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aurora-daily · 5 years

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AURORA

Interview: AURORA for smoke and echoes (July 4th, 2019).

“I made the album trying to build an army of love and remind people that they can do incredible things.” – Aurora

It was a rainy summer day in Berlin, when we met the loveliest and most magical creature of all – Aurora. When she came into the room, her aura filled the space with such a special energy. A bit shy in the beginning, but her honest answers and that special kind of a very calming voice and the way Aurora was talking, were just a reflection of her peaceful mind and soul and we truly felt touched by her presence.

The Norwegian singer songwriter Aurora Aksnes, formally known as AURORA, is back with her second studio album ‘A Different Kind Of Human – step 2’ which marks the instalment of ‘Infections Of A Different Kind – step 1’, her EP from 2018. We were talking with Aurora about her latest record, her favourite plant, daemons and fashion of course.

When you woke up this morning- what was the first thing that came to your mind?

I was sleeping quite deeply and then I heard someone knocking at the door, I was at a hotel, it was quite strange but then it was my sister. And then I thought – hmm, hello sister!

What’s the best thing about being an artist and what is the worst?

The best thing is that I can do music and that my words mean something. That is very nice and very beautiful. The worst thing ist hat I have to fly so much.

Nature is kind of an escape, inspiration and a shelter for you – would you say that you’re good gardener and do you have a favourite plant?

My favourite plant is lavender, it smells really nice and the bees also like that. But I am not a good gardener. I prefer wild flowers that decide for themselves – I like independent nature.

Your second studio album “A Different Kind Of Human (step 2)” is out now – what inspired you the most for writing the album and would you say that you also turned into “A Different Kind Of Human”?

I want people to chose. Cause many people think I named the album “A Different Kind Of Human” because I am a bit strange. But that has nothing to do with the album, but of course I have always been a bit different. But I think it’s a choice you make. And If everyone made that choice, the world would be wonderful. I was really inspired by traveling around. I saw people around the world and heard their stories and I realised how much we want to be united and how much we have in common. How much potential we have, but people don’t know how much they are really capable of. I made the album trying to build an army of love and remind people that they can do incredible things.

What’s your favourite song on the record?

It changes from time to time. Some days it’s “A Different Kind Of Human” and sometimes it’s “Soulless Creatures”!

And what’s your favourite song to play live at the moment?

Now it’s “The Seed”. It’s full of anger and I can scream it out. I am in a phase where I want to be explosive and really shout. I love it – it’s very satisfying for me to sing it.

Do you have any good morning shower songs?

I really like listening to The Pointer Sisters with “Jump In or Jump Up”- “Jump In For My Love” is not that known but it’s very nice. In the morning I often feel quite shy to the world so I maybe like to listen to Enya.

In which way are you influenced and inspired by other artists?

Very little. I feel like the whole reason why I began to make music was around the age of 6, when we didn‘t have a radio and I only knew what my mom and dad had on their album collection. So I had little music in my life and what made me want to create music was that I didn’t find any perfect music out there. I wanna make what I feel the world is missing. And I am still working on it, hunting for the perfect thing. But I do get inspired from artists that use their power in a good way. I really enjoy that.

What’s the image of Germany you have after touring here several times?

You have a much more passionate audience than I thought. Cause in Norway people are quite stiff and shy maybe. And I thought it would be the same here but no! And they really understand it when I am being funny, which is really nice because some places they don’t. It’s a good audience, very respcetful. They listen, they care.

What was the most impressive gift you have ever received from a fan? And do you keep them all?

I keep as many as I can get with me. And If I can’t bring them I take pictures and I read all the letters . And many of them I hang up on the walls in my studio. So when I make music, I can look at them. One time I got a wax figure of myself. And it looked very much like me: the clothes and the hair and everything which was very impressive. They are really artistic.

Talking about being artistic – if you had to paint a picture of a daemon what would it looks like and which colour would it be?

