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What it takes to make a game by yourself (dillonshook.com)
350 points by vicarrion on Sept 16, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 161 comments



I love reading these kinds of posts. Whenever I’m reminded that I’m not alone, I get a little bit more self-compassion and that makes me more excited to release my game and helps me appreciate all the progress and hard work to date.

I’ve been working on King of Kalimpong [0] on and off since playtesting a one-week prototype of it in 2014. I had no idea how much work a networked physics vehicle/movement shooter game would be. (I should have, I was 8 years into a programming career).

Working part-time was critical (for many reasons), but so was learning that progress is a product of discipline, not motivation, and that I needed to learn “infinite endurance” (I think that’s what Chris Hecker called it).

Once I adopted the perspective that I was some finite number of 3-4 hour blocks of concentration away from turning a goofy idea into a game that anyone could play, finishing became something that felt inevitable — as long as I kept going.

I’ll take the time to write about my experience after I release (which is now months instead of years away) in case any other game developers get anything out of it. Until then, thanks for another reminder that I’m not alone!

[0] https://store.steampowered.com/app/1989110/King_of_Kalimpong...


That looks really polished/professional. Nice work.


Damn. That gameplay looks tight. Keep up the good work!


Looks great, reminds me a lil of Vigilante 8.


What engine are you using. Did you go for tick based and/or deterministic physics?


I'm using a fork of Unreal Engine 4.20, and I'm using the substepped physics that UE ships with. I have a fixed timestep PR simmering for if and when it's time to implement a proper rewind/replay system for all vehicle movement.

I attempted the standard prediction/correction implementation used for deterministic movement systems and got it working for the deterministic aspects of the vehicle's movement system, but naturally couldn't make it work for the core, non-deterministic physics, as that will require fixing the timestep and probably doing other things I haven't thought about / don't understand yet.

For now, the system works like this:

- basic client vehicle movement is non-deterministic physx + deterministic overrides

- special moves are deterministic but client-predicted

- weapons systems are deterministic but client-predicted

- server-side anticheat model is derived from me moving around and generating believable movement curves so the server can check that any given client move it receives is appropriate given its history / state of the world

- server also (supposedly!) handles noclip and flying cheats (this was a fun month)

- clients predict hits, server authorizes them

- simulated proxies (other clients in your world) mostly move according to projective velocity blending[0], though there are special cases for some of the special moves (spins)

- collisions are blended between the replicated state of the world and the client's local simulation [1]

- probably most importantly, the server creates replay files during matches which the game coordinator/serving system scoops up and saves, so I can (at some point) generate useful statistics and review matches to detect and improve cheat handling

I would have loved to do the networked physics really right, like Rocket League did, but I couldn't quite pull it off (I'm one guy with kids and a job and just not enough brainpower!), so I opted for what I hope is "good enough" for a small project like this: give the client a great experience, put all vehicles and projectiles in mostly the same position at the same time in all worlds (since they're momentum-based entities latency-based predictions are usually quite accurate), run an anticheat model on the server, and save replays to find and review anomalies.

If the game does okay and people are enjoying it I will get that fixed timestep/rewind replay PR done.

I hope that was a good answer! Let me know if I can tell you anything else. Something I didn't mention here is the networked projectile movement, which was the most fun to work on. I plan to write about that, too, at some point.

[0]: https://www-inf.telecom-sudparis.eu/COURS/MultiplayerCourse/...

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPRK5J5-3QQ&list=PLpE81hvqYF...


Keep going and you'll get there! Your game looks great!


That is looking really fun for a casual game with friends!


I have a game with +10 million installs on the both app stores, the truth of it is making the game is about 25% of the work - the rest is dealing with marketing, screenshots, videos, user reviews, Ad/IAP SDKs, waiting for Unity to switch between platforms, dealing with Unity bugs/upgrades, etc.. When you're making the games it's a joy - the rest of the stuff can be a real grind.


With that kind of insight into each market segment, what monetization model are you seeing working the best on each platform?

I've had an idea for a small mobile game in mind now for a while, but I find the idea of potentially having to place ads in it to make back some of the investement not appealing. So I delay starting the project.

The dream would be to be able to offer it for a low price (1.5$ - 3$) and reach enough of an audience.


Freemium: Ads and IAP, i'm afraid.


I started making games right after I joined my university. Those were simple flash-like games with simple gameplay and basic UI/UX. Fast forward 10 years; I started a game studio and we’re a team of 50+ but still making really simple games for mobile. Not that we didn’t try making “huge” games but constantly creating new games and publishing them and seeing them succeed is what it takes to keep making games. As an indie developer, you’ll probably make a dozen or more games before people actually play one of your games. It’s a long battle but making many simple games is more important than trying to make a blockbuster in the first try.


You're optimizing for revenue/chance of success, not for the creation itself, which most world-class indie games are optimizing for (e.g. stardew valley, dwarf fortress, celeste, hollow knight, etc).

Also, building a million simple mobile games will not magically compound into making you a great complex/deep game builder.

Not trying to say your strategy is wrong, I just don't agree with your strategy if someone's goal is to build the game they have in mind, exactly like they have it in their mind (assuming it's more than a simple mobile game). It will help in terms of general "steps" to have built a couple simple games before sure, but that's about it.


All the indie devs you mentioned had moonshot successes that catapulted their studio. They shouldn't be modeled by anyone making a fresh go at the games industry. Save yourself the time and buy a lotto ticket.

Having a tight release loop is a good strategy. You will find mechanics that work over time and iterate on them, finding more and more reliable success. Eventually one will hit. You don't even have to avoid looking like shovelware. The mobile game audience doesn't care about that, it's more of a capital G Gamer gatekeeper thing.


How do you compare flash game to mobile games ?

