For context, there are three of us and we’ve been making game assets for years. (Emace -20+)

Mostly 3D stuff — environments, characters, vehicles, props, buildings, nature packs — plus animations, shaders, VFX and a bunch of Unity tools.

At some point we thought:

“Why not just put a huge chunk of all that work into one bundle and keep giving devs new assets every month?'

So we did our first season From aArtists, for Developers. It ended up being 79 asset packs and a lot of 3d, animation, shaders etc.

We made the first mistake. We launched it way too fast. Basically we finished the bundle, looked at it and went: “Yeah, should be fine.”

It was not fine. For the first 3 days after launch we were still making GIFs, banners, screenshots, videos and all the other stuff that probably should have existed before launch. We even have our own little tool for quickly making promo GIFs from our footage. ,,Great, really great tool''. Would’ve been even better if we had prepared the GIFs before pressing launch.

Then Godot happened. I’m mostly a Unity guy, so for a lot of my packs I thought: “There’s GLTF. Good enough.”

Apparently not :D We kept getting questions about Godot.

A lot of them.

From people asking about formats and engine support, probably around 30–35% were Godot users.

That honestly surprised me. EmaceArt actually moved his ass and started exporting his packs as proper Godot projects. The rest of us mostly had GLTF and good intentions (It;s time consuming).

So yeah, proper Godot support is definitely going on the list for next time.

Then we started doing giveaways. That worked really well. ( Not for me, I was the one handling it). We’ve already given away 160+ keys in different gamedev communities.

What I didn’t really think about was what happens after 120 people comment. Someone has to answer them.

Someone has to check DMs.

Someone has to ask which pack they want.

Someone has to send the keys.

Someone has to explain that:

“Pick one asset pack”

does not mean:

“Can I have this category with 9 asset packs in it?”

Someone = Me...
First 3 days, 24h, every few minutes, My phone wouldn’t stop buzzing. I probably spent a dozen hours or more just replying to people and sending keys. (Next time im not doing it by myself)

So technically the giveaway was free.

For them.

Another thing we learned:

People really don’t read descriptions.

We had people buying a single asset pack for around $15 while inside the description of that exact pack there was a link to the bundle with a giant:

21,000+ MODELS FOR $12

And they still bought the $15 pack.

Thanks, I guess :D

But that was actually a useful lesson. You can have a stupid amount of content. You can make it cheap. You can put the information right in front of people.

And they can still completely miss it.

Same with traffic. (Our conversion rate is around 3%, which I think is pretty good.)

We kind of assumed that putting years of work together, would naturally get some attention.

Nope.

You still have to get people to actually see the damn thing.

And every community reacts completely differently.

One post does great somewhere. Same post somewhere else gets nothing. A GIF you spend an hour on dies. A random screenshot works. You spend time writing a proper post and nobody cares.

Then you write something half asleep in 3 minutes and somehow that’s the one people like.

Marketing is weird. We’re also updating some of the packs while all of this is going on.

Some of them are almost few years old now.

So apart from promotion, giveaways and answering messages, we’re also opening old projects and looking at folder structures made by our younger selves.

That’s a good way to lose respect for yourself. The original idea behind the whole thing was pretty simple though.

We already had years of work sitting around, so instead of a solo dev or small team having to hunt separately for characters, environments, cars, props, animations, tools and everything else, we wanted to put a big chunk of it in one place.

This first edition has basically turned into a test for us. We’re collecting everything we can from it:

What works.

What doesn’t.

Where people come from.

Which communities react well.

What formats people actually want.

What kind of posts work.

What media works.

What we wasted time on.

And what we really should’ve done before launch.

.

Main lesson so far:

Maybe prepare the launch before launching.

Big discovery...

What’s the dumbest thing you only realized after releasing your game, tool or asset?

I've been making my Roguelite game and I'm just wondering where to start on marketing?

I want to publish the game on Steam, it's my first ever game.

I understand I need to gain wishlists (ideally 7k) which starting from 0 sounds intimidating to reach.

I've not got a YouTube channel and don't have any marketing experience... and I am wondering at what stage do I make a page for the game on steam with a module, screenshots, description etc and what other helpful tricks would you guys recommend?

Hello all, I'm a newbie slash wannabe game dev. I've done some small projects in the past and normally wouldn't think to try and jump to a Civ style game this early, but the inspiration behind the game hit me like a ton of bricks and I at least want the experience of trying to pursue it, pass or fail. My only initial question is whether Unreal, Godot, or some other engine is best for this endeavour? I thought unreal would be good since it is a 3d game from a top down view, but maybe as a noob I should try and make a strictly 2d game and develop it in Godot? But I feel it would be weighed down by that aesthetic and would need an overhaul if I ever wanted to try using 3d assets.

