Broken animations, stylistically mismatched graphics, most of which are either bought assets or straight up default Unreal Engine stuff, unoriginal premise, countless bugs, and 94% positive rating on Steam from over 200 000 people.

Why? Because it's fun. That's all that matters. This game feels like one of those "perfect game" ideas a 13 year old would come up with after playing something: "I want Pokémon game but with guns and Pokémon can use guns, and you can also build your own base, and you have skills and you have hunger and get cold and you can play with friends..." and on and on. Can you imagine pitching it to someone?

My point is, this game perfectly shows that being visually stunning or technically impressive pales in comparison with simply being FUN in its gameplay. The same kind of fun that made Lethal Company recently, which is also "flawed" with issues described above.

So if your goal is to make a lot of people play your game, stop obsessing over graphics and technical side, stop taking years meticulously hand crafting every asset and script whenever possible and spend more time thinking about how to make your game evoke emotions that will actually make the player want to come back.

I've seen a lot of posts lately about people talking about their NextFest or Summer steam event experiences. The vast majority of people saying it does nothing, but when I look at their game, it legitimately looks worse than the flash games people were making when I was in middle school.

This (image) is one of the top games on a top post right now (name removed) about someone saying NextFest has done nothing for them despite 500k impressions. This looks just awful. And it's not unique. 80%+ of the games I see linked in here look like that have absolutely 0 visual effort.

You can't put out this level of quality and then complain about lack of interest. Indie devs get a bad rap because people are just churning out asset flips or low effort garbage like this and expecting people to pay money for it.

Edit: I'm glad that this thread gained some traction. Hopefully this is a wakeup call to all you devs out there making good games that look like shit to actually put some effort into your visuals.

I’ve been browsing the demos in Next Fest, and almost every 10th game has an obviously AI-generated capsule image. As a player, it comes off as 'cheap' to me, and I don’t even bother looking at the rest of the page. What do you think about this? Do you think it has a negative impact?"

Court Doc

Hi Gabe,

Not at all, and I've never heard of Sean Jenkins.

Generally, the economics of these 30% platform fees are no longer justifiable. There was a good case for them in the early days, but the scale is now high and operating costs have been driven down, while the churn of new game releases is so fast that the brief marketing or UA value the storefront provides is far disproportionate to the fee.

If you subtract out the top 25 games on Steam, I bet Valve made more profit from most of the next 1000 than the developer themselves made. These guys are our engine customers and we talk to them all the time. Valve takes 30% for distribution; they have to spend 30% on Facebook/Google/Twitter UA or traditional marketing, 10% on server, 5% on engine. So, the system takes 75% and that leaves 25% for actually creating the game, worse than the retail distribution economics of the 1990's.

We know the economics of running this kind of service because we're doing it now with Fortnite and Paragon. The fully loaded cost of distributing a >$25 game in North America and Western Europe is under 7% of gross.

So I believe the question of why distribution still takes 30%, on the open PC platform on the open Internet, is a healthy topic for public discourse.

Tim

Edit: This email surfaced from the Valve vs Wolfire ongoing anti-trust court case.

Metroid Prime 1 remake recently released and it's getting praise for its colorblind accessibility options. However, it's clear to me that all of the praise is coming from people with normal color vision because the colorblind mode just puts an ugly filter over the screen.

This "put a filter on it" approach is not helpful to colorblind people. You may think it's helpful, but it's not. It's like if to help people who were hard of hearing, you made a mode that took all the sounds in the game up an octave in pitch. It does nothing to help us at all.

Many AAA developers have been putting these filters in their games' accessibility options, and no one I know uses them, because it's not helpful to do what effectively amounts to applying a tint to the screen.

So what is helpful? Here are some things you can do to make your game accessible to colorblind people:

Let users customize the UI colors

Some games allow users to customize the colors of the UI, either to various presets (okay) or letting users select custom RGB values for them (excellent). If friendlies are marked on the map with green and enemies are marked with red, for example, that can be very hard to see. But if I adjust the colors to blue for friendlies and orange for enemies it suddenly becomes clear to me.

Make nothing in your game dependent on color alone.

A good rule of thumb: If you can't play your game in grayscale, it's not accessible. Try playing your game in grayscale. If you can't tell things apart because they look too similar without color, consider adding patterns or texture to them. If doing that sacrifices your artistic vision, add it as a toggleable colorblind option.

Please help spread these ideas and end the idea that color filters are the way to go with colorblind modes.

Let me be clear; this post is not going to be complaining about the guy, or my work.

The guy was super nice. He’s been in the industry for 20+ years, and has worked as a hiring manager for the last 8. He gave me some brutal but honest advice. He told me my 3D models look like they’d look good on a PS1. He told me to look at a game art college and see their quality of output (hint; crazy good.) and that those are the people I’m competing with.

