[HN Gopher] The Future of Games is an Instant Flash to the past
___________________________________________________________________
The Future of Games is an Instant Flash to the past
Author : meheleventyone
Score : 186 points
Date : 2021-06-25 11:21 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.fortressofdoors.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.fortressofdoors.com)
| wiradikusuma wrote:
| "instant games"... here I am 10 minutes down, the game is still
| loading at 11%
| megameter wrote:
| There are oodles of games that started as free games and then
| made a commercial release later on. It's not really unique to web
| or "instant".
|
| Further, there's a huuuge dropoff in interest once you do go to a
| paid release. Often these games are accessed from locked-down
| school or office environments as part of a "game jukebox" in the
| same way that YouTube often doubles as a "music jukebox" -
| there's minimal investment in what you're playing, so, like fast
| food, it's more important that it leaves a good impression in
| five minutes than to actually have substance. FNF's basic appeal
| is akin to a fashion brand with a cool logo - these characters
| could have used any number of delivery vehicles but the game, and
| the game when put on Newgrounds specifically, happened to be the
| right one with the right audience. And because it's positioned
| for ease of access you get the high virality. When you flip
| things so that the audience pays upfront, they have to have some
| conviction in this one, out of a countless number of games, being
| the one they should champion. It's just a radically different
| proposition and only some games can cross over between the two
| markets.
|
| FNF does benefit from having a lot more hardware and bandwidth
| available these days. Music is classically the Achilles' Heel of
| web gaming because it's either space-inefficient or you need to
| invest in a sequencer format of some sort(which was only feasible
| in Flash by fighting the available technology every step of the
| way). But FNF delivers full-length audio streams without too much
| difficulty, so we've clearly made some giant strides there.
| bstar77 wrote:
| I agree that instant games are and will continue to be desirable
| for a sizable audience. Correlating that to Adobe Flash
| completely lost me.
|
| My NES games are instant and that preceded Flash by decades. In
| fact, I think the 8-bit era inspires game devs today far more
| than the early-mid 2000's browser games.
| lleb97a wrote:
| As a solo developer considering releasing - at least a demo - as
| a web-based game, this article is at least a little reassuring.
| Even though I'm still not convinced that it would be easy to
| monetize. Although I'm somewhat convinced that allowing people to
| play your game - instantly and for free - is highly-desirable.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| I think it's demonstrably the case that if you get the link in
| front of peoples eyeballs they will be much more likely to
| click it and actually play the demo then if they have to do
| anything else at all.
|
| The hard part is getting the eyeballs on the link in the first
| place. But that's the same problem you have on Steam and other
| app stores.
| thrower123 wrote:
| Maybe, but the barrier of entry for HTML5 games is absurd
| compared to what you could do with Flash, RIP.
|
| Why does everything have to be so damned complicated these days?
| It's not necessary complication, it's complication for the sake
| of complication.
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| How else do you socially signify that you're a real
| professional who uses complex tools and should be paid good
| money because not just anyone can do what you do?
| xtracto wrote:
| I completely agree. I used to make games back in the GWBASIC
| and DJGPP/Allegro age. I tried to retake that passion a couple
| of months ago and boy the complexity of Unity or all other
| gaming frameworks today amazed me.
| cupofcoffee wrote:
| What barrier of entry for HTML5 games? Not like you need to
| install 40 frameworks to make web games.
| larsiusprime wrote:
| Definitely agree. Some of the game engines are taking the pain
| out of this but Flash had something really special going with
| its stupidly easy to use animation-first workflow.
| xfer wrote:
| I think virtual consoles are the answer here like pico8. But i
| am not a fan of pico8 limitations and also the design tools
| don't work on browser. I am keeping an eye on
| quadplay(https://github.com/morgan3d/quadplay) which seems
| interesting but also lacking design tools.
| MrLeap wrote:
| What's old is new again, I remember when flash flash revolution
| was the thing everyone did in all the computer labs in
| highschool.
|
| If everything that was popular to teens during the flash era has
| a shot, I prognosticate we'll see haxe ways to box celebrities..
| uhh elaborately choreographed stick figure violence, and a whole
| lot of things that are based off old warcraft 3 custom maps. Also
| winter bells. Definitely winter bells.
| Ronson wrote:
| By far, the worst thing I ever done was Game Development. I
| poured years of starting my career into it. I worked at Sony in
| the UK then Bizarre Creations and had a wee go at Rockstar North.
| Bizarre Creations was amazing, and everything else was terrible.
|
| Not too long after, the financial crisis hit and I found myself
| working on the Flash Runtime just to earn a crust (my partner and
| I had just got a house and her father was diagnosed with cancer
| so I was kind of stuck in the wrong location).
|
| Then Stevo came along and that ended any hope of continuing with
| Flash Runtime. I eked out some work with Scaleform.
|
| Then Typescript came out, then Angular, and now I work 1% of the
| effort for 10000%+ uptake on my salary and never looked back.
|
| Game development is genuinely a mugs game and I'd urge everyone
| not to do it.
| gre wrote:
| I went on a cabin retreat and my friend's 14 year old son was
| playing this a couple weeks ago. It really is that popular.
| flemhans wrote:
| And it seems super similar to the old "Super Crazy Guitar
| Maniac Deluxe" series of games.
| wolfram74 wrote:
| I wonder if certain genre's are seasonal and other's ever
| green? Like, there hasn't been a new RTS that penetrated my
| radar like starcraft in awhile. Maybe there'll be a bump in
| sales for Crypt Of the Necrodancer.[0]
|
| [0]https://braceyourselfgames.com/crypt-of-the-necrodancer/
| handrous wrote:
| I think "classic" RTS is an interesting case that's not
| likely to return in anything like the form some of us used to
| like.
|
| There are at least two audiences for traditional RTS: the
| ones who want an experience resembling speed chess and are
| focused on multiplayer, and the ones who don't care about
| anything more than _maybe_ a little casual multiplayer, and
| mostly want the campaign.
|
| Looking back, all the RTS games I played growing up, as the
| latter kind of gamer, were _sort of_ bad at delivering what I
| wanted, even the greats. Teasing out the elements into their
| own things makes them so much better. Base-building is a
| better single-player experience when it 's more like city-
| builders with objectives. Moving your little dudes around a
| map in service of a story is better when there's minimal or
| no base-building, and certainly when most maps don't revolve
| around both sides building bases while trying to destroy the
| other's. Grand strategy scratches another part of the RTS
| itch. Certain RPGs, another. They all shine better, doing
| what they do, than RTS did, however nostalgic I am for the
| _abstract ideal_ of it, which, in hindsight, was never even
| really _approached_ by the actual games.
|
| Meanwhile, the RTS genre seems to have refined more and more
| into the multiplayer speed-chess-alike space, sometimes
| dropping some traditional elements of the genre in order to
| hyper-focus on delivering that experience, all of which makes
| it even less interesting to me (but I gather has made it much
| better for people who _want_ that). It 's not the 90s now, so
| you can ship a game that's almost entirely focused on online
| multiplayer, with little or nothing to offer for single-
| player, and it can still sell, so there's no need to try to
| tack a satisfying single-player campaign on to these.
| syzygyhack wrote:
| Eyes on Frost Giant to deliver us the spiritual SC3
| ehnto wrote:
| Some games build a community that has quite a bit of inertia
| to switching. Starcraft has an enormous community and
| competitive apparatus surrounding it, even if a game was
| better mechanically, it's unlikely to dethrone StarCraft
| without a fairly unique situation happening. The more likely
| scenario is StarCraft gets messed up in some way that splits
| the community into a new game. In my opinion anyhow.
| toptal wrote:
| This is just a rehash of https://future.a16z.com/instant-games/
| which itself is a rehash of what the co-founder of Playco stated.
| marstall wrote:
| Doesn't hurt that FNF is a game with considerable polish, swagger
| and fun, even compared to platform rhythm games!
| socialist_coder wrote:
| Facebook Instant is actually a pretty incredible platform, IMO.
| Tons of games on there, available to play with 1 click and no
| install. They all load pretty fast and the performance is great.
|
| Almost none are built with Unity. It's very very rare to find one
| that isn't built with a web-native game engine.
|
| Check it out if you've never seen it, you will be impressed.
| https://www.facebook.com/instantgames/
|
| The crappy thing is that iOS doesn't let you do IAPs on FB
| Instant. So you can only have IAPs on Android & Desktop. Ad
| monetization works everywhere though.
| hoytech wrote:
| > Before smartphones, Flash came pre-installed on approximately
| every single consumer computing device except for home consoles.
| No matter what kind of computer, operating system, or browser
| your cousin was running, you could just send her a link to a
| funny cartoon or game and it would Just Work(tm)
|
| That was not my experience with Flash on Linux or BSD. It was a
| huge pain getting it to work and keeping it updated.
