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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

#161

Post by sago »

Coding_Cat wrote: post #108
archagon wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yup. The first person that came to mind for me was Terry Cavanagh. Also a one-man phenomenon.

Re: The Rise and Fall of the Lone Game Developer

#162

Post by vonmoltke »

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).

Paradox has transitioned into being a niche publisher, particularly since merging with Slitherine. Also, DiD was, I believe, making simulation software for the RAF.

I do really miss Microprose and Bullfrog. As a wargammer, I would add SSI, SSG, and Three-Sixty to that list as well.

Re: The Rise and Fall of the Lone Game Developer

#163

Post by outworlder »

fluffheadsr wrote: post #148

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…

> 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.

This is why I had high hopes for World of Darkness.

Re: The Rise and Fall of the Lone Game Developer

#164

Post by fluffheadsr »

outworlder wrote: post #163
fluffheadsr wrote: post #148

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…

> 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. This is why I had high hopes for World of Darkness.

wasnt that done by funcom though or one of those companies? They've shit the bed with all of their latest MMO's.. Age of Conan was suppose to be amazing too and was a true snooze fest. All these games have become a grind fest.. kill 8 rats, yadda yadda.. i want a real sandbox to build a castle whereever i want..

I had huge expectations for darkfall too, but Aventurine is a joke of a company.

Re: The Rise and Fall of the Lone Game Developer

#165

Post by acemarke »

ekianjo wrote: post #145
sergiosgc wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Ah... a couple nitpicks there. First, Roberts did almost all of the initial Star Citizen pitch prototype development himself, with some assistance from CryTek employees. While most of his current time is more on the vision/direction side, I've read a number of discussion posts indicating he's still hands-on in the code when he gets a chance.

Also, he's VERY involved in the design aspects. CIG recently published a breakdown of their ship design and development process. There's three or four major stages, and every one has "approval from Chris Roberts" as a gate at the end.

So, while he's certainly not writing a majority of the code like he might have in the past, I'd definitely disagree with the phrase "not involved in development".

Re: The Rise and Fall of the Lone Game Developer

#166

Post by kllrnohj »

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:…

> Minecraft declaring freemium servers to be illegal

Yes, the dark ages, where developers look to protect their consumers (which in this case are often children!) from money-sucking leeches.

The Minecraft mod scene is thriving and massive and Mojang hasn't tried to stop it at all.

Re: The Rise and Fall of the Lone Game Developer

#167

Post by kllrnohj »

lacker wrote: post #118
deciplex wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 God…

Too many developers start with basically a POC, sell it at normal release price points, and then development peters out after that. It seemed like this happened with Minecraft, it was just popular enough that the POC was good enough.

Minecraft's price has increased slowly as the game got more and more stuff, and the pace of improvements and additions has increased significantly over time.

Minecraft today is $27 (and totally worth every penny and then some), but this is very much not what Minecraft cost 2 years ago. The alpha version was €9.95 and the beta was €14.95.

So no this is not at all what happened with Minecraft.

Re: The Rise and Fall of the Lone Game Developer

#168

Post by wtbob »

kllrnohj wrote: post #166
codexon wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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:…

> Minecraft declaring freemium servers to be illegal Yes, the dark ages, where developers look to protect their consumers (which in this case are often children!) from money-sucking leeches. The Minecraft mod scene is thriving and massive and Mojang hasn't tried to stop it at all.

You know, it costs money to run servers. I'm an adult; I can choose to pay for extra items in a game if I wish to.

Re: The Rise and Fall of the Lone Game Developer

#169

Post by coldpie »

HCIdivision17 wrote: post #159
coldpie wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a huge fan of Fez, and picked up Monument Valley for Android. It was fun, but extremely easy and super short. I decided to pass on the DLC, figuring it'd be more of the same. Does Forgotten Shores step the game up to the next level? Worth buying?

Unexpectedly, yes. I think it's better in just about every way, and it becomes excellent in a few. My only complaint is that it feels like a third installment would be the real game; I got the feeling at the end of FS that everything preceding was just training (like how a large portion of Portal is slowly and carefully acclimating the player to the mechanics before giving them a gun). I consider $2 impulse-buy money…

Cool, thanks!

Re: The Rise and Fall of the Lone Game Developer

#170

Post by phaus »

prawks wrote: post #155
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…

I think you're looking at a pretty narrow genre (Complex Games) and extrapolating the entire platform's content/potential from it. There are fewer people making as complex games as back then, but saying people are uneducated is a bit silly.

While his example of the flight sim might be an extreme, I'd agree that many genres have been oversimplified. One incredibly disappointing example that comes to mind is the X-Com series.
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