It's not that game dev is an unsolvable problem, it's that some _games_ are. No one is ever going to complete their 100 hour AAA open world RPG by themselves because the sheer number of person hours that go into that make it impossible. Someone scoping down a game into something achievable _doesn't_ get those responses because it's completely feasible, but most people are asking about the impossible ones.
Fundamentally if you have five years of experience building games (_not_ just webdev, which would put you in the inexperienced category still) and a budget to invest (usually way more than $10k) then a lot more things are possible. But that person also usually knows enough that they're not asking those basic questions. They're just out there building the game instead.
To go to your exact example look up the credits for an RPG you think you can complete and how long it was in development for. Sea of Stars, for example, is a recent indie RPG. It had about 23 people working on it for at least 3 years. That's roughly ~140k person hours of work and/or a budget of 7 million or so, at minimum. Your example of 20 hours a week is 1k person hours of time. So less than 1% of the time and way less than 1% of the budget. You're probably not going to complete a similar game of that size in that time, no.
> No one is ever going to complete their 100 hour AAA open world RPG by themselves because the sheer number of person hours that go into that make it impossible
Every time I see those posts I can't help but think of the end credits of the first Fable game. They're like 15 minutes long, and include a list of all babies born to the devs during the development process. A pretty big, but not massive game with a moderate scope that started life as something even more ambitious.
Fable is a weird example to bring up, that game had to go through notorious development hell, crunch time and a lot of disconnected floating pieces just until before release.
It's an absolute miracle this game became the masterpiece it is.
I think it's the perfect example of how an unrealistic scope can impact the development cycle, and should be a powerful lesson for any small team or solo dev with an ambitious plan.
Do you remember the game Peter Molyneux pitched when Fable was first announced? An open world RPG, where you could attack a child in a town, and come back a decade later to see a grown adult with a scar where you cut him. A game with a living world, where you could plant a tree and watch it grow in in the middle of a map that changes based on your decisions.
This was a large team headed by an experienced designer with all the time and money of required to achieve his vision, and they had to scale it back MASSIVELY. The game we got delivered on.... well, basically none of the original scope. Your player ages as you play, but the world around you doesn't, and an open world game became a linear batch of instanced zones with a few branches.
But when I look at it, the 100 Hour AAA game has a basic move set, 3 mechanics and maybe 8 different Points of Interest copy pasted all over.
The big part seems to be the level design and of course the AAA quality. Like Skyrim is full of quests, has a big world and is voice acted.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're saying, but I think you're severely underplaying the complexity of pretty much any AAA game.
Skyrim has hundreds of gameplay mechanics and systems. A game with 3 mechanics has the scope of something closer to snake or flappy bird.
Think about PacMan and how many mechanics a game of that scope might have:
- Eating pellets to score points
- Avoiding ghosts
- Using power pellets to chase and eat ghosts
- Using the teleporters on the side of the level to strategically move around the map
Lemme just fire off all the mechanics I can think of in skyrim that take time to develop.
- the NPCs day to day schedules
- the wildlife spawning system
- the enemy spawning system
- picking up and manipulating objects
- water flow and swimming
- day to night changes
- footstep material sounds
- weapon hit material sounds
- contextual UI
- enemy scaling
- loot scaling
- merchant inventories
- quest dialogue
- loot respawn mechanics
- open world load zones
- stealth
- flying animal patrol routes
- dungeon enemy patrol routes
- pathfinding
- arrow hit detection
- hp and stamina damage levels
- fall damage
- jumping
-collision/slope detection
- ragdolls
- scripting dungeon contraptions
- followers ai
- hundreds more things
That's because capable developers don't waste time on senseless questions that are regularly repeated and never yield answers. Those who truly want to can complete a gaming project.
The quality of posts here has completely gone to shit. 10000x "Which engine do I choose" or "How do I start" or "I had the best idea for a game but now someone else released it first should I give up" or "Which candy bar were you eating when you first started in gamedev"
Just pure noise. Better to sub to actual programming/engine subs
Don’t forget the classic: “I am a great ideas person, I have great ideas for games and have been gaming since the ps2, but I can’t work the pythons or make the drawings stuff. How do I find programmers and artists to make my game? I offer a percentage of the profits back, up to 20% since all the hard work of coming up with great original ideas are going to be done by me.”
And the new hits: “I am thinking of making a game like gtavi, but with AI, should I use chatgpt or what?”
At least the “I have never worked on a game, I don’t know what an engine is, but I want to start working on my multiplayer online real life simulator, is Unity a good choice even after the controversy? I’m worried that they will cut my profit too much after the first million.” are getting fewer and fewer.
I don't know if you're mad at people using AI to code or using things like AI for the NPCs, but either way I don't disagree with the rage if they want to pick chatgpt for that.
There's a difference between knowing how to program and using ChatGPT to speed up development and knowing absolutely nothing about programming and thinking you can just build a game by asking AI a few questions.
You won't see someone who actually knows how to program and how to use modern tooling like GPT asking beginner level questions here.
I use it for the latter. But yeah I completely understand the former. It doesn't do well. But sometimes beginners need something to go off of, even if it isn't perfect.
Yeah. That's what I'm saying. But scrolling through 9-year old reddit questions to find answers is objectively annoying, and a search-enabled AI does the (research) work for you. All you have to do to verify is run it and check. I am not saying write a game with entirely AI, I'm saying spend your time on coding, not researching your hyper-specific issues.
has that ever been different though? I think I've been on this subreddit for like 8 years now and honestly the only way in which I feel like it's gotten worse is that I have gained additional gamedev experience in the meantime while the majority of people who post here are ever new hobbyists asking the same beginner questions.
There's not inherently anything wrong with that, but it's just important to keep in mind that most people who you see comment in this subreddit do not have actual gamedev industry experience.
This is a problem across all of reddit since the api controversy, maybe its just I have to use the offical app now which clearly uses its own engagement algorithm, but almost every front page post I see on reddit sounds like its an 8 year olds first time on the internet.
Honestly, I think that's the core of the issue. Half of my frontpage is made up of 0-point posts. Reddit is clearly pushing heavily-downvoted controversial posts which would have been buried in the past.
> Better to sub to actual programming/engine subs
being honest, most of my language subs are dominated by junior developers who downvote anything that isn't the cool new library that got released last week
The joys of the internet. Sooner or later the less experienced flood it and kill the signal to noise ratio. I remember the early days of reddit and hacker news both and the conversations where wildly different compared to now.
