#but i don't use itch.io so. i cannot comment on that??

[zehecatl]

first of, i'm coming at this from the point of view of a gamer. a gamedev might look at this opinion, and heartily disagree, so do keep that in mind. and also, just to add, i personally only use steam. this might matter. it might not. i do not know

(and if you're a gamedev, do please throw in your opinion!!)

but i think. yes- especially if you don't mind going in depth with it, because

constructive criticism! feedback!! if you explain why, it could possibly help the dev in future endeavours, or even to fix said thing up. i've seen that happen before, where a reviewer left a negative review, and the dev reached out and said issue got fixed. plus, here's a thread, from a dev, that talks a bit about negative reviews

personally, i've always found negative reviews rather helpful in whether i should buy a game or not. i tend to do a lot of research before buying, and negative reviews are absolutely crucial. my all time favourite game, in fact, had plenty of negative/middling reviews, but when i read them over, i found that almost all of the criticism was something i either, 1) did not mind or 2) actively enjoyed. and now it's my all time favourite game, so

i'm not 100% on how it works, but a game getting to 10 reviews is huge on steam. like, i've seen devs celebrate getting to that number, and i don't think negative reviews particularly matter in that instance (take this one with so much salt, i do not get how this feature works)

i personally don't like leaving negative reviews either, and i've yet to actually do so, but i think as long as you're constructive and polite, it can't actually hurt? like yes, it sucks that it might mean less sales, but as any creative outlet, game development is a constant journey of learning. and how you gonna learn if no one wants to point out your failings?

holds your face so fucking gently please leave reviews for indie games. please. every single review legit counts, especially if the game is small enough, and you don't even gotta say much if that's the problem!!

like, anything from a long ramble to a simple 'it was good' matters, because steam (and probably also the Other Ones) uses an algorithm. so the more reviews, the more exposure, the more money the dev team gets. like, please. please. leave a review. throw your small indie dev team a bone

[if-confessions]

hi, just wanted to ask if you have an opinion on one star ratings on itch.io in general? i understand supporting authors, and i don't support mean comments on reviews. but it also feels dishonest to keep your opinion to yourself only when you have a negative view of a game. It seems like (in the cog-ish community on tumblr) sharing an opinion less than good for an if is frowned upon

i understand authors write for fun, and sometimes aren't looking for constructive criticism. but if the last part were completely the case, there IS an option on itch.io to just... disable reviews and ratings. opening yourself up to getting stellar 5 star reviews means opening yourself up to less than happy reviews as well

but, let me know what you think. you seem very insightful for these things!

Insightful XD you are too kind, Anon. I usually have some mild takes...

Long post ahead. TLDR:

use all stars available, it's there for a reason

reviews are good to get more information out of a rating

constructive =/= mean

don't want to deal with it, disable ratings

-------------------------------------------------

==> The whole range of stars in ratings should be used.

So, this is my current itch rating distribution:

As you can see, it is currently a bit skewed to the top. But that's because I tend to forget to rate a game after I play it*, and mostly because I am currently reviewing games and I wanted to start with games I know I've enjoyed in the past**. And also because I haven't played a lot of games recently... *which I only do in the first place if I actually finish a game, or gave it a fair shot. And you can't rate the game during the voting period of a ranked jam **the ones I didn't really enjoy may not be on itch either...

Even then, I am still personally in favour of using the full range of stars on itch by creating your own metrics to base your ratings* on. Not every game is worth a 5-stars and less-than-good games should not automatically get a 1-star. There are 5 stars for a reason! Use them! *My rating metric on itch is based on my enjoyment of the game/how entertained the game has been to me.

To me, ratings are part of the game making experience. They are a way to judge whether it is well received or not. And even if it doesn't feel good to receive a 1-star*, it is important to remember that not everyone will enjoy what you make, and they are still allowed to express that (what's the point of ratings otherwise...). *it's a bit like a rite of passage to get one :P

==> Itch Reviews... are not really reviews.

