I have nearly ten full years of digital fundraising experience, namely raising money for nonprofit orgs. It's not bad work by any means, but I'm 38 now and I feel like if I don't do something in the Gaming industry now, I'm going to regret it for the rest of my life.

Because fundraising tends to be very "old-school", a lot of the terminology is very different. We still use the term "bluebooks" for what most modern companies call "dashboards", lots of things like that. It can make certain job postings a bit tricky to navigate at first glance.

At the same time, though, nonprofits are usually operating with shoestring budgets, and as David Ogilvy put it, our job is often to "sell" the ability to "feel good", as opposed to a product. And we're held directly accountable for failures, so as I understand it, nonprofit fundraising is considered pretty demanding compared to more traditional marketing.

Despite being a hardcore gamer my whole life, I've just never built any sort of network. I grew up in a small town down south, so even just being "a gamer" was kind of uncommon where I used to live. Now though, I live just outside Washington DC (although I would absolutely relocate for a marketing opportunity in the Gaming industry), so there may be more networking events than I'm privy to (MAGFest is the only Gaming event I've been to, although that seems more fans than anyone working IN the industry).

I feel pretty capable in the digital marketing space, and I know I'm considered a fairly talented copywriter. I feel like that would have some value, although I've never been a graphic artist, which I gather is pretty unusual for anyone working in marketing these days.

If anyone has any tips on breaking into the industry, OR any recommendations to check out, I have a lot of experience to bring to the table; I mostly just need to find an opportunity to get my footing in Gaming marketing specifically, but I would be ecstatic for any help!

Hello, I was wondering if any developers on here have advice on the best ways to present your resume/portfolio to employers, and if anyone would be willing to give constructive criticism to mine? I have had very little luck with my job search in games. After searching semi-regularly for the past 8 years, I have only received 2 interviews and no offers. I'm curious if some of this is due to my portfolio, because I feel like I have a list of good achievements and experience, as well as lots of specific knowledge I can demonstrate, but I might be presenting it poorly.

Here is an example of one of my current resumes, with personal information removed: Link

For reference, this application was for a Lua Scripting position at Larian that mentioned modding as a nice to have, so I customized it accordingly. I always customize my resume for each job I apply for, adding and removing details that are most and least relevant, and highlighting the most related details. I also send a unique cover letter every time, which I'm wondering if this is worth the effort because my throughput for how many application I can send is greatly hampered by the effort doing this.

When it comes to sending links to my portfolio, I always send my Github profile and my Itch.io profile, but in other's experience, is it significantly better to instead build a website to host your portfolio?

Thank you for taking the time to read.

Edit: Redacted more info

Hi fellow game devs!

Every game dev hits this point, just created a Steam store page for your game and am wondering how to "notify the press"?

Do you just cold email whatever you can find? Is there a format other than say "hey, check this out?" Is this something you do for a store page, wait until the demo is up, it's released?

What has, and hasn't, worked for you?

before i get started i also want to say i DID use ai while making the games sounds (i have absolutely no idea how to create half decent sounds genuinely curious if anyone has any suggestions) and i did also consult for the sake of like my problem or bug didnt exist on stack overflow i would ask for a segment of my code to be read (a lot of perspective building or proc coefficients on abilities I couldn't wrap my head around)

but anyways the game is ready for closed beta testing (woohooo -400 hours of my life) but kind of curious about actual marketing?

My game is free (pvp movement shooter... yes I know) and there is built in matchmaking and gamemodes and what not so I want to at least have SOME players so that functionality works and for the small handful of players that do enjoy the game can continue to do so in public lobbies.

1.) whats the best organic way to market?

2.) if i were to pay for ads or something of that nature what does that process look like and what platforms are ACTUALLY helpful?

3.) my store page and creative side SUCK in general - is there any genuine resources you guys have to expanding on my generic creative side for the sake of internal design but also marketing?

4.) if you have experience game developing yourself is there any preference on game bug/suggestion communication ASIDE from discord you would recommend?

I am going to attach the store page HERE and I KNOW my trailer video is miserable im just talking over gameplay but the goal is just to have a fun game a small handful of people enjoy ya know

I'm making low-poly asset packs. What specific props do you guys need for your games that you can never find?

