Building an AI game studio: what we've learned so far(braindump.me)
braindump.me
Building an AI game studio: what we've learned so far
https://braindump.me/blog-posts/building-an-ai-game-studio
310 comments
> haven't seen it do something that isn't already possible using a "not-intelligent" solution
This is dismissing time and resources. I think things like this game maker project are extremely impressive, because it enables an individual to do in hours what it would take a team to do in months. Just '5 different cats' is impressive, because most game studios would just do one and repeat it, because their time is limited.
I don't know if this experiment will end up producing 'real' games, probably not by most people's definitions. But I can see it being used as an amazing toy by individuals, such as kids. Generating a custom game in hours, much like they can already do in months or years using other products like RPGMaker.
This is dismissing time and resources. I think things like this game maker project are extremely impressive, because it enables an individual to do in hours what it would take a team to do in months. Just '5 different cats' is impressive, because most game studios would just do one and repeat it, because their time is limited.
I don't know if this experiment will end up producing 'real' games, probably not by most people's definitions. But I can see it being used as an amazing toy by individuals, such as kids. Generating a custom game in hours, much like they can already do in months or years using other products like RPGMaker.
I've been using godot with chatgpt as a side project to see how much I can coax a game out of it, with minimal effort. Its a manual form of systems like this but definitely shows how generative tools enable independent devs or small teams to tighten their dev loops and rapid prototype ideas.
When you can rapid prototype ideas in a game search space, its more likely to get a high quality output, or at least games that hone in on fun more effectively than a AAA made with a waterfall model and a huge team with poor crosstalk abilitiy.
When you can rapid prototype ideas in a game search space, its more likely to get a high quality output, or at least games that hone in on fun more effectively than a AAA made with a waterfall model and a huge team with poor crosstalk abilitiy.
I've found this to be pretty amazing from the demos: https://stableprojectorz.com/
I think these gen ai will be quite useful in mass produced art, things like video games and animations (3d and 2d). A human creates an art direction with concept art and reference models and then feed into gen AI tools to output large volumes of assets. Assets are then touched up to remove AI weirdness, background assets getting less attention than character models for example.
It will be a massive productivity boost and will kill a lot of jobs.
Another example is 2d animation, 2d animation is usually done in "key frames" and "in-betweens". These two types of frames are often made by different companies (for western animation key frames are usually done in the core studios in the US and in-betweens farmed out to east asian studios). Gen AI will probably get really good at making these in-betweens quite soon and will kill all these east asian support studios.
It will be a massive productivity boost and will kill a lot of jobs.
Another example is 2d animation, 2d animation is usually done in "key frames" and "in-betweens". These two types of frames are often made by different companies (for western animation key frames are usually done in the core studios in the US and in-betweens farmed out to east asian studios). Gen AI will probably get really good at making these in-betweens quite soon and will kill all these east asian support studios.
Forget squarespace websites. AI is such a huge time saver for complex front ends. It doesn’t write the whole thing, but you can easily go from screenshot to code you are better off using as a starter than typing it all up yourself. And it’s way easier to make css or tailwind changes to modify components than thinking really hard.
>AI doesn't eliminate the complexity, it just hides it. At best it'll get you maybe 80% of where you want to go and you can get to the remaining 20% by hand. At worst, the complexity is so thoroughly hidden that addressing it isn't an option. It simply does not allow you to manually edit the outputs, or makes it unreasonably difficult to do so.
That's the thing about games. It's "easy" to make a website, it's very hard to make a not buggy, minimally compelling game. And it works with multiple medium to boot.
If an AI can get me 80% of the way to a good UI, or a decent asset, or a right sounding SFX, that's a huge boon to development. The big issue with these early adopters tend to be that they
1. lack the ability to finish that 20% of editing, because that 20% is still really dang hard.
2. aren't interested in finishing the 20% because that 80% will be enough of a cash grab for asset flip level studios. Hence how the reputation of tech becomes a grift rather than a boon.
3. can do it, but want to be first to market so they skimp out and get something out for financial reasons
These all work against what consumers want out of their game, but that's early tech for you.
That's the thing about games. It's "easy" to make a website, it's very hard to make a not buggy, minimally compelling game. And it works with multiple medium to boot.
If an AI can get me 80% of the way to a good UI, or a decent asset, or a right sounding SFX, that's a huge boon to development. The big issue with these early adopters tend to be that they
1. lack the ability to finish that 20% of editing, because that 20% is still really dang hard.
2. aren't interested in finishing the 20% because that 80% will be enough of a cash grab for asset flip level studios. Hence how the reputation of tech becomes a grift rather than a boon.
3. can do it, but want to be first to market so they skimp out and get something out for financial reasons
These all work against what consumers want out of their game, but that's early tech for you.
You are comparing an apple to an apple pie. The “easy” website is going to be something that looks like static html. The “easy” game will look similarly low tech: maybe a platformer that looks like it was written for an atari. 3d modern games are not the only way to make games although thats been a popular way for some time.
I can clarify. an "easy" website can still do its job and get you traction, because the website design and architecture is not going to affect your product as long as you follow the simple rules. The website is not your primary product, it is an ad to your actual product.
There are a few outliers like Vampire Survivors, but for the most part a simple game will not penetrate this market, and it is the product you're selling. Unless you're going to try to be like that dev that makes a simple game every month, for years on end, you're probably won't succeed making "simple" games alone (even then, you can argue that the primary audience is not a traditional gamer by that point).
There are a few outliers like Vampire Survivors, but for the most part a simple game will not penetrate this market, and it is the product you're selling. Unless you're going to try to be like that dev that makes a simple game every month, for years on end, you're probably won't succeed making "simple" games alone (even then, you can argue that the primary audience is not a traditional gamer by that point).
Uhm…, even you use something low-code, or even no-code tool, you still have to learn how to code (former) or learn how to use some kind of visual scripting tool (latter).
If you could simply type in plain English what are the mechanics you have in mind instead, then this new (simpler) way of creating game logic it may has the potential to unleash creativity from a broader audience.
It is like saying why would I need a photoshop brush if I can manually paint every single pixel canvas 1 by 1. Not the same thing imo.
If you could simply type in plain English what are the mechanics you have in mind instead, then this new (simpler) way of creating game logic it may has the potential to unleash creativity from a broader audience.
It is like saying why would I need a photoshop brush if I can manually paint every single pixel canvas 1 by 1. Not the same thing imo.
Emphasis on "if you could simply type in English" (or insert native language here).
Sometimes the AI misinterprets what you want. Sometimes this is due to lack of sophistication on the model's part, but I think the bigger issue at hand are the shortcomings of natural language. Even when working with an intelligent human being, sometimes you have to communicate your thoughts/ideas through pictographic means.
It's something I've thought a lot about lately. No-code/low-code is about as old as GUIs themselves, yet it's never become the de-facto way of creating software. However, for everything else we do we use a GUI. No one creates illustrations on the computer programmatically (unless you're into generative art like me). You probably aren't doing your taxes in a terminal. You get the idea.
This is a segue into my other critique of prompting as a UI. A lot of UX people think it is the ultimate UI, and natural language the premier way of communicating jobs to be done. I disagree. I think symbols and diagrams communicate more with less. Concerning language, I think that for whatever reason programming languages are the most natural way (that we've currently found) to communicate intent in a programmatic context, markup languages are the most natural way to communicate intent in a layout context, and that's the reason why despite 50+ years of GUI innovation programmers still use text-editors. The old guard has all aged out of the profession, the new guard still uses text-editors.
So that all being said, I think the most incredible AI demo I've seen so far is the tldraw stuff done by Steve Ruiz, namely Make Real, and that's because you're communicating with the AI in a pictographic / symbolic context, and because it's a whiteboard, there's no limit to the symbols at your disposal to communicate your intent. The limit is AI's ability to interpret what those symbols mean.
Sometimes the AI misinterprets what you want. Sometimes this is due to lack of sophistication on the model's part, but I think the bigger issue at hand are the shortcomings of natural language. Even when working with an intelligent human being, sometimes you have to communicate your thoughts/ideas through pictographic means.
It's something I've thought a lot about lately. No-code/low-code is about as old as GUIs themselves, yet it's never become the de-facto way of creating software. However, for everything else we do we use a GUI. No one creates illustrations on the computer programmatically (unless you're into generative art like me). You probably aren't doing your taxes in a terminal. You get the idea.
This is a segue into my other critique of prompting as a UI. A lot of UX people think it is the ultimate UI, and natural language the premier way of communicating jobs to be done. I disagree. I think symbols and diagrams communicate more with less. Concerning language, I think that for whatever reason programming languages are the most natural way (that we've currently found) to communicate intent in a programmatic context, markup languages are the most natural way to communicate intent in a layout context, and that's the reason why despite 50+ years of GUI innovation programmers still use text-editors. The old guard has all aged out of the profession, the new guard still uses text-editors.
So that all being said, I think the most incredible AI demo I've seen so far is the tldraw stuff done by Steve Ruiz, namely Make Real, and that's because you're communicating with the AI in a pictographic / symbolic context, and because it's a whiteboard, there's no limit to the symbols at your disposal to communicate your intent. The limit is AI's ability to interpret what those symbols mean.
If the AI doesn't get the mechanics right, and you have subtle game-breaking bugs that make it impossible to complete, you will never be able to fix it.
> you will never be able to fix it.
I don't know about the article's studio specifically, but regarding AI game engines, I'm mostly worried you won't be able to make engine edits, or the engine will only be able to make an extremely narrow subset of games, or exiting the WYSIWYG/SaaS means starting over from scratch. If the engine targets a specific genre, it could cause a flood of low effort garbage. Some genres are already flooded because the easier game engines have tutorials and asset packs for them.
I don't know about the article's studio specifically, but regarding AI game engines, I'm mostly worried you won't be able to make engine edits, or the engine will only be able to make an extremely narrow subset of games, or exiting the WYSIWYG/SaaS means starting over from scratch. If the engine targets a specific genre, it could cause a flood of low effort garbage. Some genres are already flooded because the easier game engines have tutorials and asset packs for them.
AI can create bugs, sure, as well as humans do. With time, I am more inclined to think it will be easier to ask an AI to fix them for us rather than the other way around.
There is a non-intuitive feature of current LLMs, and that is, they are capable of refining over and over their own previous outcome. You can ask to revisit it, to improve it, check it, etc etc. use this to fix its own bugs.
There is a non-intuitive feature of current LLMs, and that is, they are capable of refining over and over their own previous outcome. You can ask to revisit it, to improve it, check it, etc etc. use this to fix its own bugs.
These days any time I ask an AI to fix something, it starts over from scratch and some random detail falls off the back of the prompt truck.
Precisely specifying desired functionality of software in ‘plain English’ is hard. Especially if you can’t provide diagrams, sketches, mocked-up screen layouts, etc.
Also, the low-code/no-code tools allow precise editing. With current prompt-based AI party tricks, a tiny change to the prompt can produce completely different output.
Also, the low-code/no-code tools allow precise editing. With current prompt-based AI party tricks, a tiny change to the prompt can produce completely different output.
Something that I never see addressed for this: So, let's just grant that someday, the tech will be mature enough that this is possible, and let's even say it goes beyond videogames to movies, to visual art, to graphic design, to writing, etc. Let's say that AI gets to a place where any joe blow can put in a prompt, and get a competent, and even let's be generous and say good product out of it. A solid 8/10.
So... who the hell is going to buy it? Because videogames as an industry is already entirely saturated with products that range a whole spectrum from utter dogshit to amazing works of technical expertise, writing, design, etc. There are over 70,000 games on Steam alone now, with 9,000 added in the last 9 months. If this tech actually got to this place, there will be exponentially more games, because all you have to do is tell an AI what you want to play.
And you can take that further: Movies are also highly saturated as an industry, especially as larger studios move ever further into less making "movies" or "series" and just making "content" endlessly remixing their intellectual properties. So now, all of those companies (and all the people who like their stuff) can now just make their own Iron Man movie? Their own Wandavision? Just endlessly making and remaking and remaking, as though tons of people aren't already sick to death of all the television programs and movies that are being made?
And again, you can just keep extending this to any media: print, music, art... we have more of everything now than we ever have before and the goal of companies like Adobe, like OpenAI, etc. is to put even more powerful creative tools into even more hands, broadening the group of people who can create stuff but like... even if you take it as granted that this can be done...
Who the hell is watching all of this stuff? Who is playing all of these games? And why in the world would you pay to watch someone else's AI movie when you can pay to generate your own with whatever you want in it? Why would you ever buy a game off Steam again if you can just ask your game making AI to make you the exact game you want, even just copying the damn description out of steam?
All I see this doing is potentially killing off dozens of creative industries and funneling shit tons of creative control and platform-style power to a handful of massive corporations, running warehouses full of fucking graphics cards, to generate the same games, the same movies, the same music, over, and over, and over, to suit everyone's personal taste, and absolutely destroying entire rainforest's worth of electricity to accomplish it. And like... why do we want that?
So... who the hell is going to buy it? Because videogames as an industry is already entirely saturated with products that range a whole spectrum from utter dogshit to amazing works of technical expertise, writing, design, etc. There are over 70,000 games on Steam alone now, with 9,000 added in the last 9 months. If this tech actually got to this place, there will be exponentially more games, because all you have to do is tell an AI what you want to play.
And you can take that further: Movies are also highly saturated as an industry, especially as larger studios move ever further into less making "movies" or "series" and just making "content" endlessly remixing their intellectual properties. So now, all of those companies (and all the people who like their stuff) can now just make their own Iron Man movie? Their own Wandavision? Just endlessly making and remaking and remaking, as though tons of people aren't already sick to death of all the television programs and movies that are being made?
And again, you can just keep extending this to any media: print, music, art... we have more of everything now than we ever have before and the goal of companies like Adobe, like OpenAI, etc. is to put even more powerful creative tools into even more hands, broadening the group of people who can create stuff but like... even if you take it as granted that this can be done...
Who the hell is watching all of this stuff? Who is playing all of these games? And why in the world would you pay to watch someone else's AI movie when you can pay to generate your own with whatever you want in it? Why would you ever buy a game off Steam again if you can just ask your game making AI to make you the exact game you want, even just copying the damn description out of steam?
All I see this doing is potentially killing off dozens of creative industries and funneling shit tons of creative control and platform-style power to a handful of massive corporations, running warehouses full of fucking graphics cards, to generate the same games, the same movies, the same music, over, and over, and over, to suit everyone's personal taste, and absolutely destroying entire rainforest's worth of electricity to accomplish it. And like... why do we want that?
So... I think maybe the same could have been said about writing once upon a time. "What if everyone could write, we'd flood the market with poorly written books!". Well we went from no one being able to write to almost everyone being able to. But just because everyone can technically write, it doesn't mean that everyone is a _writer_.
I believe that the same goes for AI tools for games. Yes, more people will technically be able to produce games. But I think that will shift the focus; it won't be enough with an impressive tech demo in the future, instead you have to connect to the human side of people when you build games.
We now see it as a natural thing that everyone can read and write. We don't want to go back to a time where it was only for a select few elites. If we turn things around and imagine that the technology exists that makes it possible for anyone to build games; then should we keep that from them? In that world, why would we want to gate keep game creation to only people that have time and money to go to a game school or equivalent? You might think "well everyone can learn on their free time", but that's not necessarily true.
I think we will see more human, and more personal experiences that touch us deeper, because they no longer can just be about the technology (since the technology will be commoditized). That's what I'm personally excited about and why I think it makes sense to work on this.
I do agree thought that it can feel overwhelming to look at all this in aggregate. There are already hundreds of thousands of games, why do we need more? But maybe looking at things in aggregate is not the right way to look at it. There have been countless conversations between people throughout history. Does that mean that a conversation is meaningless? I don't think so, and I think (some types of) games will move into this space too; something more personal, something we don't count in aggregate, something that is between maybe smaller groups of people, but more meaningful to those groups of people. At least that's something I'd be excited to see.
I believe that the same goes for AI tools for games. Yes, more people will technically be able to produce games. But I think that will shift the focus; it won't be enough with an impressive tech demo in the future, instead you have to connect to the human side of people when you build games.
We now see it as a natural thing that everyone can read and write. We don't want to go back to a time where it was only for a select few elites. If we turn things around and imagine that the technology exists that makes it possible for anyone to build games; then should we keep that from them? In that world, why would we want to gate keep game creation to only people that have time and money to go to a game school or equivalent? You might think "well everyone can learn on their free time", but that's not necessarily true.
I think we will see more human, and more personal experiences that touch us deeper, because they no longer can just be about the technology (since the technology will be commoditized). That's what I'm personally excited about and why I think it makes sense to work on this.
I do agree thought that it can feel overwhelming to look at all this in aggregate. There are already hundreds of thousands of games, why do we need more? But maybe looking at things in aggregate is not the right way to look at it. There have been countless conversations between people throughout history. Does that mean that a conversation is meaningless? I don't think so, and I think (some types of) games will move into this space too; something more personal, something we don't count in aggregate, something that is between maybe smaller groups of people, but more meaningful to those groups of people. At least that's something I'd be excited to see.
> So... I think maybe the same could have been said about writing once upon a time.
I mean, you say that as though it is not increasingly year over year more and more difficult on balance to make your living as a writer. That it hasn't been a famously difficult thing to do since like... I mean good god, I remember writers complaining about this when I was a kid on forums back in the early 2000's and at that time it was old fucking news how hard it was to make it as a writer.
And like:
> "What if everyone could write, we'd flood the market with poorly written books!"
Many people say we have! Except writers didn't really do it, so much as grifters did it, paying gig-economy workers shit tier wages to crank out boring a repetitive e-books to sell to communities that are typically hostile to proper sources of information. You know, people entirely divested from writing as a profession did it, because they fundamentally don't care about writing and simply saw it as an avenue in which they could spam poorly crafted garbage to uncritical audiences.
Sound familiar at all?
> We now see it as a natural thing that everyone can read and write. We don't want to go back to a time where it was only for a select few elites. If we turn things around and imagine that the technology exists that makes it possible for anyone to build games; then should we keep that from them?
I mean, I'm not arguing for or against the existence of accessible toolsets. If you want my opinion on that, they already exist. Games have famously been made by all kinds of people with all kinds of circumstances that make it notable said people were able to make said games. Various disabilities, physical and intellectual, all manner of life circumstances, on and on. Tons of people make games. None of those people (yet) have used an AI game builder, they used the same tools, combined with accessibility addons for computers, and recruited help for the parts they couldn't have.
I don't know where you get this notion you have to go to game school. Tons of amateurs make games. I think a lot of them (smartly) bring on actual software and game developers to fill in the gaps their lack of expertise cannot, just like they bring on musicians if they aren't musically inclined, or designers if they aren't graphically inclined, and there's nothing wrong with that either and tons of people do all of that for free right now, because plot twist, humans in general enjoy making things for other humans. It's kind of... core to our being in a lot of ways.
I don't see creatives benefiting from AI. I see the management/consultant vampires benefiting from it. The type of people who say things like "make the logo pop" and get annoyed when creatives roll their eyes at them.
I mean, you say that as though it is not increasingly year over year more and more difficult on balance to make your living as a writer. That it hasn't been a famously difficult thing to do since like... I mean good god, I remember writers complaining about this when I was a kid on forums back in the early 2000's and at that time it was old fucking news how hard it was to make it as a writer.
And like:
> "What if everyone could write, we'd flood the market with poorly written books!"
Many people say we have! Except writers didn't really do it, so much as grifters did it, paying gig-economy workers shit tier wages to crank out boring a repetitive e-books to sell to communities that are typically hostile to proper sources of information. You know, people entirely divested from writing as a profession did it, because they fundamentally don't care about writing and simply saw it as an avenue in which they could spam poorly crafted garbage to uncritical audiences.
Sound familiar at all?
> We now see it as a natural thing that everyone can read and write. We don't want to go back to a time where it was only for a select few elites. If we turn things around and imagine that the technology exists that makes it possible for anyone to build games; then should we keep that from them?
I mean, I'm not arguing for or against the existence of accessible toolsets. If you want my opinion on that, they already exist. Games have famously been made by all kinds of people with all kinds of circumstances that make it notable said people were able to make said games. Various disabilities, physical and intellectual, all manner of life circumstances, on and on. Tons of people make games. None of those people (yet) have used an AI game builder, they used the same tools, combined with accessibility addons for computers, and recruited help for the parts they couldn't have.