I think it would be white. You know sometimes in the history of religion the true daemons can be angels. Some things so white that you are blinded. And white noise also is very annoying.

Fashion wise – what means fashion to you?

When I was little I dressed like I do now. I had many layers. A typical thing like one of each shoe on a different foot cause it looks nice when you look down. I was wearing sleeves. I really liked the characters in the wrestling games, like “Taken”. So I am really inspired by that kind of fashion. And I really like Anime and fantasy books. Also it’s good to have a sister that is a designer so I can ask her to make a dress. I can give her this ugly drawing of a dress and then she always nails it. She is very good!

Do you have an indispensable piece of clothing?

Something I can’t loose? No. I feel like if I use them a lot and I forget things in my hotel room. I feel like the meaning is that we part. I always hope that the maid in the hotel will find it. I feel like if I loose something it is my own fault. It happens a lot to me. I cannot be sad about it.

What do you pack in your suitcase? Do you have any travel essentials?

Yes – I don’t know if this is actually legal, but I bring a lot of candles. And I have InScents and a small lighter. I like it when the room smells nice, but I am very careful and often I light it in the bathroom on the tiles. But I know you’re not supposed to do that. But I just do it a little. And I always bring this tiny box with me. I have some lavender in it and a piece of my old hair. And I asked for a sisters tooth (Viktoria). She just pulled out a tooth but she has it in her witch box. Because we all – me, Viktoria and Miranda – we are witches and we have our small boxes with witch stuff inside. I bring mine always. Sometimes I bring my own pillow case and way too many books. The hotel rooms have no personality so it’s nice to bring nice things.

Music is…

Liberation.

Thanks for taking the time to have a chat with us and for your honest answers, Aurora. We truly enjoyed your aura and can’t wait to meet you soon, in the near future! If you wanna catch Aurora playing live, visit her website for tour dates and more.

Stay tuned.. xx smoke and echoes

#aurora #aurora aksnes #interviews #step 2 #soulless creatures #adkoh

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whoinwhoville · 7 years

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Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Doctor Who (2005) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler Characters: Tenth Doctor, Rose Tyler Additional Tags: Bikini - Freeform, Swimming, jaaaaaaack, embarassed ten Series: Part 3 of Whoville's Follower Milestone Celebration Summary:

The Doctor promises Rose a visit to the best beach in the universe. But then he sees her in a brilliant bikini.

Written for @goingtothetardis who won my follower milestone celebration ficlet for Ten x Rose canon ficlet. Prompt: Ten sees Rose in a bathing suit for the first time since he regenerated.

Rose bit her thumb. Trying to decide was proving harder than it ever should be.

“That’s what I get for owning twenty swimsuits. Who even has twenty swimsuits? This is ridiculous.”

She pawed through the pile of mismatched tops, bottoms, and one-piece water-wear.

She picked up a one-piece red suit and then tossed it aside remembering that the wrap-style top part was too big and gaped open.

Then the two-piece green tankini - an unfortunate neon phase when she was seventeen.

She picked up a very flattering white bikini - Shireen had convinced her to buy it. The minute she’d jumped into the public pool, she’d heard catcalls. It had gone see-thru. She hadn’t spoken to Shireen for a week. “I didn’t pack this? Why’s this one here?” She heard the TARDIS giggle.

The one-piece black halter had strings that went around her neck. But it had bad habit of coming untied, usually after diving into the pool. Great for tanning, terrible for having fun in the water.

Another black one — a bikini. The bottoms were a wee bit too close to thong territory.

And yet another black one - for exercise. And it felt like a compression suit.

A red bikini. She smiled wickedly and put it in the maybe pile. “Gotta love Miracle Bra.”

A metallic gold bikini — Mickey had bought it after marathoning Star Wars for the umpteenth time. (She crinkled her nose) and tossed it aside.

Pink bikini with a ruffled skirt. “What was I thinking? Am I eight?”

Pink one-piece with teeny white dots — cute pattern, but the leg holes were too low and made her feel like a granny.

