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Show HN: I got laid off from Meta and created a minor hit on Steam

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Re: Show HN: I got laid off from Meta and created a minor hit on Steam

#161

Post by mattfrommars »

I'm been fascinated to make games but never truly jumped into it. I'd love to pick it as a hobby but quiet unable to balance this hobby when always worrying about to put time into 'doing certification' or doing 'LC'. To get an idea on your situation and compare it with mine,

1) did you have any formal game development experience in the past? say in school? 2) since you made it into FAANG, did you LC before or time during FAANG to find another FAANG job? 3) does anyone in your personal circle does game development? 4) so instead of first developing the game, you already were in talking with publishers? what kind of background did you have for publisher to 'ok' you which i'm guessing supported you financially?

Re: Show HN: I got laid off from Meta and created a minor hit on Steam

#162

Post by martinmakesgame »

newobj wrote: post #97
mattigames wrote: post #89

What is your opinion about the top bad review on Steam? Have you addressed those issues or perhaps you disagree with them? Posted here for reference > Really fun game at first, and it has a lot of potential. Unfortunately you are very strongly incentivized to NOT UNLOCK ANYTHING (i.e. the meta-progression).... because after you unlock many additional items and get to the higher difficulties, the vast majority of runs…

It was intentional that the game got harder by broadening the pool of drafts. The design goal was that you need to develop your skill to build more flexible boards, that don't rely on just forcing a single synergy to materialize. Unfortunately, I don't think the game communicates this goal well, AND prevailing design trends (rogueli T e, which this game is NOT) I think have trained players to expect that games should…

The widening of the pool of drafts doesn't work because it is not fun. When you find something that works you want to use it as much as possible because as the player all I want to see is the numbers get higher and higher. This is where the fun is. Most of the additional drafts aren't fun. Some I never use. When I play I don't even care about the forces that make it harder at the start anymore because most of the gameplay comes from what cards show which is heavy random number generator. There should be a continue play button when you fail the run though just so you can keep playing and see the numbers go higher and higher.

Re: Show HN: I got laid off from Meta and created a minor hit on Steam

#164

Post by pfisch »

Use every sale period available to you and not as weekly sales. Make custom 14 day sales.

Add steam cards to the game asap. You should start doing this right after reading this comment really.

Also you should lobby steam for a daily deal sometime next month. If they say yes you should set that daily deal for the day the summer sale ends if you can.

Also you should push raw fury to do a publisher sale, those can really generate a lot of money.

I've been managing games on Steam for a long time and doing stuff like what I said will have a very large impact on your long tail revenue. I'm the game director of Kingmakers.

Also you should really have some kind of DLC asap, even if it is small or like an art book even. You are just leaving money on the table because there are gamers with lots of money on steam who just buy all the dlc when they buy games.

Re: Show HN: I got laid off from Meta and created a minor hit on Steam

#165

Post by sarchertech »

devsda wrote: post #155
sarchertech wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not a thing. I’m not sure where you heard that. Large companies definitely don’t try to prohibit you from telling people you worked there.

> Large companies definitely don’t try to prohibit you from telling people you worked there. They don't. But they do sometimes prohibit talking/writing about their work, the nature of it or anything remotely connected to it. My current employer explicitly prohibits us from blogging about technical topics, creating learning material or even teaching anyone on technical subjects(e.g. on weekends at nearby school) outsi…

That’s not very common either. I’ve never signed anything like that in 20 years in the industry (worked everywhere from tiny startups to very large tech companies).

In the case where your company does have a policy that that prohibits you from discussing the nature of your work, it’s likely completely unenforceable beyond them firing firing you.

The prohibition from teaching or blogging is definitely unenforceable.

Re: Show HN: I got laid off from Meta and created a minor hit on Steam

#168

Post by makerdiety »

monideas wrote: post #116
newobj wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Appreciate the thought but that's a full time job. I have to conserve whatever energy I have to actually work on the game. (Seriously, I think a lot of devs distract themselves with this stuff. Just make your damn game.)

That type of content is extremely useful for younger developers and the publicity probably has other benefits, but it's not for everyone.

[flagged]

Re: Show HN: I got laid off from Meta and created a minor hit on Steam

#169

Post by p1necone »

newobj wrote: post #147
Nition wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly very impressive to plan a one-year game project and have it take one year! How many planned features did you have to cut? ;)

None. What I delivered is what was in the contract.

I think people doing gamedev who have/had a day job writing business software have a tendency to eschew all the boring scope/time management/actually shipping stuff because being able to just write the code you want and spend however long you want polishing it is so freeing.

Seeing someone come from the corporate world to gamedev and seemingly carry over all the right lessons and keep the discipline is pretty awesome, kudos.

Re: Show HN: I got laid off from Meta and created a minor hit on Steam

#170

Post by crazypyro »

Love your game.

Is there any plans for expansions? I find the different maps to be less interesting. I want some kind of harder progression, higher levels of difficulties and of course more of everything that exists.

I found myself out of stuff to do at ~20 hours (which is awesome and beats a lot of games I've tried to buy.).

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