How much of indie dev success do you think is dumb luck?

The big problem with IQ is that it tries to measure intelligence divorced from training.

That's about as relevant as asking "How fast would Usain Bolt be if he never practiced". Natural mental prowess, like natural physical ability, is essentially impossible to divorce from training.

One can dramatically increase IQ scores simply by training on the types of questions expressed in the test.

 

That's what its supposed to do though. Measure intelligence...

 

The point is that there is no practical approach to doing that when "divorced from training".

Basically, testing methodologies turn a blind eye to the fact that you can train on the questions and that this will have an impact on the measured results that has no basis in a person's underlying intelligence.

 

The problem is that native intelligence is an unmeasurable quantity. No one has figured out a way to measure it independent of training. Countless studies have shown that IQ testing is heavily influenced by the training a person has had. You can do more training on the specific IQ test method and dramatically improve your score.

And yet despite the fact that the tests are close to useless at measuring native intelligence, we still throw it around as if it is measuring native intelligence. We still talk about people with a "high IQ" or "low IQ". There is still a culturally persistent idea that IQ measures some fundamental aspect of native intelligence, which is simply not true.

Most people that are interested in practical data use aptitude tests. These measure ability to do a specific type of task. And its fully acknowledged that they measure natural ability, training and test circumstances together.

 

Trust a Unity forum thread on what it takes to make a game to end up on the topic of whether IQ tests are for real.

 

Saying that, how many threads stay on topic

 

Lol.

In fairness we have done the OP topic to death over the past few years. Its not like its something unique that has never come up before.

 

Clearly we need a thread about how to find information already discussed in prior threads.

 

What's the point if that thread would probably end up discussing the anatomy of a unicorn

 

flappy bird?

 

It's not a discussion forum if it does not derail a bit within reason

 

And it's PEAK derailment when we derailed the already derailed topic to discuss derailment

 

Guys don’t derail the thread with this derail talk!!

Back to topic, IQ is actually a reasonable way to test intelligence, can predict career outcomes in large samples of people, though there will be individual exceptions, pretty much like in any statistics.

Things it doesn’t measure though: emotional intelligence, social skills, creativity, humor, thinking outside the box, creating elegant code, ability to trash talk.

Things it measures: analytic thinking, short term memory, spatial intelligence, math, pattern recognition, verbal skills

Source: nothing resembling close to reliable

 

This wasn't the IQ thread.

 

But it's too derailed now, it'd be impossible to reverse engineer the original subject :\

 

This is offtopic

Most if not all of this skills, can be trained. Hence measures / predicts nothing relevant.

 

@LurkingNinjaDev Image clearly suggest in our deep consciousness at Level 3, that we should back to the inception of this topic.

 

Well the question asks about "dumb luck", the opposite of it would be "intelligent skill".
I think also, some people say IQ to just mean general intelligence and not the exact manner of testing. As in "she's got a high IQ" meaning she's seems very intelligent. Well, let me put it differently. I'd say find out what area your brain is good at naturally and make your games to fit that. For example, if your brain is high in creativity then go down that route and if your brain is good at algorithms go make the next Minecraft.

But I fully believe that if you make a great game, your audience will come to you. I don't think it was just luck that Minecraft made a billion dollars.

 

You guys should have a small, unity community game jam. One month to make a single player arcade game focused on being super fun and having maximum replay value just from the fact that it is so fun. Then you can put all the games together in a bundle and sell it for a nominal fee.

 

Indeed. It was game based on proved concept of dwarf fortress, adding 3rd dimension, while dev himself, had already experience in making games for years. So if any luck was involved, is relatively small factor here, in respect to all rest.

 

Nah, I rather sit and wait for pure luck, until it comes to me. Then I will be a millionaire

 

A Unity General Discussion Forum games store?

 

it's not about money. It's about giving something useful to focus on, and if the participants keep a devlog/discussion board where they share what they are learning and what challenges they are facing, it would be a great resource compared to "how much is dumb luck important?" threads

 

If any of you guys took the time to turn it into a nice beginners tutorial, you could package it along with a modeling 101 tutorial I'll make here in a few months and, if the quality is good, maybe Unity could feature it in the learn section. A nice "crash course" to simple game development noobs could use to get a good overview of common methods.

