OUYA Development vs OUYA Forums

My first experience

Me and Spinal were discussing OUYA. He’d just bought one, and was trying to get Monkey to work with it.
I dared to mention OUYA in a tweet, and so was instantly followed by OUYAForum’s tweetbot, @OUYAForum_com
“Nnngh. A generic bloody tweetbot. Can’t these companies behave properly?” I thought, and I otherwise ignored it and carried on.

A few days later, another minor mention of OUYA on Twitter sparked a second following by OUYAForum’s tweetbot.
“Hmmm.. Didn’t they just follow me?” I thought.

I checked into it, and found that OUYAForums wasn’t even affiliated with OUYA. Instead, it was one of those fan forums that simply sprouted up as a result of the popularity of OUYA.
“Ok” I though. “Fair enough.” And I carried on regardless.

The third time I got followed by OUYAForums, I started to get a bit pissed off about it, marked them as Spam, blocked them, and thought “to hell with that shit!”

Then I didn’t bother to look into OUYA development for another month or two, because, quite frankly, that had pissed me off enough.

-=-=-

Development

A couple of months later, and OUYA seemed to be back “in” amongst the indie dev community.
I wondered “is it worth me buying one..” and thought back to my first experience.
In the end, I eventually came to conclusion that “well, it’s not OUYAs fault that a silly fan forum are being spammy” and opted to go ahead and buy an OUYA.

A few days later, having worked out all the kinks in my framework, I got NeonPlat Raw up and running, past OUYA’s awesome review board (who, unlike Apple and Google are real people who actually interact with you) and into OUYA’s sandbox.

This was great!
A proper, fresh, highly enjoyable development experience.

A joy!!

Then I got this.


Hmmm..

Note, that this is the same annoying OUYAForum that had already pissed me off on Twitter.
I ignored it, and continued work on my second game, which I swiftly released a number of days later.

You can probably imagine my frustration, at this point.
This one little fan forum was not only annoying everybody through Twitter, they’d got regular email spambots emailing the actual developers, too.

You know what…?
… Fuck you!!!

As expected, my reply went completely unnoticed. But I kinda got the vibe of this forum.
They’re only out to get buttloads of members, to get as many games on their system as possible. And you know, that’s kind of admirable.

.. except I’d already given them two completely free games, and they were still harassing me.

Their automated bullcrap was annoying me enough to nearly put me off doing any more OUYA dev. Hell, it pretty much put me off doing it in the first place. If the entire indie community weren’t all going on about OUYA in their own way, I probably would never have bought one in the first place.
Lesson learned : Listen to your own community, not the whinging spammy cries of a fan forum.

I mean, seriously, if you really think that sort of spam is going to make a developer go “ooooh, yeah, I think I’ll join that!” Then..
You’re wrong!!

You’re really really wrong!!!

I have visited OUYAForums, and read some of the discussions, but I’m not signing up.
I do NOT want to be associated with that sort of behaviour.
It’s spammy, it’s nasty, and it puts people off even bothering.
I write games for the FUN of writing games.
This kind of spam is NOT fun….

In related news…
My most recent game, NeonPlat Extreme seems to have baffled them a bit.
They’re unsure as to whether it’s a sequel, or a remake, or the same thing, or what, so instead sent their generic spam crap as a reply to their previous generic spam crap…

.. Or at least, I hope that’s what happened.. Otherwise I’m about to get another 5 of those!!

-=-=-

And Now…

Just as the dust is settling, I’m getting into OUYA dev, and I’m happily trying to ignore that terrible forum, this happens.
It seems you can’t have the greatness of OUYA without the terrible behaviour of OUYAForums.

A plea to all indie developers.

The OUYA is a great system. It is entirely capable of doing some wonderful things, and for the first time in years it’s given me the ability to make games with BLOODY BUTTONS!!! Which, quite frankly, is a godsend after years spent doing crappy touchscreen controls.

A “proper” console with a “proper” controller! and MY games on it!!
It’s a marvellous piece of kit, and at a £100 price point, you really can’t go wrong.
The games all work well, the review team is actually helpful, and the controller HAS BUTTONS!!!!

I’d definitely recommend it to anyone.

Just stay the hell away from OUYAForums…

  • http://www.crystallinegreen.com James Coote

    Well, sorry you feel that way. I’m one of the staff over at OUYA Forum and we genuinely want to encourage developers and fans to interact, discuss all things OUYA related.

    I’ve released a game for OUYA myself, and am developing more games for OUYA, and being on OUYA forums has definitely helped (long before I became staff there).

    The emails are managed by Eddie, the forum owner, and I can definitely give him a prod about it. Maybe he can set it up so that it doesn’t email the same developer twice (because, actually it’s quite unusual for someone to release half a dozen games in a row)

    But because OUYA is a bit niche and fans of it scattered around, we do have to have some way to let game devs know we exist.

    As for the twitter account, it auto-follows people who mention OUYA, but don’t have to follow it back if you don’t want. And I know for a fact, the stuff Eddie tweets on it is not automated (unlike some other OUYA-related twitter accounts, which will splurge a bunch of “such and such game v1.1 got updated today on OUYA!” all in quick succession)

  • http://ouyaforum.com Ed K

    Hello, I just saw your blog post, and I had no idea that you were so upset. The last thing I intend to do is upset any developers. For your information the emails ARE NOT automated. I manually look at the new games, visit the developer page and create a new email myself. They are however, scripted, I admit.

    I wish I had seen your respond back in October. For some reason it was sent to my SPAM box and I did not get it until just now (after seeing your post).

    I will surely never send you another email, as this is not the intention I had in mind. As you probably know, I make sure there is a discussion thread for every single OUYA Game/App on OUYAForum.com. I prefer that the game’s developers are the ones that start the threads, because I’ve ran into issues in the past where the developer has come to me wanting me to allow him/her to start a new thread themselves, after I have already created one for them. I’d say about 70% of developers I contact appreciate it and start their own threads themselves.

    I do admit that I email every developer that publishes a game on OUYA, and even though I try not to email the same developer twice, I do not have a good system to avoid doing this. Because of your blog post, I will start keeping track of developers who have been contacted.

    Again, all I can do is apologize for this, and I doubt you will accept it. It certainly looks like spam on your end. I only wish I received your email response sooner. If you would like us to make a tweet apologizing to you guys please let me know. I’ll happily do so, and happily promote some of your games for you on our site through social media and banner ads.

    As for the tweet-a-thon, that wasn’t my idea. At least this latest one wasn’t. The first 2 were very successful, and I had a ton of developers thank us for letting them know that their games are wanted on OUYA, that one of our moderators thought it would be a good idea to run another one. Is it spam? I certainly wouldn’t consider it spam, as each tweet is individual, and directed at whoever the tweeter wants to send it. I certainly know that this will be the last Tweet-a-thon we have.

    Thanks for letting me be heard.
    Ed Krassenstein

  • Tim Beltran

    I’m just a member of those forums and I gotta say I totally get where you’re coming from. I’m kinda shocked that this is the way they handle trying to get developers interested in their website.

    I get that they wanna unite devs and customers for feedback/help troubleshooting problems with apps and games or even the system. But this is the wrong way to go about it. Why does the twitter account auto follow? Why do you have automatic emails? If you really wanna get personable with the devs shoot them a legit email and let them know they have supporters if they want them.

    Hopefully all this gets taken care of. I’m sorry that you’ve had to deal with all of this spammery (which it definitely IS) and I hope you don’t let this make you abstain from the console in the future. I love your gamesss!