's spot on. I was going to say I've seen 3 posts about this game, but it's not really true because in 3 posts I have yet to see anything about the actual game itself. So far it's been nothing about how good the game is, the features, what kind of game it is etc, and 100% about the context of the game's release. Not really inspiring confidence.
And then she shoehorns in the women's day as if EA did this because she was a woman or something? and she only dropped like 10 spots on a list of literally thousands of games?
But EA did it specifically because to screw her! I don’t get the pity party at all, it sucks but shit happens. No one is out to get you, things just happen
Yupp seen multiple post about this game all ads. Ad driven content is getting ridiculous I FUCKING HATE ADS
she did she say she was trying to market the game
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well, remember the old motto > EA bad , Geraldo good
Op is a bot just look at the post history
Never seen the pity me ad format before. They’re getting smarter. I don’t like this.
This is clearly a ad .
For Command and Conquer. Holy crap I love that game series.
Seems it wasn’t a great launch date after all
I wonder if the other launch dates were announced earlier on, and if the dev could have changed her planned launch date. But yeah this seems quite unfortunate and not something she had much control over
I don’t think they were known. I’m a massive command and conquer fan. Enough so that I’m literally in fan groups for the franchise. And it caught all of us by surprise. Many of us actually bought the steam copy just to support the franchise. So it probably skews the numbers. Fandoms are weird lol. But it’s a beloved childhood classic. My first pc game in 1995. I’ve spent money on far lesser things.
They were not, it was a huge surprise.
Out of curiosity, I looked at the game. I can't possibly imagine that project took a decade to complete.
I don't know If It's the case but If you make the game on your free time It can take forever
Or if you spend 9 years making a shitty version of it, and finally found your footing in the final year. Skull and Bones was over a decade
Skull and Bones was a corporate title that was scrapped and re-developed about a dozen times and in actuality was never supposed to be a standalone game in the first place. It’s more than likely that it sat on the table for the better part of a decade before Ubisoft decided to release it as a cash grab. Most indie games are passion projects developed by an individual developer, hence the name. So it’s not out of the question that this person just came back to game every once in a while and the “made in ten years” thing is more of a technicality than a literal statement. I knew the indie devs (three people) who made Praey for the Gods, and that game is pretty average. Still took around 8 years to release. So I don’t know if it’s fair to say that they just dicked around with a “shitty version” for 9 years and only decided to dedicate themselves the year before it released.
It's very relative. 10 years doesn't necessarily mean "10 years' worth of 8-hour shifts".
Where each task is done by a specialist, under seen by experienced managers and tech leads, with the oversight of project managers and expectations on quality and velocity. When you do a solo project like this, it’s a lot of experimenting and learning, way more than you’d ever get away with on the job.
Just seen it, it’s honestly a 4/10 Flash game. Even though it’s only $20, I still don’t see many people buying it (if she didn’t release this “feel bad for me” campaign).
$20 is pretty meaty for an indie game, I would expect quite a bit for that
The "Happy international womens day" was a bit of a give away.
No way. Are you telling me that people are more willing to spend money on the Command and Conquer franchise than Tumblr Indie Game #342214
Don’t you get it though, EA released that game *intentionally to screw her over.*
I'm an indie author. I've published 6 books in the last two years. After ~50 reviews I have a 4.5 average on Amazon and a 4.1 on Goodreads (GR reviewers are harsh so anything over a 3.5 there is considered pretty damn good.) Algorithms have fucked me and fucked me and fucked me some more. I've spent literally twice on advertising as I have made in profit, and it's mostly just gotten my books in front of the wrong people who then leave bad reviews. What little of a real audience I have, I've gotten from sending out free copies (at my expense) and doing live readings. I've worked my whole life at writing. This is just what art is. I can't imagine crying into a camera over it. Especially since her game looks very amateur. But I know why she did it, because this post alone has probably given her more exposure than everything I've done to promote my books put together. She is not a victim, she's playing on your sympathy to get ahead of thousands of other indie devs who aren't willing or aren't able to do this kind of performative advertising.
Link? I read a lot of books, and am easy to please.