|
| Anyone remember having to load a Flash app just to see a
| restaurant menu? I'm very happy you don't need Flash anymore to
| browse the web.
| cupofcoffee wrote:
| Seems a bit of a far-fetched conclusion from a black swan.
|
| Browser games allow you to fast prototype but people don't care
| at all whether the game is Flash or instant, written in C++ or
| you need to install some software to play it. The only thing they
| care about is the game good.
|
| Flappy bird had insane success as well, why not claim the future
| of games is mobile?
| lilgreenland wrote:
| I'm secretly hoping for this type of success for my game.
| Realistically, I'm just glad I have a creative outlet.
|
| https://landgreen.github.io/sidescroller/index.html
|
| It's also free, open source, no ads, no micro-transactions, web
| based, no freemium, no data harvesting, no gacha, no crypto
| harvesting.
| gen_greyface wrote:
| this is really good.
| ogurechny wrote:
| Side note about "instant multiplayer Minecraft": Minetest is as
| instant as possible for a native application: you download the
| client (about 25 MB), then connect to any server, no matter which
| games and mods run there, and have all the needed assets streamed
| from it, too. Non-existing nickname is all the identification
| player needs, IRC-style. It is even inter-operable across major
| versions and forks, at least to some extent. Of course, it has
| been this way because it has a typical relatively small and tight
| open source community, but, from a cursory look, it is possible
| for a public server to have a protected spawn/sightseeing area
| with rules and information, then (auto)grant new players who want
| to participate various gameplay privileges based on their
| progress.
|
| It doesn't seem that web client built in the same manner is
| impossible. What's impossible is, most likely, telling a browser
| to give you a gigabyte or two of memory to keep the local world
| area, then step aside and forget about it.
| hackererror404 wrote:
| Sadly there's nothing "instant" about this... Takes a long time
| to load and it's pretty clunky once it does.
| sktrdie wrote:
| Gamedev has got to be the most rewarding type of software coding
| there is. It's a type of coding that is much closer to actual
| artistic creation rather than engineering. The sheer amount of
| creative & engaging stories, puzzles, real-time strategies and on
| top of this entirely multiplayerable online allows for an
| infinite amount of types of entertaining creations... all made
| possible thanks to code.
|
| Sure there's untapped potential in all kinds of types of
| software; hell people are reinventing 2d design (think Figma etc)
| & issue management (newly released GitHub issues). But surely
| building "yet another react form" feels like coding an already
| solved problem.
|
| What I mean is that gamedev has possibly the most untapped
| potential for coders wanting to make something truly amazing,
| with a sheer infinite amount of possible creations.
|
| You're not approaching the creation with the usual "what problem
| am I trying to solve" but rather "what's the most fun thing I can
| build?".
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| I agree wholeheartedly; it's also much harder and not very
| economically rewarding on average
| ChrisRR wrote:
| Unfortunately it's not. If you're working on a small 1 or 2
| person game where your work blurs the lines of art and
| engineering, you're highly unlikely to be successful. For every
| Undertale there are literally hundreds of other indie games
| that barely earned a penny
|
| It only takes a small studio of like 10 people before you're
| practically never touching anything creative and are working on
| software tools and under the hood functionality just like any
| other dev job
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| You're thinking of money. The parent poster was talking about
| art. If you can _afford it,_ gamedev allows you to blow not
| only your own mind, but also the minds of everyone else -
| especially new generations who have learned the medium from
| birth.
| ChrisRR wrote:
| Any amount of hobby projects allow to blend software with
| whatever your interests are.
|
| Everyone probably has other hobbies that they could easily
| write software for
| roenxi wrote:
| I dunno, much like how most people aren't artists, I think
| most people probably wouldn't get a lot out of game
| programming because they just don't have that combination
| of creative spark and narcissism to think they can create a
| great game.
|
| Most of the actual fun in programming is that feeling of
| ongoing small puzzle solving.
| renewiltord wrote:
| I had quite a bit of fun many years ago making an
| Arkanoid clone that included gravity and a tilting paddle
| that would react to the impact of the ball. Only two
| people ever played it: my brother and me.
|
| And I've lost the source code, but I recall it being very
| easy to make in Love 2D.
|
| It was fun, at least. And I'm a huge fan of this kind of
| mass low-grade creativity.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| If you still have a binary, LOVE 2D games are reasonably
| simple to decompile.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Fascinating fact. Thank you. I have nothing. But it
| should be easy enough to replicate.
| simplify wrote:
| > Most of the actual fun in programming is that feeling
| of ongoing small puzzle solving.
|
| Not for everyone https://josephg.com/blog/3-tribes/
| derefr wrote:
| This seems to also be defining game creation in terms of
| money: a "great game", as if something has to be widely
| appreciated to be great.
|
| Artists make art because they feel a need to express
| themselves. There are often less-stressful, more
| commercial uses for their same talents, but they do art
| instead, because there's something nagging on their minds
| to be expressed out into the world. (Often an artist-in-
| general will learn a new artistic medium just to express
| a feeling they don't feel can be expressed with their
| current toolset!)
|
| And nobody ever said the artistic process itself is
| _fun_. It 's toil for the reward--the satisfaction--of
| _having communicated your thought_ in a way that seems
| capable of truly touching other people. Just like the
| "petty art" of the prose writing we're doing to each-
| other here -- but with much more labor and intent put
| into each stroke, such that there is more value to be
| wrung out of each moment of experiencing the result.
| roenxi wrote:
| > It's toil for the reward--the satisfaction--of having
| communicated your thought in a way that seems capable of
| truly touching other people.
|
| The programming community is almost exactly the group of
| people who believe they can truly touch others by
| developing practical software. And programmers are
| usually really bad at truly touching others with artistic
| games.
|
| Most people are quite bad at expressing themselves, let
| alone most programmers. I think contributing to open
| source is probably a greater source of satisfaction for
| most than programming games. I've had a hopeless stab at
| both, and making a small meaningful contribution was much
| more satisfying than expressing myself badly through a
| game.
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| What about contributing to an open source game? I have
| code in Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup.
| derefr wrote:
| > And programmers are usually really bad at truly
| touching others with artistic games.
|
| I think you missed the key words "seems capable of" in my
| statement.
|
| Satisfaction in creating art doesn't come from _actually_
| touching other people 's emotions, i.e. witnessing them
| being touched. (People who need that feeling, should best
| avoid becoming artists, and instead become _entertainers_
| or _performers_ , where your craft is done "in
| communication with" a direct audience.)
|
| Satisfaction in art comes from when you've polished your
| work to the point where _your mental model of other
| people_ is touched. It 's actually completely
| solipsistic; it doesn't depend on whether any real person
| ever sees the art at all. Just whether you _think_ your
| target audience (which can even be a fictional character,
| or a dead person, etc.) would like it if they ever _did_
| see it. (Art can also be entirely for yourself -- though
| works of art of the complexity of games usually aren 't.)
|
| As such, you can be truly bad at expressing yourself, and
| still receive satisfaction from creating art -- as long
| as you're also bad at predicting how other people will
| react to your art+.
|
| Luckily for fledgling artists, skill in the craft of art,
| and skill in judging art quality, are usually developed
| together. So, when starting out, you can be satisfied by
| bad art, because you don't yet know it's bad. (Though
| this _does_ mean that people who start out as art
| _critics_ , have a very hard time of becoming artists,
| because they know from the start when they have no inborn
| _talent_ for art, and that discourages them from doing
| the practice required to develop the _skill_ for art.)
|
| -----
|
| + It could also be that you're bad at the craft of art,
| _and_ have a well-calibrated mental model of people, but
| you 're just driven to create art for people with
| weird/outre/"bad" taste, who are especially moved by
| exactly your brand of unskilled art. But that's beside
| the point I'm making here.
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| > People who need that feeling, should best avoid
| becoming artists, and instead become entertainers or
| performers, where your craft is done "in communication
| with" a direct audience.
|
| Modern games technology allows this. I know many an
| independent developer in tight community with players.
| There's this dude who's making this game who emails me
| closed beta builds and I think he's an artist. He often
| watches streamers in his community playing his own game
| and having a laugh with them. It's very personal. He puts
| his biggest fans into the game as NPCs, it's adorable.
| oreally wrote:
| > I think contributing to open source is probably a
| greater source of satisfaction for most than programming
| games.
|
| I've never had better satisfaction in games compared to
| open-source. The focus on iteration making the games
| trumps any jockeying about over features/correctness/'is
| this needed' in open source contributions.