I don't know where you get this notion you have to go to game school. Tons of amateurs make games. I think a lot of them (smartly) bring on actual software and game developers to fill in the gaps their lack of expertise cannot, just like they bring on musicians if they aren't musically inclined, or designers if they aren't graphically inclined, and there's nothing wrong with that either and tons of people do all of that for free right now, because plot twist, humans in general enjoy making things for other humans. It's kind of... core to our being in a lot of ways.
I don't see creatives benefiting from AI. I see the management/consultant vampires benefiting from it. The type of people who say things like "make the logo pop" and get annoyed when creatives roll their eyes at them.
You come across as being extremely condescending. And I’m sure you make some good points, but I can’t find them behind the tone. It’s a shame because again, I’m sure you make good points.
On the internet, no one hears you being subtle. (Torvalds)
I'll add my own view: when you watch a movie, read a book, listen to a song, play a game... you CONNECT with the mind of the person who made it. When there is no mind, or the source is a dead, statistical amalgamation of countless fragments of other minds, there is nothing you'll want to connect to, nothing you'll want to squander precious hours of your life on.
And while you may be curious to see, once maybe, a movie such an imaginary AGI-LLM has created from your prompt, no one else will have the slightest interest in seeing it. And vice versa. Which means there would be absolutely NO MONEY in that market. There would be no market.
I'll add my own view: when you watch a movie, read a book, listen to a song, play a game... you CONNECT with the mind of the person who made it. When there is no mind, or the source is a dead, statistical amalgamation of countless fragments of other minds, there is nothing you'll want to connect to, nothing you'll want to squander precious hours of your life on.
And while you may be curious to see, once maybe, a movie such an imaginary AGI-LLM has created from your prompt, no one else will have the slightest interest in seeing it. And vice versa. Which means there would be absolutely NO MONEY in that market. There would be no market.
>Why would you ever buy a game off Steam again if you can just ask your game making AI to make you the exact game you want, even just copying the damn description out of steam?
If we're assuming AGI levels of development, AAA scope, and very little compile time: cost. If it costs $20/month (VERY optimistic) to use an AI program to make your stuff, and some dude on Fiverr offers to pay $2 to make your game for you, the better deal is to "hire a dev".
Also should never underestimate the power of community and brands. Even if you can make your own Ironman, people will still want to see and talk with each other about the Ironman movie. That's why making a competent knockoff that may in fact improve on the original movie/game will still sell nowhere near as well. Companies pay a lot of advertising to make that the case.
If we're assuming AGI levels of development, AAA scope, and very little compile time: cost. If it costs $20/month (VERY optimistic) to use an AI program to make your stuff, and some dude on Fiverr offers to pay $2 to make your game for you, the better deal is to "hire a dev".
Also should never underestimate the power of community and brands. Even if you can make your own Ironman, people will still want to see and talk with each other about the Ironman movie. That's why making a competent knockoff that may in fact improve on the original movie/game will still sell nowhere near as well. Companies pay a lot of advertising to make that the case.
Making a game is not big problem. Making it FUN is. Theres no formula for this. Lets say AI can make a game from prompt just like that - I dont know if its going to be fun to play.
If AI works well enough that just a vague prompt leads it to spit out a professional, compelling and creative game with assets, VO, music, coherent level and production design, and everything else that goes into successful modern games... companies are going to own that and keep that on lockdown, because it's essentially a free money machine.
You won't have a "game making AI" that isn't already owned by big media companies, crippled and handicapped, and expensive as hell. You won't legally be allowed to compete against them. ChatGPT is never going to do that. That isn't how capitalism works.
You won't have a "game making AI" that isn't already owned by big media companies, crippled and handicapped, and expensive as hell. You won't legally be allowed to compete against them. ChatGPT is never going to do that. That isn't how capitalism works.
Nah, the standard will just change.
A "AAA game" will be the ones that have that extra it whether that's something resulting from human curation (the person firing off prompts who knows how to tune them and knows what other people want) or style (the person assembling things to be more cohesive) or editing (the person making sure the AI puts out an absolutely amazing story instead of a meh one) or whatever.
Basically, look at what a AAA game was 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago compared to today, and then extrapolate the other direction. ;) The person who wanted games with the quality of 30 years ago has countless options, yet people still pay for the ones they think are the creme of the crop.
A "AAA game" will be the ones that have that extra it whether that's something resulting from human curation (the person firing off prompts who knows how to tune them and knows what other people want) or style (the person assembling things to be more cohesive) or editing (the person making sure the AI puts out an absolutely amazing story instead of a meh one) or whatever.
Basically, look at what a AAA game was 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago compared to today, and then extrapolate the other direction. ;) The person who wanted games with the quality of 30 years ago has countless options, yet people still pay for the ones they think are the creme of the crop.
as a nitpick, you can argue there was no "AAA title" in 1994. Games like MGS2, FF7, and RE2 in '97/'98 is where we commonly consider to be the beginning of the moniker for "AAA".
But yeah, GTA 3 was over 20 years ago. A bit sad that it's still non-trivial to make a game that scope as one person, mostly because 480p assets and fixed lighting pipelines won't cut it anymore (regardless of scope).
But yeah, GTA 3 was over 20 years ago. A bit sad that it's still non-trivial to make a game that scope as one person, mostly because 480p assets and fixed lighting pipelines won't cut it anymore (regardless of scope).
Not something like 1994's Wing Commander or other PC games with Hollywood actors and cutscenes?
I'm not super invested in the nomenclature but it's odd to me that those are all Playstation games.
I'm not super invested in the nomenclature but it's odd to me that those are all Playstation games.
I mean, I don't disagree in the slightest on any point! I'm just curious why anyone who isn't working in the C-suite of any large media company wants that product to exist!
I'm not even certain that product can exist, at least not anytime soon. But AI is in a hype cycle right now so everyone wants to jump on the gravy train.
Of course a lot of people don't want it. A lot of artists, developers and creative people want nothing to do with it, for obvious reasons. I don't want it. I think AI-driven tools only serve to commoditize and diminish human creativity. I've never seen anything generated by AI that I find interesting beyond the sense of superficial aesthetic or vibe. But I'd never prefer it over something made by a human being.
But no one cares what the muggles think, and criticizing AI right now gets you denounced as a crank in much the same way as being an anti-vaxxer or flat-earther. There's nothing to be done but hope the fever breaks before too much damage is done to the world.
Of course a lot of people don't want it. A lot of artists, developers and creative people want nothing to do with it, for obvious reasons. I don't want it. I think AI-driven tools only serve to commoditize and diminish human creativity. I've never seen anything generated by AI that I find interesting beyond the sense of superficial aesthetic or vibe. But I'd never prefer it over something made by a human being.
But no one cares what the muggles think, and criticizing AI right now gets you denounced as a crank in much the same way as being an anti-vaxxer or flat-earther. There's nothing to be done but hope the fever breaks before too much damage is done to the world.
[deleted]
Spot the fun logic bugs! Here's a great example of where AI requires some careful attention to detail:
I would more traditionally expect a range of 0 to 2pi, but then this code wouldn't work for anything close to 2pi on the other side. And if the range was -pi to pi, why have the modulo use 2pi :)
Additionally, "facing north" probably implies a bigger epsilon than 0.01 radians. That's only half a degree! Even if it was super tight, I would expect maybe 10 degrees slop in either direction, which would be 0.17 radians.
The gameplay programmer way to do this would be to get the facing vector and dot that with the vector for north, and compare the results. Dealing with angles isn't worth it.
Oh, also, I'm guessing getUnitString().includes("tent") would work for anything with substring tent, so no adding tentacles to your game.
const tentsFacingNorth = getAllUnitIds()
.filter(unitId => getUnitString(unitId, "unitStrings/tags")?.includes("tent"))
.filter(unitId => Math.abs(getUnitRotation(unitId) % (2 * Math.PI)) < 0.01).length;
I would more traditionally expect a range of 0 to 2pi, but then this code wouldn't work for anything close to 2pi on the other side. And if the range was -pi to pi, why have the modulo use 2pi :)
Additionally, "facing north" probably implies a bigger epsilon than 0.01 radians. That's only half a degree! Even if it was super tight, I would expect maybe 10 degrees slop in either direction, which would be 0.17 radians.
The gameplay programmer way to do this would be to get the facing vector and dot that with the vector for north, and compare the results. Dealing with angles isn't worth it.
Oh, also, I'm guessing getUnitString().includes("tent") would work for anything with substring tent, so no adding tentacles to your game.
Hard facts: Steam has over 73k games - and is growing at over 10k games per year and increasing. The median game on Steam earns less than $800 - down from $4k in 2020.
Making a game is not hard - marketing a game is.
Making a game is not hard - marketing a game is.
I think that, while making a game is not hard, making an excellent game is hard.
And I think making an excellent game is a lot like reaching product-market fit. It takes fast iteration with user feedback to find the fun, then a ton of polish to make it extraordinary. It has to be so good that, out of those 73,000 games and counting, I’ll spend some of my money and time on it.
The way GenAI can help here, I think, is the first part of this problem. Help me iterate quickly to find the fun.
Then, let me export to Unity / Godot / Unreal to begin the polish process.
And I think making an excellent game is a lot like reaching product-market fit. It takes fast iteration with user feedback to find the fun, then a ton of polish to make it extraordinary. It has to be so good that, out of those 73,000 games and counting, I’ll spend some of my money and time on it.
The way GenAI can help here, I think, is the first part of this problem. Help me iterate quickly to find the fun.
Then, let me export to Unity / Godot / Unreal to begin the polish process.
Making an excellent game isn't even enough these days, that's just table stakes. With so many games out there it's a market of lemons. You need to have a way of rising above the noise. For AAA, it's having budgets to make games on a bigger scale than everyone else. For mobile games, it's generally about leveraging a large war chest to fuel an advertising-driven margin game. For prestige/indie games you need something that people will want to talk/write about, or build a dedicated fanbase over time. For tiny games like flappy bird / wordle you need massive built-in virality and lots of luck.
An excellent game is, practically by definition, a game that people would recommend. And the Steam algorithm does a pretty good job of snowballing success. My favorite example here is Kenshi. [1] It started with modest interest and within a few months it was down to literally tens of players. This is normally where somebody driven by profit would just shrug, complain, and go try something new. But they guy clearly believed in his game, kept going, and now a decade later it's an extremely popular game that still has thousands of regular players - verging on overcoming Hogwart's Legacy.
I think a lot of smaller developers are misled by things like game jams. Get a highly enthusiastic group of people in a room and the games they're going to respond well to, and the feedback they're going to give is going to be utterly worthless. What's fun to play in a highly social setting with lots of other hyper enthusiastic people, for 5 minutes at a time, does not translate at all to what people are interested in buying and playing at home.
[1] - https://steamcharts.com/app/233860
I think a lot of smaller developers are misled by things like game jams. Get a highly enthusiastic group of people in a room and the games they're going to respond well to, and the feedback they're going to give is going to be utterly worthless. What's fun to play in a highly social setting with lots of other hyper enthusiastic people, for 5 minutes at a time, does not translate at all to what people are interested in buying and playing at home.
[1] - https://steamcharts.com/app/233860
>>> An excellent game is, practically by definition, a game that people would recommend. And the Steam algorithm does a pretty good job of snowballing success. My favorite example here is Kenshi. [1]
Steam early access launched with only 12 games in 2013 and Kenshi was one of them! This is not evidence of the algorithm working, it's evidence of Valve employees personally going out of their way to try to sell this game to you!
Steam early access launched with only 12 games in 2013 and Kenshi was one of them! This is not evidence of the algorithm working, it's evidence of Valve employees personally going out of their way to try to sell this game to you!
For every Kenshi there are many dozens of excellent indie games that languish. The steam algorithm is not as cooperative for surfacing small niche games as it was of Kenshi, and it's harder to get your game seen in a more saturated market. There has been a gradual shift from the 2010's where nearly all great games we're handsomely rewarded.
Personally I've dug quite deep into steam and come to the conclusion that there are just a lot of bad games, and that a good indie game most likely will break out eventually.
I've found steam review percentages to be one of the biggest tells of a games quality, and so many games don't even have good reviews.
I've found steam review percentages to be one of the biggest tells of a games quality, and so many games don't even have good reviews.
I made a comment here where I went over some of the excellent indie games I've played recently that languish in obscurity.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40438001
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40438001
> For every Kenshi there are many dozens of excellent indie games that languish.
Can you list some here?
Can you list some here?
Sure! Pinning down some shared criteria for quality and obscurity might be a challenge, but I can give it a try. I'll only include games that I've played recently with an overall steam review score of >=%94 and less than 1000 cumulative steam reviews.
Deadeye Deepfake Simulacrum: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1545990/Deadeye_Deepfake_...
Tandis: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1297210/Tandis/
Nidus: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2372170/NIDUS/
Recursed: https://store.steampowered.com/app/497780/Recursed/
HyperRogue: https://store.steampowered.com/app/342610/HyperRogue/
Can Of Wormholes: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1295320/Can_of_Wormholes/
Mosa Lina: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2477090/Mosa_Lina/
Sigma Impact: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1654890/Sigma_Impact/
Wilmot's Warehouse: https://store.steampowered.com/app/839870/Wilmots_Warehouse/
Filcher: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1355650/Filcher/
Magicube: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2216120/Magicube/
Stick It: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1828900/Stickit/
There are a ton of indie multiplayer games that at one point would have appeared on this list, but as small multiplayer games are starved of population they enter a death cycle where new reviews are negative as a result.
Deadeye Deepfake Simulacrum: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1545990/Deadeye_Deepfake_...
Tandis: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1297210/Tandis/
Nidus: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2372170/NIDUS/
Recursed: https://store.steampowered.com/app/497780/Recursed/
HyperRogue: https://store.steampowered.com/app/342610/HyperRogue/
Can Of Wormholes: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1295320/Can_of_Wormholes/
Mosa Lina: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2477090/Mosa_Lina/
Sigma Impact: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1654890/Sigma_Impact/
Wilmot's Warehouse: https://store.steampowered.com/app/839870/Wilmots_Warehouse/
Filcher: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1355650/Filcher/
Magicube: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2216120/Magicube/
Stick It: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1828900/Stickit/
There are a ton of indie multiplayer games that at one point would have appeared on this list, but as small multiplayer games are starved of population they enter a death cycle where new reviews are negative as a result.
Surely you're not claiming that a game with fewer than 1000 reviews is "languishing"? Any indie game with 1000 reviews is very successful.
Picking your first example, Deadeye Deepfake Simulacrum has about 460 reviews, roughly 20,000 copies sold, an estimated revenue of about $120,000 while it's still in early access, and apparently a developer team size of 1. I'd guess that this game will net the developer several hundred thousand dollars over the next 10 years.
(Regarding multiplayer games: yes, these are a different case because they need to reach some critical mass to have a chance.)
Picking your first example, Deadeye Deepfake Simulacrum has about 460 reviews, roughly 20,000 copies sold, an estimated revenue of about $120,000 while it's still in early access, and apparently a developer team size of 1. I'd guess that this game will net the developer several hundred thousand dollars over the next 10 years.
(Regarding multiplayer games: yes, these are a different case because they need to reach some critical mass to have a chance.)
Deadeye deepfake Simulacrum has been in development for ~4 years and is still getting updated, so even at this estimate we're looking at a take home pay of 30k - 40k per year before taxes.
You're right. Three things:
1. He isn't working on this exclusively. In the update notes, he mentions that he's making the game in parallel to a job. He recently finished his degree and sometimes takes time off for his next project. In 2021 he said, 'As I’ve mentioned before, game development is not a full time job for me, it’s just a hobby that consumes a lot of my nights and weekends.' Obviously this must be considered when evaluating the revenue.
2. After he finishes the game, it will still have a long tail of sales over the following years. He can develop another game, whose long tail will overlap with the first one, then with a third game, etc. But I don't know how to estimate these long tails after the first couple of years.
3. It seems to be his first game on Steam.
This is actually a very interesting case. I think he does most things right (though he doesn't seem to do enough marketing on Twitter). I assume that he'll arrive at a place where he has the option to go full-time sooner or later.
1. He isn't working on this exclusively. In the update notes, he mentions that he's making the game in parallel to a job. He recently finished his degree and sometimes takes time off for his next project. In 2021 he said, 'As I’ve mentioned before, game development is not a full time job for me, it’s just a hobby that consumes a lot of my nights and weekends.' Obviously this must be considered when evaluating the revenue.
2. After he finishes the game, it will still have a long tail of sales over the following years. He can develop another game, whose long tail will overlap with the first one, then with a third game, etc. But I don't know how to estimate these long tails after the first couple of years.
3. It seems to be his first game on Steam.
This is actually a very interesting case. I think he does most things right (though he doesn't seem to do enough marketing on Twitter). I assume that he'll arrive at a place where he has the option to go full-time sooner or later.
Yeah it's definitely one of the better cases here, as with all the devs on this list I just hope he succeeds and can make more games.
I'd drop the max reviews down by quite a lot. Sales:reviews tend to be around 60:1. So a game with 1000 reviews has sold tens of thousands of copies. We can look at something like the PS2 for some reality checks. It sold 1.5 billion games through 4000 titles. So an average of 350k sales. And of course that's going to follow something like a typical 80/20 ratio, which would leave us with a median sales in the ballpark of 70k! Of course Steam has far more players, but also way more games. The PS2 was a ring-fenced minimal competition domain with an attentive and [relatively] content starved audience!
I decided to look up Tandis first. First off the game has been featured on Ars Technica [1], Rocker Paper Shotgun [2], and lots of other places. So it's definitely not like nobody heard of it. But it just doesn't really seem to drag people in. The reviews, positive as they are, all seem to stop playing after an average of around 3 hours. In fact a huge number of the positive written reviews have less than 1 hour of lifetime gameplay, which is pretty weird for a game that comes at a relatively premium price. And the peak players, a month after release was 7. [3] I'm guessing the players that moved on after such short timeframes probably weren't actively recommending this game outside of those reviews. Would you have actively recommended it, outside just filtering your library and seeing it there?
[1] - https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/04/tandis-review-the-ult...
[2] - https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/geometry-puzzle-game-tandis...
[3] - https://steamcharts.com/app/1297210
I decided to look up Tandis first. First off the game has been featured on Ars Technica [1], Rocker Paper Shotgun [2], and lots of other places. So it's definitely not like nobody heard of it. But it just doesn't really seem to drag people in. The reviews, positive as they are, all seem to stop playing after an average of around 3 hours. In fact a huge number of the positive written reviews have less than 1 hour of lifetime gameplay, which is pretty weird for a game that comes at a relatively premium price. And the peak players, a month after release was 7. [3] I'm guessing the players that moved on after such short timeframes probably weren't actively recommending this game outside of those reviews. Would you have actively recommended it, outside just filtering your library and seeing it there?
[1] - https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/04/tandis-review-the-ult...
[2] - https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/geometry-puzzle-game-tandis...
[3] - https://steamcharts.com/app/1297210
The only source I can find for a 1:60 review to sale ratio is this:
https://gameworldobserver.com/2022/11/15/how-to-count-game-s...
This article explicitly mentions that that ratio only holds for hit games, and mentions that the ratio for smaller games is roughly 1:20, which is still a high ratio compared to figures I've heard in post mortems.
Assuming a game with 1,000 reviews that takes ~3 years for 1 developer to make and support that sells for $15 at a 1:20x ratio. We're looking at 210,000 after steam's cut and before taxes, this developer at top of our review range is making ~70k a year before taxes that are calculated on one year of income. Many small indie developers lose ~35% of their income to taxes alone on game sales and so even under nearly ideal conditions for this 1000 review max constraint we have a developer earning <$50,000.
Note that many of the games I listed are highly rated but have less than 200 reviews
EDIT: I often reccomend Tandis to people, it's a great puzzle game that builds geometric intuition, and it's designed to distill that intuition into a roughly 5 hour play time.
https://gameworldobserver.com/2022/11/15/how-to-count-game-s...
This article explicitly mentions that that ratio only holds for hit games, and mentions that the ratio for smaller games is roughly 1:20, which is still a high ratio compared to figures I've heard in post mortems.
Assuming a game with 1,000 reviews that takes ~3 years for 1 developer to make and support that sells for $15 at a 1:20x ratio. We're looking at 210,000 after steam's cut and before taxes, this developer at top of our review range is making ~70k a year before taxes that are calculated on one year of income. Many small indie developers lose ~35% of their income to taxes alone on game sales and so even under nearly ideal conditions for this 1000 review max constraint we have a developer earning <$50,000.
Note that many of the games I listed are highly rated but have less than 200 reviews
EDIT: I often reccomend Tandis to people, it's a great puzzle game that builds geometric intuition, and it's designed to distill that intuition into a roughly 5 hour play time.