White. Not see-thru. Strange smashed mono-boob thing.

She held up a navy blue one-piece. Too small.

She glanced at a sky-blue bikini. “Too much side-boob.”

“And this one is just ugly. Oh yeah, it was on the 85% discount rack at Henrik’s. Does it even fit anymore?” She held it up. “Yeah, it fits. Ugh. I hate throwing out stuff that fits.”

She picked up the red maybe suit and examined it again. “He does seem to like red. He’s always staring at my mouth when I wear that red lipstick. And the red jacket on Satellite Five — I got some good looks up and down in that outfit. But that was then. What about now? I don’t even know what his favorite color is now! Although I could guess it’s brown. I like the brown. I really like the brown. Do I have a brown one? No, I don’t look good in brown. Why would I ever wear a brown bathing suit?” Rose groaned, and fell face-forward into her fluffy comforter.

She lifted her head, and then she saw a suit that she didn’t recognize. It was hanging on the doorknob.

Rose crinkled her forehead as she pulled it off of the shiny silver handle. She held up the top by the bra straps.

“Ooh La La. Never heard of that brand. Cute name. Right size, too.”

There was nothing special about the design of the suit. No embellishments. Just a classic bikini. The color was nice and cheerful. She quickly stripped off her clothing and put it on, and then went into the bathroom to take a look.

She tugged the top, adjusting it so that it covered the parts that needed covering, but showed off the parts that she wanted to show off.

The bottoms fit well and didn’t need to any adjustment.

Rose turned this way and that, looking at her reflection. She smiled. “This makes my bum look good.” With a bite of the lip she tugged the straps, enhancing the push-up effect just slightly. Not too skimpy, not too plain. Just the right bit of oomph.

“And… we have a winner.” She let out a little hooray and quickly gathered the rest of her things and headed out to the console room.

oOo

“Time’s a ticking, Rose Tyler. Chop chop. I promise, you don’t want to miss— the… uh…”

“I’m ready. Let’s go. I can hardly wait to jump into the water.”

The Doctor stood statue-still, feet glued to the grating.

“Something wrong? Do I have spinach in my teeth?”

He tugged his ear. He clasped his hands behind his back. He shoved one hand into a coat pocket, and then the other into the pocket of his trousers, striking an awkward, uneven pose.

“Something must be wrong to got you so tongue-tied. So go on, spit it out.”

“That’s the swimsuit you’re wearing?”

She rolled her eyes. “No, it’s my ballgown. My bikini’s in my bag.”

He blew air through is lips. “Right. Of course. Ha! Your bathing costume. Cossie. Your swim togs. Togs. Toggies. Cozzy. Bathing suit. Definitely not a ballgown. Definitely. Nope. You are a very funny human, Rose Tyler. Very, very funny. And I’ve met some humans who, and I promise you, are very very veeeery funny.” The Doctor gritted a smile. “You know who’s funny? Lucille Ball. Lovely woman. And ginger.” He sighed.

“What are you nattering on about?” she laughed, looping her arm through the acrylic hoops of her pink mesh beach bag.

“Well,” he tugged on his ear, “it’s, you know…” He waved his finger around. “Flattering.”

She smiled slyly. “That’s sorta the point, isn’t it?”

“I think you should change. Might be too… flattering for where we’re going.”

“You said this place was uninhabited. Do the birds have hangups about skin?” she joked.

He cringed.

“I’m not changing, Doctor.”

“The Victorians wore black bathing costumes over big ol’ billowing black bloomers. Ha! Awfully awesome alliteration. Ha HA! I did it again! You’da thought the undertow would have claimed more lives. I never knew how—“

“We aren’t going swimming with Queen Victoria, are we?”

“No! No. Definitely not. She’d would’ve had our heads. Or drawn and quartered. Very unpleasant. Or will take our heads. Or could. She thought you were naked before…” he trailed off.

“So then, what’s the problem, Doctor. You’re turning all red.”

Rose took a step forward.

The Doctor took a step back.

