Horrible Things I Found Out When I Made A Video Game(cracked.com)
cracked.com
Horrible Things I Found Out When I Made A Video Game
http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-things-you-learn-when-making-modern-video-game/
46 comments
I think that it's true that you have to be passionate about what you do. You have to trick yourself into feeling passion for something lucrative that probably wouldn't interest you if you had a trust fund. You can turn anything into a game, and when the reward is cold, hard cash it can become pretty engaging. Just my perspective.
I found the best cure of this believe in capitalism is to talk to advertising folks. The pure cynism and hatred for the consumers these "professional" explain and show, when among themselves and what they think about the producers and their employers (both sides who they usually manipulate very skillfully too)and the completely disregard for the product, this is the heart of what capitalism is all about.
Its about swinging frozen dogshit-elexiers and be gone from the fair, before the first customer unpacks, and be not found related to yourself, the next time you do it on the same fair.
Its about swinging frozen dogshit-elexiers and be gone from the fair, before the first customer unpacks, and be not found related to yourself, the next time you do it on the same fair.
Once upon a time, when you bought something, you had to buy it from the guy who made it. It was mostly unique and personalization was the default. You didn't have many options, and he didn't have many customers. Both of these were problems of distribution. And distribution was a Hard Problem.
Then we built factories and distribution chains. This provided a solution to the problem. It offered more choice, and more customers. There were drawbacks, as with anything. It centralized wealth, which was worrisome. It decoupled the value created from the value the creator received. It made producing identical products easy, and custom products intractable. It built cities, and long commutes. But it was worth it.
A couple hundred years passed, and we built computers. We built the Internet. We made solving the Hard Problem so easy children could do it. But we forgot that there were drawbacks we took on. And instead of shrugging them off, we used the tools that could remove those drawbacks to expand those drawbacks.
Then we built factories and distribution chains. This provided a solution to the problem. It offered more choice, and more customers. There were drawbacks, as with anything. It centralized wealth, which was worrisome. It decoupled the value created from the value the creator received. It made producing identical products easy, and custom products intractable. It built cities, and long commutes. But it was worth it.
A couple hundred years passed, and we built computers. We built the Internet. We made solving the Hard Problem so easy children could do it. But we forgot that there were drawbacks we took on. And instead of shrugging them off, we used the tools that could remove those drawbacks to expand those drawbacks.
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That statement is based on research or your own cynical mind? I know a lot of people who are doing rather well for themselves and are apparently enjoying themselves. See, experiences differ.
My perception of this changed as I grew older. For me, and for most people I know, most of the enjoyment of my job comes from spending time with coworkers I like and respect, and working together on a problem with them. Passion about the specific problem is something that comes and goes; it's the people around you that are more likely to remain consistently motivating over the long term.
My observation is based on my own experience and that of practically everyone I've ever met. I also know quite a few people who are doing very well for themselves - They also enjoy themselves; they enjoy making money.
The people who promote the idea that 'passion pays' like Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, etc... These are not people I've met - They are rare; the lucky ones - One thing that they have in common is that these people never failed financially. Their idea of failure is not my idea of failure - My experience of failure has nothing to do with the glorified descriptions I read about in tech media.
I also know this because the less passionate and more cynical I become, the more money I make.
The people who promote the idea that 'passion pays' like Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, etc... These are not people I've met - They are rare; the lucky ones - One thing that they have in common is that these people never failed financially. Their idea of failure is not my idea of failure - My experience of failure has nothing to do with the glorified descriptions I read about in tech media.
I also know this because the less passionate and more cynical I become, the more money I make.
Bill Gates' "passion" was essentially "Dad isn't leaving me his money. I have to make my own."
I don't see why this is being downvoted. If Bill darn Gates is telling you to make money by following your passion, the kid whose life goal in early childhood was to make a million dollars in early adulthood, he's probably trying to sell you something.
Don't get me wrong, he's a cool very-much-real-nerd-like-you, but Bill Gates passion has always been winning, and his passion after that has been making money. To the extent he sacrificed his ability to make money running Microsoft, it was to fuel his primary goal of winning and being smarter than everybody else.
Source: Gates: How Microsoft's Media Mogul Reinvented An Industry And Made Himself The Richest Man In America
Don't get me wrong, he's a cool very-much-real-nerd-like-you, but Bill Gates passion has always been winning, and his passion after that has been making money. To the extent he sacrificed his ability to make money running Microsoft, it was to fuel his primary goal of winning and being smarter than everybody else.
Source: Gates: How Microsoft's Media Mogul Reinvented An Industry And Made Himself The Richest Man In America
i think Paul Graham has talked about this, when he was doing the passionate starving artist thing in NYC, while he was stapling canvas in a studio, he heard over the radio about the huge amounts of money being made in mutual funds.. he liked the sound of that and figured "hey I could make lots of money too".
