• Steam
• GOG

Fixed Notoriety from decayed, wounded corpses being treated as wounded followers.

Fixed Glover & Glover superiors sometimes unexpectedly returning to life after the player’s demotion.

Fixed an issue with reloading games which could prevent some recipes from running.

Fixed old Ghoul saves (from before the hunger fix) preserving their negative hunger values. Hunger will be reset to 1 when the Season of Ambitions rolls around.

Fixed poisoned Mansus Ways not always triggering their traps in Apostle legacies.

IT’S THE SAME FIXES! BUT I’M TRYING TO BE HELPFUL!

• Steam
• GOG

The game will now try to save in the background where possible, which should nearly eliminate the auto-save stutter.

Fixed Notoriety from decayed, wounded corpses being treated as wounded followers.

Fixed Glover & Glover superiors sometimes unexpectedly returning to life after the player’s demotion.

Fixed an issue with reloading games which could prevent some recipes from running.

Fixed old Ghoul saves (from before the hunger fix) preserving their negative hunger values. Hunger will be reset to 1 when the Season of Ambitions rolls around.

Fixed poisoned Mansus Ways not always triggering their traps in Apostle legacies.

That’s all for now folks! If you encounter any issues when playing Cultist Simulator let us know via: support@dweatherfact.wpengine.com

Every one of us has a thing that we like to focus on, either full time or on a hobby level of commitment. Maybe a game. Or colouring Warhammer models. Some other pet project. Perhaps doing some home renovations or car tuning? My concern is: how many of these things can we complete in our lifetime?

According to Central Statistical Bureau of Latvia, the remaining life expectancy in Latvia for a 30-year old male (my age!) as of 2018 is 40 more years. Let’s assume that nothing bad happens and I survive to see myself at this age.

Game making process as time measurement

Since I make games, I use them to measure my life time. If I make one game a year, I end up with 40 games. Not too bad. Double the development time and you get 20. Some side-questions appear. Should I work longer on a more successful project that other people like? Or, skill-wise, are 20 games enough to get good at making indie games? Do I need to take a break?

By themselves, numbers mean nothing

If life was a simple series of projects, it would be easy. Alas, there are other factors of time measurement. Here are the ones that I am worried about.

With every release, I mentally take off a square from these images, left to right. I’m happy to have my parents support me all this time, but I know it won’t last forever. I can’t imagine not being able to show screenshots from my new games to my mother, even though I know this day will eventually come (unless I leave this world first).

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not stressing about this 24/7. But whenever I undertake something, I consider how many boxes am I going to need.

Larger Projects

Say I want to make something grand. Maybe 4 year game? I see a lot of gamedev beginners want to make something grand. I’ve spent 2.5 years on my first amazing turn-based-game™. Spoiler: it did not turn out amazing and I would be better off making smaller projects and learning much more. I don’t want to judge any artist and, by all means, follow your creative vision. However, consider which situation would be better for you?

Which one of those do you think is a better time / money investment? Would you want to undertake your one-in-a-lifetime work in the beginning of your career or in the middle, when you have much more knowledge an experience? Those things are not exclusive of course and of course you can do both, but be weary of the opportunity costs. Also bear in mind that you give 20% of your battery life if you do both. Subjectively, I think completing 4 games in 4 years is better for your game-releasing experience compared to one big game in 4 years.

I’ve displayed these blocks as a 10×4 matrix, but they can also be interpreted as a ladder. Each block should be treated as a step. Make sure it’s a meaningful one.

Life?

Every time we undertake a project in our life, these cells keep fading away. There are a lot of articles with financial reasoning not to do long games / projects unless you are absolutely sure in success and they are equally valid. But the time boxes concern me way more. Until I was 25, I never thought about it this way. Then, as your life gets a bit more stable, you start questioning the long term effects of doing or not doing something. Should I quit my job or should I give away 2 more cells for better security? Should I work on that game rather than on 10 other ones I want? Each decision you make reduces your life battery charge. How many more moves can you make?

Hello to those who have recently delved into Cultist Simulator after obtaining it during Twitch Prime’s July bundle. To anyone else that already plays the game or hasn’t got it via Twitch, we’re so sorry but this isn’t for you. Avert your eyes, return to the void and maybe read our other blogs.

