5 ms·

This kind of approach maybe good for very big companies, but it absolutely kills small companies and indie devs. Indie Devs should be thinking of games as prod

This kind of approach maybe good for very big companies, but it absolutely kills small companies and indie devs. Indie Devs should be thinking of games as products to complete first and foremost. Don't get bogged down in articles like this, or what's the best tech. Just ship it.

soderfoo 3y ago
> Indie Devs should be thinking of games as products to complete first and foremost. Large studios should keep this in mind as well. Lately, the trend seems to be: live service is 100% at release, core game play and narrative are wanting.
- ecshafer 3y ago
  AAA studios have shipped a lot of games with broken online services, gameplay, matchmaking, etc. No AAA studio has ever shipped with a broken cash shop. Its all about priorities.
  - soderfoo 3y ago
    Sadly, there is no shortage of folks willing to hand over their money. In my experience and based on convos with friends at other studios, good producers (product owners) are hard to come by. Of course devs would pin the blame on ops/production, but I think it's a really interesting problem that has plagued studios of all shapes and sizes.
- mhuffman 3y ago
  Well, I mean, software in general is one of the only items I can think of where you can intentionally sell someone something that is broken and promise to fix it in the future if they keep paying you, otherwise make it unusable for them.
doctorpangloss 3y ago
> Indie Devs should... Just ship it. "Make games that are fun to make." Sometimes that means "thinking of games as databases." 100s of games released every day across Steam and the App Store. Who cares? I guess they shipped, but then what? > Don't get bogged down in articles like this, or what's the best tech. Jonathan Blow is excited about Jai. That makes him wake up every day and commit. Secularly Jai will not make the game better. But intellectual stimulation helps you ship. So your advice is a negative sign in front of the right answer: it's pithy and simple, but it's 200% wrong. It's so far off the mark and so steeped into the exact kind of hustlebro culture that is responsible for the 100:1 ratio of bad games to good. > ...maybe good for very big companies Big companies struggle to innovate. They worry way too much about shipping, deadlines, whatever. So they wind up with the least risky and conservative game design. They are interested in deep tech because, if you're making the 100th CS:GO clone, it makes the work intellectually stimulating enough to make you wake up every day and grind 65h/wk for Riot's garbage pay, not just because it makes some kind of secular sense.
- raincole 3y ago
  > Jonathan Blow is excited about Jai. That makes him wake up every day and commit. Intellectual stimulation helps you ship. Yes, it's a good one. Since he started working on Jai he hardly shipped any game. Thanks for providing examples that supports the parent comment.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - adamrezich 3y ago
    > Since he started working on Jai he hardly shipped any game. why do you perceive this as a problem? Braid: 2008 The Witness: 2016 Braid Anniversary Edition (Jai): late 2023 Untitled Sokoban Game (Jai): TBA also, Jai, even in its incomplete state, is a fantastic product.
    - raincole 3y ago
      A remaster of an old game in 7 years. So yeah, "hardly shipped any game". > why do you perceive this as a problem? It's probably not a problem for him. It's not a problem for you either, if your studio can afford spending 7 years on a tool that doesn't generate cash flow. Again I have nothing against Blow. But it's a very good example about how much time it takes to make your own tool chain, even for someone who's smart and experienced. For most of us, we'd better utilize boring techs to ship lowkey fun games.
  - doctorpangloss 3y ago
    > Since he started working on Jai he hardly shipped any game. That's an opinion. Maybe if you looked closer, you'd see: if it weren't intellectually interesting, he wouldn't ship any games, as opposed to a bunch of really cool and fun ones. I can only speak personally. As a game designer, I have never regretted "not" "shipping." Spending the time on design instead, I feel my opinions are far more valued by my design and directing customers, who have bigger budgets and thus will have automatically greater success marketing, polishing, "shipping," etc. anyway. If you think you need to ship in order to find out if something is fun... well, there's your problem. What do you think game design is, an A/B test? In contrast, my former colleagues who emphasized shipping, in the last decade, they have spent 100-10,000x the budgets on putting kind of dull stuff into the App Store. And it was only marginally more stuff. Anyway, I wouldn't ever ask them for an opinion about game design, or whether a prototype is going to be fun, but I would ask Jonathan Blow, so there's that.
Loveaway 3y ago
Sure, the mission should always be: shipping fun profitable products. Doesn't hurt have solid code architecture from the get go though. From what I understand ECS are very flexible and probably your best bet. It's often hard to see where a game is headed, which can turn thoughtless code very ugly very fast. Still, many games get shipped like that, but if you're in for the long run you'll eventually have to maintain it. So why not consider the advice from industry veterans and read about a few proven design patterns.
- stuckinhell 3y ago
  Absolutely, however game developer forums, discords, etc are full of people who obsess over the "ideal" way to do things rather than ship their game and go bankrupt or destroy their lives doing it. So it's extremely common polite etiquette in the indie game developer to remind people that the end goal is a fun product that you can sell. Many many people lose a ton of money during indie game dev, and it's always a tragedy. If you want to use a no code tool like playmaker over coding, then do it. As long as you ship the code. Just keep shipping out your game.

