We had a thread a while back about Mastodon, and I think people found it useful. So:
I’ve been spending a lot of time on Tumblr lately. I like the vibe, and it’s good for getting news about choice IF. I also like being a bit silly, and it seems well suited to that. It’s a matter of taste, like so many other things, but I currently spend more online time there than anywhere else.
Anyway, I post about Inform 7 from a beginner’s perspective there. I think it can be a little intimidating to discuss things when you’re surrounded by Grownups Who Already Know Everything (I say this affectionately). Feel free to come be a beginner with me, another beginner, for a bit.
The Tumblr sphere of IF is quite distinct- and as someone who’s spent, like, basically forever on Tumblr bopping around different communities, it’s interesting to see the amount of overlap it shares with other niches (writing, roleplay, and general fannish spheres.)
There’s quite a strong emphasis on graphic design, and design choices we over here might be more familiar with from any encounters with Choicescript games (which makes sense, given the recent-ish exodus of some of their users over towards Twine.) Though, there are still a few Twine games that follow more closely to what I think of as more traditional Twines- short, non-customizable protagonist, usually some flavour of LGBT, horror stories. The majority of popular projects I’ve seen tend to fall into the serialized years-long sort of games and demos. The ‘demo-less introduction post’ is also common, if controversial.
A good amount of interaction between choice authors on there tends to happen on Discord servers: notably Interact-IF’s, which is also a fantastic hub in general for keeping up to date with new project releases and updates. If you’re looking for a place to peer into the community, their Tumblr is an excellent resource. I love reading the demo posts they reblog!
I’m on there, but my blog is mostly just kitten pictures, assorted fandom content, and generally ‘stuff that inspires me’ (fanart, poetry, scenic photography) and less so actual updates on my projects.
ETA: They maintain their own database of choice based games, (linked on Interact-IF’s page), which might be of note to anyone curious about releases, as well as curating recommendation lists around certain themes in asks (like, IF games including sports, or supernatural horror). In terms of community gamejams, then The Neo-Interactives blog is the place to follow along for those.
We also share resources for coding, writing, and reminder posts to take breaks/breathers . We have over 250 recommendations lists around genre, themes, MC/RO customisation (mainly of the CoG/Tumblr games, but we try to add more if someone adds titles), and try to help people finding projects they previously read. We used to interview diverse creators (we had to take a break bc we were all busy, it’s coming back).
Anyway… I’m there too share weekly progress on my too many projects
Hope you don’t mind, but would ask a couple of things, because my knowledge of Tumblr is very limited, Can you be discovered by anyone at random, and Why some pages look like a web page, while others just an endless video/image (maybe it’s platform dependent)?
Asking this as places like Mastodon proved to be quite disappointing, in terms of discoverability (resulted in zero views), as it is similar to the now Twitter, where you just shout into the void (unless you pay upfront on Twitter). And when you wish to grow your audience in an organic manner, the fact that nobody can access your content (posts) is disheartening. Finding people remotely interested in IF is already difficult, let alone letting your voice heard.
Semi-OT but also possibly related to questions like this: a story I’ve told here before. One time I worked as an internet rater. This is to help train search engines, and today, AIs as well. I don’t recommend it to anyone, but it is a way to make try to make some money from home. You’re made to consider objective quality of a webpage, and subjective qualities relevant to target audience and apparent purpose. You have to rate lower if you can’t discern the purpose. Of pages that weren’t spam, Tumblr pages were the most consistently indiscernible in their purpose to me. As in, I often couldn’t assess who the target was, and so couldn’t tell if the page was any good for that audience. This is probably a decade ago, though.
Tumblr pages were the most consistently indiscernible in their purpose to me.
AFAIK the site supposed to be a place where micro blogging could exist, or something along those lines. But apart from a few exceptions that look like a proper blog (web page layout), most of them appear to be a clone of Instagram or Tik-tok or whatever (which signals to me that writing would not be welcomed at all).
Have not seen a clear defined line as to what this all supposed to be (Tumblr that is), on top of the fact that most of social media, these days, are slowly moving towards monetizing reach; which is something of an interesting take when the product is the person using their “services”. Even places like Youtube is thinking of asking money from content creators (already deployed a beta or something, which caused an uproar).
