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Did I just waste 3 years?

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Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#341

Post by kiostech »

gnarbarian wrote: post #332
kiostech wrote: post #328

Dear all, I am the guy who shares this post on Hacker News. First and foremost, I wanna said that I am NOT the original author of the blog. Also, I am NOT advertising for the original author. As a software developer in Hong Kong, I am researching articles about game dev and find this interesting case. Therefore, I just wanna share on HN. The discussion about this blog is really overwhelming. I hope that everybody can…

Also there are about a jillion indie sidescrollers on steam. Standing out is important.

Yes, marketing is very important!

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#342

Post by manquer »

yoz-y wrote: post #324
ReverseCold wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is why minigame-style games (battle royale, fighting games, first person shooter competitive, etc) are so common. You can implement a simple version of your game idea in a weekend and, if your idea was good, people would likely already have fun playing it.

Never really did modern game development, but can you really implement a first person shooter with a twist over a weekend? How would you go about it, create a mod for an existing game?

You could do that or a frramework like Unity takes care of lot of stuff for you.. weekend maybe a bit extreme, but you can get something running and functional in very short time

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#343

Post by int_19h »

mikemotherwell wrote: post #265
Nokinside wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a lone programmer wants to write tight code for games, they should build game engines or libraries that games can use and then sell those to game developers. There exists large value added chain for specialized tools, arts and libraries.

... or call it a hobby. Just because someone does the same thing they make a living from for fun, doesn't mean it isn't also a hobby. It's weird, that because people pay coders for some of the work they do, expecting money gets wrapped up in what is a hobby for so many. Programming is fun for a lot of people. They love the process, enjoy the reading and learning, get a kick out of things like optimising code for a sp…

I think we need to think more along these lines in general; it's going to be needed a lot.

This is the ongoing march towards post-scarcity. We now have enough people with skills, experience and tools necessary to produce a quality indie game and a desire to make one, that the market price is far below the cost of production, and rapidly approaching zero. Essentially, these developers are spending (resources: time etc; although sometimes money as well) to scratch an itch.

And trying to recoup at least a part of those losses by selling the result is not unreasonable, but it should be considered a best-effort optimization. In the end, you still end up paying for the privilege of, essentially, having other people admire your work. It reminds me of some sci-fi story I vaguely remember from a long time ago, about a true post-scarcity society where everything is free, except for other people's attention, which therefore becomes currency. There's nothing else to do for humans other than arts, so everyone is doing that - and now you're paying someone to e.g. read your book, and then they can use that money to pay someone else to look at their painting etc.

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#344

Post by 18pfsmt »

kiostech wrote: post #328

Dear all, I am the guy who shares this post on Hacker News. First and foremost, I wanna said that I am NOT the original author of the blog. Also, I am NOT advertising for the original author. As a software developer in Hong Kong, I am researching articles about game dev and find this interesting case. Therefore, I just wanna share on HN. The discussion about this blog is really overwhelming. I hope that everybody can…

Please don't take offense: Just FYI, 'wanna' is a contraction of 'want to,' so writing 'wanna to' is redundant.

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#345

Post by hannasanarion »

gmueckl wrote: post #338
hannasanarion wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a valid comparison, because what he made is essentially the same game. And I said that in response to the guess that maybe the 62,000 lines of code was all game logic, which is absurd . Game logic, like, "when the player presses the fire button, spawn a missile" and "this enemy goes up 5 units, then goes down 5 units, then repeats". That's not the kind of thing that will change much from one metroid clone to an…

> It is practically always the smallest part of the final product. What do you base this statement on? There are several classes of games where this is definitely not true.

In what class of game?

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#346

Post by earenndil »

18pfsmt wrote: post #344
kiostech wrote: post #328

Dear all, I am the guy who shares this post on Hacker News. First and foremost, I wanna said that I am NOT the original author of the blog. Also, I am NOT advertising for the original author. As a software developer in Hong Kong, I am researching articles about game dev and find this interesting case. Therefore, I just wanna share on HN. The discussion about this blog is really overwhelming. I hope that everybody can…

Please don't take offense: Just FYI, 'wanna' is a contraction of 'want to,' so writing 'wanna to' is redundant.

Please do don't take offense: Just FYI, calling out random strangers on the internet for improper or redundant grammar is a waste of your time and theirs.

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#347

Post by earenndil »

gnulinux wrote: post #318
Retra wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It works like gambling. You play the game 100 times and you just lose most of them, but on the rare occasion you get very lucky... and you walk away with an unforgettable story about how you defied all the odds and did something wonderful and amazing. That's where procedural generation shines the brightest.

I suppose that's true. But one can imagine a game just like nethack except it's not as easy to die so after, say 20 run, you learn the ropes and can enjoy the game every time you play it. Obviously, eventually you'll get bored (unlike playing 100 times and losing every time) but that few times you beat the game would be enjoyable.

I don't know about the getting bored part. Some people have been playing nethack for several decades (without winning!).

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#348

Post by tempestn »

earenndil wrote: post #346
18pfsmt wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't take offense: Just FYI, 'wanna' is a contraction of 'want to,' so writing 'wanna to' is redundant.

Please do don't take offense: Just FYI, calling out random strangers on the internet for improper or redundant grammar is a waste of your time and theirs.

It depends. Personally I'm happy to have my grammar corrected, as long as it's done with good intentions. Perhaps I'm in the minority. I do normally avoid correcting others though, since it's difficult to tell whether someone will be receptive (or offended).

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#349

Post by adt2bt »

earenndil wrote: post #346
18pfsmt wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't take offense: Just FYI, 'wanna' is a contraction of 'want to,' so writing 'wanna to' is redundant.

Please do don't take offense: Just FYI, calling out random strangers on the internet for improper or redundant grammar is a waste of your time and theirs.

Op mentioned they’re from HK, it wasn’t a call out as much as a helpful tip to a (probably) not native English speaker. If anything, your comment was far less necessary and rude.

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#350

Post by darkmighty »

krapp wrote: post #259
the_cat_kittles wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is why i feel compelled to think about things that are necessarily localized. how the hell can you compete with the whole world?

You're not actually competing with the whole world, though, just whatever else is similar to someone's interests. In this case... "metroidvania" is a very oversaturated market, and a lot of games do it better.

Indeed, you have to look for niches -- and find the ones that are in

1) high demand (not just high demand in general -- high demand for new/better content by a new entrant);

2) low supply;

3) well paying customers.

I'm sure despite the flood those will still exist, as long as there's still a good amount of differentiation between people's preferences. A niche is a small subset of in the space of products that a small subset of customers have strong preference to. This needs preference differentiation.

This preference difference could be toward many features: cultural setting, story style, gameplay style, aesthetic style, etc.

There's perhaps a combinatorial advantage here: if sensitivity varies significantly across many of those parameters, just choose any unexplored subset, optimizing for 1/2/3 -- there are exponentially many in the number of distinguishing features (if you browse Steam tags you see this is potentially a very large number!).

https://store.steampowered.com/tag/browse#global_492

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