"Good isn't good enough"

For some content-intensive games, this is true. But content has always been one of the most costly and time-consuming aspects of game development. But for tinkering and playing around with mechanics, it's usually not true. And it's becoming less and less so all the time. Look at what people are able to achieve these days with what they get off of the Asset-Store. Look at engines like Unity and Unreal 4 going free-to-use. Look at all the open-source content creation solutions available.

I literally have everything I need for game development, with nothing but a computer and an internet connection. Now naturally, I also have more than a decade of learning and obsession under my belt as well. There's a substantial learning curve, none of us would question that. But even that is becoming less of an issue, thanks to the availability of capable tutorials and open communities like this one that are eager to help.

With continuing improvements in tools and the availability of more low-cost content solutions, the time necessary to make solid games will get even lower. We've already reached the point where many experienced developers can throw together capable prototypes in days, as opposed to weeks.

 

I get that completely. I mean all of these people coming into it for the money knocking out mobile apps and such trying to get a flappy bird. It's a shame they can't just enioy it for a hobby. Get some enjoyment from just doing it for fun without feeling the need to make money from it. Believe me I understand some people doing it for money and I understand people having grand ambitions for it. Nothing wrong with that. What I don't understand is at least here it seems like 99% of people are doing it to make money. That just seems odd. I could see 20% or maybe even half of the people but not nearly every person. Do you see what I mean?

 

It could be and it is, but it's not that for everyone and it's not exclusively a hobby (like collecting stuff is, although even with that, there could be professional collectors).

I understand why you view it as a hobby and that a lot of people do. I don't understand why you refuse to see any logic or reason in other people viewing it as something more than a hobby (which is what I viewed your insistence on calling it hobby and putting it next to collecting knives to be).

 

You can say it. They want to get filthy rich off a game. That's OK but the truth is they'd had a higher probability of becoming filthy rich by taking PEDs and training to be a professional athlete.

Calling it a hobby doesn't mean you can't make a living off of it. Michael Phelps is a amateur swimmer but I don't think he's wanting for money. Does professional swimming even exist? Plenty of folk crafts style hobbyists make their money from it. They generally call themselves hobbyists though because they realize their customers are hobbyists. It's better PR.

 

But will they make profit?

 

Why are you equating doing gamedev professionally as doing it for the money?

 

The way I see it is this...

Game development is my career. It's what I do to make a living. It's what I've devoted my life to. It's my passion and I love it. It's difficult as hell but I make money with it, and that allows me to keep doing what I love. I respect the field I'm in and the people who are in it with me.

As a hobby? Sure. That's how I started. That's how pretty much everyone started. There's a wide gap behind hobbyists and professionals, though.

As a hobbyist, it doesn't matter to you if you make money with it or not. It doesn't matter to you if you have to take a month off. It doesn't matter to you if you start a new game every three days and never finish anything. And that's awesome.

The problem is that people who would otherwise treat game development as a fun hobby have now started looking at it as a get-rich-quick scheme. And those people are disrespecting the craft. They think making a living in game development is easy peasy because hey look at Flappy Bird!! and as a result they dump whatever they've conjured up in a few days into the marketplace. Most of the time it's garbage.

Making a living as an indie game developer is insanely difficult. Being able to do it year after year is even more so. The sooner people start realizing this, the sooner the gold-rushers will leave the party, and then the professional indie developers can get back to work, and the hobbyist game developers can get back to having fun.

There's been a great disturbance in the force.

 

I don't think it's so much an issue of people who view it as a hobby vs people who view it as a profession. It's an issue of people who view it as a profession vs people who try to act like a professional before they've progressed past hobbyist.

Edit: @Ony beat me to it, and said it better.

 

@GarBenjamin
It depends how much you want to invest yourself.

You spend most of your life working. Don't you want to spend that time doing what you can feel most proud about?
Unless you like your day job more. Then game development makes a very interesting hobby.

But I personally don't want it to be just my hobby to which I come back to sporadically.

It's not just because of the money itself. Money is the indicator that people value the work you feel proud of. It means that you're not just making games, but games people are willing to pay you for. There's the rewarding feeling.

Right now, the idea of success for me is when a game makes at least enough profit to make the next game. Then I can say "I do this for a living", not because of mere economic stability, but all it implies. Does that make sense at all?

 

Games are the single most laborious creative endeavors out there. Find any game jam and see how many games are bare-bones rehashes or one mechanic ponies that could potentially work in a bigger game. These are games made usually using every hour in a weekend, and yet the best you can say about them is that maybe there is something to it that could be a real idea.

