Ben X

iirc, my advice, which was essentially what I've learnt from Dan (and a lot of which has been said here already), is that it's a full-time 8-hours a day job to promote a game. You need to send it out to everyone, and make it as easy as possible for them to 1) play the game and 2) write about it. 2) entails stuff like catering it to the individual sites/journos, dishing out exclusives, writing an interview with yourself and sending it to them ready to go. When you've been round every site and managed to get one or two small ones to write about it, go back to the bigger sites with links to those articles to show you're gathering heat. Then keep repeating that until you've got enough under your belt that the biggest sites will want to report on you. Have a good, easy to navigate site and make sure you have clear links to that and your contact details in your correspondence. I seem to remember you having problems with 1), which is a bit of a problem. If you absolutely can't have any gameplay available to journos, then the videos should be front and centre. But obviously it would be much better for them to be able to read your email and be playing the game (or even a minute-long demo or something) within a few clicks. Be on Twitter, making entertaining tweets, interacting with journos and other devs. Have an interesting blog that people might link to. Put on promotions, competitions, giveaways, even if they're just fake comedy ones. Offer to write articles, dev diaries and the like for other sites. Go to all the IRL pub meet-ups, shows etc you can and be a friendly, charming person who happens to have made a game. Don't spam people, but be consistently putting out stuff that they will want to see. DISCLAIMER: I have never personally released a game, only worked on them.

They definitely have at least slight whiffs of spoilage. If you want to go completely blackout on the game, then you'll have to leave the doc 'til later.

Even if you can't get a bike, think of it as depression-reducing exercise! Also, hopefully it tired you out enough that you didn't freak out at your mum! However it went, that's good news about the doctor, nice one.

I'm pretty sure Pony wasn't being too serious, guys, hence the smiley. However, Osmo makes a valid point, Pony; as you can see, it's easy for people to get distracted from or even ignore your message because of bad grammar, typos etc. So even if you hate proofreading, it's definitely worth the ten minutes to do it yourself or the little longer to get a friend to do it for you. Even taking into account that it's an informal blog and that certain grammar, for example hyphenation, can be a matter of opinion (although I think you should 'fess up to Elderscrolls, I can't find a single instance of that which isn't a hash-tag or URL!), there are a fair few errors which pulled me out of the article: "indy" - can apparently be used instead of indie but just isn't, plus you use "indie" later on. "peoples" - should be "people's" "believin" - I'm guessing this is a typo and not supposed to be "believin'"! "their increasing" - should be "they're" "Games cost too much. And/Or. Just aren't fun enough." - perhaps this is informal emphasis but brought me to a halt. "adressed" - should be "addressed" "uttery" - "utterly" "just a few years seem" - should be "just a few years ago seem" "consoles in business models" - should probably be "consoles and business models" Hope I don't come across as bashing you with this, Pony, I just wanted to make the point that a five minute read-through and clean-up would make your post and hence your argument feel a lot less rushed to some readers. Aside from that, a very interesting post!

Plus, it depends on the site's style guide - they may not have sub-editors to check your work, but they probably have a guide which will tell you whether they prefer contractions etc.

Well, if you really don't want to do it in a public place, don't budge either. Got to keep things on your terms. On the other hand, I can see it might be weird for her going to someone's flat that she doesn't know, and at least a public place means you can get up and walk away if you need to rather than try to throw her out. If you find a relatively secluded area and have your friend nearby, it could be okay.

http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/13017/most-every-and-almost-every A regionalism, apparently. I definitely think of it as informal or slangy.

Does anyone here ever watch these? I'd like to try a few out but the download process seems massively complicated.

There are pretty much no torrents. It's all NRQs and signing up for paid accounts and stuff. I can't find a proper help guide anywhere so it all feels a bit impenetrable.

After buying a floppy drive to circumnavigate the problems I was having here, I'm now trying again to get some old Klik N Play games running (such as this one), and MAN is it complicated. Turns out my first big hurdle is to get a copy of Windows 3.11!

That's me! Do you have a transcript of the conversation, Lacabra? It'd be interesting to see what I said. (Cut out all the bits where I'm slagging other forumites off.)

Pervy Mind Wank Response.

There aren't enough free ongoing comics on there (understandably). Guardians of the Galaxy Infinite is good though.

Well, looking at it made me feel sick, so... appropriate, I guess. Joker had been wearing his own cut-off face for a while, right? Him having a daughter feels a bit Spider-Man to me, but then I don't really follow superheroes.

Also, she put an apostrophe in "emails". DISOWN.

Yeah, I'd say take the money in a way that doesn't tell them your location, plus let your mother know why you're being cautious (ie gay therapy, taking your possessions etc). If they try to set conditions on you getting the money, call bullshit and resist. They owe you big time, take it on your own terms and don't let them trick their way back into a position to hurt you more

+1 +1 I think really the first step with your mum should just be telling her via email basically what you've told us - how shit it was for you, how her doing nothing was a negative thing and how your life has been affected. Then perhaps put out some ground rules for reconciliation if that's something you or they currently want. Although it's tough, I wouldn't ask for money as it puts them back in a position of power. Having said that, if they/she offers it and you can take it on the understanding that you're still not going to take any more cruel, destructive bullshit from them, then great. This is all assuming that she is looking to make amends/reconciliate, though - you may get back in touch just to get more shit back. But as long as you remind yourself that everything can now be on your terms, and that families who initially have horrible reactions to their child coming out can eventually, over a few years, get to a place of acceptance, support and love, I think it's worth steeling yourself and keeping communications open. (Although I know you have issues with Dan Savage, I think he gives really good coming-out advice, and I'm basically cribbing off him.)

EDIT: never mind, got my timings confused.

Keep on going, tegan, you'll catch a break soon.

Oh, I came here to say that I've quit my job in London and am now staying with my parents while I look for a new job in Cambridge so I can move there with my girlfriend and be able to afford to rent somewhere decent. So a bit of a back-step in anticipation of a big forward-step.

Fuck, that's horrible. I'm sure you could find a non-homophobic doctor pretty easily though (Canada's pretty liberal in general, right?). I hadn't noticed you talking about the gay thing, but I just want to say that coming out to your friends and family was a massive step, so well done, and don't let yourself slip back into the closet! Just remember, you've already done the hardest version of it, you just have to keep going. If your new friends/doctors/etc have a problem with you being gay, they're scum, you don't want to be wasting any time getting to know them. Especially as it's making your depression worse, sounds to me like it would be well worth biting the bullet and risking losing one or two arseholes from your life.

Well, he'd just been re-diagnosed with cancer at that point, so it's no coincidence.

Ah, thanks. My French is rusty but I think the post says something along the lines of "Last night, with the closing of Lucasarts by Disney, I couldn't resist making this little [bidouillage]... and as it's making its way around the social networks, I've put it up here.as well..." I tweeted it before I could credit it to him, but TIm Schafer favourited it!

Do you know who did this, Tycho? It's amazing!

You totally got my vote with one of those ideas.