3 ms·
As someone who has been solo developing an app for months concerned ape is such an inspiration. He literally spent 5 years on stardew valley with zero income. I
by mips_avatar 10mo ago
As someone who has been solo developing an app for months concerned ape is such an inspiration. He literally spent 5 years on stardew valley with zero income. It's such a beautiful game and reminds me what you can do when you follow what feels right.
- gmueckl 10mo agoThe sad truth js that for every solo devs that becomes successful, there are an untold number of solo devs that don't find an audience and fail. The reality is pretty brutal in games.
- mips_avatar 10mo agoYeah but how often do you finish a AAA game and want to cry at how beautiful it is. You get that feeling pretty often with an indie game. Like something really important is being done by indie devs.
- tmtvl 10mo ago> You get that feeling pretty often with an indie game. Poppycock. What, you wanna cry at how beautiful *checks notes* Hatred is? What about Unity Asset Swap Shovelware #375438? And for those who fall on the 'violence' side in the 'violence' vs 'sex' debate, how about we take a gander at the corruption genre? Sure, there are some amazing indie games (think of Unrest, for example), but there's also a ton of low effort garbage, and far too many projects which suffer from a lack of time, lack of resources, lack of ambition, or, sadly, lack of care. And, of course, the occasional 'I can't believe anyone at any point during the project thought this was a good idea'.
- bigstrat2003 10mo ago> You get that feeling pretty often with an indie game. I've never had that feeling about any game. Indie games tend to be higher quality (because they are made by people who prioritize the game above business), but I think you're strongly overstating how good they are.
- squigz 10mo agoThe last game I felt that strongly about at the ending was Red Dead Redemption 2. I don't think I can recall the last indie game I felt strongly about. Indie games are important and deserve more attention. Let's not glorify them too much though. They can be shit, just like AAA games; they can also be great, just like AAA games.
- zulban 10mo agoIf you only count developers who finish a quality game, polished, with completed endgame, and free of major bugs then the numbers are far lower. Maybe it's more of a lesson in how hard it is to finish a game, than how hard it is to make a somewhat successful one.
- gmueckl 10mo agoGames are hard. I wanted to focus more on the fact that there is a perceived glamour to indie development that is totally amd utterly disconneted from their reality.
- tick_tock_tick 10mo agoThe book Blood, Sweat, and Pixels has a good chapter on the development of Stardew. Honestly though it only reads as inspirational with the success coming at the end. 9 times out of 10 that story is actually how someone "wasted" 5 years of his life, ruined his relationship with his girlfriend that was basically supporting him the whole time, and had difficulty getting a normal job after.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- eswat 10mo agoIIRC he has a supportive partner that took care of being the breadwinner during that development period though.
- embedding-shape 10mo agoMakes it almost more impressive, both the faith and trust between them. Wholesome all around, reflected in a video game :)