In this text, I will examine my relationship with twitter over the last 4 years.
I joined twitter in 2016 because I wanted to be closer to my game dev heros. Seeing them arguing and talking about their work felt exciting. I experienced the forever looping discourse for the first time. I heard about local meetups and conventions throught twitter and met many amazing people because of it. I tweeted about the games I was working on.
Follower count: 151
In 2017 I held my first talks and made one game per month, gaining more followers. Still, Newgrounds and Youtube were much more important to me than twitter. The first of my heros started following me. I told my parents and they did not really understand. I met a publisher at a convention and got a deal because I had published a game on newgrounds, not because I tweeted about it.
Follower count: 526
I noticed that prototypes did very well on twitter. I made prototypes instead of games. A gif went viral. I got hooked on likes and retweets. Many of my heros followed me. I checked compulsively if anyone “important” started following me. Tweets with few likes made me sad. Publishing and job opportunities presented themselves, but I could not really capitalise on them. I kept tweeting gifs of prototypes.
Follower count: 3.336
Having many followers had made me arrogant. The publishing deal fell apart and I moved to Sweden, where I met many game developers and learned about their processes and dreams. We made Ord. I realised that twitter might be a big part of the game dev community, but that it is not very useful to actually sell games. Still, I was not prepared to take the opportunities I got because of Twitter. I compulsively made gifs until I had a mental breakdown.
Follower count; 6.180
When I am stressed out, I make gifs to calm down. I try to not get too invested in twitter and often fail. I am struggling with handling my little amount of “fame”. I answer DMs from developers who are starting out. I used to write similar messages and know that I can not really give them what they want from me. Having a lot of followers makes me feel good, there is no denying that. It has helped me to understand what twitter can give me and it has shown me what I am willing to pay for it. I can not say if this journey has been worth it or not.
Follower count: 10.000
fuck twitter.
Twitter does not care about games as a medium. Twitter cares about CONTENT.
Tutorials, memes, heated arguments and dunking on people will always perform better than the calm, the quiet and the reflected.
I believe that it is very important to remember that having many followers mainly indicates that you are the equivalent of a medieval market fool.
If you insult royalty, tell tall tales or put swords where they do not belong, people will look at you.
Being able to afford dinner is an entirely different story.