The Dunning-Kruger effect and aspiring game developers.

I'm not sure what you mean? You can't have cut scenes (really) without a story.. The technical list contains hints as to what surrounds it and "content creation"..

Plus I intentionally left some bit's out because the time to develop stories can vary wildly, Mass effect and Bioshock are at the two extremes here.. Character abilities are tied into "levelling system and mechanics" because of course you wouldn't have a levelling system that does nothing would you?

It's all there, you just might have to read into it a little deeper. Plus it would never take me 60 days to make 30 abilities, I've done it so many times, it'd take me three weeks at best..

Finally this depends on your workflow methodology, I don't initially tweak everything to perfection (which does take more time).. It's like music you won't solo a single instrument and EQ it, because it's the mix that matters.. So I'll get all the content in first, see how it plays and then tweak it to balance out the game correctly..

You've heard the saying right? The last 10% can take longer than the game itself, rarely have I ever got it right off the bat. As beautiful as that would be, there's generally at least 3 - 5 months worth of clean-up and expansion.

 

Ehhh, Idk about this whole op tbh. It seems kinda pokey at new people who have dreams and goals for what they want to do in unity. Of course all of us know that you aren't just going to make minecraft, but if you can learn, and practice, than why can't you dream of making the next minecraft.

Example being, I made tunnel fish starting on April 6th finishing the project's release build on April 26th. That's 20 days. IN those 20 days, I first downloaded unity in November, but due to being in my last semester at college (an engineering degree) I didn't really get to touch unity until about January. February I focused on learning a few tools such as photoshop, maya, and substance products and that lasted until early march. April I said ok lets do this, I had a few ideas for games, and I took my least likely to succeed and said lets go for it! In those 20 days, I set up tasks on what needed to be learned (from somewhere on the internet, or investigated in the API Manual and then I worked out how to do it) and then made what ever I had set as the task. That being said the most difficult part for me was FINDING information, but as the 20 days went on I learned where better to find info, how to retain that info better, and additionally worked on what game implementation steps worked best for each task. I redid the UI entirely at one point because I thought (and I was right) there was a better way to do it. Do I still see room for improvement? Ofcourse. BUT tl;dr...

Basically what I'm saying is that if I can come into unity with really no real knowledge on game making, and make a game like tunnel fish in 20 days. I'm pretty dead set on my next project which will be much larger and currently it is sounding pretty cool, been working on the concepts for game art in unity and maya using substance (painter and designer) as my texturing platform. Now I know not everyone you may be referring to is like me with solid logic and reasoning as well as mathematics but I'd hardly say that people shouldn't come in here expecting to be the next notch. Particularly if they can look at games abstractly and see niche game markets that aren't being satisfied right now.

 

Fair enough. I think I was reacting more to the "four months" to make mass effect implication in the first paragraph. At the end your final estimate of around 40 months also sounds pretty reasonable as a whole.

To be fair, I think this original posting was talking about people who were shooting for "next wow as first project" not an infinite runner (which is a very reasonable first target).

 

There is one major point I omitted (it was late) so sorry the timeline I put together that's to build a demo. Sure a lot of it will be repeated and a lot of the base mechanics will stay the same, but quests / dialogues, some art / AI and the choice system will need to be greatly expanded..

I'm estimating 5 months is what it'll take me to build roughly 2/10th's of the game, then it kind of gets a little muddled with polish and additional bits. In total, I'd say it's do-able in two years (still completely dependant on what you're going for)..

Also I'm not working alone here either which is a big factor, plus if the need arises for that last 10% I can hire another 20 people to get it finished. Reason I avoid that now is, I'm not sure how it's going to be received..

So it's a mass of so many variables it's crazy, it really depends on the game design and every single little decision you make as a developer..

I still say MMO's and MMORPG's / openworld FPS and openworld RPG's are a no go.. They're not realistically do-able if you're looking to release a quality game. Even in AAA / Mid sized studio's it's still a risky venture.

 

Traditional approaches to developing an MMO are definitely not feasible, but I have wondered about trying to build an MMO around procedurally generated content. At least for the parts of the game that do not really matter like side quests. The main storyline(s) could, and most likely would, still be hand-crafted though.

 

Procedural Generation is a weird beast, you can make huge progress in no time, or make no progress in huge time.

I remember reading a story about a game built around procedural generation that was in development for like 8 years and eventually got scrapped. It was like a spy game or something.