Here's a search for you with about a zillion results. [1] It's definitely way above 20:1. Your link references that number only for games with less than 1000 sales, and provides the data - which is super biased towards games with very near 0 sales, but tons of reviews. It could just be the games were terrible, but another potential issue is shilling. Many developers buy fake positive reviews. To my knowledge nobody has ever been banned for this (though devs have been banned for naively writing fake reviews themselves), but I expect these games end up getting some sort of a deranking or soft shadow ban, because it'd be absurdly easy to detect on Steam's side, and the games that do it seem to often end up buried after what's presumably an extremely low sales:review ratio. Here's an article that also includes some of the games that are hiring shills. [2]
[1] - https://search.brave.com/search?q=steam+reviews+to+sales+rat...
[2] - https://steamcommunity.com/groups/Sentinels_of_the_Store/ann...
[1] - https://search.brave.com/search?q=steam+reviews+to+sales+rat...
[2] - https://steamcommunity.com/groups/Sentinels_of_the_Store/ann...
Do you specific recent sources that back that up? The source I originally linked as well as this writeup[1] suggests that the review to sale ratio has shrunk over the years and is shrinking for games with lower sales. The sales & owner estimates that steamDB offers also generally pegs the games I listed has having a 10:1 - 30:1 ratio. Here's deadeye deepfake simulacrum as an example:
https://steamdb.info/app/1545990/charts/
Note that many of the highly rated games I shared had sub 300 reviews, so even if you were to have a great 60:1 ratio for a game with 300 reviews priced at $15 you're looking at a $185k gross after steams cut and before taxes for potentially 3+ years of development and support.
I really hope I'm wrong here because I would love a meritocratic indie game scene to keep flourishing, but the greater trend I see is a bifurcation between indie games that synergize with streaming and social media to become breakout hits and excellent games that prove more difficult to market that struggle to tread water.
[1] - https://vginsights.com/insights/article/further-analysis-int...
https://steamdb.info/app/1545990/charts/
Note that many of the highly rated games I shared had sub 300 reviews, so even if you were to have a great 60:1 ratio for a game with 300 reviews priced at $15 you're looking at a $185k gross after steams cut and before taxes for potentially 3+ years of development and support.
I really hope I'm wrong here because I would love a meritocratic indie game scene to keep flourishing, but the greater trend I see is a bifurcation between indie games that synergize with streaming and social media to become breakout hits and excellent games that prove more difficult to market that struggle to tread water.
[1] - https://vginsights.com/insights/article/further-analysis-int...
In your link, look at the median data he offers for literally every single thing except date. I think the following matches your overall selection of games pretty well:
---
Indie - 65:1 sales:reviews
$10-$20 - 65:1
>90% (review positive) - 51:1
250-1000 reviews - 89:1
Casual (genre) - ~70:1
---
The only thing that contradicts my 60:1 claim is the date datum, but I would take it with a grain of salt due to a endless quite obvious biases. For instance that article is based on the data 'leaked' up to 2018, but that leak was closed in June 2018. So you not only are missing half the year's data, but the two most critical holidays. There's also lots of different demographics that will have different purchasing/reviewing trends. For instance many people don't buy new releases, or buy them and only play/review them much later, and so on. There's just lot of biases in date alone.
On this site we often get a very unrealistic sampling of economic reality, because a lot of tech stuff is based in locations with extremely high local inflation both in costs and in compensation. For the US as a whole, median personal income is $41k, about $55k exclusively for full time workers. [1] $185k with ongoing passive income is doing wayyyy better than average even in America. And of course with independent development, you're not tied to any location. You could move to anywhere in the other 95% of the world where $185k would spend much closer to something like a million dollars. Places like San Francisco and Seattle are absolutely pricing out small scale entrepreneurship of all forms, but all that means is that we'll instead see things coming disproportionately more frequently from the other 95% of the world.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_...
---
Indie - 65:1 sales:reviews
$10-$20 - 65:1
>90% (review positive) - 51:1
250-1000 reviews - 89:1
Casual (genre) - ~70:1
---
The only thing that contradicts my 60:1 claim is the date datum, but I would take it with a grain of salt due to a endless quite obvious biases. For instance that article is based on the data 'leaked' up to 2018, but that leak was closed in June 2018. So you not only are missing half the year's data, but the two most critical holidays. There's also lots of different demographics that will have different purchasing/reviewing trends. For instance many people don't buy new releases, or buy them and only play/review them much later, and so on. There's just lot of biases in date alone.
On this site we often get a very unrealistic sampling of economic reality, because a lot of tech stuff is based in locations with extremely high local inflation both in costs and in compensation. For the US as a whole, median personal income is $41k, about $55k exclusively for full time workers. [1] $185k with ongoing passive income is doing wayyyy better than average even in America. And of course with independent development, you're not tied to any location. You could move to anywhere in the other 95% of the world where $185k would spend much closer to something like a million dollars. Places like San Francisco and Seattle are absolutely pricing out small scale entrepreneurship of all forms, but all that means is that we'll instead see things coming disproportionately more frequently from the other 95% of the world.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_...
"play at home" for me = play with friends.
95% of my game purchases are based on:
- reliable 4 player co-op play PvE. Can opt-out PvP if it's there.
- reasonable reviews. Doesn't have to be fantastic, we've been around and seen some shit.
- released for 6 months with patch fixes to match
This cuts down the number of games I care about on Steam considerably. We often struggle to have something new to play and go back to the favs.
[snip growing rant, try to stick to the point here]
95% of my game purchases are based on:
- reliable 4 player co-op play PvE. Can opt-out PvP if it's there.
- reasonable reviews. Doesn't have to be fantastic, we've been around and seen some shit.
- released for 6 months with patch fixes to match
This cuts down the number of games I care about on Steam considerably. We often struggle to have something new to play and go back to the favs.
[snip growing rant, try to stick to the point here]
> You need to have a way of rising above the noise.
if you believe in the social media discuourse, "making a good game" is enough, and Steam algorithms + word of mouth will boost it up for you. I think that's highly unrealistic, but I do think making "a really good game" will guarantee a certain minimum sales on Steam.
I also don't think that minimum sales is close to sustainable compared to a minimum wage job, but that's always the part of the conversation left out. $10k in a year is a great side hustle and well above the median. It's a complete failure even for the most humble game dev that lives in a carboard box and survives off of potatoes.
if you believe in the social media discuourse, "making a good game" is enough, and Steam algorithms + word of mouth will boost it up for you. I think that's highly unrealistic, but I do think making "a really good game" will guarantee a certain minimum sales on Steam.
I also don't think that minimum sales is close to sustainable compared to a minimum wage job, but that's always the part of the conversation left out. $10k in a year is a great side hustle and well above the median. It's a complete failure even for the most humble game dev that lives in a carboard box and survives off of potatoes.
Just get some popular streamers/channels to do a review/let's play and if they like it you'll get tons of free exposure. I've spent probably hundreds of dollars on indie games in the last year or so from first seeing them on a gaming channel and then pulling it up in steam.
Channels like Splattercat are a great resource for indie gamers & studios alike: https://youtube.com/@splattercatgaming
Channels like Splattercat are a great resource for indie gamers & studios alike: https://youtube.com/@splattercatgaming
"Just get some popular streamers/channels to do a review/let's play"
Just is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.
Just is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.
One doesn't start with the marketing. One starts with the great game. This is the one of the biggest issue now in culture – one is taught to promote one's awful films, music novels, games, paintings. Instead the creators should teach themselves how to make great, or at least good, art first.
Then the division of labour was to find the editor or the producer to take your work to the next level.
Then the division of labour was to find the editor or the producer to take your work to the next level.
You give them money. It's not a very heavy lift except for the wallet.
do you know how much it costs to even get a small but recognizable streamer to stream your game?
Remember, Microsoft gave Ninja a $55m contract to stream on the now dead Mixer. And ofc Ninja mostly streams the most mainstream of mainstream games anyway. These top streamers are way more expensive than any ad program to just approach and inquire to.
anyways, to answer my rhetorical question: I hear the rule of thumb is either $0.10-0.20 per video view, or $1 per concurrent view as a starting point. you can use that to guestimate whoever you had in mind when you were thinking of paying a streamer.
Remember, Microsoft gave Ninja a $55m contract to stream on the now dead Mixer. And ofc Ninja mostly streams the most mainstream of mainstream games anyway. These top streamers are way more expensive than any ad program to just approach and inquire to.
anyways, to answer my rhetorical question: I hear the rule of thumb is either $0.10-0.20 per video view, or $1 per concurrent view as a starting point. you can use that to guestimate whoever you had in mind when you were thinking of paying a streamer.
Popular streamers don’t accept every offer to demo a game.
True, but it also depends how many zeroes are in the amount. You have to find streamers interested in your genre, for sure.
This has been known for more than a decade, you can bet the competition does that too
Competition doesn't have excellent games. There aren't that many excellent games released per year, if you have an excellent game just getting noticed is enough.
> For AAA, it's having budgets to make games on a bigger scale than everyone else
Does this matter? There are lots of big budget games that don't feel big budget.
Does this matter? There are lots of big budget games that don't feel big budget.
Part of the scale is that unlike an indy game, whatever junk EA puts out will end up on every platform and in physical and virtual game stores around the world. Every year when they rerelease the same game.
I don't know what you mean by this. It sounded like OP was talking about scale of content. But it does not take a triple-A budget to be on multiple platforms on physical disk. It takes a relationship with a distributor (through your publisher).
I would even go as far as to say it's easier to distribute indie games to different platforms, for a lot of reasons. Mainly that you have a lot less people to pay and you're likely using an engine that can do a lot of that technical work for you instead of an in house engine.
Source: I worked in game distribution.
I would even go as far as to say it's easier to distribute indie games to different platforms, for a lot of reasons. Mainly that you have a lot less people to pay and you're likely using an engine that can do a lot of that technical work for you instead of an in house engine.
Source: I worked in game distribution.
>> Making an excellent game isn't even enough these days, that's just table stakes. With so many games out there it's a market of lemons. You need to have a way of rising above the noise.
Maybe if your goal is to "win", to be the biggest and most profitable game. But most of the best games become so because they don't try to rise above the noise. Do something very very well and you can abandon all the trappings of the top-tier games. I just paid 20$ for a game about puzzle boxes. It isn't flashy. It is just a fun game about a very niche topic. It will never top any steam charts, nor is it trying to do so. It is just a fun game for people that want to do puzzle boxes. It is still "great" imho because, frankly, I bought it and don't regret paying for it. That alone puts it above 99.99% of games on steam, all those games I would never consider paying a dime for.
Maybe if your goal is to "win", to be the biggest and most profitable game. But most of the best games become so because they don't try to rise above the noise. Do something very very well and you can abandon all the trappings of the top-tier games. I just paid 20$ for a game about puzzle boxes. It isn't flashy. It is just a fun game about a very niche topic. It will never top any steam charts, nor is it trying to do so. It is just a fun game for people that want to do puzzle boxes. It is still "great" imho because, frankly, I bought it and don't regret paying for it. That alone puts it above 99.99% of games on steam, all those games I would never consider paying a dime for.
This thread is rooted in a comment saying that the median revenue for a game on Steam is $800.
There's a large, large gulf between "the biggest and most profitable game" and "I spent months of my life working on this, and made less than a month of rent."
The puzzle box game may be awesome and well-worth your $20. The developer still might rightly have concluded that "damn, this was a huge waste of time. Gotta go back to my Wal-mart job."
There's a large, large gulf between "the biggest and most profitable game" and "I spent months of my life working on this, and made less than a month of rent."
The puzzle box game may be awesome and well-worth your $20. The developer still might rightly have concluded that "damn, this was a huge waste of time. Gotta go back to my Wal-mart job."
> And I think making an excellent game is a lot like reaching product-market fit.
Making an excellent game takes quite different skills than creating a commercially successful game; just compare "pop culture" (optimized to be commercially successful) vs "high-brow culture".
Even if you are not the "extremely high-brow taste" kind of person, there exist quite some video game genres in which excellent games are produced, but the audience of these games is a quite small (but sophisticated) niche audience, so that just by volume, games of these genres likely won't make a lot of money.
Making an excellent game takes quite different skills than creating a commercially successful game; just compare "pop culture" (optimized to be commercially successful) vs "high-brow culture".
Even if you are not the "extremely high-brow taste" kind of person, there exist quite some video game genres in which excellent games are produced, but the audience of these games is a quite small (but sophisticated) niche audience, so that just by volume, games of these genres likely won't make a lot of money.
That really just depends on your definition of "excellent"
You have defined it to mean "high brow"
You have defined it to mean "high brow"
> You have defined it to mean "high brow"
Both in
- "high brow"
- niche genres
categories (which I both gave as examples) you will likely find quite some games that that are excellent, but won't make a lot of money. But don't pick too much on these categories since my central point is "Making an excellent game takes quite different skills than creating a commercially successful game".
Both in
- "high brow"
- niche genres
categories (which I both gave as examples) you will likely find quite some games that that are excellent, but won't make a lot of money. But don't pick too much on these categories since my central point is "Making an excellent game takes quite different skills than creating a commercially successful game".
The main games in niche can easily sell 100k copies, that is a lot of money for a couple of indie devs.
And no those games are far from excellent, I play a lot of such niche games but they all suck quality wise compared to mainstream games with similar sales, I play them for new experiences but I never expect quality from them. So it is much easier to sell well enough to maintain an indie team by making niche games than by making mainstream games since the competition for niche markets is so much smaller.
Maybe you think that "100k" copies is a failure since it didn't sell millions, I have seen people thinking along those lines. But no, 100k copies is a massive success, even 10k copies is more than enough for a 1 person indie game, so those "indie gems" hardly failed at all.
And no those games are far from excellent, I play a lot of such niche games but they all suck quality wise compared to mainstream games with similar sales, I play them for new experiences but I never expect quality from them. So it is much easier to sell well enough to maintain an indie team by making niche games than by making mainstream games since the competition for niche markets is so much smaller.
Maybe you think that "100k" copies is a failure since it didn't sell millions, I have seen people thinking along those lines. But no, 100k copies is a massive success, even 10k copies is more than enough for a 1 person indie game, so those "indie gems" hardly failed at all.
> The main games in niche can easily sell 100k copies, that is a lot of money for a couple of indie devs.
I understand your point, but I hope people are seeing the irony of making such arguments under a post detaliing how the median game on steam can barely pay rent.
I don't think even if you filtered that data for "overwhelmingly positive games" that it'll suddenly average $500k+ revenue.
>Maybe you think that "100k" copies is a failure since it didn't sell millions, I have seen people thinking along those lines. But no, 100k copies is a massive success, even 10k copies is more than enough for a 1 person indie game, so those "indie gems" hardly failed at all.
really depends on team size. 100k is good, but divided among a team of 10 and after steam cuts, a $5 game is getting roughly 35k for a dev. You know, minmum wage in high COL areas. likewise for a solo game that made 10k sales.
My definition of success is as simple as "can the studio sustain itself from the sales of its games?". Maybe in a day where rent wasn't $3000+, but not these days in the US.
I understand your point, but I hope people are seeing the irony of making such arguments under a post detaliing how the median game on steam can barely pay rent.
I don't think even if you filtered that data for "overwhelmingly positive games" that it'll suddenly average $500k+ revenue.
>Maybe you think that "100k" copies is a failure since it didn't sell millions, I have seen people thinking along those lines. But no, 100k copies is a massive success, even 10k copies is more than enough for a 1 person indie game, so those "indie gems" hardly failed at all.
really depends on team size. 100k is good, but divided among a team of 10 and after steam cuts, a $5 game is getting roughly 35k for a dev. You know, minmum wage in high COL areas. likewise for a solo game that made 10k sales.
My definition of success is as simple as "can the studio sustain itself from the sales of its games?". Maybe in a day where rent wasn't $3000+, but not these days in the US.
You won't find them.
It is not just about marketing though. There is this belief, especially among fledgling indies that if they make a game that they think is good, and if they are able to market it well, it will be a success, even a hit.
A hit in gamedev is not easier than creating a hit in the music industry really. Even the veteran composers are not able to replicate (or even achieve) creating a hit. Possibility of success depends on many factors which change constantly, and success hinges on your ability to "read the room" which is the sound palette and the persona (for the artist that "performs" the music) millions of people are likely to find interesting at any point in time.
If you are a beginner composer creating a hit, it is an extreme fluke. Same is with gamedev. Your passion project most probably is not the thing most people want at this point in time. No amount of marketing will solve that problem. Your efforts at marketing are doomed to have negative ROI. Maybe you are a year too late? A decade too late? Maybe a couple years too early? Maybe what you think is fun is not really fun in the general sense and will never be?
I'd honestly struggle to find any good games (right for their time and audience) that failed because of a lack of suitable marketing. In the same vein, I'd struggle to find a hit game that succeeded because of marketing. No amount of marketing effort can beat thousands of people finding what you do interesting and sharing their opinion in person, on social media, youtube etc. If you have pockets as deep as Coca Cola, you may influence the culture through your marketing efforts, influence what "should" be popular - but if you are not that, you need to be an expert at reading culture of your target audience and cater to that. When you do that, "marketing" will be a walk in the park. Or else, even if you spend enormous efforts in marketing, it will only generate negative ROI.
A hit in gamedev is not easier than creating a hit in the music industry really. Even the veteran composers are not able to replicate (or even achieve) creating a hit. Possibility of success depends on many factors which change constantly, and success hinges on your ability to "read the room" which is the sound palette and the persona (for the artist that "performs" the music) millions of people are likely to find interesting at any point in time.
If you are a beginner composer creating a hit, it is an extreme fluke. Same is with gamedev. Your passion project most probably is not the thing most people want at this point in time. No amount of marketing will solve that problem. Your efforts at marketing are doomed to have negative ROI. Maybe you are a year too late? A decade too late? Maybe a couple years too early? Maybe what you think is fun is not really fun in the general sense and will never be?
I'd honestly struggle to find any good games (right for their time and audience) that failed because of a lack of suitable marketing. In the same vein, I'd struggle to find a hit game that succeeded because of marketing. No amount of marketing effort can beat thousands of people finding what you do interesting and sharing their opinion in person, on social media, youtube etc. If you have pockets as deep as Coca Cola, you may influence the culture through your marketing efforts, influence what "should" be popular - but if you are not that, you need to be an expert at reading culture of your target audience and cater to that. When you do that, "marketing" will be a walk in the park. Or else, even if you spend enormous efforts in marketing, it will only generate negative ROI.
> If you are a beginner composer creating a hit, it is an extreme fluke.
You're punching too high. Music is a passion for many people. Same as game dev. I would expect >95% of game devs to be perfectly happy if they can make a living creating indie games. Of course it's nice to make a hit that makes you tens of millions of dollars, but most game devs would be happy to make enough to pay themselves a salary to live on.
Now, if we're not looking to make a hit, but we're looking to make a living, there are a lot of composers out there who can consistently achieve that (e.g. beatmaking for rappers advertising on youtube and such).
> I'd honestly struggle to find any good games (right for their time and audience) that failed because of a lack of suitable marketing.
I'll offer Flappy Bird as an example.
You're punching too high. Music is a passion for many people. Same as game dev. I would expect >95% of game devs to be perfectly happy if they can make a living creating indie games. Of course it's nice to make a hit that makes you tens of millions of dollars, but most game devs would be happy to make enough to pay themselves a salary to live on.
Now, if we're not looking to make a hit, but we're looking to make a living, there are a lot of composers out there who can consistently achieve that (e.g. beatmaking for rappers advertising on youtube and such).
> I'd honestly struggle to find any good games (right for their time and audience) that failed because of a lack of suitable marketing.
I'll offer Flappy Bird as an example.
>I'd honestly struggle to find any good games (right for their time and audience) that failed because of a lack of suitable marketing.
Among Us is a good example. It was out for over a year before it exploded.
It got found by streamers and that slowly spread in that space before even the biggest ones were playing. [1]
[1] https://twitchtracker.com/games/510218
Among Us is a good example. It was out for over a year before it exploded.
It got found by streamers and that slowly spread in that space before even the biggest ones were playing. [1]
[1] https://twitchtracker.com/games/510218
>> I'd honestly struggle to find any good games (right for their time and audience) that failed because of a lack of suitable marketing.
> I'll offer Flappy Bird as an example.
Flappy Bird is a bizarre exception: it was a massive viral hit before it was voluntarily withdrawn by the developer feeling guilty over its success. It was then cloned a lot.
