You can watch the post-mortem here: A Post-Mortem of The Dead Account, Weird Grief, & My Game Development Career (For Now) - YouTube
Link to my Twitter thread & blog post: https://twitter.com/NaomiNorbez/status/1461867544285954050?s=20
Contains swearing & discussion of sexual activity (nothing explicit).
Feel free to share your thoughts or any questions you may have.
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There definitely is a problem with games not getting enough attention, and youāre not the first author Iāve seen quit over this.
Comps help a little, but as you say, they heavily select for whichever kind of game most players enjoy most. (This canāt be fixed, either: changing the mix of judges changes what kind of game does best, but thereās still some standard to conform to.) Theyāre also, well, competitive, so each game takes attention away from the others.
I can think of solutions to get games more attention, like more comps and festivals. Iām less sure about how to match games with players whoād be interested in that specific game, or how to elicit more compliments.
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Iām sad to hear this, as someone who actually played partway through Weird Grief, though not for rating purposes. I should have rated it, because the rating it got was absurd (and I also think works which deal frankly with sex are important). I must say that I far prefer your approach to the Twine form to the giant Twines with parser envy which try to do world simulation. I think it was pretty ridiculous for anybody to say it ādoesnāt countā as IF.
I also am frustrated by the difficulty the Comp has with experimental work. I think itās a real failing of the community, to be honest. And even though I donāt know you or your work very well, Iām upset that the artistically conservative strands of the Comp judging pool have pushed you out.
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I sent a PM. Iām saying this more for onlookers than Bez, because Bez will have the PM, but uh, I know when I see a topic like this, I donāt want to reply in public. But Iām also curious as to - has anyone replied yet? Itās the kind of thought you have when there are no replies on the topic yet, like there were at the time.
-Wade
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@hawkbyte
Yes, it is a difficult problem. One to which I have not seen a solution to, currently
@EpicIFer
I will respond to you on YouTube as well, but here is what I have to say:
If you read the post I linked in the description of my video, you will have seen that I have tried to create to ~myself~, and doing that has brought me quite a bit of sadness. Furthermore, you will have seen my discussion of wanting to be recognized for making "good IFā, something I also touched on in the video. So your words ring quite hollow, and makes me wonder if you truly paid attention to the words I am trying to get across.
@Lava_Ghost
Thank you. It is frustrating, and it is a failing. Unfortunately, I have not found a place for experimental IFs to really thrive. It would be nice if there was an event for them.
@severedhand
I received and responded to your PM. I donāt understand the question youāre asking here, though. Can you please elaborate?
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I donāt know about this, but maybe @Adam_S knows. Would IF Art Show be an acceptable venue for āfringeā IF works? There should be at least one available, right?
No question, your honour! I was just trying to say, when someone sees a topic like this thatās potentially confronting (the videoās content) then they see no replies, they may wonder, āHm, has anybody said anything yet?ā Thatās how I felt when I saw the topic originally, and that there were no replies. So I was just saying, for anyone who came later and felt the same way I did previously, that someone (me) had sent a PM. Whew, what a tedious bit of clarification Iāve effected here.
-Wade
As a side note, I do honor and respect your wishes to stop offering writing. Honestly, I have had the same feelings, many times. I have āsat outā this recent Comp as well as Spring Thing. True itās exhausting, and itās heartbreaking, no one seems to care (although there are those who do). I keep writing because I love doing it and creating games. There are times that you just get burnt out. I can relate to that. I am sorry that my words āring hollowā and they must sound patronizing, but I guess thatās just my way to say that we hope you come back.
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8 posts were split to a new topic: IF Art Show / Festival discussion
Bez, Iām sorry Iāve been one of the people who doesnāt engage much, but for what itās worth, Iāve really enjoyed your games. And the fringe always feeds into the mainstream eventually, so even people who donāt think they like āweirdā games owe a debt to creators like you.
Iād love to see an IF Fringe. I might even consider hosting one - but Iām pretty bad at keeping commitments (this year I even found out I have a medical excuse for that) so Iād frankly rather someone else did. But if no one else doesā¦
ParserComp spurred me into making a game in a form that I probably wouldnāt have made again. An IF Fringe would spur me, and others, I hope, into making something new and weird, while also providing a natural space for people whose whole shtick is new and weird. It wouldnāt get as much traffic as IFComp, but we know there are creators who arenāt even entering IFComp because they donāt feel their weird games are welcome there, so who knows.
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Hey Bez. All I can say is I feel your pain. That was me last year. I raged quit. I didnāt do it publicly, but I was done. I lurked on the forums over the past year, but I was a little bitter about it. Then this year, when the comp started, I saw the warm and welcoming atmosphere, and it made me want to enter again. I donāt know. Everyone was so happy. Then an idea hit me out of the blue. Now Iām thinking about entering 2022.
Give it time. I needed to walk away after feeling burnt. Maybe youāll come around as I did, or not. It was hard for me to walk away because I really enjoy the programming plus writing. Itās an interesting combination that you find nowhere else.
In the end, do what you enjoy. If youāre not enjoying this, quit. I had to. But if you still enjoy this, then do it at least for yourself. A creator has to create. And who knows, you might write āthatā game one day.
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And rightly so, since he deserves it. I donāt think we will enter our games expecting to rank highly. I certainly didnāt. I do expect to get good experimental feedback with none of the abuses. Things like:
- āYour life sucks.ā Hey, itās fiction.
- āYour game sucks, and it cannot be improved.ā My game is perfect, just not to your taste.