So you’ve got the game via Twitch Prime and have been experiencing a contrary bug which makes lore studying loop ad infinitum. That’s pretty annoying and we’re sorry about that. But never fear because a fixed patch for this pesky issue is here.

1. First of all download the patch.
2. Open and run it.
3. Follow the instructions and point it to the location on your hard drive where you installed Cultist Simulator through Twitch Prime.

The game should be fixed and you may continue whatever nefarious pursuits were underway in your Cultist Simulator ascent!

If you encounter any other issues, be it with the Twitch Prime version or in general, you can always let us know via support@weatherfactory.biz

The theme of July seems to be waves, I’ve decided. There’s a heatwave which no one enjoys and by no-one, I mean me, Claire. There are the waves of Brighton beach where the Weather Factory team spent a week at Develop Conference and finally, we won multiple accolades at the Develop Star Awards. It was an immense intense week, we slept hard and so post dreaming, let’s recap everything.

For those that don’t know Develop Conference is held every year in Brighton, usually in July which means the weather is often quite nice and quite warm. The consolation for us day vampires is that being by the sea air helps and there’s an abundance of ice cream options around. This year was special for two primary reasons. We were going as a full WF team and we were up for multiple awards. Awards are not why we make games, but it is a nice feeling to be nominated.

Develop is an event that is heavily focused on the business side where people can network, attend talks and for game devs to show of their games. The event is also open to the public which is great as that allows games to gain more exposure and vital feedback. It’s also wonderful from a recruitment point of view as many companies will use Develop to showcase their openings.

So let’s continue with what we actually did at this gaming conference. First up Lottie gave a talk with a title based on the core ethos of Weather Factory: Fun, Safety, Profit.

She explained with lovely slides and stellar memes the origin story of WF, how strategies were determined and managed and the results of our first year. This talk was incredibly useful for indie devs starting out and feeling daunted. Or those that have been around for a couple of years but need advice on how to continue to strive. Here’s where you can go through the presentation yourself and find out why gold sushi is prevalent and a woman carrying a hipflask is considered fitting under the category of safety.

On the Tues and Weds of Develop there were two award ceremonies, where either individuals or the entire WF company were nominated. First up was GameDevHeroes awards, where Lottie was up for Best Producer wooo and I was up for Best Marketing and Comms person wheee. The venue was packed with other nominees and supporters of their colleagues and after a quick slug of a pint they kicked off the announcing winners fairly fast. It’s always good when these events just get straight to the meat of things and even better if meat is supplied.

Oh we didn’t win by the way, which might be where I should have kicked off. Nevertheless, we were glad to be nominated, found the little comments beside nominee names to be super charming and interesting…We were impressed by how well run the event was, so big thank you and whoops towards Dan Dudley and Alex Boucher!

The next day was a big one. We were very civilised and ate bits of kraken with Bossa Studio‘s Co-Founder Imre Jele, gamedev Husban Siddiqi and Yves Le Yaouanq,  Innovation Manager at Ubisoft. We talked about many things, but the main take away was that we all have far too many games in our backlog to get through, that even more wonderful games continue to come out and it’s making us cry a bit.

Some more meetings/interviews occured, games were checked out and a very important ice cream reprieve was had before the preparation process for what was to come.

The Develop Star Awards were that evening. We were nominated in 4 categories, Best Narrative, Best Game Design, Best Innovation and Best Micro Studio. Lottie and Ak were unable to attend given that Canadian game conference Gameplay Space was happening the following day and lasting the weekend. Lottie apparently hates sleep and had to set off for this as she was giving another super funky informative talk, which we’ll get to in a bit.

So where was I…oh aye the Develop Awards. I put out a tweet asking you all to wish us luck and do questionable things to your nan. You all must have at least patted nans on the head because it all turned out pretty good on the night.

WE WON 3 AWARDS AHAHAHAHA WOOOOO YEEEEEEEEH BOI!

Disclaimer: In the interest of brand representation, I’d like to say that the collective celebratory feelings of Weather Factory may, in fact, be expressed in a more delicate humble way and the above noises are primarily coming from my own face bits.

