Without having played any of these games, I assure you that was probably a justified reaction at the time ;)

I had a quick play of this last night, and I was impressed. Really good work with it, folks.

Yup, link's broken sadly

Side note: maybe make postcount, etc visible on mouseover or an option to do so. That'll allow a clean aesthetic without (hopefully!) much work.

Also, posts need a link to the post itself so I can share them, etc.

> Personally I don't like the gamifying parts of forums like post counts etc. partly cause it makes all other forums look really ugly

If it's an aesthetic thing, offer options to minimise those things or hide them (or, make them visible on mouseovers)

Interesting. Will need to sit down and do a bunch of testing

GLORIOUS

Last night it wasn't working very reliably, unfortunately :(

Haven't been playing much (other than dev work) due to being cut off from the net for over a fortnight. Luckily, it came back tonight so maybe I'll hit something up tomorrow night.

Those colour variants remind me of Street Rod in a really, really good way

Awesome, I've seen this one turn up on twitter and it's always grabbed my attention.

Yo. If your game's been greenlit maybe you need to change the banner you're showing on the itch page to something to indicate that?

> I really want to motivate myself to complete a small game

This is the right idea. Start incredibly small, manageably small. Small games actually get finished.

Individual games can have a subforum of sorts, in that you can enable comments on them (I haven't done this though, as I don't want an additional place to maintain)

This is an important point, and to expand on it: Reddit make you feel like shit for mentioning what you're working on.

While I feel the forum should have a player focus as opposed to a dev-only focus, it should be very clear from the outset that talking about your work is encouraged rather than frowned upon.

Nope, didn't get one

Edit: Further, there doesn't seem to be a way to see notifications unless you have one

Correct. Fifty different subforums mean fifty people all talking in different places rather than one place with fifty people.

Let's talk retention.

What I mean by this, is that Itch as a site has several things that need to be improved (and they have been, which is great), and they all flow into this discussion for the forum as the following points:

1. How do you get people here? (Forum)
2. How do you encourage someone to come back tomorrow? (Forum)

First point is mostly about advertising the forum (big link front page when you're ready, etc). Second point is about psychology - and let's take some big pointers from forums we've all used before.

The first things that come to mind, are: Post counts (or some form of point reward system). Yes, they do encourage low value posts, but they are also a psychological reinforcement to come back (and remind users they've spent time here before). They also help to show how involved someone is within the community so a response can be properly rationalised (ie: talking to someone who's posted 10 times vs someone who's posted 10,000 times uses different phrasing, assumptions, etc). I think this is one of the first things that should be considered. Straight up

Secondly: Keeping a conversation going. Encouragement to continue a conversation is typically done via a trigger - mostly a notification that you HAVE a reply to respond to. Not sure that I've noticed this in place yet. In short, if there's no notification of responses, expect people to never return to conversations and for things to be very hit & run.

Third: Consider giving visual weight to users according to either their purchase history (little joysticks to indicate amount of games owned, etc), their development history (little space invader icons per games released), jam history, etc. Little things help to give people a feel of how much they belong. I know the crisp, clean interface is a nice thing but maybe you can run two visual styles - one by default that's more traditional forum and then the cleaner one for those who like a more pure look.

Mostly - if you want the community within the forum to grow (and therefore, the site overall), you're going to need to aim more at the players than at the devs, and you're going to need to examine other forums and see how certain things are handled.

> Also it's best if we include non-gamedevs into this discussion, since they use the site too and we don't want to completely alienate them with game development stuff and provide some general gaming content too.

Absolutely. Though it's nice having gamedev communities, it's worth noting that Itch's forums should actually predominately be for the folks who PLAY the games on the site rather than just the devs talking to other devs.

I've previously sold itch.io keys at PAX Aus and other events, and people are highly receptive to the idea of 'like Steam but for smaller games' - BUT, it'd be awesome to have a premade flyer as a PDF you can encourage devs to print and have at their booths, etc.

This'd be a good thing we could use to start the idea of a street team - folks who can help get more presence in geographical areas, etc.

> Our current project is a music sequencer "game" being designed specifically for a large touchscreen surface in the children's section of the Iowa City Public Library, but we've got a bunch of other stuff in the pipe for 2016.

That sounds incredibly cool. Got photos?

• weekly feedback/screenshot events (like /r/gamedev does)

Didn't get a chance to try this one out at Pax Aus, but wishing you all the best with it!