Ok. Well if you've asked to be added in this forum then you should already be added. If you ask and don't get added, then just give it a day or so. It's actually time consuming to set the permissions. Has to be done on a one by one basis.
This gives me more motivation to finish my game! I like the idea of a private forum that a causal web surfer (such as someone from a big publisher) can’t see, and that is not indexed by google.
I'd love to be added as well. Recently we've been working on a game for Cartoon Network (info here), but our primary focus is still on developing our own casual games. Our next round of self-funded projects is due out of this fall, which is when we'll launch a wider comprehensive storefront (as opposed to the more stand-alone Buzzwords info page).
Oh, the excitement is killing me! I wanna be in the secret club too! Btw, this finally made me create an account and post on this "new" indie board. I was posting sporadically on the Dexterity boards. For those of you who don't recognize me, I was BitBoy on that board..... Duh!
Everyone up to here who meets the basic criteria has been added. If you've asked and you don't have a published game yet then I didn't add you. I'm sorry, but I can't really know who everyone is, so it's best that I just stick to the basic rules I layed out in the first post to keep it as fair as possible and retain the semi-private nature of the forum. To answer the basic question. What might someone post in a more private forum and not a completely public one? Just one example might be details of their anti-piracy technique or how they generate codes. Something that they don't mind sharing with other authors to learn, but would rather not share with a random player who could google it and use it to pirate their game.
I guess I don't qualify since I'm currently self publishing a utility and my game is still in development.
"Just one example might be details of their anti-piracy technique or how they generate codes." Okay, but wouldn't that kind of info be an aid to people developing their first game, who don't have a website up yet? It sounds like there a fair few who are in that position, but won't be privy to that information until they release a game. I don't always mean to be the guy with the glass half empty kind of attitude, but... keeping people out of that loop just doesn't make any sense to me. I would have thought that kind of info would have been discussed through email, since (as someone mentioned) it is the kind of info you wouldn't want some dodgy guy with a website (and/or fake game) reading up on. But hey, it's your forum, and that's just my two cents.
Since the forum is presumably for info people would normally not have posted on the public forum for whatever reservations they might have, adding this extra group just adds information for established authors. So nobody is losing anything from this. While the info might be useful to a new author, it wouldnt have been posted on the public forums anyway.