Arms2d Motivation

     //EDIT: This is a long post, so I added a TL;DR at the bottom

     So, why am I making my Arms2D fangame? Well, it started the same way as every other project I've done: with an idea grabbing me so hard I couldn't shake it loose. The only way to satiate the idea was to see it completed.

     That's how it started, anyway.

     Just after I began development on my fan game, my brain soon hijacked my heart. My main project, The Ballad of Lone Phoenix, was seemingly losing headway as I frustratingly tried to continue development. I saw it fading into the sunset leaving nothing but a lonely ripple in the indie game ocean. So I began calculating: my previous fan game, Splatoon2D, generated more than 12,000 hits on my blog. If I played my cards right, a neat looking fan game could generate a lot of traffic my way. And if I can manage to get Nintendo to take the game down, that's even more free publicity!

     So I changed the development of Arms2D from a passionate fan project to an attention magnet. I still wanted to make a great game that was fun to play, but my propelling fuel wasn't the hope that those playing would have fun, it was the hope that the game would be just fun enough for news site to pick it up and spread it around the web. I got pretty far into development using that mindset. It was about to enter beta and I planned to stall the release until Arms reached its highest levels of hype. Everything was going smoothly until I saw something I didn't like: my reflection.

     In the wake of the take down of the Breath of the Wild fangame, I saw a glimpse of what my project could become. I didn't like what I saw: some commenting gamers were hypothesizing that fan games were only born from the desire for publicity. I cannot judge the intentions of other game developers, so I don't believe it's fair to conclude that any fan projects come from anything less noble than passion for their subject material. I can, however, inspect my own intentions. And the underhanded tactics that commenters were (I believe, falsely) attributing to the developer of a completely unrelated fan game fit me like a glove.

     If anyone ever launched accusations like that towards me, how could I defend myself? I couldn't.

     So I began writing this blog post. I acknowledge my imperfection. I want attention. Arms2d is not a project made purely from passion. It is littered with self-service and opportunistic intentions. I do believe, however, if you can find it in your heart to look past the ill intentioned inception, I believe you can glimpse the passion I've found for Arms and experience the fun I've been trying to instill.

     Ever since I read that article and saw my reflection, I've been putting this post together as I continued to develop my fan game. This has caused me to constantly check my intentions. I have legitimately tried to turn the twisted publicity project into a legitimately fun fan game filled with passion. I wanted every placed pixel and every character of code to represent my admiration of Arms and to add an incremental amount of fun to my game. Whether or not I have succeeded is up to you.

     If you see my fan game as a shameless grab for attention, I can't blame you - because you're correct. I hope you can forgive me though, because, I don't want to spend my game development career known by anyone as an attention grabbing hog. I want to create new things, share new ideas, and be a representative for love and the Truth.

     This fan project has been a much larger learning experience than I could have imagined. I've learned from my lapse of integrity, and through this post I hope someone else can learn from me.

     TL;DR - I started making the game and realized it was an opportunity to gather a lot of attention for myself and began turning the game into a media magnet. I realized that was stupid and started trying to focus on making the game fun. I did my best to keep my intentions solely based on fun rather than attention, but I'm not perfect.

     If you decide to give my little fan game a try, I hope you have fun.

Thank you very much for reading,
William Josiah Jones,
AngelWire Studio,
God Bless.

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