
What they don't tell you about being a game developer - rainmaker23
http://www.altdevblogaday.com/2012/11/21/what-they-dont-tell-you-about-being-a-game-developer/
======
patio11
Being a game developer, as a business, has more in common to being the
owner/operator of a taco truck than it has in common with playing videogames.
If you like playing video games but would hate running a taco truck, you
should probably not get into business as a game developer.

n.b. This is broadly true of all software businesses, not just video games.
(Though I think running a software business is in many, many important
respects easier than running a software business which makes video games.)

n.b. #2: This is also broadly true of many businesses which have, shall we
say, anomalously high status. "I love cooking... I should open a restaurant!
Then I'll have total artistic freedom to serve the food the way it _should_ be
made! And every day will be _totally awesome_!" <\-- Not predictive of
successful restaurateurs.

~~~
reitzensteinm
If we're talking indie game development here, I'd recommend getting into it in
exactly the way as Patrick got into BCC. It should be approached as a hobby,
until you're making enough money reliably enough that it becomes feasible to
quit and do it full time.

That way you don't burn through your life savings, and you're very much aware
of the day to day. Bonus points if you've had failures in between your
successes. Patrick is dead on here - it's not all roses.

If you can't succeed doing it for 10-20 hours a week as a hobby, it's doubtful
working even 80 hours will work. Game development is sort of like being a
musician. If nobody likes your songs, you can't make up for it in volume.

Game development is an irrational choice in terms of return on investment.
Patrick is also dead on here. Even the successful developers would have made
an order of magnitude more money if they had applied themselves equally and
had the same luck in other industries.

You have to genuinely find the prospect of working on your craft full time
more important than financial returns. And having the perseverance to hone
your skills and produce successful games in your spare time, even if it takes
years, is a good litmus test for that.

(I'm awkwardly referring to patio11 by his name even though I was replying to
him to differentiate the you [him] from the you [in general]).

~~~
jiggy2011
I can only think of 1 successful game that was built as a part time hobby
(Cave Story).

Development of even a simple game takes so much time I don't know how
practical it is on 10 hours a week. Game studios have armies of employed
people on 60+ hours a week each.

~~~
kiba
Dwarffortress - started out as an ASCII game and end as an ASCII game.
Actually, it's two games in one, and also insanely complex.

Game studios that employ armies of developers usually have tons of artists and
spend ridiculous amount of time on graphics and assets. That's why a massively
complex game like dwarffortress are never created. So there's tons of niches
for complex games with ASCII graphics. (Sorry, pixel arts also takes ton of
time)

As everyone else already said, control your scope or otherwise you never
finish the game. Dwarffortress got where it is today by simply not aiming for
great 3D graphics.

~~~
lukeschlather
There's plenty of permissively-licensed tilesets out there. Dwarf Fortress
really had some trouble because it was built on ASCII until a fan was kind
enough to write a graphics library : <https://github.com/Baughn/Dwarf-Fortress
--libgraphics-> . Writing an ASCII rendering engine was probably more work for
a lesser product than going with a library to begin with would have been.

Also, Dwarf Fortress isn't done yet. It quite possibly ends with beautiful
procedurally generated graphics (though I can't imagine that would happen with
Tarn keeping it a solo operation.)

~~~
pindi
Not quite: Dwarf Fortress has always used OpenGL
(<http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=28841.0>) to render tiles
that just happen to be ASCII characters onto the screen. The fan effort was to
port it to SDL, making it much more efficient.

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reitzensteinm
> You can read 1000 praising comments, but if just one of them is bad, it will
> ruin your whole day.

It's important to quickly get desensitized to this, because if you're even
moderately successful, the volume of YouTube quality feedback directed at your
very own pride and joy can quickly become overwhelming.

The really mean stuff never bothered me, nor the comments that seemed like
they were Markov chain generated.

My biggest weakness was always idiocy - and trust me, I picked the wrong
profession for that. Comments in the form of:

    
    
      Great game! (rating set to 1/5)
      Clone of [shitty clone of my game]
      How do you shoot??? (rating set to 1/5) (game has no weapons)
      [complaint about another game on the front page that day] (rating 1/5)
      Got [incredibly low score]!!! (game has global high score functionality)
      I bought this where do I download (game not for sale)
    

Unfortunately from memory, since I don't save any of it. But you get the idea.

~~~
michaelgrafl
Those are really funny.

There should be a website aggregating stuff like this. It would cheer me up.

And yes, if you're doing any kind of work that you pour your personality into,
you need to develop a rock-steady sense of self-esteem, or it will destroy
you.

~~~
MichaelJW
You may enjoy this animation of a dramatic reading of a bad review:
<http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/558516>

~~~
michaelgrafl
I laughed, although I might have seen it before.

Reminded me of the Weekend Web series on Something Awful, so I went there and
watched a few. They're funny, but almost too crass for my taste (so I won't
post a link here). I guess I'm getting old.

Jesus, the stuff I watched as a youngling!

