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Building an AI game studio: what we've learned so far

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Re: Building an AI game studio: what we've learned so far

#111

Post by bcrosby95 »

EncomLab wrote: post #11

Hard facts: Steam has over 73k games - and is growing at over 10k games per year and increasing. The median game on Steam earns less than $800 - down from $4k in 2020. Making a game is not hard - marketing a game is.

Yes and no. I've done a lot of reading from people that have done a lot of research about this.

In general, the revenue you make from a game seems to be related to it's production value.

I say no because that isn't marketing. But I say yes because its what makes it easier to market.

Re: Building an AI game studio: what we've learned so far

#112

Post by dev1ycan »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #108
dev1ycan wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

which shows how bad puritan culture is, most people don't care about your puritanism in their room, they want to play a game, see a hot char, and be able to do stuff with them in the game. it's the harsh truth that people seem to get mad at. Especially now with ever increasing rates of ADHD and other stuff, having an old school genre like an RPG have that type of stuff as a "reward" for beating a level or whatever re…

This is like saying people buy baldur's gate because you can undress your characters or make them date Consumers don't want pornography in their games, they're completely different products: visual novels are closer to a slideshow than a game People buy good games and they consume pornography, conflating the two doesn't help us analyse the market. That said, I agree there is probably more money in pornography than in…

Again, literally not true because of how big sites that aren't steam for those games are, and how many games are being made and how much they sell on steam.

Yes obviously no one is saying elden ring will have pornography, but there are a lot of games that did sell or would sell more with more romance and to a stronger extent sex stuff in them.

For example take an RPG, like Witcher, Cyberpunk, etc. They skirted the line but it's obvious that people want to get to that point in the in-game relationships, it is what it is, it might offend certain people but fact of the matter is, I don't think the people offended are a majority.

You can always have that content as a DLC and sell it separately and or to block it from countries that don't allow it, but let's not pretend like it doesn't sell.

Re: Building an AI game studio: what we've learned so far

#113

Post by djeastm »

EncomLab wrote: post #11

Hard facts: Steam has over 73k games - and is growing at over 10k games per year and increasing. The median game on Steam earns less than $800 - down from $4k in 2020. Making a game is not hard - marketing a game is.

Maybe it's not about marketing the game, but marketing the application that allows you to make your own games.

To be able to make a bunch of games easily that just you and your friends can enjoy without having to code seems like a good use case.

Re: Building an AI game studio: what we've learned so far

#114

Post by dev1ycan »

jncfhnb wrote: post #54
dev1ycan wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

which shows how bad puritan culture is, most people don't care about your puritanism in their room, they want to play a game, see a hot char, and be able to do stuff with them in the game. it's the harsh truth that people seem to get mad at. Especially now with ever increasing rates of ADHD and other stuff, having an old school genre like an RPG have that type of stuff as a "reward" for beating a level or whatever re…

Stardew Valley: too hot for puritans

I didn't mean it was a porn game lol, more like even basic romance can add nuance to a fairly simple game that would probably have sold less to mature audiences without it.

Re: Building an AI game studio: what we've learned so far

#115

Post by kjkjadksj »

Capricorn2481 wrote: post #100
dwallin wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making an excellent game isn't even enough these days, that's just table stakes. With so many games out there it's a market of lemons. You need to have a way of rising above the noise. For AAA, it's having budgets to make games on a bigger scale than everyone else. For mobile games, it's generally about leveraging a large war chest to fuel an advertising-driven margin game. For prestige/indie games you need something…

> For AAA, it's having budgets to make games on a bigger scale than everyone else Does this matter? There are lots of big budget games that don't feel big budget.

Part of the scale is that unlike an indy game, whatever junk EA puts out will end up on every platform and in physical and virtual game stores around the world. Every year when they rerelease the same game.

Re: Building an AI game studio: what we've learned so far

#116

Post by [deleted] »

password54321 wrote: post #28
EncomLab wrote: post #11

Hard facts: Steam has over 73k games - and is growing at over 10k games per year and increasing. The median game on Steam earns less than $800 - down from $4k in 2020. Making a game is not hard - marketing a game is.

Word spreads fast on good games due to Reddit and Twitch. Look at the success of Balatro and how much marketing that had. The number of games you listed just highlights how little Steam filters.