 

I agree with @frosted, I fall into the camp of backwards lazy in which I'll try and make shortcuts where none exist and some times it takes longer than just doing it the old fashioned way.

Procedural placement / generation kind of falls into that criterion. Sometimes you spend more time building a system to automate that'd be quicker by hand. Sure world generation is a given, I have seen AAA do some very silly things.. Like build a procedural world generation system into the core engine or sculpting one massive terrain and then cutting it into tiles. Which took them hundreds if not thousands of man hours...

 

Unity, Unreal, etc. fall pretty much into that category

 

Most of the time when I think of procedural generation I'm thinking of the Elder Scrolls Arena and Daggerfall. Both games used a fixed seed and only procedurally generated the content that was not related to the storyline. Outside of the very rare situation where you encountered an unsolvable dungeon or a nonsense quest, it worked very well.

 

View attachment 146726

From the top, the 3 guys to the right probably see themselves as the 1 guy from the left. And yet as of 2015, looking at their resumes so to speak...

 

12 Months... that's what the company who is producing this game would say is their timeline.

And then at the end of 12 months you're going to have a room full of testers going... meh. So what happens to that 12 months? It gets extended... and the extended months fly by like some kind of weird time warp has been applied to them. It takes 72 hours to perfect the colors on the GUI. It takes 3 weeks to get the audio to sound right. And then you realize... my god, what have I done.

You want to fight against impossible odds and finish your massive game? Awesome.

Now what are your plans for the REAL challenge... ensuring that your game is as good as you hope for when it's completed? There's no guarantee that a game will be fun until you can play it.

So if you think that crossing the finish line means finishing your game, you need to read about beta tests, patches, and realize that completing a game is just a matter of throwing money at it. It's also only half the work... maybe less than half, depending on how ambitious your idea is and how unique you've chosen to be (there are merits to derivative ideas).

If you want a great game... that's not something you can buy and no amount of willpower can force the goddess of good gaming ideas to bless your brainchild with wings. It's just not easy. Not at all. There's no guarantee, it's art.

 

Hence the massive speech about games vs. good games, I know the score.. Also why I didn't decide to go into this venture with no money and had a strategy from day one.

I understand you can get too close to a product, so once it's done it requires tons of feedback and tweaking. As the point was it's not the game that's difficult, it's making it worth playing.

I've seen games where all you do in an open world is slash zombies, that's not a game to me. It's a task..

The whole point of me doing this is because I enjoyed Bioware games and I don't believe there's enough of them.. So that's the plan, not necessarily to be original but to do something like an interactive epic story (like Mass Effect / Dragon age).. The script already has more twists than GOT and for me that's what I like, hence it's what I shall do.

It comes down to this, I enjoy what I'm doing and wouldn't want to do anything else.. If I was to wimp out and make something smaller just for the sake of it.. I'd quit and go work somewhere where the money's far better and I only work 40 hours a week.

 

When I say "you", I mean collectively, all of you... which includes me.

If you think you can swing it, and make it good, and you have the experience, the plan and the resources, then not doing it is just being a coward.

Much different than where I think a lot of us find ourselves, either not sure what we want or lacking some critical faculty, or just not having time and money.

For me, smaller projects aren't wussing out, they're manning up. And that's my original point, newbies seem to think they were born having paid their dues already, or that there's no entry fee, or that they've no need to really learn anything. I'm just reiterating the point though.

 

In the context that this is all for the sake of discussion and the posted list wasn't a real project planning exercise...

If someone at work gave me a list like that and said it "hinted" at the total body of work I'd tell them to go and expand out all of the "hints". Estimation is hard enough even after all of the available information is teased out and exposed, it's practically impossible when it's based on vagueness or ambiguity.

Going further, if this were for a project plan I'd want the task listing to go down to every asset, even just broadly. The average side quest will require 1.5 unique characters, 2 unique props, 40 lines of writing, two scripted goals... etc. Each environment will need... Each character will need... Each story chapter/main quest will need... Each character type will need... The [technical system] will need... The [game mechanic] system will need... The [custom tool] will need... It will cover not just the making of the stuff, but also time for designing and testing and changing of the stuff (there's no point testing if you're not willing to make changes based on the results, and we're not necessarily just testing for bugs). It should even involve marketing and sales tasks.

