Growing the Community

I made this thread to basically try to brainstorm up some ideas for expanding the OHR community. By this I mean, getting more developers and players to use the OHRRPGCE and the sites that host such things, like this one. I have some plans and I'd like to know both what you think of them and what plans you might have. Ultimately it would be great if we as a community could act on some of the ideas we come up with in this thread and grow are little community at least a bit.



So, first I think we get a lot of attention by entering contests held outside of the community. Dungeonmen is perhaps the best example of this. We had a thread for contests outside of the community but it seems to have been abandoned into nothingness. So, if you see any contests that might be up this community's alley be sure to let's us all know.

Secondly, I think taking part in another community as an OHR ambassitor would help expand the community. There on thousands of forums out there on the internet. Basically, the plan would be for a member of the community to pick another forum to introduce yourself as a member of the OHR community on. Then just check back on that community ever so often, post some things about the going ons in the OHR community and such.

Anyways, that's what I've thought up. What do you think?

I'm attempting to spread awareness of the OHRRPGCE through word-of-mouth at the art college I'm attending - there's a sizeable population of people here interested in game design. I may end up giving a short speech about the OHR and its history if enough of my peers are interested. I'll do my best to make it exciting, but I don't expect more new OHR members than I can count on one hand, even in a best-case scenario.

I'm afraid that's the limit of what I can do right now, but give me a year or two, and a bigger opportunity may come up that'll really help spread the word. Game making contests, for instance, like Spoons said. I'm certainly in a good location to be scouting for such opportunities.

I think the best plan is going to be let our games do the talking. Dungeonmen was a great success outside our community because it was a great game and the same goes for Escape The Wolf and other LudumDae entries. If people who make games have enough pride in their work to enter it into contests and release it to communities beyond our own, that's going to help widen the base. In that respect, I agree with you 100%.

Having ambassadors on the other hand, just seems kind of twerpy. If someone came here posting as an ambassador of RPGMaker or Sphere or whatever the kids are doing these days, and told me all about the "cool" stuff they were doing over on their forum, my exact tone of response would be "polite, but dismissive". That kind of stuff always smells kind of like spam, and what exactly would they say? Some guys made a retro dungeon crawler? Dude's making a Doom RPG? Like a Christmas card from your wildly more succesful family? Seems like a nuisance at best, to me.

Fair enough.
but there's got to be more ways for us to grow the OHR than just making great games. How can we get more people to play the great games once they are made? (Outside of entering them into an out of community contest)

i was going to suggest maybe applying to be on steam, but i don't think "not being out there" is the problem. i think its simply that the ohr looks way too dated. consider the first time you opened custom - you got this DOS looking program that immediately throws a bunch of menus at you that can only be accessed using the keyboard. That was back in '98-'99 for me. it's now 2013, and nothings really changed since then other than having added more menu items.

i think if the community is to grow, then the ohr needs to kinda get with the times and update it's ui, organize itself a bit, and maybe get some darn drop down menus or something.

I'm fine with just promoting good games on other sites. Just make sure they're not so drenched in community in-jokes that it's pointless. I remember OHR House being promoted outside the community and having no idea why. Even Vikings is meant to be an ambassador game of sorts and it's drowning in community cameos and jokes that won't make any sense to people who aren't long time users. Games like Missing are what really catch on with people outside of the forums.

If you want to attract traffic to this site: Host a free sprites section.

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Super Walrus Land: Mouth Words Edition

But the games themselves look pretty nice, even now. With enough time and effort you could produce something at least as graphically impressive as, say, Iji (artwork-wise if not animation-wise), Cave Story or La-Mulana (the pre-remake versions anyway).

In any event, I agree that the games should do the talking. However, I think more could be done to get the word out, so-to-speak (and I even think this could be done in a non-annoying, non-invasive way). Here are my ideas:

1.) I think that all of the biggest, most impressive and least in-jokey (no OHR House!) games for the engine should have articles on TVTropes. Wandering Hamster is on there, but nothing else (that I could find). They have no notability restrictions and I can't tell you how many times I've stumbled on something obscure by clicking around on that website that has lead me to want to learn more. All of the comparatively famous indy games I named above, in fact, I first found by reading their articles on TVTropes.

