Did I just waste 3 years? • Hacker News Board

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#401

Post by hobofan » Mon, Oct 01, 2018, 5:43 AM UTC

VLM wrote: post #93

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.

Its not necessarily marketing in the sense of A/B testing his game play or fictional background or artwork or whatever, but consider general user experience stuff. So I hear its a cool rogue-like but unlike the fifty indie rogue-likes I have languishing unplayed in my steam account already, I can play this one in the browser, whoa cool, technically impressive and maybe fun too. So I go to the web page expecting a sli…

My thoughts exactly! I'm a sucker for roguelikes and support a lot of indie developers that try slightly new angles at it, but there was too much of a barrier here.

Even if it's early access at least make it Steam early access. From the demo video it looks like the game would be in a good enough state to get it on there.

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#402

Post by ewjordan » Mon, Oct 01, 2018, 5:48 AM UTC

make3 wrote: post #389

kiostech wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for your suggestions. I just amend my grammatical mistake.

amended

That would be "amended" if we're gonna go all the way with this.

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#403

Post by seventhtiger » Mon, Oct 01, 2018, 5:50 AM UTC

krapp wrote: post #259

the_cat_kittles wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is why i feel compelled to think about things that are necessarily localized. how the hell can you compete with the whole world?

You're not actually competing with the whole world, though, just whatever else is similar to someone's interests. In this case... "metroidvania" is a very oversaturated market, and a lot of games do it better.

Making the games you want to play is actually not great advice. You need to find a niche and hit it hard.

Maybe that used to be metroidvania, but that's long over. Visual novels have been on the rise for a while, so are rougelikes and card games, but those are saturated now. You want to get in before the big streamers and reddit frontpage and ride the wave.

Who knew a Harvest Moon clone would be the biggest indie success of its year? Maybe we can systematically analyze old games to identify overlooked gems and valuable revivals.

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#404

Post by bmc7505 » Mon, Oct 01, 2018, 6:08 AM UTC

vagab0nd wrote: post #326

I used to think that making money was extremely easy. You can make an App, a website, a YouTube channel, etc. How absolutely naive I was. Turns out it's very hard to convince people to pay you. I adopted a different strategy later on. I try to make things that I use myself. So if it turns out no one else uses it, at least my effort doesn't go to waste. My Android App is now sitting at 10+ downloads but I made peace w…

What is the app?

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#405

Post by yitchelle » Mon, Oct 01, 2018, 6:10 AM UTC

invalidusernam3 wrote: post #230

Nokinside wrote: post #150

Game industry is the economics of superstars. The Macroeconomics of Superstars[1] >Abstract >Recent technological changes have transformed an increasing number of sectors of the economy into so-called superstars sectors, in which a small number of entrepreneurs or professionals distribute their output widely to the rest of the economy. Examples include the high-tech sector, sports, the music industry, management, fna…

Game development is hard, it seems like it's completely hit or miss, there is no middle ground. I've released 5 games, but I have to say, spending 2,600+ hours on something without doing market research or at least starting small seems crazy. My most successful game was an app for iOS which made me a grand total of around $30. The difference is I only spent around 80 hours working on it (40 or so for the game, 20 or…

Would you say that the difference between the games side projects vs the website side projects are the mindset in which you have executed those projects?

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#406

Post by john_moscow » Mon, Oct 01, 2018, 6:10 AM UTC

I think the biggest problem with this game is the lack of atmosphere and story. In 201X it's not about the pixels and latencies, it's about the creative part.

The nearest "success" example I can think of is Jets-and-Guns [1]. The guys that made the game partnered with an indie 8-bit rock band that wrote the soundtrack specifically for the game. The story is full of parodies on common cliches and silly jokes that made me replay the game several times.

There's a bunch of other successful indie games in other markets and unless it offers a radically new addictive gameplay (say Minecraft), it has to be about the story. Stardew valley, Papers Please, you name it. Unfortunately, this title simply lacks both of them and is hence doomed to fail.

P.S. It shouldn't take 3 years to find out the lack of product/market fit. There's a funny saying that if you are not ashamed of the v1.0 of your product, you have released it too late. This 100% applies here. Release it with just 1 level based on a commodity game engine, gather feedback, decide onward based on it. Anything more than a couple of months is just wrong if you are doing it for the first time as a 1-person project, IMHO.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEnHolPt8zw

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#407

Post by watwut » Mon, Oct 01, 2018, 6:19 AM UTC

eksemplar wrote: post #395

kbenson wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The author of this article rants about the swarm of unity games, but some of those unity games are better than what the author made exactly because they took design seriously. Did we read the same article? Not only the total number of games, but the rate of their release seems to be geometrically increasing! Holy crap. And while many of them are Unity shovelware, etc., many are polished games that a lot of effort w…

To me it reads as someone who disregards unity games, while praising well made indie games in general. And in the light of the rest of the article, the author seem to favor people who did good programming, but the truth is that you don’t need to be a good programmer to make good games. I think supply is an issue, but I also think the author added to the problem by releasing a game that doesn’t have appealing graphics…

Shovelware typically does not have "appealing graphics, gameplay or sound". It is term used for low effort games and imply nothing special in all aspects.

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#408

Post by vagab0nd » Mon, Oct 01, 2018, 6:22 AM UTC

bmc7505 wrote: post #404

vagab0nd wrote: post #326

I used to think that making money was extremely easy. You can make an App, a website, a YouTube channel, etc. How absolutely naive I was. Turns out it's very hard to convince people to pay you. I adopted a different strategy later on. I try to make things that I use myself. So if it turns out no one else uses it, at least my effort doesn't go to waste. My Android App is now sitting at 10+ downloads but I made peace w…

What is the app?

It's a very simple App which helps you memorize and learn items using Spaced Repetition.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nerfsoftwa...

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#409

Post by reificator » Mon, Oct 01, 2018, 6:29 AM UTC

bemmu wrote: post #391

invalidusernam3 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Game development is hard, it seems like it's completely hit or miss, there is no middle ground. I've released 5 games, but I have to say, spending 2,600+ hours on something without doing market research or at least starting small seems crazy. My most successful game was an app for iOS which made me a grand total of around $30. The difference is I only spent around 80 hours working on it (40 or so for the game, 20 or…

Instead of making a game for some category on Steam and hoping it sells enough in the first month before sales drop off, I wonder if it could work to make a super-super niche game where the goal would be to rank for a Google search term instead. You'd try to be very long-lived, steadily selling for years, say just a few copies a week. All traffic would come from people who have some incredibly niche interest they are…

> "baptism planner simulator 2000"

I guarantee that if you drop the "planner" that game would sell like hotcakes as soon as a medium sized YouTuber/Twitch streamer notices it.

There is no way a game about dunking babies doesn't get enough shock value to get a decent return on investment, especially if it has wonky physics, "bad" controls or other emergent gameplay.

For a deeper game, maybe bring back the "planner" aspect to add a simulation layer on top. Make a tycoon game where you manage a church and the baptisms are just one of a few minigames.

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#410

Post by nearmuse » Mon, Oct 01, 2018, 6:36 AM UTC

Well, looking at that youtube demo, although it might be a nice game a lot effort went into, it is nothing conceptually new. I could understand the despair of someone who had an original idea and artistic skill, pulled off a game with unprecedented gameplay and then it didn't float because people didn't get the hang of it. But this game? It is for people who like that kind of games (Metroid inspired games or whatever).