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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

#81

Post by village-idiot »

pushpop wrote: post #79
Zeebrommer wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess the difference is that classic videogames make their money by a single purchase upfront. Modern MMO/F2P games need the player to get hooked and spend their money on loot boxes and outfits.

Arcades were a thing before home consoles. The entire premise of an arcade is to get people hooked on short tasks of intermediate reward so they keep churning their coins into the machine.

Arcades are also a fundamentally social experience, which changes the tenor significantly.

No, most online games don’t count as social. They’re anonymous, faceless, and typically populated with the utter dregs of humanity willing to say the most vile thing to get attention. Genuine human interaction this is not.

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

#82

Post by KilledByAPixel »

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…

Hi, I'm the author of the post. Thank you for your thoughts!

I certainly don't want everyone to make business card games. I do however want games that are tighter and more focused. Like imagine RDR2 without the mini games, shorter story, and just much better core mechanics. That's the game I want to play.

I will say though that philosophically a deep and complex game can already exist on a business card. Take the classic board game go for example. Someone could probably code that (minus the AI) on a business card, and it's one of the most complex games known to man that people have been playing for thousands of years.

The lesson I was going for is not anything can be simple, we already know that.

The lesson is more about how developers are so focused on making games fun that we sometimes forget that making games should be fun too. I really do believe that for any kind of artist, to create great art, it's more important to have fun creating something then what the actual end product is.

Also that there is value in simplicity, it is sometimes worth creating something that seems pointless just because it's fun. The journey towards it may yield unexpected rewards.

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

#83

Post by muzani »

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…

To each their own. I don't like Overwatch or games like Fallout simply because of the 1500 hours. I like to complete a game within a month or so. Much longer and it feels like work (work is fun too and if I'm going to get good at something, it should at least pay the bills).

My sweet spot would actually be games like Rimworld or Kittens. Something that you can find closure in about 20 hours of gameplay.

I feel like games have become so unwinnable, that there's a whole new market to pay people to win games.

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

#84

Post by ozzmotik »

KilledByAPixel wrote: post #50
stickfigure wrote: post #16

In fairness, he's optimizing for "fun to write", not "fun to play". It reminds me of a cartoon I saw 25 years ago, "the perfect airplane" drawn from various perspectives: * The perfect airplane (pilot's perspective): Super sleek jet fighter. * The perfect airplane (mechanic's perspective): A giant pile of access hatches in vaguely airplane shape. * The perfect airplane (builder's perspective): A 2x4 with another 2x4…

Do you think great artists make things that are fun to make, or do you think they really just try to make stuff that other people will enjoy?

ideally both, but with a preferential disposition towards the former. I see no reason why it has to be one or the other. false dichotomy etc.

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

#85

Post by dgzl »

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…

> The depth and complexity just isn't there

That's literally what the author is saying, in the very passage you quoted. The idea of a game isn't inherently complicated, and even simple games can be most entertaining. You sound like a connoisseur of the modern PC experience, but most people in this world are not and would still like to enjoy something that's delightfully thoughtful, intriguing, and simple enough to pick up for a short time, but not so addicting that you can't drop it immediately for a real world responsibility.

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

#86

Post by benj111 »

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…

What's the binary size of Overwatch? What about SLOC?

Yes there probably isn't the complexity in a business card game. But there are plenty of < 1MB games that have depth and complexity. What do the many extra orders of magnitude in the size of overwatch actually get you?

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

#88

Post by dalbasal »

It's interesting that a "business card sized game" is still interesting in 2019. IE, there will be people who want to play it... a game that would have been at home in 1978.

I think there's a parallel here to film/tv. You can make a billion dollar "avatar." People like those, but there's always room for a "blair witch project" or a "clerks" that someone can decide and make.

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

#89

Post by emptybits »

MaulingMonkey wrote: post #32
ilovetux wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO art is all about working within constraints. i think this might be some of the most beautiful (if not maintainable) code out there. No body needs to maintain a picasso, just preservation.

One always has constraints, if only in time/budget/imagination. And those are some pretty boring, vanilla constraints. Different constraints encourage or force different approaches, which gives you different results. You're not going to have a budgeting meeting over a <1K demo. You're not going to contract out to an artist. You're not going to use a large engine. You're not going to make a doom clone. You're not goin…

That's an excellent description of why I recall the days of inherent constraint as fondly as I do. I was an 8-bit console programmer back in the day. I've also worked in a later era of sophisticated engines, huge teams, artists and coders often assigned narrow specialties, managed by tiers of development directors and producers and administrative staff. Pros and cons, for sure.

So in hindsight, two more joyous aspects of constraint in game development (whether inherent or self-imposed):

1. Bugs, testing, quality. When you know your binary will be burned into a cartridge with no hope of a patch or update, one tends to code and test carefully! You fill your allocated ROM banks with as much "fun" as you can (code and content) but you know it must be well tested for both play balance and bugs because you can't release a version 1.1. :-)

2. Scope creep. This is much easier to avoid when you're given (e.g.) four 16KB banks of ROM for all your code and assets. So you burn midnight oil for mere months, not years, before you find out if your game is a hit or a stinker. Short feedback loops. More variety per year. Refreshing.

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

#90

Post by Accacin »

skellera wrote: post #44
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.

When did this opinion start taking such a hold? Out of all places, I didn’t think HN would be so anti-games but I’ve been seeing more and more people saying this here. Could someone who feels this way expand on why they have such a negative view on games? Just curious if it’s personal, cultural, or something else? Also, is it directed at complex games with storylines, online multiplayer, or mobile games meant to pull…

Personally I've become disillusioned with most online multiplayer games (I've played WoW, Dota 2, etc. for thousands of hours) and I've been a lot happier now I pretty much only play single player offline games.

Offline games can be played when I want (mostly in the evening for an hour or so) and there's no pressure to improve like in Dota 2 and WoW.

One of my favourite purchases recently was a PSP Vita, I can emulate most GB, GBC, GBA, PS, PSP, PS Vita, and many others and I'm having a whole lot of fun going back to play many games that I'd missed in the past.

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