Since coming back from my little summer break I've been trying to sort through some concepts I have about GameDev and what it is intended to provide and not provide.
I figure I'll just start a dialogue and maybe that'll clear up some of my questions.

As I understand it GameDev.net is a website where people come to make games and get help making games.  For the most part those who stick around for longer periods of time ( say in excess of a year ) have some involvement in programming, game creation ( board games being an example ), are aspiring artists and or musicians.  I'm assuming for the most part people who seek this site out are looking to make a computer game.

However I've been using this site to do two things, get help making my game( which has been fantastic ), and promote my game.  Now that my little framework is getting close to being workable enough that I can begin programming the games dynamics, I've become more interested in promoting it.  I'm going to bet that there are other game creators here who would also like to promote their games.  There are promotional options within GameDev such as advertising on GameDev, and any would-be traffic that checks out a persons blog or indie showcase. 

Now on the outset there seems to be a conflict for me and how I'm using this site, GameDev attracts people who want to make their own games, not necessary look for games that have been created by the community.  Why would anybody come to this site to play the games we've created?

So I'm just throwing this out there because I'm wondering what the vision for GameDev is, is it a place to incubate an idea until it's strong enough to stand on it's own two feet, set forth into the big real world and.... good luck out there ( goodbye waves ) hahaha.  But no in all seriousness, I don't know what the goal is there seems to be a loose end...

Thoughts?

  

2 hours ago, Awoken said:

So I'm just throwing this out there because I'm wondering what the vision for GameDev is, is it a place to incubate an idea until it's strong enough to stand on it's own two feet, set forth into the big real world and.... good luck out there ( goodbye waves ) hahaha.  But no in all seriousness, I don't know what the goal is there seems to be a loose end...

I think this is a community without an end goal.  The end is that we are a community.

A Q&A site the end goal is to answer all questions.  A tutorial site the goal is to provide good tutorials on every subject.  An educational site covers all the topics from beginner to mastery, then is complete.  We aren't any of those.

We are a discussion board.  We discuss issues people are seeing in code. We discuss issues people are seeing in society. We discuss issues in the industry.  We discuss code errors. We discuss game ideas. We discuss job hunting and career growth.

As a community for discussion, we won't reach a point where we've discussed all the the things since new topics are open for discussion. New people will come in and want to discuss old topics. Those don't get closed to a link to the old discussion as happens in Q&A sites, we have the discussion over again with new faces and new resources. 

I don't see this as a loose end, I see it as open-ended by design.

Yo bro... not saying GameDev.net is not a good site for promoting a game, but I think most of the people who visit here are a game developers.

The best DIY promotional campaign of a game I can think of :

1. Creating a development series of the game on Youtube.
2. FB ^_^y tell all of friends to share the game to all of their friends.
3. Google+ create a Game Collection them post game related topic and
   post your game from time to time :-D
4. Development Blogs
5. Twitter with #Games
6. ItchIO
7. GameJolt
8. Steam

^_^y

14 hours ago, DexterZ101 said:

not saying GameDev.net is not a good site for promoting a game, but I think most of the people who visit here are a game developers.

100%
And promotion is something I been thinking a lot more about lately which is why I've brought it up here.  
To be honest I'm daunted by the task of promoting my game.  I kinda feel like I'd literally be throwing money into the wind.  I've got a lot more to learn about this and I'm starting my search, and dialogue, here. 

I'm bringing this all up because I've been thinking about my blog, and what generally gets a blog featured.  When a blog is featured it will gain more views and therefore gets more exposure.  I've noticed that If I mention my project unirule in post somewhere, like I just did, the number of views it gets will jump by about 10 in a days time.
If I make a technical blog exploring the code and logic of my approach to solving a problem it may be featured.  This is great because that means more views.  However; that kind of blog caters to a very niche group, mainly the people hanging around GameDev.  But I've been thinking more about making blogs that explore more how the game works as opposed to the technical underbelly in hopes that a game player will become enticed to try my game.  Where do I go to create those kinds of blogs?  I could and will make them here but there seems to be a conflict to me.

On 10/15/2018 at 10:40 PM, khawk said:

I'm open to hearing more ideas on this topic (and others).

As I was thinking about all this I was kinda envisioning 'wouldn't it be cool if...' scenarios, I don't know realistic these ideas are but I seeing as the floor is open:

There are a multitude of independent developers out there who've marketed their games and are available for purchase on many platforms.  If I want to buy a game for my computer I go to steam, if I want to buy a game for my phone I go to the Google Play store, if I want to play flash games I go to newgrounds, kongregate, onemorelevel and so on.  The only place I can think of going to play games that are in the making is either steam( I've got to search them out myself and know ahead of time what I'm looking for ) or a kickstarter campaign.  In my opinion they both have their draw-backs, steam doesn't provide enough community support( as far as I'm concerned, maybe I'm wrong ), and kickstarter's only give out IOU's on a one time all or nothing campaign.  I wonder what kind of an audience there is for a location that provides it all, community, trial, fundraising and purchase abilities.  Those are loftier my thoughts. 

On 10/15/2018 at 10:40 PM, khawk said:

Since blogs are tied to projects, then in theory you could post both technical details and "how the game works" blogs.

This is something I was planning on doing, having two separate blogs and tying them to the same project page, hope nobody minds.  

[ edit: I was thinking, under our avatar picture is our user name, awards we have won and groups we're apart of.  What if too we could choose one game's PLAY button and the title of the game to also be displayed?  Of course that game would be have to be hosted on GameDev or available for download via GameDev maybe. ]