6 ms·

The game industry is much more cutthroat and high stakes than it was a decade ago during the indie explosion. Many of the indie darlings from that era would be

The game industry is much more cutthroat and high stakes than it was a decade ago during the indie explosion. Many of the indie darlings from that era would be lost in the noise now, and the quality bar expected of even an indie game is insane. Outside of Jonathan Blow and Pope, I struggle to think of game creators that would stand out of the crowd nowadays. By all measures, I had pretty good success shipping an indie VR game in 2016. Competition was low and our low poly art style was passable because the game had personality to make up for it. I am 100% confident that even a few years later the game would’ve sold 4 digit copies. Even with the success, I still would have made more money as an engineer elsewhere. Of course having successfully “done the indie thing” has a high non-monetary reward that made it worth it for me, but I was also financially well off and could afford that loss. I’d counsel anyone at this point to find a AA indie team or even go AAA and consider just working on something you have passion for on the side. Drastically less risk if you go that route, as you can quit when you know you “have something”. Or just enjoy throwing your game up on itch or Steam and have fun seeing other people play.

99_00 3y ago
Poppy Playtime - Mob Entertainment
doctorpangloss 3y ago
> Many of the indie darlings from that era would be lost in the noise now. What to make of the absence of A-lister game development personalities? There are maybe exactly zero. Notch disgraced himself, and he may be the single only person to have ever gotten into the regular person popular consciousness enough. In the near past, Sid Meier and Will Wright had their names on games, but I guess not in a memorable enough way. I'm not sure anyone watched the three or so TV series about John Carmack and John Romero. Gabe Newell, Shigeru Miyamoto, Sam Houser, Tim Schafer, Hideo Kojima... A baby boomer is not going to recognize any of these names. None of these names pass the "Mom, have you heard of..." test. So there will be lots of noise. There are benefits to this - the absence of a system - though. - no institutional power: As you may have experienced, there's no one taste maker. When you are trying to market for $0, it's literally all serendipity. - the heritage: There's no such thing as a nepo baby in game development. All those ex-Blizzard people have just as little chance of making something anyone plays as you do, even as they finance 8 digit budgets to your 0. - the data: Valve, benevolently, shares the data that movie, TV, music and book financiers hoard, allowing any 1 smart person to correctly play the role of the 10,000 studio executives at Disney. - there's even some up front money, for nothing: Facebook, also benevolently, gave out lots of development checks for games, expecting basically nothing in return; Epic Mega Grants similarly.
- lukas099 3y ago
  It seems rare for there to be famous personalities as 'in the background' as game developers are. The exceptions I can think of tend to have their name in huge letters on the covers of things (book authors, movie directors). But most famous people have their face or at least their voices directly in front of people at least a good portion of the time. One exception I can think of is influential business people like CEOs and founders of large companies.
  - tonymillion 3y ago
    To extend on your point, and to brain dump something that went through my mind about the parent comment: I can tell you the name of (most of) the characters of the Avengers movies. I can also tell you the name of some of the actors who play those characters. I have absolutely no idea who directed them (nor do I really care that much). I can't tell you the names of anyone involved in the production (art/music/cgi etc). I can tell you it came from Marvell Studios via Disney. I can tell you the names of the characters of HalfLife series. I can't tell you the names of the voice actors (apart from the fact nobody voiced Gordon (lol)). I can't tell you the name of the guy who wrote the story, other than he left Valve and published a story outline for HalfLife 3. I can't tell you the name of a single programmer, visual or level designer, artist, musician etc. I can tell you Valve made it. So yeah, unless your character also shares your name, and as you point out, unless the game is titled "John Smith presents a John Smith game directed by and starring John Smith: JOHN SMITH THE GAME" you can all but forget about me knowing your name.
    - BlueTemplar 3y ago
      This guy might be familiar to you :p https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Favreau https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Favreau
  - guestbest 3y ago
    It is telling that game developers are not storytellers like those who write novels or even performers in a niche like like opera singers. It looks like after all these years, computer games have been around since the 1970s, they don’t have not only don’t have the cultural cache of writing but also music.
afterburner 3y ago
You would recommend working at a AAA game dev company? I've heard the work-life balance is terrible... Not sure you would even have time for a side project.
- meibo 3y ago
  It's pretty good in that regard in my experience, in Europe anyway. Everything else pretty much still applies though, out-of-touch execs and all.
- hesdeadjim 3y ago
  It’s no better in smaller studios frankly. Best bet if you want balance is to not work in games at all and then make games on the side. Edit: I have a US-centric viewpoint and I can’t speak to other countries.
- Cthulhu_ 3y ago
  The companies still seem to prey on naive but excited employees who want to work in the gaming industry so badly they will accept the risk of low pay and overwork; it's still an employer's market. Indie games - once established anyway - seem like a better bet, some of the bigger titles in the space nowadays in terms of sale - I'm thinking Hollow Knight, Hades - seem all right, in that their current games are still a steady income stream, allowing them to take the time with the - guaranteed successful - sequels. Only a matter of time before they get bought up by a bigger studio / publisher though, one big payout. Happened to KSP, and while I had faith in the new developer studio, the sequel is off to a disappointing start.
  - OkayPhysicist 3y ago
    The progress on KSP2 is promising enough to maintain my interest, but they definitely went into early access way too soon. It's a really bad look to launch a sequel with ~10% of the content of the original.
- teamonkey 3y ago
  In my opinion, the conditions in AAA are considerably better now than they used to be 5, 10 or 15 years ago, in general. Not everywhere, certainly, but overtime culture is lessening and there’s a more supportive attitude to employees. Average pay for the average employee is slowly improving too, and getting more evenly spread, though still a lot lower than equivalent jobs in other tech sectors. Better pay for most, but fewer Ferraris in the car park.
hgs3 3y ago
> Many of the indie darlings from that era would be lost in the noise now. This isn't specific to games. I doubt many dot-com millionaires would have the same success with the web if they were born today.

