81–90 of 266 posts
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Epic Games has a program called MegaGrants where they give a bunch of money to various projects. https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/megagrants For example they gave $250k to the Godot game engine project in 2020. https://godotengine.org/article/godot-engine-was-awarded-epi...
I wouldn't call anything Epic Games does charity: it's all empire expansion for them.
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“In Feb. 2024, Stardew Valley reached 30 million copies sold, and if we assume each copy sold for $15, that means that the game could have generated a revenue of $450 million. A modest 10 percent profit margin puts ConcernedApe’s earnings at $45 million, a number that is likely to increase in the future.” Source: https://dotesports.com/stardew-valley/news/how-much-money-di...
Why would 1 unit of this game have a "profit margin" of 10%? It's a video game. He's not selling canned goods.
The video games industry is filled to the brim with gatekeepers who take their cuts. Valve takes 30%, just for their store. Publishers start at 10%. Your engine might take a cut.
Estimating that Stardew Valley, the big success video game with the lowest overhead bar none, has made 10% profit might be too low. 20%? Might be high.
When ever I hear and see Mono Game I think back at the time I decided to dig a bit into XNA. I was a huge Xbox 360 fan and liked the idea of the indie platform they tried to setup. At the time the decision moving from Flash was either XNA in c# or Unity. Back then Unity used JS as a scripting engine. I wanted nothing to do with that. I also thought that MS is a saver bet. Well XNA is dead but the legacy lives on in p…
I remember one year, someone bought me an old book on game development. It was a book using DirectX 3.0. To this day, that was probably the most intimidating programming books I’ve ever read. I remember hearing about XNA at the time and it just made so much more sense to me.
I’ve tried a few times to get back into game development, but I don’t like most big engines. The opinionation of them doesn’t square with how my non-game dev mind wants to model things, and I’m too retarded for the math/physics involved in rolling your own engine.
I did briefly toy with monogame though during a period where I was unemployed. It certainly had me the most comfortable as someone who’s career prior had been enterprise .Net crap.
At this point though, game dev seems extremely tedious. I have much more interest in game design. I’ve considered picking up genetic coding just to try it out for that purpose.
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Is it so hard to accept someone else might give away money for a charitable reason rather than because of fear?
When you give money to help a pet shelter, or to feed kids in some far-away location, this is a donation. You give something, and you don't get anything back in return. Even a tax benefit, it doesn't change anything (as at the end you have to pay the same amount of money). But now, what if you "donate" to a public park across the street from your house: Is it charity? Yes, you are giving money to the city/trust that…
The fact people with this opinion exist also discourages donations from others because "nothing is ever enough" for you.
Also pro-tip, if you do more than a handful donations you'll realize that you as the giver is always the one that most benefits from being charitable. The feeling you get is why you do it.
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Your chances are much more higher building your own game than playing the lottery endlessly. You forget that guy who made Stardew Valley had to self-teach everything he knew, till he got to the point he quit his full time job. I don't see in what universe you have a better chance to win the lottery, than to build a successful indie game if you truly put your heart into it. Some of the greatest inventions didn't come…
The lottery definitely has worse odds, I just don't think that's saying much. If you want to create indie games—and you can make it work without quitting your day job—go for it! But I don't think it would be smart for EA or Ubisoft to, like, stop making big-budget games and make indie games instead. If you can make a breakout hit, you can make a huge profit—but you have to make a breakout hit, and that comes down to…
Absolutely. People tend to assume that 95% of video games turn a profit, when it's the reverse. There are highly polished, incredibly high quality video games who simply just don't sell.
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Why would it put them to shame? It’s an incredibly rare situation and most AAA devs would be super happy for him.
Is it incredibly rare? We've seen time and time again in the last few years, really basic indie games overtake AAA games in sales on Steam. Schedule One is another one which had 450 thousand concurrent players not very long after its launch. It seems AAA game studios are missing what gamers want at every turn. There's an uptick in indie devs that have broken through the barriers with good gameplay despite the graphic…
There are thousands of new games each year. The handful lucky outstanding low-budget games won't put anyone to shame.
> There's an uptick in indie devs that have broken through the barriers with good gameplay despite the graphics not being AAA quality.
Don't confuse indie with AAA. Indie is about control, AAA about budget. There is usually a correlation between control and budget, but there are also many long-running indie-devs with good budget now. Supergiant, who made Hades 2 for example, are such an AA(A)-Indie.
> Edit other games that come to mind: Hollow Knight: Silksong, Hades II, Schedule 1, and R.E.P.O. > More obvious examples: Minecraft, Terraria, Factorio were all indie studios as far as I am aware. Minecraft being one of the most successful games at 350 million copies sold.
Those are long-running, genre-defining games, which also received a good budget over the years. Many of them are in the realm of AA, probably AAA now. Those are naturally grown services-games which could grow from success to become even more successful. Big studies tried to emulate this in the last years, but ultimately failed big in most cases.
The general problem is, the bigger your budget, the bigger the anxiety, leading to more control, conservative micromanaging and throwing every shit into the game to cater as much people as possible, which in high numbers cannibalizes the market eventually. Low-budgets can take on more risks, focus on their gaming-mechanisms and don't have to sell big. Making small money to cover your costs is already good enough, and they all can always explode by luck if they get their marketing right.
Games like Schedule 1 or R.E.P.O. don't have to offer 100h+ of fancy fun and high level entertainment. People are happy if they can get their 10+ hours of fun out of it, because they didn't waste big money on it anyway. So you will always see cheap games occasionally explode for a short while, while everyone is waiting for the big games going on sale, especially when the cheap games are coming with a social aspect.
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When you give money to help a pet shelter, or to feed kids in some far-away location, this is a donation. You give something, and you don't get anything back in return. Even a tax benefit, it doesn't change anything (as at the end you have to pay the same amount of money). But now, what if you "donate" to a public park across the street from your house: Is it charity? Yes, you are giving money to the city/trust that…
I really hate that vision of the world with a passion. For people with such opinion nothing is ever enough or pure enough, but if you ask directly such people donate almost nothing themselves. The fact people with this opinion exist also discourages donations from others because "nothing is ever enough" for you. Also pro-tip, if you do more than a handful donations you'll realize that you as the giver is always the o…
(this sounds like an attack btw, as you can't know what I do)
"Sponsoring", "Supporting", "Paying", "Hiring", "Contracting", etc, this is all ok.
but calling it charitable donation is a bit too much; calling "donation" money that you give that directly benefits your own interest is something I don't feel is right. It's only about the wording, not the action.
"I made a video game and now I chose to give 500 USD to help women who need shelter because they are beaten by their husbands", or even 50 USD, or 5 USD.
then yes, this is charity, and beautiful.
But this is very different to "I sent 100K USD to the project I absolutely and critically depend on".
It's not about the amount or doing "more", or that people are never satisfied, is that if you give to people who work in your interest, it's strategic sponsorship (or contractors...).
It's two very very different things, under the same word: "donation".
Why not LÖVE (Lua) for example? https://love2d.org/
There is also libGDX (Java) but not sure Oracle is any better than Microsoft. https://libgdx.com/