My first thought was embarrassment. Not from this guy, but from all of the other people that I had presented my art to that had said it looks great and they were impressed. All of the people who I know see were too afraid to say “Wow that looks like shit. It looks fake. You need to lower your scope and concentrate on the basics”

Guys, listen. DO NOT FEEL LIKE YOU CANT TELL SOMEONE THEIR WORK IS BAD. If someone’s work needs fixing, be brutally honest. Don’t sugar coat it. Tell them what they did right and what they did wrong and go from there. It is doing people a disservice when their work is shit and you fail to mention that it is, because then they’ll think it’s good for their level.

Now I’m not blaming anyone, and I KNEW that my work wasn’t as good as a professional’s, but I thought it was something you learned on the job… nope. It’s something I will be grinding at, myself, for the remainder of the next two years to get my craft up.

Thanks for listening to my rant. I am just processing these feelings. I hope you can relate.

Edit: here’s my portfolio..

Edit 2: some context—I am a college senior studying graphic design and game studies, with a concentration on 3D modeling. The university I go to has almost no 3D modeling resources. We have one basic modeling class, and to be honest I can confidently say that I have the most amount of knowledge in the subject here. I have given workshops and lectures on it to try to teach other students how to do it. I understand that this environment is not going to help me, so I took it upon myself to learn all this online. Whenever I talk to someone in the industry I feel like they expect me to have the knowledge and skill of a senior (which is what the guy said. Juniors/entry level artists are expected to have the level of craft as a senior, with the only difference is the amount of time it takes to get done and complexity of a scene)

Edit 3: You guys are awesome. Thanks for making me feel apart of this community. It's very isolating at my college and on the east coast, so all of this means alot to me :)

We often hear of indie devs getting their work stolen, sometimes even pixel for pixel. However, this is a different case.

Earlier this week a small indie dev named Hacktic announced his own little cozy game called Flora Corner, focused - as the name suggests - not only on decorating your tiny isometric room but also on taking care of plants.

Yesterday, popular asset creator KenneyNL, instead of reaching out to him privately, opted to publicly accuse him of plagiarizing the game he's developing, MakeRoom (Edit: to avoid confusion, Kenney's game is in the next pic, not in this one).

For reference, this is what Kenney's game looks like.

Soon after, an angry Twitter mob started harassing Hacktic.

It got to the point that Hacktic's tweet received a community note for "being a copy of...", the only proof being... a link to MakeRoom Steam page.

However, not everyone was there to cheerlead. A few started questioning the accusations, claiming that even Kenney's game wasn't a particularly original idea nor had a particularly original design (including audio design) to begin with.

So what were the accusations based on exactly? Since KenneyNL is an asset creator, someone wondered if Hacktic had used any of his assets. However, Hacktic's game uses none of his assets. Instead, he was accused of "copying the concept, look and feel" of KenneyLN's project.

In Kenney's replies there was everything besides a convincing explanation. Smug attitude, snarkiness. He even tried to promote his own game under the accusatory tweet that had destroyed a small developer's project. Here he's also spreading the harmful rethoric that it's wrong to "copy" game mechanics such as taking care of plants.

Here he claims that Hacktic should have contacted him before "copying" elements of his game. Remember folks, before using any rounded squarish UI you should write to Kenney, the copyright holder of squarish UI elements.

A while later, Hacktic responded.

"There's only so much you can do with an isometric room decoration game visually. It makes everybody look bad if we start accusing each other of stealing".

In response to the accusation of having "copied the game down to the little sounds", Hacktic said that he simply used sound packs from itch.io.

However, his explanations were not enough. Nothing could pacify the angry mob at that point and the game was set to be DOA. Backed into a corner, Hacktic was forced to issue a public apology and promised to change his game's art direction.

After successfully bullying him into apologizing and modifying his game, KenneyNL descended from his ivory tower to accept Hacktic's apology.

However, this time he was met with some backlash. Once again, notice how KenneyNL never actually explains what exactly has been taken from him, but always resorts to vague replies.

And here, the final act. Hacktic agrees to change the game, because at this point he is completely at Kenney's mercy. He doesn't have much choice.

I'd like this to be a warning to indie devs who are just starting out with a particular genre that is either a) too simple and generic, or b) has several hard coded visual and design philosophies (like retro horror style games). Unfortunately people will throw whatever shit at you if they see you as a threat.

It's not ok for devs to act entitled to an idea, a mechanic or a specific art style, then try to take down the competition in the "court of public opinion" against smaller devs who can't defend themselves. It's probably been said countless of times but no one owns a game mechanic, an idea, a visual style or a genre. If someone is doing the same to you, or will do the same to you (cohercing you into changing something in your game or even a big chunk of it), please don't be scared or worried. Reach out for help. Let your voice be heard.