In all seriousness, we are so happy, excited and thankful for these awards. Each winner is decided by an industry vote open to more than 4000 people who have attended Develop over the past three years. I attended the awards repping the WF crew and 3 award wins, meant 3 speeches I had to give without making geese noises and evaporating on stage due to nerves. I think they went down well. People laughed and maybe one person cried but that might have been me.

The response we got online, in person and post the awards was incredibly heartwarming. It sounds cheesy but every time we meet someone who tells us how much they love Cultist Simulator and are excited about BOOK OF HOURS, it’s such a lovely warm feeling.

I suppose you’d like to see the actual awards. Here they are in all their starry somewhat stabby sadly forever smudged glory.

What was left of Develop Conference 2019 was to ride that buzz and follow up with some more meets, wandering and then enter stasis. Well me, Ak, Hannah and Marc were able to go to our respective homes and crash. Lottie was mid-air by then and even spotted by BBC News.

She flew over with Haley who is the marketing master at Mediatonic and an all-around wonderful human. Lottie’s talk was focused on a very important aspect of games, merchandise.

As usual, her talk went down a storm and I hope she treated herself to a ton of poutine. Well not a ton but at least third helpings. At the time of writing this blog she’s been inspired by the weekend in Canada and asked you all what your ideal items and trinkets would be in your very own library. We’re getting a lot of responses to this and just wanted to note that it’s unlikely we’ll have the entire Codex Gigas as a BOOK OF HOURS reward tier Damien!

That’s a wrap the events of last week. Depending on when you read this last week was July 8th-21st. It’s back to normal now, well as normal as things can be when you’re in the world of Cultist Simulator and BOOK OF HOURS. Speaking of we’ve got those super secret special Kickstarter rewards to sort out…

There’s a trope that comedians are all miserable people and that their sadness contributes to the success of their jokes and how relatable they are. In a way, pretentious as this sounds, the same can be said for marketers, especially those that work with social media.

I often joke that I hate social media, but I always preface that with acknowledging the pros both for business purposes and spreading messages. Maybe I hate myself for constantly being on social media and that’s not really Twitter’s fault, but the cat rulers of the world probably have something to do with it. Overall social media is engaged with by millions, every second of the day. There are obvious cons with that, but just happening upon a tweet about a really funky cafe you never heard of, that does geeky froth coffee might negate them.

My approach to social media is a mix of business and pleasure. I use my personal platform primarily as an extension of my career-related branding and to make people laugh. Or to help people by connecting folk or sharing links that support events, job seeking and exposure. Sometimes I post about tough issues that mean something to me, but that’s rare. But we’ll get into that further down in this blog post.

Apologies to Star Trek

So social media has its merits but mah lawd it’s a bit crazy and despite this being an area of expertise I still don’t always understand some of the why’s. To decipher what works on social media is a bit like cracking the code of an ancient puzzle.

To give you an idea of what I mean, here’s an example of a personal viral tweet.

This is an edited gif of Deanna Troi farting. I’d like to apologise in advance to Marina Sirtis who by all accounts is a wonderful human and was in one of my fav games of all time, Mass Effect. I’d also like to apologise to Lottie for reasons she knows.

5k likes and 1.9k retweets. The comments were gold too. A few days later I posted a link to a charity fundraiser for a child. I got 3 likes and one of them was me accidentally hitting the heart.

Why did this go viral? Because it’s really funny in a general sense and easy to share. Why did the charity tweet not go viral? I can only guess that it’s due to the fact that when it comes to sensitive topics, people are less likely to engage unless they have a connection to the content. That can be that they relate to the situation on some level or they will help you out if it’s connected and they’re not just followers but friends.

Is there anything wrong or shocking about this? No, not really, but it is a little bit grim, that some content needs sharing to make an impact on people’s lives and it just fades away.

Then there’s social posts that hit an impressive amount of shares and can lead to an ENTIRE GAME BEING MADE BUT WE KEEPING IT HYGGE 100 THOUGH!

Memays

“Claire, your life is a meme and your GIFs are so fresh and on point. How is this so?” The answer to this question I often get comes in the form of a meme, which might make some of you reading this cry or reach for the wine bottle. I’m doing both.

