[HN Gopher] What I Learned Failing to Finish a Game in 2024
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What I Learned Failing to Finish a Game in 2024
Author : grgaln
Score : 93 points
Date : 2025-01-13 09:16 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (georgeallen.dev)
(TXT) w3m dump (georgeallen.dev)
| akoboldfrying wrote:
| I really enjoy living vicariously through indie gamedev
| retrospectives like this. Both technical and non-technical sides.
|
| Nice work and best of luck with taking game #3 forward!
| Havoc wrote:
| The point about art being hard for programmers hits home. I hit
| the same thing when dabbling with game programmer (at a much less
| skilled level than OP). Difficult to stay motivated when the
| early drafts look like crap and you're coding against stickman
| art.
|
| I'm guessing these days there are placeholder art libraries
| available?
| petemir wrote:
| This came up a few days ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42671472
| lovegrenoble wrote:
| Free art bundles for gamedev:
|
| https://gamemaker.io/fr/bundles
| caspper69 wrote:
| 100% this.
|
| I have done work in embedded game dev off and on for about 20
| years, and I could have done so much more had I had even one
| ounce of artistic ability.
|
| And (other than hobbyist or OSS), it's very hard to use canned
| artwork. Everything just needs to be unique for a commercial
| offering.
|
| But in all fairness, I don't think many of the artists I worked
| with could code. Just seems to be opposite skillsets (beyond
| just the creativity).
| helboi4 wrote:
| I can actually draw pretty well but art for games is a whole
| other thing. Like, my ability to draw portraits doesn't really
| help that much haha. I mean it probably does but it's a
| slightly different skill and the sheer amount of assets needed
| is overwhelming, so it still takes ages.
| diggan wrote:
| > Difficult to stay motivated when the early drafts look like
| crap and you're coding against stickman art.
|
| I think learning to see past this and be able to evaluate "Is
| this fun?" regardless of it looking like shit is a skill to
| learn like any other.
|
| A great way to train this is to start playing random games
| people publish on low-stake platforms like Itch.io. Most of
| them lack in the art department, but even some of those have
| really addicting gameplay hooks, or otherwise novel gameplay
| elements you can notice shines through the awful art.
|
| Hopefully after a while you'll be able to discern more between
| "Is this not fun because it doesn't look fun, or because it
| doesn't feel fun?"
| no_wizard wrote:
| In a way, I feel like you'd get better games if rudimentary
| placeholders were used for the whole game, and the gameplay
| and story were focused on, before adding the polish.
|
| I say this because it means you're forced to focus on the
| gameplay and story. If they aren't compelling, graphics
| (usually) won't save you anyway.
|
| At least on the surface, thats what I see. Wireframes go a
| long way.
| dlachausse wrote:
| This is an unpopular opinion on here, but generative AI is
| getting very good. I think it will soon be the way non artists
| create art assets for a variety of purposes. It's not perfect
| yet, but it's rapidly improving.
| krapp wrote:
| There is an entire vast ecosystem of services and a community
| of artists offering production quality assets of every
| conceivable type, often for free. Generative AI doesn't solve
| any problems in this space.
| dlachausse wrote:
| That is great if your idea for a game or other product only
| requires those already existing assets. However, what about
| assets that don't already exist? You would have to
| commission an artist to create them, which costs money that
| you as a bootstrapped independent developer may not have.
| It also takes considerably more time than generative AI
| does.
|
| This is a contrived example but, what if I wanted a Walrus
| riding a surfboard, wearing a top hat, holding a katana in
| his right hand, and holding a slice of Hawaiian pizza in
| his left hand.
|
| Despite the biases people have against generative AI, it
| will solve a LOT of problems in this space.
| krapp wrote:
| >That is great if your idea for a game or other product
| only requires those already existing assets.
|
| Which many will. Just look at the indie games on Steam, a
| vast amount of them use pre-existing assets.
|
| Jim Sterling poisoned an entire generation of gamedev's
| minds against it, but there's nothing wrong with doing
| so.
|
| >You would have to commission an artist to create them,
| which costs money that you as a bootstrapped independent
| developer may not have.
|
| If you want a game with quality, unique artwork, likely a
| style you want to build a brand around and monetize, you
| should be willing to spend the money on an artist to
| create it. Using a technology which is trained on the
| work and style of artists (without their permission, mind
| you) to extrude an art-like product just to avoid having
| to pay for it is gross.
|
| >It also takes considerably more time than generative AI
| does.