[deleted]

Re: Building an AI game studio: what we've learned so far

#117

Post by Philpax »

jarjoura wrote: post #105

I know this is a small team and experimenting, but in my mind, this engine is already limiting the potential of games it can output. I don’t know, but Unity is already pretty much point and click game building. I spent a few weeks building a card game with it during lockdown, and without a lot of code, I had an ugly, and basic, but totally playable game. The hardest part to a game is building something fun yes, but i…

(I'm the in-house AI engineer at Braindump.)

We experimented with a few different form factors, including integrating into existing game engines, before taking this path. Our rationale was that we wanted to go beyond the existing engine integrations (i.e. Unity already has an AI assistant) and reimagine the entire game creation experience with AI and multiplayer in mind.

Our platform's entirely on the web, so you can link your current game/game creation session to someone else and have them join you. This works on most modern browser, making it easy to build and share games.

That being said, you're not wrong that the current scope of games is limited. That's OK with us for now - we'd like to focus on getting the core experience as good as possible with the current scope and then expand outwards, instead of trying to build something that attempts to solve everything and works for nothing.

Re: Building an AI game studio: what we've learned so far

#118

Post by Philpax »

intended wrote: post #18
FredrikNoren wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So far we've focused 100% on the creation side of things, but we're absolutely interested in helping people on the marketing side too. Something we've discussed here is; since it's an online platform, could it be possible for creators to form communities around their games as they are being built (even more than now), with perhaps features to engage your community around what you create (imagine that your players can…

Same issue - who is going to play it? There are many indie games that never got made, lots of iterations of the current hotness (the Vampire survivors era may almost be over?) People still play CS:GO. People still play The Sims. There are an infinite number of alternatives. Professional game devs will talk about marketing because thats the problem when it comes to selling games. The alternative is to make game creati…

> The alternative is to make game creation fun - which then gets you to Roblox territory. Have people make games and share them quickly with each other.

That's the plan :-)

Re: Building an AI game studio: what we've learned so far

#119

Post by tavavex »

jarjoura wrote: post #105

I know this is a small team and experimenting, but in my mind, this engine is already limiting the potential of games it can output. I don’t know, but Unity is already pretty much point and click game building. I spent a few weeks building a card game with it during lockdown, and without a lot of code, I had an ugly, and basic, but totally playable game. The hardest part to a game is building something fun yes, but i…

Unless your needs are extremely specific and necessitate replacing most of the engine, Unity is probably not limiting your capabilities. The default packages are extensive and allow for basic game-making without writing that much actual code, but large developers will almost certainly swap default Unity components for their own for parts that need them, while the engine manages other parts like sound and input handling, multi-platform deployment and so on.

Unity is by far the most used engine in the world and tons of extremely different games were made with it. Subnautica, Rimworld, Hollow Knight, Beat Saber, the Ori games, Disco Elysium - none of them seemed to face any issues with being made in Unity. The "Unity games are bad" stereotype annoys me - it's bound to have a bunch of shovelware made on it with how many resources there are for learning it (and Unity being free), but it's popular for a reason.

Re: Building an AI game studio: what we've learned so far

#120

Post by ApolloFortyNine »

baobabKoodaa wrote: post #66
dkarras wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not just about marketing though. There is this belief, especially among fledgling indies that if they make a game that they think is good, and if they are able to market it well, it will be a success, even a hit. A hit in gamedev is not easier than creating a hit in the music industry really. Even the veteran composers are not able to replicate (or even achieve) creating a hit. Possibility of success depends on…

> If you are a beginner composer creating a hit, it is an extreme fluke. You're punching too high. Music is a passion for many people. Same as game dev. I would expect >95% of game devs to be perfectly happy if they can make a living creating indie games. Of course it's nice to make a hit that makes you tens of millions of dollars, but most game devs would be happy to make enough to pay themselves a salary to live on…

>I'd honestly struggle to find any good games (right for their time and audience) that failed because of a lack of suitable marketing.

Among Us is a good example. It was out for over a year before it exploded.

It got found by streamers and that slowly spread in that space before even the biggest ones were playing. [1]

[1] https://twitchtracker.com/games/510218

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