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| I'm going to save that in my quotes collection.
| Beautifully said.
| jayd16 wrote:
| >It only takes a small studio of like 10 people before you're
| practically never touching anything creative
|
| I've worked at AAA studios on AAA games with 500+ devs and
| you still get to play with art and fun ideas. How do you
| think they trick kids into spending 12 hour days at the
| office?
|
| There are some that retreat into bank software levels of
| detachment but it seems to be the exception, not the norm.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| > But surely building "yet another react form" feels like
| coding an already solved problem.
|
| > What I mean is that gamedev has possibly the most untapped
| potential for coders wanting to make something truly amazing,
| with a sheer infinite amount of possible creations.
|
| Whilst I agree there is a lot of common and drudgey work in
| gamedev as well even in extremely creative projects.
| larsiusprime wrote:
| Author here!
|
| I have mixed feelings about this. When you do something
| creative for a job it takes on an entirely different character
| than doing it for yourself. Another thing is that gamedev is
| still software coding (among other things), and only a fraction
| of what you're doing amounts to the "fun bits" related to
| making interesting game design decisions. The majority of it is
| endless slog in trying to get collision detection to stop
| snagging on corners or figuring out why your fire status effect
| is cancelling as soon as it's applied (turns out it's because
| fire is cancelling ice without checking for the presence of ice
| in the first place, and ice turns enemies wet when it expires,
| and wet status cancels with fire status, so setting things on
| fire made them wet, which means they're no longer on fire). And
| 50 million more thing like this.
|
| I enjoy it, but then there's also the fact that the industry
| itself has a lot of pathologies that "boring" software
| development doesn't, lower pay and worse working conditions as
| an employee, and extremely turbulent ever-changing conditions
| as an independent developer or freelancer.
|
| Whenever some kid tells me they want to go into games for their
| career, I like to trot out the probably-apocryphal story of the
| Jewish rabbi who refuses to let a proselyte convert until he's
| come to the rabbi three times and been flat refused twice. I
| use the same method -- "no kid, you don't want to go into the
| game industry for all these reasons." If they keep coming back
| despite all that, they at least know what they're getting into.
| jimmySixDOF wrote:
| Ok but consider the recent interview this week with Unity CEO
| John Riccitiello who said: "real-time 3D
| content"--a category that includes games and material with
| game-like interactivity--will account for almost half of all
| visual digital content by the end of the decade, compared
| with what he estimates at only about 3% today. [1]
|
| That's in addition to his estimate that more than 15% of
| Unity development today is outside the gamer space.
|
| Over time I agree with him and think the better part of 3D
| UI/UX game design elements will make their way in to
| traditional enterprise software and web stacks. They will be
| both more functional and beautiful to work with as a result.
|
| [1] https://www.theinformation.com/articles/unity-ceo-
| predicts-a...
| chromanoid wrote:
| > Over time I agree with him and think the better part of
| 3D UI/UX game design elements will make their way in to
| traditional enterprise software and web stacks. They will
| be both more functional and beautiful to work with as a
| result.
|
| Lol, what better part? Game UI serves the game. UI of
| serious applications serves the user. Traditional
| enterprise software and web stacks will be inspired by
| serious well done consumer software that serves the
| consumer and is so pleasant to use that they want this at
| work too (see e.g. https://www.se-
| radio.net/2021/01/episode-442-arin-bhowmick-o...). Nobody
| wants to fumble seriously in inventory screens and go
| through click fests that are meant to keep you in-game.
| chromanoid wrote:
| This.
|
| 10k games were released on Steam in 2020. In 2021 Q1 there
| are 316k games available on iOS. When creating a game is what
| you like, it might be rewarding, but the coding work is
| usually not very rewarding when it comes to the details.
| Especially because game ideas are usually not as original as
| most people think...
|
| When you are not a code monkey, coding is always highly
| creative be it games, missile control systems, high frequency
| trading, insurance policy management etc. It might be easier
| to imagine fun in the idea of coding for a leisure activity,
| but in reality it can also feel very shallow.
| iamwil wrote:
| One thing jumped out at me above that I had a question on:
|
| With the problem about status effects, how is this typically
| implemented? Do the rules for interactions exist within the
| game objects themselves, as if-then-else statements? If so, I
| can see why that would be error prone. Even if those rules
| exist in abstractions like "Burnable" and "Metallic", it's
| still hard to see the side effects of changing or adding a
| single rule.
|
| Does anyone ever implement it in a single place, where you
| can query for the interactions between the different status
| effects? That way, all the rules are in one place, and being
| able to query for it, the results would tell you how it came
| to that conclusion. If not, how come?
| larsiusprime wrote:
| I just used it as an example of a bug I had last week and
| that I solved in 30 minutes -- the point is not how one
| individual bug occurred, but that there are a million
| boring technical things to do. You spend most of your time
| doing things other than enjoying the fruits of creative
| fulfillment.
|
| A significant amount of my time is not even spent coding,
| but doing admin and spreadsheets.
| iamwil wrote:
| Yes, game dev has a lot of grind to it. It was just that
| one example was related to something I've been thinking
| about: how come status effects and rules aren't in one
| central place to be queried? That way, you can spend 2-3
| mins on it rather than 30 mins, because the system can
| just tell you how it arrived at that conclusion.
|
| But I hear you. 30 mins probably isn't enough frustration
| to warrant something like that. What spreadsheets? Like
| systemic design in spreadsheets? Or you're doing
| accounting?
| larsiusprime wrote:
| Yeah if you wanna talk architecture I have a bit of YOLO
| code that drags on me.
|
| But actually in this specific case like 99% of my
| elemental interaction code is in the same place just as
| you recommend!
|
| In this specific case the problem was entirely that I
| added a new rule to make ice decay into wet when it was
| removed, but didn't add a check to see if ice had been
| applied in the first place before removing it. And of
| course, that was all in the elemental interactions file.
| 28 of the 30 minutes were spent in just puzzlement why
| the fire wasn't applying and checking a bunch of
| irrelevant dead ends before I thought to check "oh
| obviously it's probably the elemental interaction code,
| go check the elemental interaction file." 2 minutes were
| spent fixing the actual code.
| larsiusprime wrote:
| Missed your comment about spreadsheets. Yes! So many
| spreadsheets.
|
| So a bunch of design work happens in spreadsheets, yeah,
| that and long form google docs. Then a lot of business
| and admin stuff too (if you're an independent dev which
| means you're making games AND running a business).
| Whether that's accounting or projections or any number of
| other sundry things.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| So there's nearly as many answers to your question as
| there are gamedevs.
|
| I've seen quite a few use an OO modeling approach. That's
| fallen out of favor for good reason.
|
| Another approach is Entity Component Systems. I suggest
| googling for one of the better blog posts on that.
|
| Another approach is to build the equivalent of a datalog
| engine.
|
| An approach I favor is to have a stack per entity, and as
| you parse input events things get stacked up. Then a
| processing pass iterates across popping things off the
| stack. If you know how MTG rules work it's roughly the
| same idea.
|
| None of these are a panacea, because you can have logical
| contradictions in your ruleset that are subtle and only
| emerge in very niche situations.
|
| It's definitely very difficult problem. What you suggest
| is similar to what I termed the datalog style. If you've
| ever tried to debug a prolog or datalog program, you'll
| know that it all being in one file is a trivial concern
| compared to the emergent complexity and potential for you
| to have misstated your logic or included contradictions.
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| Agreed wholeheartedly.
|
| I'd add that engineers have their place in gamedev as well,
| because many artists don't _know_ how to make computers create
| worlds. Engineers generate the possibility space where artists
| can work. Sometimes, _fast code is needed_ to unlock
| capabilities no-one could have pre-imagined of.
| ehnto wrote:
| I've been loving following the Star Citizen project as
| they've just been throwing intense amount of money and work
| at really hard problems, due to an almost unbridled scope at
| the beginning. I think most game projects would have been
| reigned in by publishers or ran out of money by now.
|
| Whether someone believes the project will succeed or not is
| an interesting question, but you can't deny that they've made
| great progress at the fringes of a lot of game mechanics.
| ehnto wrote:
| It's unique in that it lets you create something that is quite
| immersive and more tangible instead of ephemeral. It feels more
| familiar to working with your hands than any other type of
| coding, and pretty much anyone can understand or enjoy it.
|
| My partner doesn't care that I wrote a really sweet cron job
| for collating web orders today, but she can instantly grok how
| cool a game idea is and have fun playing.
| taneq wrote:
| > Gamedev has got to be the most rewarding type of software
| coding there is.
|
| Well sure, when you're doing the fun bits for fun.
|
| > It's a type of coding that is much closer to actual artistic
| creation rather than engineering.
|
| Unless you're in a team with both artists and coders, which is,
| y'know, all of the commercial ones with a chance of success.
|
| > The sheer amount of creative & engaging stories, puzzles,
| real-time strategies and on top of this entirely
| multiplayerable online allows for an infinite amount of types
| of entertaining creations... all made possible thanks to code.