|
| Does it? Chances are that "Walrus riding a surfboard,
| wearing a top hat, holding a katana in his right hand,
| and holding a slice of Hawaiian pizza in his left hand"
| is going to be replete with errors, not have a consistent
| style, have bad geometry if it's a model, and need to be
| edited anyway. It isn't going to be what you imagined in
| your head, because generative AI is a mediocrity machine,
| and it isn't going to compete against a coherent design
| implemented by real artists who care about their work.
|
| You'd be better off just buying assets or hiring an
| artist either way. It isn't even that expensive, artists
| are desperate for work now that AI is eating them alive.
| dlachausse wrote:
| Hiring artists is still a cost and potential time sink,
| for a game done in your free time that is really unlikely
| to turn a profit. Generative AI is free and takes just a
| few minutes.
| krapp wrote:
| OK. I guess there is literally no other option for you
| and it was a mistake to imply otherwise. Have fun with
| your derivative slop, then. -\\_(tsu)_/-
| robrtsql wrote:
| How so? Can it produce a sprite sheet with a believable 'walk
| cycle' for a 2D character? Can it produce a rigged 3D model?
|
| As usual, it seems like we're maybe _almost_ there (if you
| can generate video, like with OpenAI's Sora, you could
| probably get a walking animation for a character, and I've
| seen proof-of-concepts which produce not-rigged 3D models),
| but it seems like AI can't do a lot of things that you would
| want for game development.
|
| The one thing it _is_ really "good" (emphasis on the quotes)
| at is generating static 2D assets like character portraits,
| HUDs, item/skill icons, etc. Unity's asset store is now full
| of gen-AI stuff like this (lots of packs of 1,000 spell
| icons, which are all basically variations of a 'fireball',
| except maybe this time it's green, etc).
| manuelfcreis wrote:
| Really liked the article, I think there is also something to be
| said about the difference in learning game design and game
| development. I think people tend to want to do both at the same
| time, but spending some time just on game design can help you
| feel less helpless when learning development.
| desdenova wrote:
| If I learned something every time I failed to finish a game, I'd
| know a bunch of things now.
| BriggyDwiggs42 wrote:
| Dont you?
| wkjagt wrote:
| Maybe they didn't read the article and thought it was about
| someone failing to play a game till the end.
| oliwary wrote:
| I really enjoyed the article, especially the focus on a gameplay
| loop, and leaving polish for later. Often I have found that I can
| tell if a game will be "fun" after a super low fidelity
| prototype. One of my games began as a jupyter notebook, for
| example. Of course, the rest of the process is also very
| important, but I am not sure a game that is not fun from the
| start can be made into a good game.
|
| In the same vein, I can recommend this book:
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34376766-blood-sweat-and...
|
| It shows that even big companies and development efforts can
| often struggle to create a fun game, even when the people
| involved have a lot of experience. It is a hard thing to
| accomplish!
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Agree. I used to fast-prototype games -- and if they were kind
| of fun in even their rough stage, I might be on to something.
|
| To be sure, there were a lot more game prototypes that got
| swept into the bin. Often for the same reasons the author
| mentioned (specifically there were several I knew were going to
| be too much of a time investment to do properly).
|
| EDIT: I have already posted the first two volumes (disk image)
| of unfinished games. I can easily create a third volume. Here
| is volume 1:
|
| https://github.com/EngineersNeedArt/SoftDorothy-UnfinishedTa...
| dxuh wrote:
| I think putting off polish for later as the OP and multiple
| comments here recommend is a fallacy. There are many popular,
| successful games that would just _not_ be fun if they didn 't
| have good animations, no effects and everything was boxes. Every
| game that relies on "feeling good to play". It might be fine for
| an RPG or an RTS, but it's probably not for something like
| Overwatch or Doom (the new ones). Just imagine Vampire Survivors
| without sound or effects. Some games live off the art style
| alone. This is a very controversional opinion, but I think if
| e.g. Ori and the Blind Forest had bad art, no one would have
| played the game. Some games you can evaluate really well with bad
| art and no juice or polish, other games need some and there are
| even games that need a lot of it, before you know if they can be
| fun. It's not that simple imho. I remember working on games that
| were not really fun until I added some effect and suddenly it was
| really addicting. People like flashing lights and noises and
| pretty pictures. If good, unique or interesting art was
| irrelevant, no one would invest in it, but people do.