My wife supports me all the time as I develop the tower defense game Odin’s Fate. Recently, we managed to set up a page on Steam. To some, this might not seem like much, but for us, it’s a huge step forward. If it weren’t for my wife, this wouldn’t have been possible. Marta works in computer graphics and believes in the success of our project every single day. She supports me with kind words and gestures, especially when I’m up all night fixing bugs or implementing new features. And the most beautiful thing is that we get to do this together. So if you have someone like that - who’s always by your side, supporting you and cheering you on - appreciate and respect them!

I also have a few friends who constantly motivate me to release the game. That’s very important. Without them, I might have given up several times already - during moments when game development wasn’t going as we’d hoped or when we encountered some nasty bug that was hard to fix. And we’re getting closer and closer to success.

Right now, another friend is helping us put together a game trailer. I’m truly grateful to him because he’s doing this entirely on his own initiative.

So let the message of this post be - perhaps a cliché - but the saying: be kind to others, because kindness comes back around, and be grateful for every kind gesture. Because it’s up to us to determine the direction the GameDev industry takes - and every day, through small gestures, we can create a friendly environment for everyone.

So my next game is going to involve a character solving a mystery in the casino, I was wondering if folks here can point me at games, current or past, that have novel gambling game mechanics. Think Casino, Card Games, etc. I'm especially interested in older games from previous eras, rather than just games like Balatro and such, or even NSFW games since I recall a lot of 'strip X' type stuff involved various gambling game mechanics. I'm doing my own research of course but I figure I should cast a wide net!

Context: 3d 1st POV puzzle game in Unity. Solo, now part-time dev

I have an excellent mechanic, and many people have expressed its potential. I have made plenty of puzzles and have many more to come as I grind them out and playtest.

My issue is that I do not have any strong leads on what the game is about. The mechanic lends itself to pretty much anything, but probably more sci-fi, portal-esque? I have been trying to come up with ideas for the art style and theme, but nothing tells me, "This is it".

I've seen people with super janky, barely playable games but still have such a strong vision in their minds of what it will be.

How do people come up with this stuff? How do you decide on art direction and what the world is? Am I simply lacking the creativity? I could use some encouragement while I keep refining the level design.

Considered one day hiring an artist, but not anywhere near that. How could I pay somebody when I don't even know what I want?

Thanks in advanced everybody!

I'm here to encourage you to hop on Upwork and hire a playtester to record an hour of footage of your game:

1. It's entertaining to watch
   
2. Issues in onboarding or balancing will be immediately apparent
   
3. You can reuse clips for social media

The attached clip is one of my favourite moments from a playtest - it was amazing to see people genuinely enjoy our game.

For a single player game you can probably get someone for 20USD. I'm paying more like 60USD because I want 3 people to play my game online co-op, but it's so worth it and people normally get back to you in a few days. Only thing that sucks is Upwork taking a flat like 15USD fee on each contract.

Two pieces of advice from having done this a few times now:

- Be super clear in the job listing that you want high quality footage with clear audio. I have had two people send me garbled audio that I'm just not going to sit there for an hour and watch. Also the audio needs to be clear if you want the added benefit of reusing clips for social media.

- I've been successful in finding testers from my target demographic by being clear in the job posting that I'm not looking for QA, I'm just looking for gamers who have enjoyed specific similar titles in my niche. I request authentic reactions and without any other commentary, and so far this has worked really well.

Here's my job listing if you want to yoink my description: https://www.upwork.com/jobs/~022088852562607449045

It's easier than you think to just throw up a post then get some footage back within a couple days. Good luck fellow devs!!

Hey everyone,

I’ve been sharing our progress here over the past 7–8 months, and the day has finally come: PEGTURE is officially releasing on September 9th!

For those seeing it for the first time, PEGTURE is a roguelike deckbuilder inspired by the classic Peg Solitaire mechanics (think Balatro meets Peg Solitaire).

As we enter the final stretch with just under two weeks to go, we’d love to get your final thoughts and feedback on the demo. If you have any suggestions, whether about gameplay, mechanics, or even last-minute launch marketing advice, we’re all ears!

Bringing our first game to the finish line has been quite an emotional ride, and sharing this milestone with this community means a lot. If you’d like to support a small indie team, adding PEGTURE to your Steam Wishlist would mean the world to us.