“Oh come off it. You’ve seen me in a million bikinis. What’s wrong with this one? Don’t you like yellow?”

“Yellow is absolutely brilliant. Completely and absolutely outstandingly perfect.”

“I’m going out there. You coming? Or are you just gonna stand there with your gob going nonstop?”

Rose brushed passed the Doctor and pushed the door open, illuminating the TARDIS with cheerful sunlight and the smell of salt air.

The Doctor put on his sunglasses, and slowly dragged his coat from its standard storage spot.

“Maybe it’s not the one. I did throw it away.”

He could swear he heard the TARDIS laugh.

oOo

Rose looked out towards the horizon. Small islands dotted the azure water. The beach was deserted, save the occasional sea bird flying overhead.

“So no people on this planet?”

“Nope.”

“Any dangerous animals?”

“Nope.”

“You coming? I want to get in.”

“Nope.”

“Isn’t it safe? Giant sharks with poisonous fangs? Enormous stinging jellyfish?”

“Nope.”

“Why’d we come then? You told me this was the most beautiful beach in the universe.”

The Doctor swallowed hard.

“Doctor…?” Rose crossed her arms. “What’s going on?”

“Uh… Rose, where’d you get that uh… garment you’re wearing?”

“Garment?” She snorted. “It’s a bikini. Since when did you become such a prude?”

He dragged his hands down his face. “Just answer the question.”

“It was hanging on my doorknob. I don’t know where it came from. The TARDIS must’ve put it there.” She frowned. “Why? Is it poisoned or something? Alien tech that shoots darts out of the bikini top?”

The Doctor blushed fiercely.

“You are so easy to wind up! Come on, tell me! What’s the problem?”

He opened and closed his mouth a few times.

A slow, lopsided grin appeared. “You know what, Doctor? I think you like it. You’ve been looking.” She bit her lower lip. “New New Doctor.” Rose swung her hips as she approached him.

He squeaked.

She was now a hair-breadths away.

“You did say it was flattering.”

“Yes. Very.” He nodded, eyes closed.

Rose laughed and shook her head. “Whatever. Race you to the water!”

She took off, sprinting over the sand.

“Rose!” he bellowed. “Stop! Don’t go in the water!”

“No way!” she called over her shoulder. “You brought me swimming, so I’m gonna swim.”

The Doctor dropped onto his bum, and buried his face in his hands.

He heard her squeal as she dove into the cool, but refreshing surf.

But then she screamed.

And she screamed again. Louder.

“I’m so sorry!” he yelled hiding his eyes.

“Why didn’t you tell me?!” she screeched. “You put this thing in my room, didn’t you? Thought you’d play a joke?”

The Doctor pulled his lanky frame off of the sand and slowly walked backwards to the edge of the water.

“It wasn’t me, Rose. I promise. I thought the thing was gone.”

But then he heard laughing.

And then he heard sloshing.

Louder and louder. Closer and closer.

He ran up the beach, and again walked backwards, this time carrying his long, brown, full-coverage coat.

“Here. Put this on.” He held it out to her behind his back.

“Nope.” Splash, splash.

“It wasn’t my fault. Do you believe me?”

“Nope.” Splash, splash, splash, splash.

“It was Jack!” he exclaimed. “He bought it! Thought it’d be funny. You know his sense of humour. I put it in the rubbish bin. Thought the TARDIS incinerated it.”

“Apparently not,” she purred.

“Come on Rose, take the coat,” he begged.

“Nope.”

She was right behind him now. He could feel her breath on his neck. And he could feel her skin on his back. Her wet, uncovered, soft, and very bare skin.

And then Rose took the coat and slipped it on.

“You can turn around now,” she purred.

“You know what I think?”

“Nope.”

“I think you wanted me to wear the bikini. You didn’t tell me about it, because you knew what was gonna happen and wanted it to happen.”

“Nope.”

“But you did know what would happen?”

He was quiet. “Yep.”

“I am a bit disappointed, though.”

