Did I just waste 3 years? • Hacker News Board

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#481

Post by Jnr » Mon, Oct 01, 2018, 12:19 PM UTC

fiblye wrote: post #444

fileeditview wrote: post #430

After being active in the indie game dev scene for many years I see this kind of story again and again. I see many people ask why didn't it work or others say he should have done better marketing. I think they all don't understand the real problem. You have to look at really successful indie games, such as Terraria, Factorio, Mini Metro, Stardew Valley, Darkest Dungeon, Papers Please.. and there are many more. If you…

>You have to look at really successful indie games, such as Terraria, Factorio, Mini Metro, Stardew Valley, Darkest Dungeon, Papers Please.. and there are many more. If you look at these games do you really think there is an alternative reality where they would not sell many copies? I don't. Very much yes. Most of their success is due to being fortunate enough to get a bunch of coverage. From screenshots, most aren't…

I have to agree that exposure is probably more important.

I have bought many games after watching popular Youtubers play them.

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#482

Post by fileeditview » Mon, Oct 01, 2018, 12:21 PM UTC

rolleiflex wrote: post #447

fileeditview wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market may be tiny but it is a lot easier to sell copies of a (decent) game because Linux users will love you for supporting their platform. You also don't need to support every distro on the planet. Just focus on Ubuntu. With proper planning and choosing your game engine wisely it's not the biggest deal to build for Linux.

My experience (though I'm not a game developer) is the opposite. Linux users are very demanding, and instead of being thankful that your app works well on Linux, they'll take the fact that it works and works well on Linux for granted, and will resent you for charging money for it. If you support Ubuntu+Debian (1.15% user base globally on average), the next feature request you'll get will be Xubuntu, Arch, and then so…

I agree that Linux users can also be a pain to deal with :)

But yea from my experience the game market is a little different because there is a growing group of people that rather would not boot Windows for gaming and instead stay on their platform. This group of people is very thankful for ported games.

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#483

Post by sago » Mon, Oct 01, 2018, 12:32 PM UTC

Yes. You did. Sadly.

And it is very little to do with luck or numbers or the state of the industry.

Good indie games:

1. are almost never distinguished by programming (the days of Doom are gone and you are not John Carmack). Far too much time is spent coding. Use existing tools. Code only gameplay.

2. are much more about art. The trailer looks like programmer art: no coherent style, no direction, no class. If this is what you produce. You need a collaborator.

3. are even more about feel. Your character movement is janky. Jumping is floaty. Shooting feels flaccid. There is little sense of gravity, inertia or impact. If it isn't fun to move around a single screen, it's not fun.

4. need a hook. There is almost nothing original about this game. You've got about 10 seconds to hook me. (10 seconds into the trailer you cut to a mostly empty UI.) Find the wow. And zealously focus on it.

5. need to be polished. Ambient animation. Consistent sound effects. Screen shake. Lighting. Particles. UI. These are implemented. But none of them particularly well. And they don't tie together into a whole.

6. need to be marketed. Someone needs to be working on that.

7. needs to catch (or create) a zeitgeist. So many features of this game shout '2014' to me.

8. needs a bit of luck. But beware! The converse is very rarely true. If your game isn't successful, it is probably _not_ because you were unlucky. The game probably wasn't very good. Don't spend your time trying to find alternative explanations. Be brutal with yourself. In game terms, git gud.

So this is harsh I know. I'm sorry. But frank. I've been in the industry for more than 20 years. 99.9% of games fail horribly. But 99.9% of them are not very good. This has absolutely always been the case. It's just that the 'fail point' used to be the publisher pitch. Now you don't need a publisher, you get to fail in public.

So yes three years have been ...um... call it learning. I suggest you do more jams. Figure out what it takes to win. Find a game artist. Use tools. Build prototypes. And start to build a community.

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#484

Post by noirbot » Mon, Oct 01, 2018, 12:33 PM UTC

Rainymood wrote: post #453

fiblye wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You have to look at really successful indie games, such as Terraria, Factorio, Mini Metro, Stardew Valley, Darkest Dungeon, Papers Please.. and there are many more. If you look at these games do you really think there is an alternative reality where they would not sell many copies? I don't. Very much yes. Most of their success is due to being fortunate enough to get a bunch of coverage. From screenshots, most aren't…

>Most of their success is due to being fortunate enough to get a bunch of coverage. From screenshots, most aren't very spectacular. Stardew Valley takes the formula of an existing series (Harvest Moon). >To make a successful anything, it's 90% marketing, 5% quality, and 5% luck. If the right person finds your product and endorses it, quality doesn't matter. You'll get guaranteed sales. It's then that it takes quality…

I think it's also important to point out that Stardew is in an odd place as a "remake". It's one thing to try to make the 10th battle royale that's coming out this year, and another to do what Stardew did: be, as far as I know, the first full-featured Harvest Moon-like to come out for PC, and also come out at a time where it had been a while since ANY good Harvest Moon game had released, even on consoles.

It filled a niche for gamers who had grown up playing HM on Gameboy, but hadn't been able to really scratch that itch. If anything, his choice of genre to work in was genius. It was a passionate and pre-made fanbase that was craving a new game to jump onto, and he happened to make an excellent game as well.