------
jamesjguthrie
"A large, loud portion of the public will openly hate you regardless of what
you do. Learn to live with it. No-one will ever take your project as seriously
as you, or fully realise what you’re going through. Everyone will think they
know better than you about your own project. Getting noticed at all is
incredibly difficult . The odds of you making money out of it are slim. If you
want to succeed, you’ll likely have to sell out. Just how MUCH you sell out is
up to you. You have to develop a VERY thick skin. Being open with the public
isn’t neccesarily smiled upon 100% of the time. You will meet many “game
developers” but very few people who are actually developing games. You need to
have the ability to listen to all advice given to you. Remember that listening
to advice doesn’t mean you have to take it. But listening can’t hurt and you
never know what you might learn."

Lots of this is applicable to founding a startup too. Good advice tbh.

------
charliesome
If you're doing 70+ hours a week, you're working for the wrong company. Move.

~~~
leak
I just watched a documentary about Pixar and they mentioned John Lasseter used
to spend 3 weeks straight in the office working. Just because you're working a
lot, it doesn't necessarily mean it's the wrong company.

Here's a funny quote from him:

 _why do you have the best parking spot? John Lasseter "Because my car hasn't
moved in 3 days"_

But, I would move on too.

~~~
rhizome
If I was getting paid like Lasseter and basically running the show I could
tolerate periodic 3wk crunches for creative spurts or whatever.

~~~
pooriaazimi
Not disagreeing with your point (in general), but in this case Lasseter was
doing it the worst days of Pixar - the days that any day there was the
possibility that Jobs might shut the whole place down...

------
danso
> _as a developer friend of mine once said “Those people hating on your game
> will always complain loudly. That’s just what they do. The fact is, though,
> that they’ll probably still buy your game.” and that’s what you need to
> focus on. It doesn’t matter if other people like your game. What matters is
> whether YOU like your game. If you love it, other people are bound to as
> well._

Optimism is good but I think this is the wrong kind of optimism. Especially
the part about people who rip on the game will buy it any way. Besides the
whole piracy thing, what's more likely is that people just won't care. In this
world of increasing choices, it's more likely you'll be ignored rather than
either hated or loved

------
danielhunt
Off topic: I simply cannot read this post on android thanks to that grey nav
bar on the left hand side.

It completely obscures the content when I zoom in to read the text.

Why do so many sites do have annoying behaviour?

~~~
etherealG
Me too, and I'm genuinely interestedin reading the post.

~~~
Dejital
Use this link:

[http://www.instapaper.com/text?u=http://www.altdevblogaday.c...](http://www.instapaper.com/text?u=http://www.altdevblogaday.com/2012/11/21/what-
they-dont-tell-you-about-being-a-game-developer/)

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mcherm
Your game sounded interesting. But the site does not have a prominent "Click
Here To Be Notified When The Game Is Available To Buy" button.

It should. "Marketing" details like that will make as much or more difference
in the game's success as the quality of the game itself. Go add this NOW,
before the Hacker News effect tails off.

------
kranner
Frankly a title like 'Malevolence: the Sword of Ahkranox' doesn't sound like
it's going to appeal to a broad demographic.

Even if one is indie it would seem sensible to treat it like a business, and
make the ponies-and-handbags games until there's enough cash to make whatever
one wants and damn the commercial viability.

~~~
socialist_coder
Not everyone wants to take that approach (although it is a good one). It's
harder to be financially successful making games that don't have mass appeal
but it's definitely doable.

------
MrFoof
When I was 6 years old, my goal in life was to move to Japan and work for
Nintendo. Possibly the idea of marrying Princess Toadstool was somewhere in
there, but that was the idea.

When I was 20, I actually had a chance to work on MechWarrior 3. After the
interview process, I decided to run very, very far away and to never consider
it.

I'm 30 now, and actually have been working on a game for the better part of 8
months. My mindset is that it's a hobby that has a small chance of making
enough money to live on, but I've set things up to ensure I can actually
dedicate real amounts of time to it periodically. Rather that quit my day job,
I moved into the consulting business (thanks to folks like patio11) to provide
a financial runway for what I would prefer doing (making video games). Right
now the balance is 7 months full-time consulting, 5 months making video games.
However, (again, thanks to patio) I know I'm undercharging and as I'm able to
raise my rate that will shift more to 5/7 or 4/8 over the next 18 months. I
already have customers waiting in the pipeline that are willing to pay the new
rate as soon as I'm available.

Oddly enough, my current customer is a AAA video game studio, and I've a few
friends in the industry as well (also mostly at AAA studios). Personally I
couldn't deal with the idea of surrendering so much creative input. There's
also the fact that they literally can't pay me enough to work there. I will
say that by and large the industry is filled with a tremendously nice group of
passionate folks, but I "wouldn't want to live there".