I have played a lot of flash games, but mobile games become boring very fast to me. I think this has to do with the input limitation of the device : touch with one thumb on half the screen. Maybe this force mobile games into limited gameplay choices.


Interesting story. Could you comment on the economics of running such a studio, which seems to be relying on casual gaming. A bit of insight into the market as well.

Really curious.


Which one of your games did you like the most?


The hardest thing is finishing, because everything is ever connected to a "perfect" version of itself...

And it's way less fun (for most game dev people) to code the "perfect" version of an input remapping system or leaderboard system :p

Obligatory self-promotion:

I just released my Space Pew-Pew game on Steam in Early Access, complete with original 16bit-neoclassical OST!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/914930/Alcyon_Infinity/

"Destroy hordes of ever-improving enemies and their Mothership. Alcyon Infinity is a fast shooter/bullet hell with dynamic movement and risk management. Up to 4 Co-Op players with Controllers."

I'm doing a stealth release, primarily for my own sanity. There is something different about having it out for the World to seen rather than working on it for 3 years and giving up in the meantime (happened twice).

The magnitude of the marketing work ahead is kinda daunting, but at least I have some kind of anchoring to realspace for prospective players.

A game you can play and refund is more tangible than a forum with promises...


Yep, you gotta get to release! The first you push all the way through to release is the hardest (at least so I've heard haha)


This is timely. Since I’m on sabbatical, I decided to spend 6 months cramming Unreal Engine 5 and Blender to see if I could cobble together enough expertise and the bones of a project to work on together with my now five-year old son over the coming years. I always loved gaming growing up and I figured it would be a great way to get him interested in, and learning, a broad range of skills that might help him along the way in future.

To be honest, it’s been more of a commitment than I expected, but I don’t regret the time spent at all and I think it’s something my son will come to treasure. Sketching imaginary animals into a text book and seeing them come to life in-game a few days later is a magical experience for a kid.

I’d just repeat what a few others have said herein: for hobbyists, keep your expectations for what’s achievable nice and low, make sure you enjoy the journey, and perhaps think about it as something you put an hour into every day, rather than one-focusing on hitting concrete milestones, many of which may remain out of reach for months. Oh, and checklists: write loads of them and keep them handy!


I’m working on a 2D game conceived by my 9-year-old who had played enough games that he was inspired to make one. He was thrilled as soon as the first animated graphics came onscreen. More valuable than my programming skills have been my project management skills: keeping the scope achievable and focusing on realistic milestones is a little harder when working with a 4th grader. It’s been a great learning and bonding experience for us both. Best of luck to you!


Absolutely agreed, and best of luck to you also!


Have any of you made a game, not just by yourself but only for yourself?

I haven't (other than some basic terminal-based games when learning new languages, etc), but I've thought of a few that I know I would like but don't want to put in the time/effort to make them something that someone else would like.

I also wonder about what to do when you have an idea that you know is way bigger than yourself, but you're not in the business of producing things that are way bigger than yourself? I've had a few of those, too.


Yup, three times over...

I just released the third version on Steam EA, doing a stealth release for my own sanity. (https://store.steampowered.com/app/914930/Alcyon_Infinity/)

Payed for the graphical assets 10 years ago, made a soundtrack and most of a game, then got a reality check and moved out to contract work for a year on a polished turd game under a crazy Youtuber (Fuzecat).

Came back, worked on a second version and composed a soundtrack again. A month before we would have had a nice version to show to publishers got ghosted by the artist, got a reality check and went to contract work for a medium studio in Paris, worked on 2 pretty good games (WRC8, TT:2) that were good only through the sweat and tears of people on the ground. Returned home afterwards, half the people I knew there changed job.

Came back right for Covid years, worked freelance debugging and adding features (Neurodeck), then started again on my project...

Why?

Because sometimes there are things you have to do I guess :p I took only what worked from previous iterations, and cut as much things as I could.

The end product isn't what I started with anymore, but at least I got to the point that I could make it "Real", it has an options menu, and you can remap all inputs and there's and "End" and so forth.

I made at least 5 different prototypes within those 3 iterations of the same 2D Space Pew-Pew game: - open world scriptable missions and universe - fully scriptable universe for a Star Wars mod - Survival action - Pokemon Style - Roguelike - Bullet Hell (current one)

Only one has everything that makes it a full contained and shareable experience that I can play if I want 10 years from now :p


When I started learning programming 25+ years ago, I started a tetris clone. I was learning Pascal (Borland's TP 7 anyone?) as well as creating the game. Took me 2 months and was a smash hit among my colleagues at Uni. Next I did 5-in-row (Tic-Tac-Toe's more interesting big brother), which was another smash hit among the same colleagues. They were preferring playing those games instead of listening to the undergrad when we were in laboratories. Still have the source codes for both games somewhere. Good times.


Similar story for me. :-)

Noting down some of the differences below.

Game: Pacman

32 years ago (12-13 years of age)

Programmed in Sinclair BASIC on ZX Spectrum+

Took two weekends as I recall

Played only by me and a friend

Lost the source code: There was no non-volatile memory on the computer so I used to note down the programs manually in a notebook, which I've lost.

Similarity:

"Good times." :-)

PS: The 34 years old computer still works, though 90% of the keyboard keys have stopped working. I'll need to replace internal keyboard membrane and also get adapters to hook it to a monitor.


The AI part in 5-in-row is a good challenge.


No AI. Only multiplayer at same keyboard. Hence the popularity, they were paired anyway 2 students at one computer only.


I made www.chesscraft.ca for myself, mostly to survive my brutal commute to work pre pandemic. Today I still prioritize features I'll enjoy most, even tho I have 250k installs now.

The game will also never have ads, even tho lots of people tell me I'm missing out. Then again, those people haven't or can't build fun games.