Even if they call it reviews, they are more small comments on ratings. Itch reviews are not visible on the game page, only in the ratings list of the game on the author side, and in the feed of the reviewer*. It cannot be perused by itch users wanting to know more about what players thought about the game. *if the reviewer doesn't remove it from their activity. Also sometimes visible in the global feed

They are more like personal messages from the player to the creator, rather than what you'd expect of reviews (opinion publicly visible*). This can be great for creators who want to hoard those private messages and keep it for themselves, or hide the more critical comments. But it might sometimes leads to getting irrelevant or less-then-nice messages**. And the most annoying part: you can't reply to them to correct some things, or ask for further details. *I guess you have the comment section where you could post a proper review? **itch allows you to report abusive and spam comments.

That's why I kind of prefer the system of the IFDB: your reviews and ratings are public, you can comment on reviews or indicate whether the review had been useful to you. And because it is much smaller than itch, reports are handled faster.

==> Still you should leave some comments with your rating.

Ratings give creators some sort of an indicator about the reception of the game, but, since ratings are highly subjective and everyone have different personal metrics when rating, they can't tell what when right and what didn't, how well or how poorly the game is being experiences... Only words can do that.

So I personally believe we should leave some comments with our ratings, whether it is good or bad, from full novelette-length reviews* to a few sentences. If it is criticism, then it should be shown constructively; if it is praise, it should be explicative. This will give the author some concrete elements to focus on to fix issues or continuing the project. *maybe don't do that on itch...

Here are some examples of comments I got with ratings of CRWL : only gotten 6 total, which is 5% of all ratings

ngl that second one stung (I think cried for an hour...) but nothing was false about it. It definitely needed a re-write and I was being a bit dramatic. It might have been a bit harsh, but it is a good example of a constructive comment

I know itch will never enforce it, but I do think leaving a sentence or two of constructive comment on lower ratings should be a bit more of the norm. Being constructive doesn't mean it is overly negative or mean, it should target elements that do not work and explain why it doesn't (and maybe how it could).

Sidenote: this is not a place to request things or changes from the game/creator, obviously.

==> If you don't want any 1-star ever, don't enable ratings.

Getting a 1-star rating or a bad reviews might usually be a rite of passage when putting your stuff out there, but you don't have to suffer through them if you don't want to.

Itch allows you to disable ratings and reviews (and even comments) for a reason*. Enabling it is a bit of a gamble, you don't know how people will rate and what they will say about the game. It could be a flood of stellar reviews or a barrage of terrible ones, or a bit of both, or... nothing. If you don't feel like you could handle getting some low ratings or more negative comments (like the middle one screenshotted above), then I would advise you to disable them. *it will also affect the visibility of your game in the browsing section if you are worried about that

I personally think it helped me build a thicker skin and grow as a creator* and a person. Getting long reviews** about how how my game wasn't working and why felt to me like the reviewer respected me enough to give my game a fair shot and explain their reasoning behind their view. I know I don't have to agree with everything, and I don't have to take every piece of criticism on board, but they all have made me think about my games differently. *probably more the IFDB reviews than the ratings here, because they were more constructive and explicative. **Damnit, can't link it. It was a review for this game, but locked in the forum because the reviewer had submitted a game too.

[blubberquark]

Making of Deep Sea Settler

Download any play Deep Sea Settler from itch.io.

Comment on the game jam entry for Deep Sea Settler LDJAM.com.

Deep Sea Settler is a puzzle-ish colony builder made for Ludum dare 48. It's loosely inspired by Reus, Dorfromantik, and Solar Settlers by tumblr's own @brickroaddx. Based on the theme "deeper and deeper", you have to slowly build out your underwater colony by placing buildings in a hostile environment - without destroying said environment.

Day 1

I came up with two main game ideas for this theme: The first was a game about a submarine navigating in complete darkness based on sonar and dead reckoning. The second was an under-water colony builder with an ecological theme.

The first would either have looked really boring, with no visible environments, only 2D submarine controls and instruments, or it would have been too much work to mode the interior of a submarine and interesting underwater environments.