soderfoo 3y ago

> Indie Devs should be thinking of games as products to complete first and foremost. Large studios should keep this in mind as well. Lately, the trend seems to be: live service is 100% at release, core game play and narrative are wanting.

ecshafer 3y ago
AAA studios have shipped a lot of games with broken online services, gameplay, matchmaking, etc. No AAA studio has ever shipped with a broken cash shop. Its all about priorities.
- soderfoo 3y ago
  Sadly, there is no shortage of folks willing to hand over their money. In my experience and based on convos with friends at other studios, good producers (product owners) are hard to come by. Of course devs would pin the blame on ops/production, but I think it's a really interesting problem that has plagued studios of all shapes and sizes.
mhuffman 3y ago
Well, I mean, software in general is one of the only items I can think of where you can intentionally sell someone something that is broken and promise to fix it in the future if they keep paying you, otherwise make it unusable for them.

doctorpangloss 3y ago

> Indie Devs should... Just ship it. "Make games that are fun to make." Sometimes that means "thinking of games as databases." 100s of games released every day across Steam and the App Store. Who cares? I guess they shipped, but then what? > Don't get bogged down in articles like this, or what's the best tech. Jonathan Blow is excited about Jai. That makes him wake up every day and commit. Secularly Jai will not make the game better. But intellectual stimulation helps you ship. So your advice is a negative sign in front of the right answer: it's pithy and simple, but it's 200% wrong. It's so far off the mark and so steeped into the exact kind of hustlebro culture that is responsible for the 100:1 ratio of bad games to good. > ...maybe good for very big companies Big companies struggle to innovate. They worry way too much about shipping, deadlines, whatever. So they wind up with the least risky and conservative game design. They are interested in deep tech because, if you're making the 100th CS:GO clone, it makes the work intellectually stimulating enough to make you wake up every day and grind 65h/wk for Riot's garbage pay, not just because it makes some kind of secular sense.

raincole 3y ago
> Jonathan Blow is excited about Jai. That makes him wake up every day and commit. Intellectual stimulation helps you ship. Yes, it's a good one. Since he started working on Jai he hardly shipped any game. Thanks for providing examples that supports the parent comment.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- adamrezich 3y ago
  > Since he started working on Jai he hardly shipped any game. why do you perceive this as a problem? Braid: 2008 The Witness: 2016 Braid Anniversary Edition (Jai): late 2023 Untitled Sokoban Game (Jai): TBA also, Jai, even in its incomplete state, is a fantastic product.
  - raincole 3y ago
    A remaster of an old game in 7 years. So yeah, "hardly shipped any game". > why do you perceive this as a problem? It's probably not a problem for him. It's not a problem for you either, if your studio can afford spending 7 years on a tool that doesn't generate cash flow. Again I have nothing against Blow. But it's a very good example about how much time it takes to make your own tool chain, even for someone who's smart and experienced. For most of us, we'd better utilize boring techs to ship lowkey fun games.
- doctorpangloss 3y ago
  > Since he started working on Jai he hardly shipped any game. That's an opinion. Maybe if you looked closer, you'd see: if it weren't intellectually interesting, he wouldn't ship any games, as opposed to a bunch of really cool and fun ones. I can only speak personally. As a game designer, I have never regretted "not" "shipping." Spending the time on design instead, I feel my opinions are far more valued by my design and directing customers, who have bigger budgets and thus will have automatically greater success marketing, polishing, "shipping," etc. anyway. If you think you need to ship in order to find out if something is fun... well, there's your problem. What do you think game design is, an A/B test? In contrast, my former colleagues who emphasized shipping, in the last decade, they have spent 100-10,000x the budgets on putting kind of dull stuff into the App Store. And it was only marginally more stuff. Anyway, I wouldn't ever ask them for an opinion about game design, or whether a prototype is going to be fun, but I would ask Jonathan Blow, so there's that.

Loveaway 3y ago

Sure, the mission should always be: shipping fun profitable products. Doesn't hurt have solid code architecture from the get go though. From what I understand ECS are very flexible and probably your best bet. It's often hard to see where a game is headed, which can turn thoughtless code very ugly very fast. Still, many games get shipped like that, but if you're in for the long run you'll eventually have to maintain it. So why not consider the advice from industry veterans and read about a few proven design patterns.

stuckinhell 3y ago
Absolutely, however game developer forums, discords, etc are full of people who obsess over the "ideal" way to do things rather than ship their game and go bankrupt or destroy their lives doing it. So it's extremely common polite etiquette in the indie game developer to remind people that the end goal is a fun product that you can sell. Many many people lose a ton of money during indie game dev, and it's always a tragedy. If you want to use a no code tool like playmaker over coding, then do it. As long as you ship the code. Just keep shipping out your game.