
Horrible Things I Found Out When I Made A Video Game - smacktoward
http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-things-you-learn-when-making-modern-video-game/
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jondubois
The media keeps telling us over and over again that to be successful
financially, you have to be passionate about what you do. This is he biggest
lie ever.

The reality is that to make money, you have to want money above all else. It's
extremely rare to make a lot of money from doing something that you enjoy
doing.

The vast majority of people are not fortunate enough - Passion is rarely
aligned with consumer needs.

~~~
Pica_soO
I found the best cure of this believe in capitalism is to talk to advertising
folks. The pure cynism and hatred for the consumers these "professional"
explain and show, when among themselves and what they think about the
producers and their employers (both sides who they usually manipulate very
skillfully too)and the completely disregard for the product, this is the heart
of what capitalism is all about.

Its about swinging frozen dogshit-elexiers and be gone from the fair, before
the first customer unpacks, and be not found related to yourself, the next
time you do it on the same fair.

~~~
otakucode
Once upon a time, when you bought something, you had to buy it from the guy
who made it. It was mostly unique and personalization was the default. You
didn't have many options, and he didn't have many customers. Both of these
were problems of distribution. And distribution was a Hard Problem.

Then we built factories and distribution chains. This provided a solution to
the problem. It offered more choice, and more customers. There were drawbacks,
as with anything. It centralized wealth, which was worrisome. It decoupled the
value created from the value the creator received. It made producing identical
products easy, and custom products intractable. It built cities, and long
commutes. But it was worth it.

A couple hundred years passed, and we built computers. We built the Internet.
We made solving the Hard Problem so easy children could do it. But we forgot
that there were drawbacks we took on. And instead of shrugging them off, we
used the tools that could remove those drawbacks to expand those drawbacks.

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unoti
There is a thing that engineers do in all disciplines, not just game
programming, where they wallow in how complex and difficult everything is.
Yes, it's complex and difficult, but you need to look for ways to simplify and
succeed.

The author should remember his insightful caption under Phil Collins' picture:

> Step One is a positive attitude. You have to believe you can escape!

I'm not denying that making games is complex. The things I've written for
games are indeed complex and challenging. But once you start writing essays
about how difficult and impossible everything is, you're not headed to a happy
place.

Boiling things down to their essence, and eliminating the fancy alien hats in
the articles example is crucial. Developing a mastery for how to succeed takes
time and experience, but it can happen.

If you're interested in game design, here is something that will inspire you
and fill you with ideas of how you can succeed. The book below took me forever
to read the first time. That's because every few pages I couldn't resist
putting it down and working on my designs because I was so overwhelmed with
inspiration from its amazing wisdom. The book is the Art of Game Design, and
it's one of my most prized books.

[https://www.amazon.com/Art-Game-Design-Lenses-
Second/dp/1466...](https://www.amazon.com/Art-Game-Design-Lenses-
Second/dp/1466598646/)

Another vitally important book about chasing your dream without getting bogged
down in complexity and unhappy places is The Alchemist. It's a short parable,
full of life changing wisdom, a little like The Old Man and the Sea.

[https://www.amazon.com/Alchemist-Paulo-
Coelho/dp/0061122416](https://www.amazon.com/Alchemist-Paulo-
Coelho/dp/0061122416)

The alchemist is available on audible too, but you'll want it in text as well.

~~~
fenomas
> But once you start writing essays about how difficult and impossible
> everything is, you're not headed to a happy place.

The author is a moderately well-known cynical internet humorist; I think
essays like this are his main line of work.

~~~
unoti
> The author is a moderately well-known cynical internet humorist; I think
> essays like this are his main line of work.

Ah, fantastic! Over the years I've worked with an astonishing number of
engineers whose apparent main line of work is writing cynical essays!

~~~
jldugger
And this guy is their role model!

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Eric_WVGG
I assume this is an older article because it makes no mention of the recent
kickstarter for a sequel. Looks good.
[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/611279740/calculords-2-...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/611279740/calculords-2-rise-
of-the-shadow-nerd)

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orasis
"Still, it taught me that being a man making video games is like a woman doing
anything -- you can give the world nothing but a free supply of objective
awesomeness, and you'll still have crusaders hellbent on destroying you."

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its_the_future
Couple of interesting points, slightly ruined by the guy excessively
mentioning that he's writing hilarity while actually not making you laugh at
all.

~~~
TillE
Yes, the try-hard comedy practiced by some people is really grating (looking
at you, Rock Paper Shotgun).

Most successful humor doesn't contain a joke in every sentence or two. Or if
it does, it's an elaboration of the same joke, not random shit thrown at a
wall.

------
based2
[http://www.calculords.com/](http://www.calculords.com/)

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pfarnsworth
I know people that work at small Bay Area gaming company, and their M.O. was
to rip off every popular game that came online in the App Store. They have a
few million steady users for their games, and they use that as an ad network
to advertise their new ripoffs. They said that by 2016, they couldn't find any
new games to rip off so they started to try to make their own. Gaming is a
terrible business to be in because of how the App Store allows these ripoffs
to drown out any innovation.

~~~
clarry
I fear gaming is a terrible business to be in (and I might find out sometime
in the coming times..), but I'd at least get out of the App Stores and steer
clear of cheaply produced mobile dirt. Blatant, obvious ripoffs aren't quite
so common in the PC & console market and the players do a little more research
than pull their phones to check what's popular before purchasing a game. I
think that market is much more lucrative for people who want to innovate and
try a new formula.