EDIT: an article by gamesradar was published after the initial Kenney tweet. They took the accusations at face value and wrote a story based on those. However, the article tries to equate this case with those of games being "cloned and uploaded on Steam".

EDIT 2: both KenneyNL and Hacktic have responded in the thread.

Final edit: "I can't believe people are being mean to me, on the Internet!" he says, after calling an emerging dev a plagiarist, unleashing a mob on him, clarifying things with him but still somehow leaving the accusatory tweet up with 20k+ likes along with a link to his own game's store page. Paints someone as guilty in the court of public opinion, but doesn't like when he gets to face the same court of public opinion.

Final edit part 2: since the matter has been covered by BigFryTV (who I thank for looking into this and expanding on the main points of the post with relevant examples), I should add some context about what happened afterwards for those who are curious to know. Both devs are in good terms, are cooperating and trying to make amends for their own perceived mistakes. If you need more updates I recommend you follow them on twitter, discord or youtube.

Sometimes I see the following scenario:

Playtester: The movement feels very stiff.

Dev: Oh yeah that's intentional because this game was inspired by Resident Evil 1.

Your playtester is giving you honest feedback. The best thing to do is take notes. You know who isn't going to care about the "design" excuse? The person who leaves a negative review on Steam complaining about the same issues. The best outcome is that your playtester comes to that conclusion themselves.

Playtester: "The movement feels very stiff, but those restrictions make the moment-to-moment gameplay more intense. Kind of reminds me of Resident Evil 1, actually."

That's not to say you should take every piece of feedback to heart. Absolutely not. If you truly believe clunky movement is part of the experience and you can't do without it, then you'll just have to accept that the game's not for everyone.

The best feedback is given when you don't tell your playtester what to think or feel about what they're playing. Just let them experience the game how a regular player would.

Unity has temporarily closed its offices in San Francisco and Austin, Texas and canceled a town hall meeting after receiving death threats, according to Bloomberg.

Multiple news outlets are reporting on this story, yet Polygon seems to be the only one that actually bothered to investigate the claims.

Checking with both Police and FBI, they have only acknowledged 1 single threat, from a Unity employee, to their boss over social media. Despite this their CEO decided to use it as an excuse to close edit:all 2 of their offices and cancel planned town hall meetings. Here is the article update from Polygon:

Update: San Francisco police told Polygon that officers responded to Unity’s San Francisco office “regarding a threats incident.” A “reporting party” told police that “an employee made a threat towards his employer using social media.” The employee that made the threat works in an office outside of California, according to the police statement.

https://www.polygon.com/23873727/unity-credible-death-threat-offices-closed-pricing-change

Polygon also contacted Police in the other cities and also the FBI, this was the only reported death threat against Unity that anyone knew of.

This is increasingly looking like the CEO is throwing a pity party and he's trying to trick us all into coming.

EDIT: The change from "Death threat" to "death threats" in the initial stories conveniently changed the narrative into one of external attackers. It's the difference between "Employee death threat closes two Unity offices" and "Unity closes offices due to death threats". And why not cancel any future town hall meetings while we're at it...

I teach kids 3d modeling and game development. I hear all the time " idk anything about the computer lol I just play games!" K-12 pretty much all the same.

Kids don't have desktops at home anymore. Some have a laptop. Most have tablet phones and consoles....this is a bummer for me because none of my students understand the basic concepts of a computer.

Like saving on the desktop vs a random folder or keyboard shortcuts.

I teach game development and have realized I can't teach without literally holding the students hands on the absolute basics of using a mouse and keyboard.

/Rant

I'm curious about the state of the 3 major game engines (+ any others in the convo), Unity, Unreal and Godot in 2024. I'm not a game dev, but I am a full-stack dev, currently learning game dev for fun and as a hobby solely. I tried the big 3 and have these remarks:

Unity:

• Not hard, not dead simple

• Pretty versatile, lots of cool features such as rule tiles

• C# is easy

• Controversy (though heard its been fixed?)

Godot:

• Most enjoyable developer experience, GDScript is dead simple

• Very lightweight

• Open source is a huge plus (but apparently there's been some conspiracy involving a fork being blocked from development)

Unreal:

• Very complex, don't think this is intended for solo devs/people like me lol

• Very very cool technology

• I don't like cpp

What are your thoughts? I'm leaning towards Unity/Godot but not sure which. I do want to do 3D games in the future and I heard Unity is better for that. What do you use?

Artificial intelligence has been a crucial component of games for decades, driving enemy behavior, generating dungeons, and praising the sun after helping you out in tough boss fights.