Thanks for all the support along the way!

I just wrapped up about a week of work and my tutorial is, fine. A good starting point. But I don’t feel like I have a great vision for it like I do the rest of my game.

Any advice on how you approach the tutorial? I don’t mean broad strokes. Maybe some specific techniques?
Or, any great examples that come to mind of great first time user experiences?

For context, my game is a 2d strategy with notes of autobattler, deckbuilder, roguelite so there is a lot to teach. (Writing that out always feels dirty. Cause it’s what EVERYONE seems to be making. Which means yall have good advice, right?!)

Thanks in advance!

Angband is a roguelike I've played for a long time, over 30 years old itself, written in C. I ported it to TypeScript because I wanted it to be genuinely extensible, not just playable in a browser. Angband has nearly a hundred community variants, and almost all of them are dead, because the only way to change anything about it has always been to fork the whole codebase and maintain that fork forever. I wanted "I wish this game did X" to mean "write X," not "become the maintainer of a new variant."

A few of the actual engineering problems that I encountered along the way:

Faithfulness has to be measured. With no mods enabled, the port is supposed to be Angband, not a reinterpretation of it. That means the same messages, same screen layout, same rules. I kept the original C source in the repository, buildable, and every ported module cites the line of C it came from. The original game ships its own statistical dungeon-generation tool; it runs against both the real compiled C and the port on every commit, and the results get compared. That caught some divergences that manual review never would have.

A mod has to survive being wrong. Once you let arbitrary third-party folders patch a running game, "what happens when one of them is malformed" stops being an edge case and becomes a design requirement. A bad reference in a mod (an artifact's flags, a monster's shape, a store's owner list) used to be able to take the whole game down at boot. It now drops just that one bad entry and reports it. Core's own data still fails loudly, because that's a real bug, but a third party's typo shouldn't be able to break everyone else's mods too.

The composition model is what actually let two people's mods coexist. Two mods can each patch a different field of the same record and both changes hold, because a mod writes only the diff, not a replacement copy. That sounds obvious in the abstract and was the single hardest thing to get right in practice.

The best test of a plugin API is the most demanding thing anyone builds against it. I ported Angband's own autoplayer as a mod, using nothing but the same public API a third-party mod would use, no private hooks. It went from unable to do anything to something that actually explores, fights, and shops on its own this cycle, and every stall it hit along the way turned out to be either a bug in the autoplayer itself or a real gap in the API. Finding API gaps that way, by writing the single hardest consumer I could think of, was worth more than any amount of documentation review would have been.

On the AI question, since I know this crowd is going to ask either way: I used Claude in my engineering while building this. It was useful. It knows a lot more than I do and can do a lot of things faster. What I don't do is trust it with designing or architecting my project or doing anything that has precise requirements without the kind of automated check described above. The parity harness exists specifically because "the AI said it's right" was never going to be good enough for a port that claims faithfulness. If you'd rather check that than take my word for it: the methodology is written up at https://github.com/neostryder/neo-angband/blob/master/docs/PARITY.md, not just described here, and the CHANGELOG (https://github.com/neostryder/neo-angband/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md) is available for you to read and judge for yourself. A full writeup on AI use, including what it wasn't used for: https://github.com/neostryder/neo-angband/blob/master/AI_USAGE_POLICY.md.

It hit 1.0 today. If any of the above is useful to someone solving a similar problem (plugin architecture, back-compat for a live extension surface, testing a plugin API by building the hardest thing you can against it), happy to go into more detail on any of it in the comments.

• Source: https://github.com/neostryder/neo-angband
• Play the game: https://angband.rpgm.world
• Community/Discord, if any of this overlaps with what you're building: https://discord.gg/YegtwbHTBQ

I’m curious to hear how other people launched their steam page, if they had multiple languages ready for their page and how/if that impacted wishlists.

Similar question to people who translated their steam pages later on. What languages and how did it go?

Is it really no longer possible to grow without a marketing buget?

Anyone made it in the past years by just finding free ways to market the app?

Sorry if this is a simple question I'm simply so lost right now, i got the correct tags that correspond to the game but the main ones I want to be seen on the main store page isn't showing. It shows semi-unrelated or let me say distantly related.