The end result should be an enormous tree with all tasks related to finishing your game in it. (Often called a Work Breakdown Structure, though I'm not sure that's technically correct use of the term.) If you work from the bottom of the tree up, adding estimates and aggregating the results, you should get an idea of the total time, skills and resources needed for your project. It's still just an idea, so I'd make sure my budgets and timelines could accommodate it with reasonable room to spare, but at least it's an idea that makes sure that everything is taken into account exactly once, minimizing the risk of an "Oh, we forgot to consider..." or "Oh no, what we meant was..." moment later.

 

Well I'm not going to give out the 300 page design doc (one of many, many docs).. Plus I don't have time to write an essay on game design.

Good job the Unity Forums isn't work aye?

 

I think it's doable, and I think that timeframe is pretty fair. If you're not a total noob and have experience in industry like Shadow does, you have a team and you have money... well.. yeah, in 40 months you can have a quality product. Some of the time will get pushed around, Different stuff will eat more or less, but if you're working with that timeframe and you have the money for it, then that's entirely realistic. 12 months can actually be very reasonable for a subset of the game where a lot of the mechanics are solid, feel good, and well tested.

 

Well there's been a bit of topic drift, then.

40 months for a team is a colossally different concept than 40 months for an individual. If we're talking about experienced teams, even small ones, then yes I agree they could achieve pretty epic stuff in a 3+ year project.

 

A lot of it is just Unity making some things very very easy. You can create a world, make it look half decent, have your guy running around the world.. if you watch a few tutorals you can even get some really simple combat going, download some enemies for free from the asset store.... All that on your very first day. If you can do all that in one day, surely the other stuff won´t take but a few weeks... right?

I don´t know if it is some great psychological thing, or if it is just Unity giving you a hell of a head start and people assume it will all continue to be that easy.

But it is kinda funny to keep an eye on the ´making a MMORPG myself with Unity´ videos on youtube.

 

Firstly it depends on the definition of "Epic", and time is relative to every decision that makes a difference.

Secondly, you don't need to "agree" for it to be right or wrong. It's possible to make an "Epic" (whatever definition) game under 3 years even as a solo dev, dependant on many factors. Again this is from my experience, but not necessarily yours.

 

So, I have gained a bit of insight into this subject, I think.

I think a lot of people think that games are all in their head, all games. It's a weird idea, but just imagine a person who can't fully distinguish reality from fantasy, since the two have always been so intermingled in their lives... (i.e. every day they pretend to be someone else, someplace else and they experience life more through video games than in their personal daily existence). Maybe they're 17-25 years old, maybe they've never done anything creative before.

If you go on Kongregate and look at the comments section, you'll see lots of people telling the developers how they should have made their games, or how to improve them. Which is fine, I don't see anything wrong with that at all. What's interesting is I think there might be a mindset amongst people who spend a lot of time gaming that they are experts on games. Maybe they are, but they still don't know the first thing about making them. They go online and talk with their buddies about how much they know about making games... conflating the game's idea with the development process... they watch Extra Credits and memorize the videos, they read developer logs and "So you want to be..." articles.

Then the next logical step is deciding that they're making a game, the game, the greatest game ever made. Assassin's Bio-Fallout Halo Wars: Grand Theft Mass-WoW.

Maybe they're so juiced up from everyone always agreeing with them in their circle of friends, and generally being good at games where you conquer planets and destroy enemy factions single-handedly... or they just have that personality to begin with, that they march right over to what they see to be the biggest gaming engine out there, to the forum that a lot of people frequent and say, "Can Unity even handle my game?" A lot like the scene from the Other Guys where the two hot-shot cops jump from that building. Nobody knows why they did it. Maybe they were just that arrogant. If I had the power to coin terms, I would make it so that when people post one of those "I'm better than you all, join my game for free," posts... it would be called "aiming for the bushes"... haha, after the line from that movie. Basically jumping off a building with no plan for what to do when you get to the bottom, because you don't need a plan.

Somehow, in their minds, their game already exists. They feel confident comparing it to other people's games. They can talk down your game for not being as good as their own. Because, again I'm speculating, perhaps this person thinks of games as being nothing more than ideas.

Not real products. Not physical things you can hold. Just ideas.

After all, that's been this persons involvement with them so far. Perhaps he or she hears people talk about things like "development" and "time and money" and just discards this as irrelevant, so he or she can remain focused on the idea, the all important idea. And I think when we try to give them a dose of reality, they don't listen, they just grow a bigger feeling of superiority because here we are talking about how much work making games is... and they've already made the game... in their mind. They're way ahead of most people, apparently.

