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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

#101

Post by speeder »

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…

On PC it is also "gold rush over", although we see a bunch of successful indie devs, the amount of failed ones is much, much larger.

I guess the percentage of successful devs on PC is probably on a historically low point.

On Reddit there was comments from one guy that gives from 10 to 100k to indie devs, he get 9 thousand applications per month.

Re: The Rise and Fall of the Lone Game Developer

#102

Post by archagon »

codexon wrote: post #75
gavanwoolery wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

:) Yes, pretty much. DotA was created as a small mod, and now look at the commercial explosion it has spawned, with tournaments containing $2+ million in prizes and everyone wanting to make MOBAs. I think in the past 20 years, we actually have not made as many breakthroughs in game mechanics (of course, this was easier in the early days). Games are still fairly similar to those of the 90s, only technically more compl…

I think we are headed for the dark ages of PC gaming. Before, the top AAA studios made games with mods in mind. This allowed massive genres like Dota and Counter-Strike to come into existence. Nowadays AAA studios see modders as leeches and try to cut them out of the game so they can sell DLC and skins to whales. You can see this happening everywhere. - No modding in Blizzard's new games. - No modding in Dota2. - CS:…

Most of the good mods from the last generation (CS, DoD, TFC, DotA, etc.) were less mods and more total conversions. And you don't need to mod a game to do that these days. The Source engine is free. Unity is free. The Unreal engine is cheap. We have more tools for making fully-fledged games at our disposal than we ever had in the past.

Re: The Rise and Fall of the Lone Game Developer

#103

Post by petercooper »

vlunkr wrote: post #46
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…

I think you're right. I know I've lost faith in mobile gaming because for every fun game I've played I've deleted 20. I'm sure there are good games out there, but how can you find them in a sea of garbage and flappy clones? On the other hand, Steam has plenty of great Indie games (selling for more than one dollar!) with plenty of reviews around so you know what's good.

Sites like http://toucharcade.com/ used to be good for discovery, although I'm finding them less useful as time goes by. There really should be a weekly or monthly publication where only the most interesting and gripping mobile games are covered.. preferably ones without ridiculous ads, nickel and diming, and all the rest.

Re: The Rise and Fall of the Lone Game Developer

#104

Post by sago »

archagon wrote: post #73
sago wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are no "minimum production values" if your game is good enough. Which is just a tautology. Hotline Miami - 2 core devs + 2 others; Risk of Rain - 2 core devs + others; Gunpoint - 1 dev (Tom Francis FTW, yay!) Valdis Story - Dunno, but website says "we" and mentions a few different people in blogs; Terraria - 2 core devs + others; Vlambeer - 2 core devs + others. It is very difficult, almost impossible for a s…

Yeah, if you're looking specifically for 1-person developers, it's hard to find them. But I think that's because most people aren't comfortable making the art or music for their own games. (Or choose not to out of time pressure.) If Derek Yu had chosen to sell the original Spelunky, I think it would have done well. I think Towerfall might count, since I know Matt Thorson has done the art and music for most of his gam…

> I think that's because most people aren't comfortable making the art or music for their own games.

Right, them's the 'production values'. They aren't comfortable because the quality bar is pretty high, even on pixel art, high enough that you really need an artist to do it, not a lone coder.

I think the situation isn't quite as bleak as he says in the OP anyway. The age of the lone coder is gone, I think. The few exceptions are exceptions. But the age of the prototype-in-a-game-jam-get-crowd-funded-and-build-a-product-with-a-small-team isn't over, though the bubble has definitely burst from when every kickstartered game seemed to reach its goal. So while I think he's right that the market has eliminated the lone-coder approach to game development, the ability to bring a good small game to market is as good as it has ever been.

As you said further up, it is PC that is the heartbeat of that.

Good luck on your game.

Re: The Rise and Fall of the Lone Game Developer

#105

Post by JetSpiegel »

neovive wrote: post #56

There is an interesting documentary on Netflix "Indie Game" that chronicles a few indie developers. It does a good job showing the emotional struggles and difficulties in developing and bringing a game to market.

Jesus fucking Christ, no! Please, no!!

Re: The Rise and Fall of the Lone Game Developer

#106

Post by programminggeek »

The lone game developer may or may not be a myth, but like many creative pursuits, over time there might very well be 1,000 little game developers blooming, some of which will be quite lovely and people will appreciate, but most will just be ignored. That's not all bad either. Not everyone should make a AAA game.

Some of my fondest memories of games are of the NES games I played as a child. They are still some of the most basic and fun games to play.

Re: The Rise and Fall of the Lone Game Developer

#108

Post by Coding_Cat »

archagon wrote: post #73
sago wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are no "minimum production values" if your game is good enough. Which is just a tautology. Hotline Miami - 2 core devs + 2 others; Risk of Rain - 2 core devs + others; Gunpoint - 1 dev (Tom Francis FTW, yay!) Valdis Story - Dunno, but website says "we" and mentions a few different people in blogs; Terraria - 2 core devs + others; Vlambeer - 2 core devs + others. It is very difficult, almost impossible for a s…

Yeah, if you're looking specifically for 1-person developers, it's hard to find them. But I think that's because most people aren't comfortable making the art or music for their own games. (Or choose not to out of time pressure.) If Derek Yu had chosen to sell the original Spelunky, I think it would have done well. I think Towerfall might count, since I know Matt Thorson has done the art and music for most of his gam…

Another great one-man-team is Lucas Pope, creator of Papers Please and (currently in development, but the demo has already seen great reception) The Curse of The Obra dinn, as well as a few Ludum Dare games.

Re: The Rise and Fall of the Lone Game Developer

#109

Post by ekianjo »

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…

> Consoles have not generally been indie-friendly

That's the least you can say... you need an official dev kit and those used to cost several thousands of dollars if not more.

Re: The Rise and Fall of the Lone Game Developer

#110

Post by ekianjo »

MrMember wrote: post #72
gavanwoolery wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

:) Yes, pretty much. DotA was created as a small mod, and now look at the commercial explosion it has spawned, with tournaments containing $2+ million in prizes and everyone wanting to make MOBAs. I think in the past 20 years, we actually have not made as many breakthroughs in game mechanics (of course, this was easier in the early days). Games are still fairly similar to those of the 90s, only technically more compl…

I feel like we are in a golden age of PC gaming right now. Genres completely abandoned by AAA developers ages ago are seeing a resurgence thanks to crowdsourcing. Space sims have been all but dead since Freelancer in 2003 but now there are several to play and look forward to. Formerly obscure genres like roguelikes are seeing mainstream success thanks to high quality "roguelike-like" games like FTL. Hell, even the im…

> I feel like we are in a golden age of PC gaming right now.

Not really. Its golden Age was in the late 80s, early 90s, where games were still made by educated people FOR educated people, before the whole thing went mainstream and any sign of complexity went progressively down the drain so that Everyone could start playing games. I miss Falcon's 300 pages manual, or even Colonization's fantastic booklet that went far above describing how to just play the game.

The early 90s were dominated by AAA titles from Origin, pushing both the boundaries of what was technically possible on PC as well as driving genres forward by developing non-linear game structures and exploring 3D environments. Nowadays AAA blockbusters jsut rehash the same formula over and over again (care to take another Assassin's Creed?).

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