> I'll offer Flappy Bird as an example.
Flappy Bird is a bizarre exception: it was a massive viral hit before it was voluntarily withdrawn by the developer feeling guilty over its success. It was then cloned a lot.
The reason why I mentioned Flappy Bird is that it originally wasn't a massive viral hit. It was on the app store for like a year with basically no-one playing it. And then it became a viral hit. So it's a good example of how a good game with no marketing doesn't get picked up (until it gets lucky and eventually does get picked up; you can imagine a timeline where that never happens).
I think that extreme outliers like Flappy Bird (which the developer developed over a couple of days and probably didn't expect any significant return) just muddle these discussions. They're irrelevant if you want to suss out what happens in the usual case.
I agree, but when talking with these "where the hidden gems" audience, any example I point out will be "an exception". it makes the entire conversation a bit tiring, no matter how much you research the market these kinds of people have their opiions set, with no skin in the game.
The usual case of good games which fail commercially because of bad marketing? How would I prove to someone that a failed game is "good"? The reason I talked about Flappy Bird is that the game's late success proves that its early failure was due to bad marketing. If you only want to talk about games which never succeeded commercially, then I have no way of proving to you that any of those were "good" games.
> How would I prove to someone that a failed game is "good"?
Steam reviews are a great way. Lots of folks, including myself, try or tried to seek out these hidden gems on Steam. And Steam provides some great tools to try to find them. [1] It just turns out that there simply aren't many games at all with genuinely high reviews, but very low player numbers.
There's a whole bunch of great games in the ~200 reviews category with high reviews, but I'd generally consider that successful. The average game gets something like 60:1 sales:reviews, so 200 reviews is around 12,000 copies sold. You're not going to be getting rich off those numbers, but that's more than enough to live an extremely comfortable life in the overwhelming majority of the world.
[1] - https://store.steampowered.com/recommender/0
Steam reviews are a great way. Lots of folks, including myself, try or tried to seek out these hidden gems on Steam. And Steam provides some great tools to try to find them. [1] It just turns out that there simply aren't many games at all with genuinely high reviews, but very low player numbers.
There's a whole bunch of great games in the ~200 reviews category with high reviews, but I'd generally consider that successful. The average game gets something like 60:1 sales:reviews, so 200 reviews is around 12,000 copies sold. You're not going to be getting rich off those numbers, but that's more than enough to live an extremely comfortable life in the overwhelming majority of the world.
[1] - https://store.steampowered.com/recommender/0
>You're not going to be getting rich off those numbers, but that's more than enough to live an extremely comfortable life in the overwhelming majority of the world.
I guess you don't live in the US or Canada these days. Even if the game was $20, 12k copies sold is $168k raw revenue, after steam's cut. if you have 2 people working on it, you make above average revenue, for one year.
If you have 3 people working on the game, that is below median income for the US. And it gets worse for any assets you buy or contractors you need.
Even with 2 people, you have to remember that you don't get benefits from being a full time indie. so even 80k in this situation if it's a true 2 person team may not be so much much better off than flipping burgers with healthcare/dental built in. It's a rough economy right now.
I guess you don't live in the US or Canada these days. Even if the game was $20, 12k copies sold is $168k raw revenue, after steam's cut. if you have 2 people working on it, you make above average revenue, for one year.
If you have 3 people working on the game, that is below median income for the US. And it gets worse for any assets you buy or contractors you need.
Even with 2 people, you have to remember that you don't get benefits from being a full time indie. so even 80k in this situation if it's a true 2 person team may not be so much much better off than flipping burgers with healthcare/dental built in. It's a rough economy right now.
No I don't, and this is one of the reasons why. When you can work online and get paid in $, that dollar goes so much further in the other 95% of the world. What people who don't travel much may not understand is that it's not just the exchange rate. What really matters is PPP - purchasing power parity. $100 might translate to e.g. 8000 rupees, but those 8000 rupees go far further in India than $100 would in America. I also find that even official PPP figures often understate the "real" difference. So by living outside of America and getting paid in USD you basically just multiply every dollar you make, by a very large amount. That $168k easily becomes a $million+ in the overwhelming majority of the world.
Medicine and other stuff is similarly reasonable. I had the first cavity in my life fairly recently. A dentist trip, cleaning, filling, and related care cost a bit more than $10. And that was at a private provider, so nowhere near the cheapest. And then on top of this taxes are way lower, and the first $250k (for a couple whose earnings are split) are US tax free - the US has the distinction of being literally the only country in the world that insists expats continue to pay US taxes.
So you have this thing where an indie developer living in San Francisco is probably going to end up homeless, whereas on the exact same income they could be living an extremely comfortable life in the overwhelming majority of the world - 'Asia', India, Eastern Europe, South America, even some places in Africa are starting to develop pretty reasonably. Wherever, there's something for basically every taste and desire somewhere.
Medicine and other stuff is similarly reasonable. I had the first cavity in my life fairly recently. A dentist trip, cleaning, filling, and related care cost a bit more than $10. And that was at a private provider, so nowhere near the cheapest. And then on top of this taxes are way lower, and the first $250k (for a couple whose earnings are split) are US tax free - the US has the distinction of being literally the only country in the world that insists expats continue to pay US taxes.
So you have this thing where an indie developer living in San Francisco is probably going to end up homeless, whereas on the exact same income they could be living an extremely comfortable life in the overwhelming majority of the world - 'Asia', India, Eastern Europe, South America, even some places in Africa are starting to develop pretty reasonably. Wherever, there's something for basically every taste and desire somewhere.
>So by living outside of America and getting paid in USD you basically just multiply every dollar you make, by a very large amount. That $168k easily becomes a $million+ in the overwhelming majority of the world
That's a nice sentiment for those who live in the not-US. But sadly most game development is in fact located in the US and Japan. For the US, many of the developer scene is in fact in higher cost of living areas like California, for the same reasons those areas have top tech companies and universities.
So I'm not just speaking for myself when I say that your estimates do not compare to most minimum wage work, which has itself already ceased to be a "living wage". It could certainly shift, but those are the current breaks. Your favorite indie games are likely made by North Americans as of now, and their survival depends on their ability to survive in North America. The one exception I can think off the top of my head is Team Cherry in Australia, which is not in a much better CoL situation if they are in the cities.
American or not, I don't think the solution to finances for online development is to emigrate out of your home country, away from your community, life cultures, and overall lifestyle. Tech is a big enough part of the US economy that everyone doing it would weaken the dollar itself, and then everyone loses given the current way the world economy works.
That's a nice sentiment for those who live in the not-US. But sadly most game development is in fact located in the US and Japan. For the US, many of the developer scene is in fact in higher cost of living areas like California, for the same reasons those areas have top tech companies and universities.
So I'm not just speaking for myself when I say that your estimates do not compare to most minimum wage work, which has itself already ceased to be a "living wage". It could certainly shift, but those are the current breaks. Your favorite indie games are likely made by North Americans as of now, and their survival depends on their ability to survive in North America. The one exception I can think off the top of my head is Team Cherry in Australia, which is not in a much better CoL situation if they are in the cities.
American or not, I don't think the solution to finances for online development is to emigrate out of your home country, away from your community, life cultures, and overall lifestyle. Tech is a big enough part of the US economy that everyone doing it would weaken the dollar itself, and then everyone loses given the current way the world economy works.
As someone who moves out of Bay Area back to home country and looks forward to spice up early retirement with small-time gamedev, I find the economics of indie development not that simple.
Generative AI notwithstanding, in order to make a game you will hire some artists, and the best artists are "getting paid in USD" already, to use the words from this discussion thread. They may be talent living locally, but they work on-line, too.
Thus, successful indie games usually have budgets "in USD" and sales "in USD". I mean, making one is still a first world problem.
Generative AI notwithstanding, in order to make a game you will hire some artists, and the best artists are "getting paid in USD" already, to use the words from this discussion thread. They may be talent living locally, but they work on-line, too.
Thus, successful indie games usually have budgets "in USD" and sales "in USD". I mean, making one is still a first world problem.
Going back to the games I mentioned in the other conversation we were having, Mount and Blade is Turkish. Siralim is made by a guy living in Cortland, Ohio - population 8000. Japanese stuff is obviously in Japan, which has economically become much closer to a developing country following 3 decades of stagflation. Nominal GDP/capita is $33k. Average household income after taxes is $29k. [1] It's why I kind of snicker when people reference Japan as having 'achieved affordable housing.' They sure have, so long as you aren't working for Japanese wages!
I don't know how to get meaningful stats on game development locations (because you need to exclude shovelware), but I know that in my library of games - American companies are few and far between except for big AAA titles, though even there things are getting a lot more diverse. For instance Kerbal Space Program is Mexican, Starpoint Gemini is Croatian, Space Rangers is Russian, Conquest of Elysium/Dominions is Swedish, Endless Legend is French, Lost Castle is Chinese, Crusader Kings is Swedish, Battle Brothers is German, and so on endlessly.
And in my experience lifestyles only improve abroad. All the niceties you're used to still exist in pretty much every semi-major hub around the world, and then much more on top. As do large communities of other expats. If somebody just wanted to be in a mini America, or even Silicon Valley, each and every day - they absolutely could. Think about how in the US basically every major city has a little 'China town.' It's the exact same thing abroad with Westerners, often with a tech bias.
[1] - https://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/countries/japan/
I don't know how to get meaningful stats on game development locations (because you need to exclude shovelware), but I know that in my library of games - American companies are few and far between except for big AAA titles, though even there things are getting a lot more diverse. For instance Kerbal Space Program is Mexican, Starpoint Gemini is Croatian, Space Rangers is Russian, Conquest of Elysium/Dominions is Swedish, Endless Legend is French, Lost Castle is Chinese, Crusader Kings is Swedish, Battle Brothers is German, and so on endlessly.
And in my experience lifestyles only improve abroad. All the niceties you're used to still exist in pretty much every semi-major hub around the world, and then much more on top. As do large communities of other expats. If somebody just wanted to be in a mini America, or even Silicon Valley, each and every day - they absolutely could. Think about how in the US basically every major city has a little 'China town.' It's the exact same thing abroad with Westerners, often with a tech bias.
[1] - https://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/countries/japan/
Hate to break it to you, but the pop star success formula is actually meticulously detailed and very repeatable. The producers and song writers know exactly how to do it.
It’s not about challenges in finding success, so much as, at least in music, artists don’t want to follow a formula. They want to create songs and melodies that are personal and meaningful to them and their fans.
It’s not about challenges in finding success, so much as, at least in music, artists don’t want to follow a formula. They want to create songs and melodies that are personal and meaningful to them and their fans.
There are more people that want to make hit songs than there are hit songs. As long as that's true, it will not be easy.
That probably involves more of a corporate marketing vanguard that picks winners more so than it organicly finds them.
And you think Games are different?
The corporate marketing vanguard that picks winners in the gaming industry is almost entirely dedicated to microtransactions, pay to win, pay walls, subscriptions, and battle passes.
Inorganicly chosen winners is a problem, but in the music industry, the end product itself doesn't exploit the listener beyond just that.
Inorganicly chosen winners is a problem, but in the music industry, the end product itself doesn't exploit the listener beyond just that.
Sure they are now, that's simply where the money is nowadays. 5 years ago it was battle passes 5 years before that it was an attempt to recoup costs with used game. 5 years prior to that it was experimenting with DLC types and seeing what would stick. And 5 years before that it was trying to have long term subscription attachments to a game.
Games are ultimately tech. And games grew along with the internet. It was inherently going to be run more like a tech company than a media conglomerate for that reason. I see it less as games being exploitative than a double edged sword, like the internet itself. It can be a lot more exploitative. But it also opened up entire mediums of ideas and arguably tore down world borders.
Games are ultimately tech. And games grew along with the internet. It was inherently going to be run more like a tech company than a media conglomerate for that reason. I see it less as games being exploitative than a double edged sword, like the internet itself. It can be a lot more exploitative. But it also opened up entire mediums of ideas and arguably tore down world borders.
Artists absolutely want to follow a formula. Read a little bit about songwriting. How common chord structures are across popular music. Music theory in general is literally formulaic. Beethoven or Radiohead both follow formula.
While some necessary factors about what makes a pop hit are known, even with that knowledge -- and a huge marketing budget -- the vast majority of songs written even by the very top producers and songwriters flop massively, all the time.
They know this, too. They budget so that their 1% massive hits pay for the 99% that nobody cares about.
They know this, too. They budget so that their 1% massive hits pay for the 99% that nobody cares about.
>I'd honestly struggle to find any good games (right for their time and audience) that failed because of a lack of suitable marketing. In the same vein, I'd struggle to find a hit game that succeeded because of marketing.
only if you're looking at the most general audiences. That's the advantadge of targeting a niche. Not everyone will buy furry art, but the ones that do have high demand (and apparently, deep wallets). Indies can't afford to be "for everyone", and even AAA games are struggling.
But if you want an obvious example of the latter: Raid Shadow legends. Literally spends millions upon millions on advertising a year, and I can't imagine many would organically find and talk about such a game themselves. But even after 6 years they seem to have the funding to get every youtuber under the sun to talk about it. You very much can outadvertise a mediocre game as long as you have the right monetization scheme (which spoilers: is not "buy one copy of $10 game).
only if you're looking at the most general audiences. That's the advantadge of targeting a niche. Not everyone will buy furry art, but the ones that do have high demand (and apparently, deep wallets). Indies can't afford to be "for everyone", and even AAA games are struggling.
But if you want an obvious example of the latter: Raid Shadow legends. Literally spends millions upon millions on advertising a year, and I can't imagine many would organically find and talk about such a game themselves. But even after 6 years they seem to have the funding to get every youtuber under the sun to talk about it. You very much can outadvertise a mediocre game as long as you have the right monetization scheme (which spoilers: is not "buy one copy of $10 game).
If you think that’s true, I invite you to sort steam games by release date and to simply buy the most recent 10 of them in the categories you like that aren’t free to play. I mean, they’re all equally good, right? Making good games is easy. Assuming those low review counts are only due to bad marketing? It will even save you money, compared to buying the titles you normally would
Or we can acknowledge that making a great game is extremely difficult and expensive, and not dismiss the whole industry
Or we can acknowledge that making a great game is extremely difficult and expensive, and not dismiss the whole industry
95 % of games are boring, and unoriginal. Why? Because most of these people, who create these games are entrepreneurs. They only see the possible money from these. These games have no heart whatsoever, why? Because good games need passionate people, not blue collar suits.
There are 1 million subscribers at the gamedev reddit. It's ridiculous, and when people ask something, they get total balooney, ridiculous botlike answers.
There are 1 million subscribers at the gamedev reddit. It's ridiculous, and when people ask something, they get total balooney, ridiculous botlike answers.
Games are boring and unoriginal because it's incredibly hard to make original, engaging content no matter who you are.
I don't think that's the case. Just look at the 90s, early 2000s.
I think that might be survivorship bias talking. We tend to forget all the shovelware and only remember the gems.
I remember playing a ton of awful shareware games as a kid, on floppies and disks packed with a few dozen each. Same thing later on, bringing a game home from the store only to realize I'd chosen poorly.
And it's easy to get a bit jaded after years of experience and look back with a rose tint. I loved the hell out of that junk as a kid, because it was still the best stuff I'd yet seen and I had time to spare. Today I'm a little pickier.
I remember playing a ton of awful shareware games as a kid, on floppies and disks packed with a few dozen each. Same thing later on, bringing a game home from the store only to realize I'd chosen poorly.
And it's easy to get a bit jaded after years of experience and look back with a rose tint. I loved the hell out of that junk as a kid, because it was still the best stuff I'd yet seen and I had time to spare. Today I'm a little pickier.
Being passionate doesn’t guarantee a game being a success, though. Look at a game like Knights of the Chalice 2. It's definitely a labor of love, and many people who play it think it has the best DnD combat of any game out there, and maybe some of the best turn-based combat as well. It has mediocre graphics, though, and a high price point, so it’s had extremely slow discoverability. It also has a somewhat niche audience (people really into complex DnD combat), so it’s not clear how much of an audience is out there even if discoverability wasn’t an issue.
[deleted]
People are in their own bubble and believe everything that people say to them on the internet. People lie all the time, plus they don't want to create friction by saying that a specific game is, well, shit. That game is built on already outdated foundations. You need to give something to users that will stimulate them.
> People lie all the time, plus they don't want to create friction by saying that a specific game is, well, shit
The places I frequent say that about games all the time. For instance, though the game I mentioned gets highly praised there, almost everyone trashed the author’s previous RTS game. Some places might give every game universal acclaim, but plenty of places have people who will openly call a game garbage.
The places I frequent say that about games all the time. For instance, though the game I mentioned gets highly praised there, almost everyone trashed the author’s previous RTS game. Some places might give every game universal acclaim, but plenty of places have people who will openly call a game garbage.
List those places please...
That price point is one of the most ridiculous I've seen, and is just lighting money on fire! The game looks great (erm.. so to speak) - clearly extremely heavily influenced by the Gold Box games, but I have no clue at all what the dev was thinking with that price. I am his demographic, and I'm not even considering the game at that price.
>I am his demographic, and I'm not even considering the game at that price.
That the dev spent tens of thousands of hours on a very niche genre, and that it was better to sell to 10k fans @$45 than to risk selling 25k copies @ $20 (random sales numbers).
It's a common strategy in Japanese game development. Some games are just very niche, so lowering the price doesn't necessarily increase sales proportionately. It just means less money from financially inflexble fans. So keep the price AAA level and target those fans.
That the dev spent tens of thousands of hours on a very niche genre, and that it was better to sell to 10k fans @$45 than to risk selling 25k copies @ $20 (random sales numbers).
It's a common strategy in Japanese game development. Some games are just very niche, so lowering the price doesn't necessarily increase sales proportionately. It just means less money from financially inflexble fans. So keep the price AAA level and target those fans.
Haha, when I initially wrote my comment I referenced a little inside 'joke' of sorts I have with some friends in games, referring to stuff as 'Japanese pricing.' I decided to snip that off because I figured it might be too esoteric. But I guess none of us is a snowflake, are we? The thing I'd observe is that Japanese pricing fails, hard - even for Japanese games. It seems a handful of Japanese publishers have realized this. NIS is a great example - they publish a huge amount of stuff, nearly all of it's niche, and it sells crazy well - because it's sold at a reasonable price. SEGA is the equal but opposite example. They still seem to think this is 2001 and they're selling games on a ringfenced console to players starved for content. And so their games are completely flopping.
Compare Etrian Odyssey (SEGA) with Disgaea (NIS). Both games are a fairly comparable genre, with fairly comparable production values, targeting the same demographic, and both were also PC ports/remakes of older classics. Disgaea is less than half the cost and has is pushing an order of magnitude greater sales. Also I think the concept of "niche" is somewhat obsolete.. kind of circling back to the point that none of us a snowflake. The market is so huge and diverse. Even for the most niche titles, there tends to be huge market potential, because "niche" markets now a days are larger than the whole market not that long ago. Games like Mount and Blade are just niche Eurojank embodied, yet has sold millions. Siralim is another great niche game. It sells excellently, especially considering the dev keeps releasing pretty much the same game ever couple of years.
Finally, the West is an increasingly small part of the overall market. There are huge numbers of Chinese, Russian, Indian, and so on gamers. Region pricing kind of adapts to this, but not really. In terms of exchange rates it's extremely favorable, but what really matters is PPP - how much a unit of currency is "worth" in domestic prices. So for instance the $45 game is sold for about 1000 rupees. I don't live in India but a quick search turns up a rent-by-day place in the cheaper parts of India can go as low as 100 rupee a day. So even though $45 exchanges for like 4000 rupees, it's worth far less (in terms of how far it goes in America) than even the 1000 rupees that the game is sold for India. So when you set the price of your game high in dollar terms, you're setting it to just LOL terms for most of the world.
Compare Etrian Odyssey (SEGA) with Disgaea (NIS). Both games are a fairly comparable genre, with fairly comparable production values, targeting the same demographic, and both were also PC ports/remakes of older classics. Disgaea is less than half the cost and has is pushing an order of magnitude greater sales. Also I think the concept of "niche" is somewhat obsolete.. kind of circling back to the point that none of us a snowflake. The market is so huge and diverse. Even for the most niche titles, there tends to be huge market potential, because "niche" markets now a days are larger than the whole market not that long ago. Games like Mount and Blade are just niche Eurojank embodied, yet has sold millions. Siralim is another great niche game. It sells excellently, especially considering the dev keeps releasing pretty much the same game ever couple of years.
