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Did I just waste 3 years?

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Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#171

Post by Impossible »

wainstead wrote: post #45
acangiano wrote: post #11

He doesn't mention how many hours he spent marketing it. I suspect not that many. I fully sympathize with his struggle, but this is a trap most programmers fall into so easily. Market need/fit > Marketing > Design > Programming when it comes to software products. You can't just build it and expect that they will come, unfortunately.

In "Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer's Guide to Launching a Startup," Rob Walling states three wrong reasons to launch something: 1. Having a product idea 2. To get rich 3. Because it sounds like fun This and other books on launching your own thing stress that you first have to find a market, then fill that market's needs. In the world of indie games I can't even imagine what that would be.

It is obvious what finding a market in indie games means and that you can't imagine it shows that you aren't particularly creative. There are a couple of different approaches to finding a market. Find a game that is fun or popular but doesn't have a polished or commercial version and make that. Find a set of users that would like to play games but doesn't have many games that appeal directly to them and make a product for them. Find an old game or genre that hasn't had a release and make a game in that style. Release a lot of small experiments and prototypes, build a small audience around one of them and iterate, killing ones that don't catch on, etc. Finding product market fit with and indie game might not always be cheap or easy, but there are a variety of ways to do it and it's definitely not unimaginable.

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#173

Post by pytyper2 »

You should go through your code and try to extract generic abstractions that you can release as resume building projects or as assets that other developers can license and include in their projects.

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#174

Post by mettamage »

aphextron wrote: post #137

You made the mistake of thinking that anyone would care how many hours you spent optimizing some C++ function that does something already solved a hundred times in a hundred different game engines. It's a natural tendency for all programmers. But making a game in 2018 is far more of a creative endeavor than anything to do with programming really. You need a massive amount of top notch artwork, music, 3D modelling, sh…

> It's a natural tendency for all programmers.

Then I'm not a programmer :) Less optimizing means less work! I like spending my free time in all kinds of ways.

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#175

Post by tokai »

bitL wrote: post #125
sweden wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say that nowadays is not that difficult to have a game that works on both Windows and Linux. Also, it is a legit thing to point out when and developer complains about the lack of sales.

Seriously, how many Linux users you know that pay for software? How much would that increase indie's sales? By 2?

The humblebundle sales showed clearly that linux users are ready to pay much more for video games than windows users are.

I have personally used hundreds of dollars on linux compatible games.

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#177

Post by Nition »

hhjinks wrote: post #165
Nition wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's also immediately obvious that it's just an RPG Maker game with very little effort put in to conceal that fact. RPG Maker games generally don't do well, because 99% of them are garbage, and those that aren't go to great lengths to distinguish themselves visually, like Yume Nikki, and I don't know if that title ever was a commercial success.

Nevertheless its review score average is equal to Stardew Valley's. Although I concede that people's expectations may be lower when buying this game, and that may make them less likely to leave a negative review.

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#178

Post by eXpl0it3r »

chime wrote: post #164
aphextron wrote: post #137

You made the mistake of thinking that anyone would care how many hours you spent optimizing some C++ function that does something already solved a hundred times in a hundred different game engines. It's a natural tendency for all programmers. But making a game in 2018 is far more of a creative endeavor than anything to do with programming really. You need a massive amount of top notch artwork, music, 3D modelling, sh…

> how many hours you spent optimizing some C++ function > You need a massive amount of top notch artwork, music, 3D modelling, shader effects, SFX, etc. to have a polished nice looking game. Top notch in any field requires optimizing hidden, underlying dependencies to deliver the best output. Optimizing code is not sufficient but it is usually necessary, especially if others have already solved it, setting the standa…

It's not that optimizations don't have their place, but when your goal is to create a game and make money off of it, then micro optimizing C++ code simply has no place. Also, a 2D platformer simply doesn't require any highly optimized system.

One should spend the time building a game, polishing it, marketing it, presenting it at shows, etc. and not trying to build the most efficient engine, just because engine building is quite fun - as long as the goal is to make money from a game.

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#180

Post by stupidcar »

solipsism wrote: post #33
stupidcar wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's clearly not entirely true though, because there are hits. They're just extremely rare, but extremely visible. You can read interviews with the Stardew Valley guy all over where he talks about spending 4 years working solo on his game, refusing to give up on realising his artistic vision. Then he releases and it's a mega-hit. That's a very seductive story. This isn't a problem unique to indie games. Every creat…

You may have missed the nuance in the comment you're replying to. Everyone knows that it's possible to win the lottery. But the best advice you can give is to tell people they're never going to win the lottery. People who are super passionate about making indie games I'm going to do it regardless, so this is good advice.

"Best advice" why? Accurate, perhaps. But do you really find going around telling people that they're not going to win the lottery makes them stop playing? Even after they read an article about someone who won $100m and has quit their job to sail around the world?

I think such advice misunderstands the psychology of why people gamble on very long odds. The primary drive is emotional, not rational. The rational brain only has to be convinced that a theoretical possibility exists. After that, it's a matter of emotional appeal, and culture is very good at presenting seductive narratives based on rare occurrences.

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