Anyway, that's my best analysis right now. I can see how it happens, I have been there myself. I've known people like that as well. It's just weird how delusion is so common.

 

Like others said, there may be a ton of those young developers that make their dream games from their minds come true even though they apart of the 100s of young developers that started with nothing but sheer passion or ideas. The number might be super small for sure of course in comparison to those developers that never get anywhere, but they are there.

Kojima the creator of metal gear actually started this way working at Konami's video game division and wanting to be a famous game director, but not knowing how to program or design. Just idea's. After years of his co-workers giving him flack for not knowing anything including someone saying "Please make and finish a game before you die", he finally got his first chance to lead a project with nothing but idea's being Metal gear, and it was a hit thrusting him into his career with Konami letting him lead more projects including Metal Gear sequels.

I do agree with the failure stuff though. I'm only 19 but I started game design in junior high and started with the mindset of making a commercial game being my first game as its always been my dream to be the next Shigeru Miyamoto. It wasn't that I saw myself as better than anyone else or even myself as Miyamoto, but that I wanted to become that eventually. (I think its strange to say I want to be the BEST game developer in the world I rather say ONE of the best). I got hit hard with blood sweat and tears during those years since I started with nothing, and even a publisher trying to make me sign a contract for my prototype IP and as a 15 year old kid I had no idea what to do in that situation I felt like a dumb kid who doesn't know anything about the business side of games to be agreeing to that sort of contract and even declined. (the prototype was an old version of Dream Knights). I still told myself though I would do my best for my dream no matter what and keep working on projects since I knew too little about everything. Scraping that game, and doing another project, and scraping that next game and doing another project, and scraping that project and doing the next project always felt horrible to my heart, but looking back doing that so many times eventually led to me gaining the best experience I could have ever had. I learned how to use Unity like there is no tomorrow because of those failures, and iv actually gained skills in modeling with the amount of failed and crappy models iv done.

I'm 19 and in college now, Iv even noticed as I'm in college classes for Game Design and Animation degrees my classes are full of 25+ old people who don't have nearly the amount of skills I have in Unity and design programs, and I think its not because I'm smarter or anything but because I started failing earlier. I'm working on my first game that was born was the blood and sweat, and tears of those failures. Its designed in mind with what I know I can do now, and various design documents that detail how, documents that really show the game is not over complex and can be done; you know stuff I never did back then that lead projects to fail and overstep their boundaries. (with only a few tasks that are done by a freelance programmer but can even be done by myself with him as a way to speed up development).

You can even check out updates on the game I'm making (inspired by the original NES zelda game in terms of gameplay with a VR spin (moving around a small open world with 8 temples and hidden secrets) and combat, but 3D JRPG inspired art and models a little more story, and VR functionality. Check it out on twitter! https://twitter.com/TheeWhiteReaper
Or even check out the work in progress on oculus forums here:
https://forums.oculus.com/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=24787

Not only did my failures give me the skills I need to (actually this time around) work towards a commercial game I'm passionate about, but those failures even attracted other developers to join me giving me a small team that believes in my vision and wants to work with me towards more projects because of my past's hard work and dedication. Sometimes when I lay away at night I think to myself I wish I would have started failing even earlier! It makes me wonder about what got me started on failing since I'm so grateful for first failures to become a better developer. I'm still young so I'm actually excited to fail faster and hopefully be an even better game developer in my 20's and 30's; and of course what started it all was...

Wanting to make an MMO as a junior high student with nothing but passion and idea's and a dream of being a great game designer like my hero Shiggy.

 

If making a Legend of Zelda style game represents you making the scope more realistic I'd hate to think of what your previous failed projects were trying to accomplish! Good luck!

 

Its more like the original NES zelda game in terms of gameplay with a VR spin (moving around a small open world with 8 temples and hidden secrets) and combat, but 3D JRPG inspired art and models a little more story, and VR functionality. If you talking about the more newer 3D zelda games I can see where you are coming from with the message

 

Keep going man, it looks hella sweet. I only saw a couple videos but you look like you're doing it for real. Looks cute, animated, colorful and full of personality. Just a random thought, since you mentioned Miyamoto... Why not name the game after a character in the game? I noticed that the story of the game was always braided into the gameplay and into the title, it was always one thing. It wasn't a game about a jumping plumber, it's the one where Mario tries to save the princess in the castle from the evil bowser, or the little fairy guy goes around finding golden triangles to defeat the evil pig... weird how he always did that. Just a passing thought.

