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I’m at INDIGO in Rotterdam today and tomorrow! It’s nice to have a conference particular for the Benelux region. Although I only ever bump into Dutch people and Belgians. Where are the Luxembourgers at?

Over the last year in my conferencing I have seen a trajectory of companies that scaled too big that are scaling down, and those being laid off starting their own smaller companies. Also, more folks going freelance, working with each other, and revenue sharing. Not necessarily bad, just different.

A weirdly repetitive part of this, that I’ve seen happy a few times over my long-ish career at this point, is companies scaling up too much and too fast. It rarely ever works out well, yet it keeps happening. Or maybe it just visually keeps happening. There are also many small companies around.

Also, I am seeing talks, but I’m not live posting them this time. I’m taking it a little easier today

I still get quite upset (internally) when playing a game, the dev asks for feedback, and then they never pull out a phone, or a pen, to write down the feedback! You have to write things down! You can’t remember all the feedback! Or, go nuts and write down the feedback on post-it’s on the booth

Now, day 2! Much love to every conference that starts at 10:00 instead of 09:00

Great conversations today about the industry, and I am every year surprised with how incredibly good the students are nowadays. They’re making games that professional indie teams made back in the day. That’s the baseline now. It’s nuts.

Seeing a talk by @hanney.bsky.social right now, about Steam reviewers. Using data to debunk many common misconceptions. For example, asking folks on Twitter or Bluesky to please review your game, doesn’t work. Instead, focus on the folks who already review many games!

There are metrics to Steam reviews, especially for getting the ‘overwhelming positive’ label. You need 100 reviews. Those can include edited reviews! So write good patch notes, let folks know what was changed, and they can change their review, from negative to positive!

Where do you find the folks who haven’t reviewed yet? In your Steam forums! And 85% of forum posters leave a positive review! They’re not a cesspool of negativity. Ask them to review your game. There is an icon on their forum posts that indicates they own your game. Use your Steam forums!!

Steam forum posters review 5x more. So respond to people on your Steam forums. Talk to them. Help them. They will leave a review. Steam forums are beacons of positivity. But you have to ask them to leave a review!