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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

#141

Post by bmsleight_ »

Matheus28 wrote: post #90
nathan_f77 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you written any development posts like this? I'm sure everyone on HN would be really interested to hear your thoughts about this post, and how it compares to the development of agar.io. Did you sort of just get lucky with the game mechanic, or was it something that you put a lot of thought into? Was agar.io originally supposed to be a different game?

There was a post with some technical details on Agar.io a while ago back when it was released (>2 years ago). A year after Agar.io I made Diep.io, which is also fairly successful (but not nearly as crazy as agar.io), so that points to it not being completely based on luck :) I just make what feels fun. For a perspective on development cycle: the initial version of Agar.io took 1 week, while Diep.io took less than a m…

Thanks for agar.io - it cools. Any chance of a AMA or similar ? Would be really interested on the technical aspects (only 1 week! to minimal viable product) ? Also on the ad revenue ? (where it is not commercially sensitive ?) Also the fun stopping bots playing the game ? Your view on the great trick moves (and youtube videos), are these fake or are people really that good ? Do you play it much yourself ?

:)

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

#142

Post by exDM69 »

Animats wrote: post #35
philipodonnell wrote: post #29

This seems like a case study in premature optimization

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…

Solving the lag issue is only relevant when you do multiplayer over the network. At which point you are committed to a non-trivial engineering project that will take a few months of work to get off the ground. Prototyping the game idea should be done before committing to such a project.

It would be much easier to get a dozen friends with gamepads to the same room and play around with a prototype game. Just some rectangles and circles running around the screen. About 1000 lines of code at most so changes can be made on the fly. If it's not fun, iterate until it is. The turnaround time for feedback is much faster.

When I read the article I found this to be the biggest shortcoming. Starting work on a half year project with an unproven idea, no market research (playing other games with tanks and steal ideas) and a lot of technical hurdles that don't matter to the final product.

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

#143

Post by brango »

sago wrote: post #137
pharrington wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that's the most rational approach to independent game development. You , the developer, are the target audience.

It's _really_ not. It is important to enjoy and be passionate about your game. But writing your ideal game is a recipe for making crap, in my humble experience, unless you happen to be intuitively skilled in game design.

Dude, "build it and they will come". They even made a movie about that fact...

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

#144

Post by zerr »

WalterBright wrote: post #71
dvt wrote: post #43

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.

> but couldn't find.

And there are those unlucky ones who always find what they need done by others... :(

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

#145

Post by Applejinx »

"I figured that even if the article is off by 2 or even 3 orders of magnitude, I would still be doing very well should I develop something similar."

Here's your problem. Firstly: lame motivation, in that there's no reason for a player to give a crap about this motivation. It doesn't relate to the experience of the game at all, only to 'players give me money'.

More importantly, you're fundamentally misunderstanding how internet markets work. It's always a 'viral' power-law thing where the one you're getting excited about, the incredibly profitable game or the PewDiePie youtuber etc, is unattainable. You can't have that, you're not already them, and there IS no 'second or third order of magnitude', those are also extremely tiny groups and it takes decades of work and impressive existing name recognition to even get there.

There is no correlation between merit and reward, except that 'a set level of merit is required just to get you into the zone where the power-law guys operate'. Past that point it's essentially arbitrary and governed by rules you can't affect. You don't get to turn into a PewDiePie or a slither.io, there already is one.

My advice as somebody who's in the top 3.5% of all Patreon worldwide (which is surprisingly nonlucrative, further making my point) is this: look to what you're already doing in life. For me, it's audio hacking, and so my Patreon around that 'succeeded' because I came into it with literally ten years of doing business and being known by the general audio-plugin public, with an existing brand identity and a dedicated fanbase. That got me earnings roughly a third or a quarter of what direct sales was getting me (but: much more steady and predictable and growing, which has done me a world of good).

If you haven't already been publically making games for ten years or so, the last thing you should do is look at slither.io and go 'I should do that and make a tenth/hundredth of the money. How hard could it be?'

You're fundamentally misunderstanding how internet economics work. On the internet, if you try to get 1000th as much as slither.io by making something half as good and hoping for the best, you get NOTHING.

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

#146

Post by nathan_f77 »

Matheus28 wrote: post #90
nathan_f77 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you written any development posts like this? I'm sure everyone on HN would be really interested to hear your thoughts about this post, and how it compares to the development of agar.io. Did you sort of just get lucky with the game mechanic, or was it something that you put a lot of thought into? Was agar.io originally supposed to be a different game?

There was a post with some technical details on Agar.io a while ago back when it was released (>2 years ago). A year after Agar.io I made Diep.io, which is also fairly successful (but not nearly as crazy as agar.io), so that points to it not being completely based on luck :) I just make what feels fun. For a perspective on development cycle: the initial version of Agar.io took 1 week, while Diep.io took less than a m…

Wow, I'm really enjoying diep.io, and I just realized it's extremely similar to the game in this post. The OP must have seen diep.io and borrowed a lot of game mechanics. But they still didn't do it right, because I only played their game for a few minutes, while I was hooked on yours. That's a very valuable lesson: the game has to be fun and engaging, and the technical details are almost insignificant compared to that.

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

#147

Post by dkersten »

throwaway7645 wrote: post #105
WalterBright wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same idea has worked for a lot of things for me. I often get told I'm a unique snowflake in what I like, but it turns out that's not true at all.

Write any games in D in your spare time sir? If not commercial, just for fun? I'd be curious to hear how good D can be in that area.

> I’d be curious to hear how good D can be in that area

Many of the games by ABA Games/Kenta Cho (Torus Trooper being the one I played the most, a long time ago) are all written in D, as is his BulletML library that is used in most of his games.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABA_Games

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

#148

Post by dep_b »

Animats wrote: post #35
philipodonnell wrote: post #29

This seems like a case study in premature optimization

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…

> This is at least not warmed-over 1980s console gaming

Ports of Call springs to mind immediately. But that was Amiga gaming, always a bit more sophisticated than consoles.

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

#149

Post by zimspy »

You may have made several mistakes.

First is 2 months is too long to work on a game. 2-3 weeks max. Make game -> release -> make new game. Keep them coming. Rovio made 50+. If they'd spent 3 months on each, they'd have drowned.

That problem I think also leads to the rest. Most of which has been said. Once I made my first app which took me ~1 month, I've pushed times to 1 week. Keep them coming.

Another issue is salivating at the money before you create the user-base. Get the users up first. The money follows them.

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

#150

Post by jwdunne »

chii wrote: post #124
endemic wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a great example of this is Derek Yu's "Spelunky." He made a quick 'n dirty freeware version, which turned out to be massively popular, then remade a polished commercial version. It was easier for him to pitch the publisher since there was already a working, popular prototype.

>quick 'n dirty freeware version the freeware version wasn't "quick 'n dirty" at all - he spent a lot of time doing it (and tweaking/fiddling the random generation). Ditto with another game that may have been seen as a "quick 'n dirty" prototype - super meat boy (the flash version). These games had lots of time and effort spent polishing the mechanics/controls. That's not to say one shouldn't do quick 'n dirty protot…

Interestingly, Tommy Refenes, which was written in C++, posted a write up that went over the process. What struck me is that he built a tool to export sprites from Flash because that's what the artist used.

It shows an iterative development model, focusing on gameplay features step by step. The big take away "focus on making the character do something":

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/TommyRefenes/20130107/184432/...

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