#Visual Search Optimization

[digiconnekt-sg]

Visual Search: Are You Ready for the Future of Search?

As technology continues to evolve, so does how we search for information online. Visual search is emerging as a game-changing trend in the digital landscape, revolutionizing how users interact with search engines and e-commerce platforms. This innovative technology allows users to search using images instead of text, opening up new possibilities for businesses and marketers alike.

The rise of visual search is driven by the increasing prevalence of smartphones with high-quality cameras and the growing preference for visual content among consumers. Major tech giants like Google, Pinterest, and Amazon have already invested heavily in visual search capabilities, signalling their importance in the future of search.

For businesses, adapting to this trend is crucial. Visual Search Optimization Service is becoming an essential component of a comprehensive digital strategy. This service focuses on optimizing images and visual content to make them more discoverable through visual search engines.  

What is Visual Search?

Visual search technology allows users to initiate a search query using an image rather than text. Instead of typing keywords into a search bar, users can simply take a picture or upload an existing image to find information, similar products, or related content. This technology leverages advanced image recognition algorithms and machine learning to analyze visual content and return relevant results.

Key aspects of visual search optimization include:

High-quality, clear images: Ensure your product images are high-resolution and well-lit.

Proper image tagging: Use descriptive alt text and file names for your images.

Multiple angles: Provide various views of your products to increase the chances of matching search queries.

Contextual imagery: Show products in use or relevant settings.

Structured data markup: Implement schema markup to provide search engines with more information about your images.

As visual search technology continues to improve, it's likely to impact various industries, from retail and fashion to travel and real estate. Businesses that embrace this technology early and invest in Visual Search Optimization Services will be better positioned to capture the attention of visually-driven consumers.

The future of search is visual, and the time to prepare is now. By optimizing your visual content for search, you can stay ahead of the curve and tap into the growing potential of this exciting technology.

DigiConnekt: Your Partner in Visual Search Optimization

At DigiConnekt, we understand the transformative power of visual search and its potential to revolutionize digital marketing. As a forward-thinking digital agency, we offer cutting-edge Visual Search Optimization Services to help businesses stay ahead in this evolving landscape.

Our team of experts specializes in optimizing visual content for search engines and e-commerce platforms. We employ a comprehensive approach that includes:

Image optimization: We ensure your images are high-quality, properly sized, and tagged with relevant keywords.

Visual content strategy: We help you create and curate visual content that resonates with your target audience and aligns with visual search trends.

Technical optimization: We implement structured data markup and other technical elements to enhance your visual content's searchability.

Performance tracking: We use advanced analytics to monitor the performance of your visual content and continuously refine our strategies.

By partnering with DigiConnekt for your visual search optimization needs, you're investing in the future of your digital presence. We stay at the forefront of emerging technologies and search trends, ensuring that your business is always one step ahead.

Don't let your business fall behind in the visual search revolution. Let DigiConnekt help you harness the power of visual search and transform your digital strategy for the future.

[digitaldeeptech]

Advanced SEO Methods Demystified: Essential Insights

Regarding digital marketing, SEO analysis assumes the most important position today. It is a competitive requirement for businesses struggling to sustain online visibility and lead organic traffic with novel SEO analysis techniques in the face of continuous changes in search engine algorithms and user behaviors. The comprehensive guide explores the latest developments in SEO analysis and details insights on how those techniques can optimize your digital presence.

Finally, understand the current challenges in SEO.

SEO challenges are numerous, as a business desires to attain top rankings on SERPs. First of all, search engine algorithms change frequently. For example, key search engines like Google constantly update their algorithms in the interest of users’ betterment and to safeguard against manipulative tactics. Digital marketers rush to change strategies for attaining the ranking factors and criteria brought in by those updates.

Another major challenge is that the competition in digital spaces is getting intense. As more and more businesses invest in online visibility, standing out in SERPs is hard. Further, changing user habits — such as voice search and mobile usage — make SEO work rather complex and require adaptation to new search patterns and intents.

Why Traditional SEO Analysis Isn’t Enough Anymore

Traditional methods of SEO, similar to other trends, lay the foundation but still do not sufficiently cover modern, dynamic digital environments. Conventional methods are typically based on static keyword research, backlink research, and on-page optimization tactics. They are important but do not consider new trends having a huge impact on search engine rankings and user engagement.

Outdated SEO techniques are the pathways to agony and poor performance in SERPs. For instance, static keyword research might not take into consideration long-tail keywords or conversational queries — a rising tendency in voice search. Similarly, optimization focused solely on desktops disregards a rising mobile user base that expects seamlessness across devices.

New Techniques in SEO Analysis

1. AI-Powered SEO Tools

AI in SEO research increases the efficiency and accuracy needed for a marketer to make data-driven decisions to drive measurable results. On the other hand, with the aid of AI, a business can be genuinely agile in its SEO strategies for staying ahead in competitive digital landscapes.

2. Voice Search Optimization

Optimizing for voice search, therefore, is critically essential in the current business environment. It captures voice search traffic and increases the user experience across devices. Therefore, by knowing the behaviors of voice search and implementing a content strategy on the same, businesses stand to be able to increase their visibility in the results of voice search and capture more audiences.

