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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

#141

Post by exDM69 »

ekianjo wrote: post #110
MrMember wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is a perfectly valid opinion and seems to be downvoted because of disagreement. (albeit you could have clearly stated it's your opinion).

I kind of agree. A lot of AAA games these days are just unoriginal. They follow the genre they exist in without much creativity or original ideas. Perhaps the storyline in the game is what people are after these days, but gameplay-wise, I don't remember when I've seen a big production game that I would have wanted to play.

Not to underestimate the value of nostalgia, of course. Some of the old games have not stood up to the test of time. E.g. I played the original Dungeon Keeper recently and I was a bit underwhelmed because I remember when I played that game when it was new and how great it felt.

Good thing that there are still interesting indie games. Even 15-20 years ago when I played more games, I spent more time playing small indie titles I found from BBS'es and computer magazines than I did playing big titles.

Re: The Rise and Fall of the Lone Game Developer

#142

Post by rjaco31 »

ekianjo wrote: post #125
philwelch wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there were many games that matched the complexity of Paradox's grand strategy games in the early 90's, but I'm curious to hear of any examples.

I agree with you, but simulation games were a whole genre back in the early 90s. It has almost completely disappeared. Remember Microprose? Remember Maxis ? Remember Did ? Bullfrog ? They were all huge businesses dedicated to educated/curious gamers back then. Paradox falls into the indies - they clearly do not have much means (while they make great games).

I don't think Paradox really qualify as indie anymore. They're more on a niche market than anything else.

Re: The Rise and Fall of the Lone Game Developer

#143

Post by rjaco31 »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #98
codexon wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Starcr…

I remember Diablo2 being heavily modded though

Re: The Rise and Fall of the Lone Game Developer

#144

Post by [deleted] »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #98
codexon wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Starcr…

[deleted]

Re: The Rise and Fall of the Lone Game Developer

#145

Post by ekianjo »

sergiosgc wrote: post #129
ekianjo wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

It's hard to make the case for the early 90s being the peak of game quality, use Origin as an example, and completely miss out a reference to Roberts Space Industries and Star Citizen. The golden age is in the future, and the future is already here (just not evenly distributed).

We'll see if Star Citizen is as good as it promises to be, but until then, the height of Roberts' creative career is in the early 90s for now, before he went into movies with his disastrous Wing Commander film. Plus, he is just directing Star Citizen and not involved in development as he was during the Wing Commander series (where he was a programmer himself at least for the first 2 episodes).

Re: The Rise and Fall of the Lone Game Developer

#146

Post by ekianjo »

walterbell wrote: post #116
ekianjo wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Colonization 1994 manual (135 pages): http://replacementdocs.com/download.php?view.8194 Colonization 2008 manual (38 pages): http://replacementdocs.com/download.php?view.377 Edit: fixed duplicate link, thanks ekianjo.

Np! Otherwise good find, which proves my above point. The first 1994 booklet had a whole essay on the History of the colonization of America, I used to read it several times after playing the game. But this was not just this game, so many others went ahead to provide tons of value besides the game itself (Ultima 7's map printed on a cloth! A classic!). This was just so much more than mere tutorials. They also help create the atmosphere of the game OUTSIDE of the game.

Re: The Rise and Fall of the Lone Game Developer

#147

Post by ekianjo »

exDM69 wrote: post #141
ekianjo wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

This is a perfectly valid opinion and seems to be downvoted because of disagreement. (albeit you could have clearly stated it's your opinion). I kind of agree. A lot of AAA games these days are just unoriginal. They follow the genre they exist in without much creativity or original ideas. Perhaps the storyline in the game is what people are after these days, but gameplay-wise, I don't remember when I've seen a big pr…

> Some of the old games have not stood up to the test of time. E.g. I played the original Dungeon Keeper recently and I was a bit underwhelmed because I remember when I played that game when it was new and how great it felt.

Certainly, but the opposite is also true. Baldur's Gate 2, Planescape Torment still hold up very well to this day and shame more recent RPGs lacking good stories and good character development, aimed at folks who liked RPGs on pen and paper and who actually liked RPGs before they existed on computers.

Indies are great, but there's a certain lack of ambition and a lot of rehashing there too (shovel knight reproducing 8 bit games, others using pixel art as a form of style instead of using all pixels available on screen to do something gorgeous, many reboots of ancient IPs, etc...). Truly original, innovative games are few because most of the genres have already been established for a long time.

Re: The Rise and Fall of the Lone Game Developer

#148

Post by fluffheadsr »

funny i learned to program as a kid in highschool so that I could one day make games. I'm now a full time software developer completely self taught, no overhead of a expensive CS degree i didn't need, and I've never even made pong. The closest I came was building tic tac toe. Somewhere along the lines I got hooked on stealing shit from people on AOL and just got pulled away from the thought of games and never looked back.

Ultima Online in my opinion was the climax of online MMO's. Someone needs to build a true sandbox fantasy MMO. CCP has proven that a sandbox done properly will bring in the crowd and keep the doors open.

Someone do it!!

I've tried multiple times however to build/find a team to work with and the team is never dedicated enough to complete even the most simplest of things.

Re: The Rise and Fall of the Lone Game Developer

#149

Post by fluffheadsr »

d357r0y3r wrote: post #4

I had a long stint with game development. Started contributing to MUD codebases as a teenager, later invested a lot of time in XNA and web games, although none of that work was particularly successful. As satisfying as that work was, I get as much satisfaction from writing Enterprise/B2B apps. The thing about game development is that, when you're years into it, it's just another app. Video game lovers especially star…

this 1000 times.. started out wanting to make games, ended up just building everyday apps. I now work on an app used by hundreds of companies and some very big ones. It gives me great satisfaction although I'd still love to build the game I always dreamed of if I found the right group of people to do it with.

The Fantasy Sandbox MMO market is begging for some love. Nothing great since UO or SWG:Pre-CU... Everything after WoW has been just flat out terrible attempts at stealing wow and its really hurt the market.

The whole game development now is just about profit and not about creating original, amazing works of art like the early guys.

Re: The Rise and Fall of the Lone Game Developer

#150

Post by fluffheadsr »

zackmorris wrote: post #53

I dabbled in shareware games for roughly 20 years. I had high hopes for making a revolutionary game and my ship coming in like Notch, but what I found was that making a game was never the difficult part. It was always about funding - making rent each month, affording food, etc. It was also about telling people no, because the closest people around me were often the most demanding of my time and energy, even going as…

See, I disagree with your "budget".. all it takes is a computer and a dream to build whatever you want. It doesn't take budgets.. Can you do it in the same time a team with 30 million in funding? Hell no, but with the right group of people and a lot of persistance you can make anything happen.. see SWG Emu http://www.swgemu.com/forums/index.php

it's taken years, and years, but with determination and $0 budget they've pretty much reverse engineered an entire game. It doesn't have to be done today. Start it, don't stop, keep going, and while doing that for fun(because that's why I started and still write code today.. for me its fun as hell.) find something that pays the bills like a day job.

I'm working on a project, all by myself right now.. I put in my day job, and then if I'm up to it, put in a couple hours on my side project. When its done, its done.. or it may never be done, but i make a little progress any chance I get.

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