 

That seems reasonable. I was thinking more along the lines of N64 Ocarina of Time/Majora's Mask. NES Zelda would be great because there is still a good scope of adventure and good opportunities for improvement. One of the reasons I think I like the old 8-bit games is because they kind of represent a template, a starting point. Since I don't like where games have ended up I kind of see these old games as an opportunity to go back and carry them forward in a different manner. The screenshots on your Twitter look great. Do you have an ETA for the release?

 

Well I think I know where this thread came from

Aw man, just reading about that program and seeing a few models made me realize how awful I would be at it.

As for the thread, as others have said, no doubt the success of indies, viral success in some cases, has had a huge impact on gamers' perception of game-making, not necessarily for the better.

 

Shh..

 

You don't appear to be making a value judgment so I'm not trying to argue or anything, but I want to say that that isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Writing a novel isn't about having good penmanship. It's about weaving an intriguing narrative with complex characters and believable plot, and so on. Painting isn't about being able to mix half a dozen ingredients to create some special color, it's about using those colors to create something that...does whatever art is supposed to do. Architecture isn't about making an awesome brick, it's about using building materials to make an awesome looking/functioning building.

While I can appreciate the usefulness and flexibility and power of personally made tools (see: any discussion of Japanese devs and middleware, Luminous), they have the unfortunate ability of obfuscating the meaningful part of creation--what is made with the tools (see also: any discussion of Japanese devs and middleware, Crystal Tools).

 

I'm a bit of an optimist here, my take is this.

It's a good thing that the average individual feels empowered to try and make their dreams/aspirations succeed. So what if people think your efforts are fruitless and will lead to nothing, at the end of the day it's not about being a genius or uber dev that allows you to succeed, it's about perseverance and not giving up until you've achieved your goals.

So go ahead, talk about it like it's already done - why not? It's human nature to try and bring others down to your level instead of putting the effort in to achieve and challenge yourself.

A lot of this sounds like defeatism to me - either try to support those around you and help them succeed or chill out and spend more time with family and friends. Either path is a whole lot more respectable than constantly berating someone for having the courage to go for it.

 

There's a difference between berating someone for having the courage to try even though they'll most likely fail, and advising someone to take a more realistic path so they can succeed.

You have demonstrated the phenomenon I am trying to identify... you can't distinguish hateful bullying from legitimate criticism.

Anyone?

This is what I see:



Everyone who doesn't agree with you isn't a "hater"

 

There's a difference between trying and assuming. This thread isn't about people who say "I want to make an open world game! I realize it's hard but I'm willing to learn how." I'm one of those (though with a hefty dash of procedural generation and A.I. systems--I'd join that discussion were I at my desktop).

This thread is about people who say, "I want to make an open world game! I'm sure it's easy, and I'll get it done in less than a year!"

Optimism is good. Imagining one doesn't need to learn is not. In the thread that inspired this one I mentioned that everyone is "writing a novel," (read: they wrote two pages then abandoned it--more than one friend did this when they learned I was writing one) but very very few have actually "written a novel." It's easy to start but it takes willpower and just plain WORK to get things done.

I haven't been "developing" (even saying that feels like hubris) long enough and I'm still too much of a n00b for the unrealistic assumptions of an even-newer newcomer to bother me, but having been a hobbyist writer for years it annoys me when people make light of that (could go on a tangent there but I'll leave it at that for now).

 

Frankly, the difference here is an apologetic tone vs a confident one. False humility is just as likely behind that first statement as anything (ever notice how many posts DO begin with an apologetic tone, but after suggesting some solutions it suddenly turns defensive - that ain't humility talkin' to ya bud!).

Optimism is not good, it is essential - and being an optimist does not mean you are ignorant nor does it imply you're not willing to learn.

Anyhow, interesting discussion folks - i'm only chiming in here as a shout out to anyone intimidated by this language. Don't be afraid to post, don't be concerned about having meme's associated with you - just do your best and ask for help when you need it. You ARE capable, you WILL succeed - just have the courage to keep rockin' some code and make things happen. Let the forum bumpkins do the doubting for you.