3. Mobile-First Indexing

This will ensure that the website provides seamless user experiences across all smartphones and tablets with great user engagement via low bounce rates. By optimizing for mobile, most companies will potentially strongly increase their mobile search visibility and drive organic traffic from users on the go.

4. Semantic SEO

One of the crucial principles of semantic SEO is the consideration of intent behind the query and the context of meaning within the content. Semantic SEO works on the study of users’ intentions and relationships between entities to ensure that search engines return still more relevant results to users. Apply structured data, related keywords, and synonyms, and cluster your content into core topics.

Semantic SEO enhances the relevance and authority of the content, thereby strengthening its potential to rank for more queries semantically related to it. Businesses that incorporate methods of semantic SEO will experience more significant SERP exposure with qualified organic traffic.

5. UX and SEO

UX can make or break website rankings and user engagement metrics. Search engines expose more of their users to websites that have easy navigation, fast-loading pages, and good content fulfilling the intent. These techniques are for enhancing the UX for SEO: page speed optimization, mobile usability enhancements, and making accessible content with good structure.

By focusing on UX, businesses are going to lower bounce rates and increase dwell time, as well as improve conversion rates — an added boon to SEO performance. Not only will positive user experiences improve rankings, but they will also drive customer loyalty and satisfaction.

6. Video and Visual Search Optimization

The growth in video content and visual search has created new opportunities for SEO optimization. Video SEO refers to the optimization of video content for search engines by descriptive titles, tags, and transcripts. Visual Search Optimization: optimization of images and visual content to improve the possibility of their discovery in image search results.

Video and visual search optimization will diversify the formats of content and help attract visually oriented users. By including video and visual elements in the SEO strategy, one can increase reach, engage audiences visually, and drive traffic from multimedia search results.

Attractive Design Structure of the Blog

There are infographics, pertinent images, and data visualization to support readability in the blog. Content is also organized in the form of bullet points, numbered lists, and subheadings for the effective guidance of readers over complex topics. One can go through it easily and light up the important insights and actionable strategies that are brought out.

I have, as a seasoned digital marketer and founder of Digital Deep Tech, witnessed firsthand the transformative impact of taking up advanced SEO analysis techniques. At Digital Deep Tech, we know that innovation and data-driven strategies are the negatives required to adapt to the ever-changing landscape that comes with SEO. Therefore, using AI-driven tools, optimization for voice search, and embracing mobile-first indexing, we bring to our clients exponential improvements regarding ranking and exposure.

I believe in being at the edge of industry trends and delivering solutions in SEO tailored to bring tangible results. Our approach fuses technical expertise with creative insight into creating comprehensive SEO strategies that speak to the target audience, hence going beyond the expectations that our clients have of us.

Conclusion:

This guerdon will, hence, be the mastering of new techniques involved in SEO analysis that will help a business striving to grow sustainably through competitive advantage in the digital market. Embracing AI-powered tools will optimize for voice and mobile, semantic strategies in SEO, and user experience, guaranteeing ubiquitous, quality traffic and long-term prosperity in the said business context.

Help businesses be proactive and flexible in their SEO plans. Businesses will look to measure and implement new techniques to keep them ahead. It is extremely necessary to empower innovative methods and leverage data-driven insights that will unlock new opportunities for enhancing the online presence of a business amidst growing competition.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What role is AI playing in SEO analysis?

AI optimizes SEO performance by automating activities like keyword research, content optimization, and predictive analytics. This helps marketers drive data-driven decisions and brings enhanced efficiency to SEO strategies.

2. How has voice search impacted SEO strategies?

Voice search requires optimizing content for natural language queries and conversational tone. Marketers should have a focus on long-tail keywords and structured data to match effectively with voice search behaviors.

3. What is mobile-first indexing, and why is it important in SEO?

Mobile-first indexing is the process of changing the ranking priority given to the mobile version of websites on the search engine results page, against the backdrop of ever-increasing usage of mobile devices to access the internet. It enhances the user experience and SEO performance through optimization for mobile-first indexing.

4. What are semantic SEO techniques?

Semantic SEO: This is when one gets familiar with the purpose and contextual meaning of the search query. Techniques include related keywords, structured data, and content clustering to improve relevance and authority.

5. In what way does UX impact SEO?

The key role of UX in SEO is ensuring that metrics like bounce rates, dwell time, and conversion rates remain very positive. Improvement in such intrinsic factors of user experience — like page speed, navigation, and content quality — benefits both website ranking and user engagement.

[shoppying]

Introducing Shoppy.ing

Announcing Shoppy.ing … our product showcase created using Visual Stories! Check out the visually captivating experience of shoppable Web Stories.

To get this stunning shopping experience on your own website for free, contact us.

[andmineworlddigitalmarketing]

The Australian Digital Marketing Strategy Guide 2025: Navigating the Evolving Landscape

The digital marketing landscape in Australia is more dynamic than ever. As we step into 2025, businesses are facing a rapidly evolving environment driven by technological advancements, shifting consumer behaviours, and increased competition. To thrive, a robust Digital Marketing Strategy is no longer a luxury but a necessity.

