I'll provide my answer: work in high stress low supply work and build capital. I've spent a decade in infrastructure. Beyond the ego lift of working on big things, it's not fun work.
The good news is the grind is open to all skin colors! Slap that pager on your hip and prepare for a rough night!
Once you have enough capital, you can leverage the market to provide an infinite funding stream. PLUS, as a disciplined engineer, you have the highest cost skill along with the ability to not make mistakes.
The risk is that you may find yourself giving into avarice and enjoying that high income stream from the enterprise market.
Same way you fund any other 5-to-9 creative micro-business or passion. If you’re an unknown, no one is lining up to pay you to develop a prototype of your game idea, any more than they would if you were getting started in fine art or music.
How do other people fund their band practice or painting or pottery passion? If you already have a computer and can program, your prototype probably costs less money and time than what those endeavors cost those artists.
“Privilege bashing”? Christ, how can it be “bashing” to have a candid discussion about why some people are able to turn their passions into a business, while others can’t? Your reasoning is dangerously close to “the real racism is suggesting that racism would ever be a factor in anything”.
Because more often than not it misses the mark - heavily at that.
The article mentions skin tone, but doesn't go too deep into why that might influence things - just assumes that this is the case.
Meanwhile, as an eastern European, I see typical examples of how social class influences one's options.
To clarify my point: we're predominantly white over here and yet experience the same kind of problems, which leads me to think that it's probably not skin tone, over which Americans left and right seem to be so fixated, but other things.
Yes, there's racism - that's abundantly clear. But there's also poverty, inequality and an associated lack of access to education. Maybe we would have made more progress as a species if we stopped focusing on easily identifiable features?
Same here, white male from Eastern Europe, if someone has a recipe how to make other people give me lots of money in return for a hope that in a few years I will produce a great computer game... please tell me. Because I would love writing my own game, instead of developing boring applications.
Reading all these texts about whiteness and maleness, I suspect an important step in the process is sending someone a picture of a white penis. Okay, I have a picture, but no idea where to send it. Should I just spam everyone and hope for the best?
If we are talking about privileges, how about mentioning the most relevant one: rich privilege? Oh I forgot, this one probably does not exist. Too bad, because a rich person could easily fund the game prototype, and maybe even pay for favorable reviews.
Well in the US race is inextricably tied to class. We have a long history of limiting the economic opportunities of Black people that’s led to a pretty extreme black/white wealth gap.
So in the US at least, class issues are race issues.
Europe also has a long history of limiting economic opportunities of black people - arguably much longer than the US, and yet the situation isn't that dire over here.
What do you mean by “it’s just skin tone”? I’m going to take it you’re asking if I think all inequalities between white and black people in the US are based on interpersonal racism regardless of class? Obviously that’s not true.
However, there are many examples in the US’s recent history and present that _are_ explicitly racist. For example, the criminal justice system in the US is definitely classist, but it’s also racist.
That’s the case with most of our institutions: both classist and racist to varying degrees.
As to why the situation isn’t as dire in Europe than the US? My first question is: is it really less dire there?
But assuming it is, I’m guessing it’s one of two things:
- Less recent oppression: the US has had explicitly racist policies in housing, policing, schooling, etc. in its very recent past. Some of those practices are still around, just a little less explicit.
- welfare programs seem better in general in Europe: when you have no public healthcare, an all but abandoned public schooling system, and an unlivable minimum wage a wealth gap between two races isn’t going to fix itself, it’ll only grow wider.
>My first question is: is it really less dire there?
Yes, the situation is comparably better in Europe. We don't really know what you Yankees are doing on the other side of the pond, but we don't want any of it here for sure. Your nation is a bad example to all of us.
I agree with you, but in my opinion, articles like this could generally do a better job separating between privilege and the ridiculous amount of work and commitment it can take to make it in art, especially as an independent.
Anecdotally, from the people I know making a living (so not being rich, just at least getting by fully on their own) as independents in music, sound design/engineering, illustration and writing have one thing in common: A 10+ year grind behind them working (either to earn money or practicing) 16 hour days, over weekends, almost no vacations or going out, investing everything in materials instead, living in tiny apartments or with their parents, taking shitty day jobs to earn enough to eat, etc.
Where the privilege comes in, is when due to ones socioeconomic status they can't make the above sacrifices even though they would have the necessary perseverance to get through.
From my perspective, we definitely need to do better pretty much globally in providing more equal opportunity within societies. But even if this aspect wouldn't exist, people are also just too naive about how much hard work is involved in these types of careers no matter how passionate or talented they think they are. For every one "white dude" that made it, there are probably thousands that didn't, because they spent most their free time playing video games and smoking weed but are blaming it on something else.