 

I won't speak for others, but at least, I got things to do. I just participate in forum, to get some momentary distraction of work

 

Come on. You post a lot. You have almost written a novel. Take 3/4 of your posting time to code a super simple game. Something you only need half your brain for. It will be great.

 

Sometimes I start to wonder if I'm on a game dev forum with the sort of stuff that crops up here. It's either some politically contentious offtopic, or a debate that boils down to the idea that the game gold rush has come and gone, or the marketplace apocalypse of poor customer choices and evil capitalist practices has overtaken the known world. If I thought any of that stuff was true I certainly wouldn't be here, or making games at all. There need to be threads here that elevate the general discussion forums into something that is at least 50% constructive game-dev-related topics.

 

Yeah, I have the bad habit of popping between forums while I am working, and unfortunately it is the dumber threads that grab my attention. Not being a programmer, the more technical stuff is pretty vague to me. What I'd love to spend more time reading is accounts of people doing work, solving problems, sharing lessons learned, that sort of thing. I don't have the brain space to devote to programming right now, but I am telling myself once I get my foot in the door with the 3d art industry I'm going to start making some time to get into programming so I can make some fun, simple games in my free time.

So, yeah, that's what I would like to see more of here.

 

You must be participating in wrong topics then. Not that mobile market give away golden nuggets anymore

I see your point. But if I would replace my posting here with code of lines, that means, I write my project code, then back to simple game code, then back to my code. I think that could be exhausting

But mind, I do drop from time to time some snipets (in ECS), or respond to new starters questions. So is not that, me not contributing otherwise

 

Imagine if the general discussion forum was a boatload of constructive useful information, like Gamasutra articles in the form of a discussion, or something like that.

I think the problem is that most of the people in the forums are not really qualified to talk about game dev in any detailed sense. Including myself, if I'm honest, though I hope to rectify that somewhat in the near future. But I think it's a beginning to step back a bit and ask yourself if what you post is really going to give someone something useful, even by your own estimation.

 

Yep.

What I really want to see is work coming from the regular people here. I want to see growth, development, hobbyist turned professionals, hobbyist projects getting completed, that sort of thing.

Less spectatorship and side-line discussion, more sweat, blood, and tears. General discussion would be more a matter of, "hey guys, I just spent fifty hours redoing some work over again, and here's what I've learned not to do!" or "I've gotten to the final polish stage of my project, but such and such is bothering me. What do you think?" etc etc

 

I'd be happy if more people just stopped trying to use General Discussion and Game Design as support and implementation forums when neither of them are intended for that purpose. I have to wonder how new people are learn the basics of game development when they apparently can't read a line of text that is right in front of their face.

 

Haha. Yeah, that is a separate problem though I think.

But yeah, one of the reasons I think beginner/intermediate game dev logs would be so useful is because the type of skills you need to actually do work and finish projects isn't the technical stuff at all, and that's what it seems many beginners don't realize. They want to know "how do I script this or that," but what they really need to know is how to develop a habit of reading the damn manual, exhausting available resources, understanding the assumption of ignorance, that sort of stuff. Just basic professionalism, really.

The technical side cannot be developed without a certain amount of prerequisite, basic professional habits.

 

This may be great candidate for IQ evaluation

There is plenty hot bathed people, which think, asking question on forum is quicker, than using search.

Give me 10 years. I may will have something to show off then

We had some similar thread, where people will discussing similar cases. Or look into in progress. Sometimes people describe, what they did, or implement.

I mean, we do repeat from time, to time what is right, what is wrong. But such post getting eventually dig in, under the pail of other posts. Problem is, people don't use search. Instead repeating asking same questions over and over.

We can only ask mods, to move some topics out of general, when relevant, to at least keep it more tidy.

Question I would have for example, would you like to read pile of post of my project progress dev, or rather periodical spinets. I would worry, It can get cluttered.

 

Asking on forums is the slowest way to get an answer (unless the great wide web literally does not have the answer, which is rare). That's the thing.

It's just a matter of laziness, most of the time.

 

This really baffles me often. But perhaps because I am somehow different.
I would rather do quick search, rather than type forum question, and wait for answer, for however long need to wait.
For me, typing forum question requires more effort, than using simple search.