This guide will help you navigate the complexities of 2025, highlighting key trends and offering actionable insights to ensure your brand stands out in the Australian market.

1. The AI Revolution: A Game-Changer for Digital Marketing

Artificial Intelligence (AI in marketing) is undoubtedly the most impactful trend for 2025. From content creation to customer service, AI is streamlining workflows, offering unparalleled personalization, and providing real-time data insights. Australian businesses are increasingly adopting AI-driven tools for:

Smarter Advertising: AI optimizes ad spend, identifies target audiences with precision, and even generates ad copy, leading to higher ROI for paid advertising campaigns.

Hyper-Personalization: Leveraging AI and machine learning, marketers can deliver incredibly tailored content, product recommendations, and omnichannel experiences, significantly enhancing customer experience.

Automated Content Creation: AI-powered tools are assisting with drafting emails, articles, and social media posts, freeing up valuable time for strategic thinking. However, the human touch remains crucial for authenticity and brand voice.

Enhanced Customer Service: AI chatbots provide 24/7 support, answer FAQs, and even process bookings, improving efficiency and customer satisfaction.

2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in 2025: Beyond Keywords

While SEO remains foundational, its nuances are changing. Google continues to dominate the Australian search market (93% market share!), but how users search is evolving.

Voice Search Optimization: With the rise of smart speakers and voice assistants, optimizing content for conversational, question-based queries is paramount.

Visual Search Growth: Platforms like Google Lens are making visual search more mainstream. High-quality, well-described images will be critical for discoverability.

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): Search engines are increasingly using AI to provide direct answers and summaries. Structuring your content to be easily digestible by AI will be key to appearing in these "position zero" snippets.

Local SEO: For Australian businesses, especially small and home-based operations, local SEO continues to be vital. Optimizing Google Business Profiles, managing reviews, and targeting local keywords can significantly boost visibility and leads.

3. Content Marketing: Quality and Purpose Reign Supreme

Content marketing is still king, but in 2025, it's all about quality, purpose, and impact. Australian consumers demand authentic storytelling and value-driven content.

Video Marketing Dominance: Short-form video content (TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts) continues to reign supreme for engagement. Long-form educational videos also hold strong value. Brands are using video for testimonials, behind-the-scenes glimpses, and simplifying complex services.

Interactive Content: Quizzes, calculators, and immersive AR/VR experiences are seeing higher engagement rates.

Authenticity and Values: Consumers are drawn to brands that demonstrate ethical practices, sustainability, and inclusivity. Transparent communication about sourcing and production builds trust.

4. Social Commerce and Community Building

Social media is no longer just for brand awareness; it's a primary sales channel.

Social Commerce Expansion: Platforms like Instagram Shop, YouTube's shoppable videos, and TikTok Shop are making in-platform purchasing seamless. Businesses need to integrate their e-commerce strategy with their social media presence.

Influencer Marketing Maturity: Influencer marketing, particularly with micro and nano influencers, offers niche reach and high engagement, fostering trust-based marketing.

Community-Based Marketing: Niche online communities (Reddit, Discord, private groups) are becoming goldmines for engagement and loyalty, especially as traditional platforms like Facebook see shifts in user behaviour.

5. Data-Driven Decisions with a Human Touch

While data and analytics are crucial for refining your digital marketing strategy, 2025 emphasizes a balanced approach.

First-Party Data: With the impending deprecation of third-party cookies, expanding first-party data collection through loyalty programs, newsletters, and on-site surveys will be critical.

Integrated Strategies: Successful marketing in 2025 is integrated across platforms – blending SEO, content marketing, paid advertising, social media, and email marketing into a unified customer journey.

Ethical Data Handling: As privacy concerns grow, transparent and responsible data practices are essential for building consumer trust.

Key Takeaways for Your 2025 Digital Marketing Strategy

Embrace AI: Integrate AI tools for efficiency, personalization, and data analysis.

Optimize for Evolving Search: Prioritize voice and visual search, and understand GEO.

Focus on Quality Content: Create valuable, authentic, and platform-specific content, with a strong emphasis on video.

Leverage Social Commerce: Turn your social media channels into direct sales points.

Prioritize First-Party Data: Build stronger customer relationships through owned channels.

Adaptability is Key: The digital landscape is constantly shifting. Be prepared to test, learn, and adjust your strategy.

Conclusion 

By proactively adapting to these trends and investing in a comprehensive digital marketing strategy, Australian businesses can not only survive but thrive in the dynamic digital environment of 2025.

[bkthemes]

Is It Possible to Use Alt Text to Gain Backlinks?

Introduction Alt text, or alternative text, is primarily used to describe images for accessibility and SEO purposes. While it helps visually impaired users understand image content, it also plays a crucial role in search engine indexing. Many marketers wonder whether alt text can be leveraged to gain backlinks, and while alt text itself doesn’t create direct backlinks, it can indirectly…

[sarkpromotions]

A Guide to Visual Search Optimization: Preparing for the Next Big Shift

🔍 The Future of Search is Visual – Is Your Brand Ready? 🔍 Visual search is changing the way users discover products and interact with brands online. Imagine your audience finding exactly what they’re looking for with a single photo—no keywords needed!