 

Continue the conversation:

Noob: "I'm making an open world game."

"Oh, cool! Where are you at now?"

Noob: "Well I have the idea and I can't program/draw/write/read or use Unity but I think with a team I can do it."

"I thought you were making the game? Do you at least have it planned out?"

Noob: "Of course."

"Well, maybe to help you, I can here a little about your plans?"

Noob: "Yeah, you'd LOVE that. You'll steal my idea."

End of constructive conversation.

 

Well, that happened.

I guess the thread is dead if we're calling people folks and bumpkins and raising the bro fists and throwing out shout outs to the bro army to fight the oppression of intimidating language and to resist the assault of memes.

Seriously, just learn to take criticism. That's the moral of the story.

Yes, anyone can do it, but not without learning, at least, to respect the talents and abilities of those who have already achieved what they one day hope to achieve... hard to do when you assume it's easy, or not even necessary to learn anything you don't already know to achieve.

 

Behind the very first statement? Anything but. I know I'm going to chip away at this for months and I'll never show it to anyone but close friends, believe me. I know I won't make anything off of this, if I ever get it "made." It's a hobby.

And that difference is anything but "tone," it's "attitude." If you come at something assuming it takes little work, you quite simply aren't going to get anywhere. Now that can shift over time to understanding that something takes work but being willing to put the work in--but those are absolutely two different things and they shouldn't be conflated.

As has been mentioned, the number of kids who pick up a guitar and think their fingers will dance over the strings and they'll make millions is far, far larger than the amount that practice everyday (I say that as someone who has both an acoustic and electric sitting four feet away but hasn't touched either in months, and likely won't for months more). It is not just tone, it is a commitment to the work necessary to make something from nothing. One has it, the other does not. We're all in both camps in some issue or another in our lives.

 

All I was pointing out was that you and frosted didn't seem to be talking about the same thing at that point.

 

I know we all like to think that we live in a world where a 'can do' attitude can pull you through. But here's the reality overconfidence can be just as detrimental as negativity or anything else.

Here's the cold hard reality, making a non trivial game of good quality (the kind of game you play as a gamer) is a mammoth endeavor. The scale of which is far, far beyond what most people have faced. It's safe to say that most people in their day to day lives don't take on projects span multiple months of serious concerted effort. Even for those that have and do, the timeframe and scale of a quality game are far beyond that.

Even though it's a tremendous effort, it's not impossible, even for one guy. I've spent the last year trying to do it, I might even have a shot at succeeding.

In my personal experience, it was a huge mistake to jump into a significant project. A huge mistake. If I had just humbled myself to taking on a smaller challenge, like at least making a breakout that was good enough for someone to play (this is a huge point most people don't emphasize or understand - it's not about making it functional, it's about making it fun). I would have learned far more, far faster. I would have understood the challenges far better, understood my limitations and weaknesses much better, and I would have been more familiar with Unity and game dev in general. If I had humbled myself and started small, then a year later I would be farther along, plus I would have actually made a couple fun games.

I really believe that my overconfidence cost me a great deal of time, and a huge amount of frustration. When I tell people not to start ambitious, it's not about humbling noobs, it's about saving people from the same mistakes I made.
____________________________________________

On second thought, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe making some kind of trivial game really just isn't at all transferable to more ambitious genres. Making a fun breakout is about like adding some juicy visuals, maybe adding a novel arcade mechanic.

One of the biggest lessons I've had to learn is that my UX skills were terrible. Every time I tried to design a complex UI, nobody anywhere understood it or liked it. Although my UX skills sucked, a small game like breakout doesn't really have ux - there's like a "main menu" and possibly a "select level". There isn't like an information architecture challenge there, and there is so little information that needs to be presented that I probably could have thrown in a few tweens and a particle effect and thought my ux skills rocked.

I've spent around 4-6 months effectively redesigning the UX. Some of this was learning basic graphic design, other parts involved organizing information and figuring out how to clearly present this to the player. Other parts involved decision making about how the transitions between the games various layers worked, how the strategy layer fed into the tactical layer. I've done two complete rewrites of the basic game interface (a mixture of 2d ui and 3d in world).

Maybe the reality is that if you want to tackle a non trivial game, the only ways to do it are to either jump in, or work in an environment where you can learn from others who've done it.

 

Probably not, all of this is really a case by case basis.. So may variables.