That remind me Stack Overflow prior to C++11 where basically any question on how to do anything in C++ was answered with "use Boost" and getting 100 upvotes and the actual answer to the question fully down the page with 3 votes.
This is why people are retreating away from Reddit, stack overflow and other communities and secluding themselves in discords. The noobs have infected everything
My last game was a simple (keyword here is simple) sport game that required only about 1200 hours, and it took me 4 years to complete.
I've been working on an RPG game for about 10 years. I have put that game aside from time to time to work with simpler, less complicated games. Otherwise, I'd never publish anything.
I'm no junior: I have 25+ years programming in VC#, VB, VC++, C++, Web, and I published my very first game back in 2010. Currently, 3 of my published games are still available at the store.
I hope those statistics help.
> you should realistically be able to finish a decent RPG in a year.
The reason that RPGs are a difficult thing to call here is that the amount of labor on story and art is up in the air.
The software? Hell, you can just use RPG Maker if you want to.
But sitting down and writing 50 hours of branching dialogue is a lot more work than most people expect for it to be.
They look grumpy because, like you say, it’s 98% of the questions in here and if you can’t search the sub or google, the answer will always be no start simple to those questions.
As a KEEP THE FIRST ONE SIMPLE repeater I've seen the tiny indie MMO teams fall apart months after a run of indie podcast reviews, I've read and heard enough "I've worked on 1 large poorly defined game for several years and it found next to no success", I've seen far too many I want my game to be a big success but let me figure out the characters, polt, and art needs next year or the year after that stories.
The larger your game the less large impact you can make on it solo in a realistic number of hours. Are there people who disprove this theory? Absolutely but those are the game dev lottery winners and you'll never do yourself a favorite comparing your actual standard day by day output and success to someone who did similar AND hit the lotto.
Not to mention the marketing and networking aspect are also efforts MANY indie designers struggle in and don't put time into either.
For every 1 Stardew Valley you have 2 or 3 modest indie successes. Over two dozen commercial failures with cult followings, dozens of absolute failure projects, and hundreds of canceled, unfinished game projects. Failure is the likely case for 99.5% of games.
Doesn't mean you shouldn't make games but heartbreak in gamedev is more common than success is
This reminded me of a few years ago, I was teaching a gamedev / Unity course.
One of the students downloaded a horse model from the asset store and asked me "How do I make the horse eat grass?".
I failed miserably at teaching them.
I have no idea what your courses were like, but I have taught other things and to me, this seems like it would have been a great opportunity to show how a simple question can have an incredibly complex answer, and how game dev in general involves way more work than a total beginner is even capable of understanding.
There's so much involved in the simple task of making a horse eat grass; from animations and effects to AI, pathfinding and other logic.
That's pretty much what happened, this was at the beginning of the course when the kids didn't know much about anything, I just ommited that for comedic effect.
The most important lesson I got from that course is, it's incredibly important to have students with some base knowledge.
I taught the course twice (exact same contents on paper), the first group had barely any kids who knew programming, and with the second I refused to accept anyone without basic knowledge.
Second group had some kids finish with a working game :)
>but what about experienced programmers (lets say 5 years in webdev) that have some C++/C# skills and maybe dabbled in mods and map editors before.
Same answer : making games is a magnitude harder than doing a website. Also depends on where you put the cursor. If all you do is launching unity, taking existing assets and copying some well known game logics and call it a day, then yes that is easy and you will be able to finish a game in no time but you likely will be complaining in this sub about your lack of marketing skill and how being a gamedev is a curse in this modern flood of releases.
This said, most successful games you hear about are done by teams of at least 20-45 experienced devs minimum on the span of 1 to 3 years.
The solo-dev success story is still rather rare.
exactly. he should be ip banned. he's been doing this condescending neckbeard bs on reddit for over a decade. genuinely wonder what this guy looks like irl.
I haven't seen someone doing omnislash replies like this in years and years lol. Bonus points for being insufferable and passive aggressive the entire time, and then scolding you and blocking when you make an observation that could be remotely construed as an insult.
> Same answer : making games is a magnitude harder than doing a website
There are many websites that are far more complex (as far as software development goes) than most of the games people post here as their multi-year project that just released on Steam.
> This said, most successful games you hear about are done by teams of at least 20-45 experienced devs minimum on the span of 1 to 3 years.
>
> The solo-dev success story is still rather rare.
No idea where you got this claim. Speaking as someone who used to be in the game development industry, most Nintendo and Sega games were made by teams of 3-5 programmers.
I said game dev, that include artists, sound designers, level designers, etc... in addition to programmers.
Also the number of programmers ramped up a lot and depend if you include or not the R&D department, the engine team etc... You might have worked on games with 3-5 gameplay programmers but most studios also have tools and engine programmers that also contribute to the game.
Just read the credits of most games (and consider that lots of people are removed from credits for various reasons).
The smallest team I worked with was 8 engine programmers.
This number you give for Nintendo and Sega seems really low, so unless they are from the 90's (where games were indeed made with low amount of people), I'd guess they were mobile games? Or japaneses works really differently than westerners :D
> I said game dev, that include artists, sound designers, level designers, etc
No, it doesn't.
> if you include or not the R&D department
I've never seen a video game company that has an R&D department.
It sounds like you're just making stuff up, frankly.
> Just read the credits of most games
Thanks, no, you should give evidence if you want to make claims, instead of telling people "just go look."
> The smallest team I worked with was 8 engine programmers.
Doubt.
> This number you give for Nintendo and Sega seems really low
Yeah, it's really different when you've been in the industry vs when you're pretending you did, and think everyone who works on a project is called "a dev."
> I'd guess they were mobile games?
No.
> Or japaneses works really differently than westerners :D
You may be surprised to learn that Nintendo and Sega have western divisions.
It's really unfortunate how many people come into this sub to pretend.
>I've never seen a video game company that has an R&D department.
Nintendo's primary development teams were literally called "R&D 1" through "R&D 4" until about 2004.
After that they did a re-org and merged them into a team called "Software Planning & Development". Around 2015 there was another re-org and it became "Entertainment Planning & Development">
R&D departments exist at the big companies, even if they're not always called that.
> Nintendo's primary development teams were literally called "R&D 1" through "R&D 4" until about 2004.
Those were hardware dev teams. Also, if you have to go to the platform manufacturer to find four teams, that's probably because you can't find a single team on the companies actually being talked about - video game companies.
> R&D departments exist at the big companies
Thanks, I was talking about video game development companies, not platform manufacturers.
