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My son told me yesterday he wants to program video games for a living. He's 13. He's looking at how it used to be done and seeing the pride people had in doing

• pram 15d ago
  IDK man it’s a golden era for one-man indie games right now (I just finished Endacopia) and that can only increase with AI assistance. I wouldn’t be too cynical about it
  • datakan 15d ago
    You may be right, I really don't know. I can't control the ocean, all I can do is learn to surf. I use the tools, bring home the check and go about my life. I just feel terrible for the people following after me who wont get to experience what I did. Maybe it's for the best, maybe not. Time will ultimately tell I suppose.
    • cmrdporcupine 15d ago
      I have been surfing the wave since the 80s and all I can say is as cool as things have been through all of micro-computing history, I have no desire to return to the brutal tooling we had back then. And while the LLM-wave is more of a step function than linear growth like before, it's still a continuation of this which has been going on since I first touched a 6502: I can, with the newer tools, do more and get more done, and it lets me move further up the decision making matrix. That does mean there is/will-be a deluge of slop and uninteresting "stuff" out there, and the problem now becomes producing things which are capable of standing out from the crowd. Something I'm not super good at. But I see no point in valorizing the old tools and ways of doing things. Identify with the product, and the end goal. Not the tools used to get there.
  • AlpacaJones 15d ago
    Absolutely, I'm a follower of a niche, local sport with a relatively small support base. It never really made economic sense for a game studio to make video games for it. Now there are indie developers creating extremely fun and truly impressive games of that sport with the help of AI.
    • itintheory 15d ago
      Could you share examples?
      • earlygray 14d ago
        Don't know what sport AlpacaJones is talking about but I can think of Gaelic Football and Hurling. Two sports that are very popular in Ireland (whose population is smaller than many major cities) but barely known anywhere else in the world. The total number of fans is way too small to justify a typical video game budget, but if you made a really good game based on either sport, it would probably sell well in Ireland.
      • AlpacaJones 14d ago
        https://www.gaelicstar.com/ https://www.gaelicstar.com/ To be clear, not my game. But as a GAA fan it's as good as any GAA game any studio released.
  • dd8601fn 15d ago
    Maybe there’s a narrow window to make hay right now, but that has to be closing fast for the same reasons. I wouldn’t be giving kids any career advice around software development of any kind, myself. Now seems like the worst time in my life to be making long term projections on the subject.
    • xpct 15d ago
      I hold the opinion that learning about tech is important, especially as more and more of our world revolves around software. Biased of course, but I'd keep betting on software over other fields when it comes to career options.
      • dd8601fn 14d ago
        Well I’ve certainly been wrong before, and hope I am about this, but it all looks very fuzzy to me right now.
  • hbn 15d ago
    That also makes it a more difficult to make it a career than ever. There's simply too many games releasing. Steam is absolutely FLOODED with new games releasing, and it's very hard to stand out. https://steamdb.info/stats/releases/ https://steamdb.info/stats/releases/
    • jamesjyu 15d ago
      There's nothing new under the sun. The quality of your ideas and execution will still matter in this flood, as it always has been.
      • camdenreslink 15d ago
        I think your ability to market will matter the most (which is also pretty much the same as ever).
      • hbn 15d ago
        Fortunately and unfortunately, a lot of those games in that deluge are legitimately quite good but no one will play them because 99% of gamers aren't looking for more games to play. Just the ones they hear about by worth of mouth, or recurring entries in their favorite series, or from their favorite developers are already too much to keep up with. I'm certainly in that boat. My backlog only grows, and I have quite a bit of free time relative to some people.
    • Tubelord 15d ago
      I've been a long-time indie gamer and the appeal of older games has increased significantly for me since AI. Nearly an endless supply of top-notch human-crafted classic video games exist, virtually all for free or very cheap. I understand not everyone has the same taste as me but if they did I'd be surprised of there still was a modern gaming industry at all.
    • xpct 15d ago
      I agree. I open Steam sometimes and I'm met with a conveyor of games that look good enough for me to buy, but I can play a few of them at most before all of them are replaced with a new batch next month.
  • 0x457 15d ago
    Maybe it's a golden era for making one-man indie games, but not for playing and selling those games.
  • pixl97 15d ago
    Ehhhhhh. Its a golden era for one-man indie games that are successful. But this is deceptive. Per game delivered one man games were likely far far more successful in the past. Simply because there were very few of them in a much smaller market. There are countless indie games to day and only the best of the best really get any views. It is insanely hard to stand out in that market.
