My first experience

Me and Spinal were discussing OUYA. He'd just bought one, and was trying to get Monkey to work with it.
I dared to mention OUYA in a tweet, and so was instantly followed by OUYAForum's tweetbot, @OUYAForum_com
"Nnngh. A generic bloody tweetbot. Can't these companies behave properly?" I thought, and I otherwise ignored it and carried on.

A few days later, another minor mention of OUYA on Twitter sparked a second following by OUYAForum's tweetbot.
"Hmmm.. Didn't they just follow me?" I thought.

I checked into it, and found that OUYAForums wasn't even affiliated with OUYA. Instead, it was one of those fan forums that simply sprouted up as a result of the popularity of OUYA.
"Ok" I though. "Fair enough." And I carried on regardless.

The third time I got followed by OUYAForums, I started to get a bit pissed off about it, marked them as Spam, blocked them, and thought "to hell with that shit!"

Then I didn't bother to look into OUYA development for another month or two, because, quite frankly, that had pissed me off enough.-=-=-

-=-=-

Development

A couple of months later, and OUYA seemed to be back "in" amongst the indie dev community.
I wondered "is it worth me buying one.." and thought back to my first experience.
In the end, I eventually came to conclusion that "well, it's not OUYAs fault that a silly fan forum are being spammy" and opted to go ahead and buy an OUYA.

A few days later, having worked out all the kinks in my framework, I got NeonPlat Raw up and running, past OUYA's awesome review board (who, unlike Apple and Google are real people who actually interact with you) and into OUYA's sandbox.

This was great!
A proper, fresh, highly enjoyable development experience.

A joy!!

Then I got this.


Hmmm..

Note, that this is the same annoying OUYAForum that had already pissed me off on Twitter.
I ignored it, and continued work on my second game, which I swiftly released a number of days later.



You can probably imagine my frustration, at this point.
This one little fan forum was not only annoying everybody through Twitter, they'd got regular email spambots emailing the actual developers, too.

You know what...?
... Fuck you!!!



As expected, my reply went completely unnoticed. But I kinda got the vibe of this forum.
They're only out to get buttloads of members, to get as many games on their system as possible. And you know, that's kind of admirable.

.. except I'd already given them two completely free games, and they were still harassing me.



Their automated bullcrap was annoying me enough to nearly put me off doing any more OUYA dev. Hell, it pretty much put me off doing it in the first place. If the entire indie community weren't all going on about OUYA in their own way, I probably would never have bought one in the first place.
Lesson learned : Listen to your own community, not the whinging spammy cries of a fan forum.



I mean, seriously, if you really think that sort of spam is going to make a developer go "ooooh, yeah, I think I'll join that!" Then..
You're wrong!!

You're really really wrong!!!



I have visited OUYAForums, and read some of the discussions, but I'm not signing up.
I do NOT want to be associated with that sort of behaviour.
It's spammy, it's nasty, and it puts people off even bothering.
I write games for the FUN of writing games.
This kind of spam is NOT fun....



In related news...
My most recent game, NeonPlat Extreme seems to have baffled them a bit.
They're unsure as to whether it's a sequel, or a remake, or the same thing, or what, so instead sent their generic spam crap as a reply to their previous generic spam crap...



.. Or at least, I hope that's what happened.. Otherwise I'm about to get another 5 of those!!

-=-=-

And Now...

Just as the dust is settling, I'm getting into OUYA dev, and I'm happily trying to ignore that terrible forum, this happens.
It seems you can't have the greatness of OUYA without the terrible behaviour of OUYAForums.

A plea to all indie developers.

The OUYA is a great system. It is entirely capable of doing some wonderful things, and for the first time in years it's given me the ability to make games with BLOODY BUTTONS!!! Which, quite frankly, is a godsend after years spent doing crappy touchscreen controls.

A "proper" console with a "proper" controller! and MY games on it!!
It's a marvellous piece of kit, and at a ??100 price point, you really can't go wrong.
The games all work well, the review team is actually helpful, and the controller HAS BUTTONS!!!!

I'd definitely recommend it to anyone.

Just stay the hell away from OUYAForums...