Weekly Links #222: household chores edition

Has No Time To Play lost its way?

When the original site first came online, it was more about the process of making games than the games themselves. Some of the best content you can find here came out of our early explorations. But those explorations inevitably led to some finished products... and with the latter came a hope that the site could be financed at least in part from selling them online.

So much for dreams. I spent five of the past twelve months working on two substantial games, only to see them go completely ignored. Oh well, it was getting harder to make money online anyway. One digital marketplace yanked the rug from under my feet earlier this spring; another may have just done the same after a whole month of uncertainty. Might as well pay the expenses out of pocket, and call on friends for help if I come up short. Wouldn't be the first time, either. My friends are awesome like that.

Meanwhile, the five crappy little games I made in as many weeks met with unexpected success. People actually played them. Made suggestions. Showed me their high scores. It's such a difference from the usual reaction, which is crickets, that I can't help but question the conventional wisdom. Makes sense, too: as someone pointed out recently in the itch.io Discord server (to paraphrase), the last thing people need these days is their entertainment giving them even more complications to think about on top of real-life issues.

Ought to start acting like the punk developer I call myself, and just make stuff for people to enjoy. Everything else should flow from that. Oh, and teach others how to make their own — the reason No Time To Play was born in the first place.

Ride with me.

It's another week that starts slowly, but on the plus side, the project I've been working on for just over a month is now complete! Details in the mini-postmortem; thanks for reading, and see you soon with more.

With one more project out of the way, I figured it was time for a little marketing again. It's a small move, but one that should have happened long ago: as of today, When Development Is the Game — the first No Time To Play book — is also available from Gumroad in addition to itch.io, so you can buy from the source you like more. Any money earned will still go towards keeping notimetoplay.org online and doing more research into game development, as before. Thanks again!

Last but not least, I just found out at the last moment that Failbetter Games, makers of Fallen London, have a Tumblr blog, and it's pretty active as of this writing. Hopefully that will last. They're still as cool as ever, at least going by what can be discerned from a distance. Enjoy!

Have a great Sunday.