|
| It's the game designer who gets to do all this creating, not
| the coders. Unless (see point 2) you're in a tiny team hoping
| to win the lottery. See also "the kid fresh out of gamedev boot
| camp who wants to be a designer and is confused when nobody
| wants to join their team because everybody else has already has
| their own great ideas for a game which they've been working on
| for 10+ years while they also learned to code or model."
|
| > But surely building "yet another react form" feels like
| coding an already solved problem.
|
| Try building "yet another 3D model loader (that has to handle
| the quirks of three different modeling programs and eleventy
| different graphics cards)" - it's just as much reinventing the
| wheel, but with the added bonus that if you really cock it up
| you can hard lock your computer. Or my personal favourite,
| "debug this third party open world game engine which is clearly
| just a model viewer with a for() loop around it and the object
| loading part in a separate thread with zero synchronization."
| :D
|
| > You're not approaching the creation with the usual "what
| problem am I trying to solve" but rather "what's the most fun
| thing I can build?".
|
| Sure but 99% of professional game coders don't get to do this.
| This interdisciplinary paradise is the domain of hobbyists who
| never get paid and of the tiny minority who are there at
| exactly the right place and time (and also probably never get
| paid.)
|
| Career traits: Fun, lucrative, attainable. Pick any two. This
| applies to gamedev as much as any other line of work.
|
| This rant brought to you by distant, slightly salty memories of
| my brief stint in gamedev.
| munificent wrote:
| As someone who worked at EA for eight years, I think you are
| viewing the world with pretty jaded glasses.
|
| Yes, most game dev is not a magical utopia of coding whatever
| you feel like and watching the magic happen. But it's also
| not a horrific grind where you are treated entirely as a code
| monkey for someone else's art.
|
| There is an entire continuum between these points and
| different companies and teams will lie at different points on
| it. I have worked on games where I was so deep in the bowels
| of tools and tech that I couldn't even tell you how the game
| was played (maintaining the UI editor for Madden, which was
| actually a lot of fun). And I've worked on games where I sat
| right next to the designers and artists and had a lot of
| influence on the game itself (Henry Hatsworth, where I wrote
| the level/animation editor and in-game AI engine).
|
| I think overall, most game dev jobs do have a few things
| going for them compared to other domains:
|
| * You get a greater opportunity to work on cross-discipline
| teams. During my time at EA, I worked closely with artists,
| UI designers, producers, technical artists, sound designers,
| etc. It was _wonderful_ to not be in a programmer
| monoculture. It 's good for the soul to be around people who
| think differently.
|
| * People outside of your work have a more immediate
| understanding and appreciation for what you do. There is some
| prestige to being a game dev and at the very least most
| people can at least visualize a video game. If you work at a
| typical non-famous non-FAANG software company, your job is
| almost totally invisible.
|
| * You're working on a game. You might not spend much time
| literally _playing_ it, but it 's still more fun when
| debugging to poke around a football field or dungeon than a
| spreadsheet full or insurance rates or whatever stuff most
| typical CRUD devs are dealing with. Game development often
| feels concrete and tangible in ways that other software
| doesn't.
|
| But there are some downsides:
|
| * The market factors the intrinsic rewards above into
| compensation, so game dev pays less than other software
| fields. The massive number of young people who want to do it
| also drives salaries down.
|
| * The overtime is often awful.
|
| * A side effect of the above two is a constant brain drain.
| Experienced devs age out and leave when they want to start a
| family and have sane hours, to be replaced by another crop of
| fresh-faced kids who will work for peanuts for the cachet of
| being a real game dev. That means there is often a large lack
| of software engineering maturity on teams. Tons of spaghetti
| code, broken processes, poor estimation, and other self-
| inflicted wounds.
|
| I really enjoyed my time at EA (except for the overtime and
| often crappy code), but I'm also glad to not be working full
| time in games any more.
| cableshaft wrote:
| It's rewarding, but also exhausting. Either you put
| months/years of your life into something that pretty much no
| one plays, so it almost feels like why did you bother (other
| than you gained some skills along the way), or it gets some
| success and then you get bombarded by neverending expectations
| from entitled gamers.
|
| Among Us: "I definitely burnt out. It was tough because during
| all of this, we weren't able to see friends and family. Being
| so tired from working, I couldn't even go visit my family
| during covid and had to spend holidays alone...That was
| definitely the hardest time." [1]
|
| Minecraft fans getting angry at Notch for daring to take a
| vacation I remember, and here's one about a fan getting PISSED
| at an update with only one new thing to play with: [2]
|
| Stardew Valley fans mad for how long multiplayer update took "I
| love you ConcernedApe and your game, Stardew Valley, but people
| are getting impatient. I am getting impatient. You've had your
| vacation, your space and your earnings." [3].
|
| Or Shovel Knight "We wanted another Shovel Knight game, but we
| didn't want to make it. We're sick of making Shovel Knight
| games." [4]
|
| The book Blood, Sweat, and Pixels goes into this more,
| especially for Shovel Knight and Stardew Valley.
|
| I worked on several games in the industry, a few small free
| ones on my own were popular but every game I worked on for a
| company failed to be successful or enter the gaming zeitgeist
| at all. It almost feels like a waste of my time when that
| happens, and often lead to layoffs. I got out of the industry
| after the third company in a row where that happened.
|
| [1] https://kotaku.com/among-us-developers-say-they-burnt-out-
| af...
|
| [2]
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/comments/iaeqj/dear_notch...
|
| [3] https://community.playstarbound.com/threads/rip-stardew-
| vall...
|
| [4] https://www.fanbyte.com/features/shovel-knight-dig-
| interview...
| nicetryguy wrote:
| The romance wears off fast once the ideas are in place and the
| tedium sets in. The fun brainstorming and dreaming parts amount
| to about 1-2% of the project, then you actually have to build,
| draw, tweak, and fix the damn thing.
| bitwize wrote:
| But oh man, does the high ever hit when you finish building
| and tweaking some feature, and your dream gets a little bit
| closer to reality. The video game you imagined playing,
| sometimes actually in your dreams, sits right there in front
| of you... maybe not close to completion but a little bit
| closer. And you can share it with your close network of
| playtesters a.k.a. friends and family.
| chromanoid wrote:
| Usually a bunch of indie game developers invest years and by
| the end 1000 people buy/play the game... How is that rewarding?
|
| I would claim it's the most risky type of software coding. And
| because of that probably also the most "dirty" way of software
| coding...
| samkelly wrote:
| I've spent like the last 10 years of my life making a few
| games that nobody will ever play. I don't feel like the years
| were wasted though, because the games were rewarding to build
| and stuff doesn't need to make money to be worth the time
| spent.
| chromanoid wrote:
| Sure, but would you support a generic global statement like
| this?
|
| > "Gamedev has got to be the most rewarding type of
| software coding there is."
|
| I am also a game development enthusiast, but I would say
| this is the reason why it feels so rewarding. The way of
| programming is not the reason, in my opinion.
| city41 wrote:
| I see where you're coming from, but I strongly disagree since
| you said "coding". I actually feel like the coding part of game
| dev is quite rote, boring and pretty much totally figured out.
| At least, for games that smaller teams or individuals can make.
| One of the best games ever made imo, Hollow Knight, was made
| with virtually no code at all. They used Playmaker, a visual
| game scripting engine for Unity.
| larsiusprime wrote:
| Believe me there's plenty of rote work non-fun grind work to
| be done even with no-code and lo-code engines, I've used
| plenty myself.
| ArkanExplorer wrote:
| I think its difficult to extrapolate this based on the success of
| a single game.
|
| What is clear, is that the 30% commission charged by platform
| holders is absolutely stifling creativity and output, in apps and
| games.
|
| Plus, the extra costs from VAT and refunds.
|
| Friday Night Funkin's chief innovation is that it basically
| bypasses this by using Kickstarter to fund production.
| ehnto wrote:
| It's an insane margin. You still have to pay tax on that at
| some point too. You put your heart, soul and dollars into
| producing a piece of software and between the platform barons
| and the tax man you may not even get 50% of it, depending on
| where you live.
| mattfrommars wrote:
| I agree. And who came up with 30%? It seems to be industry wide
| extraction fees. Why stop at 30, why not 50?
| ArkanExplorer wrote:
| 30% made sense when you were getting white-glove service from
| the platform owner, when that platform was actively building
| out new features, when there was little competition from
| other software, huge growth in customer base, and when
| bandwidth and ecommerce generally were still expensive and
| difficult.
|
| Now, the platform owners have dropped all developer support
| to basically zero, are just sitting on core systems that were
| created 10+ years ago, have no curation, and all of their
| fixed and marginal costs have been pushed towards zero.
