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How I tried to get into game development and failed

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Re: How I tried to get into game development and failed

#91

Post by ilaksh »

Getting 7k visits a day and $130 per month is overall a very good start. 80-90+% of people that attempt something like this either never launch or are getting much less traffic.

The thing that people don't realize is, there are literally hundreds of thousands of games or apps for people to occupy themselves with. No exaggeration. I am including all the different app stores and also the retro gaming. The retro gaming counts because there are plenty of people that play old games through MAME or whatever.

There are only so many famous youtubers driving giant traffic numbers. Not everyone can be friends with them, and so not everyone is going to have wildly popular games.

In terms of this .io stuff, there are hundreds or probably really thousands of other projects to compete with. The most successful ever was NOT particularly clever or new. It was a variation on a very old game. It was well executed but, I believe the main reason it became so popularwas from luck and viral social network effects. Not everyone is going to get those things on the first try.

People very rarely click on ads. Getting $130 per month is something to brag about. Its something to build off of.

Just because something does not become wildly popular does not mean it is a failure. That's just totally unrealistic given the amount of competition out there for people's attention and the tens of millions of dollars being spent to create immersive interactive experiences.

Maybe I shouldn't say this. Maybe I should hope everyone continues comparing their income and views to PewdiePie or whoever. That will make for less competition for me.

Here is what I think the dev should take away from this. They have done a great job of solving these hard networking issues. They have people coming to visit their game. Keep trying to promote it and adding small bits of functionality or whatever. Keep trying to get famous youtubers to visit. But that is the side task you work on for an hour or two every week.

The main new side task is taking this awesome engine you have built and creating a new variation. It might look like a totally different game. Or be similar. The point is this time you have more time to focus on marketing and content and other things.

If you can get it down to release a new game every 3 months and not get even a tiny bit more traction from them than that project --

- months 0 - 3 $130 per month

- months 3 - 6 $260 per month

- months 6 - 9 $390

...

- end of year 5 $3120 per month

It might take 5 years to build a successful business. Not everyone is an overnight success. But I am happy if most people want to give up after 6 months. Makes for less competition for me.

Re: How I tried to get into game development and failed

#92

Post by Washuu »

WalterBright wrote: post #71
dvt wrote: post #43

I don't mean to be dismissive, but here are the main issues I see with the process (and the final product): - Bottom line, the game is not particularly fun, novel, or difficult. You'll notice that games like Flappy Bird, Agar.io, Papers Please, etc. are at least one of the three. Bist.io is not the type of game that will ever go viral. - You spent money on AdWords but didn't spend money on sponsored Youtube, Instagra…

I was unexpectedly successful in the gaming business (Empire). All I did was make the game I wanted to play, but couldn't find.

That is my goal right now. I am making a game that I want to play and I will release it when I feel it is worth it to do so.

The key though is that I have a steady job so I have the free time to work on it without worrying about funding.

Re: How I tried to get into game development and failed

#93

Post by hyperpallium »

WalterBright wrote: post #71
dvt wrote: post #43

I don't mean to be dismissive, but here are the main issues I see with the process (and the final product): - Bottom line, the game is not particularly fun, novel, or difficult. You'll notice that games like Flappy Bird, Agar.io, Papers Please, etc. are at least one of the three. Bist.io is not the type of game that will ever go viral. - You spent money on AdWords but didn't spend money on sponsored Youtube, Instagra…

I was unexpectedly successful in the gaming business (Empire). All I did was make the game I wanted to play, but couldn't find.

