Yeah, this all tracks. I made a "simple" Slack RPG because I was tickled about the concept and the potential pun of the name (Slack & Slash, though Slack very p

Yeah, this all tracks. I made a "simple" Slack RPG because I was tickled about the concept and the potential pun of the name (Slack & Slash, though Slack very predictably asked for me to change it to something a little less affiliated-sounding). I figured I'd drop six months on it and release it and see if anyone liked it. Cut forward two years later, a couple of rewrites (from idle game to turn-based combat, then from a monthly competition to a long-term progression with multiple classes), and finally I launch. It got approved by Slack, it goes up on the app directory, I make a couple key reddit posts, and... Like 5 new users. I'm sure folks here can tell the problem already - spending 2 years on development and maybe a couple days on marketing is always a recipe for a shitty launch. Over and over again, I read stories like this and think "thank God this is just a hobby for me and not my main source of income, not something I took out a loan to achieve." I like to think that if it were a more serious thing, I'd have been more serious about the marketing, but even still, that's no guarantee. Oh, also - I'm up to about 20 daily users these days. Even with that few, I still get nervous pushing out any new code. Getting very polite "Hey, the game isn't working" emails while I'm stuck at the day job and can't go fix it is devastating. I've ended up with a weird release schedule because of it - I generally only roll out code on Friday evenings, so that I have as much time as possible to fix potential bugs.