In recent years, visual search has become an exciting trend in digital marketing. It transforms how users interact with search engines and brands online. With visual search, users can upload an image to a search engine. They can also use their camera to find relevant information about the object they’re seeing. This shift offers businesses new opportunities to reach their audience in ways…

[businesssinfo]

Innovative Online Branding Strategies To Stand Out In A Crowded Market

Discover latest branding tactics to elevate your brand visibility and stand out. Explore now!

[sophsweet]

I learned something new today about Search Enging Optomisation (SEO)

Today someone introduced me to the ultra-long-tail keyword and I could not understand or picture what it was about. It shows that verbal communication and teaching is accepted, whereas it is quite a struggle to convey that these types of phrases don’t compute for someone who processes visually. No amount of explanation will beat either giving me an example to recognise or an infographic. A long…

[koobruk]

Discover the leading digital marketing trends of 2024, including advanced personalisation, AI-driven strategies, voice and visual search optimisation, interactive content, sustainability focus, video content supremacy, data privacy importance, mobile-first design, and influencer collaborations. Learn how these trends are shaping the future of digital marketing.

[wirewitchviolet]

Sudokuvania: Digits of Despair is one of the most impressive works of pure game design I have ever seen.

Before I say anything else, I am going to be talking about a game that is VERY new and has pretty terrible search optimization, so in case this blog post somehow came up near the top of results for someone, here is the as-of-this-writing-current 1.02 release, and for good measure, here is the official FAQ page with the full version history, any future patches, and an FAQ for some of the more confusingly worded stuff that crops up later into the game. Now on with the praise-heaping!

So... Sudokuvania pretty much exactly what the name implies. It's a -vania, that is, a Metroidvania, and specifically one styled after one of the ones that's actually in the latter Castlevania series so that naming convention actually makes sense. Exploring a big castle, fighting bosses, getting various items letting you explore more areas, maybe breaking out of the borders of the map to find cool secrets here and there.

Also, it's a variant of sudoku. And I don't mean someone sat down with some videogame designing toolkit and made a videogame where some of the gameplay is solving logic puzzles on a grid you fill with numbers (I mean, I guess technically I do). I mean that link to the game I posted takes you to a website with a little built in standard app for solving sudoku puzzles and weird variations thereof, and the particular puzzle it's pointing to, somehow, manages to have a big map to explore, boss fights, special items that give you new powers, NPCs, and for good measure, fog of war. It is, again, an absolutely amazing hacky thing and I'm flabbergasted at how well executed it is. Now you're probably wondering how that even works, and that's why I'm writing this big gushy blog post. Here's what you see when you first load it up:

You're going to notice there is some absurdly small and kind of important text you can't possibly read, and that's because again, this is kind of a hacky thing this site so was not designed for. So it's kind of annoying but if you access this through the proper introduction page, it'll explain that the first thing you need to do is click the little gear icon in the floating tool palette, toggle on Visuals: Draw arrows above lines and Disable emoji replacement, then scroll all the way down to Experimental and turn on Test Large Puzzle UI. That enables you to zoom in and out with the scroll wheel, and right-click drag to pan around. It's... a little clunky because again, this website was NOT built for this, but tada, now you can zoom in, read the text, and start solving at a reasonable size. Then there's a couple gameplay concepts it does its best to explain, but... most people I've shown it to myself included needed extra explanation of a couple important early concepts. So let me just do a little color coding here to make this easier to get...

The map is not, in fact, one great big grid. It's 9 squares (and one rectangle that's not quite square over on the east side). Each of these is its own 9x9 Sudoku grid (well, the starting one is 6x6 and has those mutant 2x3 cells instead of the usual 3x3, and there's that weird eastern mutant). If you're solving stuff in one square, you completely ignore everything outside that square, except for where they overlap, in which case the numbers you're placing have to fit for both puzzles. So if we look at the light grey/green intersection on the left, those three overlap cells respectively can't be 4 6 or 5 (and whatever use you deduce in the grey box, but the pure green cells completely ignore all that, you're just focusing on the green 9x9 (which is going to have the overlap as a starting point, naturally).

The next bit that through me off a ton is the way fog of war works. Let me reasonably zoom in and do a little solving here. One second...

Here's the whole starting area all marked up to hell like you do when you're kinda bad at Sudoku and don't know how to spot a starting point. Penciling in little numbers in the corners. You'll also notice a that... most of the map is covered in this dark grey fog of war. A lot of in-game stuff mentions that you shouldn't go clicking out into the fog of war, because it'll show you names of later areas and preview certain special rules and all, but that's talking about clicking WAY off from what you can see. You are 100% allowed to solve stuff out in the fog of war, and it's pretty stingy about de-fogging. Don't go blindly guessing because then you can maybe end up sequence breaking but... yeah. Sorry I'm spoiling the Front Gate, it's basically the tutorial though. Anyway, first move is obvious, only one place we can put that 6, and suddenly...