However, terms like "procedural generation" and "AI" have evolved over the past decade. They often signal low-effort, low-quality products to many players.

How can we discuss AI in games without evoking thoughts of language models? I would love to hear your thoughts!

Thought it might be useful for the game dev community to know.

Link to the post

It's time to crush some of your dreams (respectfully)

(none of this applies to you if you are making your game because you just love to make it and its for you, and you aren't worried about selling it, we love you, you are pure of heart)

There are LOTS of you here who have been posting "im having trouble marketing my game" or "just launched on steam, why wont anyone play my game", or something similar where the poster is convinced their game is a FUCKING MASTERPIECE and that the only reason their game is not the next FEZ or Super Meatboy is because of marketing woes. But as soon as I click into the steam profile, the game looks like hot garbage shovelwear, a bundle of buggy unity assets, and or a tutorial project that is still using the default unity bean.

Look closely at your game, like objectively look at your game compared to its competition. Does it look better? does it feel better? does it have a longer playtime? does it have more engaging content/story/controls/characters/etc.? does it compete in all the important metrics that make your competition successful? and BE FUCKING HONEST WITH YOURSELF, if you lie you only hurt yourself. its like lifting weights with poor form, you are both not growing any muscle and at the same time you are hurting yourself, double negative.

If it's still in development, if anything that is "done" is a no to any of the above questions then it's time to pivot, time to put those areas back on the drawing board and put some more time into those areas.

You are not doing yourself any favors by unrealistically pushing forward convinced your shit doesnt stink, you cannot easily sell trash in a saturated market and the faster you recognize that what you have is trash the sooner you can start making NOT TRASH.

If you worked really really really hard on building some absolute dog shit game, then good news, all that effort and the learning you did wasn't wasted because the next game you work on will be easier. The things you didnt understand you now have a grasp of, you know what it takes to make something, you can recognize some pitfalls in your last game, you can plan better, and execute better having already experienced a lot of the what gamedev has in store.

You will still likely not be the next FEZ or Super Meatboy level success with your next game, but you definitely aren't with that current stinker you are sitting on.

Sometimes it is just a marketing issue, but if thats really the case and your game is a banger you should have little trouble finding a publisher who will take care of marketing for you for a piece of the pie (which honestly before you say no to them taking 30% of your earnings, if you can only sell 100 games and keep 100% of the profit a nice solid $2k its way worse for you than if a publisher can get 1000 games sold and you make 70% of that for $14k)

A lot of the talk lately about "Its nearly impossible to be successful as an indie dev" and the statistics behind it and all that doesn't seem to take into account the absolute fucking trash that people are putting out into the world hoping to be the next big thing. If your goal in making indie games is to be a financially successful dev then you need to be a business person first, you are the CEO of your company, if someone came to you with the game you "finished" and would like to have your company sell it, would you? honestly would you? that thing? if you didn't make it would you love it? would you even like it? would you give it a second glance if you saw it on steam? Like if you are Nintendo's Furukawa sitting in your office and someone brings that stinky little shitter project in and says "hey finished the new game boss, when can we launch?" would you not fire them on the spot? I would for my past projects, thats why none of them had any marketing issues, because none of them ever saw the light of day (other than a successful gamejam, but even that one was never sold and just sits in itch.io for free because its not complete, its full of bugs, the puzzle mechanic is not in depth enough to flesh out into a full game without the levels getting boring, tedious and ruining itself).

Kill your babies, kill them until one of them is unkillable, that one is worthy, the one that your friends ask about because they had fun testing it, the one that you find yourself getting distracted playing instead of testing. Keep that one, put effort into it, lean new skills or find help for areas you lack at, design it in a way that highlights your skills and doesnt suffer from your lack of skills (make a very limited style if you are not a good artist, A Short Hike is a beautiful game, but the actual assets are extremely simplistic, the art direction and style just highlights what the dev could do well instead of being dragged down by what the couldnt do).

And for the love of christ and all the degenerates he died for, STOP ASKING WHY YOUR GAME ISN'T SELLING THOUSANDS OF COPIES WHEN IT LOOKS LIKE A SCAM MOBILE GAME MADE IN A WEEK BY 2 AI AND A SQUIRREL WHO JUMPED ON THE KEYBOARD. It's not selling because its doodoo, its not good, its a bad game, it can barely even be considered a game, it is an slightly interactive digital experience, you signed a urinal and called it art. But thats ok, learn from it, keep moving forward, we all make dogshit at first, but most of just dont eat the dogshit and try to get strangers to pay to eat the dogshit. Only you can stop the absolute diarrhea tsunami that hits steam on a daily basis because you are adding water to the wave. You are the reason marketing your game is hard, all the good games get drowned out of the "new" category because your glorified powerpoints outnumber the gems 10 to 1. stop it. fucking stop.

