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The Rise and Fall of the Lone Game Developer

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Re: The Rise and Fall of the Lone Game Developer

#91

Post by barbs »

codexon wrote: post #88
barbs wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No modding in Blizzard's new games. What about Starcraft Arcade, which makes use of Blizzard-provided tools to heavily mod the game? http://us.battle.net/arcade/en/ > No modding in Dota2. Valve announced workshop tools that would allow users "to create, play, and share custom maps and game modes for Dota 2." http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/discussions/-1/3522031560...

> What about Starcraft Arcade, which makes use of Blizzard-provided tools to heavily mod the game? Starcraft 2 is not recent anymore. Out of WoW, Diablo 3, Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, and Overwatch, it is the only one. > Valve announced workshop tools that would allow users "to create, play, and share custom maps and game modes for Dota 2." Announced about half a year ago with no apparent progress? And the game…

> * Starcraft 2 is not recent anymore. Out of WoW...*

Starcraft 2 is still quite heavily played, and an expansion is still in the works.

I don't see how you can say Starcraft 2 is not recent, and then use WoW to further your point, when that game was released many years prior.

The fact that Dota 2's workshop tools are still in alpha is irrelevant. The fact is, there is a healthy, modding community within Dota 2, and this is being officially supported by Valve. It is also growing all the time, which contradicts your point that we are "headed for the dark ages of PC gaming".

Re: The Rise and Fall of the Lone Game Developer

#92

Post by mattmanser »

ANTSANTS wrote: post #66
munificent wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The indie dev scene is thriving on PC. Back when I was a console developer at EA, the ambient wisdom was that the money was falling out of (non-online) PC games in large part because of piracy. Is that not the case? Do you happen to have numbers on what the PC game industry is like? How much of this is because of Steam?

When did you work there? What you heard at EA applies to AAA console devs. If you're gambling everything on a blockbuster game with an enormous budget, it's true, I don't think it would be smart to make a PC exclusive today. That has everything to do with the crazy budget management, retail relationships, unsatisfiable consumer expectations, and unsustainable nature of the western AAAs, though. When a game like Biosh…

Bioshock Infinite's developer did not go out of business at all.

It was deliberately shut down.

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/myths-busted-who-killed-irrat...

Re: The Rise and Fall of the Lone Game Developer

#93

Post by iwince »

sago wrote: post #67
debacle wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you played any of the similar pre-Minecraft games? They are all almost universally completely different from Minecraft - interacting with the voxel environment is not the main point of the game. Minecraft drew heavily from other games, yes, but it was also revolutionary and one of the first games to have such an open development cycle. There is a reason that such a poorly designed and buggy game is arguably the…

Yes. They are not 'almost universally completely different'. There are elements in Minecraft (which didn't originate those elements) which are not in them, certainly. Minecraft brought a bunch of cool things together, I agree. And it was compelling enough to go places. But the idea that this was a thunderbolt of inspiration that hit notch with the best idea ever that then changed the world is just fantasy. Post-hoc r…

>> But the idea that this was a thunderbolt of inspiration that hit notch with the best idea ever that then changed the world is just fantasy.

It was a series of thunderbolts and Notch and the whole Mojang gang are freaking geniuses in my opinion.

Re: The Rise and Fall of the Lone Game Developer

#94

Post by ansible »

codexon wrote: post #84
bkurtz13 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, just as Warcraft allowed for modding which led to Dota, Starcraft 2 supports modding. So that spirit is still alive in some form at Blizzard.

Starcraft 2 came out about 4.5 years ago. Hearthstone and Diablo 3 don't support modding, and all indications show that Heroes of the Storm and Overwatch won't either.

After reading some initial reviews of Diablo 3, I just got Torchlight (1 & 2) instead, and haven't really missed D3. They are not a AAA games, but they do have an active modding community.

Re: The Rise and Fall of the Lone Game Developer

#95

Post by aeturnum »

codexon wrote: post #88
barbs wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No modding in Blizzard's new games. What about Starcraft Arcade, which makes use of Blizzard-provided tools to heavily mod the game? http://us.battle.net/arcade/en/ > No modding in Dota2. Valve announced workshop tools that would allow users "to create, play, and share custom maps and game modes for Dota 2." http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/discussions/-1/3522031560...

> What about Starcraft Arcade, which makes use of Blizzard-provided tools to heavily mod the game? Starcraft 2 is not recent anymore. Out of WoW, Diablo 3, Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, and Overwatch, it is the only one. > Valve announced workshop tools that would allow users "to create, play, and share custom maps and game modes for Dota 2." Announced about half a year ago with no apparent progress? And the game…

> Announced about half a year ago with no apparent progress? And the game has already been out since 2013 with a hefty 1 year "beta" where anyone that wanted an invite could easily get one?

The valve mod tools are based on source 2 and already work, though they are in an early state. I've played maps made using them - anyone can - they're in the DOTA 2 workshop. Valve has said the dev tools are paused while they port the main DOTA 2 client to source 2 so the client doesn't need to close & boot source 2 to play user-made content. I'm not a game developer, but I'm told the current source 2 map maker is excellent if buggy & poorly documented.

It's possible Valve will release Source 2 for the client and never update the tools, but that seems unlikely. They've made an enormous amount of money off user-created content, and I expect they'll want to continue to add to that revenue stream (as well as it being the cool & decent thing to do).