@frosted

Well there's a huge variance between pong and an RPG, the skillset is utterly and completely different. Although I'm the same I do have this argument with myself all the time, until logic get's trounced with "shiny effect"..

Because technically it's not hard to learn various systems and skills, logic says "well we can always re-factor and make the game smaller". Then another part of me says BIGGER, SHINIER, OMGZ PRITTIEZ!

I'll play a game, look at some of the cool systems.. My mind works it out into pseudo code, I think to myself yep that's well easy.. Then I end up with bits of un-finished systems whilst I have a new "idea" I mean I have all sorts, a half built engine, a half built GI system and a horribly un-optimised octree based terrain system, masses of artwork, tons of prototypes and many code experiments..

I already have a half baked game that's probably bigger than a fair few AAA games and a hack n' slash that just needed polishing (before I decided too many people did them so I dumped it), point being if I'd of been more focused and concentrated on something smaller, I'd of definitely had a lot more done and many more games released.

Sometimes I wish I'd of listened to mr. logic, but where's the fun in that?

 

No ETA at the moment. If you have an Oculus Rift though I am working on a demo that is about an hour or two long, and it basically is a prototype demo to show off to people what the game is about, and get a taste of it before development moves even more forward. The demo is suppose to have the Knight and the player leave the knights house and go on a linear but beautiful path to a single temple with all the demos content (levels and temple) exclusive to it. I wanted to do a free prototype demo so I can test if people actually like my designs, art, and gameplay before I go ahead and make 10 temples or whatever with the entire game based on those designs. Although it is exclusive to the Oculus Rift. The whole point of the game being in VR/exclusive to the rift is because of what I'm prototyping "VR items". They are items like a cross bow (which lets you fire arrows into the world with your face to help out the knight) and the headlamp (which in pitch black temple rooms allows you to use your headlamp as there is a light attached to the rift camera) Here is a gif of how the head lamp works (its already my favorite VR item so far this early on)
https://embed.gyazo.com/1331de56d969a4e01ca22a58710a4087.gif

Also back on topic I too ponder why newer game developers hate criticism. (Phil-Fish/Fez guy as a great example). We live in the age of the internet where it doesn't matter what job you have, you could be Janitor whose only job is to mop with a go-pro camera and stream it online for the world to see and no matter what you will always get someone who trolls you and tells your mopping is S***ty even though you did fine and didn't leave any messes. That is something newer game developers I think need to take into account not to throw fits or be too upset when it comes to every bit of criticism in this day and age of the world wide web. Most of the criticism I ever got, actually makes it into better design choices for my game. (hence why I want to do a demo and get more flung at me).

 

Not defending the guy, but most of the criticism wasn't aimed at his game but at a comment he made and his Twitter attitude.

 

We could have had Fez II.....!

Should have known he was off when he said in indie game: the movie that if fez failed he'd commit suicide.

 

Here's the big lesson I've learned... The code is easy. Making the design of the game work as a whole is not.

I started my game by trying to copy XCOM's strategy layer. The way that xcom's strategy layer essentially work is:

- You have a bunch of menus that allow you to view your guys, hire more and upgrade them.
- You then have a 'world view' where time passes.

Every 10 or so seconds passing time on the world view, there are basically 3 kinds of fights that might pop up:
- Abduction (player chooses between 3 fights/rewards)
- Terror Mission (a difficult 'boss stage')
- UFO Mission (little mini game followed by a fight)

The really unusual thing about this design is that it's entirely passive for the user. They click a button then the game prompts them with their fight choices. The user can skip these if they want.

The code for this is stupidly simple. I had it all working in like under a week. Then I probably spent 1-2 months trying to figure out why it sucked so much in my game.

The thing is, I had to learn (painfully) that the reason this system works so well in xcom is that the mechanic is intrinsically linked to the narrative. Your role is 'guardian of the earth' and when you click that 'pass time button' you're literally scanning the skies waiting for an attack. The genius here is that the narrative and the implementation are perfectly aligned. That's why it feels so good. That's one of the reasons it's so F***ing fun.

When people are deciding between saving Canada or Europe or China - there is emotional baggage they're carrying into that decision that help make the game feel epic. Each of these fights revolves around "saving" that country, the narrative drives it. Many players make decisions about what country to save at an emotional level not a strategic one, and that's a sign of really effective game design.

