Once you're going, don’t look down

Dealing with haters on Reddit

Hi pals!

Welcome to all you new subscribers! Pleasure to have you here.

This week, in an effort to spread the word about Surmount, I made a post on the r/gaming corner of reddit. A daring marketing stunt.

It shows the very earliest version of the game compared to the current state of it. It’s gone from a pretty static capsule with balls hands - to a dynamic, fully animated little fella (still with ball hands).

The post currently has over 900 upvotes, which isn’t great by reddit standards. But it’s the most engaged with post about Surmount across all platforms. And I’m pretty happy with it.

Of course that amount of attention also comes with some hate-comments. One of those comments stood out to me.

“Really though, my question remains unanswered. I still don't know who your game is for and I don't think you know either. There is no Venn diagram of the target audiences of these different games you cite as inspiration overlapping.

One more thing: Local coop is risky. The vast majority of these titles fail, for obvious reasons. Don't let the success of a small number of outstanding coop games blind you. I hope you didn't invest too much time into this feature. Any kind of multiplayer is extremely risky for an Indie.

Every single time, indie game devs claimed that their situation was different, that their little game would succeed because all of the hard work or this or that feature they put into it, but every single time, their games fizzle out within days of having been released on Steam. One minuscule sales peak in the beginning, enough to create hope, and then nothing.”

It has some real validity. I started to sweat when I reread his comments to quote these parts.

I could argue that we have a pretty decent idea and proof against his claims. But there’s no point in arguing with this person. And I’m not about to try to defend myself in front of you either.

When I discussed this comment with my partner she told me a story about a little girl who walked across a wire. She looked straight ahead and walked calmly but surely across the line with her gaze fixed forward. The person after her did exactly the same thing, until she reached the middle. She looked down and fell.

I believe the guy who commented on my reddit post is more like the second girl.

As I make this game, I can listen to whatever, think about whatever, discuss whatever. But I can’t give it so much attention that it causes me to look down and lose my balance. I have to keep looking forward.

The fluidness of logic

I said there was some validity to what he said.

And the truth is, we have thought about all of those things. So many times. We’ve landed at answers that are about as good as they can be, while still allowing us to make the game that we want to make. We can’t do more than that. Because the goal isn’t to answer those questions. It’s to make Surmount. There’s something emotional to Surmount that makes it so I have to make it - the reason for it to exist goes beyond logic.

What he suggests is that we follow some criteria that has already been proven to work. But if we did that, we would take the safe route and be called copy-cats instead.

You can always make logical excuses to not do stuff. But it’s very hard to find logical reasons to actually do stuff. Your gut feeling is the only good metric. If you want something bad enough, you will make up logic to explain why it will work.

There are also other types of success outside being a huge bestseller. Even if I just make a little bit of money from it, that’s still an improvement from where I am today. And I’m getting the climbing game idea out of my system, something that I always wanted to do. I will be able to move on.

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I’m still considering if I should reply to that guy’s comment or just delete it. I’d love to hear your opinions on that, if you have one.

As always, thank you for reading!