itchio tuto

Brief list of itchio main features:

• You can customize your Profile page: click on your name (top right of your window) then
  • 'Edit theme' > 'Save' to set the appearance of your page, with colors and banner, 
  • 'Edit profile' > Save' to add some text.

• You can upload and manage your projects in your 'Dashboard', each project will have its own page, linked to your account. 
• You can participate and host jams, which are time-limited creation challenges.
• You can discover new games or projects (Explore > Physical games > Most recent)
• You can follow people to be up-to-date when they upload, rate or save something. 
• You can see what people you're following are rating or saving (Feed)
• You can save a game or content to a collection, rate it or find content with similar tags (at the top right of the game page). 

Collections are lists you create as you wish. You can list other people's games and projects, as well as your own projects. 

A collection allows you to:

• keep all you favorite content in the same place, 
• create a 'wish list', 
• sort your own games/projects by topic or system, 
• organize your Profile page. 

You'll find collectins in your 'My library' section, by clicking on the arrow next to your name (top right of your window browser – or direct link there: itch.io/my-collections).

When you create a new account, you automatically have 2 'basic' collections to begin with:  'Things you've rated' and 'My Purchases' (either you donated money or obtained with a 'Reward' function).

You can rearrange the projects included in a collection, by clicking on the title of a collection to open the list, then hover your mouse over a game and click on Move left or right. 

You can rate projects. The rating is expressed in stars, 5 being the maximum, but I strongly recommend to not use this rating as you would on other websites, because it's highly punitive here for tabletop roleplaying games.

If you don't like a project, but it doesn't disgust you, don't rate it. If you rate it less than 5 stars, you're "sinking" it. (Yes, even 4 stars sinks the project –it's an algorithm problem and I'm not sure it's been fixed this year; perhaps because there aren't enough ratings on physical games as opposed to videogames).

According to Khelren: 

A sole [negative] note has a strong impact, and it takes a lot to compensate for it. For 1 troll [who gives you only 1 star], you need a dozen 5-star ratings to compensate.

If you enjoy something, rate it 5 stars and speak out about it. What I recommend when you rate a project is to include a message with your rating, which you then copy and paste into the public Comments section of the page (as the text you can write under your rating will not be publicly visible and will not send any notification to the author, unlike comments).

Comment on what you like. Let us know when you've enjoyed a game, a rule, a headline, a picture, or a play on words in a text. A brief comment of just a few words can be such a motivating and gratifying thing for an author! Especially in a small community like ours. Make it public so that other people are encouraged to leave a comment too, or will even reply to yours. Itchio is a website on which most of the people (TTRPG field, at least) are friendly: be part of it 🙂

Bonus tip: if you'd like to play the (algorithmic) "popularity" game, add a video as a comment to the projects you like. This brings the project up on the "Most popular physical games" page, and helps its author to be highlighted. This is an observation made and "studied" empirically by several people. The aim is not to comment with any video, but to comment with actual plays or any game-related content. I guess this is a function of the algorithm linked to itchio's purpose: a videogame platform, the most popular video games being the most streamed.

The website doesn't have a messaging system, so all exchanges with other creators take place publicly (in the Comments or Forum sections). There is a Community tab, which is a public forum, but it doesn't sound very popular (in the TTRPG communities).

For a more private conversation, you'll usually find a link to the author's personal website or social network on their profile page. If you need to send a more "private" message on itchio, you can comment on a game's devlog by leaving your email address and then deleting your comment once the author has replied or contacted you; I advise you to do this only if you truly can't find any way of contacting them but you really need to get in touch.

Some of your actions generate automatic e-mail notifications. Be reassured, these are generally not single e-mails, but rather e-mails grouping together several notifications at once.

You'll receive a single e-mail when someone :

• subscribes to your account,
• buys one of your games,
• leaves a comment on one of your pages,
• replies to one of your comments;
• replies to one of the forums you follow (you can subscribe to forum topics - on game jam pages, for example).

You receive a " grouped " e-mail when someone you follow :

• uploads a new project,
• adds a file to an existing project,
• publishes a devlog,
• puts one or more of their projects on sale.

Single emails aren't always sent, and it can often happen that you don't get any email notifying you that someone is following you or has bought a game (especially if your account is logged in, itchio won't send you an email because you'll get the red notification). If, however, that's too many emails for you: you can deactivate some or all of these notifications in Settings > Email notifications.