The Doctor turned around.

“Why?”

“Best bikini I’ve ever had. And now it’s gone. Dissolved straight away.” She raised an eyebrow. “So, did Jack buy you a pair of swim trunks?”

#ten x rose #goingtothetardis #ficandchips #whoville follower milestone #bikini #humor #maybe a bit cracky

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aurelliocheek · 4 years

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Working with the community to make better games

Philomena Schwab shares her positive experiences with community-based development and everything she has learned about it in the past couple of years.

Why build a community? Well, building a community around your game in development is not only beneficial for financial success but provides developers with constant feedback and can serve as a motivator to push through the tough times of development. For our indie studio Stray Fawn Studio, this was utterly true, and we are very grateful for everything our players helped us to accomplish. In this article, we want to share our story and provide insights on how we built up and maintain a healthy, friendly community and how they helped our games becoming financially successful.

We recently put together a survey, asking indie game developers from all over the world about their experiences with building game communities. You will encounter the results of the survey while reading this article, and here is the first one: According to our survey, 96% of developers believe that community building is relevant for the financial success of indie games. Having a loyal fanbase and financial benefits sound great! But as with most good things it comes at a cost. The initial effort of opening a hub, finding people and establishing an appropriate tone and rules within the community can be quite time-consuming. However, if you are ready to put in some time and effort, the chances are that you are positively surprised by the fruits of your labor.

Philomena wrote her master thesis about community-building for indie game developers. She spent a whole year testing methods to engage, maintain and activate a games’ community.

It‘s all about the game When trying to build up a community or even thinking about what kind of game to develop, the question of the games‘ „hooks“ should be asked early on. Building up a fanbase around a game that has nothing special to offer will be hard. That‘s why you need to think about hooks. Our first game „Niche – a genetics survival game“ defined the following hooks for itself: Scientifically accurate genetics, cute animals, survival genre. When we started Niche‘s development in 2014, no big games about genetics and evolution had been released for a long time, and there weren‘t many survival games available either. Whichever hooks you choose, a game either needs to be unique enough to attract its own audience or be better than existing games it‘s trying to compete with. A game‘s visuals can be a great first hook to get people interested. If the game looks dull or ugly but has excellent gameplay, it will be a tougher sell at first, since people need to play it to be able to tell all their friends how amazing the game is.

There are many other factors about games that can make community-building and discoverability easier; multiplayer for example. Playing with friends can be a great motivator to buy a game and stick with it. Our studio‘s favorite helpful factor is expandability. If you show your game in an early state, you can gather feedback at the beginning of the project. This method can have a positive impact since problems in the core gameplay can be corrected before more is built on top of it. Then, with every new update, players can pick up the game again and discuss all the new changes. This works exceptionally well for system-driven games and can often be seen with games in Early Access. The supreme discipline of expandability is modding support. Letting players create their own content can increase a games‘ lifespan drastically. If a game is heavily story-driven and can‘t be played before it‘s finished, there are other ways to build up a community around it, for example by starting a blog that analyzes games that are similar to yours. The game‘s worlds and characters could be introduced using additional stories and lore. Then, once your game is released, you will have access to people that are interested in exactly the type of game you are creating. Whichever type of game you might create, they all face the same problem: Where to find people that care?

Going to events helped to re-define the target group of Niche. The game was initially intended for a younger audience (kids and teens).

Where to find players? There are many ways to approach this problem. For us, an excellent place to start are events. Events can be great to gather early feedback and to see if the game attracts our chosen target group. With Niche, for example, we weren‘t surprised that many young girls (age 8 – 12) where attracted by the game. What we didn‘t expect however, was that men and women age 25 – 35 were interested in it too. This encouraged us to adjust the concept towards an older target audience, which allowed us to add more complex scientific concepts. When exhibiting at events, newsletter signup lists are a great tool to stay in touch with interested players. Once the game launches, few things are more useful than a long newsletter list of interested people. You don‘t have to start from zero when building a community. There are many already established groups out there that align with your target audience. For Niche, for example, we reached out to the author of a fantasy series about fighting forest cats. Thethor appreciated that her books have inspired our game and gave us a shoutout on her Facebook page. This resulted in lots of teenage girls becoming interested in the game. Of course, we also advertised Niche via social media ourselves, using hashtags and existing groups to reach related communities.