Memes are such a common everyday occurrence now. They should ultimately be humorous and harmless. But their power is such that they’re a vital part of marketing and engaging with communities. There’s no real twist as to why this is. Humour puts people at ease and if it’s relatable without being hellofellowkids.jpg it reflects on the accessibility of your brand.

Indie games haven’t succeeded as well as they have, just because of their art style or versatility. It’s because the barrier between creator and consumer isn’t as thick as with the AAA genre. If you can’t find a good meme, then shove a cat in there. I’m very serious.

It sounds like something to say for a laugh, but in all honesty, if you can inject your social media with a chonky dose of memes I swear your reach and engagement will skyrocket. Or at least perform somewhat better than without that spicy addition. Just look what the mothlamp meme did for this Cultist Simulator Tweet.

The Dark Side of the Tweet

There are many negative sides of social media that we could discuss but let’s focus on its use for professional interaction and promotion. A few publications have touched upon the stress that those handling social platforms endure. From Vice:

” Social media can be a toxic place—especially for those of us who work in that space. Angry users on social seem to forget that a human being is behind the brand’s account they are screaming at or the story they are criticizing.“

When you are involved in anything that requires daily interaction with humans online, especially in the gaming industry, you’re open to abuse and uncheery interactions. Even if you’re presenting as the company brand and not your direct name. It’s your eyes being exposed to and your brain having to deduce replies if any. The veil is thin enough.

Different people will experience different levels of negative feedback and text-based abuse and will handle it in their own way. Some may not be phased but plenty are. Who can blame them?

Social media didn’t exist 20 years ago and in 10 years has evolved into an entirely different beast.

It’s worth noting that Weather Factory accounts have not suffered any tirades of abuse. We primarily get people asking questions or posting critiques in a manner that isn’t offensive. Do we get comments that sometimes hurt? Yes but it’s not frequent enough to impact and it’s never directed personally. I hope that remains and given how lucky we are to have a very lovely and active community, I’d be surprised if it changes.

Disclaimer: Just because I said this, if you’re listening Sod’s Law, please sod off.

Social media has now become a vital organ in promoting video games. It’s top of the list of what you need to set up, keep active and learn how to properly use. I appreciate its value, I love the variety of content, the way it can help people and I enjoyed every Game of Thrones Season 8 meme more than most of the episodes. We are truly blessed by this aspect of social. It makes sense and it doesn’t.

I like it but I also hate it. Maybe I hate it because it’s popular to say that. But I don’t believe that’s the case. I think I hate how it can tangle itself up in our lives in ways we sort of let happen without consciously consenting to. I hate that people are beholden to the physical representation of how well a post did, via a heart or whatever button.

To sidetrack a bit, analytics can help show that on the face of it, your performance may have not been great but behind the scenes, it did far better. So never focus purely on the aesthetics of a social post to determine its success.

In all honesty, the main reason I made this blog post is to vent at the fact that only 7 people liked this beautiful collage post of Jessica Fletcher in her various forms.

Based on that, social media is full of riff raff and that’s how I’m ending this elongated hot take! Good day to you sirs and sirettes!

If you’re reading this in June 2019, it’s Pride month which means everything gets a lot more colourful. So happy pride to all our LGBTQ+ cultists and any newcomers to the Weather Factory universe.

In our last sprint update, which you should have read as Lottie put a lot of effort into making it shiny and memetastic, you’ll see we have had quite an intense month.

We launched the Anthology Edition of Cultist Simulator alongside new DLC with Priest and Ghoul. A worldwide announcement of BOOK OF HOURS went live. Plus cat drama ensued. But that wasn’t enough to make our calendars squeak as Casual Connect hit London and I attended as part of two panels, Diversity in the Workforce and LGBT in Gaming.

For the work environment focused panel I was alongside the power force of progression Liz Prince and inclusion hero Paula Whelan. We discussed the trials and tribulations of increasing diversity in the workforce and more importantly what can be done to make getting that bread more inclusive and healthy for everyone.

“I wrote something down that I read that made absolute sense to me: Diversity is being asked to the party, inclusion is being asked to dance, and belonging is dancing like nobody’s watching” – a brilliant quote by Liz Prince.