|
| You can go into the Steamworks dev forum for example and find
| ongoing major platform issues that have been raised for
| years, consensus gained from a lot of other devs that they
| need to be fixed, and just never addressed or even responded
| to by any Valve staff.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| It's not as simple as declaring "instant games" as the future.
| The idea has been around for a long time after Flash got killed.
| Both WeChat and Facebook made a big deal about "instant games"
| (e.g. see https://www.facebook.com/games/instantgames), but so
| far there don't seem to be any breakout hits (at least on FB,
| don't know what's the situation on WeChat).
|
| There seems to be a general disinterest by investors, developers
| and gamers, apparently it's very hard to monetize instant games
| over a longer period. Even if there are some bursts of
| popularity, those games are soon forgotten because people don't
| stay around.
|
| A single game can change that, but nobody knows when this will
| arrive and what it will look like.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| The funding of "cloud gaming" and interest from investors like
| a16z as noted right at the top of the article mean it's on a
| bit of an upswing in terms of interest.
| _dibly wrote:
| I feel like a lot of time was spent convincing the reader that
| instant games are the future and not explaining the benefits and
| potential shortcomings of the area. A significant amount of the
| article is filling in background information. I didn't need two
| pages on why Apple and Steve Jobs are the worst thing to happen
| to instant games, the explanation of how flash games were once
| monetized, or a rundown of all the different ways that they (or
| indeed any digital service in the modern day) could become
| profitable.
|
| The article starts with a point that there is a huge spectrum
| between the arcade-style instant game and modern "full" games but
| then never really addresses that gap. They highlight that these
| games can be on a maintained third-party streaming service but
| then go on to focus mainly on browser games and make points that
| don't even apply tangentially to things like Game Pass or
| PlayStation Now.
| chairmanwow1 wrote:
| This article takes a while to get to its point. I'm still not
| sure I understand what "instant" means in this context. Also I
| find the whole premise pretty claiming a single game => systemic
| market shift.
| FailMore wrote:
| a browser based multiplayer game you can access with a link
| ChrisRR wrote:
| So the entire point is basically it's a flash game which
| doesn't need flash. Where has this person been?
| meheleventyone wrote:
| Like this for example: https://dotbigbang.com/game/ee5d9ed9e9
| 684cad865cf04cd425406a...
|
| Although I'd argue that instant games don't necessarily need
| to be multiplayer. For example Friday Night Funkin isn't
| right now IIRC.
| sofixa wrote:
| Well, almost everything on Stadia matches that definition.
| You need to create an account and buy the game ( bar the few
| free games like Destiny 2 and a demo for Hitman WoA), but
| it's basically accessible via a link, playable in a browser
| and multiplayer when the game is.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| The point is that instant games are frictionless so having
| to create an account and buy the game adds enough of a
| barrier that clicking the link -> playing a game has a
| significant drop off in terms of people who will actually
| play the game.
|
| Stadia could do that but hasn't yet. A really strong demo
| for them would be to let you click a link and be playing a
| AAA game immediately. But as the article notes you have a
| scale problem immediately because you still need to run
| expensive hardware to support that.
| sofixa wrote:
| > A really strong demo for them would be to let you click
| a link and be playing a AAA game immediately.
|
| That's what happens, as long as you have an account.
| Considering most games are paid, it's entirely reasonable
| to expect an account-type barrier to entry.
|
| From memory, at least some Flash game sites, which is
| apparently the baseline, required a login.
| stale2002 wrote:
| > entirely reasonable to expect an account-type barrier
| to entry.
|
| Yes, we can expect there to be a barrier to entry.
|
| But that is what I would expect this to fail.
|
| I can both expect that stadia will have this significant
| barrier, and also think that it is going to be harmed
| significantly by it.
| larsiusprime wrote:
| The successful ones (particularly Kongregate) didn't
| require a login, they let you play for free as an
| anonymous user, and then tried to incentivize you to
| login after the fact. Requiring it up front cuts out an
| enormous amount of users.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| Right but a demo is trying to convert people from not
| being a user into being a user. If you require an account
| to run the demo you are cutting A LOT of potential
| customers out of your acquisition funnel. You are in
| effect saying "become a user to see if you want to be a
| user". If you can only give that experience to people
| that have made an account AND bought a game that's even
| more you've just dropped on the floor. Whereas dropping
| someone right into the demo/game/product with no
| obligation shows them the value proposition immediately.
|
| This doesn't just apply to games, building a new
| programming language? Embed a web playground with your
| hello world example in the landing page!
| Jakobeha wrote:
| I really wish internet games were the future. Both from the
| producer and consumer side - as someone who tried to make games
| before, and currently owns a low-end mac (great for productivity
| but bad for gaming) - I really believe the ideal is web-games
| that are easy to start and work everywhere.
|
| The issue is that at least in my experience web game engines
| _suck_. JavaScript is slow and awful for large-scale software,
| even today. Frameworks which compile into JavaScript and WASM
| (e.g. libGDX) compile incorrectly, leading to obscure awful bugs,
| and they 're still slow because JS. Your best bet is a general-
| purpose game engine like Unity or Godot which can export to web,
| but still, the web export is often broken, missing features, and
| just slow. Even tiny games I've played on itch.io either don't
| load or play super slow, and sometimes that might be the dev's
| fault, but often I think it's the state of web-gamedev in
| general.
| socialist_coder wrote:
| > Your best bet is a general-purpose game engine like Unity or
| Godot which can export to web
|
| Totally disagree about Unity. Unity's web export is awful. If
| you want a good web game you need to use a web-native engine
| like Pixi, PlayCanvas, or Phaser. I guess the Haxe & Godot
| tools are good too but I've never used them.
|
| The huge advantage with using a Javascript/Typescript based
| game engine is that you can use the latest & greatest build
| tools like Webpack, and the latest ECMA/javascript features,
| instead of some proprietary tool chain that hasn't seen a major
| updated in years.
|
| I think mobile game companies who have only been using Unity
| and have all their games built in Unity will have a hard time
| transitioning to mobile because you just cannot use Unity to
| make good web games. You have to rebuild them in a new engine.
|
| But, if you use a web game engine, you can still target mobile.
| So, I would not use Unity for any new mobile/web game projects.
| jedberg wrote:
| > My 15-year old nephew who isn't part of the game development
| scene almost certainly noticed this game before I did. Just think
| of all the other trends you and I are likely missing no matter
| how close we think we're paying attention.
|
| People like to make fun of me when I talk tech with teens (TM?).
| This is exactly why. Because as much as we think we're on top of
| all the latest trends, sometimes we're just too not hip.
| jsnell wrote:
| Is FNF really so significant that it was important not to miss
| it? Looking at Google Trends, it's already peaked, and peaked
| at far less interest than say Among Us or Fall Guys. It does
| appear have more longevity than Fall Guys did. But right now I
| just don't see either the cultural or commercial significance.
|
| https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=roblox,among%20us...
|
| (But I hadn't heard of the game before now, so maybe dismissing
| it is just a bias on my part.)
| jedberg wrote:
| > Is FNF really so significant that it was important not to
| miss it?
|
| Probably not, but I also learned about Roblox, Snapchat,
| Instagram, and TikTok from teens long before any of those got
| popular in my usual bubbles. In part because when I would
| tell my usual bubble about them, they were dismissed as fads.
| ipaddr wrote:
| vsco.co is the next bubble.
| jedberg wrote:
| Funny you mention that. I have in fact heard about that
| one from some teens as well. Don't use it much though,
| since I don't really know anyone on the platform. I still
| haven't figured out how it differs from Instagram, other
| than the ownership of the site.
| andredz wrote:
| Maybe it is because I was a teen then, but I heard about
| vsco a long long time ago (unless ~6/7 years is not
| long). I thought it was already on its death throes
| though, barely anyone I know uses it.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| I think it's not so much that you're not "hip," but you aren't
| concerned about the minutia most kids are nowadays. My 2nd
| cousin told me recently he hated reading in school because
| "there was no sound." It was incredibly eye opening to me to
| see how starkly different growing up between us was. Not that
| I'm some enlightened millennial, but often in the earlier days
| of the internet, reading and images were all we had. Now as a
| more tech inclined individual, I see what the current
| generation appreciates as annoying and excessive.
|
| Perhaps market research should interview 10-16 year olds more
| often?
| larsiusprime wrote:
| Yup. I feel like a bunch of stuff is absolutely invisible to my
| industry bubble until it has a standout hit that makes a ton of
| money or starts getting talked about by someone everyone knows
| and trusts and then becomes impossible to ignore. And the
| lesson then should not be that "wow this is a perfectly
| replicatable formula" but, "maybe some of our assumptions are
| wrong."