Can't speak for Unity but you can make a pretty complete Unreal game solo in around a month or so if you've done it before.

I'd love to release some of my work (for free ofc) but I'm never truly happy with how limited my 3D art skills are so I always shelf it after finishing all the fun programming bits.


I am in the camp of "if a game is fun then I don't care what it looks like" but also of the "I could not possibly publish a piece of art that looks like shit" personality type. IOW, I generally demand more perfection of myself than I would ever require of someone else. So I think I feel where you are coming from. :)


It's genuinely not great, mostly placeholder stuff to convey aesthetic & mechanics so I can continue coding. I always toy with just bankrolling a skilled 3D artist to craft all the pieces to spec but then it becomes a quandary: is it really 'my' game at that point?


Consider that you don't have to create the universe from the beginning to make something from scratch (Sagan). If the art is work-for-hire and you own all the rights, then I think the game is truly yours. Just like most of us don't write compilers or hand-make all the computer components ourselves. I didn't even build my own chair or desk! :)

Well, I sort of did build my own chair and desk, since they come from Ikea.


Me, actually- I've played in the past flash game Taberinos- before I've found out what its title was I've made a similar game for myself - and that's how BOINK! has been made: https://lukaszkups.itch.io/boink


I think video game success is probably distributed like startups. Maybe 1 in 10 will have real success, a few might break even or make a little and most will end up never making enough to cover the costs to create. The work is massive and the pay off is not guaranteed. Creating a video game by yourself is not for the money, it's because you're driven to create the idea you see in your mind.


I'd think it's closer to 1 in 100 then 1 in 10 that break even.


If “break even” is “I made back costs” and not “I made back opportunity costs” - most game devs could have made many multiples contracting, or even working those hours at Starbucks.


Perseverance and conditioning yourself to be comfortable with (or even excited/inspired by) long periods of unfinished-ness are core competencies in practically every demanding project I've embarked upon - not just software, literally anything that can't be started and finished over a weekend.

A WIP is often largely indistinguishable from a complete and utter broken disaster. When the project necessarily takes a long time, that work-in-progress state can start convincing you (and your peers/family/friends/onlookers) that it's not a work-in-progress but a total failure. The only difference between those two realities is abandoning it vs. finishing it.

Some (most?) people lack the grit to get through that trough of "unfinished-or-failed?" ambiguity.

That's a lot of text trying to describe what I've found is the real substance behind "real developers ship".

And somewhere in all this, you still have to have maintain enough perspective to know when to cut your losses.

As a developer, and builder of things in general, I have hella respect for anyone who does such projects.


I've been working on my site: https://golfcourse.wiki for some time, and this is exactly how I feel all the time. Thank you for the encouragement.

I know this is a good idea. I know it will help people. I know I can either monetize it long term or even have it function as a non-profit. I also know it will take many years to slowly build to the functionality and content quality that I'm aiming for. Holding onto that long term view is extremely challenging.

Most days are just watching nothing happen, or slowly, slowly adding a single course (aggregated sites litter the golf internet, I want the opposite). One day I'll post on the golf subreddit and have 1000 users, get positive feedback, and the next two weeks just 5 users per day from google. And the kicker is, I'm genuinely embarrassed by some of the sub-optimal code and real lack of functionality I haven't addressed, even though I'm honestly very regularly working on it.

The best advice i got from a friend: only look at one-month or two-month increments as far as users. Day-to-day can get depressing, but on a bi-monthly basis, I've had slow-and-steady growth. At the same time, while I'm only up to 700 commits so far (vs 2000 in the article), I do have serious anxiety that I'm wasting years of my free time building something that won't amount to anything but a couple hundred upvotes on reddit, so I look at it as my unique hobby. I like mapping courses and making course books. It's my site and my hobby, and I'm fine if it's just me doing the work alone for the rest of my life. I believe that much in the project.


As a hobby I dabble in ceramics. I've recently been working on a large animal sculpture which has taken a few months of (weekly class) work.

It has probably a 50% chance of surviving a firing. Naturally the class instructor is concerned that "all this work will be for nothing".

But unlike him, I'm at peace. Creating the sculpture was its own reward. After the firing it maybe a big bag of bits, but that won't remove the pleasure of creating it.

In the same way I applaud your enjoyment of your hobby. Whether it is financially successful or not, your pleasure needs to be in the journey, not just the destination. If you keep it that way you'll have more fun than if you're only working for a future payday. And if you do monetize it, you may find it robs you of your joy.

If someone was going to pay me for my sculpture, I'd be a lot more worried around about now :)


Just wanted to say that I have only ever played golf once and have no real interest in it, but I still clicked on your site and went down a rabbit hole. This was fascinating: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2004-jun-11-me-peren...

Thanks :)


This is very relevant!


Personally the map with little icons always turns me off of sites. Maybe just a random course with quality photos where the map is, and some way to navigate to the next one? Maybe you don't fully aggregate the courses but you can scrape behind the scenes, automatically compile a bunch of content, and then edit it down. So you've proofread vetted all the content but doesn't have to be done manually.


>Personally the map with little icons always turns me off of sites.

I actually agree with you, but I really don’t know how else to get people to physically see courses they’ve never noticed before. Also I suck at Leaflet so it’s ugly.

>Maybe you don't fully aggregate the courses but you can scrape behind the scenes, automatically compile a bunch of content, and then edit it down.

I thought long and hard about this, but when I realized that the USGA, itself, has incorrect data more often than not, I realized that letting the people who love the course add the data is going to be better in the long run.


I'm surprised you think it's ugly, my immediate impression was the opposite.

I personally don't mind the icons on the map, they give a good overview and, above all, immediately explained to me what the website is about.