Even if you don't want to make money off it, I imagine most people still want someone to play it.

 

I am really not understanding where I gave that idea of seeing it only as something all people should be doing for a hobby. There has to be a real disconnect between the thoughts in my head and how it is coming across in my writing. lol

I understand people doing it to make money. What I don't understand is nearly every person doing it to make money. Honestly I think I have seen maybe 3 people on these forums say they do it for a hobby and nearly everyone else is ovviously doing it to make money based on questions about promotion, monetization and so forth.

All I am saying is there is more to get out of game dev than just making money and find it strange that people don't seem to see that. I know some do. Some of the people wanting and working on making money from it I am sure have a passion for it and would likely continue to dabble with it even if they do not make money from it. It just seems like those people are very few and far between.

 

For me at least, some of this is simply sympathy. There's nothing wrong with some reasonably healthy ambition. It helps to drive us to improve ourselves and reach greater heights, and that's great. But it can also drive us to destroy ourselves, and that's not so great. For me, I worry about a lot of these aspiring developers throwing their all into their dreams, coming up short, and ending up in debt for years because they gambled their lives and lost.

This is the kind of story that I keep hearing out of a lot of the indie developers that I've met personally. They are almost all starving artists, living from release to release, scraping by, clawing desperately for a living. More often than not they have to take frequent breaks from their development work in order to take on temporary contracts to pay the bills. For every success story I hear, there are thirty or forty people just trying to get by, subsisting on instant ramen and working like dogs for almost no reward. This is the reality of indie game development. Most indie developers aren't wealthy rock-stars.

I love the passion and creativity inherent in this medium. I don't want to see people suffer so much for their craft, or burn out before they really have a chance to improve. We already get enough of that in the large-scale game industry. That's why I frequently advocate a more part-time hobbyist approach. Being a hobbyist developer takes most of the risk out of the equation. It drastically reduces the pressure, and frees you up to experiment in ways you wouldn't have been able to before.

As you pointed out, there are also quite clear drawbacks. And they are worth considering. For some people, being full-time is the only way to go, and always will be. I have no problem with that. But for a lot of the more opportunistic developers who are gold-rushing at the moment, hobbyist development would probably be a better idea.

 

You mean going to college?

 

Not true. Not everyone who wants to make money from games is some fly-by-nighter with a gold-rush dream.

I know I say this a lot, but I'll say it here again for emphasis: I've been making a living as a game developer since 1994. The past fifteen plus years has been in creating and distributing my own games. And because I treat it as a passion and a business, and because I've built up a very useful skill set, and because I refuse to quit, I've survived. Hundreds of thousands of people have played and enjoyed my games, and I've been able to have a good life, raise healthy children, and so on and so forth because I am a professional game developer.

 

Come to think of it, I understand what you're saying. Everyone wants to start cashing in right off the bat, even those who started like, last week.

Personally, I'm in a moment of my life that is crucial I define whether this is going to be a profitable thing or not.

Lol, good one!

 

Spot on. This is not a profession for people looking to make it rich. Very, very few do.

 

I think that is a big stretch. I would hazard a guess the reason is that hobbyists won't be asking those questions so you won't see a post about it at all.

 

If you're referring to students who went to some Art-Institute in order to get a "degree" in game design, then yes. Those diploma-mills cost an arm and a leg and don't give you credits that can be transferred anywhere else. (most established educational institutions don't take them seriously) While you will hear about the occasional success story, a lot of poor students just end up with a bill and no hope for the future.

Aside from that, going to college isn't as bad as many people think. Especially if you, once again, keep your expectations reasonable. If you're getting a standard liberal-arts degree, community college is entirely viable, and way less debt-inducing. This is doubly true for technical-focused degrees and courses, such as mathematics and programming. And educational scholarships abound. Anyone willing to put in the work looking for and applying to various scholarships can defer a huge chunk of educational costs.

But really, with the way things are, you don't even need to go to college to design games. Any young student with a computer in their house can get started long before college even becomes an option. And the younger you get started, the better. Some of this stuff is actually easier to pick up when you are young, and your brain is more pliable.

 

It may seem like what I am saying is a "big stretch" and is certainly not intentionally done. All I can go by is what I see here. It seems like people who are doing it just for fun would be posting as much as the others. I certainly do. Not about marketing or monetization. But game design, their projects, tech issues etc. Heck I probably post way too much really.