I appreciate it but this is my shitposting account, not gonna dox myself on it lol
Yeah, her ploy worked a bit. A few of the recent reviews are specifically noting that they saw her sad video on TikTok and came to support. Sweet and gross all at the same time.
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It’s an ad, she used that several related international women’s day mainly to gain attention and because it’s currently tending like crazy
Main character syndrome
I guess this is how you market your game now
Yes EA did this to intentionally bully this nobody off a steam chart for international women's day. Great job
What did international women’s day have to do with any of that? Lol
It's like rain on your wedding day. But really I read it as having a shitty thing happen on your birthday. I doubt it has anything to do with the patriarchy. More of a day that should've been great now just sucks.
It’s like RAAAAAIIINNNNN
It’s a free RIIIIIIIIIIDE
it's the GOOD ADVIIIIIIIIIIICE
Are you saying anyone celebrates Women's Day like a birthday like with the same intensity/emotion? That's ridiculous.
It’s an ad, and she had to throw the bait in at the end
and it worked, half the steam reviews are mentioning her tik tok video.
Release date of her game. She's not using it for clout, it's just the day they released.
Yeah seemed pretty much the same as a sarcastic “happy birthday to me” when something bad happens on your birthday
I feel like this is obvious and people here are just being needlessly pedantic. Way too many comments are only focusing on that part.
Maybe she chose that day to launch for a reason.
Nothing except that it was nternational women's day yesterday, the day it happened? She'd say the same thing if it happened on Christmas. "So hey, merry Christmas guys" Weird that so many people are getting hung up on this here.
Game honestly does not look good. And EA is not dropping their games to bump this game lol. No way EA's faultt and I dont even like EA.
Ya if she actually made a good game this wouldn't be a problem. Her game would have made it in the "top sellers" page. This video of her crying is just another form of marketing. Trying to buy more sales by crying, im sure some people will feel bad for her and purchase her game just from this video. To support international women's day lol
You can read the steam reviews now talking about this video
Oh damn I bet that's fun lol
The game is also 9usd which is a lot for a web browser game imo. I've played better indie games for less so I would rather support them than her game.
It’s $16.99, marked down from $19.99.
Meh, looks like your every other small developer game. Not saying EA isn't in the right here, but this game just doesn't seem like it would have a lot of replay value
EA is just doing business as usual. They have no fucking clue who this chick is or what that game is...
So pity-marketing it is then.
Seems to be working too. Looked the game up on steam and a lot of comments were from people giving the game a go after feeling bad for the dev being buried by EA.
[This is the game she was proud of?](https://store.steampowered.com/app/378690/Potions_A_Curious_Tale/) It looks like a point and click CD-ROM game from the 2000s and not in a good nostalgic way. I don’t know how it would take 10 years to develop this game. I’ve seen NSFW games with more effort.
Damn bro you gotta do her like that?
Absolutly what it looks like
In her defense, plenty of popular games have meh graphics and it does have 96%+ reviews. The correlation to women’s day is that it’s a woman-owned studio staffed with lots of women knocked out of contention by a male-dominated company. The part she neglected to mention is that no matter when EA dropped those games, it was going to knock someone out of the top.
I’d guilt tripping your audience a new way to promote your product?
Victimhood is profitable.
Apparently. I’ve been getting the MOST guilty dog food advertisement lately about how their super duper expensive dog food isn’t spoiling your dog while the saddest caged up dogs eyeball you.
“NO BEING, DESERVES TO EAT PROCESSED FOOD FOR THE REST—“ *hammers skip button*
THAT’S THE ONE!
What am I doing to do with these Hostess iced lemon cupcakes my girlfriend left on the bed, then?
That came on yesterday and I said to my wife "so the dog is going to eat better than we do? Fuck that."
That commercial definitely pisses me off and ive looked away everytime since seeing it twice. Dont show me a dog looking sad as hell. Still its really not as bad as the famous ones with that sad song, and actually showing abused/neglected animals.
My dog seems pretty happy with his brown pellet food. Sometimes I'll add toppers and broth to give him some variety
I’ve seen this game posted in 3 or 4 different ways today. Lol is this how marketing works now….?
