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How I tried to get into game development and failed

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Re: How I tried to get into game development and failed

#11

Post by corysama »

jgmmo wrote: post #5
Shorel wrote: post #3

Please, don't use the term 'an io game'. It really makes no sense.

I also have never heard this phrase 'io game'. Sounds like firebase & html5 games? Those were popular after html5 came out..

I think the history goes: agar.io and slither.io were surprise smash-hit games that both featured simple, drop-in-and-play multiplayer HTML5 with a dedicated .io domains. They inspired literally hundreds of copycats that each set up .io domains to signal that they were following they genre. The genre has become so popular that "io game" is now a term.

Re: How I tried to get into game development and failed

#12

Post by Danihan »

gre wrote: post #6
jgmmo wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also have never heard this phrase 'io game'. Sounds like firebase & html5 games? Those were popular after html5 came out..

It's referring to the domain .io, as in agar.io, which was a circle fighting game that started the trend.

Which is so fucking strange.

Is TagPro a "gg game" now, because they use the "gg" domain for their main site? I mean, how obtuse can we get..

Re: How I tried to get into game development and failed

#13

Post by drngdds »

Danihan wrote: post #12
gre wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's referring to the domain .io, as in agar.io, which was a circle fighting game that started the trend.

Which is so fucking strange. Is TagPro a "gg game" now, because they use the "gg" domain for their main site? I mean, how obtuse can we get..

If it inspired dozens of similar games and they all used the gg domain, then yeah, it would be reasonable to call those gg games.

Re: How I tried to get into game development and failed

#14

Post by oddlyaromatic »

Danihan wrote: post #12
gre wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's referring to the domain .io, as in agar.io, which was a circle fighting game that started the trend.

Which is so fucking strange. Is TagPro a "gg game" now, because they use the "gg" domain for their main site? I mean, how obtuse can we get..

Isn't this just normal evolution of language? Like how terms like "uppercase" have meaning even though we don't keep letters in cases (most of us anyway!). It's not like every domain extension has to match a game genre, but if, by fluke, it became what happened for "io games" ... That's how words get their meanings. Which is a long way of saying I disagree that it's strange!

Re: How I tried to get into game development and failed

#16

Post by seanmcdirmid »

amelius wrote: post #10
Shorel wrote: post #3

Please, don't use the term 'an io game'. It really makes no sense.

As opposed to an 'o game', which is output only, i.e., just a movie.

Or an 'i game', a game that takes only input and provides no feedback. Like waving your hands in the air and pretending you are playing a VR game; or a Karate kata.

Re: How I tried to get into game development and failed

#17

Post by Danihan »

oddlyaromatic wrote: post #14
Danihan wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is so fucking strange. Is TagPro a "gg game" now, because they use the "gg" domain for their main site? I mean, how obtuse can we get..

Isn't this just normal evolution of language? Like how terms like "uppercase" have meaning even though we don't keep letters in cases (most of us anyway!). It's not like every domain extension has to match a game genre, but if, by fluke, it became what happened for "io games" ... That's how words get their meanings. Which is a long way of saying I disagree that it's strange!

I suppose I'm arguing against the adoption of such a vernacular. It's just a web game.

Re: How I tried to get into game development and failed

#18

Post by stevenwoo »

jgmmo wrote: post #5
Shorel wrote: post #3

Please, don't use the term 'an io game'. It really makes no sense.

I also have never heard this phrase 'io game'. Sounds like firebase & html5 games? Those were popular after html5 came out..

I was introduced to this by my friend's (USA) elementary school age kids last year - they showed me a lot of games on the .io TLD. mope.io was popular for a time - it's seems pretty pointless from watching people play it over the shoulder.

Re: How I tried to get into game development and failed

#19

Post by stevenwoo »

advice_giver wrote: post #9
stevenwoo wrote: post #2

It's more like he saw a type of game that made a lot of money that seemed not that technologically advanced and thought he could replicate the monetary success and this part was like a lot of apps - it's not the making of the app that is hard - it's making an app that people want/need to use in numbers to support the development. I mean no disrespect because his team did succeed in producing an online only game so th…

Yeah, I see this all over these indie game dev posts. Highest priority is writing your own engine and solving some deep but tertiary technical problem. Whether the core mechanics are fun or not is whatever. It's truly BPDD (blog post driven development).

It's pretty funny because I got lucky and got paid to game development with people who made some big hits and the very first thing we did after getting a block to draw on the screen was try to make a fun game mechanic. Even for a multiplayer online game - we made or simulated something that could be done on a developer's machine to find something fun first and then worked on the multiplayer details that this blogger spent a large amount of time on - in at least two of the three parts of the blog postings on this project - we had difficulties to overcome in exactly the same manner in adding multiplayer to a game but that was after we had something fun.

Re: How I tried to get into game development and failed

#20

Post by swat17 »

stevenwoo wrote: post #2

It's more like he saw a type of game that made a lot of money that seemed not that technologically advanced and thought he could replicate the monetary success and this part was like a lot of apps - it's not the making of the app that is hard - it's making an app that people want/need to use in numbers to support the development. I mean no disrespect because his team did succeed in producing an online only game so th…

It seems so obvious reading his post that he went at this backwards. The basic idea of developing and iterating on a lightweight MVP is completely absent.

I'm genuinely curious - because I see this error replicated all the time when engineers try to take a side project to market - why otherwise rational people do this. This approach is obviously doomed to failure. I understand that as programmers we enjoy solving technical problems, but that should be second to actually building something that people enjoy (if that's your stated aim). Why do developers so often seem to lack this foresight? Are we just too absorbed in our craft to see the forest for the trees, and we mis-prioritize as a result? Shouldn't there be some moment of self realization, akin to "oh fuck, I just spent the last 3 months fixing the lag on a game that doesn't actually exist?" The psychology of this error bewilders me.

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