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Did I just waste 3 years?
101–110 of 582 posts
Re: Did I just waste 3 years?
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
I work at a AAA games studio and if this guy came to us with nothing else on his resume but this game he would definitely get a chance. I mean, in terms of chances in the industry - I got in by completing a 4 year CS degree. If he gets in by spending 3 years building his own game then I'd say it was worth it.
That's great, but would you say its industry wide? Because I have also heard (non-gaming) the exact opposite. Also, would he get through HR? They are more often than not, the real gatekeepers. It would require someone to vouch for him personally to go through, and that isn't very scalable when applying for jobs.
Hiring in both gaming and non-gaming is about your resume, phone screen, and interview. The first two are gating factors for the interview. The interview is how the actual decision is made. References are of much less significance, often go unchecked, and are usually focused on simply confirming the truthiness of your resume.
If you spent 3 years of your life working on a game, it's not a gap on your resume. In fact, it's the shining achievement on your resume, and it should get you that phone screen. If you can't tell a good story about hard work and technology mastery from that experience, your problem isn't an HR department, it's that you don't know how to write a resume.
Re: Did I just waste 3 years?
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Another good take on the phenomenon is (the insufferable) Taleb's discussion of "Black Swan" professions. History (from culture to natural disasters) gets defined by exceptional cases, but your own life in these professions will probably get defined by the typical case. Unfortunately, the industry is set up to stoke and profit handsomely from people mis-assessing their own chances. The people I've known (actors and w…
> the industry is set up to stoke and profit handsomely from people mis-assessing their own chances. how so? how does the industry profit from people mis-assessing their own chances?
Biggest example is the terrible working conditions of games developers in industry. These are some of the brightest, most dedicated coders out there, but they accept less money and crazy long hours.
It's the same thing with other professions where people provide their own sense of mission and self-fulfillment: teachers, home health aides, VFX artists in hollywood... These are important, in-demand professions, yet they get paid poorly because their drive and passion is counted against their compensation.
Re: Did I just waste 3 years?
#104The end user doesn't care you hand built your engine out of C and other beautiful technologies. They care if it's fun. Period.
It's looks like way too much time was spent on an engine when off the shelf would have done better.
Re: Did I just waste 3 years?
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a problem, but it's not the problem honestly. Every game that fails, there's something about it that people can point to as obviously why it failed. And just about every game that succeeds, also has something about that they could have pointed out as why it failed, had it failed. Some games are so unpolished or uninspired that they were never going to succeed, but always picking apart "why it failed" makes pe…
On the other hand, sometimes it's very much not chance. Take stardew valley. It's not like Barone hit some sort of jackpot with his game. It really is head and shoulders above the competition, and that appears to be entirely due to his hard work on it. My evidence for this is that after I played Stardew Valley I was thirsty for more similar farming games, so I played or looked at every single one on steam (there's on…
I just had a look myself.
The first one I see is "Fantasy Farming: Orange Season"[1]. Looks very similar to Stardew Valley, review average is 96% positive, but it only has 61 reviews (a good general indicator of sales) vs Stardew Valley's 86,000.
I'm sure it's probably not as good as Stardew Valley, but one has probably 1400x the sales of the other.
It did also release after Stardew Valley which is a problem. You can certainly benefit from being a first to fill a niche that people are missing. I wonder if the Stardew Valley dev had taken another year to release and Fantasy Farming had released first, if things would be the same.
[1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/416000/Fantasy_Farming_Or...
Re: Did I just waste 3 years?
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
Super Metroid is literally my favorite game, and I don't really have a strong urge to play this. Metroid is an exploration-based game. The game rewards you for finding secrets and for knowing how to get places. It teases you to find a way to break sequence, and much of the replay-ability of that game is based on the possibility to do that and to bask in what you've already learned about the world. Procedural generati…
I'm curious about where the story happens? I've played a rogue-like (Pixel Dungeon), while I found it fun, I didn't think it had much of a story. Are others better?
In say nethack you can pick up random overpowered or weird items that change the game or get into crazy adventures when you meet some weird rare creature.
Re: Did I just waste 3 years?
#107The end user doesn't care you hand built your engine out of C and other beautiful technologies. They care if it's fun. Period. It's looks like way too much time was spent on an engine when off the shelf would have done better.
I couldn’t agree more. When I read the engine was built in C++ it absolutely knocked me flat.
Why? With perfectly awesome and free technologies like Unity, you’re setting yourself up for failure by spending hundred hours putting together something that has already been created for you.
It would allow you to focus on making the best game possible, instead of wasting countless hours re-inventing the wheel.
IMHO, that’s the first, and largest, mistake this project made.
Furthermore I agree with others that it simply feels ‘uninspired.’ Maybe less hours spent on the engine and more spent on the content would’ve made the game more notable.
Re: Did I just waste 3 years?
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the industry is set up to stoke and profit handsomely from people mis-assessing their own chances. how so? how does the industry profit from people mis-assessing their own chances?
Here are some things you can sell to indy devs while they are working: dev tools, hardware, books or online media w/ ads, conferences, certificate programs focused on game dev, marketing opportunities. Then, when they are done, you get to skim big chunks of their revenue with app store, payment processing, etc. Don't forget to sell additional advertisements, to other game devs, on top of the places where you list the…
Same with the music industry. Professional for profit schools for audio engineering jobs that don’t exist, tons of home recording gear you must have, publishing companies to distribute your music, expensive studio time. So many ways to throw away your money, so many hobbyists willing to play for free or cheap (I’m guilty) that music venues don’t need to spend a dollar to book shows every night. Music sucks for most independent musicians and they have to hustle really really hard to make a living wage. Otherwise they just have to teach lessons to earn money which can really take away time from further developing your craft.
I’ve been a hobbyist and am increasingly exposed to professionals, people trying to make it and I feel sorry for them. Way more skilled at music than I will ever be at programming, yet struggling to keep a roof over their heads.
Re: Did I just waste 3 years?
#109That's from back in February but more recently others have been saying similar things:
https://www.polygon.com/2018/9/28/17911372/there-are-too-man...
Re: Did I just waste 3 years?
#110I'd have started this blog post with links to the game, the game title plus cool screenshots.
I completely agree - the lack of screenshots in the article was almost as strange as hearing the author wrote their own engine.
Furthermore, a simple Google of the game reveals very, very few results. As others have stated, nothing markets itself.