If money is your main goal sure, but most of the time we want money to be more happy, and help us reach other goals. Like I'm spending time on making the next Google, to get enough money to help me build a space rocket. It would however be better to concentrate on building the rocket, instead of getting enough money to be able to build the rocket.
There is a thing that engineers do in all disciplines, not just game programming, where they wallow in how complex and difficult everything is. Yes, it's complex and difficult, but you need to look for ways to simplify and succeed.
The author should remember his insightful caption under Phil Collins' picture:
> Step One is a positive attitude. You have to believe you can escape!
I'm not denying that making games is complex. The things I've written for games are indeed complex and challenging. But once you start writing essays about how difficult and impossible everything is, you're not headed to a happy place.
Boiling things down to their essence, and eliminating the fancy alien hats in the articles example is crucial. Developing a mastery for how to succeed takes time and experience, but it can happen.
If you're interested in game design, here is something that will inspire you and fill you with ideas of how you can succeed. The book below took me forever to read the first time. That's because every few pages I couldn't resist putting it down and working on my designs because I was so overwhelmed with inspiration from its amazing wisdom. The book is the Art of Game Design, and it's one of my most prized books.
https://www.amazon.com/Art-Game-Design-Lenses-Second/dp/1466...
Another vitally important book about chasing your dream without getting bogged down in complexity and unhappy places is The Alchemist. It's a short parable, full of life changing wisdom, a little like The Old Man and the Sea.
https://www.amazon.com/Alchemist-Paulo-Coelho/dp/0061122416
The alchemist is available on audible too, but you'll want it in text as well.
The author should remember his insightful caption under Phil Collins' picture:
> Step One is a positive attitude. You have to believe you can escape!
I'm not denying that making games is complex. The things I've written for games are indeed complex and challenging. But once you start writing essays about how difficult and impossible everything is, you're not headed to a happy place.
Boiling things down to their essence, and eliminating the fancy alien hats in the articles example is crucial. Developing a mastery for how to succeed takes time and experience, but it can happen.
If you're interested in game design, here is something that will inspire you and fill you with ideas of how you can succeed. The book below took me forever to read the first time. That's because every few pages I couldn't resist putting it down and working on my designs because I was so overwhelmed with inspiration from its amazing wisdom. The book is the Art of Game Design, and it's one of my most prized books.
https://www.amazon.com/Art-Game-Design-Lenses-Second/dp/1466...
Another vitally important book about chasing your dream without getting bogged down in complexity and unhappy places is The Alchemist. It's a short parable, full of life changing wisdom, a little like The Old Man and the Sea.
https://www.amazon.com/Alchemist-Paulo-Coelho/dp/0061122416
The alchemist is available on audible too, but you'll want it in text as well.
> Developing a mastery for how to succeed takes time and experience, but it can happen.
Yes, this exactly. If the features of a game are too complicated to implement in the existing game's code base, that's a design problem, not an engineering problem.
Yes, this exactly. If the features of a game are too complicated to implement in the existing game's code base, that's a design problem, not an engineering problem.
> But once you start writing essays about how difficult and impossible everything is, you're not headed to a happy place.
The author is a moderately well-known cynical internet humorist; I think essays like this are his main line of work.
The author is a moderately well-known cynical internet humorist; I think essays like this are his main line of work.
> The author is a moderately well-known cynical internet humorist; I think essays like this are his main line of work.
Ah, fantastic! Over the years I've worked with an astonishing number of engineers whose apparent main line of work is writing cynical essays!
Ah, fantastic! Over the years I've worked with an astonishing number of engineers whose apparent main line of work is writing cynical essays!
And this guy is their role model!
> I'm not denying that making games is complex. The things I've written for games are indeed complex and challenging. But once you start writing essays about how difficult and impossible everything is, you're not headed to a happy place.
If it's anything like regular programming or novel writing then I have to disagree. The best people I've worked with - the ones who were the most helpful, got the most done, and I suspect enjoyed themselves most - had an unending well of cynicism, an attitude of "everything is shit and our product is doomed and good work is impossible but I can make this small corner a little bit less shit". Positive attitudes tended to mean unrealistic planning and a much higher risk of burnout.
If it's anything like regular programming or novel writing then I have to disagree. The best people I've worked with - the ones who were the most helpful, got the most done, and I suspect enjoyed themselves most - had an unending well of cynicism, an attitude of "everything is shit and our product is doomed and good work is impossible but I can make this small corner a little bit less shit". Positive attitudes tended to mean unrealistic planning and a much higher risk of burnout.