I've been making video games for a long time and while it's true they can feel unfinished for a long time, they shouldn't ever feel completely broken/disasterous/failed. One of the key things when making a video game is to make sure that it is fun and playable as early as possible into development, and when someone is grinding away working on something that isn't fun that's a pretty huge red flag to me.


"No prototypes. Just make the game. Polish as you go. Don't depend on polish happening later. Always maintain constantly shippable code." - John Romero


For one project, John Carmack hacked out a beta in two weeks in a cabin retreat and then spent ages polishing it up.

The first 90% of the effort is getting it working and then the next 90% is the polishing the result.


I think one of the biggest problems indie game devs have is putting a lot of focus into art and polish without actually working out whether the game is fun to play. The dev gets to make enjoyable incremental progress without having to confront the difficult questions about whether the game is actually workable. Some games can get by purely on story and art, but in the vast majority of cases I think solo devs would be best served by making an absolutely minimal gameplay prototype and making it fun before thinking at all about polish.


> Polish as you go

Best way to end up bikeshedding.


This is why it’s good to intentionally go between the micro and macro and define some design goals or pillars. The latter give you a razor by which to judge the game and the former stops you getting stuck in the weeds.

I broadly agree with the Romero quote, getting the game playable as quickly as possible and keeping it playable is easily the most effective way of crafting a game because it enables you to routinely playtest and understand your progress. A key element of that is making the game legible and for that you do need to spend some time on “polish” because it’s an intractable element of the whole.


> keeping it playable is easily the most effective way of crafting a game because it enables you to routinely playtest and understand your progress.

Obviously.

> A key element of that is making the game legible and for that you do need to spend some time on “polish” because it’s an intractable element of the whole.

What does "legible" mean? Polishing means making something production-ready. A polished feature contains (ideally) no known bugs, has been thoroughly tested, gone through several UX iterations and brought up to a release standard.

That's not necessary for playtesting and improving the game. Unless you're done with all core game mechanics, you shouldn't be polishing.


Legible means clear enough to be understandable and polish can be a clear part of that including selling the game feel. It’s a pretty classic move to under-appreciate how much feedback from a game players need to understand it.

Your definition of polish is much narrower than mine and I fundamentally disagree with you on the value of polishing during development through bitter experience.


sounds believable, i'm not sure its helpful.

i think that also sums up John Romero tbh...


The most difficult part about software engineering and IRL engineering is the feeling of “everything’s broken always” and just constantly needing to fix or tweak things. I understand that’s the job description basically but nice to hear it articulated by someone else


This is why TDD exist, it doesn't necessarily improve the product or delivery speed, but it keeps you sane while the project is half baked.

I've found incorporating tests on my personal projects allow me to pick it up after even a year or two, but if I don't have tests, they inevitably become so jumbled that they cannot be salvaged once the initial effort is over.


tests mostly work for technical code, it would be harder to pick up gameplay stuff.

Though that's why open betas exist I suppose, but for most studios that want to keep things under wraps, paying a lot of testers is extremely costly (and thus buggy releases).


> The most difficult part about software engineering and IRL engineering is the feeling of “everything’s broken always” and just constantly needing to fix or tweak things.

Who says that this feeling is not entirely correct and most of software development is insanely broken, i.e. software development as of today actually mostly means working around these insane problems such that not already a monkey that was conditioned using electrical shocks realizes how broken everything is.


Not sure I understand this comment very well but should have added it’s “the thing I personally find most difficult”. I was referring to “putting out fires” at work mostly, even with tests and other checks there are often regressions in a “large codebase” when working with a team of devs


Real developers ship = real writers write = real painters paint, etc.

If you want to create things — anything, you put your ass in that chair every day regardless of whether you feel you are accomplishing anything. Eventually, you will start to make progress towards your goal. It gets better as you become better at staying the course.

Highly recommend The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, which is a short, but important read on this very topic.


On the same topic, I would recommend Seth Godin - The Practice: Shipping Creative Work


These are very wise words that I needed to hear today; thank you.


You go to hell and back thinking you have a broken disaster and come out beautifully the other side.


Good luck to all indie game developers!

If you need a break, seeing this documentary about it will be worth your time: Indie Game: The Movie (2012) https://moviewise.wordpress.com/2012/12/28/indie-game-the-mo...

And, if you need some encouragement or diversion about the joy and reward of learning and how it get help you achieve "flow" and happiness from your work, please read: Some Advice On Happiness From A Few Good Movies https://moviewise.substack.com/p/going-through-an-existentia...


Bought it from the website https://buy.indiegamethemovie.com/ and just watching it. Thanks a lot for the tip! Really engaging documentary.


The Mathematics StackExchange reference gave me a chuckle.[1]

1 - https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/3137017/how-do-you-...


Which makes what Stardew Valley developer, ConcernedApe, accomplished so much more impressive. https://www.gq.com/story/stardew-valley-eric-barone-profile


I very much admire the dedication to stick with coding and designing SV, but I also understand at some level how it works. But creating the art and music may as well be wizardry. Eric being able to do that also is awe-inspiring.


Toby Fox (Undertale) and Dōkutsu Monogatari (Cave Story) are a few other notable solo devs


Doukutsu Monogatari is just Japanese for Cave Story. The dev is called Daisuke Amaya (Wikipedia informs me).


This is a great post, thank you for writing it. I got into programming 20 years ago because I wanted to make games, and I spent my teenage years in the 2000s building web games. As a high school project I spent a year building a turn-based strategy web game (https://twitter.com/cpojer/status/1460221157634830337).