Finally, the West is an increasingly small part of the overall market. There are huge numbers of Chinese, Russian, Indian, and so on gamers. Region pricing kind of adapts to this, but not really. In terms of exchange rates it's extremely favorable, but what really matters is PPP - how much a unit of currency is "worth" in domestic prices. So for instance the $45 game is sold for about 1000 rupees. I don't live in India but a quick search turns up a rent-by-day place in the cheaper parts of India can go as low as 100 rupee a day. So even though $45 exchanges for like 4000 rupees, it's worth far less (in terms of how far it goes in America) than even the 1000 rupees that the game is sold for India. So when you set the price of your game high in dollar terms, you're setting it to just LOL terms for most of the world.
>Also I think the concept of "niche" is somewhat obsolete.. kind of circling back to the point that none of us a snowflake. The market is so huge and diverse. Even for the most niche titles, there tends to be huge market potential, because "niche" markets now a days are larger than the whole market not that long ago.
The market is larger, yes. I don't think it's gotten that much easier to target your marketed towards those audiences. the privacy changes on IOS/Android are great, but it has an unfortunate consequence that these more intimate styles of ads are now nearly impossible to channel to the right person. So you have to go to the good ol' fashioned social media blitz. Something everyone else is also trying to do. It's never been harder to get a person's attention.
Essentially, those titles you mention relied heavily on word of mouth (except Mount and Blade, but that was from a different era of gaming). I'm not sure I trust WoM enough to stake my entire livelihood on it. Gamers can be fickle, or timing can just take some cruel turns and ruin all that trajectory built up.
>Finally, the West is an increasingly small part of the overall market. There are huge numbers of Chinese, Russian, Indian, and so on gamers.
I don't disagree. But the top factors still apply. Very few are going to risk losing the USD to try and get more rupees/yuan. Russia and China in particular are pretty infamous for their piracy rates.
On top of that, getting a good localization can be too much for a smaller indie, and even those who afford it can never assure quality. Localization is a very hard process for games that need more than simply UI text to be done.
The market is larger, yes. I don't think it's gotten that much easier to target your marketed towards those audiences. the privacy changes on IOS/Android are great, but it has an unfortunate consequence that these more intimate styles of ads are now nearly impossible to channel to the right person. So you have to go to the good ol' fashioned social media blitz. Something everyone else is also trying to do. It's never been harder to get a person's attention.
Essentially, those titles you mention relied heavily on word of mouth (except Mount and Blade, but that was from a different era of gaming). I'm not sure I trust WoM enough to stake my entire livelihood on it. Gamers can be fickle, or timing can just take some cruel turns and ruin all that trajectory built up.
>Finally, the West is an increasingly small part of the overall market. There are huge numbers of Chinese, Russian, Indian, and so on gamers.
I don't disagree. But the top factors still apply. Very few are going to risk losing the USD to try and get more rupees/yuan. Russia and China in particular are pretty infamous for their piracy rates.
On top of that, getting a good localization can be too much for a smaller indie, and even those who afford it can never assure quality. Localization is a very hard process for games that need more than simply UI text to be done.
Yeah, the developer is a bit eccentric, which seems to be common when it comes to these passion products. At one point I believe some of the really big fans of the game were pushing him for a price reduction to increase the amount of players (it comes with a NWN style module creator, so a bigger community is important). From what I recall the response was something like, “You know, you’re right, I’ll go ahead and make a 10% discount during the next Steam sale.”
Or you have developers like Iron Tower Studios (Age of Decadence, Colony Ship RPG). The lead developer actually seems to have pretty good business acumen, and is pretty open about the studios finances. But he’s also a perfectionist, and the huge amount of time between games means that the studio requires a lot of sales to stay afloat. The last update from them I saw was that the launch of Colony Ship was good, but it’s still unclear if it’s good enough to support them for several more years while they make another passion project.
Or you have developers like Iron Tower Studios (Age of Decadence, Colony Ship RPG). The lead developer actually seems to have pretty good business acumen, and is pretty open about the studios finances. But he’s also a perfectionist, and the huge amount of time between games means that the studio requires a lot of sales to stay afloat. The last update from them I saw was that the launch of Colony Ship was good, but it’s still unclear if it’s good enough to support them for several more years while they make another passion project.
most games are made by entrepreneurs because the best creators are either in industry, too broke to afford to create and took some different job, burned out of the industry for a myriad of reasons, or are one of the few gems out there (which may or may not be hidden).
>It's ridiculous, and when people ask something, they get total balooney, ridiculous botlike answers.
This isn't limited to r/gamedev. Reddit is asking the blind to lead the blind, and maybe once in a blue moon you get an actual expert to help. They often leave once they realize everyone else is blind and questioning their experience, though*.
Sadly, the best place to find the best answers is to find people live. Be it in town, during a conference, or just hoping they accept a cold invite on their social media and choose to respond.
>I don't think that's the case. Just look at the 90s, early 2000s.
yes, you neede to know someone at Nintendo (or later, Sony) just to get your game in there, know how to make your own assets and levels without a high grade commercial engine, and get Nintendo/Sony to approve it. There were a lot of gatekeepers to making an indie game back then, so there were almost none.
Meanwhile, Shareware was hard to profit off of on PC (remember, it was not commonplace to have a digital wallet back then). There may be some great games, but few would be profitable without launching on console, being on store shelves, and overall supporting a propreitary machine.
(*me being an example. Though calling myself an "expert" is an overstatement. 10 years in industry isn't nothing, but also is far from authority level in any technical field).
>It's ridiculous, and when people ask something, they get total balooney, ridiculous botlike answers.
This isn't limited to r/gamedev. Reddit is asking the blind to lead the blind, and maybe once in a blue moon you get an actual expert to help. They often leave once they realize everyone else is blind and questioning their experience, though*.
Sadly, the best place to find the best answers is to find people live. Be it in town, during a conference, or just hoping they accept a cold invite on their social media and choose to respond.
>I don't think that's the case. Just look at the 90s, early 2000s.
yes, you neede to know someone at Nintendo (or later, Sony) just to get your game in there, know how to make your own assets and levels without a high grade commercial engine, and get Nintendo/Sony to approve it. There were a lot of gatekeepers to making an indie game back then, so there were almost none.
Meanwhile, Shareware was hard to profit off of on PC (remember, it was not commonplace to have a digital wallet back then). There may be some great games, but few would be profitable without launching on console, being on store shelves, and overall supporting a propreitary machine.
(*me being an example. Though calling myself an "expert" is an overstatement. 10 years in industry isn't nothing, but also is far from authority level in any technical field).
> Making good games is easy
This is entirely you hallucinating an opinion they never expressed. The op said:
> Making a game
not a _good_ game.
This is entirely you hallucinating an opinion they never expressed. The op said:
> Making a game
not a _good_ game.
OP basically implied this, by arguing about marketing being the culprit, not the quality.
It requires both a decent (doesn’t have to be amazing, but has to have some hook or draw or something interesting to keep people’s attention) game, and marketing (people who don’t know about your game can’t buy it).
Itch.io claim to host over 200k free games.
AI makes standing out harder; we're not ready for the sludge era of having seven billion people and ten billion games.
AI makes standing out harder; we're not ready for the sludge era of having seven billion people and ten billion games.
Except that’ll just be a fluke.
The next thing isn’t a never-ending list of AI generated games stored somewhere that we’ll have to sift through somehow.
The next big thing will be ephemeral games, created on the fly based on the context and the preferences expressed, both explicitly and implicitly, by the player’s (or players’) past behaviour (and, for multiplayer games, that of their social graph).
That and perhaps, if we manage to preserve it and keep it alive, an industry of hand-crafted games made by people trying to beat the odds.
The next thing isn’t a never-ending list of AI generated games stored somewhere that we’ll have to sift through somehow.
The next big thing will be ephemeral games, created on the fly based on the context and the preferences expressed, both explicitly and implicitly, by the player’s (or players’) past behaviour (and, for multiplayer games, that of their social graph).
That and perhaps, if we manage to preserve it and keep it alive, an industry of hand-crafted games made by people trying to beat the odds.
I wouldn’t be overly optimistic on what an average player can express as a preference. Besides, as a gamer I want to be surprised and entertained, I don’t want to design rules and game mechanics, iterate over balancing the game and finding consistent art style. Unless you meant like really distant future.
I meant something akin to recommendation engines like TikTok’s, applied to generative models instead of user-generated content.
Start-off with generic, "one size fits all", generated content, using a few parameters such as rough area, time of day, time of the wear, what’s currently popular at that time in that area, what’s popular with the person who created the link if they got in through that, etc.
Then, use the player’s actions (playtime, engagement, sharing, whatever) to infer preferences, and fine-tune the model using both context (time of day, location, other players if multiplayer, etc) and those preferences.
Again, recommendation engine, applied to generative models.
I wouldn’t wager on how distant or close that future will be.
I don’t think it’s doable today, but it’s so obvious that I am certain people are currently working on it. And perhaps some duct tape (sorry, heuristics and expert systems) may be able to somewhat fill the gap in current or near-future models’ capabilities.
But I’m certain (unless copyright laws end up killing such use cases), that it’s the future for both streaming platforms (Netflix, Disney, Spotify & all), content-driven "social" media platforms (TikTok, YouTube, Instagram,…), and video games. Most of them anyway. Some might doubt it can rival with the greatest movies, books, or games, but it doesn’t need to. It just needs to be as good as the cheap filler content these platforms are mostly filled with.
I just hope we’ll find a way to preserve those industries so we can keep getting great new things.
Start-off with generic, "one size fits all", generated content, using a few parameters such as rough area, time of day, time of the wear, what’s currently popular at that time in that area, what’s popular with the person who created the link if they got in through that, etc.
Then, use the player’s actions (playtime, engagement, sharing, whatever) to infer preferences, and fine-tune the model using both context (time of day, location, other players if multiplayer, etc) and those preferences.
Again, recommendation engine, applied to generative models.
I wouldn’t wager on how distant or close that future will be.
I don’t think it’s doable today, but it’s so obvious that I am certain people are currently working on it. And perhaps some duct tape (sorry, heuristics and expert systems) may be able to somewhat fill the gap in current or near-future models’ capabilities.
But I’m certain (unless copyright laws end up killing such use cases), that it’s the future for both streaming platforms (Netflix, Disney, Spotify & all), content-driven "social" media platforms (TikTok, YouTube, Instagram,…), and video games. Most of them anyway. Some might doubt it can rival with the greatest movies, books, or games, but it doesn’t need to. It just needs to be as good as the cheap filler content these platforms are mostly filled with.
I just hope we’ll find a way to preserve those industries so we can keep getting great new things.
I think this will describe a category of games, assuming the tech eventually gets good enough, but I can't imagine this replacing all games. Most people won't want to craft a 10,000 word prompt to layout the kind of game they want to play.
There will still be professional developers who figure out the gameplay mechanics, design style, difficulty balance, progression, and more. Maybe there will be more customization around the edges due to AI, but most players want to grab a ready to go game and get playing.
There will still be professional developers who figure out the gameplay mechanics, design style, difficulty balance, progression, and more. Maybe there will be more customization around the edges due to AI, but most players want to grab a ready to go game and get playing.
Huh. That's close to what I was earning from Mac shareware games 14 years ago, something like £2k over 2 years (not inflation adjusted) if I remember correctly.
(And that's why I stopped making games :P)
(And that's why I stopped making games :P)
I miss the days of Flash.
I used to be able to make a game in a few weeks from my dorm, add Mochi ads, upload it to Newgrounds, and then it would spread to thousands of sites and get played by hundreds of thousands of people.
I used to be able to make a game in a few weeks from my dorm, add Mochi ads, upload it to Newgrounds, and then it would spread to thousands of sites and get played by hundreds of thousands of people.
Yes and no. I've done a lot of reading from people that have done a lot of research about this.
In general, the revenue you make from a game seems to be related to it's production value.
I say no because that isn't marketing. But I say yes because its what makes it easier to market.
In general, the revenue you make from a game seems to be related to it's production value.
I say no because that isn't marketing. But I say yes because its what makes it easier to market.
> Making a game is not hard - marketing a game is.
Literally no one who has ever made a game says this. Making games is so incredibly hard that the phrase “making games is hard” is a running meme!
Literally no one who has ever made a game says this. Making games is so incredibly hard that the phrase “making games is hard” is a running meme!
Perhaps a better formulation would be: "Making games is hard. Marketing games is even harder."
> Making a game is not hard - marketing a game is.
The sentiment here is true of all software and always has been. However, it does not mean that making a game/software isn't hard, it means that marketing it and selling it is a different problem space that people underestimate.
The sentiment here is true of all software and always has been. However, it does not mean that making a game/software isn't hard, it means that marketing it and selling it is a different problem space that people underestimate.
I guess if you mean in the sense that writing a book is just writing words or publishing an app is not hard it makes some sense... But no. Shippable games are incredibly hard to make.
Why do you think publishers invest in new games instead of just hunt for diamonds in the rough?
Why do you think publishers invest in new games instead of just hunt for diamonds in the rough?
The majority of those games are now visual novels / pornography.
Does that actually matter? You see the same sort of embarrassingly low numbers in all artistic mediums. Writer, painter, musician, sculptor, interpretive dancer, comedian, indy game dev - on average none of these pay enough to count as a career and you only hear about stuff on the successful end of the bell curve. Even if you improve your odds by making commercial art. In many cases even the artists considered successful still need a day job.
It matters in the context of the original claim. Median revenue per game has not changed for the genres that are not VN and porn games.
which shows how bad puritan culture is, most people don't care about your puritanism in their room, they want to play a game, see a hot char, and be able to do stuff with them in the game. it's the harsh truth that people seem to get mad at.
Especially now with ever increasing rates of ADHD and other stuff, having an old school genre like an RPG have that type of stuff as a "reward" for beating a level or whatever reinvigorates a genre that felt outdated due to a lack of a proper reward structure.
Fact of the matter is, if you as a game dev want to make money, better lose your inhibitions real fast, because the consumers, want more choices in their game, even if it's just romance for the most part.
Look at stardew valley, I would never have played it if I hadn't found out you could literally date and marry a girl in the game, it just added a layer of reward to the gameplay.
Especially now with ever increasing rates of ADHD and other stuff, having an old school genre like an RPG have that type of stuff as a "reward" for beating a level or whatever reinvigorates a genre that felt outdated due to a lack of a proper reward structure.
Fact of the matter is, if you as a game dev want to make money, better lose your inhibitions real fast, because the consumers, want more choices in their game, even if it's just romance for the most part.
Look at stardew valley, I would never have played it if I hadn't found out you could literally date and marry a girl in the game, it just added a layer of reward to the gameplay.
This is like saying people buy baldur's gate because you can undress your characters or make them date
Consumers don't want pornography in their games, they're completely different products: visual novels are closer to a slideshow than a game
People buy good games and they consume pornography, conflating the two doesn't help us analyse the market.
That said, I agree there is probably more money in pornography than in making indie games (which explains the explosion of the genre)
Consumers don't want pornography in their games, they're completely different products: visual novels are closer to a slideshow than a game
People buy good games and they consume pornography, conflating the two doesn't help us analyse the market.
That said, I agree there is probably more money in pornography than in making indie games (which explains the explosion of the genre)
Again, literally not true because of how big sites that aren't steam for those games are, and how many games are being made and how much they sell on steam.
Yes obviously no one is saying elden ring will have pornography, but there are a lot of games that did sell or would sell more with more romance and to a stronger extent sex stuff in them.
For example take an RPG, like Witcher, Cyberpunk, etc. They skirted the line but it's obvious that people want to get to that point in the in-game relationships, it is what it is, it might offend certain people but fact of the matter is, I don't think the people offended are a majority.
You can always have that content as a DLC and sell it separately and or to block it from countries that don't allow it, but let's not pretend like it doesn't sell.
Yes obviously no one is saying elden ring will have pornography, but there are a lot of games that did sell or would sell more with more romance and to a stronger extent sex stuff in them.
For example take an RPG, like Witcher, Cyberpunk, etc. They skirted the line but it's obvious that people want to get to that point in the in-game relationships, it is what it is, it might offend certain people but fact of the matter is, I don't think the people offended are a majority.
You can always have that content as a DLC and sell it separately and or to block it from countries that don't allow it, but let's not pretend like it doesn't sell.
Sure, but that's digressing from the key point of the grandparent post about the visual novels - that this median number of "game" revenue is meaningless, because steam sales conflate to entirely different markets i.e. proper games and visual novels, and since the latter outnumber the former but each generally get far less sales (as the market demand is so differently structured) the number isn't informative about the revenue of actual games; and if we want to reason about the game market financials, we have to split the porn in a separate category, as it's too different (money- and sales-wise, it's not about prudeness) to be treated as just one of the genres.
>Consumers don't want pornography in their games,
I kinda do. I just want them to be more than a fade to black implication or awkward not even colliding meshes with low res genetalia.
It's a landmine, so no AAA dev is doing any of that, and it's really high tech to do convincingly so few indies can pull it off. That's why 2d works like VN's tend to be the best compromise. a gif loop or a few still frames and a seductive voice can be just enough to sell the scene.
> they're completely different products: visual novels are closer to a slideshow than a game
most western ones. They're "expensive" to westerners, but if you ever buy a decent Japanese VN you can understand the appeal. full voice acting, multiple different scenes and poses, an actual attempt at a narrative (we can argue all day if it's good, but so many western ones have shifted to "haha quirky meta" as a substitute for substance), good music, etc. Some even have some surprisingly addicting gameplay, which makes you question why it's categorized as a "visual novel". But that's marketing for you.
I don't blame you for your opinion, but I assure you it can be done right.
I kinda do. I just want them to be more than a fade to black implication or awkward not even colliding meshes with low res genetalia.
It's a landmine, so no AAA dev is doing any of that, and it's really high tech to do convincingly so few indies can pull it off. That's why 2d works like VN's tend to be the best compromise. a gif loop or a few still frames and a seductive voice can be just enough to sell the scene.
> they're completely different products: visual novels are closer to a slideshow than a game
most western ones. They're "expensive" to westerners, but if you ever buy a decent Japanese VN you can understand the appeal. full voice acting, multiple different scenes and poses, an actual attempt at a narrative (we can argue all day if it's good, but so many western ones have shifted to "haha quirky meta" as a substitute for substance), good music, etc. Some even have some surprisingly addicting gameplay, which makes you question why it's categorized as a "visual novel". But that's marketing for you.
I don't blame you for your opinion, but I assure you it can be done right.
I think a lot of people would absolutely adore a local co op rpg with protagonist romance tbh
Larian very very lightly did this in divinity 1 and I was kind of bummed out that it wasn’t fleshed out playing with my wife.
Larian very very lightly did this in divinity 1 and I was kind of bummed out that it wasn’t fleshed out playing with my wife.
Stardew Valley: too hot for puritans
I didn't mean it was a porn game lol, more like even basic romance can add nuance to a fairly simple game that would probably have sold less to mature audiences without it.
I don’t think that supports your claim that this is what the market wants though. It’s merely that shitty porn games are incredibly easy and cheap to make. They earn much less than other games on average. But they’re still profitable to make.
>I would never have played it if I hadn't found out you could literally date and marry a girl in the game
Interesting reason. But I guess everyone's different.
Personally, I'm not a huge fan of most romances unless it's a central point. They just feel so superfluous because you need to rely on very strong charaterization to make it work. Hard to do if you also need to focus on making a good core game.
Interesting reason. But I guess everyone's different.
Personally, I'm not a huge fan of most romances unless it's a central point. They just feel so superfluous because you need to rely on very strong charaterization to make it work. Hard to do if you also need to focus on making a good core game.
Word spreads fast on good games due to Reddit and Twitch. Look at the success of Balatro and how much marketing that had.
The number of games you listed just highlights how little Steam filters.
The number of games you listed just highlights how little Steam filters.
This is subject to survivorship bias. Balatro is a great game that deserves its success. But it's easy to imagine a universe where it simply never got any traction, anywhere, and died in obscurity. Conversely, this suggests that in our current universe, many games just as great as Balatro have quietly passed without ever getting their 15 minutes of fame.
At the end of the day, much of success just hinges on luck. There is no law of the universe that says that great art must be appreciated.
At the end of the day, much of success just hinges on luck. There is no law of the universe that says that great art must be appreciated.
I immediately knew someone would claim "survivorship bias" but at the same I knew that they would fail to come up with a single counterexample.
