Community Building for Developers
How can indie game developers build up and maintain a community for their game?
Countless games are created everyday by independent game developers. Only very few of these games will reach a big enough audience to cover their development costs. Most of them will fade and be forgotten, not due to a lack of quality but a lack of visibility.
Building a community around a game in development is an excellent way to connect with people early on. Having a loyal fan base is not only beneficial for the financial success of the game, but provides the developer with constant feedback and can serve as a great motivator to push through the tough times of development. This thesis introduces the EEE approach of community building: Evaluate, Establish, Engage, and demonstrates its effects in different examples and experiments.