 

Exactly! Geesh I was beginning to think really how can people not get what I am saying. lol

 

Half of the current economic issues are from unemployment, while the other half is underemployment. Unless your degree says MIT, Harvard, or Yale, I don't think too many people even care.

 

I really disagree with you implying that it's all the fault of the Arab Spring and Tetris.

 

Clearly Tetris is to blame. If Tetris hadn't cracked down on all those clones all those years ago, then their inevitable failure would have taught people that cloning Flappy Bird wouldn't work and we wouldn't be in this mess to begin with. Curse you, Tetris!

 

To sidetrack on the college issue... College is also much, much more than a simple degree. The true power of college is in the people you meet, the network you become a part of. As with almost every career path, a lot of success has to do with who you know.

 

@GarBenjamin @Ony

Pretty much exactly what Ony said. It's because to make a good game you need to do it for more than a hobby. You need to do it so you can add enough money into your IRA/401k and retire. If you work full time and make games most of us would never be able to craft something they truly see as their dream project.

Much as we hate the AAA studios (don't we? Ok maybe hate is too strong a word ) the reality is they produce some AMAZING stuff- and regardless of their passion for games, it never would have been made on a hobby time budget.

Lastly, I've been around the block a time or two and for some reason discussions about "indie" developers always comes back to "WHAT IS INDIE?" - which is a fool's errand topic of discussion as it is self-assigned.

This matter isn't about the Indie bubble, it's affecting everyone. AAA studios are facing more competition from the influx of titles too. Their risk is a little more muted because they can lean heavier on multiple PR firms and larger scale ad purchasing to ensure they can seen above the noise, but the noise is there and it IS dragging their sales down - especially for games that are "not quite AAA." There's no shortage of 200-1m budget games that are probably not seen as "indie" that are facing the hangman's noose of not being noticed.

 

I'm pretty sure Majohng, Go, and Shogi were also co-conspirators.

 

Exactly and I believe there is a huge distinction between the two, although neither is a bad way to make games. You got a dream and a passion, people should go for it.. Enjoy, create, improve and you never know.

For all the whining I do love making games foremost, I could make far more money picking up on pretty much venture I've done before. It sucks about Steam of course and I believe it could hurt the PC platform, but in a professional venture it's far from the only distribution platform and / or gaming platform.

There are popular platforms that are curated heavily, require contracts / this that and the other. Where if you're not popular or producing A / AA games at least they'll not let you through the door. So there are some bastions of saviour in places..

@ironbellystudios is bang on, notice a lot of mid sized developers just disappeared? Anyone? I scoped and saw a haunting reflection of what we'd end up like if we screw this up. There's only so many hits a ship can take before it goes down..

On reflection, if I wasn't deep in.. I'd do it in my spare time for funzies. No stress, no pressure, just fun..

 

Personally I really admire AAA studios. Maybe because I see they're people doing great work? I don't understand anyone who would hate on that.

 

*Cough* some of them .. The amount of talent oozing out of AAA developers is astounding, I mean you'll never find a greater collective amount of awesome people. Some practices in places are much to be desired, but generally the games they make are to be in awe of.

 

Ha ha! Yeah I definitely understand that. Alright good people I am trying to clarify this. I understand @Ony and @ShadowK have big ambitions and they need and want to focus full-time on this. But only those two. The rest of you don't need to. lol

Seriously... I understand the people who really have a big ambition and want to make something pretty grand. I can see that. I have had that before in my life in other things and I get it. You need to take the plunge and just do it full throttle.

What we were looking at here and what I am talking about are people who do this part-time coming into it because they see things like Flappy Bird that made a lot of money. I see a huge difference between the kind of game @ShadowK wants to make and all of the games that are flooding the market. All of the mobile games in particular. I am referring to the games being made almost exclusively just to make money period by people who as @dogzerx2 stated literally just started like a week before. Okay, maybe a few weeks or a month or so before.

They intentionally make the games as quickly as they can because they have got to get it out there and get that cash coming in right now. Not next month after they have taken the time (and hopefully enjoyment) to learn the craft. No. It has to be right now dammit because this game itself is not so important it's just a vehicle to make the money. And it has got to get out there on the market! If they had read about people making a quick n easy pie and making loads of cash every day they'd be out of game dev and baking pies in their kitchen.