The Void Rains Upon Her Heart [1], Fear and Hunger [2] are two examples. You'll look at both of these games and think 'wait, they're actually successful, what's the deal?' and not see the whole story, which is why I linked the charts. Both of these games launched to little to no success, with few (highly positive) reviews. What changed is that deep into their lifespan (~3-4 years after release), a popular youtuber did a video on the game, and as a result it suddenly blew up in popularity and carried that momentum forward. You can in fact see the exact point on the charts where that occurred.
There are a lot of games exactly like that, but haven't had the person with the viewerbase to boost them up. Nor will they ever.
[1] https://steamdb.info/app/790060/charts/
[2] https://steamdb.info/app/1002300/charts/
There are a lot of games exactly like that, but haven't had the person with the viewerbase to boost them up. Nor will they ever.
[1] https://steamdb.info/app/790060/charts/
[2] https://steamdb.info/app/1002300/charts/
Thanks for giving these interesting examples.
I hope that this doesn't come across as moving the goalposts, but for me it's a given that popular Youtubers can multiply the success of a game, and that this depends to a large extent on luck. For me, the crux of the matter in discussions about game development profitability and survivorship bias is not how much luck influences the maximum possible success of a game.
For me the relevant question is: If you develop a carefully crafted, fun game based on a game concept you have reason to believe will have a decently sized target audience, will you make enough money for a living with some kind of predictability, or does even this depend on luck?
Now when looking at The Void Rains Upon Her Heart, I'd like to know the sales figures before the jump in popularity. You can filter Steam reviews to the period before the game's popularity surged in June 2023. At that time, there were 561 reviews (or 338 reviews for copies sold via Steam). Using the common sales estimation trick of multiplying the number of reviews with 50, we get approximately 28,000 (or 17,000) owners before June 2023. I think the price fluctuated between $9.99 and $6.99. Assuming that after Steam's 30% cut and taxes there are about $3 left on average for each sold copy, then 3 * 25,000 = $75,000. According to the game's credits on MobyGames it was made by a single person. Depending on how long he took, maybe it is reasonable to assume that the game was en route to profitability anyway?
I hope that this doesn't come across as moving the goalposts, but for me it's a given that popular Youtubers can multiply the success of a game, and that this depends to a large extent on luck. For me, the crux of the matter in discussions about game development profitability and survivorship bias is not how much luck influences the maximum possible success of a game.
For me the relevant question is: If you develop a carefully crafted, fun game based on a game concept you have reason to believe will have a decently sized target audience, will you make enough money for a living with some kind of predictability, or does even this depend on luck?
Now when looking at The Void Rains Upon Her Heart, I'd like to know the sales figures before the jump in popularity. You can filter Steam reviews to the period before the game's popularity surged in June 2023. At that time, there were 561 reviews (or 338 reviews for copies sold via Steam). Using the common sales estimation trick of multiplying the number of reviews with 50, we get approximately 28,000 (or 17,000) owners before June 2023. I think the price fluctuated between $9.99 and $6.99. Assuming that after Steam's 30% cut and taxes there are about $3 left on average for each sold copy, then 3 * 25,000 = $75,000. According to the game's credits on MobyGames it was made by a single person. Depending on how long he took, maybe it is reasonable to assume that the game was en route to profitability anyway?
>There are a lot of games exactly like that, but haven't had the person with the viewerbase to boost them up. Nor will they ever.
Such as? Just name one so we can all know. This is your time to help them out no matter how little and there are "a lot" apparently so it shouldn't be hard.
Such as? Just name one so we can all know. This is your time to help them out no matter how little and there are "a lot" apparently so it shouldn't be hard.
Hex of Steel. Turn based hex wargame, very niche but with a fairly large worldwide community into such games. Only the solo developer is doing plays on youtube and twitch. The game has been seeing a slow upward sales trend as the niche wargame community realizes how good it is. If you've played SSI and Avalon Hill hex games as a kid you should get this.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1240630/Hex_of_Steel/
https://steamdb.info/app/1240630/charts/#max
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1240630/Hex_of_Steel/
https://steamdb.info/app/1240630/charts/#max
That is an indie success, almost 400 reviews for that price is good for a solo developer, he can live well on that as long as he continues to create and sell content for.
Failures are games with 50 or less reviews or a bit more if they have much lower price points, there aren't many gems at that level. Note that a large majority of indie game developers don't live in USA, indie gaming isn't dominated by American developers unlike the regular software industry.
Failures are games with 50 or less reviews or a bit more if they have much lower price points, there aren't many gems at that level. Note that a large majority of indie game developers don't live in USA, indie gaming isn't dominated by American developers unlike the regular software industry.
Hardcore games are much more likely to convert plays to reviews. Many of the units would have shifted during the 50% sales.
The game is multiplayer which is a whole other layer of complexity.
Based on my experience in this market, I really doubt the author is happy with the outcome as anything other than a stepping stone to something more sustainable.
I think you're an order of magnitude too low setting the bar at 50 for professional developers where this is their full time job - even outside of the US.
The game is multiplayer which is a whole other layer of complexity.
Based on my experience in this market, I really doubt the author is happy with the outcome as anything other than a stepping stone to something more sustainable.
I think you're an order of magnitude too low setting the bar at 50 for professional developers where this is their full time job - even outside of the US.
Shout out to All Day Dying. 76 reviews. Also both of Colorgrave's games. One way to look for interesting stuff is SteamDB > 50 reviews and over 80%. For example Wild Dogs, Downpurr and Vetrix look cool.
I mean I already gave you two examples, so here's [1] [2] [3] [4] a few examples of games that haven't had the chance to become popular.
[1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/1727180/NeverAwake/
[2] https://store.steampowered.com/app/1372210/Dap/
[3] https://store.steampowered.com/app/1400910/Soundodger_2/
[4] https://store.steampowered.com/app/1084220/Cavity_Busters/
[1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/1727180/NeverAwake/
[2] https://store.steampowered.com/app/1372210/Dap/
[3] https://store.steampowered.com/app/1400910/Soundodger_2/
[4] https://store.steampowered.com/app/1084220/Cavity_Busters/
Survivorship bias is the norm in any system with high variance and a low success rate. I would say that arguing against the phenomenon is by far the more out there position.
A analgous statement like, "There are actors with world class talent who never became successful" is one that pretty much everyone would intuitively agree with, outside of maybe an internet agrument. Whether or not I can come up with some talented obscure actors on the fly doesn't disprove the statement.
A analgous statement like, "There are actors with world class talent who never became successful" is one that pretty much everyone would intuitively agree with, outside of maybe an internet agrument. Whether or not I can come up with some talented obscure actors on the fly doesn't disprove the statement.
God exists. I can't show you God. But believe me God definitely exists.
Also low success rate comes from the fact that most of these games are asset flips. But we can conveniently ignore that fact so we can believe in the imaginary.
Also low success rate comes from the fact that most of these games are asset flips. But we can conveniently ignore that fact so we can believe in the imaginary.
because you'd also counter with "well that's an exception", or find some other reason it "deserved to fail" while propping up a game jam level game as "deserving to succeed". Yeah, conversation about game metrics without proper metrics and unaligned definitions of "success" is a bit of a fool's errand on social meida.
No disrespect to Balarto, but you just know that if it sold 1k copies, people on Reddit would tear it apart with the usual armchair criticism.
> this looks like a free mobile game > why are you selling a game about gambling? don't use poker cards > use a real engine like Unity/Unreal > rougelites AND card games are oversaturated, pick a better genre
Seen the same things over and over again for years. There's a huge "rule of cool" effect and popularity bias influencing such opinions that suddenly shift when a game is "a success".
>God exists. I can't show you God. But believe me God definitely exists.
I wouldn't call Gabe newell "God", but I guess others would.
But sure, you're free to message him, and he can definitely defy all ethics to show you the sales figures for every game on steam just so you can see how little the average indie game earns. I believe all of that is real. Not feasible, but not outside the realms of reality.
No disrespect to Balarto, but you just know that if it sold 1k copies, people on Reddit would tear it apart with the usual armchair criticism.
> this looks like a free mobile game > why are you selling a game about gambling? don't use poker cards > use a real engine like Unity/Unreal > rougelites AND card games are oversaturated, pick a better genre
Seen the same things over and over again for years. There's a huge "rule of cool" effect and popularity bias influencing such opinions that suddenly shift when a game is "a success".
>God exists. I can't show you God. But believe me God definitely exists.
I wouldn't call Gabe newell "God", but I guess others would.
But sure, you're free to message him, and he can definitely defy all ethics to show you the sales figures for every game on steam just so you can see how little the average indie game earns. I believe all of that is real. Not feasible, but not outside the realms of reality.
That's sort of the point of survivorship bias. Name one unsuccessful would-be entrepreneur. It's hard because chances are, anyone that's recognizable was successful in some way.
For games, I'll give an example: Aegis Defenders. Great game, no traction.
For games, I'll give an example: Aegis Defenders. Great game, no traction.
Then it seems that "survivorship bias" is some kind of unfalsifiable and self-fulfilling belief.
Secondly, these sorts of discussions usually don't define any concrete amount of success that a game is supposed to achieve. What is "no traction" supposed to mean? Aegis Defenders has 1,656 reviews at the moment. There's the assumption floating about that you can roughly multiply this by 50 to get the number of owners, which would turn out to about 80,000. The price point is fluctuating between $19.99 and $4.99. Will it net the developer/publisher less money over its lifetime than its development cost?
In any case, I think that one of the biggest factors is not merely the game's quality, but whether there are a lot of players hungry for a game's specific concept and genre. Making an "excellent game" in an oversaturated genre, or in a genre where games require some network effect to take off (any multiplayer game), is much more risky. Don't just make something good; make something that a lot of people want even when the product is less than perfect.
EDIT: VG Insights estimates $770k gross revenue. That's just for the Steam version. The game was also published on PlayStation 4 and Switch. The developer team seems to have been small.
Based on your reply to the sibling comment, you're just pointing out the "contrast" to the success of Balatro? I honestly don't get the point. I don't think the particular amount of success that break-out hits achieve matters to the discussion. If Balatro had a million reviews, would you expect Aegis Defenders to also have a lot more reviews and sales? I think this isn't relevant to the question whether excellent games will succeed (for me this means: enable the developers to make a good living) with some predictability or whether it's due to luck, and whether there exist a lot of excellent but unknown games.
Secondly, these sorts of discussions usually don't define any concrete amount of success that a game is supposed to achieve. What is "no traction" supposed to mean? Aegis Defenders has 1,656 reviews at the moment. There's the assumption floating about that you can roughly multiply this by 50 to get the number of owners, which would turn out to about 80,000. The price point is fluctuating between $19.99 and $4.99. Will it net the developer/publisher less money over its lifetime than its development cost?
In any case, I think that one of the biggest factors is not merely the game's quality, but whether there are a lot of players hungry for a game's specific concept and genre. Making an "excellent game" in an oversaturated genre, or in a genre where games require some network effect to take off (any multiplayer game), is much more risky. Don't just make something good; make something that a lot of people want even when the product is less than perfect.
EDIT: VG Insights estimates $770k gross revenue. That's just for the Steam version. The game was also published on PlayStation 4 and Switch. The developer team seems to have been small.
Based on your reply to the sibling comment, you're just pointing out the "contrast" to the success of Balatro? I honestly don't get the point. I don't think the particular amount of success that break-out hits achieve matters to the discussion. If Balatro had a million reviews, would you expect Aegis Defenders to also have a lot more reviews and sales? I think this isn't relevant to the question whether excellent games will succeed (for me this means: enable the developers to make a good living) with some predictability or whether it's due to luck, and whether there exist a lot of excellent but unknown games.
>Then it seems that "survivorship bias" is some kind of unfalsifiable and self-fulfilling belief.
It's very falsifiable. Just not by us, as we have no acccess to the sales data, nor enough public sales points to make a proper statistical analysis. The best ones out there are either based on estimations (especially reviews to sales ratios) or non-public data you pay the NPD or someone similar thousands to access (and obviously you're not allowed to share that data). So someone truly curious can pay a lot of money to get an answer.
It's very falsifiable. Just not by us, as we have no acccess to the sales data, nor enough public sales points to make a proper statistical analysis. The best ones out there are either based on estimations (especially reviews to sales ratios) or non-public data you pay the NPD or someone similar thousands to access (and obviously you're not allowed to share that data). So someone truly curious can pay a lot of money to get an answer.
[deleted]
>Aegis Defenders
7/10 on Steam and Metacritic. Reviewed by major publishers. Over 100 reviews.
Not sure what you mean by "no traction". But I'm sure it did fantastic in some alternate universe because Sean Carroll.
7/10 on Steam and Metacritic. Reviewed by major publishers. Over 100 reviews.
Not sure what you mean by "no traction". But I'm sure it did fantastic in some alternate universe because Sean Carroll.
But we're in this universe.
Based on the number of years it took to develop the game, it wouldn't be considered one that achieved "15 minutes of fame". 100 reviews is quite a far cry from your example of Balatro with 33k. I'm not sure where you plan to draw the line on "success", but I think this is a broadly reasonable contrast.
Based on the number of years it took to develop the game, it wouldn't be considered one that achieved "15 minutes of fame". 100 reviews is quite a far cry from your example of Balatro with 33k. I'm not sure where you plan to draw the line on "success", but I think this is a broadly reasonable contrast.
3 of my steam friends have already purchased it. One of them has it on wishlist.
I only have 40 steam friends.
I only have 40 steam friends.
I own this game too, got it probably from a bundle-sale, so I didn't really bought it on purpose for the game itself. It also seems to haven been given away for free some years ago.
Vampire Survivors and Among Us were both out for years until they got traction, IIRC. That could have easily continued forever for both of them.
"Word spreading fast" means there is marketing going on. Thats kind of the genius of marketing to reddit/youtube/twitch as a "normal guy dev", it doesn't feel like marketing, but thats why its so powerful (see social media influencers). You could be even more cynical and look into guerilla marketing tactics they might use like fake views and upvotes/likes.
And again, survivorship bias.
And again, survivorship bias.
You are trying hard to be literal for the sake of sounding smart. It was obvious by marketing we meant paid. Everyone else caught on.
By definition you can't pinpoint (but I think it's a fair assumption) the many great games that don't gain traction on Reddit and Twitch, and silently sink without notice. You've just picked a single anecdote.
And you picked none.
What exactly do you mean? Reddit and Twitch are marketing-channels too. Marketing does not mean someone has to pay for it, just that people are talking about it and are aware of it.
[deleted]
I find it sad that this post is dominating this conversation.
This theme of comment comes up for sooo many types of posts, and it is unfortunate that it usually dominates the conversation. If Facebook or Airbnb-type companies share a new JavaScript lib, the comment sections will be about how Facebook is evil, or an anecdote about someone's horrible Airbnb experience when they cheaped out in Paris.
If my startup worked hard on something cool, got it on the front page of HN, and the top thread is: you have no chance.
I mean it's malicious
I mean it's malicious
What people fail to understand is you have to be smart about the size of the target market and what you're up against while simultaneously being willing to step into the arena.
You get no credit for sitting on the sidelines and whining about how hard it is out there. And it shouldn't be regarded as an especially intellectual point to state facts like the size of the market or the relative success the average game makes.
We're not entitled to any sort of success of the things we make. All we can do is make the best shots we can and keep at it.
You get no credit for sitting on the sidelines and whining about how hard it is out there. And it shouldn't be regarded as an especially intellectual point to state facts like the size of the market or the relative success the average game makes.
We're not entitled to any sort of success of the things we make. All we can do is make the best shots we can and keep at it.
Don't want to be rude, but most people here probably aren't game devs. So bikeshedding taking over is inevitable.
The act of marketing a game isn't separate from making the game unless your ubisoft and have 3k people working on your game.
Maybe it's not about marketing the game, but marketing the application that allows you to make your own games.
To be able to make a bunch of games easily that just you and your friends can enjoy without having to code seems like a good use case.
To be able to make a bunch of games easily that just you and your friends can enjoy without having to code seems like a good use case.
When in a gold rush, sell shovels.
You're right, devs aren't as picky with tools as gamers are with games. As long as it works and is proven to save time, it'll sell. But the downside is that you're audience is much less.
You're right, devs aren't as picky with tools as gamers are with games. As long as it works and is proven to save time, it'll sell. But the downside is that you're audience is much less.
Is this on topic?
I think this would have more chances of success if it focused on just one aspect of game creation, instead of trying to solve engine development, gameplay development and content development all at once.
I.e. if an programmer wants to create a game, then getting the artwork in a consistent style is a big problem, and solving that alone (i.e. as a plugin for Unity or Unreal or Godot or whatever) would be both powerful and difficult.
Conversely, if someone without programming skills wants to create a game, then it would be best to focus solely on the AI assistance for gameplay design with a fixed, well-known engine and an integrated well-populated market for content, and assume that they will get the content packs there, leaving that problem out of your scope but making it easy to integrate the AI-generated logic with the pre-made content packs.
I.e. if an programmer wants to create a game, then getting the artwork in a consistent style is a big problem, and solving that alone (i.e. as a plugin for Unity or Unreal or Godot or whatever) would be both powerful and difficult.
Conversely, if someone without programming skills wants to create a game, then it would be best to focus solely on the AI assistance for gameplay design with a fixed, well-known engine and an integrated well-populated market for content, and assume that they will get the content packs there, leaving that problem out of your scope but making it easy to integrate the AI-generated logic with the pre-made content packs.
They mention using a service called Meshy for generating models, and I noticed that they have a free plan where the generated assets have a "license" of CC-BY-4.0[1]. Any lawyers in here that can comment on that? They're claiming copyright ownership over models generated from customer prompts, and I doubt they trained their model exclusively on stuff they own/licensed.
1: https://www.meshy.ai/pricing
1: https://www.meshy.ai/pricing
https://app.meshy.ai/preview?web=018f8ef6-e562-7e19-b0d7-5f6...
https://app.meshy.ai/preview?web=018f4d04-6a56-701e-9abc-62a...
IANAL, but I think Blizzard and Marvel would beg to differ that these are kosher for commercial use.
They're also very poor quality models but that's a separate issue.
https://app.meshy.ai/preview?web=018f4d04-6a56-701e-9abc-62a...
IANAL, but I think Blizzard and Marvel would beg to differ that these are kosher for commercial use.
They're also very poor quality models but that's a separate issue.
[deleted]
"They're claiming copyright...." Who is "they" in this sentence, the company from the OP or Meshy? I'm guessing the company from the OP?
I know this is a small team and experimenting, but in my mind, this engine is already limiting the potential of games it can output.
I don’t know, but Unity is already pretty much point and click game building. I spent a few weeks building a card game with it during lockdown, and without a lot of code, I had an ugly, and basic, but totally playable game.
The hardest part to a game is building something fun yes, but it also has to meet some level of quality bar and work on any platform.
I don’t know, but Unity is already pretty much point and click game building. I spent a few weeks building a card game with it during lockdown, and without a lot of code, I had an ugly, and basic, but totally playable game.
The hardest part to a game is building something fun yes, but it also has to meet some level of quality bar and work on any platform.
Unless your needs are extremely specific and necessitate replacing most of the engine, Unity is probably not limiting your capabilities. The default packages are extensive and allow for basic game-making without writing that much actual code, but large developers will almost certainly swap default Unity components for their own for parts that need them, while the engine manages other parts like sound and input handling, multi-platform deployment and so on.
Unity is by far the most used engine in the world and tons of extremely different games were made with it. Subnautica, Rimworld, Hollow Knight, Beat Saber, the Ori games, Disco Elysium - none of them seemed to face any issues with being made in Unity. The "Unity games are bad" stereotype annoys me - it's bound to have a bunch of shovelware made on it with how many resources there are for learning it (and Unity being free), but it's popular for a reason.
Unity is by far the most used engine in the world and tons of extremely different games were made with it. Subnautica, Rimworld, Hollow Knight, Beat Saber, the Ori games, Disco Elysium - none of them seemed to face any issues with being made in Unity. The "Unity games are bad" stereotype annoys me - it's bound to have a bunch of shovelware made on it with how many resources there are for learning it (and Unity being free), but it's popular for a reason.
>none of them seemed to face any issues with being made in Unity.
I'm sure they did. But I wager there is no such thing as "smooth development". Every engine has its quirks, every team has its odd dynamics and clashes.
engines are there to make development smoother, not smooth.
>it's bound to have a bunch of shovelware made on it with how many resources there are for learning it (and Unity being free), but it's popular for a reason.
To be fair, that one is more on Unity. You had to pay to remove the splashscreen, so that meant low effort titles would have "MADE WITH UNITY" front and center, where higher budget titles could remove the logo. It was great for awareness, but it completely reversed the perception of the engine quality as a result.