It’s important to always keep multiple dialogues occurring regarding these subjects but we do need to start pairing actions with talking. G into Gaming is certainly an example of that. To get a more in-depth look at the topics discussed and what I had to say (which isn’t nearly as impressive as Liz and Paula’s contribution), Games Daily Biz covered the panel here.

After a quick lunch and drinking tap water from a can, because apparently, that’s the world we now live in I was on to my next panel. It was moderated by Richard Franke a game dev whose alter ego is the fabulous Kitty Powers. The main topics were, our experiences in the industry so far, how companies can create realistic LGBT characters for their games and what titles stuck with us over the years.

I was in the good company of Ed Fear from Mediatonic, PR Freelancer Izzy Jagan and Gaymingmag founder Robin Gray. We were sat beside what was essentially a magnifying glass, allowing the sun to lick our faces. It was hot you guys, so hot.

These sort of panels are useful for those in the industry looking to get advice on how to steer the creative side of gay character creation and inclusion in games. They’re also important for those within the industry, especially starting out, who need to know that there are folk to reach out to and to support them.

But the good gay times didn’t stop there, as the next morning Gayming magazine went live and I was featured in the inagural launch of the digital magazine. I gave some harsh but fair words about the issues facing diversity in the esport industry, and my career so far.

Somehow I wasn’t asked what character I had a crush on but it’s Bastila from Knights of the Old Republic or Suvi Anwar from Mass Effect. So now you know!

I once did an article about how Suvi Anwar was the first character I ever encountered that represented me in many important ways. You can read it here if you want. But essentially I never knew how important a relatable gaming character was until I encountered her, a Scottish (ok I’m Irish but it can’t be too perfect), lesbian space scientist who believes in God.

In hindsight me also saying I fancy her sounds super narcissistic but I can’t fix all the problems in the world!

To round this all off I’ll state what is probably obvious to many but helpful to reiterate for the few. No matter who you are, who you want to be or who you love, you’re very much a valid human being who deserves respect, kindness and safety. Pride month is a time of showing solidarity to members of the LGBT community, but every month should be about showing that and an abundance of empathy to everyone.

Finally, I hope you can find time to spare some empathy for me as I fully intend to send myself into a diabetic coma inhaling all the rainbow themed food I can get my hands on! I’M COMING HOME LAWD!

We like to have fun at Weather Factory, but cults are serious business. While knowing your eldritch monstrosities from your treacherous tomes is all well and good, you won’t get far without a special element. Beguiling willing acolytes takes more than charm and instilling fear.

You see it’s all in the headgear. How can you be taken seriously as a potential Long, if your noggin isn’t presented fabulously?

The power of a good hat is not meant purely for fashion statements, but to denote hierarchy and sheer pizzazz. One of the earliest examples of head coverings includes this 27-30,000-year-old Venus of Willendorf figure. Archaeologists believe this depicts a wearing a woven hat, which might be a bit of a stretch but we’ll play along.

Let’s look at how some of the best gaming characters are adorned by incredible hats. Some of these might not even be that memorable character-wise, but if from their forehead and above is stylin’, they’re on this list!

Professor Layton

Hershel Layton does not mess around. He’s a world-renown detective and let’s face it, would not be too pleased about what you get up to in Cultist Simulator. But it’s clear that this distinguished beast wants you to know that while he’s solving crimes, you’ll want to be arrested for even glancing at his tower-top hat.

Hat Kid

A Hat in Time is about a little girl trying to return home in a spaceship. Every facet of the game is cute and cuddly. Hat kid is much more humble in comparison to Layton. She’s ascertained her brand colours, gone with a twist on the standard angles of a top hat and somehow installed balancing mechanics so it doesn’t fly off her head. Style, practicality and high levels of kawaii. 10 hats out of 8!

PaRappa

There are days when you need to unwind and relax. Being the best cult leader doesn’t mean that you exert yourself constantly. PaRappa beanie serves as your cheat hat. Cosy and luminous, yet featuring what could be a simple frog but the more you stare at it, the more you feel its eyes boring into your very soul.

Dough nose fuzz lip man

Came across this hat and really like it. Anyone got the source on the game? Cheers.