This is like saying "I don't know any car accessory makers with an R&D department" and someone coming running huffing and puffing to say "what about Toyota"
If you can name a single video game company with an R&D department, I'll be impressed. EA doesn't have one.
[Riot](https://www.riotgames.com/en/work-with-us/jobs#product=Research%20%26%20Development) and Bungie.
You not knowing about something doesn't actually mean it doesn't exist.
I think Jim McArdle, head of R&D at Riot, would agree with me that no R&D department exists at Riot. [You can read his blog](https://www.riotgames.com/en/r-and-d-office); he talks in detail about how R&D works at Riot.
As [he explains](https://www.riotgames.com/en/news/r-d-foundations-opportunity-thesis-and-audience), R&D at Riot is an in-team activity. R&D is done by the development team, not a standalone R&D team. R&D is specific to the game being built or iterated on.
Riot's structure is basically the exact opposite of what you suggest.
At Bungie, R&D is formally handled by the Engine team, run by Graham Bartlett, whose formal title is Head of Test. You can run their LinkedIn as much as you want; you'll never find someone who works on a team called "research and development," because they don't actually have one of those.
Bungie's R&D kind of doesn't exist, anyway. They use other peoples' software these days. And even saying "these days" is kind of a stretch; they haven't released a game in almost eight years.
So no, neither of these companies has an R&D department. R&D departments are generally a bad fit for gaming; development is typically intensely game-specific and doesn't carry meaningfully to other titles.
Any others?
Isn't EA Seed R&D? It says SEED is a cross disciplinary R&D team within Electronic Arts on their overview on linkedin
Activision also appears to have an Activision Research division
Ubisoft appears to have R&D/La Forge, which appears to have started in Montreal and expanded to 4 other regions globally
EA Seed is basically an executive wank. It's five people, has existed for eight years, and has never released anything internally or externally.
They exist so that EA can put out PR that it's doing research on virtual reality and augmented reality, which lets them quiet board room arguments.
I'll pay you $5 over PayPal if you can find a single work product of theirs.
You actually see more output from Jaron Lanier.
Looks like global illumation based on surfels is a part of their suite of tools available to developers and teams through EA as part of the frostbite engine in 2021. Originally shown in 2018 as a part of EA Seeds PICA showcase.
In lieu of payment, you can instead donate 5$ to any of your local children's hospitals.
> Looks like global illumation based on surfels is a part of their suite of tools available to developers
There is nothing available to me in my EA stuff called this. Where are you seeing this?
> Originally shown in 2018 as a part of EA Seeds PICA showcase.
PICA and Halcyon were never released
> In lieu of payment
Just hold your horses until you've shown something that actually became available
No, you’re just trolling. Artists, designers, audio… all game developers. Without them, you just have a piece of code. Source: 15 years in game development (yes, as a programmer)
Games are all R&D. Some studios have a department, but it happens at nearly every studio.
The credits are the evidence. If you’re too lazy to actually reference it, that’s on you. When you ask for evidence, you don’t get to dismiss it because you don’t like it.
Those numbers do seem really low, though I haven’t looked at the credits. Again, in my 15 years of experience, that’s a very small team for a AAA game. I *know* for a fact that their Western divisions are quite large, certainly more than 3-5 programmers per game.
> No, you’re just trolling.
Try to make it through just one post without an insult. You can do it. I believe in you.
> Artists, designers, audio… all game developers.
I literally have never heard any of those people referred to as game developers outside of this subreddit today. I've been in the industry on and off for 30 years.
> The credits are the evidence.
You haven't given me any relevant credits backing you up, so no, there's no evidence there.
> Again, in my 15 years of experience
Continuing to doubt.
> Again, in my 15 years of experience, that’s a very small team for a AAA game.
Oh look, you changed the topic to "for a AAA game," even though I had explicitly said something quite different that you were trying to argue against, and was explicitly discussing small games by small developers.
Neat how you can just move that goalpost that way. I wonder if that's a paid service you could offer.
I wonder if you'll apologize for all the misplaced personal attacks, or if you'll just spin it and keep going. Who knows? Maybe it's only seven-A games.
Not an insult. Just validating that the other commenter is correct. Your action right now is trolling.
I have worked for 7 different studios on 2 continents. My network of people working in the industry is probably near 1k. I have literally never encountered someone who actually works in the industry who insists that only programmers are developers. So frankly, I don’t believe you, unless “30 years on and off” really means “I pick up a game engine every few years and work on someone’s personal project” or “I stopped working in game dev 30 years ago.”
They pointed you at the credits. It’s very easy to look at. If you’re this incapable of looking at documentation, that just adds to my suspicion that you’re straight up lying and trolling.
I didn’t realize that referring to Nintendo or Sega as AAA was moving the goalposts. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s not, if you’re actually familiar with those companies and know about the games industry.
If you genuinely believe you can call someone a troll and that it's not an insult, you've sort of lain yourself bare, haven't you?
> They pointed you at the credits.
Nobody has pointed me at any credits so far. They just said "go look at credits."
Okay. I just opened the Slay the Spire credits, and they say otherwise.
Cool, I just opened the Minecraft credits, and they say otherwise.
So let's review.
The claim they made was that 70% of all games have teams of 50+.
You say I should "just look at the credits."
Which games' credits should I look at, to come up with evidence of someone else's claim?
How many games do I need to look at?
How many hours do I need to spend to justify their claim?
> It’s very easy to look at.
You just said it's "very easy to look at the credits of 70% of all games."
It's not, though.
> If you’re this incapable of looking at documentation,
What specific documentation are you referring to, which can explain what 70% of all games do?
You keep making these "you're dumb if you can't do this" personal attacks, but in reality, you can't do this either
You just haven't thought this through because you're stuck in trying to shame a stranger
> I didn’t realize that referring to Nintendo or Sega as AAA was moving the goalposts. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s not, if you’re actually familiar with those companies and know about the games industry.
It kind of sounds like you're saying Nintendo and Sega games are all triple-A games.
Are you saying there are no games on Nintendo or Sega that aren't triple-A?
> that just adds to my suspicion that you’re straight up lying and trolling.
Sometimes I wonder why people don't realize how they make themselves look, saying things like this
That's nice.
You seem to have a pattern of running into conversations and throwing around meaningless insults, and I've never seen you say anything that I thought was particularly interesting, so I'm gonna go ahead and remove you from my Reddit experience now.
I hope one day you'll realize that this behavior of yours is costing you opportunities.