I have recently gotten back into it to explore things I never got a chance to do before like building an AI and fog-of-war. Currently the game is inspired by Advance Wars, and you can see me play against my AI here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bGeEeti22bM

I’m tweeting about the technical details and progress on Twitter:

* Basic explanation and code examples: https://twitter.com/cpojer/status/1460221157634830337

* Map Editor: https://twitter.com/cpojer/status/1488510688389566464

* Fog of War: https://twitter.com/cpojer/status/1547967785015189504

* Testing Infrastructure: https://twitter.com/cpojer/status/1538299796334686208

* Random Map Generator: https://twitter.com/cpojer/status/1537444893580136454

I’m currently working on the game design to make it “inspired by Advance Wars” instead of just a clone.


Advance Wars is an absolute dream to clone. I had that itch too, and made a full clone with story mode in PICO-8 a couple years ago.

The challenge there was that PICO-8 has infuriating arbitrary restrictions on code size to limit the developers for fun lol. To get around that, I have code that swaps serialized memory between virtual "cartridges" in order to fit everything in.

Sadly that limits the game from distribution on the official PICO-8 network "Splore", because those games must be single-cartridge only, so I have a stripped down version without a campaign that is uploaded there.

The AI was by far the funnest to implement. Getting enemy ranged units to retreat correctly when they were in range of attack was such an awesome feeling. It really led me down a rabbit hole of making games primarily so that I could code fun AI

You can play in your browser here: https://lambdanaut.itch.io/picowars


FYI I love playing this


Wow thats really cool! I love Advance Wars!


I've shipped quite a few by now and I'd preface by saying this person uses Unity as well.

There are many game devs that choose to roll their own... The code stats look quite different.

Also contractors... Some literally do everything by themselves.

If you're doing your own game out there, hang in there and strap on for n^2 the expected timeline!

I love making games because to me it's one of the hardest part of computer science... Not only you have to make something with immediate rendering, that runs at 60fps or higher and that is fun, full of contents AND unique in some way!

Then you haven't even started marketing...


I started making total conversion mods for Half-Life 2 when I was a young teenager – I made the levels, models, wrote the gameplay code and so on. I never really recommend game development to anybody, because it can be quite an exhausting hobby (not to mention career), with a high cost and low reward ratio (note: in my experience!), but it sure taught me a lot about realistic project planning, budgeting the cost of features and so on.


The irony of video games is that they’re often associated (at least in America) with childishness. And yet, by any conceivable standard, they’re by far the most complex creative endeavor.

Creating a video game requires knowledge of the following: programming, graphics, 3D or 2D art tools, artistic ability, UI and UX design, game design, music production, cinematography, storytelling, copywriting, etc etc. It’s just astoundingly complex.


That's a broader theme. Watching TV is considered more childish than reading a book, even though TV content requires a lot more kinds of creative work in order to exist. The reason is that usually when the medium is richer, it demands less of its audience. Instead of imagining a scene, you're given its picture ready-made. Instead of actively following the lines of a story, you passively assimilate what appears before your eyes. It's less effort, and it's less active. It's common for people to watch TV in order to "turn off their brains" when exhausted. "Turning one's brain off" when reading a book is usually an accident, not an intentional thing, and happens a lot less.

Games demand more from their audience than TV, but you're still given a lot to consume passively, compared to a book: instead of imagining scenes, you're again given them as pictures. Games do compensate though with demanding that you make choices as you play a game, which may impact a story. Well... that's as long as the game is not an FPS, or a racing game, where choices don't matter for a story, as the story is either non-existent, or barely important; and what matters a lot more is your dexterity and reflex.


There are games that are entirely text-based. I play less than I used to but always try to check out the yearly winners on https://ifcomp.org/

Also see https://ifdb.org/


> There are games that are entirely text-based.

There are a lot of MUD games. I've been playing WoTMUD on and off for a little over two decades now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUD

https://wotmud.info/


Pretty sure those still fit the thesis in practical terms. They demand more of the player, and AFAIK are not particularly associated with childishness (if only because much fewer people know they exist, but still, you can't take imagine people thinking some arty piece of IF is childish, can you?).


"That's a broader theme. Watching TV is considered more childish than reading a book, even though TV content requires a lot more kinds of creative work in order to exist." While TV shows are more involved and complex to make, that does not automatically give the TV show depth, reflection, nuance etc. A TV show is often quite the opposite; a banal story full of platitudes.


I absolutely agree with your comment from the consumption perspective, but I believe GP was referring solely to the creation aspect.


By bringing up the association with childishness, no, they were not.


In sandbox games with lots of building you are often painting the picture moreso than someone reading a book.


I agree. For a long time I felt games weren't art in the same vein as e.g. painting. More recently I've come to feel that's not true. As you say, making compelling games requires compelling art across multiple mediums. Add on top of that interactivity and agency! That's part of what's so satisfying about making them. It's an incredible challenge and measure of your ability.


But is the actual game, as in, taking actions obeying a premade set of rules, art? That is the essence of every game. We use various representations, physical or virtual, for representing the game. Yet, the representation is not the game.


Can taking actions that obey a premade set of rules communicate something to the player? I think it can. For example, Jonathan Blow has played around with this notion in Braid and The Witness.


You must separate the game from its presentation when considering game as art. Chess figurines can be artful, but that does not mean that the act of playing them becomes art. That same separation translates to Braid and The Witness: how is requiring to press a button to reverse the player actions in a specific way in itself art? I'm deliberately separating that from the notion of "time reversal" here because that's how that action is embedded into the game's presentation. The actual physical flow of time for the player in the real world is unaffected by the button press; so this separation is justified. Therefore, the final flow reversal from the phantasy to the real plot in the last level is just a twist that happens in the presentation and not a consequence of the game rules.

The Witness is a slightly more interesting case in that it presents a sequence of evolving puzzle rules. The rule evolution again relies on presentation aspects to achieve the "twist": early puzzles are clearly framed to stress the notion that puzzles are limited to clearly discernable canvases. Later puzzles dissolve these boundaries until they are no longer present and the puzzles are simply part of the environment. This sequence is only partially gated by the game (whether or sequencing/gating in a game is part of the rules or the presentation is another can of worms). The only real change from clearly framed to unframed puzzles here is that the problem statement transforms into finding the right viewpoint. Which part of this is art?