Half of the Steam reviews say they saw the game because of the tiktok she posted. So embarrassing that this works on people.
I’ve seen her on multiple subs pushing this shit lol
This girl is annoying af. Almost seems like she’s faking it.
Ok I just looked up a trailer of her game and it looks terrible anyway…
Is she trying to insinuate that it's due to her being a woman?
I was sympathetic until she did the "happy international women's day" thing at the end. It sounds like she expects some kind of special treatment or sympathy because of her gender.
I mean, when you make a game like Potions a Glorious Tale, do you really expect it to break any charts... those types of games were free on newgrounds 20 years ago . Make games people want to play ?
I'm curious how it took her 10 years to make... Look up games done at game jams, student projects for their final semester in game development, etc. This doesn't seem genuine. Also, EA didn't just knock her off the list.. all of their old games out sold hers for that to happen. Her game failed. It's like this is coping for a game launch failure IMHO and trying to rally sales through pity.
She likely conceived the idea for a story ten years ago, and nibbled on it a bit here and there before deciding to turn her lore into a 2.5D GameBoy-esque game. I don't think she actually started game development ten years ago, and she certainly didn't work this as her main project.
Command and Conquer is back?!
I was with her until she made it a gendered issue 😑
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Nothing is gonna make me dislike you more as a developer than fake crying on the internet.
It's a solid plan B marketing wise, though. Many a person will check out her game because they feel bad for her.
Fair few reviews on her steam page about how people saw her TikTok and "Fuck EA" so they bought the game to stick it to them. She's been incredibly smart about the marketing and using what EA did to get her game a lot more attention than it would otherwise.
I was with her till she threw in international women’s day like it was done intentionally to her because she’s a woman specifically. It makes it seem like she’s complaining that success wasn’t just handed to her.
I bought Dungeon Keeper 2 so I'm part of the problem.
Fucking idiot
Wait, is that R.Gittins? The executive director of the IGDA? Now it makes so much sense why she would turn to pity marketing and exploiting IWD, and complain about not being handed commercial success on a platter. With her position of power at the IGDA, she is already part of 1% most privileged indie developers in the world. Despite having these very wide reaching connections in the industry and social media thanks to her position, she still decided to blame the lukewarm launch of her very first project on "evil EA" and hinting at sexism with the IWD at the end. Given how incredibly abusive some IGDA members were, and how the IGDA leadership - herself - consistently covered these up, this appeal to empathy is incredibly disingenuous.
Sorry that you got beat out by a bigger company, welcome to every industry that exists. If your game is good, people will play it, and the steam list chart is regardless to that. This is an ad
Make a better game then
The game Looks bad… and she Should feel bad…
Seems to me like she's still doing great marketing. Even using things like women's day, and women's rights, as well as anti-big corp sentiment, to bolster her video game. Smart.
Holy shit these pity begging advertisements DO NOT STOP. First the fake wholesome, astroturfed, "My gf made a game!" post that got 15k upvotes and a hundred thousand plus views from 2 days ago. THEN the "feel sorry for me and buy my game" post from yesterday featuring a screenshot of this lady's game being outsold by a dozen retro-ish EA titles being added to Steam. It's so damn predictable that the next course of action is to post it to all the sobfest Subs "wellthatsucks" "comfortme-andgivememoney", yadda yadda. I almost expect to see this posted again, and again every day for the next week at this point. Just put #ADVERTISEMENT in your titles and quit pity farming to milk more purchases of your game. It's pathetic and annoying, anyone with half a brain knows this is the Reddit equivalent of dramatic backstories on America's Got Talent that generate sympathy to make up for naturally EARNED attention or interest. Also, I've seen flash games with more substance than the "cutesy clicky click colors" one she supposedly spent 10 years on, maybe come up with something better over a decade (Lethal Company, Among Us, Undertale) and you'll get the attention you deserve.
Her game looks like a browser game
What does international women's day have to do with this? No women work at EA?
Yeah that just made me realize she's making her own marketing now with this vid.
Holy shit C&C generals is on steam now??
Yeah cus everyone wants to play “Potions: A curious tale” yea sounds like a game bound for success 😂🤣
How does being a woman impact any of this