I think early equity funding has a role to play in video games… a role that’s very similar to YC. So I started EGG: https://www.elbowgreasegames.com/
You need a lot more information on your site to give this idea credibility.
Games don't need venture capitalism
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Re: Games don't need venture capitalism
#72I think early equity funding has a role to play in video games… a role that’s very similar to YC. So I started EGG: https://www.elbowgreasegames.com/
You need a lot more information on your site to give this idea credibility.
You’re right.
Though I haven’t formally announced yet. I’m more lurking in the shadows talking to studios quietly than trying to be noticed by the public at large.
I will post more info soon.
Re: Games don't need venture capitalism
#73Games in this day and age ideally need generous government subsidy to be successful. I feel we're a long way off universal basic income worldwide so at the very least, something like an artist's living wage provided by the government is a necessity to produce good independent video games. Most professional indie developers tend to survive rather than thrive, barely kept afloat by money from publishers who also have t…
Government subsidies are a wonderful source of pre publisher funds but in many places (like the US) they don’t really exist for video games.
Re: Games don't need venture capitalism
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not clear to me how you can say that in good faith. There are just too many instances of artists who died destitute only to be considered one of the greats many years after the fact. And the ones that didn't were bankrolled by a wealthy individual. thirdly, many artists draw things they don't really want to because that thing sells better than what they enjoy drawing. It's optimizing for a different thing than w…
Because what other good measure is there? You mention great artists who died destitute - but we consider them great because they are posthumously popular. We can't look into the future to see what stands the test of time, so current popularity and commercial success seem like the best proxies. >thirdly, many artists draw things they don't really want to because that thing sells better than what they enjoy drawing. It…
We place a great cultural value on art.
Bear in mind that "art" is not just "paintings and poems". Novels are art. Movies and television shows are art. Music (of all types) is art. Games, indeed, are art.
Basically anything that you might turn to for entertainment and aesthetic pleasure is art, and as humans we need it in our lives—both consuming and, in a great many cases, creating.
But many forms of art have always been commercially non-viable. Many if not most of the best-known painters and sculptors from times past fell into one of two categories: those who had wealthy patrons, and those who died destitute.
Why should we say that only those artists whose work meets some arbitrary standard of commercial success are allowed to create art without spending most of their waking hours doing something else, or else having to constantly worry whether they'll be able to live to see another year?
Re: Games don't need venture capitalism
#75They need something. I've been trying to crack into this space for a better part of a decade. Ideas that come naturally to me that I spend hundreds of hours on end up being limited by ludicrous amount of art requirements to be considered acceptable in my mind to the public audience. I'm not interested in releasing an 8-bit (but looks worse somehow) pixel art clone of a popular genre. I want to make something truly in…
> ludicrous amount of art requirements to be considered acceptable in my mind to the public audience Do you want to do the next Carmack game? Not even Carmack is doing Carmack games any more :) > releasing an 8-bit (but looks worse somehow) pixel art clone Good pixel art is harder than it looks and I'm not sure it takes less time. But there is a middle ground between fake 8 bit and high budget with hundreds of artist…
I was talking specifically about indie games that have obviously not very high quality pixel art with my statement.
Re: Games don't need venture capitalism
#76They need something. I've been trying to crack into this space for a better part of a decade. Ideas that come naturally to me that I spend hundreds of hours on end up being limited by ludicrous amount of art requirements to be considered acceptable in my mind to the public audience. I'm not interested in releasing an 8-bit (but looks worse somehow) pixel art clone of a popular genre. I want to make something truly in…
I never did any game development but I feel the same way. I never pursued this path but I kinda wish I did in some way and the idea that maybe it's not too late to switch comes back every so often but the scope feels impossible. I wonder if AI tools making the art would be a big enabler for small indie studios. Still, it does seem like 10 - 100x effort required to make a good 3D video game that sells vs. making an even somewhat complex app.