(disclaimer: I used to work at unity)
I'm sure they did. But I wager there is no such thing as "smooth development". Every engine has its quirks, every team has its odd dynamics and clashes.
engines are there to make development smoother, not smooth.
>it's bound to have a bunch of shovelware made on it with how many resources there are for learning it (and Unity being free), but it's popular for a reason.
To be fair, that one is more on Unity. You had to pay to remove the splashscreen, so that meant low effort titles would have "MADE WITH UNITY" front and center, where higher budget titles could remove the logo. It was great for awareness, but it completely reversed the perception of the engine quality as a result.
(disclaimer: I used to work at unity)
> I'm sure they did. But I wager there is no such thing as "smooth development". Every engine has its quirks, every team has its odd dynamics and clashes.
That's not really what I wanted to convey. I'm not saying that their development process became spotless as a result of using Unity, but that these developers don't appear to be constrained by the engine in this extreme fashion like what the top commenter was suggesting - they successfully used it to make wildly different (and sometimes boundary-pushing) products.
> You had to pay to remove the splashscreen, so that meant low effort titles would have "MADE WITH UNITY" front and center, where higher budget titles could remove the logo.
Yeah, I agree with this. Almost all people have no idea what engine any given game runs on (if any), and professional developers will only put that in the credits, if at all. Admittedly, I can't think of any better ways of introducing some limitation for free users that wouldn't get overbearing - interfering with gameplay or other interactive stuff is probably a no-no, so a splash screen is one of the few viable options.
That's not really what I wanted to convey. I'm not saying that their development process became spotless as a result of using Unity, but that these developers don't appear to be constrained by the engine in this extreme fashion like what the top commenter was suggesting - they successfully used it to make wildly different (and sometimes boundary-pushing) products.
> You had to pay to remove the splashscreen, so that meant low effort titles would have "MADE WITH UNITY" front and center, where higher budget titles could remove the logo.
Yeah, I agree with this. Almost all people have no idea what engine any given game runs on (if any), and professional developers will only put that in the credits, if at all. Admittedly, I can't think of any better ways of introducing some limitation for free users that wouldn't get overbearing - interfering with gameplay or other interactive stuff is probably a no-no, so a splash screen is one of the few viable options.
I would bet that more than 0% of that perception, at least from developers, comes from how _fucking awful_ the Unity editor is. It's one of the worst pieces of software I've ever used. The games you can make with Unity are absolutely very impressive, but the tools Unity provides are just awful, and give a lot of newbie developers the perception that Unity is a hacked together pile of garbage (which...it is, but so are all game engines). Godot, Unreal, and GameMaker are, I would say, the main competitors to Unity in the Indie space, and all three of them have much higher quality editors than Unity's.
The unreal engine editor is way worse than unity though, unreal doesn't even let you move around files without a massive headache, while in unity moving files is trivial and almost never causes issues. Not to mention that C++ in unreal is horrible to work with and blueprints lacks a lot of features, unity C# is far superior to both for productivity.
If your game doesn't do anything complicated so you don't need to code a lot, then sure unreal could work since by far the biggest problem is iterating on code for the different components and actors. Adding or removing or renaming fields or refactoring folder structure and then go and update them in the blueprints takes forever while in unity that is really easy.
If your game doesn't do anything complicated so you don't need to code a lot, then sure unreal could work since by far the biggest problem is iterating on code for the different components and actors. Adding or removing or renaming fields or refactoring folder structure and then go and update them in the blueprints takes forever while in unity that is really easy.
> If I type “Create an Orc,” then I don’t want to be asked 20 follow-up questions to exactly specify the nature of the Orc; I just want it to take a guess.
This is the exact point where everything falls apart. Good games have simple rules that combine in robust ways to allow for varied expression.
Each roll of the dice here is baking in assumptions that will not play nice with the last unit, or the next one.
This is the exact point where everything falls apart. Good games have simple rules that combine in robust ways to allow for varied expression.
Each roll of the dice here is baking in assumptions that will not play nice with the last unit, or the next one.
> I don't want to be asked 20 follow up questions to exactly specify the nature of the Orc
This is the tell that these folks don't know enough about game design to be opining so strongly on "the future of AI driven game development". Game development is almost exclusively about the 20 follow up questions. Any moron can say "I want minecraft but in space with guns", but making that and, more importantly, making it feel good, are where all the juice lies in games. The details are the most important part, which is why I think all these attempts to put AI into the game development flow are ill advised at best. Copilot is okay at helping out with game code, but less so than for normal e.g. REST API or UI code, because game code tends to follow rules that don't exist anywhere else and every game is architected completely differently. Games are just...different.
This is the tell that these folks don't know enough about game design to be opining so strongly on "the future of AI driven game development". Game development is almost exclusively about the 20 follow up questions. Any moron can say "I want minecraft but in space with guns", but making that and, more importantly, making it feel good, are where all the juice lies in games. The details are the most important part, which is why I think all these attempts to put AI into the game development flow are ill advised at best. Copilot is okay at helping out with game code, but less so than for normal e.g. REST API or UI code, because game code tends to follow rules that don't exist anywhere else and every game is architected completely differently. Games are just...different.
I promise that we've made games of our own in the past and that we're not coming at this completely unaware :-)
Our thinking is that you can lay a base quickly, and then iterate on that to work on the details of your game. We want to avoid the analysis paralysis that comes from having to make all of the decisions upfront; you can instead rely on the AI's "common sense understanding" of the world [0] to get started, and then refine it to your desired vision.
Our initial "engine" is highly-constrained with a specific ontology and predefined behaviours. That will strongly restrict what can be built with it. That's what makes it tractable to use with today's AI; as we develop better techniques and the backing models get better, we hope to cover more and more of the game design space.
[0]: Yes, this is a contentious concept, but in practice it has a pretty good idea of what an orc is :-)
Our thinking is that you can lay a base quickly, and then iterate on that to work on the details of your game. We want to avoid the analysis paralysis that comes from having to make all of the decisions upfront; you can instead rely on the AI's "common sense understanding" of the world [0] to get started, and then refine it to your desired vision.
Our initial "engine" is highly-constrained with a specific ontology and predefined behaviours. That will strongly restrict what can be built with it. That's what makes it tractable to use with today's AI; as we develop better techniques and the backing models get better, we hope to cover more and more of the game design space.
[0]: Yes, this is a contentious concept, but in practice it has a pretty good idea of what an orc is :-)
>Our thinking is that you can lay a base quickly, and then iterate on that to work on the details of your game
I'm not an AI engineer, but my understanding with current AI advances is that it is very good at "laying a base" and very bad at "iterate on that". Many models are essentially throw out 90% of the previous iteration and grabbing something else for the next prompt.
I am a dev, and usually it isn't as hard to "lay a base", from a technical perspective. There's plenty of mock assets to work with, and then later on we can use a early design mesh to fine tune. I don't necessarily need an "orc" to work out the posing and animations for a game unless I'm doing facial animations.
But hey, there's 2000 dev pipelines for every 1000 studios, so this isn't to discredit you. Just hoping to give another perspective on how some approach game dev.
I'm not an AI engineer, but my understanding with current AI advances is that it is very good at "laying a base" and very bad at "iterate on that". Many models are essentially throw out 90% of the previous iteration and grabbing something else for the next prompt.
I am a dev, and usually it isn't as hard to "lay a base", from a technical perspective. There's plenty of mock assets to work with, and then later on we can use a early design mesh to fine tune. I don't necessarily need an "orc" to work out the posing and animations for a game unless I'm doing facial animations.
But hey, there's 2000 dev pipelines for every 1000 studios, so this isn't to discredit you. Just hoping to give another perspective on how some approach game dev.
(I'm the in-house AI engineer at Braindump, but I come from a gamedev background.)
Yes, we agree that doesn't scale. Braindump's designed to let you change those assumptions at any time; the AI works over the state of the entire game (for the most part), so it can change past assumptions to better meet the user's current requirements.
Yes, we agree that doesn't scale. Braindump's designed to let you change those assumptions at any time; the AI works over the state of the entire game (for the most part), so it can change past assumptions to better meet the user's current requirements.
(I'm the in-house AI engineer at Braindump.)
We experimented with a few different form factors, including integrating into existing game engines, before taking this path. Our rationale was that we wanted to go beyond the existing engine integrations (i.e. Unity already has an AI assistant) and reimagine the entire game creation experience with AI and multiplayer in mind.
Our platform's entirely on the web, so you can link your current game/game creation session to someone else and have them join you. This works on most modern browser, making it easy to build and share games.
That being said, you're not wrong that the current scope of games is limited. That's OK with us for now - we'd like to focus on getting the core experience as good as possible with the current scope and then expand outwards, instead of trying to build something that attempts to solve everything and works for nothing.
We experimented with a few different form factors, including integrating into existing game engines, before taking this path. Our rationale was that we wanted to go beyond the existing engine integrations (i.e. Unity already has an AI assistant) and reimagine the entire game creation experience with AI and multiplayer in mind.
Our platform's entirely on the web, so you can link your current game/game creation session to someone else and have them join you. This works on most modern browser, making it easy to build and share games.
That being said, you're not wrong that the current scope of games is limited. That's OK with us for now - we'd like to focus on getting the core experience as good as possible with the current scope and then expand outwards, instead of trying to build something that attempts to solve everything and works for nothing.
> Our rationale was that we wanted to go beyond the existing engine integrations (i.e. Unity already has an AI assistant) and reimagine the entire game creation experience with AI and multiplayer in mind.
How does that pan out?
There's hundreds of millions of dollars of product development in Unity and Unreal specifically for game design. How will you ever catch up?
Godot got $8m, for the people who authored it, what does it have to show for it? It seems like hopelessly little money.
Maybe you said to the investors, "You don't want to be locked in" or whatever. The browser still an engine. Mobile Safari and Chrome are also moving targets. You're still playing in someone else's back yard. There are no games that are designed to be played in Mobile Safari and also make money. I mean the browser also has AI assistants.
Obviously I want you to succeed but this sounds more like a good story than a good strategy. It doesn't hold up to an ounce of scrutiny. Right now it sounds like it's not interesting to develop the toolset for Unity because they are already doing it.
How does that pan out?
There's hundreds of millions of dollars of product development in Unity and Unreal specifically for game design. How will you ever catch up?
Godot got $8m, for the people who authored it, what does it have to show for it? It seems like hopelessly little money.
Maybe you said to the investors, "You don't want to be locked in" or whatever. The browser still an engine. Mobile Safari and Chrome are also moving targets. You're still playing in someone else's back yard. There are no games that are designed to be played in Mobile Safari and also make money. I mean the browser also has AI assistants.
Obviously I want you to succeed but this sounds more like a good story than a good strategy. It doesn't hold up to an ounce of scrutiny. Right now it sounds like it's not interesting to develop the toolset for Unity because they are already doing it.
Going beyond could mean one of several things, only one of which is playing catch-up with a decade-plus game engine.
How will you ensure the content created for a game is free from copyright violations? Or is that up to the user to determine?
The demo shows making a game with unlicensed Star Wars IP, I don't think they care about copyright violations.
We haven't looked into exactly how this will be handled yet, but I believe this would fall under the same laws and restrictions as any other online platform (YouTube, TikTok etc.), it's just that the production tools are different.
That seems like a ridiculous stance. The safe harbor laws that those platforms depend on are for user-generated content. Here it's your platform that's generating the infringing content. (And obviously it's not by accident, you're practically reveling in it with your choice of demo.)
Please look into it. You are already breaking Disney's copyright just with this post, and if you ever hope this product Disney's lawyers would have a very easy case here.
Yea you might want to update your blog post with some original and creatively inspired new content. Demoing Star Wars is just asking to be picked apart by people.
[deleted]
> Demoing Star Wars is just asking to be picked apart by people.
I am confused as to why you think think this is a bad thing.
That's likely the best way to go viral and get traction, to have a bunch of people being upset about this tool.
I am confused as to why you think think this is a bad thing.
That's likely the best way to go viral and get traction, to have a bunch of people being upset about this tool.
Getting people upset is one thing, getting Disney upset is another. They don't mess around with people appropriating their IP.
> getting Disney upset is another. They don't mess around with people appropriating their IP.
I am not sure why everyone repeats this line so confidently when it is so clearly wrong.
Have you been on the internet? Do you understand how common copyright infringement is?
Especially related to Star Wars? Its ubiquitous. Its everywhere. People make fan art of star wars. They write stories. They make fan games. They make youtube videos.
All of that is mostly illegal copyright infringement and everyone is doing it, and basically nobody ever gets in trouble for that.
I am not saying that there isn't a line. There clearly is. You couldn't just release your own star wars movie in theatres, or sell bootleg star wars merch in every walmart. (You could sell infringing merch on etsy, and mostly get away with it though!)
But the bar that you have to go above to actually get in trouble for infringement is extremely high. And a random demo of a bad tie fighter game just doesn't pass it.
I am not sure why everyone repeats this line so confidently when it is so clearly wrong.
Have you been on the internet? Do you understand how common copyright infringement is?
Especially related to Star Wars? Its ubiquitous. Its everywhere. People make fan art of star wars. They write stories. They make fan games. They make youtube videos.
All of that is mostly illegal copyright infringement and everyone is doing it, and basically nobody ever gets in trouble for that.
I am not saying that there isn't a line. There clearly is. You couldn't just release your own star wars movie in theatres, or sell bootleg star wars merch in every walmart. (You could sell infringing merch on etsy, and mostly get away with it though!)
But the bar that you have to go above to actually get in trouble for infringement is extremely high. And a random demo of a bad tie fighter game just doesn't pass it.
> They make fan games.
This is the subject at hand. Got any examples?
This is the subject at hand. Got any examples?
Absolutely. That is a great question, and I am glad that you asked.
I have lots of examples.
Here you go:
https://www.google.com/search?q=play+star+wars+fan+game+onli...
https://www.google.com/search?q=star+wars+fan+mod
https://www.google.com/search?q=star+wars+conversion+mods
Just go to those links, and then at those links start clicking at random anywhere on the page. I'm sure you'll find some.
I have lots of examples.
Here you go:
https://www.google.com/search?q=play+star+wars+fan+game+onli...
https://www.google.com/search?q=star+wars+fan+mod
https://www.google.com/search?q=star+wars+conversion+mods
Just go to those links, and then at those links start clicking at random anywhere on the page. I'm sure you'll find some.
That's about what I'd expected: Mods and flash-tier free web games.
It gets to the core of my concern: OpenAI API calls aint cheap, and Disney has not made a habit of letting others profit from their IP.
It gets to the core of my concern: OpenAI API calls aint cheap, and Disney has not made a habit of letting others profit from their IP.
[deleted]
> We haven't looked into exactly how this will be handled yet
That's how we know you're the real deal! Move fast and break things, laws and such are mere details. Capture the market first, work around problems later.
That's how we know you're the real deal! Move fast and break things, laws and such are mere details. Capture the market first, work around problems later.
This is an unacceptably lazy and reckless comment: your very first example blatantly plagiarized from Star Wars. You even called the bombs "BB-8 bombs" to make them look like the robot! It's just a dumb demo, but it means your product has no safeguards against copyright infringement, and you don't even care.
I suspect you might say "users of our technology assume full responsibility for copyright violations" or whatever, but what are your customers supposed to do if your product plagiarizes something more obscure than Star Wars? They can't be expected to check every generative AI output against every IP. You and your team need to take responsibility for the copyright problems your tool is guaranteed to create as currently implemented.
I really hate this "better to seek forgiveness" approach to copyright OpenAI has encouraged.
I suspect you might say "users of our technology assume full responsibility for copyright violations" or whatever, but what are your customers supposed to do if your product plagiarizes something more obscure than Star Wars? They can't be expected to check every generative AI output against every IP. You and your team need to take responsibility for the copyright problems your tool is guaranteed to create as currently implemented.
I really hate this "better to seek forgiveness" approach to copyright OpenAI has encouraged.
[deleted]
Not a bad idea. But what's next?
For example, I am indeed interested, but will anyone really play the game I make with AI?
If I spend the same time watching YouTube and learning Godot or Unity, will it be more likely to make games and even make money, and I can also use Meshy to produce my assets. Unity also has Muse (though it's hard to use).
If the games I make don’t make money, what is your business model?
For example, I am indeed interested, but will anyone really play the game I make with AI?
If I spend the same time watching YouTube and learning Godot or Unity, will it be more likely to make games and even make money, and I can also use Meshy to produce my assets. Unity also has Muse (though it's hard to use).
If the games I make don’t make money, what is your business model?
Hi HN. We want to make it possible for anyone to build games without first learning to code or make art, by giving them access to an “AI game studio”. It’s early days, but here’s what we’ve learned so far building this product. Would love to hear what everyone thinks, and see if we can find some alpha testers for this!
Having done a couple indie games myself over the years, I think you're addressing many of the pain points of building such a game. However the REAL problem as an indie gamer is getting a marketing/get-the-word-out campaign such that said game produces enough income to cover the cost of making it.
Will you be adding a "marketing" add-on to this to help developers actually get their games noticed and played?
Will you be adding a "marketing" add-on to this to help developers actually get their games noticed and played?
So far we've focused 100% on the creation side of things, but we're absolutely interested in helping people on the marketing side too.
Something we've discussed here is; since it's an online platform, could it be possible for creators to form communities around their games as they are being built (even more than now), with perhaps features to engage your community around what you create (imagine that your players can comment on things in the game as they play test it, for instance). This is quite speculative for now, but it's something we're interested in exploring.
Something we've discussed here is; since it's an online platform, could it be possible for creators to form communities around their games as they are being built (even more than now), with perhaps features to engage your community around what you create (imagine that your players can comment on things in the game as they play test it, for instance). This is quite speculative for now, but it's something we're interested in exploring.
Same issue - who is going to play it?
There are many indie games that never got made, lots of iterations of the current hotness (the Vampire survivors era may almost be over?)
People still play CS:GO. People still play The Sims. There are an infinite number of alternatives.
Professional game devs will talk about marketing because thats the problem when it comes to selling games.
The alternative is to make game creation fun - which then gets you to Roblox territory. Have people make games and share them quickly with each other.
There are many indie games that never got made, lots of iterations of the current hotness (the Vampire survivors era may almost be over?)
People still play CS:GO. People still play The Sims. There are an infinite number of alternatives.
Professional game devs will talk about marketing because thats the problem when it comes to selling games.
The alternative is to make game creation fun - which then gets you to Roblox territory. Have people make games and share them quickly with each other.
> The alternative is to make game creation fun - which then gets you to Roblox territory. Have people make games and share them quickly with each other.
That's the plan :-)
That's the plan :-)
Marketing is hardly something that can be done via an "add-on" or some mechanical approach.
It's more of a mindset, getting yourself and what you're working on known is something you need to do throughout the entire process, before, during and after the release of a game.
It's more of a mindset, getting yourself and what you're working on known is something you need to do throughout the entire process, before, during and after the release of a game.
If you want people to be able to make games without having to "make art", I feel like you've misunderstood what video games are.
Part of me thinks this might be a good idea for children, as I grew up on simple game creators like Warioware DIY. But I also hate to think that children would grow up simply telling the computer what to generate instead of being encouraged to do it themselves in some capacity.
Part of me thinks this might be a good idea for children, as I grew up on simple game creators like Warioware DIY. But I also hate to think that children would grow up simply telling the computer what to generate instead of being encouraged to do it themselves in some capacity.
It looks like a new kind of sandbox game and it certainly is a very promising concept. It might allow for entirely new types of collaborative storytelling. e.g. if a player marks an item as 'important' the next level generated builds on that thread.
Personally I would love to have a dedicated tool for generating mods for established games like Minecraft and let simple drawings be given life in game worlds.
Personally I would love to have a dedicated tool for generating mods for established games like Minecraft and let simple drawings be given life in game worlds.
Is this like GameMaker but AI-based, or is it more lofty and at risk of biting the hand that feeds it?
I'd say it's something in that direction (GameMaker) yeah. One big difference (other than the AI part) is that both building and playing is multiplayer by default. (Though of course, you can choose to make things single player and to build solo). With biting the hand that feeds it; I sure hope not! :) I've built my fare share of obscure indie games, and we in the company have friends and family members who do now as well, so the aim is to build something that can help people like this.
This is genius! I currently work on attention loop games (the kinds you see ads for on your social newsfeed). A big bottleneck is the number of new games we are able to produce per week. New games generally have a better ROI and get more installs and clicks than older games, which age out.