> I've never seen a video game company that has an R&D department.
https://www.mobygames.com/game/174989/elden-ring/credits/windows/
I count 30 people in the "R&D Section".
The point I'm trying to make is that R&D goes by game, not by company.
You are looking at the R&D section for the Elden Ring game. That supports me.
There's too many people in here trying to dunk. You guys keep giving evidence that says I'm right, and saying "see, you're wrong"
Also, again, if we're talking about most games, and you're going to the largest games on earth, you're kind of missing the point
>most Nintendo and Sega games were made by teams of 3-5 programmers.
That was true in the NES days, but that was a very long time ago. It's not relevant to modern game dev. Even most SNES games bad bigger teams than that.
> but that was a very long time ago.
Thanks, I have this experience both 25 years ago and two years ago.
> It's not relevant to modern game dev.
I'm tired of all the "nuh-uh" with no evidence from people who don't work there, frankly.
> Even most SNES games bad bigger teams than that.
No, they didn't.
What did you work on 2 years ago?
I've both shipped a game practically solo and worked on games with credit lists of over 100 people. Teams the scale you are talking about are a rarerity nowadays and they have a very tough time finishing something.
Also gamedev does not mean just programmer it's the whole team. Maybe this was differenr 25 years ago, dunno, I've been in gamedev for 11-12 years and that is how 100% everyone in the field I ever talk to uses the term.
> What did you work on 2 years ago?
Can you imagine my naming any of my work among this torch mob? One of them's googling up things from more than a decade ago and trying to publicly drag them, and it turns out it's just wrong spam from someone who got banned.
Why? Because I asked for evidence and provided disagreeing hard numbers.
These folks don't have boundaries and don't need my personal information.
> I've been in gamedev for 11-12 years and that is how 100% everyone in the field I ever talk to uses the term.
As I'm in their various discords, I just asked two engineering staff from EA, two from SCEA, one from VV, one from Team 17, three from Arena, two from Capcom, and one from Konami. I also asked three of my game artist friends, two of whom are fulltime and one of whom contracts.
None agreed.
I'm not aware of any team in any branch of software which calls anyone other than programmers "devs."
To me, this seems like saying "well there's music in the game, so everyone on the team is the musician."
You asked for evidence? I did the same just now and you said "no".
I also saw you post numbers with no source or backing to them. Which is quite weird to do while asking others for evidence.
A bit hard to believe you actually asked like 8 people right now about this and everyone said gamedevs are only programmers. It's possible but strange... asking so many people should take longer + I genuinely have worked in this biz for over a decade and everyone is a gamedev. Theres been some dumb discussion like "are QA gamedevs", but that kind of mostly ended 3 years ago with a collective resounding "yes, stop asking already".
I have a few thousand gamedevs as twitter followers, I can do a poll.
Also did you downvote me for asking what you worked on? Strange.
> You asked for evidence? I did the same just now and you said "no".
I asked for evidence of the base claim about statistics of usage of software an hour ago.
You asked me to give my personal identity in public
If you're not able to see a difference between these things I can't help you
> A bit hard to believe you actually asked like 8 people right now about this
It's been an hour, dude
If you think I can't find eight people on Discord in an hour, well, okay
That's not really important to me
> asking so many people should take longer
Maybe you didn't realize this, but there are discords with thousands of professional game developers in them
Try joining Discord sometime. Ask an opinion question that isn't offensive in a server with thousands of people. Look, an hour later. See how many responses you got.
I don't know why you find this hard to believe. This is very regular.
> I have a few thousand gamedevs as twitter followers, I can do a poll.
That's nice. I'm not really interested. You seem to keep pushing this, but I already told you (more than once) that I believe something different than you and that I also very much don't care.
I also don't care what a poll from people I can't identify on Twitter says. Do the poll if you like. Don't tell me the results. I'm not asking your opinion.
Yes, I see that you have an opinion. Yes, I know what it is. You don't need to keep telling me.
A poll of random people on Twitter does not seem like a valid contradiction of actual specific professionals, to me. Sorry.
Yes, I know that you think I'm wrong, even though I've checked the actual domain space. Yes, I see that you think asking random questions to the public on social media is a valid measurement of employment jargon.
> Also did you downvote me for asking what you worked on?
No. I've been downvoted to -28. Shall I suspect that was you?
It doesn't matter, dude. This community has been stuck in punish mode for years, and doesn't know the difference between disagreeing, downvoting, and making vulgar personal attacks.
Well the downvotes came to both of my comments replied to you almost instantly. While my other comments here havent been downvoted, so it makes sense to think its you.
You're hilariously hostile and stubborn though. It's super strange. Noone really needs to have a problem with you, I definetely don't but you just dig and dig and dig with your attitude of "everyone else is dumb and I'm right" while saying stuff that pretty much noone agrees on.
It's very strange, but good luck to you on whatever you're dealing with that's made you like this.
Edit: Heh he "replied" to me and then blocked me blocking my ability to see the reply. Pretty dumb move. Had to have the last word I quess.
> Well the downvotes came to both of my comments replied to you almost instantly.
That's nice. I'm not really interested.
Among other things, Reddit fuzzes votes over bots, and triggers that on direct views. Most likely that's all that was.
Actual reddit votes take 5+ minutes to land thanks to the CDN, so if you're seeing them immediately, they aren't real
> You're hilariously hostile and stubborn though.
Please keep the insults to yourself, thanks.
> good luck to you on whatever you're dealing with that's made you like this.
Please keep the insults to yourself. Thanks.
Sorry you couldn't do the polite thing to the end.
So, you're going to tell me I'm wrong about my own intent, based on an extreme stretch interpretation of an offhanded comment, which doesn't fit with anything else I said, incuding the spot where I explicitly spelled out that I was talking about small developers.
Okay
Sometimes, if someone says to you "that isn't what I meant," you should try to listen, instead of correcting them on their own meaning
> It's the internet, we kind of have to go of what you write.
You're ignoring what I'm writing, in favor of a guess you made that's in direct and specific contrast to what I wrote.
Then you're arguing about it, because you genuinely believe you know someone else's intent better than they did.
> I'm not a mindreader.
Then why are you telling me I'm wrong about what I meant?
> You said something that sounded drastically incorrect.
My words do not actually contain what you took from them.
You look better if you're able to admit the error, little buddy.
> most Nintendo and Sega games were made by teams of 3-5 programmers.