It's a fickle market though, which is why I decided to mitigate the financial
risk of financially unsuccessful projects by funding it with a consulting day
job. The consulting affords the video game making. For me, the financial risk
would've been real. I'm developing on a platform that's not taken seriously,
with an art style that might put off hardcores, but with hardcore gameplay and
a simple monetization strategy (you buy the app. There'll be some expansion
packs, but that's it) and no IAP currency nonsense. Things a normal studio
would never dare try.

~~~
RyanZAG
Awesome stuff. I'm actually in exactly the same position on you - been making
a game part time and funding it with contracting work.

Agreed on the fickle idea, as well as trying gameplay that a normal studio
would never touch as it's not been proven. All I can say is keep up the effort
- if its enjoyable and interesting then it will succeed. Looking forward to
seeing the completed product, and I wish me, you and everyone else pushing out
interesting Indi games massive luck!

------
kayoone
> Start Simple!

Cant stress this enough. Start with the simplest possible game project to test
out the waters! You will be to naive and want to tackle big things but you
will probably regret that. Theres alot to be learned by starting small and
then create something bigger once you have some experience with the market.

~~~
Thomvis
In my own experience, it is not only about starting simple, but also finishing
it simple. I know you're not saying it isn't, but what I want to emphasize is
that it is too easy to say that you're done with something simple and then
move on to the next/bigger thing. For example, what eru suggested, if you
build a Tetris-like game. You probably can have the gameplay finished in a few
hours. And then, move on? Or spend another week on polishing, menu's, sound,
graphics, copy, etc. I think the most valuable part of the lesson of starting
simple is in finishing it. (And they don't tell you that.)

~~~
brador
This is probably the best hidden advice on this page. Build complete projects.
Make it a habit. If you just make gameplay prototypes, that will become your
habit and you'll struggle to ship your big idea when the time comes. You'll be
missing the final 90%. You won't know how to prep game art for example.

This applies to all creative "package" projects. Learn to ship.

------
sergiotapia
70 hour work weeks; fucking atrocious. Where do people find time for family
and friends and hobbies? I can't imagine working long stints like that
regularly, I would probably burn out and product shoddy work.

------
sukuriant
Their off-time work is contractually owned by the company? Is this true for
most game development companies? I have never heard of that happening before.
Is that even legal? In the two positions/companies that I've worked with/for,
I've been able to moonlight, as long as it didn't compete directly with the
company (in laymens, non-lawyer terms).

Is this a common detail with game devs? With most jobs? It sounds awful.

~~~
thisone
I've seen this mentioned off hand, occasionally, by developers, not
necessarily game developers. My contract where I work prohibits moonlighting,
because they want your soul (really, they even try to specify how excited I
should be every day).

They even got their knickers in a twist when they learned I work on my own
projects and help out friends and OSS, in my own time, on my own equipment,
but there's not thing one they can do about it.

I've also had a friend be told that he would need to give up his personal,
part time, income generating website in order to take a particular job (not
here). The website business was not in competition with or even the same
general industry as the job.

~~~
flyinRyan
>My contract where I work prohibits moonlighting, because they want your soul
(really, they even try to specify how excited I should be every day).

Personally, I would just ignore clauses like this. I know of no examples of
stuff like this ever being held up in court. At least not at our level. You
might have to worry if you were an executive or something.

~~~
thisone
Because I know the guys who wrote the contracts up, I know the reason this is
in there.

They really believe that if you are working on something then you should be
working on something for them 24/7 (without overtime, of course)

{long personal crap fest story here}

I think these contracts, for anyone, junior, senior, or exec, are quite
unproductive. Outside stimulation makes us, programmers and designers, better
at what we do.

If I only ever worked on work related projects, I wouldn't be able to provide
the kind of input I'm paid for. The contract writers know this, when they stop
to think about it, but they are very scared.

~~~
flyinRyan
I appreciate why places might do it. But it's irrelevant what they believe and
slavery clauses aren't going to be enforceable even if I sign it in my own
blood. What these guys really need to worry about is invalid clauses
invalidating the whole document.

~~~
sukuriant
Unenforcable statements. If I were offered a job by a given company, could I
go take that part of the contract to a lawyer and see if that part of the
contract was not-enforceable, and then go off and work in my spare time,
holding the lawyer on reserve until the day when they sued me?

Because, if I had requirements like that in my contract, I don't think I could
work for that company, even if I were in very real need of money. I have
entrepreneal plans of my own, and they'd start out as just moonlighting.

~~~
flyinRyan
They're probably not going to try to sue you until you're making enough to be
able to defend yourself.

------
ivanstojic
It's kinda sad that, in order to protect himself, he has to put a disclaimer
on his blog about four paragraphs down from the start.

------
bconway
Anyone else feel this read like a paraphrasing of The Oatmeal's most recent
comic?

~~~
sprobertson
Yes actually, the quote about comments could be lifted straight from here:
[http://s3.amazonaws.com/theoatmeal-
img/comics/making_things/...](http://s3.amazonaws.com/theoatmeal-
img/comics/making_things/14.jpg)

------
csense
People say mean things to other people on the Internet?

Stop the presses!