| meiraleal wrote:
| The idea behind postponing polishing is that if you can't build
| a strong foundation using the skills you're most comfortable
| with (coding), there's little point in starting with the harder
| parts. It's better to make as much progress as possible with
| the tools you already know, since the areas you're less
| familiar with will require more research and move slower.
|
| Most indie projects die before getting there.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| I don't think they're saying don't polish it all before you
| release it, but to not worry about polishing it until you have
| a solid gameplay foundation
|
| You might spend a ton of time and money on art and polish only
| to suddenly realize your game isn't fun at all. Many such
| cases.
| cartoffal wrote:
| > Just imagine Vampire Survivors without sound or effects.
|
| I can't help but feel that this completely undermines your
| point - Vampire Survivors is bashed together using rudimentary
| knockoffs of sprites from games from the 1990s, in an engine
| which barely supports the idea of particles let alone proper
| visual effects.* It is the gameplay that carries Vampire
| Survivors, not the aesthetic.
|
| Game feel is of course essential to producing a good game all-
| round, but a competent game designer can and will tell the
| difference between a good game design and a bad one, way before
| polish and juice are layered on top.
|
| *I don't say this as a criticism - Vampire Survivors is
| fantastic - but the idea that it's propped up by its look is
| just daft.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| The point of the OP (which I agree with) with is that the
| gameplay and the aesthetic are not orthogonal to one another.
| Even with Vampire Survivors which is not strictly beautiful
| the aesthetics are a big part of the gameplay. Largely the
| visuals and audio need to do several things:
|
| - Make the game legible. A good example would be to reduce
| the whole game to boxes, you still need to differentiate
| things, so you might want to color them. Aesthetics in
| support of gameplay to make the game understandable.
|
| - Add 'game feel'. This is where audio is especially
| important as you tend to notice the lack of good audio rather
| than its presence. But also 'juice', animations and what not
| all layer in.
|
| - Support the fantasy. The name Vampire Survivors carries
| expectations that boxes do not match.
|
| If you've ever done a lot of playtesting with your target
| audience one thing you'll find is that missing these elements
| gives you much worse feedback. Most notably legibility
| because it's so integral to being able to play a game but the
| others as well.
|
| Game designers to an extent can get past this but it's still
| an attempt at extrapolation which is necessarily less
| concrete. Also if you're new to making games then you're
| going to make it harder to judge your own work.
|
| The good thing about Vampire Survivors as an example is it
| shows that you don't need to do _much_ but enough.
| camtarn wrote:
| Overwatch was prototyped by making levels out of plain boxes,
| using character models ripped from a previous game, then
| iterating until the game mechanics were fun. Of course, it then
| received many layers of polish before it was launched, but
| nonetheless the devs prioritised getting the basics right
| first.
|
| The dev team had just come off developing Titan, a cancelled
| MMO where they had trouble making the core game loop engaging
| after seven years of development, so they had a lot of
| motivation to start small and make something good first, then
| polish later.
| jon-wood wrote:
| I don't think anyone is suggesting to ship a version to actual
| customers without some polish, but foregoing polish is good
| advice. I've attempted to make games on several occasions and
| my current is the first to stick because I intentionally
| decided not to worry about aesthetics too much at first, that
| allowed me to quite rapidly get to something that's fun to
| play, which in turn has motivated me to keep going. It also
| drastically reduces the pain of sunk costs when the entirety of
| your projectile system is a coloured box shooting spheres
| rather than a lovingly crafted gun model which isn't actually
| fun to use.
|
| Having watched/read a few things about the white boxing stage
| the general advice is to put in as much polish as you need to
| do that _and no more_. If you 're trying to prove out jump
| mechanics literally just some boxes for platforms and a sphere
| as the character is enough. If you're making a stealth game
| then you'll need some lighting in your level because it's a
| core game mechanic.
| dxuh wrote:
| Multiplayer game development just stinks. It's not because of the
| networking and the tricky bugs and cumbersome testing setups
| (fake latency, packet loss, a bunch of open game clients) if you
| like these sorts of things (though of course that can suck
| sometimes and does frequently), but if you get far enough, you
| just depend on everyone you know for play testing constantly. The
| more people you need per game the worse it is. I worked on a 3v3
| game for a couple months and it got really hard to find people to
| test towards the end. Just imagine making any plans for a group
| of 6 people. That's almost always annoying. Now try to do that
| once a week and some of those people don't really know you, so
| they don't care about being late or flaking out. This is not just
| annoying, but it really impacts the game. The game requires
| design and tweaking and experimentation just like any other, but
| if you can properly play test your game once a week for an hour
| or two, game design progress is very slow and tedious. I'll never
| work on a multiplayer game again solo, only with a team at least
| as large as the number of players the game is designed for.