|
| Which makes me further think -- how many OTHER transformative
| trends are we missing, because they AREN'T money or media based
| and thus destined to _eventually_ pierce our industry bubble?
| [deleted]
| the_lonely_road wrote:
| Holy shit its like this author just experienced his very first
| 'cultural wave' phenomenon and then decided that literally every
| small detail around it was some critical reason for its success.
|
| There are probably labs out there they have figured out how to
| send 'viral waves' out into the economy and profit from it, but
| thats all this is. Game of Thrones was an example, The Walking
| Dead was an example, Fortnite was an example, and Roblox was an
| example. Those examples highlight two very different viral
| culture waves. The kids playing games and the grown ups watching
| tv, but they highlight the exact same phenomenon.
|
| As for this game itself its probably exactly like Among Us and
| the million other little indie games like it that shot up in
| popularity 'out of know where' except it wasn't out of nowhere at
| all. It was a couple dozen HIGHLY interconnected Twitch streamers
| all getting into the same space and then 100's of follow along
| mid tier twitch streamers hoping to ride the new bandwagon to
| higher viewership.
| larsiusprime wrote:
| Hey there author here!
|
| > It was a couple dozen HIGHLY interconnected Twitch streamers
| all getting into the same space and then 100's of follow along
| mid tier twitch streamers hoping to ride the new bandwagon to
| higher viewership.
|
| I have access to the traffic stats behind FNF and this is
| demonstrably false. There was a lot more to it. Twitch was one
| small part of this phenomenon.
|
| I'm happy to welcome critique but could you please be less
| dismissive and instead make a more substantive critique?
| stragio wrote:
| I think your article is great, hope you are right and align
| with your worldviews. Is @Tocelot your Twitter account?
| larsiusprime wrote:
| No I'm @larsiusprime. @tocelot is the a16z partner I quote
| at the beginning, but I'm not associated with that or any
| other VC firm. I'm an independent game developer and
| consultant with a blog.
| derefr wrote:
| > It was a couple dozen HIGHLY interconnected Twitch streamers
| all getting into the same space and then 100's of follow along
| mid tier twitch streamers hoping to ride the new bandwagon to
| higher viewership.
|
| I mean, until Twitch is no longer such a big thing, that sounds
| like you're describing a likely repeatable formula for success:
| make a game that will catch on amongst these couple-dozen
| Twitch influencers.
|
| And it seems like a good property for such a game to have,
| would be a really low barrier to entry, to entice them into
| trying it in the first place, when _they_ don 't see anyone
| else playing it.
|
| As such, I can see the validity in the argument in the article
| is making -- and I'm not sure why you think it's a "small
| detail."
|
| It's not like that set of Twitch streamers has ever made a game
| go viral that _didn 't_ have this "pick-up-and-play-ability" in
| some way or another. The property is just created in different
| ways for different games.
| munificent wrote:
| _> a likely repeatable formula for success: make a game that
| will catch on amongst these couple-dozen Twitch influencers._
|
| Sure, but like half the world's game devs are all trying to
| do exactly that right now.
|
| Similar to the stock market, game development is an novelty-
| based ecosystem. That means that there is essentially no
| long-term repeatable formula for success. Any formula will
| eventually discovered by others, over-exploited, and players
| will lose interest and go elsewhere.
| shuntress wrote:
| The problem isn't the formula (good enough game, readily
| accessible, noticed by players.)
|
| The problem is that last step, "be noticed", is extremely
| hard and mostly based on luck/money.
|
| And this is 100% "long-term repeatable" if you can
| continually deliver "good enough" games after being
| noticed. The obvious example is Call of Duty.
| derefr wrote:
| If the set of Twitch influencers is relatively static,
| presumably you could just cater to the exact peculiarities
| of their tastes in games to the exclusion of the wider
| market, the way that some authors try to cater to the exact
| peculiarities of the tastes of a particular editor.
| saturdaysaint wrote:
| A lot of this article (possibly the majority?) is actually
| spent explaining why Instant Games haven't taken over the
| world, despite some success stories. This is why he goes into
| some detail on Apple - if they can't go on iOS devices, there's
| a real ceiling on the trend.
|
| I really enjoyed this article, but it's a bit of a discursive
| brain dump, which is why I think a lot of the criticisms have
| essentially been misrepresentations of the actual article
| contents.
| jchw wrote:
| If your only critique of the article is _why_ FNF got popular,
| then that seems like a really minor critique overall. But
| honestly, comparing it to Among Us makes me doubt you on this.
| First of all, simply pointing to Twitch streamers is giving
| them too much credit. Twitch streamers may be early to trends,
| but seldom do they start them alone. Secondly, Among Us is
| particularly good for streaming because it pushed a lot of
| streamers with pre-existing relationships to stream the game
| with _eachother_ , and lead to interesting content for that
| reason alone.
|
| I will gladly agree that Twitch streamers may have helped boost
| Among Us out of its slump. I also agree that it helped FNF too.
| But you know what else helped Among Us and FNF? Millions of
| views on YouTube, Tiktok, fanart on Twitter/NG/elsewhere, mods
| across the entire Internet, etc. and where it's fair to say
| that Twitch could've been the catalyst for Among Us, saying
| that it is the catalyst for FNF without further evidence seems
| patently unfair. Big platforms like TikTok and YouTube are more
| than capable of driving viral sensations that are bigger than
| the entire audiences of "a couple dozen highly interconnected
| Twitch streamers." (For clarification I regularly watch a
| couple of the Twitch streamers you are likely grouping into
| this category so yes I do know how large their audiences are.)
| danShumway wrote:
| > mods across the entire Internet
|
| I think Among Us's mod support is underrated for a multi-
| player game, and I think it did a lot to improve the game's
| longevity.
|
| I'm hesitant to make broad sweeping claims about the game,
| but I agree that looking purely at streamers is probably
| underselling its success, even though streamers did obviously
| play a big role in bringing it to more people's attention.
| jchw wrote:
| Agreed. I have only checked out a handful, but even just
| Town of Us and Crewlink completely transform the
| experience, not to mention countless neat aesthetic and
| other misc mods. (I remember a Korean user went fairly
| viral when they posted a full Sanrio-themed reskin of the
| game.) Having a game that can be modded is a real win/win.
|
| What's so weird is it feels like this lesson should've
| already been learned. Several prominent franchises were
| born as mods to other games, and TF2 even went as far as
| simply making mods part of the actual game and compensating
| modders in the process... Yet it feels like a lot of this
| is left on the table in the walled garden world of gaming.
| Marazan wrote:
| The post isn't about FNF, it's about the Flash Game eco system
| and what was lost and now slowly being refound.
|
| And a high quality "Fuck you Steve Jobs" as well. I'm here for
| any posts that says "Fuck you Steve Jobs"
| larsiusprime wrote:
| Author here!
|
| Couple of things -- despite the admittedly click-baity headline,
| I'm not 100% convinced that "instant games" are definitely the
| future. Nobody can predict the future with certainty. And as I
| state up front in the article FNF itself is obviously an outlier
| which should not serve as a model to try to replicate step by
| step.
|
| My main point is that instant games -- which is to say browser
| games -- are actually already the past and the present (even if
| they're not necessarily taking over everything else just yet),
| and most people are unfamiliar with a bunch of weird details
| about how they began in the first place.
|
| The article's actual thesis is not necessarily to prove to you
| that instant games are the "wave of the future" but to point out:
|
| 1) Even games industry insiders are often massively out of touch
| with trends
|
| 2) Browsers games represent the _potential_ to disrupt existing
| gatekeepers and platforms
|
| 3) Browser games had a weird and unique ecosystem that
| represented a 'minor league' of games that provided an on-ramp to
| further professional success, _especially_ for international
| developers, and we 've largely lost that today
|
| 4) Modern platforms want to own the entire stack top to bottom
| (editing tools, playback engine, discovery, and marketplace), but
| trying to capture so much value yourself and tightly controlling
| the environment can actually stunt the ecosystem
|
| And yeah the article is really long. I'm chronically unable to
| write short articles when I have a lot to say and that means I'm
| taking the sincere risk of boring some of you to death while you
| wait for me to get to the point, sorry about that!
| Marazan wrote:
| The one thing I think you missed from explaining the economics
| of the old Flash Game scene was Mochi.
|
| By getting you the pre-roll ads Mochi gave you a way of being
| rewarded on a per-play basis which A) bypassed the risjk of up
| front sponsorship number B) allowed absolute total amateurs to
| not even bother with sponsorship and just dump a game with
| Mochi ads onto the net, if it took off they would rake in the
| bucks. m Add on top of that the Mochi microtransaction
| infrastructure and I'd say Mochi was as important, if not more,
| than FGL for boosting the ouptu of games.
| larsiusprime wrote:
| Mochi was mentioned in the article, but yes, I did gloss over
| it, thanks for bringing it up. I used Mochi ads myself!