Either way, when I replay to newbie thread question, tend formulate answer / question, in such way, that I provide "fishing rod", rather "a fish". Sometimes work, sometimes not. But every dev knows, getting right answer requires effort.

 

If that was true my thread about ray helix intersection would have been super popular, and I don't think people are interested in me spending 100h solving that case because I start ill equip mathematically anyway. On top of being "only relevant to me".

 

Sorry for late reply I forgot I even made this thread lol.

Yea I sort of agree with the IQ thing. My IQ is only 97 and I sometimes struggle with some aspects of the design. I am not an expert coder and I am currently struggling with learning organic modeling

 

Part of it is, as a professional, I spend all day working on games and having discussions and feedback with the rest of my team. There is not much interest in discussing it for or to any practical result in a a public forum. I’ve tried in the past, and ends up being sort of pointless. The most vociferous folks usually aren’t really making any games or have actual experience, but are happy to go on for pages sharing thier opinions on every aspect of game development and the industry and blah blah.

There are a handful of folks here who I value thier feedback and just ping them directly. But otherwise I try to help and share insight where I can, but don’t have time or interest in discussing experience outside that. This is a good place to discuss unity stuff, but for professional game development.., there other places for that.

 

I understand. Only reason I have too much time to kill on forums is because I'm not working right now, obviously. Really it's a bad habit and I waste too much time, but I got nowhere else to talk about this kind of stuff and when you spend all day doing something you kind of need to talk about it at least a little bit.

But, is there a place where professionals are providing post mortems, discussing lessons learned, that sort of stuff? Like, GDC stuff but more like a forum or something.

I suppose I could just search and not be lazy... or, get back to work.

 

There are a few, Some general, many are discipline/segment specific. Usually slack and a few are forums. But they aren’t public, invite only. Though content (white papers/post mortems/presentation ) are public on individual blogs and sites.

 

Well that might have been true years ago but not since the internet. You no longer have to store everything in memory just pop on unity forum and do a search for what you trying to achieve and the code or a good headstart is probably out there or do a google search. Its like oldschool landlines and cellphones now everyone stores people numbers in there phone memory and don't have a clue what the numbers are offhand but before cellphones you memorized the numbers you called.

 

Being a good programmer isn't about knowing solutions, though. It's about knowing how to solve new problems for yourself.

 

Yes, however usually a good google search is an integral part of the problem solving process

 

being smart means realizing that you are dumb. dumb people believe that they are smart. smart people understand that they are dumb.

so when you know that you are nothing but a big dummy, you learn how to find information. you solve problems in way that accounts for your ignorance. you never say, "welp, I know all there is to know about that." That's why smart people are always busy working.

 

When these topics come up, I always think its worth making a distinction between people who want to make games to make money and people who want to make games for the sake of the games (be it artistic or otherwise). Its a continuum and I'd suggest the amount of luck required varies heavily depending on where someone falls on the continuum.

If you were just seeking money, you could (for example) find games that meet these criteria: new, simple, popular. Then you clone them and address one or two key complaints that users have (maybe more levels, maybe better controls, maybe one extra mechanic). You gather metrics about every facet of these releases and hone your strategy to optimise for return.

Compared to say, building your magnum opus text based MMO, this clone and tweak strategy will require a lot less luck.

I think a lot fall in the middle: they want to create the kind of games they like and are proud of, but they also want to make money and would probably make quite some sacrifices to the 'purity' of their games in order to generate revenue.

Being aware of where you fall in this continuum is a very handy tool for focusing your efforts on the right things.

 

Well, that's going to depend on a bunch of factors. In any case, if you regularly rely on Googling for "the code or a headstart" then you're relying more on other peoples' solutions than your own.

That is definitely valid in some cases. Nobody can be an expert in everything. In the long run, though, it should be far from the norm.

 

While I agree, it's more looking at how people approached specific problems and get inspired from that which can give you some ideas. I am not saying that you should just find the solution and copy it all the time

 

TL;DR - you have to market your S*** otherwise no-one will know you even exist, regardless of how good your game is.

Here's the one reason why your amazing game (which better be pretty good first of all) is not doing well.

NO ONE KNOWS IT EXISTS.

Some people have said well, if you don't even release your game it's not going to succeed at all. As if to imply, when you release it, it's going to suddenly do well. Nope. Because there is a second hurdle.