I decided to work on the colony builder, and to set it on a hexagonal grid. You start out just below sea level, and as you go on, the sea bed gets deeper and deeper, sunlight becomes scarce and pressure increases, so the game gets more difficult. (The depth and difficulty mechanic did not make it into the final game, but tiles of varying depth did.)

I started by working on the art and rendering code.

I made a simple renderer for infinite hex tilemaps (stored in a hash table), and drew some tiles. They all had a "base" or "depth" to them, allowing me to raise or lower them a bit without "floating" over the playing field. After seeing the tiles arranged like that, I decided to re-work the tile shape to allow for a better perspective when drawing tile contents, and I drew a bunch of tiles based on an ecological and "humorous" theme:

A fishing submarine with a fishing rod and a fish farm with fish fenced in in a 2D enclosure felt like the peak of humour to me at the time.

Day 2

I drew some graphics for UI elements and cursors, and started making the map clickable and interactive. For this, I repurposed the drawing code and the hex marker that shows the selected tile. After a broad-phase collision check, the game checks if the mouse is inside the drawn tile by checking a collision mask at the positions of nearby tiles, preferring the tile nearer to the "camera" if two or more overlap. This was easier to code than convex hex shape collisions, and allowed me to stay a bit more flexible with depth and overlapping tiles. At this point I was still thinking about making depth a more prominent mechanic, but the interaction with the map and judging of distances got a bit too difficult when tiles were occluded too much.

Then I added the wavy underwater effect. It took me way too long to add it, and although everybody tells me it's a bit too distracting, without it it's not clear that you are underwater, which is an important thing to convey at all times, because of the theme.

I drew some sprites for resources and tile products, but I was still unsure which should become which.

After playing around with different configurations, I decided to focus on just building, without a way to destroy built structures, and without "turns". There were discrete actions, but no "turns" and no way to pass time. There was also no way to accumulate resources over time. The only action was clicking on a tile and building, with instantaneous effects: Left-click a tile, select what to build, repeat.

This gave the way a much more puzzle-ish feel, that I really liked, but it also meshed with the "ecological" theme: Every action is irreversible, every tile is a precious resource, every decision is meaningful. Using a tile for building can cost you food or oxygen production. Expanding can destroy synergies between tiles.

To make this more obvious, I added a UI that shows a tile's output when you hover your cursor over it.

Day 3

The game was "feature-complete" after the second day, but I felt a bit unhappy with the balancing and the UI. I took a third day and spent Monday evening adding mining tiles to make tile space more precious, and UI improvements like drawing the perimeter of the buildable area (instead of the range of the current habitant) when the cursor is outside of the buildable area.

The farms were too easy to build, and the power plants were too difficult, so I added power lines to distribute energy (at the expense of building over more tiles) and mining of rifts for science juice to build farms. This way, food, energy, and oxygen are more of a trade-off, and you can't just tile the world with farms, but you can upgrade some of your farms to undo your worst mistakes. If there are not enough volcanoes where you want to build, you can build power lines, but that will make habitat placement more difficult.

What Went Right

Scope: I am really happy with the tight focus of the game, but at the same time, this game mechanic has "legs". It would be easy enough to add more tile types, make the map bigger, and to increase the goal population in the future based on what I have now. But as it stands, it's an interesting game already. Adding more systems would have made it harder to balance, and I am glad I didn't add turns with actions per turn, or tiles that generate resources over time.

Art: For the most part, I stuck with the db32 palette, plus some transparent shades of those colours in the domes and bubbles. I don't think the tiles are as funny as I first intended, but they are distinctive and legible enough.

Balance: After playtesting the game for hours, it's really easy for me, but it's a decent challenge the first few times. Some of the difficulty stems from not knowing what tiles are available and the lack of undo, but it's replayable for some time without feeling "solved" even after you have internalised all the mechanics. None of the tiles is too abundant or too rare.

Game Design: The core loop is build habitat->connect food and energy->expand range->build habitat, but it's also possible to go back and increase the population of existing habitats by mining, upgrading farms and connecting more energy. In the endgame, the player can sometimes increase the population by densely packing the centre of the map with habitats after spreading on the map, and sometimes, it's the other way round. That gives this game a thinky, puzzle-ish feel.