How do you define art, then? What is the art in a Kandinsky painting?

In my opinion, the art in these games is the beautiful intersection of a set of puzzle rules with the world they inhabit. In The Witness, the world is additionally constructed to be thematically interesting, and I think that the set pieces on the island are intrinsically connected to the puzzles next to them. The island by itself would not make for very interesting art: it’s the game element that brings the art to life.

Also, “pressing a button to reverse time” feels very reductive. By playing the game, the player learns, and this learning leads to understanding. Usually, this understanding is tied solely to the game world and is used to tackle new and more complex challenges in later areas, but maybe it can also lead to extra-game insight. Even a tiny game like Passage makes powerful gestures in this direction.


My position is mostly based on Brian Moriarty's Apology for Roger Ebert, by the way. I also define art mostly the presence of an intent that an artist wants to convey to the audience that goes beyond the immediate form.

Somewhere along the path towards modern computer games, a conflation happened between the game and its presentation. My intention here is to point this out. If you retain the meaning of the word "game" from its pre-computer origin, you arrive at the reduction that I outlined and the question whether you can convey artistic intent solely in a set of game rules.

Artistic intent is always somehow relying on a certain level of control over an artwork's presentation. What is (or isn't) shown in painting, how is it represented and where is it on the canvas relative to everything else? Music, film and video have a temporal aspect under the control of the artist. In that sense, Kandinsky paintings can be art under the assumption that the compositions of these paintings are very deliberate.

In a computer game, there is always tension between the game elements which give agency to the recipient and the presentational aspects for which the creator has to assert control from the player in some form to ensure that they are conveyed with the proper intent.

This tension makes any answer to whether video games can be art nontrivial.


The Witness is absolutely an astonishing work of art, a life-changing experience. So much so that I wonder if it really can be called a game. (I'm over 100 hours in, and that's not counting all the time I've spent on trains looking out the window and thinking about its themes.)

It's frustrating that the reasons The Witness is lifechanging can't be explained to others without preventing them from having that same experience and understanding. But that in itself is a revelation to discover. It can't be told, it must be experienced.


I would say there is a lot of creativity involved when you play multiplayer games. It is a mix of strategy and decision making depending on the context of a situation that layers on top of gameplay mechanics.


Reading a book is also obeying a premade set of rules, the meaning of words, to convey art.


This :) Got into dev maybe 20 years ago or so, because I wanted to build a game, but no one I knew could code. Eventually got annoyed enough and decided if no one (I knew) can code, then I should learn it instead! so I did. Now working as a senior dev (building mostly web stuff), but still not having built a game, I tried a few times (trying again at the min with Godot!) I now appreciate the people working on rendering, storytelling, animation, model creation and so much more, I am with you on the complexity, I think you have to try it to understand.


I think part of that is because we are expected to put up with frustrating software at work because we are getting paid for it so if the work is more work than it needs to be, well just shut up and do your job.

Games are supposed to be fun. The money goes the other way, so the annoyances are taken a bit more seriously. The creator has to take that frustration on themselves instead of externalizing it, which is more work for them.

Add to that the delight aspect, and games try crazy stuff that would never fly with business software. 'Safe' doesn't get you many accolades so you're essentially obliged to try at least a few things. And the shelf life is lower so even if you fuck up you usually only have to hear about it for three years and then you can try something new. Once in a while, every five years or so, one of those UI gambles ends up being adopted by the industry, so while not the most effective petri dish for general UX research, it still gets some results.


IME the US has a unhealthy culture of work. Religion too carries a "put childish things behind you" influence.

Things do appear to be changing, yet with older generations there's still a lot of judgement.


I think if I ever got asked to write up a religion, there'd need to be a positive commandment ordering you to enjoy yourself in moderation on a daily basis. Something that says "if you're making yourself miserable all day every day, you are sinning." Not sure how to word it in a way that discourages hedonism and also doesn't make people trapped in lousy situations feel even worse, but that'd be the goal.


balance, in all things

keep your mind on your self and it's surroundings, and let your self be one with both pleasure and struggle.

let not the words of others compel you to eat too many frogs [1]

[1]: https://experimentalhistory.substack.com/p/excuse-me-but-why...


This is only sort of true. I’ve been making games for over thirty years and nearly hit twenty years of doing it professionally. The truth is you only need to be passable at some of those things. Even if you want to make a game by yourself. Whilst I don’t think everyone has a commercially successful game in them I also am pretty sure that’s way more to do with circumstance and project management ability than any sort of raw talent. On top of which no game is truly the work of one person even if the help is uncredited.

TLDR; games like movies are a sum of parts that is a lot less creative and original than might appear at first blush.


I agree with this.

I've worked with various teams on game jams and I’ve had conversations with people over the years, encouraging people to hold themselves to a lower standard. It’s not just the fact that this is a game jam—we are not competing with Zelda, and our game doesn’t need to have scope, scale, or polish similar to a Zelda game.

I also enjoy playing a game and seeing somebody’s amateur-ish art, or hearing some clumsy musical phrases that they put together. There’s something special about that which is hard to capture when you start spreading the work around people, because it’s just so hard to put together a coherent vision for a game in multiple minds.

We’ve also talked about how you run into a lot of people who’s main goal is to do job X at a higher level of technical ability and polish so they can get hired by a studio they like. It’s understandable why they’d want that, but it also leads to people sanding the edges off their style, so to speak. This makes it difficult to assemble a team of people who are all interested in the same style of development process (no judgment—some people on your team want a portfolio piece for a future job, some people want to express themselves here and now).