If no-one knows it exists, it doesn't matter for S*** whether it's released or not. A lack of awareness it the #1 problem. Getting eyeballs on it. It's a traffic problem. The big question is, how do you get MORE PEOPLE to know that your game IS EVEN THERE, yet alone play it and like it.

This isn't a problem isolated to games or apps either. Every single business has this same problem. This is why they used to say "location location location"... if you set up a retail store that relies on foot traffic, you better be sure there will be enough physical bodies walking past your front door to even know you are THERE, yet alone come inside. Otherwise you will not sell anything and will have to close the store.

This is a fundamental fact of this world. It's huge. And people are all over the place. And people tend to stay LOCALIZED to where they live and a small surrounding environment. They talk to a small group of people by word of mouth. They don't venture far from the neighborhood. So how exactly is that new store in the next city going to make that person know that they have just opened? It sure isn't going to be by some amazing chance that the person happens to stumble upon them. "Build it and they will come" is utter nonsense. How do you think anyone ever found out about anything back when there were no cars, no internet, all people had was a horse-drawn carriage and it took days or weeks to go anywhere? Do you think your game would sell in that environment? Because the fact is not much has changed!

So you have to be very careful because when you make your game and even if you feel rightfully good about it's quality and playability and potential, if you let that go to your head and think that just "releasing it" into the wild to SIT THERE glowing and being attractive, is going to be enough to just automatically magnetize a huge population of people to it, you better think again.

It does not matter how good your game is. If people do not know it exists, it might as well NOT EXIST. It doesn't matter how much better it is than other games. If people do not know it exists, it might as well be crap as hell. It doesn't matter how much time you spend on it, how much money you put into it, or how much it is your best work. If people do not FIND it, and are not LOOKING for it, and have absolutely no idea that it even exists AT ALL, all of that is useless.

Cold hard fact. A beautiful polished diamond ring sitting in a crevice of a back-alley buried under some pile of turd goes totally unnoticed. What does it matter that it's the most beautiful ring in the world? No-one wants it because no-one KNOWS IT EXISTS.

This is a huge world. People are spread out everywhere. Most people are very local and stay within the confines of a little bubble. They venture out a little and sometimes uses special devices like the internet to peer beyond their locality into the wider world. But even when they do, if your stuff STILL doesn't come up in front of their face, you do not exist to them. Even if you have a glaring blaring billboard with flashing lights saying "LOOK AT ME" they STILL do not give a crap about your game if they they do not DISCOVER it.

So now you've got a problem and it's the same problem every business has. How do you get people to even know you exist, in the first place, yet alone the question of whether you have something to OFFER that they might want. If you focus entirely on making the game and not on raising awareness of its existence, you're starting off with the "something to offer" and completely ignoring the "someone to offer it to."

So then you'll end up with a nice new shiny product sitting on the street with barely any passers by wondering why no-one wants it. And then you'll be annoyed and disappointed that no-one seems to be buying it, even though it's a great game, and puzzled as to why that's happening, and then think that the "dream" of making money from games was a big fat lie, because it isn't just "working" automatically. Or you'll think that the kind of game you made was a bad idea and all games like this are a bad idea. When the fact is, NO ONE KNOWS IT EXISTS. It's not that you can't make sales, it's that you're not getting in front of enough people.

It also does not matter if your game is 100x better than the crap that makes it to the top of the rankings. It doesn't matter if you outdid yourself or are leaps and bounds ahead of the competition. The people who do not know it exists couldn't care less. Why do you think the top-ranked games in the app stores quite often are pretty crap games? Because more people KNOW ABOUT THEM. For whatever reason, their mediocre made-in-a-weekend crappy design isn't there because it's necessarily GOOD, it's there because PEOPLE ARE AWARE OF IT. The "cream of the crop" isn't really the cream of the crop, it's the drudge that happened to SURFACE into the awareness of the most people. It's a ranking based on how many people know about it, not how many people think it's good.

And here's the other cold hard fact. There will be games that are wildly successful NOT because they're especially amazing games but ONLY because a S***load of people know about it. For some reason, whether it be the game is actually pretty good or controversial or unique or has something going for it, just the mere fact that people FOUND OUT ABOUT IT, is what has driven it into the #1 spot. And do you know what the #1 spot represents, ie symbolizes? It's the position of "the most people are aware I exist." It's the spotlight. It's not merely the position in which you're most discoverable, it's also the position in which you've BEEN the most DISCOVERED.