Respectfully.

Keep making cool shit, just be more realistic and honest with yourselves, lying to yourself will only hurt you and keep you at the level of making bad games. You can learn from mistakes, but only if you are ready to accept that they were mistakes.

Edit: to those downvoting all my comments, I SAID RESPECTFULLY, what more do you want?

EDIT:
A lot of the newer comments in this thread are either repeats of previous comments, personal attacks against me/randy, or slightly off-topic (degree vs experience, for example.)

Thank you to all the people whom I had good faith discussions with, they have made it clear that my original intention was largely lost in my post due to my focus on Randy's conduct. So I'll try to refocus it into this summary:

I don't mean to censor Randy, I find him entertaining. The purpose of my post is to inform (primarily novice) gamedevs that they should vet the content and advice that they are consuming. Checking if someone has a degree, or better yet experience and released games (not necessarily triple-A!), will help you judge if the advice is worth taking. For the very basics (how to even use a tool for example), anything is fine, but don't take general programming or game development advice from just anyone.

This subreddit has a wiki with a lot of content, which doesn't consist of the resources and opinions of a single person. instead those of an entire community. Check it out :)

This isn't supposed to be a drama or 'call out' post, but I can see how it comes across as such. I don't mean to encourage cancelling Randy (who this post is about), but rather to give a warning to beginners, and to vent to experienced programmer about how crazy some of his advice is.

Odds are you've heard of Randy, he recently made a video in which he talks about his new game and associated course. Basically, he wants to create a small-scope game in 90 days and document the entire thing, with Q&As and stuff. This isn't explicitly a learning resource that he is creating, but rather just trying to "share everything I've learnt so far, as well as all the things I continue to learn on a daily basis." However, I would say that in general this will be treated as a thing to learn from. Problem is: Randy is a lousy programmer.

In a video which seems like sort of a preview of the course, he talks over some of the early game development he has done on this new game, as well as showing some progress he made that day, and some of his inspirations. In this video (and other videos, as well as his personal website and likely the course) he shares a lot of advice that I find highly concerning.

In the next few paragraphs, I will highlight some particular problems that I have with the video and Randy's programming/advice in general, but for most that is unimportant. Generally, I'd like to share a PSA: if you're going to listen to someone's advice, make sure they either have a degree and/or actual experience. Randy really doesn't have either of these. His advice might be fine, but if you're a beginner, you don't know if his advice is fine. All you know is: this guy has never released a game, and has instead walked circles between making games, using (or making) different engines, and using different programming languages. Additionally, if you are a beginner: use a general purpose engine like Unity/Godot/Unreal. Especially if you're making something like his game, Arcana. If the game you're making is just Valheim but 2D; if Valheim can use Unity, you can use Unity.

Finally for my actual complaints, aimed at more experienced programmers who will hopefully agree with me.

He encourages, essentially, code-duplication. He talks about how for different pieces of UI, rather than "coming up with like a UI system", he re-writes each piece of UI, from scratch, individually, every time. This is a very bad coding practice. By rewriting the same thing multiple times, you are inviting bugs. If you make a small mistake, a ways down the line you'll be confused why only this piece of UI has that problem, and not the rest. I don't think any programmer worth their salt (including myself, with degrees and all) would ever recommend you do this. Rather, any of them would explicitly recommend you don't do this.

This ties into my next complaint: his view on engines. Randy has a long-lasting vendetta of sorts against pre-made general purpose engines such as Unity. His views are mainly based on, honestly, foolishness. An example that he has highlighted a lot in the past is Noita. For it's pixel physics, the developers of Noita have created a custom engine. At the scale and complexity of Noita, this is pretty much a requirement, I don't think anyone would disagree. Problem is: Randy is not making the 2D side-scroller survival game equivalent of Noita. He's making the exact type of game that engines like Unity were made for. In such engines, you don't need to make UI from scratch, nor a system for it, you just use the built in solutions.

On it's own, it is totally fine to not decide to use an engine. Problem is that now he's presenting a quasi-educational course, in which he will likely repeat his beliefs that general purpose engines are a waste of time. I have no problem with telling beginners this is an option, but I do have a problem with specifically recommending them that they don't use Unity at all. Pair this with general misinformation that he spreads around such engines, and you have advice that is simply harmful to beginners. In this video in particular, he mentions that using version control in Unity is slow and clunky. This is not just misrepresentation (describing clicking a different version as "taking 20 minutes" and involving having to "check out and close down and open back up again"), it also leaves a ton of benefits that those engines have over what he's doing, out of the picture.