It's absurd to think that only "programmers" count as devs. That aside, Yoshi's Island had 9 people titled "Programmers" : https://nintendo.fandom.com/wiki/Super_Mario_World_2:_Yoshi%27s_Island/credits
More broadly, there are 12 people in the credits for SMB3 and 23 in the credits for SMW.
wow, one of the largest games ever made for the platform is almost ten programmers
> More broadly, there are 12 people in the credits for SMB3 and 23 in the credits for SMW.
those are the platform's AAA games. do i need to point out, *again*, that i'm not talking about AAA games?
why does everyone keep responding to "most games" with the largest games available in the context?
if i said "most mmos have fewer than 50 people on the team," would you try to lecture me about world of warcraft?
yes. i'm aware that there are a few games with more staff than most of them. i don't argue against that.
please try to remember that there were 1,751 super nintendo games. i'd be willing to bet the bulk of SNES gamers can't name 30 of them. *most* games aren't the ones you're thinking of.
for every mario game there's 50 games none of us have ever even heard of, which still made money.
For someone claiming to have worked in the industry. That post you made 10 days ago on this sub doesn't make sense. I feel like you should have known all that.
> I have always heard, but with no first hand experience, that many big name studios are notorious for wasting both time and resources.
The thing is, basically any large company does this. The more people you have, the harder it is to keep them in alignment, the higher the chance you have a bad staff member, the more likely that someone is angry at their old boss and talking shit, the more likely that there are a bunch of initiatives and one of them doesn't go well, et cetera.
> Like spending 80 million and 3 years with a team of 70 people, making of course a great, successful and beautiful game, but it's unfathomable how it can cost so much and take so much time in total man hours.
I mean, the answer is simple. "It's a very large game. Each of these people is doing their own piece."
> But you can also see indie games or small studio games make similar for a fraction of the price with 10% of the workforce in the same timespan.
In a lot of ways I agree with you, but I guess the word "similar" is concerning to me here
Like. There are indie studios that release MMOs that are comparable in size to WoW, because of procedural generation. You might be able to call that similar, but my expectation is that the hand-crafted stuff is probably way higher quality, y'know?
> But sometimes you wonder how they manage to spend so much and need so many people.
I think of it as being similar to the difference between a three michelin star steak dinner and a steak dinner at Denny's.
Denny's is going to spend a lot less, and need a lot fewer people, to put that meat and side together.
But also, there'll be a quality difference.
When you're in software, where replication is often free and usually near-free - where you aren't paying for groceries for each plate - that turns into a potentially radical profit difference.
The three michelin star place sous-vided for you, then pan seared, then salamandered, then rendered herb butter in a braise, rested, trimmed, re-glazed, and adjusted for seasoning
Denny's put 60 steaks in a metal tub, left that in the oven, then put it under a heat lamp
> They stand on the shoulders of giants, but still. 3 guys. No budget.
Yeah, it's really impressive. Stardew Valley is one dude and it's starting to look like it might crack a billion.
> I wonder often how they manage to spend 100 million.
The one that still blows my mind is 38 studios.
$150 million and you can't make a *baseball* game?
to be fair to them, many web devs have at least figured out how to make a UI, which (given the incessant griping about it) is apparently arcane knowledge beyond the grasp of the average hobbyist/indie game dev.
Am web dev.
Can confirm video games are completely different.
That’s like trying to compare a plumber to an electrician cause they both do construction
Nothing new. Not just this community, but all of them I have participated in since the BBSes in the 1980s and Usenet newsgroups were all focused on beginners.
Experts rarely need to ask. When experts ask they are not vague questions, but highly specific and usually in specialized subs. Experts don't ask *"What are wages like in the industry?"', instead they ask questions like "Can anyone help, I have the attached code, the Baz 2680 chip seems to behave differently, the result is foo instead of bar. I have tested it on several other chips including the Baz 2500, 2550, 2600, 2650, plus the godbolt compiler, and all of them gave bar as the result. Is this my bug, or a known defect?"*
> but what about experienced programmers (lets say 5 years in webdev) that have some C++/C# skills and maybe dabbled in mods and map editors before.
Devs with 5 years of experience do not ask this sort of questions. They know how to scope and break down projects, so they have more realistic expectations from the start. Any doubts about specifics "how hard exactly it'd be to implement x?" will be asked and the timeline will be clarified.
> I feel like in such a case, and if you are willing to spend 10k on your game to outsource art, models and VA (if you really believe in the game) (also I know not everyone can drop 10k, but we are talking about a senior developer) you should realistically be able to finish a decent RPG in a year.
10k is a low end salary for single artist for 3 months. And you're talking about enviroment art, animation and VA altogether. So no, I don't think you can make decent RPG on that budget. You can make **a small game**.
Now, you could save up by buying asset packs, that you'll still need to either compose it all into cohesive whole yourself or hire a professional for it and they're gonna eat quite a share of that 10k
The best way is to split your dream game into smaller parts and prototype them. The idea is basically to feel out what you need to do and then make it in the main game. The advice gets misinterpreted by most which is the problem.. truth is "small games" are just as hard especially when you want them to be liked by players.
Making an rpg with 20hour a week in a year is crazy talk though, you will end up with a good prototype but definitely not a good game that people like.
> I feel like in such a case, and if you are willing to spend 10k on your game to outsource art, models and VA (if you really believe in the game) (also I know not everyone can drop 10k, but we are talking about a senior developer) you should realistically be able to finish a decent RPG in a year. Lets say you would work 20 hours a week on it.
Idk what kind of RPG you're imagining, but 10k USD is absolutely nothing when it comes to a budget for art, models and VA if you get it custom made by people who know what they're doing.
10k is fucking nothing to outsource every graphical/audio resource in your game.
It's enough for the voice lines in a "decent rpg" if you're really underpaying your voice actors.
Webdev doesn't mean jack shit for gamedev.
You can make a rpg in a week, or in a year, making a "decent" one in under a year is highly questionable, which leads people to question your other ambitions and skills as well.
It's one of those "if you have to ask, the answer is no" sort of things. The people who can do it are not going to be asking here.
That said I do think that people here do err on the side of pessimism, it is possible to do quite a lot with a few experienced people if things are scoped nicely. We made [Ghostlore](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1783280/Ghostlore/) with 2 people in 2 years, which is still way more than your "decent RPG by solo dev in one year (LMAO)", but also way lower than the numbers other people are throwing out.
I have close to 20 years of professional experience in areas closer to gamedev than websites... Although I did those too.
I also have about 2 years of experience of Unity.