I don’t think making a solo game developer should be any different than being a novel writer, in the sense that it’s not a club reserved for the people who are good at doing it—but a club for the people who put in the time and effort to make something.


This is so true, except for that one glorious, fleeting period when iOS apps were new and you could be an overnight millionaire with something like Flappy Bird.


Flappy Bird didn't become popular until 2014, when the App Store was already 6 years old.


Oh, hush. The broader point is just that the barrier for entry was very, very low for a brief period.

I definitely bought a $0.99 app that you could tip up to your face to make it look like you were drinking a beer.

Very, very low.


"programming, graphics, 3D or 2D art tools, artistic ability, UI and UX design, game design, music production, cinematography, storytelling, copywriting, etc etc."

Also! Physics, vector math, AI, cameras, shaders, networking, etc


Yep, and all the sub-disciplines within sub-disciplines. It’s crazy.


I know, god damn -- including "networking" as just a single word feels... horrifying.


It’s so extensive that you really just have to enjoy the journey. Good experience and life lesson for kids/teenagers. And fully-grown adults.


Yes it is an art that can contains multiples others arts.

On a small project you also usually have to do the game design, it is art too.

And art is harder than technique in my opinion.

I got a lot of respect for artists.


Plus heavy math if not using an engine or if it involves more than what the engine provides.


> The irony of video games is that they’re often associated (at least in America) with childishness.

That's because most games are about shooting other people. This is something only children (and perhaps some dictators) love to think about.


Imagine what you would think if someone claimed that “most movies are violent”. You would think that even a cursory glance at Netflix or Apple TV or the shelf of your local Blockbuster would quickly disabuse you of the notion.

So it is with games. I’d urge you to take a second look. These sorts of generalisations, ill-supported by evidence, have historically been bad for the medium.


38 out of 50 games in https://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/all-games are about shooting people. So "most" doesn't sound too far fetched.


Congratz on releasing! It's so so hard to actually reach that point.

I've made a number of games by myself as well as with small teams. It requires incredible focus, scope management, and tons of time. It's like boiling the ocean. For me, it's all worth it to create something original from start to finish.


I'm also a solo game dev with a recently released game.

All this is really spot on with my experience. It just not clear if the author hired an artist or he just recommends it...its quite common for Game dev's to claim they made a game by themselves but actually contracted out the music, art, animation, etc.

Somewhat of a bug bearer with me as there are some genuine solo dev's creating great work that get overshadowed with the whole solo dev marking spin.


You got a wishlist from me sir, your game looks perfect for my GF when she wants to relax after a hard day's work.

Just released my own game in EA, I'd say our saint patron Gabe Newell kinda failed us with the way discoverability works in Steam.

There is clutter problem that hides a lot of gems, and they have full coffers to solve it...

But eh... maybe it wasn't all about expanding the Human consciousness and Art and all :p


Thank you! Likewise!

I'm not too bothered about Steam's discoverability, its at least honest(ish) about it. The more reviews and sales you get the more its pushed...as far as I can tell.

I've found discoverability/promotion to be the most difficult, esoteric in the indie game enthusiast spaces. That really surprised me.


It's certainly a huge endeavor. I probably have a pile of projects that I started and abandoned at some point for various reasons. The saddest of all was the first one that started to get traction... a story based game developed iteratively chapter by chapter where the writer got a hard case of imposter syndrome and just quit (it was just the two of us). Success is also hard to manage for some people.

Right now my newest moonshot is joining a friend who's just started trying to make an educational game for developers, that teaches you in a fun cyberpunkish style how to develop an NES from scratch, step by step. It's an absolutely bonkers idea but it's something we'd have loved to have and that we're having a blast making, just for ourselves. I doubt it's ever going to be successful if we make it to the finish line and ship it, but luckily it's just for fun. I'm thankful of posts like these, it helps getting motivated to make it through.


Hah, related question I had yesterday, is it procrastination, if you play your own game, instead of focusing on finally releasing it?

(my conclusion was, a bit, playing it is helpful to think about balancing and final polishing, but only playing it and not improving it probably does not help much. In either case, it is probably a good sign, to have fun with your own game ..)


I've made a game with a team in~ 6 month, we almost didn't play it. And this is an obvious sign the game isn't "fun".

About your question, if part of your job is game design or assurance quality, you have to play the game a lot. Like a player would.


After playing brogue for a couple of years, I'm really intrigued by rogue like development. I haven't started yet, but something seems more approachable about having a bunch of ascii characters as the gui.


I haven't made a game yet (not even a prototype) though I have been tempting for years. I can't point the issue, whether my coding skills aren't up to the task or because I can't make assets for my game, or because I can't hire a staff and my game ideas scope needs a team to realize them.

The problem is I don't know what is the right next step to take in front of all the issues aforementioned, and I have been thinking that for years without taking any step ahead or risking


Here, consider watching MIT's edx course on game design [0]. I found it a good overview of many aspects and a reminder that board games (paper prototypes) can play a role in designing a game. I'm assuming you've already watched Extra Credits videos [1] about beginning.

[0] https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-to-game-design

[1] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhyKYa0YJ_5C6QC36h5eA...


This reminds me of college where we had to design a game and prototype it with pen and paper; it was a great and fun experiment with comfy results and we nailed down the menus, gameplay and level design before any of us touching the keyboard.


Make a very small scope game first. Start with Pong or Breakout or the like, with your own slight twist (can be as simple as adding some unique colors). Keep it so simple that you can easily accomplish it.

Then make a slightly larger scale game, like an infinite runner 2d platformer. Keep the scope small, but try to finish every aspect of it (menu, sound, etc). Once you have a finished version you can decide whether you want to add to it or start another project of slightly larger scope.

