Good indie game dev forums?

Isaiah Sherman

Polycount is awesome for art pimpage, but I'm wondering if anyone knows any good forums for the overall process of indie development?

A Google search came up with these three seeming to be fairly populated.

http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php

http://forums.indiegamer.com/

http://www.indiedb.com/forum


Are there any more good ones? Is there one unanimous site for indie dev as Polycount is to game art?

Thanks!

ambershee

https://www.facebook.com/groups/8117041572/?fref=ts

IndieDB is okay, but to be honest these days there are very few people who actually develop games on there, and it's now fairly vastly populated by 'idea' people. I can't comment on the other two.

Ben Apuna

I came across GPWiki a little while ago, it has a forum too, not sure of it's quality yet.

Twitter's got a ton of indie developers if you can get them to follow you back, though I prefer Google+ which seems to inherently lead to more meaningful discussions.

There are also numerous game dev communities on Google+ such as Indie Game Developers and OneGameAMonth.

Don't forget about Gamedev.net and it's forum.

Super Friendship Club used to be a thing, but it died...

Often specific game engines/frameworks have their own forums as well like L

GarageBay9

An acquaintance pointed me towards a site called TheChaosEngine a while back, but it seems extremely hard to actually get your account activated. It's supposed to be for production-level folks only, so they can speak their minds without upper studio management retaliating. In practice, it basically keeps anybody from registering...

BARDLER

reddit.com/r/gamedev and reddit.com/r/indiegaming are fun.

crazyfingers

If you're looking to recruit outside talent

http://www.reddit.com/r/gamedevclassifieds

Is probably your best bet, the better your project is looking the better help you'll be able to find, obviously. Roll of the dice for sure but worth a shot.

And if you're looking for a community there's an IRC chat link in the /r/gamedev section where people hang out that are making games, I've been there a couple times, pretty hit and miss but you never know.

It's sorta funny how there isn't a single great community for this stuff for professionals to gravitate to, but in a way that's good for those who are able to get their projects off the ground as there's less competition. It's good and bad, just like everything else.

Isaiah Sherman

I'm not looking to recruit, I found a programmer !

I'm just wondering if there is a community as good as Polycount is with game art.

I've never visited Reddit and I have never made a Twitter account, but I guess it's time to start!

Thanks for the links and explanations everyone

Justin Meisse

I'd say the Tigsource forums - loads of now famous indie games had their start on there and everyone is pretty nice.

CordellC

Tigsource is a pretty nice place. It has its fair share of bitter devs who have failed, but it's mostly made up of good people.

Frankie

Not quite what you were asking but have a look for some local indie meetings, I've made loads of friends at my local one.

stickadtroja

I have to disagree with justin and cordell. i think tigsource is a really terrible community, and wouldnt recommend it to anyone. i recently decided to stop posting there, since the constant super elitist bickering, and sometimes outright hateful discussion started to bleed over into the art section. I mean, sure there is nice people, and a lot of great art, but overall it has a very hostile and cold attitude to basically everyting.

its sad really since i too would like to find a forum focused on indiegames. probably going to check out some of ben apunas links then.

Ben Apuna

Two other forums I didn't mention earlier, bit collective and HTML5 Game Devs

I think bit collective was formed partially in response to TIGSources' perceived flaws. It didn't really take off though. That could always change given enough members/traffic.

HTML5 Game Dev is pretty new and very platform specific, but it's filled with some great people from what I could tell.

I forgot to mention that my perception of indiegamer.com's forums last time I looked was that it was very business oriented and in somewhat of a downward spiral in terms of activity. Looking at now though maybe things have picked up?

Isaiah Sherman

Cool, thanks!

JKMakowka

For open-source game development:
www.freegamedev.net

Ruz

http://www.blitzbasic.com/

been going here for years, really good community

Ben Apuna

I love the premise of Ludology University as a community focused on game design. Unfortunately it appears to be dead. Still though it has a plethora of game design links on it's wiki including links to even more forums.

root

There isn't much of in the way of discussion actually taking place there but cartrdge is a pretty nice little indie-flavored counterpart to artstation.  itch.io also has a discussion board that has less traffic than tigsource but is also likely to be less, uh, mean.

edit: oh, uh, hm. Thread actually died in 2013 and got necro'd by a bad-faith rando, huh?  Well, hopefully these links will be useful to some folks.  

Finnn

Not a forum exactly, but there are some discord servers dedicated to indie developement  

TRex

As for me, Indiedb is one of the best community about indie games development. I can also recommend this website: http://indiegames.com/index.html 
It's not a forum, but interesting blog about new games.

You can also find a lot of good content on Gamasutra in the topics about video gaming. They often talk about programming and games from independent developers. There are a lot of great articles.

Hope my answer was useful 

Shiv

root said:

There isn't much of in the way of discussion actually taking place there but cartrdge is a pretty nice little indie-flavored counterpart to artstation.  itch.io also has a discussion board that has less traffic than tigsource but is also likely to be less, uh, mean.

edit: oh, uh, hm. Thread actually died in 2013 and got necro'd by a bad-faith rando, huh?  Well, hopefully these links will be useful to some folks.  

Sadly Cartrdge is shutting down in the next week or so, which will be a big loss to me as I don't know of any sites doing anything similar within specifically the game dev circles.

sacboi

I'll also mention middleware sites, I've been with Unity for ages they're an active community so you're not short of advice if a problem happens to crop up.