Re: Games don't need venture capitalism
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because what other good measure is there? You mention great artists who died destitute - but we consider them great because they are posthumously popular. We can't look into the future to see what stands the test of time, so current popularity and commercial success seem like the best proxies. >thirdly, many artists draw things they don't really want to because that thing sells better than what they enjoy drawing. It…
There's a common complaint you'll see about google. They hired the brightest minds of our generation ... to work on ads rather than the betterment of humanity. You're saying artists should optimize for money, the other poster is saying they should optimize for fulfillment. The output you get from one vs the other is vastly different because the underlying incentives are vastly different. > Because what other good mea…
Unless you go for UBI, art subsidies will be finite. You need a measure to decide who gets subsidized and who doesn't. We're not talking about people doing art as a hobby after all, but about the government paying people to make art.
I'm not saying artists should optimize for money but financial sustainability. It seems like a good target because it indicates popularity and means you need less subsidies. You don't need to make _all_ the money or even break even, but if nobody is interested in paying you, the odds are good that you're not enriching many peoples lives.
Re: Games don't need venture capitalism
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because what other good measure is there? You mention great artists who died destitute - but we consider them great because they are posthumously popular. We can't look into the future to see what stands the test of time, so current popularity and commercial success seem like the best proxies. >thirdly, many artists draw things they don't really want to because that thing sells better than what they enjoy drawing. It…
We place a great cultural value on art. Bear in mind that "art" is not just "paintings and poems". Novels are art. Movies and television shows are art. Music (of all types) is art. Games, indeed, are art. Basically anything that you might turn to for entertainment and aesthetic pleasure is art, and as humans we need it in our lives—both consuming and, in a great many cases, creating. But many forms of art have always…
Because we don't live in a world with UBI, so we have to decide how to allocate finite resources. The alternative to using some arbitrary standard of commercial success is some other arbitrary standard (unless you introduce UBI).
If we want to optimize for enrichment of people's lives through art, "how many people are willing to pay for it" seems like the best proxy we have. Not to mention that people with some financial success will be less costly to subsidize.
Like, if I had to choose between subsidizing two musicians projected to make half of living wage and a single musician earning nothing, to me that's a pretty obvious choice. The musician earning nothing might be a true visionary who will be recognized in the future, but the odds are far more likely that the music they produce just doesn't hold much appeal.
Now, commercial success is of course not a perfect measure for "enrichment", but, again, what's the alternative? Currently it's some government body deciding, though this holds the quite elitist assumption that the taste of the art establishment is better.
Re: Games don't need venture capitalism
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you actually can reduce a lot of it to a formula. Most major games that come out are basically a modern remake of something that already exists and was popular. Just rehashing the same concepts and improving them is a pretty solid strategy. This strategy won’t create the Minecrafts and Stardew vallies, but it covers the bulk of game development.
I don't really like this argument because it reduces down to "all art is derivative". While true, it's not really useful. It leads to things like there being only 37 possible stories [1] and people pointing out how Shakespeare is derivative, which is a true but essentially useless statement. Even if a story is exactly the same, like going to see a Shakespeare play, we still do it because the performance matters, the…
That's not quite what I'm saying. I'm suggesting that there is a formula and predictability to successful games. If you do something pretty much the same as the thing that succeeded several times previously, it's more likely to succeed again than a wildly novel idea.
Re: Games don't need venture capitalism
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a common complaint you'll see about google. They hired the brightest minds of our generation ... to work on ads rather than the betterment of humanity. You're saying artists should optimize for money, the other poster is saying they should optimize for fulfillment. The output you get from one vs the other is vastly different because the underlying incentives are vastly different. > Because what other good mea…
Unless you go for UBI, art subsidies will be finite. You need a measure to decide who gets subsidized and who doesn't. We're not talking about people doing art as a hobby after all, but about the government paying people to make art. I'm not saying artists should optimize for money but financial sustainability. It seems like a good target because it indicates popularity and means you need less subsidies. You don't ne…
financial stability is a different word for money.
no one is saying the government needs to specifically pay for art, the original discussion was about how to determine the worth of art. You think money is the right proxy, the other poster thinks fulfillment is the right proxy.
yes the other poster was hinting at UBI and using artists as a proxy for people being able to work on what they find interesting. you strawmanned that into an argument that governments are being asked to specifically pay for art.