Tada, important space so it rewarded us with a little fog clearing. You can also see that this will handily point out stuff in your pencil notes that can't be true, but only if A- it's untrue for standard sudoku reasons not special stuff, and B- it's not in the fog of war (or on the other side of some. You also maybe noticed that weird green thing under that first hint 6? That's something we need a tool for, you don't worry about it until you have that tool. Solving this out some more...

Little more de-fogging, both of the puzzle area and the margins where we're getting new information on playing the game in general. Now right here if you're observant, you'll see that bottom right corner has to be a 6. It's out in the fog of war, but you can mark it if you know what it is. And...

I was cropping it out before but the big purple number pad is always floating off to the side there, and the green text box over it, which among other things has an area name and flavor text for whatever grid you're in. This won't ALWAYS happen when you place numbers in fog of war, but there was a trigger on this 6 to load in a little piece of the first real area, and oh hey, we unlocked "Guide THERMO!" That's our first tool, and it's described up in the upper left.

So tada, from here out in addition to standard sudoku stuff, you've got these "bronze Guide THERMOs" that show up here and there and have this extra rule. You basically never get free numbers in the grid past the Front Gate, it's all slow-marching into new areas using what you're bringing in plus some easy starting examples of how your new tools work, plowing on from there. The fog of war is pretty stingy but it keeps you focused. You'll also notice the rules here mention bosses, all the 9x9 ones have one. It's clearly marked, and you should PROBABLY expose it from the fog first, but any time you're in the area really you, if you scroll around in that green text box or hit the rules button when in a grid, there's a link you can click to go fight it. The boss fights are all separate puzzles (site's good about auto-saving so don't freak out if it takes over your tab and you have to hit back after). These are very themey, sometimes VERY evil (especially boss #1, feels a bit overtuned) self-contained 9x9 puzzles, probably using the same tools their area is themed around, and I don't think there's a single pre-placed number in any of them. Beat the boss puzzle, it gives you some flavor text and a number to place in its cell back in the main castle puzzle, plug that in and you're always going to unlock something cool. Usually a new item, sometimes other weird stuff, and it just goes on like that.

Don't expect to be able to fully solve a given grid in one go. It's a Metroidvania, backtracking is expected. Even if you've fully de-fogged a grid, later stuff might reward you by straight up adding new symbols you couldn't see before or doing weird stuff with fog. It IS all solvable with pure logic... but there ARE a few places that do that thing I hate in tougher sudokus where you just kinda have to pencil in in a different faction and explore 2 possible futures for a bit to see which eventually contradicts itself. And of course the last couple of grids do some really evil mind-bendy stuff.

But yeah aside from a couple gripes where the way a tool works could maybe be a lot more grammatically clear, that first boss being a lot to deal with as you're first getting your feet wet, and a particularly cruel twist later on, I don't really have any complaints. Well, it might need a cool soundtrack. Maybe play some Castlevania music. Maybe switch it up for some real proper boss music when you're nearing victory.

Again I am just completely blown away that someone made something so meaty in a standard sudoku site's normal UI, and really managed to make it feel so much like playing a DS Castlevania. Some real proof of game design being an art form here. And now you too can just completely lose a day or two to it!

[insertdisc5]

📚 A List Of Useful Websites When Making An RPG 📚

My timeloop RPG In Stars and Time is done! Which means I can clear all my ISAT gamedev related bookmarks. But I figured I would show them here, in case they can be useful to someone. These range from "useful to write a story/characters/world" to "these are SUPER rpgmaker focused and will help with the terrible math that comes with making a game".

This is what I used to make my RPG game, but it could be useful for writers, game devs of all genres, DMs, artists, what have you. YIPPEE

Writing (Names)

Behind The Name - Why don't you have this bookmarked already. Search for names and their meanings from all over the world!

Medieval Names Archive - Medieval names. Useful. For ME

City and Town Name Generator - Create "fake" names for cities, generated from datasets from any country you desire! I used those for the couple city names in ISAT. I say "fake" in quotes because some of them do end up being actual city names, especially for french generated ones. Don't forget to double check you're not 1. just taking a real city name or 2. using a word that's like, Very Bad, especially if you don't know the country you're taking inspiration from! Don't want to end up with Poopaville, USA

Writing (Words)

Onym - A website full of websites that are full of words. And by that I mean dictionaries, thesauruses, translators, glossaries, ways to mix up words, and way more. HIGHLY recommend checking this website out!!!

Moby Thesaurus - My thesaurus of choice!

Rhyme Zone - Find words that rhyme with others. Perfect for poets, lyricists, punmasters.

In Different Languages - Search for a word, have it translated in MANY different languages in one page.

ASSETS

In general, I will say: just look up what you want on itch.io. There are SO MANY assets for you to buy on itch.io. You want a font? You want a background? You want a sound effect? You want a plugin? A pixel base? An attack animation? A cool UI?!?!?! JUST GO ON ITCH.IO!!!!!!