Okay? So, I am not talking about people who have an actual passion for games and game development. I am talking about the people who literally come in because "hey Flappy Bird did it! I can do it too" and completely overlook the fact that even the guy who made Flappy Bird had many games before it. He actually had an interest in what he was doing. An interest and enjoyment in the process itself. He just happened to score a big success that even he has no idea how it happened. And for him the overnight success was so much stress he said to heck with it.

Big difference @ShadowK has a dream to make an ultimate quality RPG / FPS whatever. And I am sorry for using you as the example here man. I just think it will help to clarify this. So on one side you have some people like this who really have a dream a vision to build something pretty amazing. And then on the other side you have a massive amount of people thinking "I am gonna make Doobey Bird!" "Smokey Bird for me!" "Stinky Rotten Bird over here" and others thinking "Forget the birds! I am making Hoppy Toad!" and "Crazy Snake" and so forth. They race through the development as fast as they can just to get it out to the market so they can strike it rich. Their main focus is always on getting to market. The game design, the development is just a pain in the ass process they have to go through to get to where they want. They may spend some time on graphics to make things look "good enough" or they may get some free or low cost assets but the reason for it is always to "make the sale", "get the downloads" and so forth.

If this doesn't clarify it then yeah I don't know what else to say so I will say it is time for a beer I guess. lol

 

Miss slender tbh.

 

Miss Slender + Slenderman = Offspring with no face.

 

True that. In all my years of making it as an indie, I've never had a single game on Steam. And I don't make mobile games.

 

I do agree as soon as you start thinking about how its going to make money, or whether an audience will like it, that seriously changes your focus and the kind of thoughts you have, which leads to a very different set of decisions. In a way sometimes it's better to actually forget about all audiences and all money, focus on just making something pure, and then hope that maybe people like it. I did that twice with books I wrote... I think it resulted in good books, but I do have to say that also they did not sell all that well (due to no marketing?) and were not 'tuned' to appeal to people's egos or to 'compete'. Unfortunate fact is that when other people are optimizing their product for gaining attention, holding attention, appealing to specific users/markets, sucking up and people-pleasing certain audiences, or even monetizing in a maximal way, they are going to make a S***-tonne more money than your little humble 'I am what I am' game. And that's sort of sad but true. Unless maybe you can be such a good artist or something that people just love it anyway, or maybe you are just such a good developer that even without optimizing for any audience or for sales you still manage to come out with a hot product that people want. Something with heart?

 

I understand, we're clear

Our only small disagreement is that I don't think hobyists are as extinct as you make them to be. I mean the rising popularity of LDJAM, proves that an increasing amount of people likes to make games just for the fun of it.

I don't think I have seen too many "goldrush" devs on here. (on facebook groups on the other hand...)

 

I agree, only few indies put lof of work, detail and love on their games.
When you play their games, you see the attention to detail making graphics very attractive, the polished gameplay, the great appealing content, or the story that keeps you playing.
Take a look at the game "Journey", nothing exceptionnal within graphics , no exceptionnal gameplay, but they build some intriguing atmosphear, some appealing level design that call you to explore and go further.
Another example was Bastion : Great graphic style, appealing hero and gameplay, good content, great story telling.

I would say this is the ability to make the overalll game experience attractive.
Many indie successfull games , have lot of work, lot of polishing and long beta tests with feedback.
And there is lot of games with quick generated level that just lacks , attention to detail or good level design.Like many rogue likes all the same without story, without appealing mechanisms or content , very repetitive , they just look and play bland.

When developpers start a good game ,Beta tests are important ; without good attention to players feedback this can litteraly destroy a good game. Like "Wolfe" game : http://store.steampowered.com/app/281940
It had lot of potential and a good background and characters, but if failed because of the non polished gameplay and challenge , the game is too short.

Give your game to true gamers , gamers that hate quick made games or flash like games, and gamers that knows what is a good attractive game. This is the best feedback that will help you know what they expect and what they like or don't like.

 

Luck is the residue of design*


* a quote from Branch Rickey, a front office executive of a successful baseball team.

 

They may say that they marketed the game, but the problem with Escape is that it's first time I hear about it. And I'm one of the guys who love platformers and probably would buy every single one if my financial situation would allow that.

Actually, there are two problems. The second one is that I've got weird sense of dejavu when looking at the gameplay. Because I've seen something like this both graphics-wise and gameplay-wise (though for each category it was a different game)... on a free flash game site (not sure if NG or Kong, but either one). So the second thing is that it looks like more of the same for people who are involved in flash sites.