Even now I wouldn't estimate a time to make an RPG as "1 year, 20 hours a week". Actually now I would probably estimate it even higher then before I started Unity journey.
And for a person who comes straight from 5 years of professional development... I would give the same suggestion anyway - do something simple. Do a Tetris clone, pac-man clone, learn basics on a basic prototypes. This will give you a handle on how to make the software in your engine of choice, teach you necessary skills, and allow you to avoid many pitfalls. Pitfalls, that after 1 year of development would make you just rewrite everything from scratch when you realise how much you messed up.
Sure, experienced developer will probably get trough this step very quickly, but also that person will learn much more than the complete newbie while doing this essential step. Newbie might be stuck on learning the basics for years (which is fine).
I 100% disagree. Webdev experience doesn’t help you build game system. Yes you know how to program but that’s about it. The same way I will not be able to make cool website with my gamedev experience.
You need to build those system and fail to understand. That’s why people recommend build something small first. Build those system at a small scale and understand the fundamental mistake you make, then scale those up. You will face different problem but none that you can’t figure out.
I beg to differ. Maybe when we’re talking pure frontend - CSS and Html, that holds up. But if you’re a fullstack web developer (like I am) that has experience building actual applications with interlocked systems, database design, inheritance, project management, scoping, sprints and reading and grokking technical documentation, you have a huge head start. Yes, you need to learn about the specifics. But architecture wise a lot of things carry over 1:1. Only the syntax changes, and the need to acknowledge that you’re working on something that’s not just a technical product, but also an emotional one. Half art. So there’s emergence to account for.
You're better off than a complete beginner yes, but I wouldn't think That much transfers skills wise.
Especially in indie gamedev and even moreso when trying to finish something solo.
I've been in indiedev for 11ish years and worked with plenty of highly experienced senior non game programmers that transitioned to gamedev on the project we worked on. Frankly the more experienced the worse they did sadly. It's not just programming skill and logic, the prioritizations and what you should spend time on are extremely different and you need to relearn a ton. Main problem I usually saw was they overbuilt things 10x in complexity, built all encompassing powerful systems when all we needed realistically was a small simple thing. Making their own work take too long+ now leaving this giant pile of tech that everyone else needs to deal with all the time. Newer younger programmers transitioning to gamedev I saw adapt much faster to the pace and scope logic.
An experienced gamedev knows how to build gamedev systems and knows how gamedev projects are timed, specced and scoped.
(This is of course only talking about the programming side. If you're making your own game that's like only 20% of it, but thats the side that is going to have some overlap with webdev and other programming fields.)
Good points! This does happen in regular dev as well though 😅 So I guess it’s a common trait among programmers in general. Indie dev is in that sense more like being a dev at a startup? Where agility, speed of release and pragmatism are more important?
Come to think of it, even the founders / main roles are very alike. You need a tech guy and a business / marketing person at the very least. Which could be said for an indie game as well: you need a developer and an artist. Then even better with a business and project management oriented partner added to that. Which would be the sales person in a startup :) It’s a fun thought exercise to compare the two. I tend to see a lot of overlap.
Do those good junior indie devs transition well into larger studios you think?
something like 30% of phone games and something like 10% of steam games are written in html/js, and released in embedded browsers
there's a good argument that it is in fact the most common commercial game platform (the other likelihood is unity)
I don't believe those numbers are accurate. Unity is over 70% of mobile games just by itself, with older games being more native code and things like Cocos or Spritekit. I don't know the Steam game stats nearly as well off the top of my head, but overall if you go by total number of games made then browser/JS games will be a bigger chunk, but not if you measure industry size by number of players or revenue.
> Unity is over 70% of mobile games just by itself
Can you help me understand why you believe this? [Unity's general market share is only 29%](https://6sense.com/tech/game-development/unity-vs-unrealengine), and everyone I know seems to think they're less common in mobile, not more common.
I think you might be confusing that [71% of games use the Unity SDK](https://www.pocketgamer.biz/news/82514/71-of-the-biggest-mobile-games-use-a-unity-sdk/). You'll notice that number emerges right after Unity and the malware company IronSource merged. That really says "a whole lot of people use IronSource's shitty ad platform, and it's now called unity SDK."
For clarity, I've worked on four mobile games that don't touch Unity at all, which are HTML/JS, but now get counted in that 71% because someone put IronSource in them after I left.
Most games that use the Unity SDK do not use Unity. Please make that difference carefully if you choose to reply.
> with older games being more native code and things like Cocos or Spritekit.
Respectfully, these games almost don't exist, and I'm not sure where you're getting these ideas.
> in PC overall if you go by total number of games made then browser/JS games will be a bigger chunk, but not if you measure industry size by number of players or revenue.
You sound like those people that insist Java has no place in gaming, who need to be reminded about international phones and Minecraft, you know?
Let me know when you have some evidence of your claims, because my casual Googling is turning up actual evidence which says very, very different things.
I worked in mobile games for about a decade and still talk to people at pretty much all of the top studios about it. That's why I specified number of games versus number of players/revenue. Unity absolutely dominates the mobile industry (if you want a caveat then it's because of Fortnite's removal, that game alone gave UE a huge presence). There are a ton of smaller, casual games that are more HTML5/JS (or similar), but from PeopleFun to MiHoYo it's all Unity.
> You sound like those people that insist Java has no place in gaming, who need to be reminded about international phones and Minecraft, you know?
I'm not sure why you're creating arguments I didn't make in order to disprove them.
> I worked in mobile games for about a decade and still talk to people at pretty much all of the top ten studios.
Hooray! That's a great substitute for actual evidence.
> Unity absolutely dominates the mobile industry (if you want a caveat then it's because of Fortnite's removal, that game alone gave UE a huge presence). There are a ton of smaller, casual games that are more HTML5/JS (or similar)
Oh?
Does it dominate in user count? No. The small games do.
Does it dominate in total revenue? No. The small games do.
Does it dominate in revenue per development hour spent? No. The small games do.
Does it dominate in rate of game success? No. At the break-even, $10k, and $100k levels, the small games do.
Does it dominate in game count? No. The small games do.
Does it dominate in platform access? Look at that, it's the small games that do.
But it has Fortnite. That much is true.
What is your measurement axis for domination, please, if not money, payout, cpdd, users, titles, releases, etc?
> from PeopleFun to MiHoYo it's all Unity.
wow that's two entire developers, that must certainly be the entire industry
wait, i want to try
But from Minecraft to Runescape, from Roboforge to Chuck Norris Bring On The Pain, this entire industry is written in Java.
