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Show HN: I got laid off from Meta and created a minor hit on Steam

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371–379 of 379 posts

Re: Show HN: I got laid off from Meta and created a minor hit on Steam

#371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Is apathy toward society—which is, really, only your local community you're trying to defend and not something that is universally significant or even objectively capable of growth and sustainability—a dire crime I've committed? Not particularly. You're free to interpret and navigate as you see fit. >And claiming to have technical skill while also claiming that technology is stopping you from creating is a contradic…

If you are held back by a lack of artistic creativity, then you should simply expend the effort to do a journey of self-improvement in the name of acquiring artistic creativity. Life is that simple, yes? Because game development without game development is what leads to consequences like the stagnation of the game development industry whose population decline you lament. Making tools for nobody or nobody in particula…

>If you are held back by a lack of artistic creativity, then you should simply expend the effort to do a journey of self-improvement in the name of acquiring artistic creativity. Life is that simple, yes?

Not with bills to pay, and family to care for. It's not something I can do on the snap od a whim. I plan to take art classes to understand the fundamentals, but I'm not sure I can just "gain artistic creativity" the way I can "just learn 3d modeling and color theory". At this stage in life it's probably easier to help out other inspired creators with objective hoops.

>Making tools for nobody or nobody in particular is aimless unproductivity.

Sure, that's why evangelism has to be a part of this type of marketing. Help those who remain so far and have them inspire. If you get to advertise your tools on the way, it's 2 birds.

And yes, I worked at Unity at one point. I've seen firsthand the consequences of not dog fooding your own tools to make sure the pipeline fits with what an actual dev would do in production. I will still make games with such tools just to make sure I'm not disconnected from the audience. Something more than just a fancy tech demo with horribly mangled code that no one can learn from. A sub-goal is to encourage best practices and make sure my documentation is well covered (I'd say "better than Unreal/Unity", but that's a very low bar).

>What is more ambitious would be something like incubating or founding a small province of dedicated developers who aim to fulfill your wish.

I won't lie, I've thought about it. You're essentially saying to either found up a small studio or to make soke form of masterclass. To mold future students or employees to that vision. I'm not going to actively pursue such a dream, but steps in that direction does help with that mentality.

I need at least a decade more experience and a lot more capital before I could really pull thst off, though. So yes, that will still be a decade of me proving I can launch useful tools and well-made (not necessary profitable) games to gain that trust. I gotta do one to accomplish the other.

>Caring one bit about the ontological time of today and its youth, a mere phenomenological axiom which leads to concerns about some content creator crisis, is the tendency you need to abandon, if you want to start your theoretical project and see its successful completion.

Perhaps. I'm not claiming I can change an entire generation's mindset on what to pursue in life. I simply want to show the path for those may have been interested but are put off by entire avoidable factors of the industry. I was simply rejecting a notion thst somehow the industry of devs is becoming bloated.

Re: Show HN: I got laid off from Meta and created a minor hit on Steam

#372
post #86
post #64

Hi, I enjoyed playing Ballionaire. I do like this style of rogue-likes where things can maybe break the game itself (infinity, slow down the game completely when too many eggs are spawned). I was curious in your platform choice of windows only. Was this due to the framework/programming language you're using? Or was this more of a time savings of trying to support more than one system at a time? Or maybe both?

FWIW, it works on the Steamdeck, natively, without Proton -- so it's a native Linux game in other words. Apparently a lot of folks are playing it on desktop Linux, as a result. It's just not "officially supported". I'm a one-man dev operation, so it's strictly a matter of opportunity costs of my time. Linux and Mac are miniscule gaming markets, like 1% of Windows, but could potentially generate a significantly propor…

It's from 2023 but the last Godot community survey showed a marketshare of 27% for Linux amongst the developer's primary development platform and 55% for exports to Linux[1]. That's quite massive compared to the 2.06% Linux and 1.4% OSX have amongst gamers[2]. So, if you need help getting your game to those 3.4%, there should be plenty of helping developers on the usual godot forums.

[1] https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeXRE1nF64PUilO6fA7... [2] https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw...

Re: Show HN: I got laid off from Meta and created a minor hit on Steam

#373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I literally started a company on that thesis. It failed, but I still believe in that mission.

Were you trying to make short games or offer some kind of abridging service? Because I've wondered about that too. Like, right now there's a pretty big dichotomy between "purchase and play a game myself" and "watch someone else play it on youtube/twitch". But it would be interesting if there was a market for a kind of interactive guided tour, like for $10 let me play the best 4-6 hours of AC:Odyssey, and that's deliv…

Perhaps I'm an outlier. I expect to pay for my personal gaming experience. But if there's some necessary part of gameplay I don't like, that's negative experience that makes the game worse for me, reducing the value of the game to me. To skip that gameplay seems like something that shouldn't cost me anything, or even get me a discount because I'm not getting some of the experience I paid for. Like say if a side dish is so bad I send it back at a restaurant. I neither expect to pay for that nor a premium for someone else to eat it for me!