| nkrisc wrote:
| It stinks but sounds like your compensation for their time was
| too low.
| zipy124 wrote:
| I used to be part of an indie play testing group which was spun
| off from the community who took over developing natural
| selection 2 after the dev team moved onto subnautica, it was
| great as we all got to play new games every time, with the same
| people and just have fun. No idea if it still runs now but it
| was a great idea!
| floydnoel wrote:
| thanks for the reminder of one of my all time favorite games!
| macromaniac wrote:
| >you just depend on everyone you know for play testing
| constantly
|
| I had this problem, didn't figure out the solution till the end
| of the project- it's bots. Even bad bots are HUGELY important
| for multiplayer game development because now you can iterate
| every second instead of every week. I thought bots would be too
| hard to make for my game, but they really weren't as they don't
| even have to be good. With LLMs i'm fairly sure almost any type
| of game can be botted at this point too.
| monsieurbanana wrote:
| Almost any type of game can and has been botted since
| forever, nothing to do with LLMs
| macromaniac wrote:
| I more meant like now you can bot word or story type
| multiplayer games too e.g. if you were designing a
| codenames or a mafia style party game or something. 95% of
| the time though ya you are just doing basic AI logic, go
| towards objective, attack nearby enemies, avoid nearby
| danger, etc
| Sxubas wrote:
| I have barely done anything in game development, but in terms of
| engine, what has been better for you as a solo dev?
|
| Risk of rain comes to mind as a great multiplayer videogame with
| a small team, it was made with gamemaker studio.
|
| I am curious how is the ecosystem right now and if Godot has
| become a more attractive option for solo/indie development.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| One of the reasons I got into software development was that I
| wanted to make some games (even just small ones that I release
| for free).
|
| I've now been coding for like 14 years, and I still haven't done
| it (besides a number of prototypes). And I'm so burnt out on
| writing code that I never have the mental energy to push through
| and get one done.
| diggan wrote:
| > I've now been coding for like 14 years, and I still haven't
| done it (besides a number of prototypes). And I'm so burnt out
| on writing code that I never have the mental energy to push
| through and get one done.
|
| I was basically the same. Played video games before programming
| was even on my mind, and first exposure to
| programming/structured data was trying to mod GTA Vice City
| vehicles, and then eventually got drawn into programming while
| trying to game dev by night basically.
|
| On and off I've tried Gamemaker, Unity, Phaser, Godot, Unreal
| Engine and everything in-between, for the last two decades or
| something. It always end up the same, game logic so complicated
| I can't make head or tails of it anymore, and it was really
| hard to decouple things enough so I could be as confident
| editing game logic as I am reading/editing other types of
| codebases.
|
| So I never really got anywhere, until I found Bevy. I'm not
| particularly fond of Rust, way too verbose and strict for my
| taste, but ECS turned out to be a god-send for organizing game
| code (in my case). Suddenly writing decoupled game logic became
| a breeze, and since discovering Bevy (but really ECS gets most
| of the credit here), I've even shipped some games during game
| jams that I'm moderately proud off and placed well in the
| ranking compared to my expectations.
|
| If you're of similar traits that you need code to be of a
| certain quality to be able to effectively work with it, ECS
| might be up your alley too, and worth a try if you haven't
| already. It made a huge improvement in terms of how flexible
| the architecture end up being, and made it a lot easier to
| incrementally work on games.
| snarf21 wrote:
| I have a suggestion for you. Try making a board game instead.
| No complex technology to learn, way different than already
| being burnt out from coding all day, you can iterate on the fly
| by writing on your prototype, some can be tested solo (but
| having some friends come over once a week isn't insurmountable
| and is very social), lots on online testing available using "no
| rules" engines that let you just move "objects" around (a
| little tech to learn but done in a few hours), etc.
|
| If if your game never gets published, etc. you could have a
| game that you and your friends got countless hours of enjoyment
| from. I personally get a lot of enjoyment from it. Good luck!
| rcfox wrote:
| Heh, I started working on a board game with a couple friends
| and then got caught up reading card descriptions from a
| shared Google Spreadsheet and generating images to work with
| Tabletop Simulator.
