Building An Indie Game Developer Community For Support
Connecting with Fellow Developers
As an indie game developer, it can feel isolating and challenging to create games without a built-in team for collaboration and support. One of the most vital things you can do is actively connect with other indie developers to form a community that mutually uplifts and learns from each other.
There are several strategies to effectively connect with fellow indie developers:
Finding Online Forums and Groups to Join
A wealth of online forums and groups exist specifically for indie developers to meet, discuss their work, seek feedback, and find new opportunities. Excellent places to join include Reddit communities like
Attending Local Meetups and Conferences
While online communities are invaluable, attending local meetups and game development conferences facilitates making connections in-person. Meetups allow you to interact face-to-face with others working on games in your geographic area. Conferences like the Game Developers Conference (GDC) represent a rare opportunity to network with indie devs from around the world. The connections made at these events often blossom into long-term mutually beneficial relationships.
Leveraging Social Media to Make Connections
Social platforms like Twitter and TikTok have become popular places for indie devs to share WIP content and chat. Follow prominent figures in the indie dev scene, check relevant hashtags, and be active posting about your own projects. Share requests for feedback, development tidbits, interesting prototypes, and more. Fellow devs may discover your work and can lead to future crowdtesting, promotion, or potential partnerships.
Collaborating on Game Jams
Game jams are timed events focused on rapidly prototyping video game concepts and mechanics, usually over 24-72 hour periods. Jams attract fellow indie developers to team up collaboratively designing and building games. They represent opportunities to significantly expand your network while gaining hands-on development experience.
Getting Involved in Game Jams for Experience and Networking
Major online jams like Ludum Dare or in-person ones like Global Game Jam are open for anyone to register and attend. Consider jams even slightly out of your comfort zone or typical genres to gain wider experience. Set expectations ahead of time with any teammates in terms of scope and commitment. Use jams as a focused way to experiment technically or design-wise where the time constraints lower pressures. And even more importantly, use them to meet cohorts of new developers, seek advice, give feedback on others’ games, and make connections that may spark future opportunities.
Forming Teams to Rapidly Build Small Games
Jams inherently encourage participants to split into small teams to match the tight schedules. Assess what skills you bring (programming, art, design, etc) and seek teammates that complement and broaden your own abilities. When forming teams organically at jams, discuss personalities, working/leadership styles, technical competencies, availability over the timeframe, and the high-level concept to get aligned. Establish means to smoothly collaborate whether by version control, real-time editors, Asset stores, communicating on Slack/Discord etc. Assign clear roles and responsibilities, break down tasks vertically, set milestones, and re-sync frequently when blocks emerge. Building effective teams for jams, even with strangers, creates bonds and mutual respect often lasting past the events themselves.
Gaining Visibility by Open Sourcing Jam Games
Most jam games never see the light of past the events themselves. But choosing select ones to polish up post-jam and releasing as open source on GitHub and Itch.io can significantly improve their visibility. Documenting the projects, adding proper attribution, ensuring license files, refactoring and cleaning up code, fixing bugs, adding build automation, and improving overall quality transforms them into portfolio pieces and examples others can learn from. With visibility, other developers may discover and download your open source jam games, provide valuable feedback, perhaps even fork and build upon them. The connections made this way give jams value long after.
Seeking Feedback Early On
All developers, especially indie ones lacking a formal team, struggle evaluating if game mechanics are fun, if narratives connect emotionally, or if the technical foundations are robust. Seeking critical feedback early in development from objective outside perspectives is crucial. Sharing design specifications, early vertical slice prototypes, and works-in-progress accessibly allows fellow indie developers chances to constructively criticize. Their inputs will undoubtedly strengthen projects.
Sharing Design Docs and Early Builds to Get Input
Before diving into implementation, high-level design documents covering core mechanics, systems diagrams, level outlines, interface mockups, and target demographic info are useful to review early with trusted peers. Their feedback shapes projects in positive ways not possible late in development cycles. As initial playable builds and vertical slices are constructed, sharing those via closed groups and individual testing also gathers invaluable objective input on where games excel or fall short. Then adjustments may be architected in response to strengthen later work.
Identifying Experienced Mentors to Provide Guidance
All developers occasionally find themselves stuck on complex problems without simple solutions. Seeking wisdom from veteran indie developers that have solved similar problems can provide guiding lights forward. Respectfully ask seasoned developers you admire and with expertise in areas aligning with your projects if they are open to casual mentorship. Schedule video chats to pick their brains, seek architecture guidance, talk through tough choices, and gather nuggets of wisdom. Their outside zoomed-out high-level perspectives may uncover elegant solutions not immediately obvious. Often mentors volunteer insights gladly to pay-forward support once given to them when starting out.
