Did I just waste 3 years? • Hacker News Board

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#391

Post by bemmu » Mon, Oct 01, 2018, 5:23 AM UTC

invalidusernam3 wrote: post #230

Nokinside wrote: post #150

Game industry is the economics of superstars. The Macroeconomics of Superstars[1] >Abstract >Recent technological changes have transformed an increasing number of sectors of the economy into so-called superstars sectors, in which a small number of entrepreneurs or professionals distribute their output widely to the rest of the economy. Examples include the high-tech sector, sports, the music industry, management, fna…

Game development is hard, it seems like it's completely hit or miss, there is no middle ground. I've released 5 games, but I have to say, spending 2,600+ hours on something without doing market research or at least starting small seems crazy. My most successful game was an app for iOS which made me a grand total of around $30. The difference is I only spent around 80 hours working on it (40 or so for the game, 20 or…

Instead of making a game for some category on Steam and hoping it sells enough in the first month before sales drop off, I wonder if it could work to make a super-super niche game where the goal would be to rank for a Google search term instead.

You'd try to be very long-lived, steadily selling for years, say just a few copies a week. All traffic would come from people who have some incredibly niche interest they are searching for, say baptism planners discovering your "baptism planner simulator 2000".

If you continued to make games like these say one per month or two, it might be possible to gradually build up a liveable income from them.

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#392

Post by TeMPOraL » Mon, Oct 01, 2018, 5:25 AM UTC

gmueckl wrote: post #355

hannasanarion wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what class of game?

Adventures and RPGs are the most obvious ones. There, the story-based interactions quickly turn into tons of game logic corner cases that must be handled. Also, the rule sets for RPG character stats and fighting interactions (strengths, weaknesses, immunities, temporary effects, combos...) generally are pretty insane. Oh, and lest we forget: game logic does not stop once you figured out at a high level that X has to…

> It still needs to set up and drive all the presentation that goes with it on top of the pure bookkeeping.

Yup, a lot of "game logic" is in fact bookkeeping, i.e. self-inflicted complexity. It's not necessary, but is what happens when you overdo it (though IMO it's more often a symptom of using more frameworks and libraries than less).

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#393

Post by kbenson » Mon, Oct 01, 2018, 5:25 AM UTC

eksemplar wrote: post #383

chongli wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. At this point, recommending that a 9-5 programmer quit their job to work on an indie game is equivalent to suggesting a PR writer quit their job to write the next Great American Novel.

It was always like that though. Game programming had always been the worst field for programmers, and the industry had and is exploiting the fact that some people like games enough to work on them under horrible conditions. I don’t think it’s the equivalent to writing the great American novel though, because programming is just a minor part of game creating and arguably one of the least important. Design I’d the most…

> The author of this article rants about the swarm of unity games, but some of those unity games are better than what the author made exactly because they took design seriously.

Did we read the same article?

Not only the total number of games, but the rate of their release seems to be geometrically increasing! Holy crap. And while many of them are Unity shovelware, etc., many are polished games that a lot of effort went into. A tiny percentage are hits, but most are forgotten in the deluge.

To me that reads as someone that's fully aware that some people are putting a lot of effort in and making good games (Unity or not), but is upset by the realization that quality doesn't seem to be nearly enough. The problem is not (just) that a lot of crap is being released, but that a lot of everything is being released, good and bad. So much so that even the good things can't make good money because supply has so far outstripped demand.

It's sort of like the Netflix queue problem. I'm continuously adding things to my Netflix queue that look interesting, but my time to actually watch them is such that my chance of getting through even a majority of the queue is almost nil.

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#394

Post by theossuary » Mon, Oct 01, 2018, 5:30 AM UTC

honkycat wrote: post #168

rolleiflex wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Linux desktop market share is tiny. My own app supports Linux, but I'm 100% aware that I'm doing it at a loss in every possible way, it's a passion project. Bang for buck is terrible, so you need to justify as a labour of love. - The amount of pain one needs to endure to get a Linux desktop to work as it should is huge, and there are several competing packaging providers with no clear winner, and all have very much…

I disagree with your assertion Linux desktops are hard to set up. You plug in your Ubuntu drive and install it, it detects your video card and install the drivers. Everything just works, when people rag on Linux desktops they are talking about Linux from 6 years ago. A ton of effort has been put into making the experience smooth and there are multiple projects to make it even more user friendly like elementary os and…

Me and my HiDPI monitor disagree.

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#395

Post by eksemplar » Mon, Oct 01, 2018, 5:33 AM UTC

kbenson wrote: post #393

eksemplar wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was always like that though. Game programming had always been the worst field for programmers, and the industry had and is exploiting the fact that some people like games enough to work on them under horrible conditions. I don’t think it’s the equivalent to writing the great American novel though, because programming is just a minor part of game creating and arguably one of the least important. Design I’d the most…

> The author of this article rants about the swarm of unity games, but some of those unity games are better than what the author made exactly because they took design seriously. Did we read the same article? Not only the total number of games, but the rate of their release seems to be geometrically increasing! Holy crap. And while many of them are Unity shovelware, etc., many are polished games that a lot of effort w…

To me it reads as someone who disregards unity games, while praising well made indie games in general. And in the light of the rest of the article, the author seem to favor people who did good programming, but the truth is that you don’t need to be a good programmer to make good games.