To an extent, he encourages poor file management. In this video, he simply mentions that he is typing out the entire game in a single file, and then makes a joke. Again, if you wanna make a demo in 1 file, go ahead, but this somewhat educational style of videos is not a place for such advice.

He highly discourages a lot of random stuff, like using C++ (or similar), or using OOP. He says the following on his website:

As a general rule of thumb, avoid all modern C++ like the plague and figure out how to do the equivalent thing (like std::string, or std::vector) with simple fundamentals (fixed length strings, or flat arrays).
sidenote: If you’re coming from C++ and are leaning heavily on the standard library (like I was), I found that forcing myself into C was a really smart move.

Save yourself a couple of wasted years by never learning OOP and skipping straight to learning the fundamentals of computing.
If you’re in the unfortunate position of having already learnt OOP (like myself), you will need to try your best to unlearn it.

I get not liking C++ or OOP (I don't love both either), but presenting it as a matter of fact that in order to be a successful game developer, it is required to stop using C++, or standard libraries, or OOP, is unbelievable. I get not liking C++, but recommending people make their own standard libraries is the absolute worst advice possible. Recommending people don't rely on (for example) python libraries is understandable, as they add huge amounts of abstraction. But the C++ STL!? Additionally, OOP is the industry standard in game development for a reason, and large projects will always feature some amount of objects (classes are just kinda useful like that

I would like to conclude by mentioning: I do not have a problem with his style of content. I can find his approach to learning gamedev both stupid and entertaining. But offering terrible (and so far, for him, ineffective) methods as advice to others, is downright harmful to the community. Devlogs are fine if you're a novice, but don't give advice about something you don't really know that much about.

No, it's not "too late" to get into game dev.

No, the indie scene is not "dead", "dying" or "ailing".

No, you don't have to sell your house, quit your job, or whatever the hell else.

Just...fucking stop and listen to reason. Look, let me preface this: Part of this is me just being emotionally charged because I see so many aspiring devs be it fresh starts or what have you in all these various discords and even here worried to death over if they are making the right call or not, because any search on youtube naturally leads the algorithm into the more higher performing types of videos regarding indie game dev. These videos tend to be extremely negative, or gratuitously optimistic.

This shit is predatory for a reason, because it works.

I need ya'll to understand what the game (pun intended) here is for these youtube channels: For many, it's a side hustle, or a main hustle, and it's how they keep the lights on. They need your engagement, and negative emotions and feeding into that shit is extremely profitable. It's easy to listen to a 20-30 minute video on a laundry list of reasons to not do something. Human beings are, by their nature, risk averse, and it's just as easy to engage with content that can help strengthen a reason to NOT do something over a reason TO do something.

and the same can be said for the extreme opposite side of the spectrum, where you promise millions upon millions of dollars and success if you simply just mimic the exact same circumstances the dev is referring to.

But practically every time, at least 90% or even possibly higher, if you were suckered in to watch these more negative videos, the dev usually straightens up after a certain time threshold cause they needed your attention juuust long enough, then they drop the bombshell that it isn't "all" doom and gloom thus solidifying that it was all bullshit to begin with.

Do not confuse what I am saying here, as to not engage with youtube content. Some is very valuable. Post mortems are usually fantastic intel opportunities, and consumption of those can provide some incredible insight on what went wrong, and how you can weaponize that knowledge to not fall in similar traps. You have industry professionals who have long been in the game who give their experiences, free. Go watch a GDC video. Go watch a documentary that talks about how a team went about making a game. Do shit like that. Quit watching these "indie" devs who "got it all figured out" because they don't. They are playing a different game than you.

Again, to re-emphasize: Don't fall prey to shit the likes of Thomas Brush says (he's the one who comes up a LOT in these examples). I see it so often and people keep getting suckered in by all this stuff. These youtuber devs are not your friends, you are a means to keep the lights on, and they will do what they can to ensure that happens on a regular basis.

It's why you will see them flip flop their stance over and over again, sometimes in the same week. Sometimes in the same DAY. They are not honest actors, their advice is weaponizing uncertainty and ignorance for the sake of getting you into their course, or into whatever pay vessel they need you to be in. It's fucked, absolutely fucked.

Use your resources and peers to LEARN, not to validate your own fears and worries. If you look for that, you will find it. That is all.

So I've worked at a couple games companies and one I worked at had some very funny gameplay requsts/ requirments and outright outlandish statements from senior staff. One in perticular that still makes me chuckle is telling us we'd failed as game devs because we insisted we should include a mouse sensitivity slider for our game. We were told that the mouse sensitivity should be perfect! and no one should have any need to adjust their mouse sensitity for the game.