2.) I noticed that some people on these boards like to do Let's Plays of OHR games (Spoonweaver, I'm particularly a fan of yours!). I don't know what everyone's opinion is of SomethingAwful but personally, I love their Let's Play forum. I think that if the wittiest / most-knowledgeable / most-eloquent of us set out to do kind of an "OHR greatest hits" thread (or series of threads) on there, that could do a lot to raise awareness. You do have to be willing to put up with a lot of snark and a slew of semi-draconian posting rules (and penalties), though.

Anyways, just some ideas that are mostly reflective of my own Internet proclivities, I suppose. Either one would take a lot of time and effort but I don't think you'd be disappointed in the results. Just make sure to link back to the engine itself someplace prominent.

I think that we need to submit more games to indiegames.com and the like. They love pixely games, especially strange ones, and I think that many OHR games meet the standards with aplomb. I do agree that it's important to link back to the engine somewhere. I saw an OHR game on indiegames.com but it wasn't really prominent how they made the game. I only knew because I've played so many.

I like the TVTropes and SomethingAwful ideas. Let's Plays are especially cool, even if they are super common. Spoonweaver has done some great ones.

I'm kind of out of the indie scene anymore (too politically charged, at least in the circles I was running in) but Twitter is a huge resource for indie gamers. In fact, I plan on tweeting a bit about the Burrow as soon as I get the bravery to log back on. So there's an idea, everyone make Twitter accounts and start tweeting at each other.

politically charged? what's there to fear? I am curious.

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dOn'T MiNd mE! i'M jUsT CoNtAgIoUs!!!
Play Orbs CCG: http://orbsccg.com/r/4r6x

A lot of the people in the indie games circle that I followed, like Auntie Pixelante, Courtney Love, Mattie Brice, and Porpentine/aliendovecote, are extremely wonderful people. I love 'em to death. They also happen to be very politically active in the arenas of feminism, trans rights, gender equality, etc. It's all very awesome, but it's a bit exhausting for me personally. I tend to get overwhelmed pretty quickly. They have much more personal reasons than I do to be active in those areas. I just start to get depressed and hate everyone, so I don't use Twitter very often anymore.

Also, many people on Twitter are fighty and confrontational, so it gets a bit hectic sometimes.

My favorite people on Twitter are also the folks on GloriousTrainwrecks.com (like Jeremy Penner, or Terry Cavanagh) as they just tend to love games and want everyone to make games. They make me smile quite a bit. *sigh*

Anyway, I'm probably gonna be a bit more active on Twitter soon (@clintmakesagame) so anyone who wants to sign up/follow me, I'll follow back. Just gotta clean up my following list.

I moderate at a video games forum, and I've always brought up the OHRRPGCE during amateur game dev discussions. I also recommend OHR games from time to time. If I ever get off my butt and start working on a game of my own sometime, I'll use the opportunity to show off the CE there.

I love the idea of joining contests in other game making communities. If anybody hears about a contest somewhere that OHRRPGCE games would be eligible for, please do post about it. (The next Ludumdare isn't until April by the way)

I'm glad to see there's so much interest in this.
Let's see, as far as sites that have been suggested to spread the word on, we've got:
SomethingAwful
TVTropes
Twitter
vgf.com
steam
LudumDare (sort of)
indiegames.com

This seem like a great list to work from. Did I miss any?




The UI is consistently said to be one of the best things going for the ohr.
It's not that you're wrong, it's just that I kind of think of the UI as the bases of the whole community in a way. A retro engine for retro games.

I don't imagine many people on SA would watch let's plays of games no one there has heard of unless the game was really damn weird and you did a hell of a job selling it. Buying banner ads there would get you more attention.

Also I ran the OHR twitter account and no one had any interest in ever interacting with it. At all. The OHR fan page on Facebook is similarly dead.

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Super Walrus Land: Mouth Words Edition

I remember the twitter page, at least.
It's been since 2010 since I've glanced at it, though.

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dOn'T MiNd mE! i'M jUsT CoNtAgIoUs!!!
Play Orbs CCG: http://orbsccg.com/r/4r6x