Having the ability to programmatically generate new games would be amazing. It would be great to have the game completely generated by AI, and then pipe the screenshots into a video AI tool to create the ads.
Will it support slot based games and gambling card games? My head is just buzzing at the possibilities and the opportunity for profits from this!
Having the ability to programmatically generate new games would be amazing. It would be great to have the game completely generated by AI, and then pipe the screenshots into a video AI tool to create the ads.
Will it support slot based games and gambling card games? My head is just buzzing at the possibilities and the opportunity for profits from this!
Finally we can shovel garbage attention stealing games at an unprecedented rate!
New games per week is an insane metric.
New games per week is an insane metric.
Maybe this is a totally different market from what I'm in, but as an indie game developer, this reads dystopian to me.
If you want a picture of the future, imagine a lucky 7 stamping on a human face forever
This is very impressive. If i'm understanding the post they basically created an inrernal api and just have the llm use that api. Seems like a great way to workaround llms struggling to keep track of large codebases.
Yip. It's like a tiny game engine and then the LLM makes games using it.
What a neat idea!
Next: a strategy game where you give orders in plain text, instead of hundreds of clicks per minutes
Next: a strategy game where you give orders in plain text, instead of hundreds of clicks per minutes
Has anyone tried to create an LLM based crew on the bridge of a ship or spaceship?
Being able to delegate tasks to competent subordinates would be very helpful.
Being able to delegate tasks to competent subordinates would be very helpful.
Even a failed attempt at this would be great - imagine your crew frequently misunderstanding your orders and the ensuing chaos.
System Prompt: You are a helpful crew member for the user's space vessel. You attempt to follow every detail of every command the user provides or question the user asks. If any detail is left ambiguous or unspecified, assume the worst possible interpretation.
"Incompetent Bridge Crew" is a game that I'd enjoy playing, that's a great idea!
I sometimes feel like the corpus of videogames is approaching a parody of my entire career.
Or them giving you the answer to questions you give them in an ambiguous manner.
https://www.gog.com/en/games?developers=turcan-research-syst...
I guess with a LLM you could make interacting with the game a bit more interesting than what a 1989 text-parser could handle.
I guess with a LLM you could make interacting with the game a bit more interesting than what a 1989 text-parser could handle.
Sounds like the premise of Tom Clancy's EndWar from 2008. It was supposed to be an entirely controllable via voice commands. No clue how well that worked out in practice.
It actually worked fairly well, but obviously wasn't freeform since you couldn't order units to move to any arbitrary point on the map with a voice command.
Tons of strategy games don't need or even really 'allow' high APM, but people still act as if they don't exist.
Sounds like you'd like the game Diplomacy
It's been done. The AI plays it rather well.
https://ai.meta.com/research/cicero/diplomacy/
https://ai.meta.com/research/cicero/diplomacy/
Thanks! Oh yeah that would be really interesting to explore! We haven't done much with LLMs on the play side yet, but we know that there's so much that can be done there, that can open up for totally new types of games.
Any plans for LLM based agents :) ?
NPCs will be amazing. AI Dungeon is probably a good example for character setup and story snippets to weave in (so you don't get all generic "helpful assistants") :).
Hi there! I'm the in-house AI engineer at Braindump. We've done some internal research into this and are excited to explore it in future, but we're not currently working on it at present - only so many problems we can tackle at the same time :) Looking forward to playing around with it more down the line!
looking forward to everything either way :)!
I'm very into the idea of using AI to change the types of games we make, but I think that "prompting the game to do stuff" is barking up the wrong tree. As the top comment says here, you can develop non-intelligent solutions to do what is going on here in probably the same if not less time. This is more like "end of chain" AI work and doesn't center AI as necessary for the game itself. If anything this is using LLMs as a shortcut for keyboard shortcuts or something, which is fine, and likely necessary work to get to something new and interesting, but already makes the category error at the top of constraining what is possible based on the need to fit the LLM into the rules box.
This is really cool thanks for sharing. I have built a generic app builder that follows the same idea. I am dealing with the same problems!
It is an iOS app called Burning Idea, it lets you build small apps by talking to it.
It is an iOS app called Burning Idea, it lets you build small apps by talking to it.
Wonder how well this will do given that, going by reactions to even fairly anodyne AI usage in games, gamers really really loathe gen AI used to make games and game assets.
I feel like that loathness is largely coming from the game design community, particularly asset and environment artists.
Question: the demo uses star wars imagery, including X wings and tie fighters, going as far as naming BB-8. How are you not getting sued to kingdom come?
How robust is the system to fix bugs? Can you just point at a thing and say "fix this bug"? How does that side of it work?
So it's hard to give a number on how robust it is, but yes, simply telling GPT that "this doesn't work" or "try again" does work a lot of the time. We're trying to give GPT as much context as possible to help it figure out where things went wrong. Currently that means giving it type errors, execution errors, self-critique and user feedback. But we're working on expanding that; for instance we want to experiment with automatically generating tests that validate things are working as they should. We also want to add a GPT based "debugger" that can help you pinpoint exactly what went wrong.
Sounds like a nightmare tbh. Half the fun is the actual coding (aka the journey). I guess if you want to be a prompt engineer that sounds like fun but it sucks all the art of programming out of it.
(I'm the in-house AI engineer at Braindump.)
Yeah, this is definitely something we're considering. The majority of us are programmers and have similar feelings about the joy of programming. The two things I'd say we've discovered along the way are that:
1. People who aren't programmers can build games with this, and that's worthwhile in itself (giving this to a non-programmer and watching them realise an idea they have is delightful!)
2. Working over concepts, not code, allows for much faster iteration and experimentation. I'm a fast programmer, but nothing compares to clicking somewhere, saying "do this", and being able to play around with it within a minute.
We're still navigating the boundary between traditional game making (including programming) and AI-infused game making; I hope we'll find a happy balance that keeps everyone empowered and happy :)
Yeah, this is definitely something we're considering. The majority of us are programmers and have similar feelings about the joy of programming. The two things I'd say we've discovered along the way are that:
1. People who aren't programmers can build games with this, and that's worthwhile in itself (giving this to a non-programmer and watching them realise an idea they have is delightful!)
2. Working over concepts, not code, allows for much faster iteration and experimentation. I'm a fast programmer, but nothing compares to clicking somewhere, saying "do this", and being able to play around with it within a minute.
We're still navigating the boundary between traditional game making (including programming) and AI-infused game making; I hope we'll find a happy balance that keeps everyone empowered and happy :)
Common remark about game making (also here) is that “there are already a lot of games, building them is not the limiting factor“, and yet I find myself without anything to play despite these 70k games on steam. I like playing city building games, all the good ones I already beat and there is nothing new that seems any good!
First thing I noticed in the demo is the lasers casting shadows on the ground. Which doesn’t make any sense
I find the "threads" approach to prompting in a complex app very intriguing. Did you experiment with threading at different levels and how they interact? If so what can you share about this?
This looks like the perfect tool for rapid prototyping. I am not yet sold on this being a viable method to produce commercial games, but I do think you guys are on to something. Very cool!
That's sweet! Like the UI and threads approach.
How does it generate 3d models?
Btw there is also https://frvr.ai for more casual games
How does it generate 3d models?
Btw there is also https://frvr.ai for more casual games
Thanks! We're using a service called Meshy (https://www.meshy.ai) to generate 3d models.
[deleted]
Could you leave the tapping and chatting to the AI? This way, I can let it work on some basic guidelines and let it surprise me with a game every day.
Since it's all chat based you can actually start by asking it for game ideas and tell it to proceed with making it. Unfortunately and definitely not surprisingly the resulting game is usually quite bland.
I wonder why their studio is named after a way to cheat on exams?
This doesn't happen to be the AI game startup at which the host of the wonderful Last Week in AI podcast works?
https://lastweekin.ai/
we are in need of a good 2D strategy game such as Advance Wars or Fire Emblem that can be played with infinite variations
You might have played some (most?) of these games already, but I'd like to offer some suggestions in case you haven't.
- The Disgaea series is hilarious, infinitely replayable, and allows you to pull off some very satisfying game-breaking maneuvers. Disgaea 1, 4, and 5 are considered the best in the series. Disgaea 7, the newest release, has good reviews on Steam too. If you want to pick just one, get Disgaea 5.
- Tiny Metal is inspired by Advance Wars and improves on many aspects of the game.
- Wargroove is also inspired by Advance Wars. It's very good, but a single level can sometimes take a long time to beat (45 mins to an hour). Comes with a scenario editor so you can design your own levels (or download other people's creations).
- Into the Breach is one of my favorite games. The design is simple with very few rules, but it lends itself to emergent behavior that can be a lot of fun to discover.
- Deckbuilders give me the same kind of satisfaction as turn-based strategy games. The current genre darling is Balatro, and its popularity is well deserved. One of the best games to come out in recent years. I've been recommending it to everybody.
- And of course, the Fire Emblem series is still alive and well. The games are 3D now, but the gameplay is still the same as it always was (with slight variations between versions). Fire Emblem: Three Houses might be my most played game ever. That said, Fire Emblem has never been as challenging as Advance Wars in my experience, so you might not enjoy it as much unless you play on higher difficulty levels. I play these games for the story, so I usually play on easier modes.
- EDIT: oh, how could I forget Triangle Strategy and Unicorn Overlord? I haven't played these yet, but they're well reviewed and come with some very interesting mechanics.
Hope there's something new in that list for you to enjoy :)
- The Disgaea series is hilarious, infinitely replayable, and allows you to pull off some very satisfying game-breaking maneuvers. Disgaea 1, 4, and 5 are considered the best in the series. Disgaea 7, the newest release, has good reviews on Steam too. If you want to pick just one, get Disgaea 5.
- Tiny Metal is inspired by Advance Wars and improves on many aspects of the game.
- Wargroove is also inspired by Advance Wars. It's very good, but a single level can sometimes take a long time to beat (45 mins to an hour). Comes with a scenario editor so you can design your own levels (or download other people's creations).
- Into the Breach is one of my favorite games. The design is simple with very few rules, but it lends itself to emergent behavior that can be a lot of fun to discover.
- Deckbuilders give me the same kind of satisfaction as turn-based strategy games. The current genre darling is Balatro, and its popularity is well deserved. One of the best games to come out in recent years. I've been recommending it to everybody.
- And of course, the Fire Emblem series is still alive and well. The games are 3D now, but the gameplay is still the same as it always was (with slight variations between versions). Fire Emblem: Three Houses might be my most played game ever. That said, Fire Emblem has never been as challenging as Advance Wars in my experience, so you might not enjoy it as much unless you play on higher difficulty levels. I play these games for the story, so I usually play on easier modes.
- EDIT: oh, how could I forget Triangle Strategy and Unicorn Overlord? I haven't played these yet, but they're well reviewed and come with some very interesting mechanics.
Hope there's something new in that list for you to enjoy :)
Something like Battle for Wesnoth?
I got a buddy who is making an AW2-like and was exploring procedurally generated gameplay modes (including co-op), not sure if they'll use this new AI thing or not.
What do you mean by infinite variations here?
I'm guessing they mean with some type of procedural generation or another randomization approach in mind that creates a bunch of new maps, bosses, vehicles even!
Advance Wars, if I recall correctly, has a hand-crafted set of maps and battles structured in a campaign story. So once you're done, you're done. Replay-ability is a bit limited.
I absolutely loved Advance Wars and my brother and I played the heck out of it growing up!
Advance Wars, if I recall correctly, has a hand-crafted set of maps and battles structured in a campaign story. So once you're done, you're done. Replay-ability is a bit limited.
I absolutely loved Advance Wars and my brother and I played the heck out of it growing up!
Advance Wars has a map creator and the AI can play on it. In theory one could get an AI to generate maps given the rules of the map creator and then users can implement them. Per my memory, no way to share, so it'll be a bit harder to setup and you can't do things like give the enemy units whose location you don't know, but it achieves a near infinite replay value. With some more work and one could have a new AI interface with an emulator and play the game instead of using the built in AI, if one finds it is no longer challenging. Thought that is probably reaching the scale where remaking the game from scratch would give one more freedom and control (and ability to monetize).
Advance Wars Returns [1] is allegedly good and on my list of things to play.
[1]: https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/6012
[1]: https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/6012
Replayability is overrated imo. The old advance wars games on gba and ds took hours to beat and had excellent map design. There's also something cool about the no strings attached development model of old cartridge games where the game had to be perfect on release that is very endearing.
Interesting, yeah I guess that makes sense.
I always thought those strategy games were missing a competitive community and better PvP experience but I could also see how more replayability would make them more popular.
I always thought those strategy games were missing a competitive community and better PvP experience but I could also see how more replayability would make them more popular.
I think it's hard to make those PvP modes compelling to most people, being turn-based with longer turns is rough (card games get away with it because turns are typically pretty short).
It's hard to think of popular turn-based video games where it's popular for multiplayer and the turns are long.
It's hard to think of popular turn-based video games where it's popular for multiplayer and the turns are long.
Do you consider the civilization series popular? It seems people put up with that.
AI is so creatively bankrupt and hated by nearly every professional in the industry that isn't a programmer that using it feels like a real liability.
I think most people don't actually want to make games.
Most people want to take an existing basic game, and tweek it a bit, incrementally, adding new art, ideas and levels, and removing the stuff they don't like.
They definitely do not want to write code.
They most certainly do not want to debug generated code and I think you've hit the nail on the head with 'generating actual code sucks, is hard and basically doesn't work' with current models.
What I see in the demos looks different though; it looks like you have a configuration driven set of basic game elements and let the AI tweek the structured and easily-to-validate-schema config.
Which I think is fantastic.
"Make this unit bigger", "Add new type of fighter", "Get rid of this unit", "make the terrain here smoother and add a lake"; I feel like this kind of structured tool use is currently possible, if you write a framework of constrained actions (which is what it appears you've done).
So, props to you. This feels like something that is both actually novel and interesting.
...but; I feel there is going to be a difficult path ahead.
The more generic you make the engine, the more different types of games you can make with it; however, in doing so, the tools you have (eg. "modify unit config", "generate 2d sprite for unit", etc.) will have to become more generic; and the more generic they become, the less effective the agents will be at using them.
Our current batch of GPT4-ish models seems like they're relatively well suited for using specific tools with specifically constrained inputs to plan and achieve goals; however, as the tools become generic, the solution space balloons out widely and you start getting random crap instead of actual real solutions to tasks.
Specifically, I'm skeptical about your generic `createOrUpdateRule` and that you can effectively scale it to complex interactive behaviors; it just feels like the agents will never express complex ideas with that kind of coding; it'll only ever be an array of trivial behaviors.
Maybe that's all you need in some cases; but I don't think you can build actual games that way.
So, practically speaking, this might actually only ever really work as like a 'super modding tool' that takes basically a fully working game and lets you mod it in a very specific set of ways; but that would mean creating a 'template game' for various different game types, and different 'modify game' tools for each one. Otherwise, the final product is never going to really be beyond 'unit moves back and forth randomly'.
...but, that would still be really fantastic.
I guess, I hope you don't get lost trying too hard to build a generic Unity clone using AI that is kind of so-so (ie. generates random code that doesn't work and you have to constantly debug), instead of an amazing thing that is slightly less generic, but lets you do amazing things within a specific set of restrictions.
Most people want to take an existing basic game, and tweek it a bit, incrementally, adding new art, ideas and levels, and removing the stuff they don't like.
They definitely do not want to write code.
They most certainly do not want to debug generated code and I think you've hit the nail on the head with 'generating actual code sucks, is hard and basically doesn't work' with current models.
What I see in the demos looks different though; it looks like you have a configuration driven set of basic game elements and let the AI tweek the structured and easily-to-validate-schema config.
Which I think is fantastic.
"Make this unit bigger", "Add new type of fighter", "Get rid of this unit", "make the terrain here smoother and add a lake"; I feel like this kind of structured tool use is currently possible, if you write a framework of constrained actions (which is what it appears you've done).
So, props to you. This feels like something that is both actually novel and interesting.
...but; I feel there is going to be a difficult path ahead.
The more generic you make the engine, the more different types of games you can make with it; however, in doing so, the tools you have (eg. "modify unit config", "generate 2d sprite for unit", etc.) will have to become more generic; and the more generic they become, the less effective the agents will be at using them.
Our current batch of GPT4-ish models seems like they're relatively well suited for using specific tools with specifically constrained inputs to plan and achieve goals; however, as the tools become generic, the solution space balloons out widely and you start getting random crap instead of actual real solutions to tasks.
Specifically, I'm skeptical about your generic `createOrUpdateRule` and that you can effectively scale it to complex interactive behaviors; it just feels like the agents will never express complex ideas with that kind of coding; it'll only ever be an array of trivial behaviors.
Maybe that's all you need in some cases; but I don't think you can build actual games that way.
So, practically speaking, this might actually only ever really work as like a 'super modding tool' that takes basically a fully working game and lets you mod it in a very specific set of ways; but that would mean creating a 'template game' for various different game types, and different 'modify game' tools for each one. Otherwise, the final product is never going to really be beyond 'unit moves back and forth randomly'.
...but, that would still be really fantastic.
I guess, I hope you don't get lost trying too hard to build a generic Unity clone using AI that is kind of so-so (ie. generates random code that doesn't work and you have to constantly debug), instead of an amazing thing that is slightly less generic, but lets you do amazing things within a specific set of restrictions.
I think you are right with most of your observations.
Why do you think that using something like createOrUodateRule could limit the ability to produce complex behaviour?
Why do you think that using something like createOrUodateRule could limit the ability to produce complex behaviour?
The callback style in createOrUpdateRule appears to create isolated snippets of code that can't invoke other rules.
Perhaps I've misunderstood what is happening, but if this is how it is, the agent can never write a function and compose other functions out of it.
That is functional programming where functions cannot call each other.
Composition of code units (ie. code A calls code B) is the basic building block that allows software to scale.
Without it, I don't believe you can get above trivial complexity.
Perhaps I've misunderstood what is happening, but if this is how it is, the agent can never write a function and compose other functions out of it.
That is functional programming where functions cannot call each other.
Composition of code units (ie. code A calls code B) is the basic building block that allows software to scale.
Without it, I don't believe you can get above trivial complexity.
The models look awful. If only there was a place where you could go to download human-created 3d models, either for free or a nominal fee. /s
So ... does every single AI demo put copyright and intellectual property infringement on the box?
Just asking? How on earth can an entire ecosystem be so damn tone-deaf and lack self-preservation?
Just asking? How on earth can an entire ecosystem be so damn tone-deaf and lack self-preservation?
shhh you will scare the VC bros and their dreams of doing nothing and making billions off others work.
> tone-deaf
Maybe. I'm not sure why that matters though. Better to be hated than not even noticed.
> and lack self-preservation
Arguments like this confuse me. Copyright infringement is everywhere. Not just among companies, but also among individuals.
Any time someone draws fan art of the Mario and posts it on this internet, this is illegal copyright infringement.
But basically nobody ever gets sued for that kind of stuff, unless you get huge and bothersome enough to be noticed.
And if you've gotten to that point, you've already basically won. And you can just fix the issue later, if they actually bother telling you to stop. But it doesn't matter, because you have already found success.
Maybe. I'm not sure why that matters though. Better to be hated than not even noticed.
> and lack self-preservation
Arguments like this confuse me. Copyright infringement is everywhere. Not just among companies, but also among individuals.
Any time someone draws fan art of the Mario and posts it on this internet, this is illegal copyright infringement.
But basically nobody ever gets sued for that kind of stuff, unless you get huge and bothersome enough to be noticed.
And if you've gotten to that point, you've already basically won. And you can just fix the issue later, if they actually bother telling you to stop. But it doesn't matter, because you have already found success.
They are baiting the mouse with the star wars items
For example, AI website builders. It's impressive as a tech demo that you can prompt an AI to make a website for you, but otherwise I don't think this is going to be disruptive to the web design industry since it's already pretty easy to make a website using a drag-and-drop builder like Squarespace or Webflow. Granted, it can get complex when you add certain special features on these platforms, but same goes for an AI-generated website. AI doesn't eliminate the complexity, it just hides it. At best it'll get you maybe 80% of where you want to go and you can get to the remaining 20% by hand. At worst, the complexity is so thoroughly hidden that addressing it isn't an option. It simply does not allow you to manually edit the outputs, or makes it unreasonably difficult to do so.
In that same vein, an AI game maker is pretty impressive as a tech demo, but I feel like it isn't a huge improvement over a code-light game maker. You're not eliminating the complexity of making a game, just hiding it.
Nonetheless, it's a pretty interesting tech demo.