131–140 of 170 posts
Please, don't use the term 'an io game'. It really makes no sense.
It makes as much sense as most words. Usage defines meaning - not logic.
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Not really. If you're doing a multiplayer shooter, solving the lag problem is basic. Otherwise the thing is too annoying to play. The question is whether you can come up with something more fun than a top-down multiplayer shooter. It's not like there's a shortage of those. For some reason, the latest fad in indy browser games seems to be parking games. Truck parking. Tank parking. Airplane parking. Crane parking. Man…
Can you recommend some good parking games?
Heavy Truck Parking.[2]
There are lots more.
[1] http://www.y8.com/games/airplane_parking_academy_3d [2] http://www.unity-3dgames.net/3d-car-games/Heavy-Truck-Parkin...
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You should check out the rather prolific and open development of Star Citizen. They are building in what I would considered a great compromise between feature focus and long term technical investment. Some context to why they need to have strong systems in place is that they intend to deliver new content continously into the same platform/engine/world over the course of at least a few years. So their focus is on fast…
and yet after this many years of development, there is still no "game" - just tech demos after tech demos. At some point, you have to question whether the 'real' game is going to be delivered!
Other games of smaller scale have taken more time, and they didn't have to build out a team of hundreds and have massive scope creep like SC has had thanks to reaching various funding goals. Not to mention it is actually two games developed concurrently!
The game to be delivered is nothing like the game in the kickstarter, and it only really kicked into full development in the last couple of years. In game dev time it's really impressive how far they have gotten, all things considered.
So long as you don't expect the impossible, and understand it is likely still a couple of years away, then you get to see the project in a much more positive light.
It's doable but hard. A game can be unplayable until the lags are under control, and only then can they become fun and immersive. Assume the game itself has that potential. But don't release until then.
Beyond this, I have no comment about the game itself.
I don't mean to be dismissive, but here are the main issues I see with the process (and the final product): - Bottom line, the game is not particularly fun, novel, or difficult. You'll notice that games like Flappy Bird, Agar.io, Papers Please, etc. are at least one of the three. Bist.io is not the type of game that will ever go viral. - You spent money on AdWords but didn't spend money on sponsored Youtube, Instagra…
I was unexpectedly successful in the gaming business (Empire). All I did was make the game I wanted to play, but couldn't find.
You're a legend Walter, but there are millions of games available to play now. The days when a title circulated around university PDP-10s are gone. The dynamics of virality are very different.
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I was unexpectedly successful in the gaming business (Empire). All I did was make the game I wanted to play, but couldn't find.
Yeah, that's the most rational approach to independent game development. You , the developer, are the target audience.
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I was unexpectedly successful in the gaming business (Empire). All I did was make the game I wanted to play, but couldn't find.
If you are the Walter Bright, thank you for writing Empire! I played the hell out of that game in one of its ASCII PC ports.
There can be only one!
Anyhow, glad you liked it! I still regularly get email about Empire 40 years later.
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On the one hand that's sort of mindblowing, on the other not that surprising, and reading the original article just underscores my (thankfully brief) experience of working in a large enterprise: the one thing you can absolutely trust is that when it comes to product development a senior enterprise developer or architect will always focus on the wrong problem. I find their approach to software development in general,…
@bartread That's an awfully high and mighty opinion, don't you think? Sounds like annoyance over the fact that things that work reliably aren't "cool" enough.
I have to admit that it may not be entirely they're fault: organisational culture shapes you whether you want it to or not. So perhaps what I'm really railing against is a culture of software development that tends to exist in larger organisations.
Clearly this isn't universal though - just common. There are notable examples where very large organisations have been able to avoid these problems, at least for a while, even at scale: Google, BBC, parts of Microsoft (I can personally attest to this one), facebook (although hearing from a friend t sounds like they're getting sucked into it).
I do find it frustrating that guys like this style themselves as thought-leaders - and often succeed - whilst unfailingly focussing on the wrong points, and making themselves a complete pain in the ass to everyone they work with.
The other point is that as I've got older it's become starkly obvious to me that I only have so much time left. Obviously that's always been true but when I was younger I suppose I just didn't take it that seriously, and that's sort of a gentle regret. And that's really for everyone: you don't have all the time in the world so if there's something you want to do then get on and do it - sometimes you have to do things just to make ends meet but, as far as is possible, don't subject yourself to anyone who's going to hinder you on that journey.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
On the one hand that's sort of mindblowing, on the other not that surprising, and reading the original article just underscores my (thankfully brief) experience of working in a large enterprise: the one thing you can absolutely trust is that when it comes to product development a senior enterprise developer or architect will always focus on the wrong problem. I find their approach to software development in general,…
There is value in writing clean, impeccably-designed, beautifully architected, const-correct, lint-free software. Just not much business value in it. I have unreleased hobby projects sitting on my hard drive at home that are works of art (if I must say so myself!), and were great learning experiences, but are commercially pretty much valueless. That's OK. You need to have a goal and adapt your software writing to tha…
When I was in mobile games (3D) we saw a direct correlation between framerate and revenue. We released a patch that (accidentally) slashed the frame rate and our revenue tanked. We released a patch that did nothing but fix the performance and our revenue went back up to previous amounts.