Visual Assets (General)

Creative Market - Shop for all kinds of assets, from fonts to mockups to templates to brushes to WHATEVER YOU WANT

Velvetyne - Cool and weird fonts

Chevy Ray's Pixel Fonts - They're good fonts.

Contrast Checker - Stop making your text white when your background is lime green no one can read that shit babe!!!!!!

Visual Assets (Game Focused)

Interface In Game - Screenshots of UI (User Interfaces) from SO MANY GAMES. Shows you everything and you can just look at what every single menu in a game looks like. You can also sort them by game genre! GREAT reference!

Game UI Database - Same as above!

Sound Assets

Zapsplat, Freesound - There are many sound effect websites out there but those are the ones I saved. Royalty free!

Shapeforms - Paid packs for music and sounds and stuff.

Other

CloudConvert - Convert files into other files. MAKE THAT .AVI A .MOV

EZGifs - Make those gifs bigger. Smaller. Optimize them. Take a video and make it a gif. The Sky Is The Limit

Marketing

Press Kitty - Did not end up needing this- this will help with creating a press kit! Useful for ANY indie dev. Yes, even if you're making a tiny game, you should have a press kit. You never know!!!

presskit() - Same as above, but a different one.

Itch.io Page Image Guide and Templates - Make your project pages on itch.io look nice.

MOOMANiBE's IGF post - If you're making indie games, you might wanna try and submit your game to the Independent Game Festival at some point. Here are some tips on how, and why you should.

Game Design (General)

An insightful thread where game developers discuss hidden mechanics designed to make games feel more interesting - Title says it all. Check those comments too.

Game Design (RPGs)

Yanfly "Let's Make a Game" Comics - INCREDIBLY useful tips on how to make RPGs, going from dungeons to towns to enemy stats!!!!

Attack Patterns - A nice post on enemy attack patterns, and what attacks you should give your enemies to make them challenging (but not TOO challenging!) A very good starting point.

How To Balance An RPG - Twitter thread on how to balance player stats VS enemy stats.

Nobody Cares About It But It’s The Only Thing That Matters: Pacing And Level Design In JRPGs - a Good Post.

Game Design (Visual Novels)

Feniks Renpy Tutorials - They're good tutorials.

I played over 100 visual novels in one month and here’s my advice to devs. - General VN advice. Also highly recommend this whole blog for help on marketing your games.

I hope that was useful! If it was. Maybe. You'd like to buy me a coffee. Or maybe you could check out my comics and games. Or just my new critically acclaimed game In Stars and Time. If you want. Ok bye

[beebigdigital]

https://beebigdigital.com/page/posters-and-magazines

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[dandysworlds]

how does one make graphics (i need to . improve)

Well, the Princess' methods are very simple! She would be glad to teach you.

A bit long graphic tutorial under cut ^_^ (all art by Iinquint on twitter)

First, we import the frame or mask you will use. You can find these by searching "rentry frame".

Then, we will import our picture and erase any excess outside of the frame.

Then we usually add a chibi, You can do this by finding chibi art and erasing the background.

And now we will add any PNGs to the graphic. We chose circle laces for this.

Now we will duplicate the layer of our chibi.

We then use the Stroke Outer filter to find dots that weren't erased, we will go to the top original later and erase where all the exposed dots are.

After that, we delete the layer & reduplicate it. Then we use stroke outer for a white outline, and then a black one. If the chibi or whatever you are using is white or very light already, feel free to reverse the white & black.

Then we add glow outer (usually around 1-2px)

Continue this process for everything

Save it

And then we will import it into a new canvas through 'import picture' & then use the grayscale.

Now, We do not always use a gradient map. But feel free to try out gradients to see if it looks nice on the graphic. Either of the 2 top sites work.

Find a gradient that looks nice. If none fit your vision, feel free to skip it.

Now, import the new image and then add textures. Play around with blending modes & opacity until it looks right.

Boom! You've made your very own graphic.

Now for animated graphics...

(No visuals) If you'd like one where the small chibi moves, move it to be angle -5, save it, and then angle 5 and save it. (Also adjust angles if the 5 looks weird.)

Import the images into ezgif gif maker and turn on "Don't stack frames" and adjust delay time. (I usually use 80ish)

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Animated graphics 2

Import your graphic into capcut. Add a green background or whatever color is not present on your graphic at all. Add the gif you want on the graphic. Adjust for all the images to go on for equal times so it works.

Ezgif > Mp4 to gif > Remove Background > Select hex code of background > "Replace hex with transparency" > Adjust Fuzz > Optimize

And voila, your graphic is completed! Feel free to adjust in ezgif effects if needed.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Conspiratorialism as a material phenomenon

I'll be in TUCSON, AZ from November 8-10: I'm the GUEST OF HONOR at the TUSCON SCIENCE FICTION CONVENTION.

I think it behooves us to be a little skeptical of stories about AI driving people to believe wrong things and commit ugly actions. Not that I like the AI slop that is filling up our social media, but when we look at the ways that AI is harming us, slop is pretty low on the list.