Don't jump into it trying to make your dream game. Start with making the game that you can realistically make, and then gradually expand as needed. Once you've fully finished a game you'll have a much better understanding what you can do, what you'll need to learn to do your next project, how much work it was for that scope of project, etc.

Make a game where everything is a solid colored rectangle. Then go back and see what it would take to turn one of those rectangles into a simple animated character. This type of gradual progressing will let you focus on things one at a time, decide your own limits (will I make my own walking animation? or will I use a premade asset? How long will one walk animation take?)


Practice with game jams. 24h to cram _something_ out, 72 hour to get a nice little demo of some mechanic or story.

The theme and restrictions take away a lot of the choice and apprehension. And you're laser focused on the end goal and _will_ release something since you have an end date.


Since you seem to really want to do it, I highly recommend that you set aside a fixed amount of time every day and just sit down and start something - anything. You’d be surprised how far that can take you. Don’t go over the hour, though. You’re looking for consistency, not intensity.


I'd say, make a small thing that works. Then another, and another. They might start as independent little projects, but eventually can grow up into parts of a larger whole.


Let's start from step 1: What kind of game do you want to make, and why do you want to make it that way?


This is really a sequence of seven games of totally different genres, which is definitely going to increase the difficulty and time commitment! It looks like an interesting game, though.


Yep, it's worth watching the video as I was really impressed by the diversity of gameplay.


Great advice, wish I knew that earlier in my life. I mean the start small and finish experience. I have so many ambitious abandoned projects, I even lost track xD


its interesting to see how this differs from my own experience, from a time without game engines, 3d graphics libraries, the internet or even books for reference.

the point about actually finishing things is a great takeaway. the first game i finished /myself/ took a week, then got another week of post-launch attention... but that was after some 10 years of personal work to develop the skills, then another 5 years or so in the industry gaining experience.

i probably could have done this earlier, but i was constantly setting my sights higher than what was realistic.... but actually the lessons from doing that were pretty invaluable. today, i'm more than capable of filling any role in any of the specialised areas of programming required for games to an expert level... and a lot of that knowledge came from trying to build AAA quality features in isolation with little support - finishing features or engines rather than whole games.... so as much as i agree with the conclusion, i'm not sure it would have helped me to learn it sooner :)


Starting game dev is way easier than finishing it. Requires years of commitment with a super uncertain outcome. If you're someone who cannot take financial risks, you absolutely shouldn't be in game development unless you know what you're doing and unless you're fine with failure and an empty bank account at the end of it.


Anyone can get into game development with low risk. Why start with the gargantuan task of a whole game? e.g. you could be making flightsim addons. Paint a few liveries or code a simple plugin and people will find value in it pay for it.


Whenever I get to know a developer that dabbles with game development, most of the time I can be confident that they know their stuff.

It's such a demanding field that if you're passionate about it, you're bound to learn a lot of things. I don't do game dev anymore but the time I did taught me a lot about what I know now.


The game that the author is writing seems quite similar in concept to Spore, which I thought was interesting.


I dream of creating “the thinking player’s Stronghold” with more complex defences and economy, but articles like this confirm that it will only ever be a dream. Hell, perhaps DF is already 80% of what I want.


Consider modding! Using an existing engine that is malleable (or even has the assets you want) can be a great way to prototype or even achieve it without doing the really gritty stuff first.


Not getting bored with it.


Nice to see an NM Tech alum pop up here! I did grad school there.


Hi there fellow techie!


Seems like an odd choice of game format for a solo dev, since it seems to be essentially making 7 separate games?


Counter-intuitively, the more games you make at once, the less effort each one takes. Because you can share resources between them. Of course, they have to have something in common to capitalize on this.

I'm aiming to make about 20 games at once, at the moment.


The lines of code section shows the number of files not loc. I thought you had 333 loc at first


Just look at the guy that tried to make Yandere Simulator, and don't do that stuff.


Didn't he get deplatformed for spreading hate speech?


He failed to complete the game well before that.


And what's the problem with that? I've been working on a game for 15 years, and probably need another 10 to finish it.


The problem is the unmaintainable code. The game doesn't take that long because of its scope, it's not exactly Dwarf Fortress.

If I remember correctly the code got leaked at some point and it wasn't a fun time for the developer. It seems to me the dev was a beginner with a popular idea, leading to random people on the internet giving him money to work for a long time on a codebase that was too large for his experience and should have been thrown away and rewritten years ago.


Glad I'm not the only one. Keep up the good work!


Also, what's that?


Hate speech in modern use is attested by 1990. The term is found in a translation, published in 1898, of the Anglo-Saxon poem called "The Fall of the Angels," telling of Satan's revolt, where it renders Anglo-Saxon hetespraece:

    Dear was he to our Lord; but it could not be hidden
    That his angel began to be proud,
    Lifted himself against his Leader, sought hate-speech,
    Words of boasting against him, and would not serve God.
    ["Education," vol. xviii, No. 6, Feb. 1898]
Faith based term, people are using politically recently.


Ah. So it's a contraction of "freedom of speech" and "none of my business".


>predictably dense math answer

They gave you the damn formula....


I was surprised by the low bum we of lines of code.


If he iterated a lot, it's possible a lot of them were written like 5 times each though.


Can a no-coder create a game by himself?


Not much, I was able to make 9 levels of a very graphic intensive game in unreal over six months. Is it really that much work to take it from that to something that runs on all the platforms? I’m genuinely asking.


I often found people could get a concept up and running (nine levels is impressive) but that there were boring things still to do like high scores, saved games, control configuration UI, settings, etc. that were a sort of hurdle that many people weren't willing to invest in.

Then again, getting something just up to the point that it is playable, a proof of concept, is when you can really see if a game is fun or not. I have floppy disks full of games that never made it past that point because there was just ... something missing.


Did you release it?




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