I guess a release on Steam is always a memorable time for a small dev and it certainly was to us. So much new people, so much info and help needed, oh and that article in the doc is actually not helpful at all, and damn it the banner to the getting started page is not displaying why is that, oh oh the chat is starting to lag badly, the public project pages is taking too long to refresh, etc.
To be honest we expected to meet with the steam audience a slightly wilder bunch, less educated regarding audio production than what we had in the little world of audio application prior to it. Turns out we were completely wrong and that you can't judge the Steam Community on the sole basis of reading a chat during a Dota 2 game!
Monitoring newcomers we discovered quite a lot of pro, a heap of stupidly talented musicians, and an overall ability to get it sorted slightly better than the non steam users. Not to say they weren't a heap of people who really didn't want to click the help menu, but a bit less than usual (in ratio, brute quantities were overwhelming sometimes :P)
So Bravo for that, but the most amazing part to me is something else. It's the fact that, especially during the last two days the level of assistance on the chat was absolutely... completely... super amazing...
First helpers, of course, were core members of the cohmmunity, people here since the opening of the beta. It was not a surprise to see them helping. But it was to see how much they helped. Jamie57lp have been spending a tremendous amount of time in and out project, spreading info, monitoring things. Nick.in.Holland apparently didn't sleep, or has been sleepwalking helping people with ASIO4ALL issues. And every other, Bioxid, Cloud Patrol, Mqe2345, Herman and all the one I am forgetting (because they were so many)... feeling you guys wanted this steam release to work like a charm as much as we did here was a blessing. A Big Thank You.
And then, it went even more mindblowing. The last day and a half, most of the time I was checking the chat, there were as much answer than questions. People who were struggling two days earlier were now sending the links to newcomers, providing assistance and giving me some headroom to rework documentation. I will miss even more names but people who helped people like InkDropFalls, ProSound, Irockus, SCAndroid890 and many many more did, A. Big. Thank. You.
This weekend Ohm Studio looked like what we were dreaming of in... 2000. So, shall I take a whisky and a cigar, tonight?
"Chances are very good".
Santé!
- Red