• deleted 15d ago
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• qarl 15d ago
  As someone who has worked in both the game industry and the film industry - tell your son this: When you are passionate about your work - it comes at a serious price. We live in capitalism and so everything has its cost. Passion in the workplace is taken-advantage of by the corporation. Sure, maybe there are a few places. Maybe more at the beginning of the industry. But by and large you and your skills will be treated very poorly. Because you really want to be there. And so they can get away with it. Paid less, treated less, considered less. It's the same dynamic at play with teachers, who also feel passionate about their work. Probably every profitable field that has passion. I don't say this to dissuade your son. But he should know what he's getting himself into. What the real price is. And what we need to fix.
  • datakan 15d ago
    That's kinda what I feel like telling him. He has a lot of passion and he's a very smart kid. I don't want to crush that, I want to nurture it. I think being real about things is important though and he has a lot of years still to ultimately decide.
    • qarl 15d ago
      I think you're doing right by giving him AI. But get him a coding harness - that's where the real traction is right now. Claude Code or Codex. I say this because - the joy of making games is mostly in the design. The imagination it takes to create a new world. I use AIs to create these worlds for me, from MY imagination, and they are extremely useful for that.
    • camdenreslink 15d ago
      One lesson that could be applicable, is that your passion doesn't necessarily have to be your "job". You can perform music on the weekends, or be an active participant in your local indie dev gamer community while having a totally boring corporate job. I've seen a lot of people burned by trying to make their passion their actual career.
      • qarl 15d ago
• vaylian 15d ago
  The games industry is terrible. But he's still a kid and can learn making games for the sake of making games. I suggest to look at https://ludumdare.com/ https://ludumdare.com/ and other game jams. That's a good way to get experience and have fun in the process.
• ActionHank 15d ago
  Only studios that have had a big mouth about using AI are the big ones. Indie studios are eating the industry and most of them are not bullish on AI for replacing the craft, but for optimizing and automating the mundane. My son is 12, he doesn't care, I've told him how LLMs work, he's used claude, he's not convinced that AI changes things that much and frankly, so am I. The work was always to build, thoughtfully, carefully, with vision, and ingenuity. That hasn't gone away.
• pixl97 15d ago
  Tell him to run now. Time to become a plumber at least for a bit.
• thesis 15d ago
  If you haven’t already… show him how to use codex or claude or whatever. And let him start having fun and making games.
  • datakan 15d ago
    I got him a ChatGPT account with parental controls on it. I'm just hoping he uses it as a tool and not a crutch.
    • zenoprax 15d ago
      > I'm just hoping he uses it as a tool and not a crutch. That's not enough given how much adults are struggling with this.
  • deleted 15d ago
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• hdgvhicv 15d ago
  Best time to be a game programmer was probably the 80s or 90s, when you could make games in your bedroom and they became a hit. Either then or today, when you can do the same thing and sell them through steam. Today you’ve got more competition but it’s easier to distribute.
• w0m 15d ago
  > He's looking at how it used to be done I mean, you're probably thinking 30 years ago; not any time recent. Indy devs are still a thing though.
• stale2002 15d ago
  You are looking at this all wrong. Give him the tools now and watch him be a better game dev today than a professional engineer from 4 years ago. He can work on his dreams as of this exact moment.
• thatmf 15d ago
  I was the same at that age (decades ago, but still). And I'm kind of glad I didn't go down that path, seeing friends and colleagues who did. There's a (I think) Folding Ideas video where he's talking to some 13-yo Roblox developer who already has that jaded veteran kind of vibe to them. Which might be the most salient visual. The thing is separating the consuming experience from the creating experience, but also recognizing the validity and importance of both. It's obvious but hard to really internalize. A good parallel I've discovered as an adult is wine. I love it, and collect it, and can talk at length about terroir, techniques, etc. About ten years ago I wanted to get hands-on experience, and thru a friend was able to intern at a local winery during harvest. That was one of the most intense months of my life, and I was in physical pain for months afterwards, even as a relatively fit person. So much of that elegant, philosophical final product is manual labor, lifting lots of heavy shit, and endless repetitive motion. It was fun, but it was also brutal. It left me with even more respect for the people who dedicate their lives to it. But also the realization that I'm much more comfortable being on the other end of it. And that's not only ok but absolutely essential, because the producers need people to buy (and maybe wax philosophical) about their product. So yeah, by all means give it a shot. But also I think it's important to communicate that there are many valid and satisfying ways to engage with something. Consumer/maker isn't a binary.