IF Seal: What's up with demoless IF blogs getting big audiences?
Hey there IF Seal, new(ish) author here with some confused rambles over interactions, marketing, and general community stuff.
Honestly I love reading and writing interactive fiction so regardless of likes and stuff I will finish my story BUT I cannot help but notice I'm just not getting a whole lotta traction on my demo.
I frequently see Tumblr pages that don't even have a demo released yet get several dozens/hundreds of likes and retweets yet I have an actual demo out (along with intro posts, RO information, progress updates, etc) but rarely get over 10 notes. Furthermore these IF pages with "Demo TBA" seem to get quite a few asks too and I don't anymore (side note, anyone reading this, if you notice an IF blog that you like isn't getting many asks then do send them some, they would probably really appreciate it).
It's just very confusing to me. I know it's still early on for me so people will probably read and interact once I get over 100k words (am close) but I just don't know what I'm doing wrong and why demo TBA ppl get so much attention when it is well known that many of these projects just get abandoned. The few people that I do get comments from seem to like my IF and express excitement over it so I think it's more of a reach problem ?
Dear Community-Seeking Friend,
I entirely understand your confusion about demoless blogs ending up with a lot of attention. I don't really get the appeal myself - while I understand being excited about a concept, there is not much way of knowing what the game will be like without at least some excerpts. I believe it comes down to:
- people seeing something they're excited about in principle, and wanting to encourage the writer
- people seeing their friends get excited, and wanting to join in and enthuse as a community
- the fact that a game concept has no way of disappointing you if it does not exist yet: it is all endless potential
Now. Does it feel confusing and perhaps even difficult to see that happen when you are sharing something real? Of course. But it is reality, and people being excited about an idea doesn't guarantee that those same people would have been equally excited about your work. That is a difficult aspect of this to swallow, but it can be rather freeing at the same time. There is not much that can be done about it directly other than trying to avoid comparison (the thief of joy) and focusing on the fact that you have made something and taken the plunge to share it, which is a genuine achievement in itself.
There are some other things you can do, perhaps. Put yourself out there to get in touch with other writers at a similar stage to you through your project, play their work, let them know what you think. Ask players what they think about certain aspects of your game. Try to focus on what you love about your game and the intrinsic rather than extrinsic reward of making something new that did not exist before.
The latter is hard. I know it is. I have many letters here about feeling vulnerable about audience (look under "if seal: audience", especially poor potato's "lack of audience engagement makes me want to quit") and I do not have easy answers. Making art is vulnerable. You do not mention whether you are making commercial art, but that is emotionally complicated as well. I truly hope that your writing finds its people.