 

@Ony You haven't had a game on Steam, but you also aren't saying you wouldn't put one up there if they *cough* allowed that kind of game *cough*

Frankly anyone can exist outside of Steam today on PC, but the reality is there's virtually no reason not to be there if it is allowed. The opportunity, even with all the problems it has, far outweighs any negatives.

 

Absolutely. I would put one up on Steam if they allowed it. Then sit back and watch everyone have a fit because they don't want "porn" on Steam. Sadly, we live in a world where someone has to talk about my games with "cough" tags around the idea because sex is something to keep in the shadows and joke about. If I made brutally violent murder games, no one would even blink an eye.

Anyway... Even before Steam came along it's been pretty much impossible to get our games into decent mainstream outlets. We figured that out early on and found ways to make ti work anyway. My point was that there are ways to do things other than Steam, and there always have been.

 

Hah, I meant no disrespect about my coughing problem I have no problem with nudity in games (or other media) and agree it is a double standard on violence. That subject will derail this thread though. My point stands that you may be successful without Steam, but it isn't because Steam is the "problem" even in its less-than-glory days of today.

Though it strikes me that in reality you, Ony, may be better off with Steam not accepting those types of games. While it made starting out harder for you, it now also represents a massive barrier to entry for any newcomer. If Steam accepted nudity you'd find yourself swimming in competition (possibly). Anyway, enough on that as it is really an aside to this thread!

 

Yup I was just about to write this post as an addendum that for all my ranting, I'm very glad Steam doesn't allow my sort of game. It's a niche not too many people want to touch and that's a rare thing these days.

 

Ha ha. I was actually thinking the same thing @ironbellystudios and @Ony ... actually it is a blessing in disguise. Would you really want there to be 10 to 100x as many developers in your market? Because reaching your target audience requires more work and skills (aha! barriers to entry) it means you won't have nearly the number of people dumping out games to test the waters.

 

Haha yeah I joke with my wife all the time that I bitch and moan here in the forum about my kind of game not being allowed in "normal" places, but in private I'm really glad people are so ridiculous. It pays to be in an under-served niche. Shhhh....

 

Just a follow-up here... I purchased Shovel Knight this morning. Unfortunately, the game will not run. It fails with a D3D Compiler error as seen in the screenshot.



The amazing thing is I purchased Curses n Chaos at the same time and the Options screen appears to be very bugged so I cannot reconfigure the controls. For some weird reason they have keyboard wired to J, K etc.

Just a note that if you make a game do try to test it and use some standard controls as defaults. I think this it the first game I have ever seen that had J, K and so forth as the default keyboard controls. I mean who uses those?! lol

EDIT: Ah! I had an idea.

Changing the properties to run this game in XP SP3 mode fixed the issue.

Going to check it out now.

EDIT 2: Yeah that game is well done as far as it being a test of pattern recognition, timing and reaction speed. It definitely is reminiscent of some NES games.

They did a great job on the overall feel of the game as far as the player movement and such is concerned. The pogo jumping with the shovel is a nice technique. Lots of secret areas including just heading off the screen in the "other" direction.

I think it relies too much on high precision timing and reflex testing. I made it through the dragons to the black or red knight whatever it was. The dragon patterns were easy to recognize. The knight's were a little more advanced with a chain of several states he moves through. Although I managed to break his shovel pogo attack a couple times his movement speed and reaction time makes him quite a challenge.

It's a good game. Certainly can see a lot of work, play-testing and tweaking went into it. I'd have liked for the devs to place more emphasis on the exploration and less on refining the fast twitch stuff to get the timing near perfect. It does a great job in capturing the pain in the ass bits of NES games while keeping you coming back for "just one more time". I will give it a another play sometime to beat that knight. Overall, I have the same view of SK as I do of many of the real NES games: "they have some great ideas... some really nice stuff in here. If they had just done it this way it would have been really awesome".

Still... I think because most games being made these days rely much less on this kind of hand-eye coordination there could be a market for difficult games requiring such skills.

 

You say that, but it seems to me lately Steam has become a lot more "forgiving" as it were.. Not sure why the change of heart?

 

How so?

 

Check out Steam, I noticed more adult orientated games on recent submissions.

 

Will do. I know there are some erotic visual novels on there but they've had their adult content censored out. Haven't checked recently, though. Thanks for the heads-up.

And... That's it for the derail!

 

Lol so they pretty much censored out the point of it.. Of course, I'm sure that will help sales. (Slightly on topic right?)