- āI donāt have to tell you what the right thing is.ā You donāt know either, huh? Then shut up and stop abusing me.
I certainly can accept if my game is incomplete, or otherwise faulty. I cannot accept poisonous community that harass and abuse people, just because they submit fringe, unpopular games.
I donāt see a problem with āExperimentalā tag in ParserComp, that will be evaluated separately. But somehow these Fringe games arenāt experimental, and Iām not sure I want to tag it āFringeā or āNicheā or āSubcultureā because those are loaded words. But this is why I put this thing out there for discussions. Iād rather have āArtā tag on it, even if it conjures the image of toilet on wall in an art museum.
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Iāve had this often over the course of my 40+ years on the planet. Not necessarily from reception to games Iāve released (as I havenāt released any 
) but more in the feeling of pushing an elephant up the stairs when trying to get a passion project moving; and just getting no interest from Joe Public. Occasionally it strikes a chord and gets a lot of interest (like ParserComp) and sometimes its an incredibly isolating, lonely, depressing journey where it feels like I am literally the only person on the planet who is interested. You can reach out to 100s of content creators, bloggers, journalists, and get not so much as a reply telling you āstop contacting me you looney, before I get a restraining orderā. Then another person ties their shoelace and content creators fall over themselves to write about it!
It can feel like pouring you heart and soul into something, only for it to generate nothing but apathy.
In short, youāre not on your own!
Adam
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Hi Bez. I watched your video, and the thing I noticed is that your sense of self-worth seems to be very tightly bound up with how your work is received. As artists, our work tends to become a defining detail of who we are, so when our art is not perhaps as popular as we hoped, our very identity feels threatened. I know this from personal experience.
Please donāt fall into that trap. We are more than our work, we are human beings. Self-love should not come with qualifications.
In a way, itās a pity that the IF world is so focused on the competition. It would be lovely if a game released outside the comp got all the reviews and discussion that comp games get, but without the competitive aspect. IF is incredibly varied, and sometimes the comp can feel like comparing apples and oranges.
I enjoyed playing your games. Since watching your video I also went back and re-read the reviews, and thereās a good deal of praise in them. Theyāve generated a lot of discussion too, as the more personal, experimental games tend to. Iāve never yet written a game that merited its own discussion thread.
I think a revival of the IF Art Show is a great idea. We already have Spring Thing, which is meant to be a āfestivalā rather than a competition, where more experimental works are encouraged - itās why Grim Curio and I chose it for Excalibur. It doesnāt get quite the attention IFComp does, but the expectations are slightly different. But a dedicated, non-competitive āartā show would be great too.
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I didnāt play your game, but I did watch your Youtube video. Hope you donāt mind if I share my reactions 
.
You evidently have the instincts of a writer. You like to explore ideas. When you become interested in characters, they suggest their development to you.
But you pick a tough crowd when you write a piece for an IF competition. I learned that myself when I submitted a work-in-progress to the Spring Thing Festival Back Garden. I was not prepared for the rigorous and forensic dissection of what at that point was a temporary implementation of some immature ideas.
For clarity: I have no criticism of any judge who takes the time to read/play a piece and then invests additional time in a structured critique. The person who supplied feedback on my bit of work did me a huge favour in communicating his perspective. But I did feel bruised at the time.
Those of us who choose to make experimental work in non-traditional media canāt really count on widespread recognition, approval or fame. Maybe retrospectively in a couple of decadeās time. But instant validation is not a realistic expectation.
Why not cast your nets elsewhere for a while? Why not make more Youtube videos? I would watch them, and Iām sure so would many others. Please donāt stop considering yourself a writer, though.
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Thatās a really good idea actually. If it helps then Iāve found that creating a YouTube video and then sharing into gaming Reddit subreddits generates a fair bit of interest and discussion. Iām sure must be an experimental game subreddit.
Adam 
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I would totally subscribe to a Bez podcast or Letās Plays on YouTube!
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Do you find that you feel angry and frustrated, but feel unable to express that or share it because in doing so you fear the response will be that you are accused of āfeeling entitledā?
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Hi Norbez. I just wanted to express goodwill.
I was pretty involved with a different art scene for a number of years, and, despite some minor successes, I never really felt like I was getting anywhere. Like you, I wanted to feel seen. After all, I had started making art as a way to connect with peopleāto explain things I didnāt know how to explain any other way.
Lots of well-meaning people told me that I had to do it for myself, but thereās a point where doing it for myself became doing it to myself.
I donāt have any wisdom or life advice. I just wanted to acknowledge your experience and say I hope things get better. Wanting to be seen isnāt unreasonable; itās a basic human need.
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Apparently, my original response was too old-fashioned, so let me say it another way.
- I came in 70th out of 71st. Someone has to win, and someone has to lose. You can use your ranking as motivation or as discouragement, but itās your choice.
- You do realize that fewer than 100 people on the entire planet saw your game, right? Thatās true for everyoneās games, even the first-place winner. IFComp isnāt the Oscars.
- Take a breather and get outside of your head for a minute. Youāve been focusing on how others interpreted YOUR game, but how did you interact with other peopleās games? Did you play them all, even the āweirdā or āfringeā ones? Did you write supportive comments to those āless popularā authors? Etc etc. Got to give what you want to get.
- Itās good that youāre passionate - without it, you canāt live as a writer. But step outside and forget the world of words for a bit because life is big, and stories are only a part of it.
Other than that, hang in there.
If this gets censored, then hell, I donāt know what to do.
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