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I’m only making business card sized games now

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Re: I’m only making business card sized games now

#21

Post by apsdsm »

meditate wrote: post #14
jrockway wrote: post #3

> We all know that modern games have become bloated, weighed down by useless features, achievements, anti piracy measures, piles of assets, and other junk. Not only that but developers are constantly taken advantage of, made to crunch for no pay, mass layoffs, etc. Lives have been ruined, and for what? So you could watch your horse poop or play dominoes in an open world game? I am not sure that it's fair to compare a…

I personally reject "hours of enjoyment" as a metric for value and depth of a purchased game. It's good to hear that you've had positive experiences, but the dark side is that for many it drifts towards being an addictive time-suck that eats money for nothing in return.

This is particularly true of, say, many mobile games. But conversely, if not hours of enjoyment, then by what metric do we gauge a good game? Perhaps there’s a line here between hours of enjoyment and hours of mindless engagement?

Re: I’m only making business card sized games now

#22

Post by munk-a »

meditate wrote: post #14
jrockway wrote: post #3

> We all know that modern games have become bloated, weighed down by useless features, achievements, anti piracy measures, piles of assets, and other junk. Not only that but developers are constantly taken advantage of, made to crunch for no pay, mass layoffs, etc. Lives have been ruined, and for what? So you could watch your horse poop or play dominoes in an open world game? I am not sure that it's fair to compare a…

I personally reject "hours of enjoyment" as a metric for value and depth of a purchased game. It's good to hear that you've had positive experiences, but the dark side is that for many it drifts towards being an addictive time-suck that eats money for nothing in return.

I understand that "hours of enjoyment" can get extreme with addictive personalities and I think it's super relevant to point out games that use tactics specifically to trap users and extract in-app purchases from them but...

As a general rule I think "hours of enjoyment" is about as optimal as you can get for leisure payoff, the alternative "how much I learned" is nice too, whether that's literal stuff (like trivia), strategic growth or else can vary on a title-to-title basis.

But I do understand where you're coming from.

Re: I’m only making business card sized games now

#23

Post by munk-a »

pmiller2 wrote: post #15
empath75 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he’s making an argument that you can make games with much less code than we do now, not a serious argument that we should only make games that fit on a business card.

Totally agree. The current version of Nethack is ~204k lines of code. Modern AAA games have millions of lines. I don't think there's an order of magnitude more depth to most AAA games than there is in Nethack.

Nethack is 204k lines? That is amazingly bloated for what it is.

With dwarf fortress coming in at 381,764 I feel like it delivers a much higher amount of value/line.

Re: I’m only making business card sized games now

#24

Post by joemi »

I'm assuming that the business card size restriction is an April Fool's joke. There's already a pretty big movement of people dissatisfied with the big AAA games: the indie video game scene. I can't believe someone in the video game world wouldn't know about that.

Actually, now I wonder if the whole post was actually supposed to be taking the piss out of indie game developers? If so, that's pretty damned elitist, as there are many many many good indie games that I'd happily play over most AAA titles. Plus there are great AAA titles that started life in the indie game scene, like Portal.

Re: I’m only making business card sized games now

#25

Post by icebraining »

munk-a wrote: post #18
munificent wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the lesson to take away is not to take the author too literally.

Oh right, it's that day... so this is all just April Fools' BS. Is it possible to get a [Parody] tag for HN to just highlight "Intelligent discussion need not happen here."

Nobody said this was just a joke.

Re: I’m only making business card sized games now

#27

Post by gbacon »

meditate wrote: post #14
jrockway wrote: post #3

> We all know that modern games have become bloated, weighed down by useless features, achievements, anti piracy measures, piles of assets, and other junk. Not only that but developers are constantly taken advantage of, made to crunch for no pay, mass layoffs, etc. Lives have been ruined, and for what? So you could watch your horse poop or play dominoes in an open world game? I am not sure that it's fair to compare a…

I personally reject "hours of enjoyment" as a metric for value and depth of a purchased game. It's good to hear that you've had positive experiences, but the dark side is that for many it drifts towards being an addictive time-suck that eats money for nothing in return.

It must be one heck of a fun title to take someone who would — if not for that dratted game! — be a productive pillar of the community and make her a bump on a log.

The far simpler, albeit non-egalitarian, explanation is some people are more productive and others will find ways to waste time.

Re: I’m only making business card sized games now

#28

Post by chii »

apsdsm wrote: post #21
meditate wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally reject "hours of enjoyment" as a metric for value and depth of a purchased game. It's good to hear that you've had positive experiences, but the dark side is that for many it drifts towards being an addictive time-suck that eats money for nothing in return.

This is particularly true of, say, many mobile games. But conversely, if not hours of enjoyment, then by what metric do we gauge a good game? Perhaps there’s a line here between hours of enjoyment and hours of mindless engagement?

May be the measure should be how harmful it is to continue?

For an MMO, you're engaged socially (presumably in a guild, rather than soloing). In a mobile grind game, you spend hours constantly checking on progress for that endorphine hit.

Re: I’m only making business card sized games now

#29

Post by xuejie »

jrockway wrote: post #3

> We all know that modern games have become bloated, weighed down by useless features, achievements, anti piracy measures, piles of assets, and other junk. Not only that but developers are constantly taken advantage of, made to crunch for no pay, mass layoffs, etc. Lives have been ruined, and for what? So you could watch your horse poop or play dominoes in an open world game? I am not sure that it's fair to compare a…

I'm not sure AAA games have more depth and complexity. Usually, modern AAA games are just optimized for more polygons, yes there are minor outliers but I do believe business card games can have a fight in terms of complexity with a significant number of AAA games.

Re: I’m only making business card sized games now

#30

Post by crooked-v »

This makes me think of Kairosoft (the company that makes all those relaxed, bite-sized simulation games) as one of the examples of a company sustainably making a huge number of small, inexpensive, but engaging games. I think part of their secret sauce is in how they take some of the same basic gameplay concepts and adapt them to different themes with just enough new stuff to change the gameplay loop, so the conceptual development overhead is minimized to just the new stuff.
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