"Scratch your own itch"; if you like it, maybe others will too; instant user feedback

Re: How I tried to get into game development and failed

#94

Post by hyperpallium »

ryandrake wrote: post #82
bartread wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the one hand that's sort of mindblowing, on the other not that surprising, and reading the original article just underscores my (thankfully brief) experience of working in a large enterprise: the one thing you can absolutely trust is that when it comes to product development a senior enterprise developer or architect will always focus on the wrong problem. I find their approach to software development in general,…

There is value in writing clean, impeccably-designed, beautifully architected, const-correct, lint-free software. Just not much business value in it. I have unreleased hobby projects sitting on my hard drive at home that are works of art (if I must say so myself!), and were great learning experiences, but are commercially pretty much valueless. That's OK. You need to have a goal and adapt your software writing to tha…

Businessvalue-only code can get complex though, and difficult to work with. But, maybe, when the value/intention is clear, it makes it easier to understand. (That is, until there's years of accumulated complexity).

Re: How I tried to get into game development and failed

#95

Post by hyperpallium »

Matheus28 wrote: post #21
Shorel wrote: post #3

Please, don't use the term 'an io game'. It really makes no sense.

I'm the guy that made Agar.io, and I personally hate that term, but I don't think we'll ever win the war of getting people to stop calling those browser MMO games "io games"

At least you're better off than those guys who created the "pc" market category, only to have those two letters come to mean their competitor, and not them.

Re: How I tried to get into game development and failed

#96

Post by smaddox »

jnaddef wrote: post #66
smaddox wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great game. Was it a side project, or were you a full time game dev? And what about now after its success? Did it provide enough income to pursue whatever you want full time?

Depends if you consider several millions US$ as 'enough income'

Source?

Re: How I tried to get into game development and failed

#97

Post by hyperpallium »

Matheus28 wrote: post #90
nathan_f77 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you written any development posts like this? I'm sure everyone on HN would be really interested to hear your thoughts about this post, and how it compares to the development of agar.io. Did you sort of just get lucky with the game mechanic, or was it something that you put a lot of thought into? Was agar.io originally supposed to be a different game?

There was a post with some technical details on Agar.io a while ago back when it was released (>2 years ago). A year after Agar.io I made Diep.io, which is also fairly successful (but not nearly as crazy as agar.io), so that points to it not being completely based on luck :) I just make what feels fun. For a perspective on development cycle: the initial version of Agar.io took 1 week, while Diep.io took less than a m…

> initial version of Agar.io took 1 week

The protoype of my successful (non-game) software took 2 hours (though it percolated a while). But I still haven't finshed a prototype of my recent ideas, after years of research and development. Could it be that successful ideas are simple enough to prototype quickly?

But what about complex games, like Horizon Zero Dawn, or Zelda: Breath of the Wild?

It turns out they did prototype BotW... and not the beautiful 3d graphics or physics, just a 2d top-down version.

Re: How I tried to get into game development and failed

#98

Post by rpeden »

vkhorikov wrote: post #77
Practicality wrote: post #69

I have been having a lot of fun playing this game with lots of others here on Hacker news. Some suggestions: 1) Make the levels more obvious. It's not clear why players are stronger than others for some time. It would also be nice to see how far I need to go to level up more clearly. 2) ADD CHAT! I can't emphasize this enough. We need to be able to yell at each other and complain and work together. 3) Add the ability…

Wow, that's a hell of a suggestion. All on point! Where were you when I was still developing the game

If you're still willing to work on the game, then you're really still developing it!

You're getting a lot of decent feedback here. Although there's lots of feedback that is more negative than necessary, too. Don't worry too much about that.

Take the good bits of advice, and keep on polishing the game if it still interests you. Even if it didn't become a hit right away, that doesn't mean it's a failure. :)

Heck, even if it never becomes a hit, you made your first game and people are actually playing it. There are lots of games that never achieve even that. And you can take the lessons learned here and apply them to the next game you write.

And for what it's worth, I had fun playing it. It felt sort of like Subspace in tanks.

Re: How I tried to get into game development and failed

#100

Post by WalterBright »

hyperpallium wrote: post #93
WalterBright wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was unexpectedly successful in the gaming business (Empire). All I did was make the game I wanted to play, but couldn't find.

"Scratch your own itch"; if you like it, maybe others will too; instant user feedback

The same idea has worked for a lot of things for me. I often get told I'm a unique snowflake in what I like, but it turns out that's not true at all.
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