On the side: Reaching an audience, back when writing short stories was my explicit thing, proved to be rather difficult (and gave up after, which also meant a short “lived” end to my “career”), despite being on numerous websites (catered to writers). But that’s another story, because most of those sites were solely populated by writers.
Kinda yeah. When you tag your posts a certain way, people are able to find your posts based on these tags (like #interactive fiction or #twine games). Tumblr has now a For You page where it will feature similar content to what you’ve liked/reblogged. However, whether people do discover you through this page (the For You page) is kind of a hit or miss. Tagging tend to be the most useful.
Edit: also sharing your content to directory blogs like Interact-IF, and connecting with other authors (we share each other’s work).
Sidenote: the IF crowd on tumblr tend to favour choice-based games, especially the romance kind (and with extensive MC customisation). There are of course other game dev on the platform with good success outside of these traits, but these specific aspects tend to be favoured (prob due to the ChoiceofGame exodus).
Tumblr is a blogging platform (or it was its primary function), where people post/share/reblog what they liked. Some are writing focused, some are more image/video focused. There is really a wide range of use/communities out there (music fan, literature peeps [quite big], movie enthusiasts, any fanbase under the sun, etc…). What is on a user page/blog depend on the content they like/share. Tumblr also lets people customise their blog page (the [username].tumblr.com one, not while you’re logged in on Tumblr), so it can actually look like a personalised webpage.
(Tumblr has also been experimenting with the UI lately, with A/B testing, it’s been a mess.)
This is why established devs say that “you’ve to find/define your audience first” then adapt accordingly. That may hold true when you’re a billion dollar company, and can afford a marketing team that does all the hard work with their fancy campaigns and whatnots for you. But when you’ve nothing to work with, then the story becomes completely different; especially if you’re not going down the popular path (aka. what’s trendy among teens per say). And in a way, quality has lost its meaning, because if you’re not creating content, favored by the algorithms, then your hard work will be all for nothing (happend to me more than I can count). On top of not mentioning how increasingly difficult it is to market on the web (w/o paying for it).
From what I have gathered, the reason depended on different authors, but recurrent ones were about the licensing fees of the ChoiceScript (which can be quite large compared to the free Twine), lack of customising (UI/Saves) with ChoiceScript (there are add-ons afaik, but built-in in Twine), grievances about how the ChoiceOfGame Forum is moderated (iirc there was something about considering NTFs/crypto a few years back?), or how/when published games are scheduled within their labels.
Going back to the subject of the topic: outside of the Tumblrina (Gonch Girls), anyone else on Tumblr? I would want to follow more Forum IF peeps there
Neat! Abandoned places are awesome, factories especially, there’s just something about the industrial decay that gets me. I’ve been to the Bethlehem Steel Plant in person before, and it looks fantastic just from the outside. Would love to get inside but I’m not brave enough. Do you still happen to have the pictures?
This is the archive for the stuff posted that month in 2010. If you scroll down, past perhaps a 100 posts, you’ll hit a ton of pictures (in thumbnail form) from Bethlehem Steel, most including commentary. Click on each one for the full sized picture and commentary.
I don’t have a way to just select those posts beyond sharing dozens of links, which isn’t great. @Cerfeuil
These days, I consider Tumblr to be my main base: @alianoralacanta .
Be warned: if you follow me, you’ll probably get 20 reblogged motorsports posts for every reblog about matters relating to IF in any way, shape or form (I started it 12 years ago as a pure F1 blog and that remains its primary purpose). I’m also prone to reblogging whatever happens to catch my fancy from the variety of posts I see.
Ever since the formerly known Twitter platform has been in decline, I started using other platforms like Cohost, Mastodon, and Tumblr. The latter, I’m not so sure I’ll use it as much because I don’t care too much about reblogging (it’s what already annoyed me about Twitter). But Tumblr does have a vibrant IF community…
I’m on there at least as @kastelpls. Pardon the header, by the way.
. We have over 250 recommendations lists around genre, themes, MC/RO customisation (mainly of the CoG/Tumblr games, but we try to add more if someone adds titles), and try to help people finding projects they previously read. We used to interview diverse creators (we had to take a break bc we were all busy, it’s coming back).