TALK: Small Games Community

[droqen]

Giving a 30-min talk on small games communities. Notes here

[droqen]

What's the conclusion? Well- first, what are the pieces?
- Paradise
- Letterclub
- Founding communities, collaborations, consensus decision-making, social spaces... artists...? support networks for artists? what do we do with spaces
---> poetry readings at bampot
---> dunbar number, runyourown.social, general principles for events and communities and gatherings of people at any scale
- The Videogame Industry
- The Videogame Industry Does Not Exist

[droqen]

- Business. How do we make money.
- Audience, attention, marketing. How do we get noticed. (Tie to poetry readings: What is the purpose of making art? Why do you do it?)
- Identity. How do we have a shared identity and individual identities? (Is this a struggle currently?)

[droqen]

- The Creative Process Generally
---> i have a shit ton of thoughts about this and i think it's a hugely important topic to me! i should lean into that. i think everything flows up or down stream from this

[droqen]

... Let's allow things to flow from there, then.

[droqen]

1. I love to make games, but it's hard.
2. Having a community makes it easier and more fulfilling: TIGSource, Toronto scene
3. I like game jams, but how do I bridge the gap from game jams to Real games?
4. Tried many things. Starseed Pilgrim came together. Then tried making bigger games without much of a plan. Arrogantly thought, "I can just make a bigger game now because I'm a successful indie, right?" (This part might not be useful.)
5. Tried making a game with a bunch of co-designers (Gloam)... We did not know what we were doing, bit off more than we could chew imo. I think this was a bad step- too much pressure to make some strange process work. (Respect your processes!)
6a. Experimented with many different processes. 31 unmarked games.
6b. Made Paradise by accident. It grew on its own out of a latent desire.

Letterclub gets in here somehow. That's complicated. It's also not really a 'small games community'... It's more like a 'games theory writing circle'. A little more theory than small games, a little too small for the term community.

TIGSource.

[droqen]

UPDATE: I delivered the talk! With Ezra's assistance it became less of a "talk" and more of a kinda chill interview about my practice of making small games, which I found to be a lot more comfortable and easy. I gave in to the obvious; it was great. Got some nice questions from others in the voice chat.