A good game needs to at core understand itself and it needs to tailor it's mechanics to the experience it provides. Doing that, and executing it well, it's hard. It's exceptionally hard. And the mistakes you make along the way can carry huge costs in terms of time.

 

I believe the narrative and the mechanics are always intrinsically linked, because we as humans are all about stories... movies are stories, books are stories... so every game is just being interpreted as a story by our brains, and there's nothing we can really do about it. That's just how we view the world. Someone correct me if I'm wrong here.

Your analysis is great, it's real and you learned something already that I'm just discovering, it's been touched on before in the discussions I've participated in, but the fact that the story and the game are one and that the union of those two (and all the other art and media) is what produces the end result we call fun...

What's also fascinating is that good controls, solid gameplay and all that is that those things will not cause players to like your game... ! That will cause them to keep playing past 15 seconds. But, alas, to create a fun experience, the player needs all their basic questions answered... who, what, when, where, why... its right back to what you learned about stories in grade school.

So, I hope we can have that discussion.

Edit: ALSO... try to think of a game you LOVE that has lousy controls, cheesy dialogue, dated graphics or whatever and you'll discover that it was the story that makes you love it. At least that's my current theory I'm testing.

 

What it all comes down to is vision vs. execution. We'll continue to see tons of people thinking about the next grand MMO, which in theory might sound pretty good. Then in three months they'll disappear and we'll never hear from them again..

You should be proud if you've lasted a year, it's more than many people have..

I know were debating what can and can't be done, the harsh reality is it's not that it can't be done.. It's that most can't do it.

Take this for example, it's made by two people (a third later) and it's damn impressive for what it is. Sure it's not an MMO Epic. But even then how many people here can do this? Stick your hands up? I know I can't do it with such detail and finesse in that amount of time, they are just truly talented people.

I'm not really sure myself if I'm capable of doing what I'm doing completely, it's just nice to know it can be done. Experience and money ultimately mean diddly squat if it flops like a fishy..

End of the day, you just gotta do it.!

 

I personally pretty much only play games for the story, in fact I find it difficult to play games without a story, but I don't think that's necessarily universal. There are plenty of games, heck the entire foundation of gaming is games without any semblance of story (pong as mentioned), or the "story" nothing more than three paragraphs in the manual. Plus stuff like multiplayer has no semblance of story either (usually). And there are entire genres that are usually absent of stories (racing games, simulators, weird stuff like candy crush or bejeweled) or again where it's a paper-thin veneer over the non-story-related gameplay (FPSes USUALLY, action games, RTSes).

 

I'll bet you a dollar that you're not 100% correct that there are games without stories... there's always a story, even if you're creating the whole story while you play. Even if the story is, "First the ball hits the top and comes down, and then I smash it with like a ton of English and then it bounces off the bottom, he goes for it but it bounces off the bottom of paddle and I win." Or "I was like one block away from losing in Tetris, and then I just started matching every piece like some kind of ninja cyborg, it was crazy." Obviously... there's always a story.

These days, I think we've seen games like those take a massive drop in popularity, with newer, more evolved games available to play. It's all relative. Back then, they were all there was.

But even back then, there was the recurring theme of saving the world from aliens.

When you see games getting huge was when they started having real stories with real characters. Donkey Kong was King Kong, so that means Mario was based on a movie... these days games with no story seem to get panned.

 

Great takeaway I think. I've tried to do it the other way around(mechanics before story/gameplay) and it has never worked out for me no matter how awesome I think the mechanic is. Actually I think it is probably the biggest stumbling block I've run into with gamedev truth be told.

 

Seconded. I thought that gameplay was everything.

 

Well they are all relative and tied, it's better to build the mechanics around the interactions (story). Whether it's enemies or friends, it's what truly makes the game come together.. It's like the story triggers the mechanic and without it, there's only a task.

Well IMO anyway ..

 

Apologies for taking so long to reply.

But I can't agree. Now, I would say that a game without a "story" like space engineers or perhaps Minecraft can derive it through emergent narrative. But that's a function of the player's interaction with the mechanics rather than the mechanics themselves. I wouldn't say "pong" has that ability.

And just because you CAN play that way, deriving narrative, doesn't mean you will. I'm sure you can roleplay as a soldier with sniper training in COD, but how many players do you think actually do that?

I want to be clear I'm not saying story or narrative doesn't add anything. I pretty much only play story-focused games. But necessary or intrinsic? That's a stretch, I think.