| OmarShehata wrote:
| I disagree that Mochi was as or more important than FGL.
| Perhaps this was true for developers who released a lot of
| games and could rack up consistent significant monthly views
| across on all their games.
|
| I remember a big question was always: should you self sponsor
| if you can't get high enough bids for sponsorship? If they're
| willing to pay $5k to put their ad on your game, why
| shouldn't you capture that revenue yourself?
|
| The answer was for most developers it was difficult to
| capture that value without some kind of centralized game
| portal where you could redirect this traffic and keep those
| users coming back. So even if the sponsor was paying $5k and
| still making money off that game, it was unlikely you could
| make anywhere near that amount just from Mochi ads or
| similar.
| Marazan wrote:
| Oh for serious game devs FGL was absolutely the most
| important monetisation stream by some distance no doubt.
|
| But for people just starting out and, say, knocking out a
| game in a weekend, unpolished, raw Mochi was incredible.
| With zero effort (beyond spending a couple of weekends
| making games) I had 3 figure annual revenue from games that
| would have never ever gotten sponsorship.
|
| If you were a 16 year old hacking stuff together in Flash
| that would have been hugely motivating. That's would drove
| the sheer volume and variety of Flash games.
|
| If I could apply the knowledge I have now back to past me
| I'd have easily been able to get 4 figure annual revenue
| swiftly and that would have let me focus on putting the
| polish on FGL level serious sponsorship games. ( I did make
| one full stand alone game and it flopped, I've made more
| money from people playing the demo than from full game
| purchases)
| jayd16 wrote:
| We had instant browser games and the gold rush of mobile ate
| them. The AppStore stack had better discoverability and native
| performance...a lot of benefits, really. Why would we all go
| back to the browser?
|
| I feel like a large leap is being made that instant games will
| win back users when their instant-ness didn't keep them in the
| first place.
|
| I don't feel like any catalyst is explored enough to be
| convincing.
| utzucto wrote:
| I think the increasing difficulty of being discovered on
| ever-growing platforms like the App Store is/will push more
| games to other places (though I don't know how instant-game
| platforms will build userbases like native app stores).
|
| Also, I don't think people moved away from instant games
| because the instantness wasn't enough. I think it's more
| about what devices kids (and people in general) are using for
| everything else; people who are playing mobile games now
| probably would have been playing flash games a few years ago.
| I'm kindof spitballing here, but I wonder if all the
| chromebooks that are used in schools now are or will be
| pushing kids back to online games platforms like the old
| flash sites
| larsiusprime wrote:
| > had better discoverability
|
| I don't agree, particularly in the case of mobile App stores
| where the top charts are consistently dominated by the same
| few games.
| danShumway wrote:
| > And yeah the article is really long. I'm chronically unable
| to write short articles when I have a lot to say and that means
| I'm taking the sincere risk of boring some of you to death
| while you wait for me to get to the point, sorry about that!
|
| Brevity is a good skill, but given the choice between too
| concise and too long, too long is probably the better direction
| to err.
|
| I'm always happy to see articles like this on HN. I'm not sure
| I agree with all of it, but it's generally pretty thoughtful
| and covered some interesting points I hadn't thought about
| before. Thanks for writing it!
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| >> Modern platforms want to own the entire stack top to bottom
| (editing tools, playback engine, discovery, and marketplace),
| but trying to capture so much value yourself and tightly
| controlling the environment can actually stunt the ecosystem.
|
| If anything, I see modern platforms using more off-the-shelf
| and standards based tech rather than reinventing the wheel. It
| used to be the case that you'd have to download not just Flash,
| but Shockwave, Silverlight, the Java applet plugin, Unity Web
| Player, and all sorts of proprietary plugins just to play games
| built on whatever proprietary game engine and scripting
| language came with it. It was like downloading individual video
| codecs in the early 90's before the advent of Quicktime.
| Nowadays, you can play fully fledged 3-D games on a Web
| Application built with any game engine, any language, on nearly
| any browser of your choosing. No plugins needed. I don't think
| web games are going to be siloed to particular platforms any
| time soon. What I do think is that web games are now competing
| with siloed AAA games. And this might be a good thing overall
| for competition in that space. For a long time Flash and mobile
| games were also-rans simply because of the limited computing
| power. Very few were of such caliber either in graphics or
| playability as to compete with contemporary installable or
| console games and were very often mimicries of those very same
| games. In the West, mobile games underwent a revolution with
| Angry Birds and Infinity Blade, there hasn't been a killer app
| that's reinvigorated the browser game craze of the Y2K era just
| yet. But Epic's interest in itch.io might be hinting at an
| attempt in that direction.
| larsiusprime wrote:
| The difference is, that even though Flash was proprietary in
| tools (The Flash IDE) and the playback engine (The Flash
| Player), what was open was distribution, discovery, and
| marketplace. You didn't pay a tax to adobe to distribute your
| games and you weren't limited to Adobe.com as the one place
| to go for Flash games. To be clear this was not because of
| Adobe's benevolence, but their incompetence -- believe me
| they tried to find ways to tax Flash, but they just couldn't
| figure it out until the horse was out of the barn. And this
| was a _good_ thing for the ecosystem. Honestly, Adobe
| stubbornly refusing to open source the flash player is one of
| the things that cemented its demise.
|
| Compare that to say, Roblox. If you make a Roblox game, not
| only will it only run within the Roblox environment, it is
| only able to exist on exactly one website and one app --
| Roblox. Roblox owns the entire stack top to bottom. You can't
| take your game anywhere else.
| bartwe wrote:
| If wasm/webgpu doesn't get too limited due to coinminers,
| 'meltdown style' vulnerabilities and platform holders feeling
| challenged.
|
| And some solution for preloading/caching/preinstalling large
| (many gigabytes) assets are added.
|
| Than yeah webgames have a very bright future ahead, assuming a
| method of monetization is found.
| utzucto wrote:
| I like the article, it's got a lot of the same threads that
| I've been thinking about recently while developing an iOS app
| and a browser game (unrelated to each other). It's also
| interesting to learn about how the flash sites I used to play
| when I was younger actually made and distributed money. Back
| then I just assumed the devs made some cut of the banner ad
| money or something.
|
| As I was reading it, I somewhat agreed with the sentiment I see
| in some of the comments around that the article had a bit of
| the "old person discovers new trend and concludes its the
| future of everything" (which you see a fair amount with VR, on
| Stadia/cloud gaming, the "metaverse," and other things you
| mentioned FNF doesn't do) but this comment tempers that
| feeling. At the very least, I think that this is an interesting
| showcase of a project that is successful outside of the big
| platforms and I agree that it's a direction that things could
| be going in to some extent.
|
| Speaking about the fact it's free & open source, I think that
| people --in this case the games industry people to whom this
| doesn't make sense-- sometimes put too much weight on the
| decision to publish source code. I think it's about focusing on
| what differentiates your product from others, and in this case
| it seems like the game differentiates itself with music and
| personality rather than complex code, thus bandcamp &
| kickstarter. There's probably a lot of software products that
| don't gain anything from being closed source, and I'm no
| Stallman.
|
| As a bit of an aside, I appreciate you mentioning the fact that
| there's a whole several continents of people who aren't
| American, or NA, or English-speaking, etc. and aren't
| necessarily talked about when it comes to diversity. Diversity
| is often based around US/CAN sensibilities around identity and
| other things. Obv very difficult to fully consider the entire
| Earth's population in everything you do, but just considering
| the fact that not everyone is in the same place or can have the
| same powerful hardware/internet connection is worthwhile. I'm
| absolutely not perfect in this regard either.
|
| I wonder if the increasing use of chromebooks in school
| (revealing my US bias) is/will push this trend forward as well.
| I don't use chrome, so maybe there already is an ecosystem of
| games in the chrome app store.
| larsiusprime wrote:
| Yeah so to clarify my bit about open source I have two
| points:
|
| 1) It's made FNF very easy to mod, and these mods drive a lot
| of viral engagement with the game. If you scan social media
| you'll see that this is what keeps the community excited and
| engaged when the authors themselves are not putting out
| updates.
|
| 2) I mention it because many people see being open source as
| a liability because of concerns about cloning. Seeing a FOSS
| game like this pull in literal millions shows that at least
| in this one case, FOSS games aren't literally doomed to
| failure _because_ of being FOSS, is all.
|
| So my position is, no actual players care that you have a
| github repo with source available, unless that actually
| affects them somehow, and in FNF's case I argue it does
| affect them by enabling the community to keep making more
| weird content for the game (though it could be achieved in
| other ways, like using a modding API like
| [polymod](https://github.com/larsiusprime/polymod), which it
| has been integrating with recently).
