This post is going to be very hard for me to write, because I generally avoid conflict and am not personally very fond of ranting. But still. I will try not to be offensive because offense is not my intention, but I do contain a certain amount of rage and grief, so something might come out that is too extreme. I apologize in advance.
In short, you have a site that draws its existence almost entirely on the work of others. You list things that other people have created. You earn money by letting people advertise themselves, on your site. Perhaps you have another scheme of income that is not apparent, but this can be deduced on a glance. You have a forum, on that forum, you have a group called 'Shameless Promotion' and the greeting thread in that forum you beg people not to shamelessly self promote themselves? So what exactly do you expect? If I pay you to promote myself on the front page, that won't be shameless, for some reason?
Actually I am not surprised. Most of the pages like yours have a forum like that and some kind of declaration like that posted on the head of somesuch forum. In a system where nothing may be achieved without self promotion, the free kind of self promotion is declared 'shameless'. We, the developers of games, are supposed to 'contribute' into your already vast pool of replies, commentaries and forum posts which you have millions of, in order to 'gain ourselves the right to promote something we created with our own blood, sweat and tears'. Well, thanks a lot for that. What do you think is easier, collect a 1000 of things that something else created and create a list of them, or actually *create* those things? What would you collect if all the people creating those things one day said 'I have enough of this s**t and I'm never gonna create another thing for you ever?'
I make games because some crazy nerve in my brain is pretty much forcing me into doing so. It's an impulse. I have to create to feel normal. This is my personal problem of course, but it's a proven fact that many people actually enjoy the things that I create. Of course since I don't make mainstream stuff, I make something I feel that has to be made, I don't get that much attention. Actually, the attention that I get is below the critical mass required for a creation to spread, sadly. My only choice, to be blunt, is basically to walk around all the billions of people living in this world, door to door, simply to find the people that like what I do. People still enjoy what I create, which I think grants me the 'licence' to try creating more, there's just not enough of them for the process to catalyze and start running on its own. Does that mean that what I do and try to do in order to spread my work, is somehow shameless?
I have long time ago discovered that I cannot sustain myself on making games. I create games that appeal to a very limited public, and though I could have earned enough for a living even if each person that ever played a game of mine gave me a dollar for that, the system and the economy in which we live in does not allow me that. Which is why I make and give away my games for free. I can barely scrape enough resources to make a living month to month, and every moment I can waste is spent on creation of what I love, and what many other people appear to like. So for me not to be shameless in this situation I have to what? Promote myself on your forum first, prove that I am 'worthy' by wasting time on chat that could better be spent on making another game? Because I am a lowly parasite, having made a game for free and now 'leeching on your vast popularity' selling myself like some kind of prostitute to actually make it possible for people to experience that game? What kind of attitude is that? Oh, but if I coughed up some dollars for actual promotion that would make me shameless?
Come on. What's shame got to do with all this rotten mess anyway?