Up to you whether you think this is racist, but the article does invoke generalizations about race and gender through this quote here:
> [To be honest] I think most local white dudes don't think of a prototype as something they "funded". They ”just made it” because they had time, space and hardware. Did their other job/parents covering tuition/lack of dependents to support/etc allow that? Yeah, but they can't see how it paid.”
Personally, I imagine class or wealth has more to do with being able to bootstrap a game than skin color. And I imagine the barriers to entry have been lowering steeply.
It's all about race, just look at all those white dudes from Polish villages cranking out one prototype after another, swimming in the vast oceans of opportunity. Contrast that with the daily struggle any person of colour must endure to survive in, say, Seattle. Unfathomable.
This is an underrated comment. The blindingly American framework in these discussions is in itself bigoted — it completely ignores countervailing evidence that comes from adopting a global perspective.
For what it’s worth, that quote is from Dislekcia. He is a white developer from South Africa, where class/wealth is still extremely correlated with race, due to obvious historical reasons.
It's a Chicken-or-the-Egg problem. You need talent and resources to develop your Prototype but those talents and resources improve dramatically if there is a Prototype to play with. Catch 22. The Makers Dilemma. A microscale version of what Peter Thiel calls "Zero to One" - as in getting from nothing now to something new. The post is based on a great tweet thread full of inspiring stories of grit and determination; but as far as starting up anything in any person's garage anywhere, you may just as well be saying that water is wet.
Developing the required talent and resources is best done working a day job. Go work as a cog in a game making team, they'll cover your weaknesses and build your strengths. Attempting to make a game while also "making your skills" will result all early work being vastly interior to later work.
If getting employment on a team is impossible that points to a bigger issue: you need at least 1 skill to get hired but you need 12+ skills to finish a game. Short of devs in locations without studios, most developers should start their career making portfolio pieces to get a job.
Too often people think of Indie dev as an intro into the industry: but that is like starting a restaurant to "break into" the food service industry.
It's reasonable to expect someone who is new to the industry to make a small game, so a better analogy might be expecting someone to be a decent home cook before getting a good service job. I agree though when you start talking about game dev as a business. Although people start successful businesses from cooking in their home, it's highly unlikely that they'll get it off the ground, let alone be successful.
TL;DR: by having some free time, saved up funds (or "lottery" like kickstarter) and then just doing it.
It's like with prototypes in any other area. You have idea, you either convince someone that it's good (typically with alredy working prototype, which precludes funding for prototypes) or use your own time/funds. I wish there could be other way. Maybe someday UBI will give us that.
It might be controversial, but are you sure the current way is wrong?
If you did not have to consider financial viability of a project, then more people would make more random stuff, which of course would produce more useful stuff, because the sample size increases, but there would also be more useless garbage.
The question is whether and in what direction/magnitude the signal to noise ratio would change in the UBI scenario.
> It might be controversial, but are you sure the current way is wrong?
No, current way is the most optimal I can think of in current situation. There are better ways, but not widely implementable currently.
As for more garbage - yes, there would be more noise, but ALSO more signal (in my humble opinion). Signal in this case is useful things, which would be multiplied by usability, which is a net win for me.
Read the article, it weirdly shoehorns the “white male” thing in there between “we used savings when possible and worked 75 hour weeks until we had something to show.”
The article starts off by saying they want to poll white men, because marginalized developers are struggling.
It includes quotes from people such as this:
> I think most local white dudes
> don't think of a prototype as something they "funded". They
> ”just made it” because they had
> time, space and hardware.
Generally, refers to hidden privilege throughout as subtext. If you're white and male you have more access to these kinds of opportunities, etc.
The irony of course being "working for free on personal project after work" is not an opportunity.
No doubt I am the exact class of "white dude" the article is talking about. My "funding" story is super boring. I worked on my game after a full day of work and after getting kids to bed.
Spend savings from day job on commissioned art to make the game pretty, after a couple years you should have a game worth players time. If "having job" counts as privilege then sure it requires privilege, to the exact extent paying rent does too.
PS: Occasionally commenters say "I program all day and have no energy to program at home". To which I can only warn: games programming is not what you want.
Did you read the article?
It quotes a Twitter conversation where a user asks for specifically white male experiences about creating a game studio / prototype. In general the answers basically amount to "I worked extremely hard, like 75hr weeks. Worked full time job whilst doing it; took multiple years before things started to work out" and then the article again tries to shoehorn the white male narrative to invalidate the answers. "other job / parents covering tuition / lack of dependents to support" are hardly exclusive to one gender or skin colour.
The good news is the grind is open to all skin colors! Slap that pager on your hip and prepare for a rough night!
Once you have enough capital, you can leverage the market to provide an infinite funding stream. PLUS, as a disciplined engineer, you have the highest cost skill along with the ability to not make mistakes.
The risk is that you may find yourself giving into avarice and enjoying that high income stream from the enterprise market.