Where to bring them? Once we found a couple of people that cared about our game, the next question was where to bring them. Here is another survey result or you: 45% of all indie developers are currently using Discord as their primary community hub. 16% are using the Steam forums, 8% their own forums and 4% favor Facebook groups. Discord is the most popular option by far. Survey participants stated that it‘s easy to set up, it‘s platform independent (in case a game is planned to be released in different stores or on different platforms), that they appreciate the direct chat functionality and the ability to automate processes using bots. I agree that Discord is currently a great option as a community hub. Other options, such as a Subreddit or Facebook group can work too. The most important requirement for a community hub is that people should be able to interact with each other easily. So in my opinion, sites like Youtube and Twitter are great for gaining visibility, but the interaction of the community should not be limited to leaving a comment on the developer‘s posts.

Thanks to the support of the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, Stray Fawn Studio was able to present Niche at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.

Are you using a forum? Our studio has decided to start running its own forums. The main reason being that after we released our second game, the different channels/hubs were becoming too numerous to maintain and people expected us to be available everywhere. So we decided to declare the new forums as our primary communication outlet and informed our players via pinned posts on all other channels. We still drop into our Discords, Facebook groups, and Subreddits occasionally, but the change to one central news channel relieved some of the pressure to respond everywhere within a short amount of time. Bringing the forums to life was a different beast entirely. For now, it turned out to be a good decision, enabling cross-promotion between our two games and allowing to add many cool features, such as an up- and downvote plugin for feature requests and bug reports. If you‘d like to hear more about why we chose a forum and how we brought it to life, check out my GDC 2019 talk about this topic: strayfawnstudio.com/insights

Stray Fawn Studio is based in Zurich, Switzerland. The team consists of 10 people, half of them graduated from the Zurich University of the Arts’ game design course.

How to manage a community? Once you have found at least a hand-full of interested people and opened up a hub where they can easily communicate, community management begins. The early days of a community are when its fundamental tone and rules are defined. If you do a good job at this point, players will become advocates and pass on the desired behaviors to new members of the group. I like to refer to this phase as „forming the backbone.“ Having a clear vision of your game at this point is important since you want to be able to communicate what players can expect. With Niche, players requested „options to build traps and fences“ after playing the first prototype. We clearly stated that building anything beyond basic structures such as nests would never become a part of the game since the protagonists are animals. After a lengthy discussion, the community members accepted the decision and passed on the knowledge to new members requesting building features ever since. There are quite a few things developers can do to deepen the connection with their community:

Show benefits of being in the community (such as letting them know news first)

Show people that you are human and why you love your game, tell your story

Take the time to explain decisions (especially if people are unhappy about them)

Listen to feedback

Implement suggestions and credit people for them (generates a sense of ownership)

Educate people on how games are created, so they understand the effort

Always be honest and transparent

However ultimately, the developer is not the protagonist of this story. In the end, it‘s all about people making friends. We are only the ones providing the platform for it. If community members become friends, our game is suddenly not the only reason for spending time in our community hubs anymore. Instead of talking about the game exclusively, they will start to discuss all kinds of things. For example in the Niche forums, people post their drawing of animals and ask for feedback. Suddenly, the hub provides an entirely new type of value: Artistic improvement. Now people can easily entertain themselves until the release of our next big game update.

Stray Fawn Studio initially financed Niche and Nimbatus via Kickstarter. Crowdfunding is now a fixed step in their development cycle to test if players are interested in a game concept before working on it for too long.