Cerebella

Skullgirls is a fun fighting game and it knows that style and function are paramount, especially in the arena. That’s why Cerebella decided to have two massive sentient fists for a hat. Standard really. How does this help a budding leader of the forbidden arts? Simply put, who would dare defy your orders, when one whip of your neck would lead to them being kamehameha’d. The Mansus has no walls, but one whack from your hat and your foes will meet brick!

Link

Iconic. Trailblazer. Ceramic pot smasher! Savior of Hyrule. All these titles and more befit our hero Link, but the first two are the most important because his hat is a definitive fashion statement in the video game world. In a world where turmoil seeks to reign, having a bright fairy tale green hat is a bold move and one that shows true leadership qualities.

His hat even has different titles, such as Cap of Time, Cap of Twilight and Cap of the Hero. Who better to dawn the mantle of a Cultist Leader than someone who has headgear for every season.

SPOILER: SECRET CULTIST SIMULATOR HOUR REVEALED BELOW!

With that, you’ve all learned some valuable lessons about what truly matters when you endeavour to form and lead a cult. You don’t need to thank us!

That’s right, we have some spicy info to drop on Version 2019.5.a.1 of Cultist Simulator. That’s not even including the big exciting reveal at the end of the month, but ssshhh for now.

Research Update!

The most important thing you may notice is in relation to Research!

We’ve just released a major, long-promised change to the Research mechanics – the ones that allow you to upgrade Lore to the next level, or subvert it to different types. As a refresher, this is a feature that was going to go into Christopher’s Build in January, except that the New Game + Apostle content ate Christopher’s Build.

Research was one of the earlier mechanics in Cultist, and we’ve never really been happy with it. The way it used to work – you matched a Lore fragment with another type to upgrade it, or a different type to subvert it, and then you watched the Study timer tick round, asking you for Glimmering or Erudition or Reason at random. If you fed it what it wanted, the Research succeeded. Hurrah!

This was a problem because it required a lot of care and feeding, it took a chunk of time, and it was hard to plan for – especially because Glimmering and Erudition decay. It also meant that upgrading Edge lore and upgrading Grail lore worked pretty much the same way.

Here’s how it works now:

(1) Every lore fragment has one or more challenges you need to solve in order to upgrade it. So a Practical challenge means you need to risk your own Health, or use a Prisoner. A Grim challenge means you might need to provide Dread (which might breed) or use the Silent Intensity top-level Reason skill, or use an HQ with a Pit. An Obsessive Research challenge means you need an HQ with a Library; or the Never-No skill; or you need to risk a Reason which might be damaged. There’s always more than one way to solve a challenge.

(2) The challenges now suit the lore types! So Winter and Edge lore tends to involve Grim challenges, but Lantern lore might involve Paradoxical or Illumination challenges.

(3) You can stop a complex research process halfway through, with just some of the challenges solved, so you can come back to it later. Handy when you really need that Study verb for something else.

Finally, you might have noticed that both Skills and HQs are involved in the research mechanic, because this change is what we were leading up to. So high-end Reason and Passion skills now finally have a proper use, and swapping HQs is now a lot more than just flavour.

(Note: There’s a nuisance issue right now with card stacking around the new mechanics, but we’re working on that.) Thank you as always for your belief!

This is the basic motivation behind most press comms you’ll come across on social media or your inbox. If you were to receive a message that read almost word for word like that, you’d probably not be too keen to engage.

Communication or comms, is a powerful marketing method, used via/for PR, Direct/Indirect Marketing, Advertisement, word of mouth, personal and group promotion. While comms is the blood of good PR, we won’t be diving into details of successful PR campaigns this time.

So while obviously comms are integral to many aspects of business, there’s an art to ensuring that you present your product and brand, without sounding greedy or robotic. How you communicate can sometimes be determined by brand guidelines or a principles documentation. Some companies are able to take risks and amend their comm copy to suit a societal audience.

Wendy’s is a classic example of a company you would not expect to be so sassy in their messaging. Yet they realise that people love humorous public engagement, the more savage the better.

Does this mean you need to replicate risky, meme-centric posts in order to reach a wider audience and maintain your existing one? No not at all. Consumers aren’t fools, but people who hate cake are. That sentence veered into irrelevancy but seriously who hates cake….

