Hey people!

So, as I'm sure you're mostly aware by now, Twitter is kind of a shitshow at the moment. Musk seems keen on burning it down to the ground, and I've largely decided to make Tumblr my primary social media account. You can find it here if you want to follow me there.

I'm sure lots of you might have questions about where I'm going to be and my future as a game designer, so this post is going to serve as a general "game plan" for how I'm going to be approaching game design and social media in general in 2023.

So to start off, I want to make it clear by explaining how my creative process works and how I've used Twitter in the past. When I get an idea for a game, I generally start handwriting notes, either during my day job where I have a lot of downtime, or, if I'm at home, I throw all my thoughts down in a .txt file. Then, I spend anywhere from a few days to a few weeks refining those ideas into a digestible, readable format, designing cover art and layout for the project, actually creating the book in Affinity Publisher, and designing the itch page for each game. I also work on banners, logos, and profile pictures to use as marketing material for the game's release, and I would write out a few hype posts leading up to the game's release. I generally don't have a set release date in mind: When I feel like I'm close enough to completion to publish within the next 24 hours, I'd create a short-term announcement that the game is releasing soon. On release day, I create a thread announcing the game's release and publish the project officially on itch, and may spend a few weeks periodically generating hype. All of this, I would do on Twitter. I owe my following and the income I've made from selling games to Twitter allowing me to build a profile and a brand to sell to people.

Now, with Twitter becoming a swelling dumpster fire that I refuse to pay money to have access to a checkmark, I have decided to severely limit how I use the site, and have been slowly moving to Tumblr and learning how to properly use it and get settled into the new post format. My only problem is: Twitter is literally all I had to market myself with. I don't have a Facebook account (and generally avoid using Meta's services due to their prohibitively invasive data harvesting practices), and while I have a reddit account and have achieved much success using it in the past, I find it to be much too volatile and hostile to indie devs to consider it as a serious platform to use. All I have are my followers on itch that I can blog to like I'm doing right now, and a tumblr that I'm still getting the hang of.

This, combined with a general drought of creativity I've been experiencing lately due to various factors in my personal life, is going to severely limit how much y'all hear from me in the foreseeable future. I think I'm going to take a break from game design while I get acclimated to changing factors of my personal life and take time to develop my Tumblr presence. I'll still periodically be on Twitter, but it will largely be for shitposting as the site collapses around me.

So if you want to continue hearing from me and getting your hands on new projects that I will (eventually) develop, your best bet is to continue following me here and to start following me on Tumblr. 

I'm also going to clarify that I'm not in any kind of financial trouble: I work full time in a different industry, and all the money I've earned from designing games has largely just been extra spending money. I have not nor will I likely ever consider making games as a primary source of income. I'm making this post in large part because, with Twitter in the state that it is and where it's headed, you probably won't hear from me or receive regular updates from me on Twitter in the near future as I shift platforms and take a short-term hiatus from game design.

If you choose to stick around, I greatly appreciate it. Share my games with your friends. Give feedback. Comment on the pages of any of my games that you like! Any little bit of support helps, and I greatly appreciate any support that comes my way.

So, yeah. Follow my Tumblr if you want more relaxed content, or stay here if you strictly want updates related to my games. I'm also on Discord in a select handful of servers.

¡Adiós!