|
| It's a different kind of work from my usual though, and it
| was fun to see my friends in awe that they could write
| arbitrarily many new cards and almost instantaneously see
| them in the game.
| dazzawazza wrote:
| Learning how to prototype a game is a skill. I've prototyped
| hundreds of games over 30 years for work and pleasure. Seeing the
| potential is genuinely hard but it IS a skill you can learn.
|
| Understanding that the general public should not and indeed
| cannot be expected to see the potential is also a hard lesson.
| Games like VVVVVV are unicorns. Never bet on being a unicorn.
| redbell wrote:
| I'm not entirely sure why, but I find myself drawn to reading
| about failures and the reasons behind them, far more than success
| stories. There's something uniquely compelling about failure--it
| often teaches us hard, invaluable lessons that are nearly
| impossible to grasp when everything goes smoothly. Success, on
| the other hand, can sometimes be attributed to a stroke of pure
| luck, leaving fewer insights to learn from.
|
| Similarly, when I'm considering a purchase, I tend to focus on
| the negative reviews (those rated 3 stars or below) rather than
| the glowing, positive ones. Negative reviews often provide more
| logical, specific reasoning as they shed light on potential deal-
| breaking issues. That said, they can sometimes veer into
| irrelevant complaints that don't resonate with me. For example,
| when I'm browsing book reviews on Amazon to decide whether a book
| is worth reading, I frequently come across one-star reviews
| criticizing the print or paper quality. If I'm planning to buy
| the digital version of the book, those complaints become
| irrelevant to my decision-making process--even though they might
| be incredibly important to someone else.
|
| In essence, I find value in the nuanced, sometimes brutally
| honest critiques that failures and negative feedback offer. They
| paint a more realistic picture--one that helps me make better
| decisions and understand the world a little more clearly.
| zehaeva wrote:
| I'm reminded of the opening line to Anna Karenina
|
| > All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy
| in its own way.
| hypertexthero wrote:
| While thinking of making a game I've found these helpful:
|
| 1. The Art of Game Design, A Book of Lenses by Jesse Schell -
| https://schellgames.com/art-of-game-design
|
| 2. 20 Tips on Making Games by Jordan Mechner -
| https://www.jordanmechner.com/downloads/library/20tips.pdf
|
| 3. Liz England's blog - https://lizengland.com/blog/
| ghostzilla wrote:
| Jesse Schell's book is a great read beyond game design.
|
| Thanks for the other links.
|
| To leave something in return, here's something I read the other
| day and kept thinking about it (I'm designing on a PvP motion
| based game)
|
| "In competitive games, there is little more valuable than
| knowing the mind of the opponent, which the Japanese call
| "yomi."
|
| As a side note, I would even argue that the "strategic depth"
| of a game should be defined almost entirely on its ability to
| support and reward yomi."
|
| The Yomi Layer concept is a reminder that moves need to have
| counters. If you know what the opponent will do, you should
| generally have some way of dealing with that.
|
| https://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/7-spies-of-the-mind
| snapcaster wrote:
| I have tons of friends that took his classes at CMU, as much
| as everything he says sounds good I don't know a single
| person that has ever enjoyed a game he made. Because of that,
| I have to assume what he says is either fluff or wrong even
| if i can't perceive why exactly
| daseiner1 wrote:
| Obviously you'd be a better judge than I am given your
| inside knowledge, but your comment reminds me of the many
| virtuoso musicians who don't really make music people like.
| There's a gap between technical ability and taste,
| artfulness.
| snapcaster wrote:
| It's not that he's making games too avant garde or
| something that might be going over my head. His company
| just makes corporate slop, not a single enjoyable game
| amongst them
| no_wizard wrote:
| I feel a great deal of the games Schell produces are for
| clients (like ports) or serve as a more in-depth proof of
| concept.
|
| I think the client work pays the bills though, looking at
| their catalog.
| snapcaster wrote:
| Yep, but that's a totally separate thing from making good
| games
| dowager_dan99 wrote:
| Usually but not always. There have been some great
| corporate projects, but it does feel like they are less
| common now than say 10+ years ago, and typically neat
| twists on existing successes vs. unique ideas
| ghostzilla wrote:
| That's interesting, it hasn't occurred to me to check his
| games. That said, I remember reading that Machiaveli was
| once given a territory to govern and he was terrible at it,
| despite The Prince. It may be a thing about teachers vs
| doers.
|
| THAT said, there is a lot of intersting things one can
| learn from John Carmack, so there's an exception to every
| rule.