Some years ago for example I remember the Black Eyed Peas came out with this annoying song. I did not like the song. But, they were on a huge marketing campaign and kept coming up on all kinds of TV shows. They seemed to be everywhere. And as a result of that huge exposure to people, they sold a lot of records. A lot of CRAP records. A record that you KNOW EXISTS is far more likely to be purchased than a record that's really excellent that's HIDDEN FROM SIGHT.

You can't just "publish and pray". You cannot just push something onto a marketplace and think ok, just because I'm on there and I'm amazing, my game is going to the #1 spot. Why doesn't it work? Because the market is HUGE, the number of LOCATIONS in the market are massive, and so there is the same discoverability problem. No-one knows you exist. If you think that every single visitor is going to actually stumble upon or even SEE your little app sitting there on your screen you've got another thing coming. You'll release your game at the BOTTOM of the heap. Where NO ONE knows you exist. With no traffic, no attention, no eyeballs, nothing.

Cold hard fact. You are not starting out in the limelight. You are starting out in the DARK PITS OF HELL. Totally obscure and unheard of and HIDDEN by a massive steaming pile of wannabe's. No one knows you even released. No one cares. The gamers don't care. They WOULD care if they discovered your app, but... until then... they're absorbed with the games they are AWARE of. And not only do you have to vie for their attention and attract them away from their latest addiction, you also have to get in front of their faces in the first place to even have a chance of being downloaded and installed.

So there you are in the hidden depths, a needle in a haystack. Sitting there. Doing nothing. Your shiny screenshots are worthless. Your nice video is pointless. Because no-one's looking at it. Isolated, alone, a barren desert of nothingness. That's what you're starting from. So how do you suppose you're going to actually be successful? How is your game going to get NOTICED? How are you going to get the recognition that you really deserve, since your game is actually quite good? Or even amazing?

Another cold hard fact. There are really amazing excellent games that would be totally awesome to play sitting in the dark depths of hell buried beneath a stockpile of attention-seekers, so far buried that barely anyone even knows it's there. A forgotten hero. How the heck are you going to get anywhere close to the limelight from that position? How are you going to come out of the dark and into the spotlight? Yet alone to have any chance whatsoever of the wishful thinking that you'll just automatically "be featured" because of how amazing you are? Sure some savvy searcher might spot your game and decide to give it a boost, if you're lucky. But even they don't know it exists.

It's all about the eyeballs. And this is the same struggle for all businesses. How do you get people to know that your product exists at all? Yet alone whether you can sell them on it. How do you get it in front of people? How do you get people to visit your website when it has next to no traffic and is unproven and no-one's talking about it, linking to it, sharing it? How do you come up in any kind of search algorithm on ANY marketplace or platform if you're just sitting there lifeless and there's no evidence anywhere that anyone likes it? Word hasn't spread. There's no signals telling the search engines that you're even popular and worth exposing to the audience.

You're going to have to DO SOMETHING PROACTIVE to increase awareness. You're going to have to MARKET the thing. You're going to have to find as many ways as you can to overcome that massive wall of unconsciousness which stands between you and the prospective buyer who lives in another country and has no idea what you just released into the world. How will you reach them? They hang out in their local neighborhoods. They frequent the places they like to go, not the places you want them to go. You either have to GO TO THEM and shove it in front of their face (advertising etc), or find ways to build inroads across which people might FLOW TO your game or website, to actually find it. It's a huge traffic problem. Bums on seats. How are you going to get people's attention? And it's not going to be because your game is super attractive and just sits there naked trying to draw people in.

This is why the bigger teams and companies have marketing efforts. Sales people. People who outreach. People who build websites and write blog posts and spend bazillion dollars on advertising. This is why they build relationships with influencers in order to get in front of their audiences and be exposed. This is why they don't just release a game, they build a huge amount of buzz about it. They market it. They PUSH it in front of people. They go to where the people are hanging out and make them aware of it. They find those little pockets of humans who might be totally into games just like yours and they drop a bombshell on them. They get people who frequent certain websites to come to yours through some link building effort or partnership. They put out videos so that more people might stumble upon it "randomly". They try to get featured by bloggers and vloggers and all the rest of the influential crowds, to try to get in with their audiences.