~~~
namlem
IMO Steam needs to launch an Android store. If anyone can convince consumers
that mobile games have the potential to be high quality and valuable, it's
Valve. People who balk at the idea of paying 99 cents for a mobile app happily
drop $20 on a game on Steam.

~~~
otakucode
It wouldn't be any better. Valve has had a strict policy of 'let the publisher
do whatever it wants' since the inception of Steam. There have been one-off
exceptions, but their general policy is to be a platform that facilitates
publishers doing their thing, regardless of what that is. There are growing
numbers of asset-swap games, and games slapped together in a minute with cheap
asset packs. It's not like how Apple approached the music industry with
iTunes, laying down ultimatums like '99 cents a song, individual purchases
allowed, audio CD burning permitted' which forced music publishers to choose
between their retail distribution agreements and iTunes.

This would actually be OK if Steam provided any rudimentary
filtering/personalization system at all. If they would just take a users
activity and feed it into a Bayesian system with 'disliked' games considered
'spam' and purchased or 'wishlisted' items considered 'ham', then put that
content on top for that user, it would be much less of a problem. But as it
is, they provide nothing like this and don't seem to ever intend to.

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hmahncke
Calculords is a truly great game. All the fun of learning arithmetic on your
new TI, plus grumpy aliens.

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georgeecollins
For " The Industry Doesn't Really Encourage Innovation" please replace the
word "Industry" with "Audience". There are a vocal group of people who want
something new, but a larger, less vocal group of people who want something
familiar, or don't know what they want so they pick something familiar.

This is true of all media and true of consumer tastes in general. People like
TV shows and movies that are like ones that have been done before. There is
certainly an audience for things that are original, but a much a larger
audience for things that are familiar. And in movies and TV, like games, your
chances of achieving a viable product are better if you tweak an existing
formula rather than innovate.

Lots of people make games because they love them, and then are disappointed
that they don't make money. But in almost all other media there is an
understanding that the "best" (most smart, most original) will not be the most
popular because of the tastes of the audience.

I know this, the first game I designed was very innovative and I took my lumps
for it.

~~~
otakucode
You are definitely in the right ballpark. The audience bears at least even
responsibility, if not the majority. This is a widespread problem in the
gaming community, not just in mobile. Remember that Simcity 2012 version? The
always-online one (that could never get online at launch) that spawned dozens
of boycotts and petitions before it came out? Best-selling game on the Origin
platform in history. This sends a crystal clear message. 'Ignore our
protestations, we're just salty. Hurt us and we will pay you.'

However, we're facing an interesting time. Research suggests that the public
response to media is actually random. Copycat movies and TV don't get churned
out because they are successful or have a better chance of success, they get
made because the people in charge of deciding what to create are executives
who want to 'make their mark' and been seen as 'a tastemaker' in an
environment where the only pattern is that there is no pattern. 'I know what
people want' makes careers, and 'I got lucky' gets you nowhere.

The 'interesting' part is that this copycat system only works when there are a
small number of players controlling the creation and distribution of the
media. Once things open up and niche markets become viable, things get
interesting.

(The book 'A Drunkard's Walk' runs the numbers if you're curious.)

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pascalxus
The author is correct: Advertising on Mobile is extremely untargeted. You
basically spray and pray, throwing vast amounts of advertisement dollars out
the door. Hoping to make a decent ROI. But, to do so, you need to get to the
top, the very top. This is why the long tail of mobile development doesn't
work anymore and why only mainstream games can be successful.

The vast majority of casual gamers don't truely appreciate the depth in games
these days. Just read the app store user reviews, they are replete with
reviews such as: "Uhhh, Great way to kill time...", "Good time killer...".
That's all these games are to them, just a great way to kill time in an
utterly boring life. How sad.

I'm sure there's still a tiny audience out there, who enjoys games of depth,
indie games and non-mainstream games, but you'll never be able reach them with
the current app store setup.

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ajeet_dhaliwal
Great post, been there myself. Twice. Won't be returning.

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tgb
Can we all take a moment to consider that not a single one of the percentages
in the screenshot of the Kardashian game's purchase screen is accurate?

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jwatte
Also, while the presentation is funny, the "leanings" are something that
anyone in the industry will tell you for free while waiting in the free beer
line at GDC.

Ideas are worth very little; ability to draw and code and execute is where
it's at, and modern business is hyper optimized to exploit money out of
suckers by strip mining the society we all have to live in.

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forgottenpass
Thought 1: This is Cracked, so it will probably suck, but I'll scroll through
the headings real quick and ignore everything else.

Thought 2: I'm reading more than the numbered items? A Cracked article hasn't
won me over like this in ages.

Thought 3: That was weird return to form.

Thought 4: Oh, it's seanbaby. That explains everything.

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BoorishBears
I'd say almost all of these are mobile specific aside from the effort one, and
are also things the author could have, and should have, known before entering
the mobile space.

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edem
So how big a success your game is after all? You did not elaborate in your
article. Nice observations though! Thanks for sharing.

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vhogemann
Cool article, awesome game!