I assume this is an older article because it makes no mention of the recent kickstarter for a sequel. Looks good. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/611279740/calculords-2-...
"Still, it taught me that being a man making video games is like a woman doing anything -- you can give the world nothing but a free supply of objective awesomeness, and you'll still have crusaders hellbent on destroying you."
Couple of interesting points, slightly ruined by the guy excessively mentioning that he's writing hilarity while actually not making you laugh at all.
Yes, the try-hard comedy practiced by some people is really grating (looking at you, Rock Paper Shotgun).
Most successful humor doesn't contain a joke in every sentence or two. Or if it does, it's an elaboration of the same joke, not random shit thrown at a wall.
Most successful humor doesn't contain a joke in every sentence or two. Or if it does, it's an elaboration of the same joke, not random shit thrown at a wall.
I know people that work at small Bay Area gaming company, and their M.O. was to rip off every popular game that came online in the App Store. They have a few million steady users for their games, and they use that as an ad network to advertise their new ripoffs. They said that by 2016, they couldn't find any new games to rip off so they started to try to make their own. Gaming is a terrible business to be in because of how the App Store allows these ripoffs to drown out any innovation.
Clearly, it is what the gaming audience wants. The saying 'you get what you pay for' doesn't just mean 'if you pay little, you get little'. It also means 'if you pay for something, the next thing on offer will be similar to, not different from, the thing you paid for.' In many industries the line between demand and profit can be pretty fuzzy (see all the iPhone 7 sales fueled by exploding Note 7s) but in gaming, it's quite clear. The games making a good return on investment are terrible in every way to every person except the publisher whom gamers choose to lavish with riches.
What would you suggest as an alternative? I think in any market, copying is a thing...
I fear gaming is a terrible business to be in (and I might find out sometime in the coming times..), but I'd at least get out of the App Stores and steer clear of cheaply produced mobile dirt. Blatant, obvious ripoffs aren't quite so common in the PC & console market and the players do a little more research than pull their phones to check what's popular before purchasing a game. I think that market is much more lucrative for people who want to innovate and try a new formula.
IMO Steam needs to launch an Android store. If anyone can convince consumers that mobile games have the potential to be high quality and valuable, it's Valve. People who balk at the idea of paying 99 cents for a mobile app happily drop $20 on a game on Steam.
It wouldn't be any better. Valve has had a strict policy of 'let the publisher do whatever it wants' since the inception of Steam. There have been one-off exceptions, but their general policy is to be a platform that facilitates publishers doing their thing, regardless of what that is. There are growing numbers of asset-swap games, and games slapped together in a minute with cheap asset packs. It's not like how Apple approached the music industry with iTunes, laying down ultimatums like '99 cents a song, individual purchases allowed, audio CD burning permitted' which forced music publishers to choose between their retail distribution agreements and iTunes.
This would actually be OK if Steam provided any rudimentary filtering/personalization system at all. If they would just take a users activity and feed it into a Bayesian system with 'disliked' games considered 'spam' and purchased or 'wishlisted' items considered 'ham', then put that content on top for that user, it would be much less of a problem. But as it is, they provide nothing like this and don't seem to ever intend to.
This would actually be OK if Steam provided any rudimentary filtering/personalization system at all. If they would just take a users activity and feed it into a Bayesian system with 'disliked' games considered 'spam' and purchased or 'wishlisted' items considered 'ham', then put that content on top for that user, it would be much less of a problem. But as it is, they provide nothing like this and don't seem to ever intend to.
Calculords is a truly great game. All the fun of learning arithmetic on your new TI, plus grumpy aliens.
For " The Industry Doesn't Really Encourage Innovation" please replace the word "Industry" with "Audience". There are a vocal group of people who want something new, but a larger, less vocal group of people who want something familiar, or don't know what they want so they pick something familiar.
This is true of all media and true of consumer tastes in general. People like TV shows and movies that are like ones that have been done before. There is certainly an audience for things that are original, but a much a larger audience for things that are familiar. And in movies and TV, like games, your chances of achieving a viable product are better if you tweak an existing formula rather than innovate.
Lots of people make games because they love them, and then are disappointed that they don't make money. But in almost all other media there is an understanding that the "best" (most smart, most original) will not be the most popular because of the tastes of the audience.
I know this, the first game I designed was very innovative and I took my lumps for it.
This is true of all media and true of consumer tastes in general. People like TV shows and movies that are like ones that have been done before. There is certainly an audience for things that are original, but a much a larger audience for things that are familiar. And in movies and TV, like games, your chances of achieving a viable product are better if you tweak an existing formula rather than innovate.
Lots of people make games because they love them, and then are disappointed that they don't make money. But in almost all other media there is an understanding that the "best" (most smart, most original) will not be the most popular because of the tastes of the audience.
