That’s a lot of NPCs writing a lot of games that are really all by the PC, Christopher Merriner. This is like SO meta. If you have some spare time, can you just code in a big wad of cash and a fountain of youth for me?
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This is a rather depressing thread for me to read, when just getting ready to release a game I’ve been working on steadily for three years…
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It sees you’ve been using tads from your profile, which is a great system. How many testers have you had?
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I might be a bit blind on context here, but why so?
Just the whole part about no one on earth being interested in playing a text game save those who are already “in the niche”…
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I’m basically just now trying to get it out for testing… so sort of none so far, except Jim Aikin and I swapped some testing before my game was really ready…
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It’s a pretty awesome niche, though!
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Oh.
Yeah, it’s kind of a thing. That’s okay, though! The value of art is not equal to its number of supporters. I learned this while making music. I am satisfied making music for myself to listen to. If I have one other person listening to it too, then that’s a victory. I have, like, 10 listeners after a decade of music, so that’s 10 whole victories!
There are also THOUSANDS of other people making music, writing fiction, and making games, and their work is absolutely stellar, but NOBODY knows about it.
Art on the Internet is not a meritocracy.
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Yeah, I would say with a lot of IF, you can get a small but not tiny, appreciative but not fawning, and knowledgeable, audience, consistently. It’s a good deal compared to a lot of kinds of art making. Since it’s word-based, the audience can skew articulate with words about what you’ve done.
There are a lot of events that can help focus attention on your game, too. Ifcomp, thiscomp, thatcomp, etc
Wade
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There are a lot more players out there than people in this community. I have a friend in the US who has been an IF fan since childhood. She plays the IFComp games every year, and when she met her husband-to-be, she learned he was also an IF fan and had played some of my games. Neither writes games themselves or hangs out on this forum.
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Yes, I think it’s important to be aware of this dark matter of the IF universe, who may make up 99.9% of consumers but remain forever unseen and unknowable. Probably because they feel they have better things to do than chatter away on this forum (but I can’t for the life of me think what!).
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Thanks, friends. I do know that there are many other players beyond who post on here, I was just making a mildly wry and ironic comment after hearing so many of you authors talk about how you can’t get anyone to play… because I think I have unconsciously already been sensing the same vibes just from telling people I’ve been programming a text game, let alone asking them to play it. (Exception: my father-in-law claims he’s looking forward to playing it, but he’s also a programmer…)
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I feel like there was a “but not wise” tactfully redacted here.
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I have this sense that if I could just get people to sit down for a few minutes with a game and help them with the conventions, a lot of folks I know would like it, since a lot of folks I know are major readers, play graphic puzzle games and love room escapes, etc. Some of them remember the frustrations of Zork and cannot be convinced that there’s a whole new world of IF out there. My husband won’t play-- even if I wrote it-- because he hates to type and he’s directionally challenged, so the whole NSEWUD thing turns him off big time. However, he will read through a transcript of a game I wrote, and he has faithfully been following @DeusIrae 's Let’s Play: Cragne Manor thread, so he does like the stories. I wonder if there was more stuff like that on one of those “Watch people play games” social media thingies, if it would get more people to try it.
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That’s true, we are. But you seem to have hit on a way to get us to explain ourselves in text. Which is genius. So well done you 
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NSEWUD breaks my brain quite a lot. I think I might have that in common with him. I gotta draw myself a compass rose with N, S, E, W, NE, SE, SW, NW indicated on it for reference, and then also use a mapping utility to keep track of where I am.
Which is funny, cause I grew up in scouting and have used a real compass for actual navigation multiple times in my life. But my brain just can’t remember the difference between east and west without pondering it for 20 seconds first every single time.
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Just remember “Never Eat Shredded Wheat” is the compass directions in clockwise order (with North at the top).
Feel free to replace it with something more obscure like “Never Ever Slap Wallabies” if that’s easier to remember.
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Yeah, but then I will need to have a diagram showing me what clockwise is lol! I also keep messing up left and right. My brain is terrible about any visuals that can be mirrored left-right, really. I can remember north and south easily, but easy and west is really hard, lol.
GPS gives me anxiety because it’ll be like “turn left at the light” and literally every time I’m panicking about “oh no, which one is left, again??”
Remarkably, after driving for ten years, I have yet to be in an accident!
Also, for some reason, I don’t have dyslexia; I have yet to mistake “b” for “d”! Brains are so strange!!
Well I can’t help you with your sat nav, but if you have a QWERTY keyboard layout the “W” and “E” keys are in the correct order for when you’re typing in directions.
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If it helps, English “west” may be related to Latin vesper “evening” because that’s where the sun goes in the evening, while “east” is related to Greek eos “dawn” (or Eos the god of dawn).
I’m sure tying the common English words to obscure Latin and Ancient Greek equivalents will help a lot!
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