Re: The Rise and Fall of the Lone Game Developer

#96

Post by Groxx »

Sevores wrote: post #40
archagon wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you played it? It's like watching an animated movie. There is negligible repeated content, at least as far as the art and levels are concerned. Unlike 99% of iOS games, I felt as satisfied in level 1 as I did in 10. (And in fact, some of the best content is in the last few levels.) Everything feels alive and dynamic, from the crows to your friendly neighborhood totem. I even felt feelings . In an iOS game. Can y…

I have. It is like an animated movie. Very pretty, but while the mechanics could be deep, I felt that the levels themselves were not. Unlike for example Braid or recently The Swapper, there were no epiphanies, just “rotate all the things and try to tap on the correct tile”. Maybe I shouldn’t have expected a puzzle game, but this sort of space bending would really lend itself to more interesting problems to solve.

fwiw the expansion is IMO a much better set of levels. longer, deeper, more bendy. especially after replaying it, the original set isn't as compelling (though still introduces the concepts very well). it is still pretty far down the "not much thinking required, just keep poking" side of gaming though, sadly.

Re: The Rise and Fall of the Lone Game Developer

#97

Post by georgeecollins »

I have made games for almost twenty years and only one thing has been a constant: People always say it is a terrible time to make games, and a terrible time start a game company. I'm not saying it isn't hard now, or the odds are aren't against you. But its easy to look back on past successes of twenty years ago and forget that most people were failing then too.

Re: The Rise and Fall of the Lone Game Developer

#98

Post by TulliusCicero »

codexon wrote: post #88
barbs wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No modding in Blizzard's new games. What about Starcraft Arcade, which makes use of Blizzard-provided tools to heavily mod the game? http://us.battle.net/arcade/en/ > No modding in Dota2. Valve announced workshop tools that would allow users "to create, play, and share custom maps and game modes for Dota 2." http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/discussions/-1/3522031560...

> What about Starcraft Arcade, which makes use of Blizzard-provided tools to heavily mod the game? Starcraft 2 is not recent anymore. Out of WoW, Diablo 3, Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, and Overwatch, it is the only one. > Valve announced workshop tools that would allow users "to create, play, and share custom maps and game modes for Dota 2." Announced about half a year ago with no apparent progress? And the game…

1. Blizzard only ever had extensive mod tools for their RTS series, not any of their other games, so this is not new.

2. Starcraft 2's mod tools are vastly more powerful than those from Warcraft 3 and especially Starcraft 1 (in some ways this is actually a bad thing).

3. Blizzard implemented a major overhaul of the custom games interface for Starcraft 2's first expansion in 2013, so clearly they still care.

4. Starcraft 2 is still under active development; the latest expansion is expected sometime this year.

Re: The Rise and Fall of the Lone Game Developer

#99

Post by increment_i »

gavanwoolery wrote: post #51
ANTSANTS wrote: post #38

More like, the iOS app store gold rush ended. The indie dev scene is thriving on PC. Stop throwing your time and money away developing for a platform overwhelmingly used by people that don't really care about your games, that are looking for brief distractions while they wait in the checkout line, and by and large refuse to pay even a dollar for the privilege. Don't blame the industry because you avoided the platform…

The gold rush was almost over before it started on mobile - it did not take more than a year for things to become extremely competitive. Flash games suffered a similar fate. Consoles have not generally been indie-friendly but Playstation is now making a better effort on that front, although they are still mainly catering to indie devs who have already "made it." Greenlight is becoming quite competitive (there were 17…

I agree. I think one of the worst things to happen to indie devs on mobile was the concept of the App Store(s) itself. When I open the App Store, my brain just...drifts off. Its a bunch of icons with little context. It's like looking at the rack of magazines and trinkets while you checkout at the grocery store.

While Moore's Law marches on, I'm hoping the days of AAA titles for mobile are just around the corner. It's true - I suppose I'm not willing to pay even 0.99 for some generic platformer or cutesy puzzle game. I would be willing, however to pay 20+ dollars if someone could give me something close to say, Fallout 3 for my phone though.

Re: The Rise and Fall of the Lone Game Developer

#100

Post by deciplex »

benihana wrote: post #78
munificent wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The indie dev scene is thriving on PC. Back when I was a console developer at EA, the ambient wisdom was that the money was falling out of (non-online) PC games in large part because of piracy. Is that not the case? Do you happen to have numbers on what the PC game industry is like? How much of this is because of Steam?

I'm not sure how much of the success it attributable to Steam, and how much of it is just a consequence of the times - lots of cheap tech, lots of people using cheap tech, and most importantly, video games being something everyone does. In the 80s and 90s, video games were for geeks. Ha, in my freshman year of college in 2001, my roommates were baffled that I would put on a headset and seemingly talk to my computer w…

Early Access is a crapshoot though, and I'm glad Valve is taking steps to rein it in a bit. Too many developers start with basically a POC, sell it at normal release price points, and then development peters out after that. Godus and DF-9 are good examples of this.

Strangely, it seems that you should avoid Early Access when it's for games by [i]established[/i] developers (Peter Molyneux and Tim Schafer are behind Godus and DF-9, respectively). Meanwhile KSP was made by a bunch of (former) nobodies, who actually made a game that delivers everything they've ever promised.

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