The real AI harms come from the actual things that AI companies sell AI to do. There's the AI gun-detector gadgets that the credulous Mayor Eric Adams put in NYC subways, which led to 2,749 invasive searches and turned up zero guns:

https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/nycs-subway-weapons-detector-pilot-program-ends/

Any time AI is used to predict crime – predictive policing, bail determinations, Child Protective Services red flags – they magnify the biases already present in these systems, and, even worse, they give this bias the veneer of scientific neutrality. This process is called "empiricism-washing," and you know you're experiencing it when you hear some variation on "it's just math, math can't be racist":

https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/23/cryptocidal-maniacs/#phrenology

When AI is used to replace customer service representatives, it systematically defrauds customers, while providing an "accountability sink" that allows the company to disclaim responsibility for the thefts:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/23/maximal-plausibility/#reverse-centaurs

When AI is used to perform high-velocity "decision support" that is supposed to inform a "human in the loop," it quickly overwhelms its human overseer, who takes on the role of "moral crumple zone," pressing the "OK" button as fast as they can. This is bad enough when the sacrificial victim is a human overseeing, say, proctoring software that accuses remote students of cheating on their tests:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/16/unauthorized-paper/#cheating-anticheat

But it's potentially lethal when the AI is a transcription engine that doctors have to use to feed notes to a data-hungry electronic health record system that is optimized to commit health insurance fraud by seeking out pretenses to "upcode" a patient's treatment. Those AIs are prone to inventing things the doctor never said, inserting them into the record that the doctor is supposed to review, but remember, the only reason the AI is there at all is that the doctor is being asked to do so much paperwork that they don't have time to treat their patients:

https://apnews.com/article/ai-artificial-intelligence-health-business-90020cdf5fa16c79ca2e5b6c4c9bbb14

My point is that "worrying about AI" is a zero-sum game. When we train our fire on the stuff that isn't important to the AI stock swindlers' business-plans (like creating AI slop), we should remember that the AI companies could halt all of that activity and not lose a dime in revenue. By contrast, when we focus on AI applications that do the most direct harm – policing, health, security, customer service – we also focus on the AI applications that make the most money and drive the most investment.

AI hasn't attracted hundreds of billions in investment capital because investors love AI slop. All the money pouring into the system – from investors, from customers, from easily gulled big-city mayors – is chasing things that AI is objectively very bad at and those things also cause much more harm than AI slop. If you want to be a good AI critic, you should devote the majority of your focus to these applications. Sure, they're not as visually arresting, but discrediting them is financially arresting, and that's what really matters.

All that said: AI slop is real, there is a lot of it, and just because it doesn't warrant priority over the stuff AI companies actually sell, it still has cultural significance and is worth considering.

AI slop has turned Facebook into an anaerobic lagoon of botshit, just the laziest, grossest engagement bait, much of it the product of rise-and-grind spammers who avidly consume get rich quick "courses" and then churn out a torrent of "shrimp Jesus" and fake chainsaw sculptures:

https://www.404media.co/email/1cdf7620-2e2f-4450-9cd9-e041f4f0c27f/

For poor engagement farmers in the global south chasing the fractional pennies that Facebook shells out for successful clickbait, the actual content of the slop is beside the point. These spammers aren't necessarily tuned into the psyche of the wealthy-world Facebook users who represent Meta's top monetization subjects. They're just trying everything and doubling down on anything that moves the needle, A/B splitting their way into weird, hyper-optimized, grotesque crap:

https://www.404media.co/facebook-is-being-overrun-with-stolen-ai-generated-images-that-people-think-are-real/

In other words, Facebook's AI spammers are laying out a banquet of arbitrary possibilities, like the letters on a Ouija board, and the Facebook users' clicks and engagement are a collective ideomotor response, moving the algorithm's planchette to the options that tug hardest at our collective delights (or, more often, disgusts).

So, rather than thinking of AI spammers as creating the ideological and aesthetic trends that drive millions of confused Facebook users into condemning, praising, and arguing about surreal botshit, it's more true to say that spammers are discovering these trends within their subjects' collective yearnings and terrors, and then refining them by exploring endlessly ramified variations in search of unsuspected niches.

(If you know anything about AI, this may remind you of something: a Generative Adversarial Network, in which one bot creates variations on a theme, and another bot ranks how closely the variations approach some ideal. In this case, the spammers are the generators and the Facebook users they evince reactions from are the discriminators)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_adversarial_network

I got to thinking about this today while reading User Mag, Taylor Lorenz's superb newsletter, and her reporting on a new AI slop trend, "My neighbor’s ridiculous reason for egging my car":

https://www.usermag.co/p/my-neighbors-ridiculous-reason-for

The "egging my car" slop consists of endless variations on a story in which the poster (generally a figure of sympathy, canonically a single mother of newborn twins) complains that her awful neighbor threw dozens of eggs at her car to punish her for parking in a way that blocked his elaborate Hallowe'en display. The text is accompanied by an AI-generated image showing a modest family car that has been absolutely plastered with broken eggs, dozens upon dozens of them.

