Common remark about game making (also here) is that “there are already a lot of games, building them is not the limiting factor“, and yet I find myself without anything to play despite these 70k games on steam. I like playing city building games, all the good ones I already beat and there is nothing new that seems any good!
Building an AI game studio: what we've learned so far
261–270 of 312 posts
Re: Building an AI game studio: what we've learned so far
#262I think a part of the reason why I'm kind of dismissive of AI when it comes to creative endeavors is that I haven't seen it do something that isn't already possible using a "not-intelligent" solution. For example, AI website builders. It's impressive as a tech demo that you can prompt an AI to make a website for you, but otherwise I don't think this is going to be disruptive to the web design industry since it's alre…
Forget squarespace websites. AI is such a huge time saver for complex front ends. It doesn’t write the whole thing, but you can easily go from screenshot to code you are better off using as a starter than typing it all up yourself. And it’s way easier to make css or tailwind changes to modify components than thinking really hard.
Re: Building an AI game studio: what we've learned so far
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
So... I think maybe the same could have been said about writing once upon a time. "What if everyone could write, we'd flood the market with poorly written books!". Well we went from no one being able to write to almost everyone being able to. But just because everyone can technically write, it doesn't mean that everyone is a _writer_. I believe that the same goes for AI tools for games. Yes, more people will technica…
> So... I think maybe the same could have been said about writing once upon a time. I mean, you say that as though it is not increasingly year over year more and more difficult on balance to make your living as a writer. That it hasn't been a famously difficult thing to do since like... I mean good god, I remember writers complaining about this when I was a kid on forums back in the early 2000's and at that time it w…
You come across as being extremely condescending. And I’m sure you make some good points, but I can’t find them behind the tone. It’s a shame because again, I’m sure you make good points.
Re: Building an AI game studio: what we've learned so far
#264Earlier 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…
An excellent game is, practically by definition, a game that people would recommend. And the Steam algorithm does a pretty good job of snowballing success. My favorite example here is Kenshi. [1] It started with modest interest and within a few months it was down to literally tens of players. This is normally where somebody driven by profit would just shrug, complain, and go try something new. But they guy clearly be…
"play at home" for me = play with friends.
95% of my game purchases are based on:
- reliable 4 player co-op play PvE. Can opt-out PvP if it's there.
- reasonable reviews. Doesn't have to be fantastic, we've been around and seen some shit.
- released for 6 months with patch fixes to match
This cuts down the number of games I care about on Steam considerably. We often struggle to have something new to play and go back to the favs.
[snip growing rant, try to stick to the point here]
Re: Building an AI game studio: what we've learned so far
#265Hard 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.
"Word spreading fast" means there is marketing going on. Thats kind of the genius of marketing to reddit/youtube/twitch as a "normal guy dev", it doesn't feel like marketing, but thats why its so powerful (see social media influencers). You could be even more cynical and look into guerilla marketing tactics they might use like fake views and upvotes/likes.
And again, survivorship bias.
Re: Building an AI game studio: what we've learned so far
#266I think a part of the reason why I'm kind of dismissive of AI when it comes to creative endeavors is that I haven't seen it do something that isn't already possible using a "not-intelligent" solution. For example, AI website builders. It's impressive as a tech demo that you can prompt an AI to make a website for you, but otherwise I don't think this is going to be disruptive to the web design industry since it's alre…
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Re: Building an AI game studio: what we've learned so far
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 handli…
>none of them seemed to face any issues with being made in Unity. I'm sure they did. But I wager there is no such thing as "smooth development". Every engine has its quirks, every team has its odd dynamics and clashes. engines are there to make development smoother, not smooth. >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 popul…
> I'm sure they did. But I wager there is no such thing as "smooth development". Every engine has its quirks, every team has its odd dynamics and clashes.
That's not really what I wanted to convey. I'm not saying that their development process became spotless as a result of using Unity, but that these developers don't appear to be constrained by the engine in this extreme fashion like what the top commenter was suggesting - they successfully used it to make wildly different (and sometimes boundary-pushing) products.
> You had to pay to remove the splashscreen, so that meant low effort titles would have "MADE WITH UNITY" front and center, where higher budget titles could remove the logo.
Yeah, I agree with this. Almost all people have no idea what engine any given game runs on (if any), and professional developers will only put that in the credits, if at all. Admittedly, I can't think of any better ways of introducing some limitation for free users that wouldn't get overbearing - interfering with gameplay or other interactive stuff is probably a no-no, so a splash screen is one of the few viable options.
Re: Building an AI game studio: what we've learned so far
#268I think a part of the reason why I'm kind of dismissive of AI when it comes to creative endeavors is that I haven't seen it do something that isn't already possible using a "not-intelligent" solution. For example, AI website builders. It's impressive as a tech demo that you can prompt an AI to make a website for you, but otherwise I don't think this is going to be disruptive to the web design industry since it's alre…
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Re: Building an AI game studio: what we've learned so far
#269I find the "threads" approach to prompting in a complex app very intriguing. Did you experiment with threading at different levels and how they interact? If so what can you share about this?
Re: Building an AI game studio: what we've learned so far
#270Hard 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.
The majority of those games are now visual novels / pornography.
Does that actually matter? You see the same sort of embarrassingly low numbers in all artistic mediums. Writer, painter, musician, sculptor, interpretive dancer, comedian, indy game dev - on average none of these pay enough to count as a career and you only hear about stuff on the successful end of the bell curve. Even if you improve your odds by making commercial art. In many cases even the artists considered successful still need a day job.