The skill in comms comes down to determining what works for the brand itself. What works for Doom, does not work for Animal Crossing. But if they made a crossover game not one of you can deny you’d snap that right up!

Being engaged in your community as well as the wider industry, helps tremendously with finding a good tone of voice. Equally so the want to be genuine. It sounds cheesy, but if you care about your product and community, then that helps sincerity show and with determining how to achieve your desired outcomes.

Purpose of comms: Engage, promote, support and retain, both B2B (bizness folk) and B2C (players/communities).

Say you have new game content or an event you want to share with the world. Sure it’s great if people just say “yes” and hop on board. But the chefs kiss of comms is to relay news in a way that generates and sustains actual excitement.

Two methods of doing so are: tease and tantalise, then reveal or DROP AN UPDATE NUKE OUTTA THE BLUE!

To plan your tender attack begin with selecting your goals and who helps tick them off.

Who am I reaching out to? How do I want them to feel? Do I want the messaging to rely on visuals, copy or both? How can I make comms easy to share? How can I make people care to share? Did I find memes or did they find me?

It depends on the platform, be it press releases, on site landing pages, social media or carrier pigeon. Once you’ve determined the purpose of what you’re communicating, the presented style will vary. Controlled direct targeting occurs via press releases usually shot at email inboxes. Somewhat controlled targeting on public platforms.

Social platforms allow your plan to be seen beyond your targeted parameters. Best of all you don’t have do anything else, which is just lazy lovely.

Here at Weather Factory, we have a certain flair, a vivacious graceful blob squat style. But the essence of how we want to communicate is based on 3 key points:

Transparency, creating experiences people feel something about and injecting creative personality into the content we make and share.

If you want to get people to attend your event or buy your products you need to think as your audience does. Most of us want content we’re excited by and often enthusiasm by the creator can instill that feeling, even for something new we’ve not yet encountered. In the finance or rock painting world, this trait is not as vital to comms. In the video game industry it behooves comm-anders (huehuehuehue) to think beyond “this exists, expose and purchase”.

These heading puns are getting a bit wild now. So you’ve got your battle plan for announcing something fun that consumers will enjoy and biz folk will see as schmart. But comm planning is not just a prerequisite tool. It’s an important part of handling any issues that erupt along the way.

I could go into intricate details about this, but instead I’ll be boring. The premise behind crisis control, should follow the same format that you’ve determined for all messaging.

Most of us are mortals and errors can happen. Some errors can be detrimental and whether they could be prevented or not, depends. But for lighthearted issues your comms can be a saving grace to your brand. People merge themselves more with what is relatable, owning your mistakes and being up front about it helps with that. But that’s toe-dipping into PR and I said NO PR TIPS THIS TIME!

Let’s hit the finale, if you’ve survived that noise of letters above. What are the most important points when creating and sharing business communications?

1. The goal and outcomes desired
2. Who is being communicated with
3. Creation in accordance with the above and your brand

Bear in mind that adaptability is also essential, as your company and projects grow. With that I’ll leave you with an inspirational quote that I believe all indie devs and marketeers can learn from.

Last time I wrote about the badassery of Saint Bríd and this time I’m going to push the Irish history agenda more, but it’s prompted by an unlikely source.

I was scrolling through twitter trying to find the dankest of memes for…marketing purposes, when I came across a trailer for Marvelous Games Fate/EXTELLA

Yes a character trailer for a Japanese Single player action game reminded me of one of Ireland’s greatest heroes. If you check their tweet you can see the character is called Cu Chulainn, the unrivaled Hunter of Ulster.

In Irish folklore, we have different ‘cycles’, which can be likened to saga eras and this hero comes from the Ulster Cycle. To further educate you all against your wishes, because I’m on a roll now: Ulster is one of the 4 provinces of the island of Ireland and the only province that is split between the country of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

A smith named Cullan, decided to have a big old party, inviting esteemed guests such as Conchobar mac Nessa, the High King of Ulster. The King’s nephew, Sétanta was playing hurling and HERE’S ANOTHER FACT TANGENT DON’T TRY TO STOP ME LOTTIE!