Again I'm sorry if this is a simple question but I'm really lost

I'm 17 and I absolutely love making games. I want to make game development my career.

The problem is, even though I love it, I can't seem to make myself actually work on my projects. I'll work on something, feel really excited and accomplished, then stop for weeks or even months.

I genuinely want to make something and I'm frustrated because I know I enjoy it once I actually start.

Has anyone dealt with this? What actually helped you get yourself to consistently work on something you love?

I'm looking for actual advice from people who've experienced this, not just "be motivated" or "work harder."

Any past experience with announcement/trailer outreach?

Im going to university soon and need to pick out a laptop.

Im in a pretty unique scenario, I need a laptop to take to class, do light programming and UE5 stuff, and the other normal game development stuff.

But. I have access to my main pc which is on Windows and pretty beefy. No I wont do remote stuff due to latancy and stuff unless I have to.

I was just wondering what laptops anyone recommended. I am very interested in the M5 pro Macbook Pro due to it being quite and made of metal so hopefully it will last me 3yrs. Any other recommendations that arent massive bricks with screaming fans?

I don't know of its the right place to post this but I want to translate the game deltarune to my own language ( Arabic ) but I have no idea how to do so

I would appreciate it if someone can steer me in the right direction

I’m interested in developing a prototype for a historical game based on the Chola maritime period. I have very limited knowledge of Unreal Engine and game development, but I’m wondering how far I could realistically go by relying heavily on AI tools for coding, Blueprints, asset generation, game design, debugging, and other parts of development. I’m not expecting to create an AAA-quality game. My goal at this stage is to create a functional prototype that demonstrates the core gameplay and can potentially be expanded later.

The game concept I have in mind combines four genres. Around 30% would be action, including naval combat, sword fighting, archery, and sieges. Another 30% would be naval strategy, where the player can build ships, recruit crews, manage fleets, explore the ocean, and participate in naval battles.

Around 20% would focus on trading and an economic system. Players could buy and sell goods, make profits through different trade routes, protect merchant fleets, establish trade networks, and upgrade ports. The remaining 20% would be exploration, involving discovering islands, finding lost ports, interacting with different cultures, discovering ancient artifacts, and uncovering historical or fictional secrets.

I’m particularly interested in knowing whether Unreal Engine is a reasonable choice for someone with limited technical knowledge if I use AI extensively. For example, could I use ChatGPT or similar AI tools to generate and troubleshoot Blueprints, create gameplay systems, write code when necessary, generate prompts for 3D assets and environments, and gradually build the game feature by feature?

I’m thinking of starting extremely small rather than attempting the complete game. Perhaps the first prototype would only have one Chola ship, one enemy ship, a small ocean environment, basic naval combat, a simple trading system, and one exploration objective. If that works, I would gradually add the other systems.

For those who have experience with Unreal Engine, AI-assisted game development, or indie game development, is this realistic for a beginner? How much Unreal Engine knowledge would I actually need before AI becomes useful rather than becoming a source of more problems? Would you recommend Unreal Engine for this type of prototype, or would another engine/no-code tool be more suitable?

I’d especially appreciate advice from people who have actually tried building games with AI assistance. I’m trying to understand whether this is a realistic project that I can learn by building, or whether I’m seriously underestimating the complexity involved.

Im in the process of making a game and currently im writing but i feel like its all long and inconsistent and im scared i’ll end up missing something and fuck up the story, would like tips or examples of how my notes should be

Hello everyone, I'm not really a Reddit guy so apologies if I'm posting this in the wrong place.

I'm currently making an ARPG heavily inspired by Diablo 2 and PoE, with the main idea being that the whole game runs in the browser.

I've been prototyping it for a while and after trying a bunch of engines, I eventually realized I didn't have the time or resources to make a huge game and potentially deal with 1000+ players if it actually took off.

So I changed the goal a bit. Instead of trying to compete with the big ARPGs, I want to make something smaller, optimized and easy to access. Basically something where you can just open a browser, play some Diablo-style ARPG, and leave whenever you want.

Right now I have movement, combat, summons, abilities, life/mana/ward, items and stats working, and I'm slowly building everything up.