If all goes well, the community will slowly start to grow on its own. At some point, players might open new hubs by themselves and will ask us to approve them or even drop by occasionally. This is the point in time where moderators become essential. If a moderator is needed, our team often asks people who joined the community during the „backbone phase“ to take on the responsibility. Usually, people feel honored and happily assist. This is a huge time saver since moderators should be able to answer most questions that players have on their own.

What to do next? Now that you have a healthy, growing community in place, what other things besides feedback and ideas can they support you with? One example would be community translation. More and more indie game studios depend on their players when it comes to localizing the game. Niche‘s community has localized the game to eight languages. However, while players understand a game‘s context very well, it might still make sense to let a professional translator double-check the spelling.

Players can also help to create social media content. Our studio often runs „best gif“ competitions for our second game „Nimbatus – The Space Drone Constructor.“ Winners receive a free Steam key, and we get to post their amazing creations on social media.

For their new game Nimbatus – The Space Drone Constructor, Stray Fawn Studio offered everyone who joined the games’ newsletter a free demo before the game was released.

Also, there is the option to ask players for financial support, using sites like Patreon and Kickstarter. Our studio has run Kickstarters for both our games, raising funds that were essential to keep working on the projects. If you are interested in reading more about our games‘ crowdfunding campaigns (Spoiler: One of them got funded thanks to a free demo), you can do so here: strayfawnstudio.com/insights Running a Kickstarter can be a great way to deepen the connection between your players and your team because if a campaign succeeds, the community will celebrate it together with you and feel that they were an essential part of the accomplishment. Also, crowdfunding is a great first step to teaching a community that making a game costs money. Which brings me to my favorite moment with our games‘ fanbase to date. When Niche was ready to leave Early Access in autumn 2017, our team was afraid that the game might not break even financially. So we turned to our community and explained that we would not be able to release further updates for the game anymore if we didn‘t hit the break-even mark of selling 50.000 units during launch month. The community was shocked and asked what they could do to help us. We put together a list of helpful things, such as contacting their favorite YouTubers, streamers, press outlets, as well as sharing posts on social media and telling their friends. This worked out way better than expected. Many prominent YouTubers and streamers picked up the game since their viewers asked them to do so. The game easily surpassed its break-even goal, and our players got to enjoy many more free updates.

Problems we have encountered Looking back now, we had surprisingly few issues with our community. However, I‘d still like to address two of them. The first issue came up when at one point we introduced a new game mechanic. The community was unhappy about the change, and some of the players initiated voting on whether the new mechanic should be removed again. After we set down, discussed and re-iterated the mechanic with them, they started to accept it. However, this kind of strong reaction was something our team wasn‘t prepared for.

Events are not only useful for community-building, but also to meet potential publishers, distributors and other partners that are relevant for the success of an indie studio.

Our second problem was something we could have foreseen from the start: People that like to play survival games and people that like cute animals might not enjoy the same kind of gameplay. Pretty early on it became obvious that we had to cater to two very different interest groups. „The breeders“ wanted life to be peaceful and were mostly interested in breeding animals with all kinds of different patterns. On the other side, we had the „the survivors,“ who wanted to be continuously challenged and didn‘t care about cuteness too much. Luckily, plenty people were filling in the gaps between those two extremes, but it wasn‘t easy to satisfy such a broad interest spectrum in one game, and Niche might have turned out better by focusing on just one of them.

Closing words Even if things got tough sometimes, we would do it all over again. Our community has done more for us than we can ever repay. They have improved our games in many ways through their countless ideas and feedback. Community-based development has become our team‘s favorite way of making games. So hopefully we can keep on making games that both our team and our players love.

Philomena Schwab is the co-founder of Stray Fawn Studio and vice president of the Swiss Game Developers Association (SGDA).

Philomena graduated from the Zurich University of the Arts Game Design Masters program, writing her thesis about community-based development and crowdfunding. She went on to co-found the Zurich-based Indie game studio Stray Fawn, which just released its second game. As vice president of the Swiss Game Developers Association, she tries to help the Swiss games industry grow.

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