Tile products follow the pattern [adjacent tiles->built tile->product->habitat], so that there are no loops. It goes kelp->fishing sub->food->habitat; rift->power plant (->power line optionally?)->energy->habitat; kelp forest->oxygen->habitat; farm->food->habitat. Evaluating the output of a tile is straightforward both for the computer and the player.

Theme: I tried to work in an ecological theme, where Oxygen is in short supply, built structures cannot be reverted into pristine nature, and tiles are an important resource. Players picked up on that.

What Went Wrong

Jam Theme: Unfortunately, the jam theme "deeper and deeper" got a bit lost in the process. The game was already difficult enough without making tile depth contribute to building costs, and complicated enough for a jam game without adding more mechanics. Making the terrain generation more extreme would have made tile adjacency hard to determine. I would have needed to use a 3D engine to make 3D game mechanics.

Tutorial: There is no in-game tutorial that introduces the tiles gradually. I added some text on the itch.io download page and the LDJAM submission, but that can easily be missed.

UI: The UI is too busy and the mechanics are not discoverable enough. Adding more things to the UI would make it busier, removing things would make it harder to see what's going on. The UI needs a complete overhaul if I add anything more.

Time: Looking back, I could have implemented all this and some more polish, animations, and sound effects within the time constraints of the compo, if I hadn't had anything else to do that weekend. I really wish I could have added some audio.

What I learned

Don't try making depth a mechanic thing in a 2D game if you can't rotate the camera and look behind things

Some users get annoyed by waves even if they don't get sea-sick

People call every visual effect a "shader", even if it doesn't use the GPU

Hexes are cool. Some games don't work on a square grid

My visual jokes are not as funny as I think they are

I can do LDJAM without feeling hungover and tired on Monday

Try not to accidentally take out the jam theme when cutting down the scope!

Download here: https://blubberquark.itch.io/deep-sea-settler

[elfwreck]

publishing a work of fiction is not the same thing as clicking ‘publish’ on AO3, it involves actually releasing a work commercially (even for free!) and claiming authorship.

NO THIS IS NOT HOW IT WORKS.

Putting fic on AO3 is indeed publishing it. It is releasing it to the public. The authorship claim is right there - your username is attached. It is no different, legally, from publishing it on Smashwords for free, or putting it on your personal blog, or itch.io, or drivethrufiction. It is only a sliver's different from posting it on Kindle Unlimited, because there's profit involved in that one... but the "publishing" part doesn't require profit, or a profit motive. There is no list of "posting your fic on THESE websites counts as publishing and THESE OTHER websites does not."

Publication, for copyright purposes, is:

...the distribution of copies or phonorecords of a work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending.

You could, I suppose, argue that public blog posts & archives are not sold, not transferred, not rented, leased, or loaned. They are, however, distributed, in a way that's identical to a the licensed release used on paid digital content sites. (If AO3 works are not "published," then neither are any free ebooks at Amazon, and I have doubts that'd hold up in court.)

The rest of the points have similar flaws.

The accurate bits: In 2024, Tolkien will have been dead for more than 50 years, making his works public domain in Life+50 countries. These include Canada, much of the Middle East, some of Africa, and some of Asia, among others.

The Hobbit will be in the public domain in the US in 2033. That may seem like a long ways off... but an org that's had a near-hundred-year monopoly sees a 10-year-deadline as a looming shadow. (Look at what the Holmes Estate has done in the last 10 years.)

They're going to try hard to do what the Burroughs Estate did with Tarzan: Sure, some of the content is public domain, but it's trademarked, see, and we're gonna pretend that trademark law has the same kinds of protections as copyright law and we can tell people not to make stuff that refers to our content.

(That is not how trademark law works.)

TL;DR VERSION

1) Nothing has changed. This is a new announcement of existing policies.

2) Copyright law is fucking complicated. Hentai fans rejoice - if you wanted a real-world example of a multidimensional tentacled beast that fucks people, endless study materials await you.