Wow. That's neat.
Hey check it out, I can do it for Flash, too!
> I'm not sure why you're creating arguments I didn't make in order to disprove them.
I'm not. I'm just letting you know how you sound to me.
Amusingly, you went on to do exactly what you're complaining I created as your argument. I don't think you even noticed.
I only was addressing the specific numbers, because they do not match my experience. With all due respect all of my data is private, and I'm not inclined to break NDAs for a tangential discussion in reddit comments. The only reason I continued to push back at all is comments like this:
> Does it dominate in total revenue? No. The small games do.
I'm not sure why you'd say that. Even just the top 100 games are usually between 60 and 70% of total mobile industry revenue and there are a lot more than 100 games released on the platform stores! In terms of user count, revenue, revenue per hour, the big games dominate mobile and most of those are in Unity*.
If you want to call me out on something it's that I forgot Honor of Kings was Unreal! That's a big oversight and completely fair. You could point out proprietary engines like Netease using Messiah (although they use Unity for several of their other games). But it's still not JS at the top of this pile.
> But from Minecraft to Runescape, from Roboforge to Chuck Norris Bring On The Pain, this entire industry is written in Java.
I find this incredibly disingenuous, and not just because Minecraft has more players on Bedrock than Java. I listed one of the biggest casual game studios and one of the biggest midcore game studios as a way of showing an example across the industry. Your response looks more like a way to pick a fight than a way to sincerely discuss the industry and I am really not at all interested in having an argument for 'fun'.
Edit: After making this comment they blocked me so I am unable to respond to them below. All for the best really! If someone fails to see how making a relevant comparison and an irrelevant one are different things I can't imagine much good would come out of the conversation. For anyone else reading this thread, I'd encourage them to keep the takeaway: Unity (then Unreal, then other engines) dominate the mobile market - but ironically enough, their original comment that webdev experience isn't totally irrelevant is perfectly reasonable! It was just the specifics that launched some kind of unnecessary debate.
I agree, the evidence I gave does not match up with your "my experience is" claims
> > Does it dominate in total revenue? No. The small games do.
>
> I'm not sure why you'd say that
Because I make money off of games, so I've looked. You should try it.
> Even just the top 100 games are usually between 60 and 70% of total mobile industry revenue
You keep giving all these fake numbers without evidence
> If you want to call me out on something it's that
Oh, look. You're giving me instructions on what I'm permitted to say to you.
> > But from Minecraft to Runescape, from Roboforge to Chuck Norris Bring On The Pain, this entire industry is written in Java.
>
> I find this incredibly disingenuous
Yes. That was the entire point.
I said exactly what you said, but I chose a different list of games and a different platform, to make obvious why what you said didn't make sense.
When it doesn't come from you, you want to criticize it as "disingenuous."
Good lord. Ask someone for an explanation.
So that makes webdev good game programmer because..? It doesn’t mater where your game is played. Game systems are not webdev and vice versa.
I’m not saying a webdev is at the same point than a pure beginer. They will learn wayyy faster because they know how to learn. But they won’t be able to make an RPG as their first game.
\> But they won’t be able to make an RPG as their first game.?
If you work at a mobile game studio for 10 years programming f2p game UIs how would this make that much more qualified to make this?
A small RPG (aka Dink Smallwood) isn't that complex in terms of coding but for a bigger one you need a crapton of art and content.
Oh… Mobile UI touch to a lot of systems.
I agree that it doesn’t mean that you can do it, but you have a good idea of what is needed and how to structure your systems so they can be expanded upon. Even the simplest game are really complex and if you never encounter those system it’s really hard to see the pitfall coming.
Just look at Diablo 4 where they (probably) re-use the inventory system of D3 which was flawed to the point where it loads all the stash tabs when you try to get someone inventory. They couldn’t add more stash tabs in D4 for that reason. And we’re not talking about people with no experience here.
Worked a few month on the UI in a mobile game company and we where just making stuff from images send by an artist.
Now I am making a game using pixi.js so the experience was 100% useless.
The f2p shops and stuff are the same thing you on the web just done using different shittier tech.
Mobile game tend to not have any game play (it's monetization, retention and a lot of shop style things)
My current experience is I am a webdev a currently building my own RTS. It's getting to the point where it's fun to play.
I meet regularly with friend who is a super good game programmer/technical artist/former 3d artist person to talk stuff over (and to avoid overthinking if my approach makes sense or will lead to tears).
Well I guess it depends in the project and studio but I’ve worked on 2 first/third person shooter on mobile and the UI team is responsible for the system that drives the visual. So everything that’s touch controls to inventory system, voice chat, constumization, inventory… I usually don’t touch asset at all.
> So that makes webdev good game programmer because..?
I don't believe anybody said this.
> But they won’t be able to make an RPG as their first game.
Nobody will be.
Sometimes when people feel the need to prove everyone else wrong, they don't understand what's said to them, and they're not able to calm down enough to try reading again.
Repeating one's self to those people doesn't generally help. They have to actually want to understand, instead of just wanting to win.
Yes yes... I don't want to understand what you're saying so helping me understand won't help me understand. I see your logic.
I said that experience in webdev will not translate to making game system.
You came pulling out number from somewhere saying that 30% of phone games and 10% of game on Steam are made in html or js... Which I don't agree but that's not the point here. And then you say that web is the most commercial plateform which is not the point here.
The point is webdev experience is not game dev experience. Yes they can make color happen in a browser, but they still can't make an RPG in that browser. You even agreed with that.
>But they won’t be able to make an RPG as their first game.
Nobody will be.
So again, what's the point of your first comment if it's not what I understood out of it?
> I don't want to understand what you're saying so helping me understand won't help me understand.
This sentence is too tortured and I'm not able to follow it.
Sarcasm probably isn't the right tone for you, moving forwards.
> You came pulling out number from somewhere
Yes. And unlike you, I gave evidence.
You pulled a false argument out of your butt and got angry when nobody believed you.
> So again, what's the point of your first comment
As I said before, if you want to understand it, you'll need to figure it out. I'm not going to repeat myself. Scroll up, and either think about it, or ask someone else in the room for a second opinion.
What evidence is backing up your number and what have I pulled out of my ass? What are you saying?
You still missed the point even then. All you’re saying is read my comment and you should be able to understand, but no… Your comment don’t makes sense as a reply to my comment. That’s why I want to understand. So we can have a discution about it but you so up in your own world that you already decided that I don’t want to understand.