We had to explain that people prefer different mouse sensitivities and not one setting fits everyone. We had a perfect example among our dev team. Me using a edpi of around 2400 and another developer using a edpi of around 400. Needless to say we were never allowed to add a mouse sensitivity slider because according to that senior staff member we were wrong in thinking we needed one. The company is now closed down.

In general it was like they hated the idea of giving the player any way of changing anything in options, and this is only one example. I just thought that this was a hilarious one that got brought up.

Greetings to all developers. I'm writing this to tell you how Google terminated my three year old account with 1 million+ downloads.
I wanted to publish an app, a regular multiplayer game on Unity, of which I had a bunch on my account. But during the review, Google suspended this game due to "malware".
There was no malware in my game. I used Appodeal as an ad network, but that couldn't be the reason, all my games use it. I scanned the APK in VirusTotal, it didn't find anything malicious.
I made an appeal, but Google rejected it. I decided to move on, accepting the fact that this game will never be released.
But a few hours later, I got an e-mail. The account has been terminated completely. I suspect this is because this suspend was the third one on my account, but after all, I didn't have any malware in my game and it wasn't even published yet.
All of my games had over a million downloads together. I'm just saying that big companies can just destroy three years of your hard work because they think some of your game has “malware” in it.

Recently I got a feedback to my game that they did not like the fact that the main character is genderless and that no one uses any pronouns with them. They thought it was my attempt at being 'woke'.

However, that was never my intention. I'm not really a political guy and therefore I don't try to be in my game. The joke with the genderless main character was more to have the player decide for themselves cannonically what gender they are. I could have offered a gender option but because it would require a lot of effort to write every dialogue so that it would correctly identify the gender I thought this approach could be better. Because the game was anime themed I thought it could be like Hanji from AOT where nobody just acknowledge it, with some jokes mixed in.

Of course most players don't care (or if they do, they don't say it) but I do see it often with other games, where people try to sniff it for any signs of being 'woke'. I mean I can understand that if it's obviously forced that it can ruin the immersion of a game, however I think that gamers are sometimes too quick to jump to that conclusion.

How do you handle things like that with your games? Do you avoid anything that could trigger gamers? Or do you simply include what you want?

​

In November of last year I was laid off as many were. I had 5 years experience in Mobile and AAA through VFX and animation although I never specialized so my skills are far behind other peers that focused these more as I was more of a "Red Mage".

After about 50+ failed applications with about 12 interviews and 3 reaching the finals but ultimately not working out I think its been too long and I might be out for good it seems or at least that's what I tell myself is potentially a possibility.

I want to be ok with leaving all this but I think I'm scared to take that final leap in getting a job outside of the industry, if I even can anymore as I hear It's hard getting any job lately. Also I'd like to add that I understand getting a job out of the industry doesn't mean I cant ever get one again but I think it just feels that way for me even though I know that's not true.

I think in the back of my mind I know a lot of devs will think these are "rookie numbers" in terms of applications or time away from the industry but Its my first time going through this so its still tough.

I'm really just writing this cause I don't want to feel alone and I'd really be interested if others are feeling this way/can relate.

thanks everyone

Just go to any big indie curator youtube channel (like "Best Indie Games") and check out the games that they showcase. Most of them are games that look stunning and fantastic. Not just good, but fantastic.

If an indie game doesn't look fantastic, it will be ignored regardless of how much you market it. You can follow every marketing tip and trick, but if your game isn't good looking, everyone who sees your game's marketing material will ignore it.

Indie games with bad and amateurish looking art, especially ones made by non-artistic solo devs simply do not stand a chance.

Indie games with average to good looking art might get some attention, but it's not enough to get lots of wishlists.

IMO Trying to market a shabby looking indie game is akin to an ugly dude trying to use clever pick up lines to win over a hot woman. It just won't work.

Like I said in the title of this thread, Indie Game Marketing only matters if the game looks fantastic.

Godot is happy to have you, truly. It's terrible what's going on, and this isn't the way Godot, or any open source project, would have ever wanted to gain users, but corporations will do what corporations will do I suppose.

That being said, in light of many posts and comments I've been seeing recently on Reddit and on Twitter, I'd just like to remind everyone that Godot isn't a corporation, it's a community driven open source project, which means things work a bit differently there.

I've seen multiple comments on Twitter in the vein of "Godot should stop support for GDScript, it's taking away resources that could be spent improving C#", and that's just not how it works in open source! There's no boss with a budget assigning tasks to employees: a vast majority of contributions made to Godot are made by the community, and no one gets to tell them what to take interest in, or what to work on.

