sooo, i made this forum thinking about social spaces, and i think the experiment is actually kinda done. i had some ideas for 1st dragon and i'm really (really) happy with everyone posting there but i don't think it's something i have the fire to keep going myself. I DID THIS LAST TIME TOO T___T

i wish i'd made the game able to go on without me? i realized i'm looking for social spaces and specifically i'm interested in ones where i and others share our art. to some degree this is what some tabletop roleplaying games are - everyone is sharing in the art of storytelling. i was drawing inspiration from that but i think i really missed the mark, making something with an authoritative server and a noninteractive client, the "World Viewer for 1st Dragon".

rather than build a game to contain such a community it seemed better to make a community for playing little games, and i believe that now more than before. i think probably what i want to do is make (or find) an indie games community that i want to be a part of.

i noticed how the forum mostly was quiet withouts prompts to get involved.

i learned a bunch.

i'll be back.

Hey, just wanted to say I super respect this post. I'm someone who frequently starts things (both solo stuff and collaborations) and then lets them die for various reasons, but I'm bad at actually declaring them dead. I hadn't realized until this moment how much I've let all those orphaned projects eat away at me by keeping them "alive" in my head. I'm taking this as impetus to go say a few words over a number of dead projects. Thank you for that.

The social space and community you're describing are things I want too, and I'm excited to follow along. I build stuff in such a vacuum today, and share so little. I hope we can both figure out where and what ticks those boxes for us, whether your answer is the same as mine or not.

Best of luck!

It makes me... really sad, but also validated, to hear that you've been building in a vacuum and don't share much. I guess I've felt much the same way, and have been working on ways to dig myself (and by extension & necessity, others!) out of this hole. So far all the communities I've been exposed to seem to be focused on the 'indie' identity, which imo has gravitated away from just sharing creative stuff and having fun together.

Kill your dying and cannibalize their parts! Good luck with your dead projects. Thanks for your response. <3

Starting things and never finishing?! Who would do that?! *Looks intensely at self* At this point i count it as part of the process. Trying things until one grabs our mind, and then we run with it.

Do not worry too much, 'twas fun!`

post-mortem part 2: it was called 1st dragon because there was always a possibility for a second interation, another try. it's not ready, but lessons for 2nd dragon:

- empower players to do more without my involvement, because i'm lazy

- schedule my involvement but make it valuable, because i'm not actually lazy, i'm just bad at time management. if i set aside some time i'll spend it more intentionally and i'll maybe be able to not worry so much every other second of the day

- more prompts for action. the most active part of the game was when i asked ppl to envision different HOMES; ofc part of that was because it was right at the beginning of the game, but i think it was also because it was the only part of the game with a clear directive

- more surprises, more follow-through, more interesting outcomes. (food was a pretty boring problem because there was no choice involved, and once solved it was like "ok, food's solved, uh, ok")