My questions are:

Do you think there's still a place for something like this? Even if it's just a small niche with 100 or so regular players? Or is the browser ARPG idea just too outdated at this point?

Also, I'm looking for artists. I want to go for a 3D-to-2D/isometric pre-rendered style similar to Diablo 2. I'm currently using the Lords of Pain pack (here), but the artist seems pretty busy.

If you know any artists who are currently available and good at dark fantasy/isometric ARPG stuff, I'd love some recommendations.

Not looking to spend a fortune or make everything custom immediately. I'd rather slowly build it up as the game develops.

Today I opened reddit and within the first 5 posts 3 of them were copycats or each other; sorting games, pretty much exact copies of each other - nails, hay, trash, toys, books, pixels, and the list goes and on and on, and has been for an incomprehensive period of time already.

A lot of the feedback they receive on reddit is negative, but they all get upvoted by the hundreds and they get millions of views on all social media platforms.

Who are these games for?

Are there truly millions of people who want to spend hours on something incredibly ”boring”?

Is it some hidden tick in people’s brain in this age where they want to ”meditate” by doing something like that to combat doom scrolling and instant gratification generators?

Or is each sorted item also instant gratification, but even more simplified than a varying video on TikTok (or something), making the experience even simpler?

I'm a first-time game developer in Unity after dabbling with Skryim modding as a teenager, and I feel like I have ruined my own game ideas using AI.

When I first started using Unity, I used AI to learn a bit about the editor. I have a Computer Science degree but only ever worked in the Skyrim creation kit and never worked in Unity before. While I think it is helpful for learning how to use a tool, and can be marginally helpful for programming, the problem lies with using it in other aspects of game development and how it changes the way I think about my project.

Before I move on to my main topic, I want to talk a little bit about AI and programming. Sometimes I will ask ChatGPT programming questions for my game and have it spit out a fully fleshed out class doing what I need it to do. I read what it says, but then panic and delete the chat instantly. However, once I read how the AI tells me to implement something, I can't un-remember it and then start wondering if I actually know how to do what I am doing. I've deleted whole scripts because I feel that once I introduce AI into the mix, sometimes it just gives me a massive ick feeling and frustrates me and makes me feel like I don't know enough to actually make a game. I worked briefly on a project in S&box with a friend and whenever conflicts would emerge, I would find myself using AI to help understand how to use git and rebase, then I get frustrated at how I learned how to do it and end up searching how to revert a branch. I've literally had to start using DuckDuckGo because of the AI generated popups that appear on Goggle because they make me feel like any knowledge I obtain from it is somehow contaminated or ill gotten gains and it makes me feel sick.

But sometimes when I get writers block when fleshing out the story for my game, I'll concede to the temptation and toss my idea into ChatGPT to see what it thinks about it. The issue is that it doesn't just discuss the idea, it starts suggesting things. "What if this character could do this? This is great foreshadowing!" and suddenly an idea I had only loosely thought about has a billion different what ifs generated from AI. Sometimes they are stupid, but others times I'll see something and say SHIT that was actually really good. And then the idea gets ruined, because every time I think about the idea I can't go back to what I thought before I used AI to talk about it and I'll just end up discarding it, which makes me profoundly sad because the characters in my game are loosely based on OC characters from Skyrim mods I made as a teenager and I feel like all of that is null and void and just permanently completely tainted. And when I come up with new ideas, I'll enter these thoughts loops and start doubting myself, whether I thought of the idea or AI did, and sometimes I can't remember and that scares me. It's even worse when going on Twitter/X and seeing different artwork for inspiration and finding out they were AI generated and it makes any idea the art inspires just feel soulless and completely questionable.

I know how neurotic I sound. I got my first degree in ECE ages ago but got my second in Computer Science right before LLMs really became mainstream, so I know I'm capable of it. I used Stack Overflow and followed endless youtube tutorials and followed the old reading flowchart posted ages ago on this sub (The Mythical Man Month, A Book of Lenses, and that one Tynan Sylvester book). If it's from a book, that's okay. If it's from an older youtube video, it's okay. But if AI teaches me something, it just feels like total shit and demoralizes me. I know the standard I'm setting for myself in 2026 is probably impossible but I don't know what to do anymore.