| snapcaster wrote:
| >That said, I remember reading that Machiaveli was once
| given a territory to govern and he was terrible at it,
| despite The Prince.
|
| this is a great articulation of what i'm trying to say
| thanks
| snapcaster wrote:
| Discourage reading Jesse Schell if you want to make _good_
| games instead of corporate slop. He's never made a game you
| like or anyone you know likes. Agreed everything he says sounds
| great but then why hasn't he made any good games?
| Vermeulen wrote:
| I Expect You To Die, Among Us VR, Until You Fall. All good
| stuff
| diggan wrote:
| > Agreed everything he says sounds great but then why hasn't
| he made any good games?
|
| Quick browse of the portfolio on that website
| (https://schellgames.com/portfolio) seems to show multiple
| games that has won awards. All their original games seems to
| have "Mostly Positive" or above on Steam as well.
|
| What metric are you judging this developer by? I can't say
| I've played/seen any of those games myself, but clearly they
| seem to be putting out some games that people play and enjoy.
| snapcaster wrote:
| The fact that i'm a huge gamer, and have a huge friend
| group of them but nobody plays his games. It's just crazy
| to me this guy gets a shout out by hordes of people that
| don't play them. I doubt anyone upthread recommending his
| book plays any of them regularly
| no_wizard wrote:
| The titles skew non 'gamer gamer' toward casual gaming
| though. Like some of these titles I could see being great
| on phones, for example.
|
| I don't know their internal metrics by any means, but
| none of these games look 'hardcore', they all seem casual
| DonnyV wrote:
| I started building an iso game a couple years ago and like you
| was not looking forward to having to make so much art. Then I had
| an idea. Build it in a 3D engine and lock the camera in an iso
| like position. Now I can use 3d models and not have to worry
| about creating all these different views. Also you could do
| effects when walking around the board by spinning the camera and
| then locking it in a different iso position. I'm pretty sure this
| is how newer iso games are made.
| moring wrote:
| If you are using a 3d engine that doesn't support actual
| isometric views, you can put the "iso" in isometric by moving
| the camera far away and at the same time zooming in on the
| object. This has the effect that all points of the object have
| roughly the same distance from the camera (compared to the huge
| distance you moved the camera away), so there is no perspective
| "shortening" of points farther away. This is especially
| important if you have rectangular wall segments that must fit
| together.
| mclau156 wrote:
| So many games will use a Capsule as their player for so long that
| it seems impossible to get a fully rigged player later on
| tmountain wrote:
| Taking ClarityCorp as an example, I see an opportunity to focus
| more on the design phase (testing ideas) than the implementation
| phase. As engineers, we often dive directly into coding and
| implementing systems related to our problem rather than asking
| simple questions like, "is the game loop fun?" I've seen some
| brutally simple prototypes (150 lines of JavaScript) that
| represent an idea well enough to determine whether the idea has
| the potential to merit the time investment required to bring it
| to fruition. Personally, I'd rather test 15-20 different concepts
| at the lowest fidelity before settling on a direction than 2-3
| half built games over the course of a year. Not knocking the
| author at all (kudos for producing some work). Just offering
| suggestions.
| EncomLab wrote:
| The brutality of the marketplace is unlike any other - Steam has
| over 100k games in it's store, with 18k added just last year.
| Yes, as in anything there will be the breakout few which go on to
| generate fame and riches, but in general if you are a single or
| small group indie with little to no marketing budget you are
| unlikely to ever turn a profit. As the saying goes "just because
| you wandered through the desert does not mean there is a promised
| land."
| robrtsql wrote:
| It's definitely sobering. I don't necessarily want to make
| money (gamedev is what I would do if I _didn't_ need to eat)
| but it would be really cool to get some recognition, or even
| just have a community of 100 people who _really_ liked and care
| about my game. Given the sheer amount of indie games out there
| (and the number of games that I see advertised yet give no
| thought to), it seems less and less likely to achieve that as
| time goes on. The best time to release your indie game is
| probably 15 or 20 years ago, when the barrier to entry was a
| little higher (thank goodness for all of the free tools we have
| today, but geez has it allowed a lot of competition to
| appear!).
| dpig_ wrote:
| A community of 100 players is totally achievable if you are
| willing to put some time and effort in on social media
| presence, like a YouTube channel. I worked on a small game
| and managed to host a Discord server with 40-50 members
| relatively quickly.
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