Somehow you have to do SOMETHING beyond just releasing your game. You have to raise awareness. Make people know you even exist at all. If you can't do that, all of the rest is really pointless. That is, if you're really wanting people to actually play your game or buy it. It's not enough to just let it sit there festering. It's buried in the darkness, under a huge haystack, among all the other lost beans, hopelessly thrashing around in the dark trying to make some noise. No-one even notices. Not unless you build a connection to some PERSON somewhere, they do not know about it.

To not realize this and to just spend years making some game and then you plonk it on some marketplace and cross your fingers.... good luck with that. And it IS going to be luck. If that think just blossoms all on its own, you got way lucky. If enough of the people who DID find it make enough noise it COULD take off organically. That's when things go viral on their own. It's all about awareness and excitement. But don't bank on that happening. Much more likely it's not going to to happen and that means you're dead in the water and have to do something actively to bring attention to your game. Go to the people, or make the people come to you.

This is VITAL. The world is too big and spread out and isolated and everyone is so in the dark about what's even happening beyond their own noses. You have to overcome the SPATIAL separation between you and others. Between where your game IS, and where the PEOPLE ARE. You have to connect the two together. And that doesn't mean putting it on some marketplace, where all you've done is throw it into a HUGE environment spread out across thousands of miles of landscape, hoping that every single person on that market is going to see it. Just because you are part of a large group of people doesn't in any way mean you are getting people's attention, any more than if you're a tiny store in a huge city. Getting inside the front door is nothing more than moving to live in a metropolis and hoping everyone notices your arrival.

Otherwise they might as well be on the other side of the world sipping cocktails on some desert island, oblivious to your dreams. It's crazy to think it's so "easy" to just make something and plonk it on a marketplace as if that will do it, or as if the marketplace itself is run by such an impressive company that this will "rub off" on your game and make it a success. It won't. Apple doesn't give a crap, nor does Google or anyone else. You're nothing to them until you get into the light and make some money. Don't expect any company or marketplace to just "give you traffic" spontaneously. They won't unless there's something in it for them. They are your enemy.

What everyone's trying to do is to get into the light. To get into the limelight. The spotlight. The maximum attention. The most exposure. The most people paying attention. The most eyeballs. That isn't going to just happen on its own. You have to shout and make loud noises. You have to send stuff to people. You have to build traffic sources. You have to get out there and FIND people or help people to FIND YOU. Build bridges. Connect. Network. Whatever. You have to overcome the limitations of space itself. Your audience is scattered all over the place. How are you going to reach them? How are you going to guarantee that they SEE YOU, yet alone whether they will like what you've made? If you can't do that, you're living in the dark and will probably stay there admiring yourself privately.

It's not just that you have to market because that increases business. You have to market because you are literally CUT OFF from the audience. You have brick walls, long roads, massive gaps and giant chasms between you and the people you want to reach. It's a mountainous landscape. You HAVE TO do something to counteract that otherwise you're going to stay in a little valley where no-one visits and wonder why nobody likes you. You're not battling competitors as much as you are battling with the terrain. You have been held apart from those you would want to reach, so that means you're going to have to do something to reconnect with them. It's the only way to make the world AWARE you exist at all. And if you do that MORE than "the competition", regardless of their product's quality, you will rise into the limelight. Sure you can't probably get there with a crap product but you sure as hell can't get there if you're lurking in the shadows.

The world is against you. It's a giant obstacle. It's far more your competitor than any of your competition. You've been separated from people spatially. If you want people to buy your stuff, you have to do something to overcome that, to transcend the separation between you and others and find a way to connect with them. And don't kid yourself that people can or will or are looking at you just because you're part of a huge crowd. There's nothing happening at the bottom of the heap or in the back corners of the store away from the main aisles. And the fact is when you "launch" you're going to be shoved at the bottom of the least-visited shelf in the back corners of the marketplace under a pile of old discontinued dead items that turn people off with their stench. If you want to rise from obscurity, you literally have to tackle your obscurity and make yourself less obscure, and that's not likely to happen on its own.