So I'm not willing to pay a premium for such a thing. I don't see why the game with the bad part missing should be worth more than with the bad part present. Rather, the inverse! I'll more likely skip the game entirely and find a different one that doesn't have such mandatory grinding.

As I say maybe that's an outlying opinion since making money from this kind of thing apparently works. It it helps, I'm in the adult with family demographic and my time (rather than game purchase levels of money) is what is at a premium.

Re: Show HN: I got laid off from Meta and created a minor hit on Steam

#374
post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if op was working at Meta for 10 years and they started at 2013 they probably have more then enough money stashed away to not worry about bills for a few years.

highly likely they have millions from the stock alone, assuming they didnt sell

correct, the guy is not exactly strapped for cash after 10 sweet years at Facebook. He's 10M+ NW probably.

Re: Show HN: I got laid off from Meta and created a minor hit on Steam

#375
post #164

Use every sale period available to you and not as weekly sales. Make custom 14 day sales. Add steam cards to the game asap. You should start doing this right after reading this comment really. Also you should lobby steam for a daily deal sometime next month. If they say yes you should set that daily deal for the day the summer sale ends if you can. Also you should push raw fury to do a publisher sale, those can reall…

How will trading cards help the game? As a Steam user, they seem useless and badges, which they create, are also completely useless. Unless to target sales to those who buy up all the cards to get really high profile levels.

Re: Show HN: I got laid off from Meta and created a minor hit on Steam

#376
Man, what a wild ride! From getting laid off at Meta to pulling off a 200k-unit hit on Steam—talk about turning things around in style. That’s seriously inspiring.

Ballionaire sounds like an absolute blast—roguelike pachinko? That’s a combo I didn’t know I needed! Must have been a crazy year grinding to get it out, but totally worth it. Any unexpected lessons or ‘oh crap’ moments along the way? Wishing you even bigger wins ahead!

Re: Show HN: I got laid off from Meta and created a minor hit on Steam

#377
post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Were you trying to make short games or offer some kind of abridging service? Because I've wondered about that too. Like, right now there's a pretty big dichotomy between "purchase and play a game myself" and "watch someone else play it on youtube/twitch". But it would be interesting if there was a market for a kind of interactive guided tour, like for $10 let me play the best 4-6 hours of AC:Odyssey, and that's deliv…

Perhaps I'm an outlier. I expect to pay for my personal gaming experience. But if there's some necessary part of gameplay I don't like, that's negative experience that makes the game worse for me, reducing the value of the game to me. To skip that gameplay seems like something that shouldn't cost me anything, or even get me a discount because I'm not getting some of the experience I paid for. Like say if a side dish…

I've never bought an XP booster myself, and I feel some of the same conflict. Although I can obviously afford it, I don't think I could stomach doing this for new releases. So at most it would be something where I'd be interested after 2-3 years when all the patches are in, bugs are fixed, and review consensus has settled.

So rather than pay US$70 today for a buggy, grindy new release experience, I pay $20 in two years for the base game + $10 for the "player's digest" mod.

I expect even then it would be a tough sell, particularly having to be on PC— a lot of the market for this kind of thing would more casual console/mobile/streaming players.

Re: Show HN: I got laid off from Meta and created a minor hit on Steam

#378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I literally started a company on that thesis. It failed, but I still believe in that mission.

Were you trying to make short games or offer some kind of abridging service? Because I've wondered about that too. Like, right now there's a pretty big dichotomy between "purchase and play a game myself" and "watch someone else play it on youtube/twitch". But it would be interesting if there was a market for a kind of interactive guided tour, like for $10 let me play the best 4-6 hours of AC:Odyssey, and that's deliv…

I was making short games. Specifically I was trying to make games that packed the same density of concentrated entertainment as other media.

The abridgement thing sounds like a smart approach, but ultimately I've gotten more enjoyment from shorter games that don't pack the fat in to begin with.

Re: Show HN: I got laid off from Meta and created a minor hit on Steam

#379

Hi Thanks for sharing this, I was first struck by the fact being laid off from Meta, I mean 10yrs of service and then laid off. I'm glad you did well and recovered after that. I'm curious to know about the technology behind, did you use a framework?

This article has a link to the steam page, at the end. https://godotengine.org/article/2024-cherry-picks/ So my guess is Godot.

Thanks!
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