Conducting User Tests to Validate Concepts
No amount of internal testing adequately validates if games connect with end-users until accessible by others. While formal public playtests require more late-stage polished builds, earlier concept validation tests with fellow devs are enlightening. Provide clear user tasks like “navigate the main menu flows” or “defeat level 1 enemies”. Then observe if testers naturally flow towards solutions or get stuck on aspects assumed trivial internally. Keep close tabs on suggestions, friction points called out, or repeated struggles to gauge design effectiveness. Use feedback to simplify interfaces, introduce features helping players progress, or add clarity around discovery and onboarding. Thank all testers for their time and inputs with genuine appreciation.
Open Sourcing Tools and Frameworks
Game engines and reusable codebases form essential building blocks. Yet as engines grow complex fulfilling wide needs, simplicity suffers. Fellow indie developers often face similar core technical hurdles like 2D physics, inventory systems, save games, etc. Building targeted frameworks solving specific shared issues then open sourcing them gives back to the community.
Contributing to Shared Codebases for Common Needs
Vetted community repositories like GitHub’s game-off organization or publisher accounts on Gitch.io offer homes to publish frameworks beneficial across projects. Evaluating where bespoke solutions already constructed for your own games solve broadly reusable problems, extract, document, and contribute them to these public groups. Clearly comment codebases, provide usage guides, set clear licensing terms allowing derivatives, and spread the word upon release. With visibility, you enable other indie developers to stand on your code to accelerate their work while forming connections.
Releasing Custom Engines and Editors Publicly
Some problems require large investments of effort before foundations feel useful, like game engines, world editors, shader graph editors, etc. But after significant personal effort developing custom internal tools, their usefulness likely extends beyond your own projects. CarefullyEvaluating their releasability, take steps like parameterizing project-specific parts, adding modularity and compatibility layers, improving stability, creating tutorials, and crafting documentation guides. Then publish under permissive open licenses to GameDev community hubs. At minimum you multiply the value from your initial time investments while enabling better games from others inspired by your creations.
Encouraging Remixing and Derivatives of Open Work
Maximize adoptability of published open source tools and engines by intentionally enabling community remixing of efforts. Use Apache/MIT licensing providing maximal freedoms. Support compatibility exporting to formats like Unity, Godot, Blender etc facilitating easy imports for modifiers. Make clear in docs your wishes and blessings for derivatives expanding capabilities according to their needs, even commercially. Remix-friendly positions earn respect across communities, spread tooling far through derivative forks well outside initial scopes. Most become grateful brand advocates. Some later optionally give back to core bases once means allow.
Promoting Others’ Games
Successful indie games ultimately rely on community support for visibility and sustaining continuation funding. But marketplaces overflow with thousands of competing titles. Effective word-of-mouth promotion of deserving peer games through your own social channels seeds the supportive community. Recommending excellent experiences, boosting their signal, directly puts funds into developer pockets enabling more great games.
Cross-Promoting Indie Games Through Social Media
Leverage your own earned followings across Twitter, TikTok, Mastodon, blogs, newsletters, Discord servers etc. to spotlight noteworthy games from fellow solo devs or small teams. Share trailer links, developer’s own tweets, behind-the-scenes development tidbits, discount deals, Twitch streaming events, or encouragement to wishlist upcoming titles. Strategically choose content aligning with interests of your specific communities and follower demographics to maximize click-through conversions. Honorable cross-promotion done regularly accrues community karma likely returned promoting your own work. Plus embedded trailers earn referral purchase commissions once followers convert to happy players.
Writing Reviews and Making Let’s Play Videos
Developers depend heavily on YouTube/Twitch influencers and written reviewers for marketing signals to funders predicting launch successes. Yet few boast follower counts moving markets alone. Rally multiple indie devs to coordinate simultaneously publishing let’s play videos and reviews on release week. Ask teams permission first to record spoiler-free early press builds. Use focused titles like “Indie Game Studio Playthrough”, personalized enthusiasm in commentary, strategic tagging, and cross-linking videos to form search powerhouses together. Writing reviews follow similar patterns post-launch, collaborating constructing strong narratives presenting underplayed gems positively. United initiatives better ensure titles find audiences.
Supporting Crowdfunding Campaigns Through Word-of-Mouth
Many solo developers turn to Kickstarter or IndieGogo to crowdfund full-time development efforts once establishing credible gameplay proofs-of-concept. Support these brave visions by contributing small amounts yourself then enthusiastically sharing with friends. Privately urge circles to view trailers or gameplay teasers, emphasize the rainfall effect of grassroots contributions. Remind that supporting represent the only paths sustaining these developer’s big dream executions. Provide updates across networks upon funding successes or last day pushes needing final bumps. Shepherding community goodwill efforts maximizes campaign conversions far exceeding individual buys alone.