Hurling one of the 2 national sports of Ireland, alongside Gaelic football and is one of the fastest sports in the world that isn’t some sort of running nonsense. There was a really bad game on Playstation 2 a few years ago that tried to give gamers the experience of playing these sports.

Back on course and long superhero name origin story short…Culann unleashed his fearsome dog which attacked Sétanta. Someone got their wires crossed, it was super awkward. Sétanta had to defend himself and so fired a sliotar (the ball in hurling) at the hound, where it went right down his throat and instantly killing the poor but angry beast.

To repay for this slight, Sétanta offered himself to take the dogs place as Cullan’s guard, thus becoming the “Hound of Cullan” aka Cú Chullain.

But his story doesn’t end there, in fact he went on to be involved in many great tales, and legendary feats. Maybe one day I’ll tell you about his battle with the notorious Queen Medb, who is connected to the Celtic character Morrigan (not in a fanfic way, least not that I know of). That battle is really interesting because it’s all over a big cow.

There’s been many comic books and other adaptations of Cú Chullain over the years and he’s appeared as a random character in games such as Smite. I’ve no idea if any of this history will cross over to Fate/EXTELLA, though I suspect not. But it’s still cool to see more games take inspiration from Irish Lore, so good on ya Marvelous Games.

Oh hi there folks, I’m interrupting your usual blog broadcast from Lottie and Alexis to introduce myself. I’m Claire and I support the Marketing and PR for Weather Factory and have been slowly using techniques I learned off the telly, to convince Sulo and Chi to run away with me.

So I thought I might kick off with giving some juicy insights to the world of marketing and PR for game studios, but given that the fans of Cultist Simulator have a penchant for lore, mythology, religious text and just interesting stories as a whole, I thought I’d break the ice with the Story of Naomh Bríd or Saint Brigid if you don’t speak Irish.

Now I happen to be Catholic and a lover of bread. The latter isn’t relevant at all, I just really like bread. Despite the themes of CS and a fair amount of the community being probably not Catholic, I’m mentioning this because I think it’s cool that everything about what Lottie and Alexis have founded and the human beans that enjoy their games, is not at all ostracising (despite people crying because CS has ground them emotional to a pulp) and we all have a shared love of great writing and stories, regardless of whether people believe them to be real or purely set in fantasy.

This brings us to Bríd, who fyi is not the pagan Goddess Bridget, (there are more than one person with that name) but rather a badass Irish nun, who was canonised after a life of being a badass.

Bríd, or in Old Irish Brigit, is one of the patron saints of Ireland, alongside the likes of St. Patrick (you may have heard of him) and St. Columba. Every February 1st, Irish people,usually the small children folk, go and collect rushes and make Bridget crosses.

Now Patrick is infamous for telling all snakes to feck off out of Ireland and for other miracles, but Bríd has always resonated with me, because some of her acts were rife with sassiness. I won’t go through all the tales here, but my favourite story is how she acquired land in order to build a monastery and it’s usually referred to as The Legend of St. Brigid’s Cloak.

In Harry Potter you can use a cloak to turn invisible and that’s great and all but unless you’re using the cloak to overtake queues at gaming conventions, what’s the point? Brigid’s Cloak skills were far more impressive. She requested a plot of land from the King of Leinster in a serene part of Kildare, which had a lake surrounded by forest and on fertile plain on which to grow crops. The King refused her request, boo!

But Brigid was like “hmm ok cool cool, let me ponder on this”. She prayed that the King’s heart would soften and came back to him and offered a deal. “Give me as much land as my cloak will cover.”

The King rolf’d royally and said “sure you can have as much land as that cloak covers”. So Brigid removed her cloak and draped it fabulously across the land. The cloak begun to expand and expand, as did the Kings shocked face no doubt. After a moment the cloak had covered the entire plot of land Brigid had desired.

She won her land and the King had won a bag of humbleness, becoming a patron of Brigid’s monastery, assisting her with money, food and gifts that she dispersed amongst the people. I like to think that if sunglasses had of existed back then, she would have been the first “deal with it” meme or something akin to

I think Bríd and her shawl of sass could fit in well within the Mansus. Next time I’ll give some Marketing do’s and don’ts and maybe talk about some bread I like!