Howdy! Continuing our series on the overlapping communities for incremental games, I’d like to discuss how different platforms can have different values and goals that shape both how the community is structured but also the people it attracts. Together these can drastically shift the vibe interactions on each platform.
You, as a member of one or more incremental games communities, have likely had these kinds of values, at least subconsciously, when deciding to participate. Even if you’re on reddit or discord communities due to already being on those platforms, it was values (and perhaps network effect, which can admittedly supercede values) that brought you to those platforms initially. And even if you would argue its just because of a site “feeling” right or being “well executed”, those likely just refer to an alignment of values.
As a developer, you’re encouraged to post on as many communities and platforms as possible. But yet, not all games appear everywhere - which is partially why I created plusone! To collect the new releases in one place! So one value I think is pretty important in creating a community that actually hears about new games is how “dev-centric” the community is.
Dev-centricity determines things like how easy it is for a dev to submit a game, edit/update the game, remove a game they don’t want publicized there/in that way, control the discussion about the game, and so on and so on. You might even find some of those competing with other values you care about. For example, on reddit anyone can submit a game, and devs have to go through the subreddit mods to have a game post removed, comments removed, etc. On the other end of the spectrum, sites like steam or itch can only have games submitted by devs, and devs have full power to remove their game or individual comments about their game.
For more, here’s an interview with yhvr, the creator of galaxy.click, a site I believe has a high level of dev-centricity despite not being a storefront like itch or steam.
Q: Lets start like how we did with asterisk_man, with your personal journey into the genre. How did you learn about incremental games, and what part of them appealed to you? Do you have a personal favorite, or one you find particularly formative to the genre?
I was very much an iPad kid growing up, and I'd spend many a day trawling the App Store for free games that caught my eye. I just looked at my purchase history, and I'd say the first incremental game I played was Pixel People, which was installed on my iPad the day before I turned six years old. I didn't touch any others until I was 7-8 though, and that seems to be when I started getting into some (relatively) more well-known titles - PickCrafter, AdVenture Capitalist, Cow Evolution, and so on.
I think a big turning point for me was when I discovered Antimatter Dimensions a few years later, though I don't remember why. My memory is hazy since it happened so long ago, and I'm hard-pressed to call it my "favorite" game since I have never even reached Reality. Beyond that, I love all my children equally :)
Q: Galaxy is relatively new on the scene, coming after r/i_g, plaza, and incremental db. What were your motivations for creating a new dedicated space for the incremental games community?
My goal has changed over time, but initially I wanted to make a "new Kongregate", or at least something like it. Plaza (RIP?) and IncrementalDB are fine sites for listing games, but when I heard about Kongregate shutting down I thought it was only a matter of time before someone made a "new one" for incremental games. There's a lot of half-baked features on the site made by 15/16 year-old me that were moreso taken from Kongregate instead of ruminated over for months before implementing, like most new features nowadays are.
Q: You've put an emphasis on developer consent on galaxy - games can't be added without developer consent, and a dev can delist or delete their game from the site at will. This is in stark contrast to other communities where anyone can share a game, and having a post removed requires contacting the communities’ moderator team. How do you feel this has impacted the culture of the galaxy community? How does that fit into the role galaxy plays within the incremental games community?
Good question! This is not something I have thought much about. My first instinct is that it would not be a big influence, but I suppose it has caused issues on occasion. Developers will sometimes delete their games from galaxy but not the whole internet, so the people who were already playing the game naturally want to continue on the main link. However, deleting the galaxy version makes exporting saves from it particularly challenging, so there's now a message encouraging developers to unlist their games instead of delete them. I have to admit, it does a feel a little weird though - I worry about coming off as some weird exploitative place when that's not my intention in the slightest. If I was going to make a platform, a high-consent one seemed natural as the majority of platforms I spent time on when I was younger behaved that way.
Q: What challenges, if any, are you facing now or anticipate becoming issues in the near future?
I spend a lot of time thinking about, stressing over, moderating, and developing galaxy. However, sooner than later I'm going to start looking for a job. Although I've balanced these responsibilities with university work just fine, I don't know if it'll still work out after I find employment. There's a lot of information, opinions, and understandings about the site that exists only in my mind, and training staff feels like it'd be a rather involved endeavor. I'd also have to find people that I trust, but that I would also feel comfortable burdening with this workload. I appreciate the current other staff who sometimes help out and act as a sounding board for tough decisions, but I still do a lot of the day-to-day work alone or with Flame.
Q: Overall, what lessons have you learned regarding community management?
- It's worth thinking about where you're willing to draw lines. I spent a lot of time trying to make as many people happy with galaxy as possible, but I realized that's not a feasible goal, and there's some things that not everybody agrees with or cares about (e.g. keeping generative AI in games to low levels). At the end of the day, a community you run belongs to you, not everybody else. It's okay to be opinionated.
- You need to have at least somewhat concrete workflows in place. I've saved so much time by creating things like warning templates that convey ideas I frequently want to share with people in an acceptable but pre-made manner.
- Don't run a large public community when you're 16 :)
Q: Galaxy is open source and there’s no company that could kick you off, that you wouldn’t be able to immediately replace with another VPS, domain registrar, etc. How does that effect galaxy, compared to other community places like reddit or discord?
Contrary to tne answer you were expecting, I think my day could still be adequately ruined by corporations. For example, it would be a massive pain in the ass if Uniregistry, the owners of the .click TLD, put me on serverHold for no reason. Migrating save data to another domain would require me to write software people wouldhave to install on their computer, which feels really gross. However, I can at least say that galaxy isn't built around a BaaS/SaaS platform like Supabase, so you can run it on any sufficiently powerful computer you want to. I (or anyone!) could resurrect galaxy at any point in time, but doing so would likely be closer to a month of misery than clicking a few buttons.