It also helps that HM is a highly generic game/genre. There's very little about what makes the original games popular that is trademarked. I played thousands of hours of a couple of them, and I probably can't name any of the characters any more. You can easily make an "off-brand" remake, and most people won't miss anything specific. You wouldn't be able to just go make a knock-off Pokemon and have it work, even though the demand for it on PC is high.

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#485

Post by Draiken » Mon, Oct 01, 2018, 12:34 PM UTC

cursorial wrote: post #462

fiblye wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You have to look at really successful indie games, such as Terraria, Factorio, Mini Metro, Stardew Valley, Darkest Dungeon, Papers Please.. and there are many more. If you look at these games do you really think there is an alternative reality where they would not sell many copies? I don't. Very much yes. Most of their success is due to being fortunate enough to get a bunch of coverage. From screenshots, most aren't…

Factorio doesn't look very visually appealing, but if you play it for an hour you can pretty much write off your next week because you'll be hooked.

People use the word "graphics" and "sound" often, but that's not all that makes a game. So many indie "ugly" games work out just fine. It's all about the gameplay. You can make the graphics and the sound be a core part of that, but you can also focus on other places.

Factorio and Dwarf Fortress are two examples of those. Can someone say their graphics are amazing? Probably not. Yet they focused on their differentials: the unique gameplay.

I have to agree with the GP. They're always unique in one form or another.

People however overuse the marketing card IMO, saying that you need a lot of marketing. Good games do stand out for being good games. Word of mouth only works if your game is good. Nobody will urge their friends to play a bad game and for indie games, word of mouth is king. You can't "force" word of mouth marketing, so it's not really a marketing effort. It comes naturally with good games.

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#486

Post by Draiken » Mon, Oct 01, 2018, 12:39 PM UTC

beaconstudios wrote: post #477

bspammer wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely not true, I've never seen an advert for Stardew Valley but it's talked about all over the internet because it's a really good game.

> but it's talked about all over the internet Word-of-mouth is marketing too. Perhaps you are thinking that marketing === advertising? Because marketing doesn't have to be advertising. Building a community, attending conferences, getting influencers to play your game - these are all marketing activities. If people are talking about the game, it's surely fueled by a quality experience but marketing has to bootstrap th…

Word-of-mouth might be marketing, but it's not something you can work towards. To get that you need a good fun game. IMO that's not a marketing effort, it's a symptom of a good unique game.

I'm not a marketing expert tho, but I can't think of any way to force word-of-mouth onto people.

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#487

Post by Wheaties466 » Mon, Oct 01, 2018, 12:46 PM UTC

I really hate when people try to justify them not being successful saying something along the lines of, i'm smart why am I not successful.

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#488

Post by eru » Mon, Oct 01, 2018, 12:51 PM UTC

jondubois wrote: post #473

detritus wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...and what about all the other countries?

The currencies of developed countries are pegged to the US dollar and so their reserve banks are just copying whatever the Fed is doing; their main goal is to make sure that the value of their currencies doesn't change too much relative to the USD. All countries reinforce the same economic distortions on a global scale.

Any evidence of that pegging?

The relatively stable exchange rates can be explained by entirely orthodox inflation targeting together with purchasing-power-parity pretty well.

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#489

Post by jerguismi » Mon, Oct 01, 2018, 12:51 PM UTC

bspammer wrote: post #471

fiblye wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You have to look at really successful indie games, such as Terraria, Factorio, Mini Metro, Stardew Valley, Darkest Dungeon, Papers Please.. and there are many more. If you look at these games do you really think there is an alternative reality where they would not sell many copies? I don't. Very much yes. Most of their success is due to being fortunate enough to get a bunch of coverage. From screenshots, most aren't…

> To make a successful anything, it's 90% marketing, 5% quality, and 5% luck This seems very logical but indie games really do seem to defy this general rule. Pretty much every single popular indie game out there is really, really good in it's own specific way, and most of them had almost no marketing budget (when they first came out anyway). Minecraft had no marketing. Terraria had no marketing. Stardew Valley had n…

"Stardew Valley had no marketing."

Bullshit claim. They did really clever marketing where they provided the beta release beforehand to few prominent twitch streamers, and in my knowledge also did all kinds of other pre-release hype, community building etc. I'm pretty sure also the other titles invested quite a lot of time, smarts and money towards marketing.

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#490

Post by tialaramex » Mon, Oct 01, 2018, 12:52 PM UTC

orangecat wrote: post #156

sweden wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I consider myself as a big fan of Metroidvanias, I'm even the kind of person who actively looks for new games in this genre, and those were my thoughts as well. I would even say that this game manages to hit the 3 points in which I avoid on a Metroidvania: 1. Rogue-like. I really dislike rogue-like, no special reason, just a personal preference 2. Lack of a plot. I appreciate the feeling of exploring a world the feel…

#1 and #2 are strongly related. Procedural generation makes it much harder to create a sense of a coherent world, rather than a series of disconnected mini-games.

And yet Dead Cells does the Metroidvania Roguelite thing and has a plot.

In fact being a Roguelite is woven into the plot, characters aren't surprised to see you, after all you were just here last session, the mounds of festering corpses prompt you to remark that they're all the same... They're all you.