I know this, the first game I designed was very innovative and I took my lumps for it.
You are definitely in the right ballpark. The audience bears at least even responsibility, if not the majority. This is a widespread problem in the gaming community, not just in mobile. Remember that Simcity 2012 version? The always-online one (that could never get online at launch) that spawned dozens of boycotts and petitions before it came out? Best-selling game on the Origin platform in history. This sends a crystal clear message. 'Ignore our protestations, we're just salty. Hurt us and we will pay you.'
However, we're facing an interesting time. Research suggests that the public response to media is actually random. Copycat movies and TV don't get churned out because they are successful or have a better chance of success, they get made because the people in charge of deciding what to create are executives who want to 'make their mark' and been seen as 'a tastemaker' in an environment where the only pattern is that there is no pattern. 'I know what people want' makes careers, and 'I got lucky' gets you nowhere.
The 'interesting' part is that this copycat system only works when there are a small number of players controlling the creation and distribution of the media. Once things open up and niche markets become viable, things get interesting.
(The book 'A Drunkard's Walk' runs the numbers if you're curious.)
However, we're facing an interesting time. Research suggests that the public response to media is actually random. Copycat movies and TV don't get churned out because they are successful or have a better chance of success, they get made because the people in charge of deciding what to create are executives who want to 'make their mark' and been seen as 'a tastemaker' in an environment where the only pattern is that there is no pattern. 'I know what people want' makes careers, and 'I got lucky' gets you nowhere.
The 'interesting' part is that this copycat system only works when there are a small number of players controlling the creation and distribution of the media. Once things open up and niche markets become viable, things get interesting.
(The book 'A Drunkard's Walk' runs the numbers if you're curious.)
The bitter sweet taste when the innovation gets picked up, after you dropped it, by some competitor, who trims it down and merges it into his product.
Being innovative, can make you the risking your job lab-rat without reward - and no, you can not protect everything with a patent.
The author is correct: Advertising on Mobile is extremely untargeted. You basically spray and pray, throwing vast amounts of advertisement dollars out the door. Hoping to make a decent ROI. But, to do so, you need to get to the top, the very top. This is why the long tail of mobile development doesn't work anymore and why only mainstream games can be successful.
The vast majority of casual gamers don't truely appreciate the depth in games these days. Just read the app store user reviews, they are replete with reviews such as: "Uhhh, Great way to kill time...", "Good time killer...". That's all these games are to them, just a great way to kill time in an utterly boring life. How sad.
I'm sure there's still a tiny audience out there, who enjoys games of depth, indie games and non-mainstream games, but you'll never be able reach them with the current app store setup.
The vast majority of casual gamers don't truely appreciate the depth in games these days. Just read the app store user reviews, they are replete with reviews such as: "Uhhh, Great way to kill time...", "Good time killer...". That's all these games are to them, just a great way to kill time in an utterly boring life. How sad.
I'm sure there's still a tiny audience out there, who enjoys games of depth, indie games and non-mainstream games, but you'll never be able reach them with the current app store setup.
Great post, been there myself. Twice. Won't be returning.
Can we all take a moment to consider that not a single one of the percentages in the screenshot of the Kardashian game's purchase screen is accurate?
Also, while the presentation is funny, the "leanings" are something that anyone in the industry will tell you for free while waiting in the free beer line at GDC.
Ideas are worth very little; ability to draw and code and execute is where it's at, and modern business is hyper optimized to exploit money out of suckers by strip mining the society we all have to live in.
Ideas are worth very little; ability to draw and code and execute is where it's at, and modern business is hyper optimized to exploit money out of suckers by strip mining the society we all have to live in.
Thought 1: This is Cracked, so it will probably suck, but I'll scroll through the headings real quick and ignore everything else.
Thought 2: I'm reading more than the numbered items? A Cracked article hasn't won me over like this in ages.
Thought 3: That was weird return to form.
Thought 4: Oh, it's seanbaby. That explains everything.
Thought 2: I'm reading more than the numbered items? A Cracked article hasn't won me over like this in ages.
Thought 3: That was weird return to form.
Thought 4: Oh, it's seanbaby. That explains everything.
I'd say almost all of these are mobile specific aside from the effort one, and are also things the author could have, and should have, known before entering the mobile space.
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So how big a success your game is after all? You did not elaborate in your article. Nice observations though! Thanks for sharing.
Cool article, awesome game!
olegkikin(1)
The reality is that to make money, you have to want money above all else. It's extremely rare to make a lot of money from doing something that you enjoy doing.
The vast majority of people are not fortunate enough - Passion is rarely aligned with consumer needs.