| mysterydip wrote:
| I've recently switched back to html5 gamedev for my hobby
| projects and it's been great for online collaboration and rapid
| prototyping.
|
| Being rid of the hoops of app store submissions, being able to
| update at any time, and play on nearly any device has been very
| freeing.
| ch00se wrote:
| Great article! Thanks so much for talking about FGL. I'm one of
| the co-founders, and helping Flash developers and portals was
| definitely a special time that I remember fondly.
| mrkramer wrote:
| The future of gaming is cloud gaming. Moore's law is our friend.
| collaborative wrote:
| I have been downvoted for saying this before but I will say it
| again
|
| Indeed, the money should flow from app stores to developers and
| not the other way around
|
| Developers provide value to their platforms. Developers don't
| need them except for the fact that they enforce a monopoly on
| distribution (iOS)
|
| The day is coming when platforms will have to reward content
| creators based on usage metrics or simply up front. Platform
| subscriptions, micro payments, or platform ads are the future.
| And they will only get cheaper as time goes on
|
| A ruling forcing Apple to open up iOS to different browsers or
| app stores will be the sign that change is coming
| mrtksn wrote:
| >the money should flow from app stores to developers and not
| the other way around
|
| That's exactly the case and I have receipts to prove it. I have
| financial records as proof of money flowing from Apple to my
| bank account.
|
| What's the plan for rewarding the developers? If anything is
| broken with the mobile games it's the model where the money
| doesn't flow from the App Stores to the developers but
| developers need to interrupt the player and make them buy
| something so that the developers get rewarded.
|
| Ads in games are dreadful.
|
| I'm afraid that if the subscription services for games becomes
| the norm, and the payment is based on engagement it will make
| mediocracy the norm just like with Netflix. This will make game
| development a practice of matching the spec sheet of the
| subscription platform you want to be included. If it is like
| Spotify, what developers are supposed to do for substitute of
| the live performances if their rent is higher than $0.52?
|
| I never had problem with iAP or pay to play games.
| [deleted]
| collaborative wrote:
| Let users side-load and use as many stores as they want. Or
| let them choose an "Apple only mode". Monetization models
| will follow that won't be affected by monopolistic practices.
| I also think IAPs are ok. But the lack of choice makes
| everything feel wrong
|
| >>That's exactly the case and I have receipts to prove it. I
| have financial records as proof of money flowing from Apple
| to my bank account.
|
| Are you sure that money came from Apple and not from your own
| users? Don't forget, they chose you. Apple doesn't own them
| mrtksn wrote:
| I'm not looking forward to pay multiple app stores to
| publish my apps. I'm also not looking forward to deal with
| multiple implementation details and multiple appstore
| guidelines and rules.
|
| The %30 cut is nothing for the service provided. The only
| people I know to suffer from it are the resellers(i.e.
| Spotify like services where they redistribute most of the
| revenue).
|
| The multiple store thing is going to be a hell for the
| small developers. Apple handling all the legal and
| regulatory procedures for selling globally is a great
| service stuff since it's something out of the reach for
| most small companies otherwise.
|
| Users who simply can't find the app they need in the App
| Store due to the limitations can use Android.
|
| When there's a opportunity for innovation that is not
| possible on iOS because of this, it will happen on Android.
| Razengan wrote:
| As a developer and a user and a gamer, oh god, no.
| [deleted]
| colechristensen wrote:
| That only happens when app stores are competing for developers
| which is very much not the case. There are a million developers
| chasing a small amount of potential success, app stores could
| impose much more ridiculous conditions and still get more
| developers than they could ever want.
|
| App stores also fund hardware. Ask a consumer if they want a
| device 50% more expensive or better terms for developers and
| guess what the outcome will be.
|
| It only changes if there is a lot more competition or
| legislated terms for how these companies operate.
| somethoughts wrote:
| >> App stores also fund hardware. Ask a consumer if they want
| a device 50% more expensive or better terms for developers
| and guess what the outcome will be.
|
| What would be interesting is if instead of the Appstore
| taking the cut off the top, the Appstore charged developers
| based on utilization of different parts of the A13 or M1
| processor. Sort of like an AWS compute pricing.
|
| If iOS Netflix users are using N million hours of the video
| accelerator, then charge Netflix something like N _Cost per
| video compute. If an Augmented Reality app users are using N
| million hours of ARKit, charge them N_ Cost per ARKit
| compute.
|
| This could lead to more efficient iOS apps and better future
| HW roadmaps.
|
| I'd say apriori the one difference between AWS compute fee
| and an iOS compute fee would be that Amazon owns AWS
| hardware, whereas Apple sort of doesn't own iOS hardware (i.e
| the iOS user does).
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| > Ask a consumer if they want a device 50% more expensive or
| better terms for developers and guess what the outcome will
| be.
|
| I find the Epic Game Store really interesting in this regard.
| While they aren't quite _paying_ developers, they are funding
| a lot of games and giving out upfront payments.
|
| I love it, personally--but it hasn't gone over too well with
| users.
| collaborative wrote:
| App stores aren't competing because.. there is no competition
|
| Also, I didn't know app stores funded hardware. I thought the
| money came from the value created by devs or from the actual
| device price. I mean, should my next IAP say "fund the
| development of the next iphone". How many consumers will like
| that? How do Android manufacturers manage to make hardware
| without an appstore? It's not like Apple has billions to
| spare to actually make hardware, things must be tight
|
| Now seriously, none of the above are the issue. The issue is
| that the iOS app store should be one of many, and that Safari
| shouldn't break html5 functions on purpose to prevent PWAs
|
| This even spills over to Android because devs in general
| aren't going to adopt wasm until it truly can be run cross
| platform. Google actually benefits from Apple's protectionist
| policies. Microsoft also tried to pull this with IE and we
| know what happened. It will happen again (and consumers will
| benefit from it). What good is a great device that can only
| run few and bad apps?
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| For a short while, in the beginning, AppStores provided some
| value allowing you to select top games in category, which were
| actually good. But then SEO guys took notice and all top
| ratings are now populated by pay 2 win garbage games which
| invest heavily in AppStore optimization. You just can't find
| anything these days on Google Play / AppStore other than by
| typing a full name of the app. This, of course, relegates these
| services to gatekeeper role only, void of any positive benefits
| for the developers.
| Jakobeha wrote:
| This seems to be what Apple Arcade is doing. You pay a
| subscription to Apple and get access to curated games with no
| ads or microtransactions. Apple pays the developers, although I
| don't know how.
|
| AFAIK it's going pretty well. I don't actually own Apple
| Arcade, but the games all look really nice, and no ads or
| microtransactions. Maybe someone who knows more can comment.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I do not have time to research to which games are
| implementing loot boxes or other gambling mechanics or
| showing them ads, so restricting my kids (while they are too
| young) mostly to Apple Arcade solves that problem for me.
|
| Although, who knows, maybe if Apple Arcade is compensating
| game makers by how much time is spent playing their games,
| then those tactics will be present in Apple Arcade too.
| echelon wrote:
| It needs to go further. Marketplaces should not be required for
| entry into platforms whose market is essentially "everything
| you'd do with a computer". Especially if the web is
| purposefully hobbled.
|
| Apple's "protection" is actually just a racket and scheme to
| control the flow of money and extract as much as possible.
|
| iPhones and Androids are computers and web downloads should be
| first class. We've been gaslighted into this "nanny state", yet
| we do much more dangerous things every day: get into cars, wire
| transfer money, go on blind dates, ...
|
| Open and free computing is not wrong. The powers that be are
| trying to tell us that it is so that they can "protect" ( =
| control and tax) us.
|
| Apple App Store and Google Play can still exist and cater to
| specific needs. Marketplaces like Itch and NewGrounds do a
| better job at what they do than either Apple or Google. If
| indie developers want to show up in multiple places, including
| their own website, it should be allowed.
| Razengan wrote:
| > _iPhones and Androids are computers_
|
| So are Xboxes and PlayStations
| [deleted]
| echelon wrote:
| Those are toys.
|
| Nobody needs an Xbox, but they need a phone.
|
| Also, there are 10000 gaming options (many fully open!).
| There are only two phones.
|
| The iPhone is the internet and the computer for most
| Americans.
|
| Increasingly, all commerce is being funneled through iPhone
| and Android. Tim Cook gets a cut of the videos I watch, the
| art I buy, the donations I make, the banking I do, the
| productivity apps I use, _fucking everything_. Slimy,
| greedy assholes.
|
| They were just in the right place at the right time. The US
| government isn't going to put up with them having their
| Berlin Wall. They do not get to do that.
|
| Computing != Tim Cook's bank account.
|
| So stop defending these extortionist gas-lighters.
| Computing and the internet aren't supposed to work this
| way.
|
| Thank you.
| [deleted]
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