99_00 3y ago

Poppy Playtime - Mob Entertainment

doctorpangloss 3y ago

> Many of the indie darlings from that era would be lost in the noise now. What to make of the absence of A-lister game development personalities? There are maybe exactly zero. Notch disgraced himself, and he may be the single only person to have ever gotten into the regular person popular consciousness enough. In the near past, Sid Meier and Will Wright had their names on games, but I guess not in a memorable enough way. I'm not sure anyone watched the three or so TV series about John Carmack and John Romero. Gabe Newell, Shigeru Miyamoto, Sam Houser, Tim Schafer, Hideo Kojima... A baby boomer is not going to recognize any of these names. None of these names pass the "Mom, have you heard of..." test. So there will be lots of noise. There are benefits to this - the absence of a system - though. - no institutional power: As you may have experienced, there's no one taste maker. When you are trying to market for $0, it's literally all serendipity. - the heritage: There's no such thing as a nepo baby in game development. All those ex-Blizzard people have just as little chance of making something anyone plays as you do, even as they finance 8 digit budgets to your 0. - the data: Valve, benevolently, shares the data that movie, TV, music and book financiers hoard, allowing any 1 smart person to correctly play the role of the 10,000 studio executives at Disney. - there's even some up front money, for nothing: Facebook, also benevolently, gave out lots of development checks for games, expecting basically nothing in return; Epic Mega Grants similarly.

lukas099 3y ago
It seems rare for there to be famous personalities as 'in the background' as game developers are. The exceptions I can think of tend to have their name in huge letters on the covers of things (book authors, movie directors). But most famous people have their face or at least their voices directly in front of people at least a good portion of the time. One exception I can think of is influential business people like CEOs and founders of large companies.
- tonymillion 3y ago
  To extend on your point, and to brain dump something that went through my mind about the parent comment: I can tell you the name of (most of) the characters of the Avengers movies. I can also tell you the name of some of the actors who play those characters. I have absolutely no idea who directed them (nor do I really care that much). I can't tell you the names of anyone involved in the production (art/music/cgi etc). I can tell you it came from Marvell Studios via Disney. I can tell you the names of the characters of HalfLife series. I can't tell you the names of the voice actors (apart from the fact nobody voiced Gordon (lol)). I can't tell you the name of the guy who wrote the story, other than he left Valve and published a story outline for HalfLife 3. I can't tell you the name of a single programmer, visual or level designer, artist, musician etc. I can tell you Valve made it. So yeah, unless your character also shares your name, and as you point out, unless the game is titled "John Smith presents a John Smith game directed by and starring John Smith: JOHN SMITH THE GAME" you can all but forget about me knowing your name.
  - BlueTemplar 3y ago
    This guy might be familiar to you :p https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Favreau https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Favreau
- guestbest 3y ago
  It is telling that game developers are not storytellers like those who write novels or even performers in a niche like like opera singers. It looks like after all these years, computer games have been around since the 1970s, they don’t have not only don’t have the cultural cache of writing but also music.

afterburner 3y ago

You would recommend working at a AAA game dev company? I've heard the work-life balance is terrible... Not sure you would even have time for a side project.

meibo 3y ago
It's pretty good in that regard in my experience, in Europe anyway. Everything else pretty much still applies though, out-of-touch execs and all.
hesdeadjim 3y ago
It’s no better in smaller studios frankly. Best bet if you want balance is to not work in games at all and then make games on the side. Edit: I have a US-centric viewpoint and I can’t speak to other countries.
Cthulhu_ 3y ago
The companies still seem to prey on naive but excited employees who want to work in the gaming industry so badly they will accept the risk of low pay and overwork; it's still an employer's market. Indie games - once established anyway - seem like a better bet, some of the bigger titles in the space nowadays in terms of sale - I'm thinking Hollow Knight, Hades - seem all right, in that their current games are still a steady income stream, allowing them to take the time with the - guaranteed successful - sequels. Only a matter of time before they get bought up by a bigger studio / publisher though, one big payout. Happened to KSP, and while I had faith in the new developer studio, the sequel is off to a disappointing start.
- OkayPhysicist 3y ago
  The progress on KSP2 is promising enough to maintain my interest, but they definitely went into early access way too soon. It's a really bad look to launch a sequel with ~10% of the content of the original.
teamonkey 3y ago
In my opinion, the conditions in AAA are considerably better now than they used to be 5, 10 or 15 years ago, in general. Not everywhere, certainly, but overtime culture is lessening and there’s a more supportive attitude to employees. Average pay for the average employee is slowly improving too, and getting more evenly spread, though still a lot lower than equivalent jobs in other tech sectors. Better pay for most, but fewer Ferraris in the car park.

hgs3 3y ago

> Many of the indie darlings from that era would be lost in the noise now. This isn't specific to games. I doubt many dot-com millionaires would have the same success with the web if they were born today.