3) Copyright law was designed for corporate purposes, not individual use, and it's been on the verge of collapse since the first photocopy machine. The law assumes that copies are expensive and hard to make, which is why the penalties are so ridiculous.

4) Listening to amateurs (like me) expound on copyright law is fine, but don't take any of our words for it. FUCKING COMPLICATED and packed with CONTRADICTORY LEGAL RULINGS. Look things up yourself. (Sorry for the headaches.) Or don't - but don't believe randos on the internet about "how copyright really works." I absolutely promise you that the career experts don't agree on how copyright really works.

5) AO3 was created with the awareness that, someday somehow, one of the major IP holders was going to actually crack down on free fanworks. And they're ready to shield us. (Cross)Post your noncommercial fanworks to AO3, because they are the one site that's not going to cave to "actually you cannot host X fanfic anymore" demands from any estate.

5b) This includes tumblr ficlets. There is no quality requirement for AO3. Feel free to post comment fics, drabbles, back-and-forth RP excerpts from Discord, "incorrect quotes" dialogues, and so on. Save our fannish history.

so the thing about the Tolkien Estate’s updated FAQ is that all of this is the exact same as it was prior to the update, it’s just easier to see now and placed front-and-center without you having to go digging through their Permissions page. since nothing has changed, I’d advise not freaking out too much. the Tolkien family and Tolkien Estate have historically had some serious issues with copyright, and their careful approach stretches back to the Professor getting burned by Ace Books in the 60s.

but I have had some requests to give my thoughts, so here they are, I guess? I am not a lawyer/IANAL, but as I’m looking at this, I don’t see anything super terrifying.

a quick breakdown:

“you can’t publish fanfiction!” you couldn’t publish fanfiction before, you could post it noncommercially on sites like AO3 or other archives. publishing a work of fiction is not the same thing as clicking ‘publish’ on AO3, it involves actually releasing a work commercially (even for free!) and claiming authorship. the Estate is responding primarily to the issues they’ve had in countries like Russia, where historically, a lax copyright law meant you could publish fanworks (things like The Black Book of Arda and Beyond the Dawn are available as printed books in Russia and not just electronic fanfic)

“you can’t make commercial fanart!” first off, fanart has always been in a legal grey area, one that most corporations and rights holders have chosen not to litigate rather than not being able to. second off, that’s not strictly true - the site’s FAQ specifies that you can’t use the name Tolkien, the JRRT monogram, Tolkien’s signature, or his artwork (including maps of Arda and Middle-Earth, the One Ring inscription, heraldry, etc) in your artwork if it’s being sold. people who steer away from that are on much more solid ground.

“you can’t publish fanzines or host cons!” you can’t publish fanzines with the name Tolkien on the cover, and you can’t host a con or a conference with the name Tolkien in it.

“you can’t stream read-alongs!” that’s another legal grey area, but it’s also never been strictly okay. they’ve looked the other way a lot and will probably continue to do so, but unauthorized audio books are, as always, still existing solely on the goodwill of the rights holder.

“you can’t set his works to music!” this has never been allowed as something you can make money off of, because the poetry is under copyright. the Estate has historically looked the other way on noncommercial fanworks, but they might stop. fan music that doesn’t make use of Tolkien’s poetry, like Lind Erebros and Oonagh, is in a different legal space, though if you reference specific names directly you might be in hot water.

“you can’t use his languages!” you can’t use his languages commercially, you can’t make money off them, but that’s never not been true.

okay, but the ultimate question is ‘why is this update happening?’ why are they centering issues of rights on the FAQ and not underneath the Permissions page? and the answer is that in less than two years, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings will be in the public domain in so much of the world that enforcing copyright on them will be intensely difficult. also, Priscilla Tolkien died, which means that there will be a new approach taken to policing fanworks, possibly by someone who’s significantly more invested in getting rid of them.

I’m going to echo what others have said - the answer here is to champion noncommercial fanworks and fan projects. in less than two years the whole landscape is going to change drastically, and that’s going to throw open the doors and rob them of a lot of their power.