I think supply is an issue, but I also think the author added to the problem by releasing a game that doesn’t have appealing graphics, gameplay or sound. Where as many much of the unity “shovelware” is exactly the opposite.

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#396

Post by hexane360 » Mon, Oct 01, 2018, 5:33 AM UTC

ALittleLight wrote: post #275

adamnemecek wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not actually because even if you fail, you’ll be in a better position skillwise.

I'd think this is more true for a writer than a programmer. You could probably attempt to program a game by spaghetti coding, copy pasting from stack overflow and tutorials, not using version control or tests, and working solo - at the end you'd have a lot of bad habits and not so much that would be useful at a professional studio.

Your impression may be biased because you're more familiar with bad programming habits than bad writing habits.

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#397

Post by kbenson » Mon, Oct 01, 2018, 5:35 AM UTC

ALittleLight wrote: post #275

adamnemecek wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not actually because even if you fail, you’ll be in a better position skillwise.

I'd think this is more true for a writer than a programmer. You could probably attempt to program a game by spaghetti coding, copy pasting from stack overflow and tutorials, not using version control or tests, and working solo - at the end you'd have a lot of bad habits and not so much that would be useful at a professional studio.

Some people use mistakes as a launch pad to learn a better way. Not always, and not always immediately, but sometimes it takes dealing with the negative consequences to make the better solution obvious when finally encountered.

Sometimes convincing someone to spend the extra 10-20% of time or effort to do something "the hard way" is nigh impossible until they've spend time doing the alternative and know the extended pain that sometimes results.

It's sort of like seat belts. When they were first required in all vehicles, many people still didn't bother with them. Even before cultural indoctrination took over, a lot of people eventually started too. It took some close calls for people or their friends and family for them to finally make the effort, and such a small effort it was. I saw exactly this play out with my own parents and their siblings.

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#398

Post by TeMPOraL » Mon, Oct 01, 2018, 5:35 AM UTC

derefr wrote: post #285

scrollaway wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stardew Valley is insane. The developer did everything . Art, music, sound effects, engine, gameplay, design, writing... everything.

Stardew Valley is an interesting case in that the developer didn't really need to invent anything. They took a formula (the Harvest Moon series), produced a clone, and then polished the hell out of it in response to community demands until it was hardly recognizable. None of that really required an act of genius creative talent, though. Learning enough about audio production to create the set of SFX and music you alr…

> Learning enough about audio production to create the set of SFX and music you already know you need from the top-down design of the clone-game you already know you're aiming for is effectively "just" grunt work. (...) Stardew Valley's creator didn't need to develop the skills to be an amazing artist or musician, they just needed—like the actor—to develop the skills to create a particular pastiche of existing pieces of art and music.

Would almost agree but you had to bring up this :). I actually talked with SDV developer about his music skills[0]. Turns out, music was his hobby prior to becoming a developer, so he has a lot of experience. So in this case I wouldn't say it's "just', and it definitely wasn't a skill developed for this game.

--

[0] -- https://www.reddit.com/r/StardewValley/comments/4acds9/how_d...

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#399

Post by TeMPOraL » Mon, Oct 01, 2018, 5:39 AM UTC

scrollaway wrote: post #252

aswanson wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minecraft.

GP is completely wrong on their last assertion. You do not need AAA quality to make it as a game dev. But citing Minecraft reinforces their first assertion. Minecraft was an underrepresented genre, released early, with an (accidentally) excellent marketing technique. Above all, the code is an atrocious, unoptimized Java pile of crap (Yeah, I used to be into Minecraft dev in the early days). It's the best proof you ca…

SDV is another example; the author himself admitted on numerous occasions that the code is, well, not stellar, and in the community we also had some fun reading through decompilations of the parts of the game.

Yet another proof would be surprising number of very games made in tools like GameMaker - think Nuclear Throne, or Cook Serve Delicious. I actually took a peek at the sources of the latter (they were distributed with some Humble Bundle once), and it's... reinforcing this point.

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#400

Post by kbenson » Mon, Oct 01, 2018, 5:42 AM UTC

eksemplar wrote: post #395

kbenson wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The author of this article rants about the swarm of unity games, but some of those unity games are better than what the author made exactly because they took design seriously. Did we read the same article? Not only the total number of games, but the rate of their release seems to be geometrically increasing! Holy crap. And while many of them are Unity shovelware, etc., many are polished games that a lot of effort w…

To me it reads as someone who disregards unity games, while praising well made indie games in general. And in the light of the rest of the article, the author seem to favor people who did good programming, but the truth is that you don’t need to be a good programmer to make good games. I think supply is an issue, but I also think the author added to the problem by releasing a game that doesn’t have appealing graphics…

> Where as many much of the unity “shovelware” is exactly the opposite.

I think the difference of interpretation we're having is that I think you are interpreting "Unity shovelware" to mean "If it's Unity it's crap", which nobody who follows that space could easily defend (a lot of high quality well known games and publishers use Unity). But a lot of shovelware uses Unity, because it's easy to get assets for and publish with.

It's sort of like saying "Java enterprise crap-ware". I wouldn't assume that means all Java programs are crap, or that all enterprise software is crap, but that of the crappy software targeted towards the enterprise, a lot uses Java. That's not an indictment of Java, and might actually be the opposite, given that it has qualities that cover up other poor choices.