Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #92 (Wrapping My Head Around This)

     Another week passed without much being crossed off the list. Making every menu screen work properly is turning out to be a week-long affair rather than the couple days I had in mind. It's like making a little game in itself with its own little systems. I'll remember that when planning for the future. That multiplayer setup menu is going to be a pain.

Check out this week in gamedev below.

That's 750 birds!

Unity wants me to start using their paid service but I can't afford to even peek my head in the door until BGP is finished.

Let's see how fast I can reach this number with the next trailer.

   Completed:

• Code for Customization Interfaces
• Actually Took a Day Off (No More Working Saturdays)

     Lessons Learned:

• Found some crowdfunding advice over here. Similar principles can be used to get my Greenlight campaign out there.
• I never even knew about GamesPress.com! Totally adding them to the top of my list of contacts for getting press attention.
• Having a day to decompress is actually necessary. Actually forcing myself to relax on Saturday renewed my gamedev energy like you wouldn't believe. I was feeling serious burnout until I laid on my bed to watch cartoons and indie dev documentaries all day.
• The whole Wells Fargo scandal made me look into what options there are when it comes to getting stiffed by banks and I came across this useful list. Putting thought into where I'll store my Yotes Games funding is a pretty important task. Can't keep making games if my earnings get sapped away by the bank I store it in.

       I spend a lot of zoning out time thinking about what life would be like if BGP took off like Pokemon Uranium after launch. I wonder just how big of an appetite there is for a Pony/Pokemon crossover kind of game. Like, how many people out there would be willing to throw down money day one and tell their friends about it after?

EQD bronies were polled to see what they'd like to see more pony games on.

     Of course most EQD readers would be Steam users, so the answer is pretty skewed. My surprise is seeing 3DS/PS4/Wii-U above mobile (the platform with the most most official MLP games). Good thing indies seem to have PC pony gaming goodness down pat. We've got NIA, Ambient, Sulfur Nimbus, Fightin' Herds, and Battle Gem Ponies on the horizon. It's gonna be a bronypalooza over on Steam next year! If there isn't a big market for Brony gamers now, there surely will be next year.
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   Downloads:

Next week there will be 90,000 Unicorn Training players!

I sold a lot more Unicorn Training downloads this month than usual!

     I'm actually feeling really proud of Unicorn Training's performance this month. It seems like a side effect of being covered by so many YouTubers was getting more curious viewers to check out my app store offerings. I was so used to seeing a straight $25 - $30 a month plus the generous $10 donation by a mysterious Mr. Craig to survive on. If the app store numbers are jumping up to $50 now I can only imagine what'll happen once BGP is on Greenlight!

      Still, this is less than I'd be making at a below min wage job so it's not like I can afford a PS4 or anything. But there's a certain magic to this kind of revenue. It's the fact that I earned it. I didn't grind for it or sacrificed my life energy and time in exchange for it. I made a thing I wanted to make and gave it the price of a chocolate bar. Then some people decided it was worth that much and paid me for my creation. To me, that makes the 70 cents worth way more than that.

     It's the validation that I can make make a living by doing what I love and I can make games people think are worth breaking out a wallet for.

    Featured:

More subs and more let's plays being found every week!
Check out the gameplay playlist.

     Been steadily getting more YouTube attention. I try to respond to anything sent my way so people get a sense that I'm a person and not a machine or some organization. There's really no red tape between me and the fans of my games and I think that could help Yotes Games grow as a brand in the future. 200 subscribers, man! That's more than double the 98 I remember having.
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     There's actually a post planned for this Friday!  After weeks and weeks of really nothing to talk about, I figured I could at least keep the site updated with my state of mind or a little dive into where my head's at work-wise. So you can look forward to seeing blogs here on weekends again.