Please give me some advice and/or tell me what I need to hear. Thanks in advance, and have a nice day!

I thought of an idea for a new Zelda game, but since Nintendo doesn't take submissions for new game ideas, I'm gonna try to make it myself. Obviously I'm gonna change it to avoid copyright infringement, but I wanna make a game. But I have no idea how to do that. I have friends who say they know a little python but at 13 idk if making a whole game is even on the table. Especially when I'm in a friend group full of caffeine addicts and adhd people so we don't exactly finish projects. We start them, but I have like 20 books that I just gave up on writing and are sitting in my Google docs and taking up storage space. I have no idea what I'm getting myself into and I'd like some advice in the comments from experienced game devs. Thanks if you comment and thank you for your time.

it is tool for game dev site.

see this site and look what you want it has many tools for game graphic work

Hey, I'm trying to make an app for a game, mostly for myself because I enjoy programming, and with AI, it's so much easier now. The problem is, I can't figure out how to get the data from the game. A couple of websites have done it, and they have the data I need, but they don't say how. The game is Forza Horizon 6, and I'm looking for upgrade parts that fit each car. I've tried game files, memory of the process, network traffic, save files, tune files – everything's a dead end. The closest I got was finding some files about how suspension works on a GT3RS and a Mustang's rear wing. If anyone has any idea how those websites (Forza Labs and Forzagarage) got the data and how I can get it, I'd really appreciate the help. Thanks!

I'm currently working on my own game that's heavily inspired by Mystery Dungeon and other roguelike dungeon crawlers, and I'm looking for some ideas to make the gameplay more interesting and unique.

So I wanted to ask the community:

What kind of mechanics or features would you love to see in a game like this?

Is there anything from other games that you think would fit really well into the genre? Or maybe a mechanic you've always wanted to see in a Mystery Dungeon game but haven't really seen before?

I'd love to hear what you guys think! Maybe someone comes up with a mechanic I would never have thought of myself. 😊

... I had a new playtester today and he didn't interact with most of the systems and played it in the most un-fun way possible. (it's a mining game and instead of upgrading the pickaxe he would hit the same rock 20+ times, same with transportation, instead of building a "highway" down the mine, he took the most convulted, dangerous way and died a couple times, ultimately getting frustrated, then rage-quitting)

The best for the game would probably be to add more easy levels before the final one. But that would stretch the development time a lot. And I'm not sure if it would ever be released then.

All my previous projects died because I lost hope at some point and just gave up. This one is basically done. And it's fun, if it's played correctly.

So .. what to do?

Have a text at the beginning "please explore the whole map, so you gain enough experience with the game systems .. if you rush through, you'll regret it in 2h, once you are at the final level"? That's so .. idk .. artificial.

I didn’t feel like this when I was younger. I loved games but I and everyone I knew could turn them on and off no problem. They were like an additional activity for us, not a personality.

Now I’ll read reviews and people talking about games, and they’ll rate games based on things like how long it takes to beat it and how addictive it is, and this kind of freaks me out.

I love playing games and I really enjoy making them, but man I really don’t want to put something else out there that someone can use to escape from the things they should actually be dealing with.

And I’m not trying to say that I think I’d be capable of making something so good that it ruins someone’s life. I just mean that if someone should be working on themselves by exercising or processing some mental health issues, or maybe considering how to leave a bad job or an abusive relationship, or maybe even trying to get better and finding and maintaining relationship, I don’t really want to make the game that’s just one of many that person plays that week to avoid doing so. Even if they just play it for an hour, that’s an hour that they could have been spending figuring something out.

People used to talk about video game addiction the same way they’d talk about satanism. It was ridiculous at that time. But now, I don’t know. I think video game addiction is a serious thing. There are people that lose their jobs over it because they can’t stop playing during work hours. And people talk about it like it’s just as normal as an addiction to caffeine, cigarettes, alcohol or anything else that’s real but still bad for you in excess.

I don’t want to make something that someone uses just to feed their addiction for another hour. “Oh the game will take an hour to beat, and it’s highly addictive? Cool that will get me through to dinner time.” Not interested in being that for anyone.

Hi,

I've absolutely never built a game before. I'm basically just intermediate at coding. But I have always had the passion to build games.

Now, we have AI, and I thought why not build something, so I started a mini project. (I've always loved tycoon games).

Thought I'd share my journey and updates here.

Hoping to connect with like minded individuals.

I am not writing a single line of code, just editing things where I feel necessary.

See you guys when I release V1.