About three months ago I wrote this post expressing frustration at not being able to attract contributors to an old project that I had been working on for a number of years. The short version of a long story:
- Things were great for several years and we published numerous successful releases
- I found new interests that began taking up more and more of my time, and gradually drifted away from the project
- My absence left the project without a dedicated leader, and the team began to fall apart and break away
- After 3-4 years of it effectively being dead, I rediscovered my motivation last year and got back to work
- Worked solo for about 6 months, then tried to rebuild a team once things were in a good state
- Despite my efforts, the project received little interest and I had to continue working alone on a project that was way too big for a one-man-army
I received a lot of great advice from several people. Taking their suggestions into consideration, I came up with a plan that I followed through with:
- Continue working solo until the next release was ready to be published
- Upload a walkthrough video of the release so people can easily take a look at the game without needing to play it themselves
- Update the about page on our website so that people can get a better picture of what this game is all about and what makes it different
- Once the previous items are done, retry efforts to build a new team
The plan worked. For the first time in four years, this project has an active team again and progress has been skyrocketing in the last couple of weeks. It feels incredible. It was looking a little depressing at first because my help wanted posts on gamedev and on other forums were all generally ignored. I finally tried using reddit to search for help, and the positive response there was overwhelming.
So I wanted to give a huge thank you to the friendly people here who helped make this happen and showed me the way to breathe new life into this project. And I also hope it serves as a story of encouragement for others as well. Even when the situation is looking grim, people will take notice and rally to you if you work hard and put something out there. Never give up!