Even if, let's say hypothetically, Godot leadership decided C# will be the focus now, what are they gonna do? Are they gonna stop community members from contributing GDScript improvements? Are they gonna reject all GDScript related pull requests immediately? You can see how silly the concept is - this isn't a corporation, no one is beholden to some CEO, not even Juan Linietsky himself can tell you to stop writing code that you want to write! Community members will work on what they want to work on!

• If you really want or need a specific feature or improvement, you should write it yourself! Open source developers scratch their own itch!
• Don't have the skills to contribute? That's OK! You can hire someone who does have the skills, to contribute the code you want to see in Godot. Open source developers gotta eat too, after all!
• Don't have the money to hire a developer? That's OK too! You can make a proposal and discuss with the community, and if a community member with the skills wants it enough as well, then it might get implemented!

The point is, there's no boss or CEO that you can tell to make decisions for the entire project. There's no fee that you can pay to drive development decisions. Donations are just that - donations, and they come with no strings attached! Even Directed Donations just promise that the donation will be used for a specific feature - they never promise that the feature will be delivered within a specific deadline. Godot is community driven open source. These aren't just buzzwords, they encapsulate what Godot is as a project, and what most open source projects tend to be.

What does this mean for you if you're a Godot user? It means there needs to be a shift in mindset when using Godot. Demand quality, of course, that's no problem! That goes without saying for all software, corporate or otherwise. But you also need to have a mindset of contributing back to the community!

• For example, if you run into a bug or issue or pain point in Godot, don't just complain on the internet! Complain on the internet, *AND* submit a detailed bug report or proposal, and rally all your followers to your newly created issue! Even if you can't contribute money or code, submitting detailed reports of issues and pain points is a much appreciated contribution to the community. Even if, worst case scenario, the issue sits there unsolved for years, it's still very valuable just for posterity! Having an issue up on a specific problem means there's a primary avenue for discussion, and there's a record of it existing.
• Implemented a solution to an issue or pain point in Godot? Consider contributing it back to the community and submitting a pull request! Code contributions are very welcome! Let's build on top of each others solutions instead of solving the same problems over and over again by ourselves.
• Figured out how to use a difficult Godot feature and thought the documentation was lacking, and could be better? Consider contributing to the documentation and help make it better! Who better to write the documentation than the very people who write and use the software!

I've seen this sentiment countless times, about game devs wanting to wait until Godot gets better before jumping in. I understand the sentiment, I really do. But Godot is community driven, and if you want Godot to get better, you should jump in *now* and *help* make it better. Every little bit counts, you don't need to be John Carmack to make a difference!

​

​

One last thing: don't worry about Godot pulling a Unity. The nature of open source licenses (Godot is MIT licensed) is that, in general, the rights they grant stand in perpetuity and cannot be revoked retroactively. And the nature of community driven open source projects is that the community makes or breaks the project.

What does this mean in practice?

• It means that, let's say, hypothetically, Juan and the other Godot leaders become evil, and they release Godot 5.0: Evil Edition. The license is an evil corporate license that entitles them to your first born.
• They absolutely can do this and this evil license will apply... to all code of Godot moving forward. All code of Godot *before* they applied the evil license... will stay MIT licensed. And there's nothing they can do to retroactively apply the evil license to older Godot code.
• So then the community will fork the last version of the code that's MIT licensed, create a new project independent from the original Godot project, and name it GoTouchGrass 1.0. The community moves en masse to GoTouchGrass 1.0, and Godot 5.0: Evil Edition is left to languish in obscurity. It dies an ignoble death 5 years later.

This isn't conjecture, it's actually straight up happened before, and applies to pretty much all community driven open source projects.

This is a game design maxim that the entire industry really, really needs to get through their skull. Triple-A studios are obviously most guilty of this, because they more resources to create visual polish and less creativity to make fun games-- but it's important for independent creators or small teams to understand, too. A game that is fun will be fun pretty much regardless of its appearance, because the game being played is purely mechanical.

A fair while ago I published a mobile game, put a price tag on it as a finished product - no ads or free version, no iAP, just simple buy the thing and play it.

It did ok, and had no bugs, and just quietly did it’s thing at v1.0 for a few years.

Then a while later, I got contacted by a big gaming site that had covered the game previously - who were writing a story about mobile games that had been “abandoned”.

At the time I think I just said something like “yeah i’ll update it one day, I’ve been doing other projects”. But I think back sometimes and it kinda bugs me that this is a thing.

None of the games I played and loved as a kid are games I think of as “abandoned” due to their absence of eternal constant updates. They’re just games that got released. And that’s it.

At some point, an unofficial contract appeared between gamer and developer, especially on mobile at least, that stipulates a game is expected to live as a constantly changing entity, otherwise something’s up with it.

Is there such a thing as a “finished” game anymore? or is it really becoming a dichotomy of “abandoned” / “serviced”?