According to Lorenz, variations on this slop are topping very large Facebook discussion forums totalling millions of users, like "Movie Character…,USA Story, Volleyball Women, Top Trends, Love Style, and God Bless." These posts link to SEO sites laden with programmatic advertising.

The funnel goes:

i. Create outrage and hence broad reach;

ii, A small percentage of those who see the post will click through to the SEO site;

iii. A small fraction of those users will click a low-quality ad;

iv. The ad will pay homeopathic sub-pennies to the spammer.

The revenue per user on this kind of scam is next to nothing, so it only works if it can get very broad reach, which is why the spam is so designed for engagement maximization. The more discussion a post generates, the more users Facebook recommends it to.

These are very effective engagement bait. Almost all AI slop gets some free engagement in the form of arguments between users who don't know they're commenting an AI scam and people hectoring them for falling for the scam. This is like the free square in the middle of a bingo card.

Beyond that, there's multivalent outrage: some users are furious about food wastage; others about the poor, victimized "mother" (some users are furious about both). Not only do users get to voice their fury at both of these imaginary sins, they can also argue with one another about whether, say, food wastage even matters when compared to the petty-minded aggression of the "perpetrator." These discussions also offer lots of opportunity for violent fantasies about the bad guy getting a comeuppance, offers to travel to the imaginary AI-generated suburb to dole out a beating, etc. All in all, the spammers behind this tedious fiction have really figured out how to rope in all kinds of users' attention.

Of course, the spammers don't get much from this. There isn't such a thing as an "attention economy." You can't use attention as a unit of account, a medium of exchange or a store of value. Attention – like everything else that you can't build an economy upon, such as cryptocurrency – must be converted to money before it has economic significance. Hence that tooth-achingly trite high-tech neologism, "monetization."

The monetization of attention is very poor, but AI is heavily subsidized or even free (for now), so the largest venture capital and private equity funds in the world are spending billions in public pension money and rich peoples' savings into CO2 plumes, GPUs, and botshit so that a bunch of hustle-culture weirdos in the Pacific Rim can make a few dollars by tricking people into clicking through engagement bait slop – twice.

The slop isn't the point of this, but the slop does have the useful function of making the collective ideomotor response visible and thus providing a peek into our hopes and fears. What does the "egging my car" slop say about the things that we're thinking about?

Lorenz cites Jamie Cohen, a media scholar at CUNY Queens, who points out that subtext of this slop is "fear and distrust in people about their neighbors." Cohen predicts that "the next trend, is going to be stranger and more violent.”

This feels right to me. The corollary of mistrusting your neighbors, of course, is trusting only yourself and your family. Or, as Margaret Thatcher liked to say, "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families."

We are living in the tail end of a 40 year experiment in structuring our world as though "there is no such thing as society." We've gutted our welfare net, shut down or privatized public services, all but abolished solidaristic institutions like unions.

This isn't mere aesthetics: an atomized society is far more hospitable to extreme wealth inequality than one in which we are all in it together. When your power comes from being a "wise consumer" who "votes with your wallet," then all you can do about the climate emergency is buy a different kind of car – you can't build the public transit system that will make cars obsolete.

When you "vote with your wallet" all you can do about animal cruelty and habitat loss is eat less meat. When you "vote with your wallet" all you can do about high drug prices is "shop around for a bargain." When you vote with your wallet, all you can do when your bank forecloses on your home is "choose your next lender more carefully."

Most importantly, when you vote with your wallet, you cast a ballot in an election that the people with the thickest wallets always win. No wonder those people have spent so long teaching us that we can't trust our neighbors, that there is no such thing as society, that we can't have nice things. That there is no alternative.

The commercial surveillance industry really wants you to believe that they're good at convincing people of things, because that's a good way to sell advertising. But claims of mind-control are pretty goddamned improbable – everyone who ever claimed to have managed the trick was lying, from Rasputin to MK-ULTRA:

https://pluralistic.net/HowToDestroySurveillanceCapitalism

Rather than seeing these platforms as convincing people of things, we should understand them as discovering and reinforcing the ideology that people have been driven to by material conditions. Platforms like Facebook show us to one another, let us form groups that can imperfectly fill in for the solidarity we're desperate for after 40 years of "no such thing as society."

The most interesting thing about "egging my car" slop is that it reveals that so many of us are convinced of two contradictory things: first, that everyone else is a monster who will turn on you for the pettiest of reasons; and second, that we're all the kind of people who would stick up for the victims of those monsters.

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/29/hobbesian-slop/#cui-bono

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[freehusk]

I'm probably overthinking this, but Angel's rope came off sooner than Husk's.

I find it interesting that in this shot, Angel's colored pink, which is part of his pallette, while Husk is colored orange, the closest thing to orange in Husk's design is his gold/yellow teeth.

I said it, I'm probably looking too much into it, after all, it could be a visual choice to portray him with orange.

A quick search of the meaning of orange tells us that in a positive way, it represents optimism, while on the negative side, impatience (among other things).

Husk is impatient because he wants to be freed from his contract with Alastor and Angel being freed from his gives him optimism on his own situation.