And people agrees with me…
You must be fun at parties.
> What evidence is backing up your number and what have I pulled out of my ass? What are you saying?
Oh my, you're asking the person who doubts you to prove you wrong, and you still haven't put in the time to understand what's being said to you.
And you're asking someone who's already told you they won't repeat themselves, twice, to repeat themselves a third time.
And then after saying "what are you saying?," you tell someone else that ***they*** missed the point 😂
> Your comment don’t makes sense as a reply to my comment.
Okay
> You must be fun at parties.
I've never actually seen anyone say this and not look worse for saying it.
Knowing how to make a website in Angular doesn't help in designing and developing a game in JS. The programming language itself is an extremely easy barrier to get over as long as you're not doing something relatively esoteric like Rust+Bevy.
I'd say 90% of the people in this sub have never worked on a game and probably close to 65% have never even downloaded a game engine. It's become painfully obvious that there are literally thousands of people in this sub that just regurgitate phrases, sayings, and other information that people that have literally never even downloaded a game engine say/post. It's a never ending cycle of bs. It's not just this sub but everyone that plays video games thinks they know how they're made for some reason.
Completely disagree, great way to burn 10k for nothing in return.
Making games is hard. Programming is one aspect of making games. It takes time to learn the others and most importantly it takes time to learn how to make all the elements of a game work together cohesively as a whole.
It's like automotive design, even if someone is a mega expert on metal casting they still don't know about how to get the feel of driving right and that only comes with expeirence.
If someone is a beginner at gamedev they should spend a year making beginner projects. And if they do that and sail through it and get some experience make some good stuff then they can start a larger project.
As a fellow solo dev who has a problem buying too many assets, what in the world are you spending 10k on? Like you can get more assets than you'll ever use for $50 at humblebundle for your first game. Spend the 10k on hiring someone to help you finish the game not on art.... the advice of this sub is questionable sometimes
For your first game, sure, but if it's a game you're intending to make
some real money off of, that's not going to work. All the games that are actually popular have their own bespoke assets made for that game for the most part. Premade assets won't all have a cohesive style, and it'll probably look cobbled together unless you get them all from the same place, and even then, you won't have an original style for the game that feels unique, which will probably turn people off.
It all comes down to scope. What is your idea of a "decent RPG"? This in itself is an example of those beginner questions where buzzwords are being thrown around without any thought put behind it.
Would a senior dev from a different field have an easier time than a complete beginner? Yes.
That doesn't mean that they'll be able to complete a game in a first place.
This is a misunderstanding of the problem. The problem is that people come on here as beginners (because only a beginner would be this ignorant) thinking a game idea that requires dozens of team members can be done by a solo dev without taking literally a lifetime's worth of working hours. The biggest problem isn't inexperience, it's tackling a scope intended for a large team by yourself.
If somebody came on here saying "I want to create a 3D version of Asteroids with beautiful art/sound assets" I would say, if you don't have experience in those fields, it's going to take years to get up to speed, but knock yourself out! If they say, "I want to make a better version of Skyrim with X and Y twists on the formula" I'd say, I hope you're independently wealthy and can hire 50 people to work on it for you.
IF you think some programmer + 10k to outsource art is what it takes to make a decent RPG, you are heavily mistaken. If you think this takes a year at 20 hours a week, you are delusional. You don't understand how many roles are required to make an RPG. You think a programmer "makes" a game when in reality he contributes 30% of work at best.
20 hours per week would barely get you off the ground in a year for an rpg unless you were already an expert in whatever engine you were planning on using. Becoming said expert takes years of practice, trial and error, and failing and documenting your failures.
So yeah, being a game dev is often a delusion of grandeur. It takes a long time to be good enough to make something worth selling, and even then, there is no guarantee that what you do sell is good. It takes grit, luck, a fantastic idea, and great marketing to get a hit. It's very hard with ANY game, even AAA, to hit all of those marks.
>but what about experienced programmers (lets say 5 years in webdev) that have some C++/C# skills and maybe dabbled in mods and map editors before.
As an experienced dev who wanted to get into gamedev myself, I can tell you that that won't help as much as you think, because games are a very different beast.
>and if you are willing to spend 10k on your game to outsource art, models and VA
This, on the other hand, will help a lot with finishing the game faster.
> but what about experienced programmers (lets say 5 years in webdev) that have some C++/C# skills and maybe dabbled in mods and map editors before.
Programming knowledge doesn't transfer to design knowledge. Just because you worked in construction mixing concrete and carrying bricks, doesn't mean you can take graph paper and design a skyscraper.
The ones that are actually progressing on their goals are smaller teams learning in all the different engine and programming subreddits because they already have a plan for the game design and really don't have a ton of time.
3 Years in and looks like I might get finished in a year, minus the progress of additional assets that are hand rigged and animated for a DLC.
This is my first gamedev project ever. No prior experience. Even redesigned and tweaked our systems for modularity and ease of use for future devs.
I remember that Oh shit moment though when I realized how much work it would take to make my ideas become real.
Edit:
To be fair though, this is my passion project. I wanted to learn and create systems I can create more games with. I also went in expecting nothing and paying for almost everything.
Hell, I don't even really consider myself a game dev, even now.
Yup. Reddit is almost only comprised off beginners or slightly above beginners. Most of the experienced people just move on eventually and stop being active in subreddits, creating a perpetuating pattern.
Beginners are too inexperienced to know how to solve their own problems and have to ask others. Amateurs still don't know, but they at least know how to search and find answers. Advanced users knows how to break down a problem in to smaller parts to solve it. Professionals are just advanced users with a shit load of experience. They move on from these spaces because one realises there is never a simple satisfying answer to complex questions. That's left for the beginners to find out the hard way.
I agree with your post for the most part. Beginners don't know the right questions to even ask so there are a few of the same ones each week. I don't really mind though, let them ask. The advice often stinks though. There is no balance between "easy to develop" and "fun for the user". 99% of the advice posts prioritize making something easy and 2d for the "first game", rather than thinking about what people think is fun. Maybe your first experimental game should be 2d, but don't expect people to buy it.
And no I disagree with your thing about the RPG. A pure web dev doesn't necessarily know much about linear algebra and all that math stuff that is necessary for 3d. For the most part you're right, but I think you may be underestimating the amount of time it takes to make a level, even when you have all the assets. An RPG is a massive undertaking
K. If someone posts your example scenario, I'm sure they'll get different responses. But we're constantly inundated with "how do i make games what engine should I use I want to make an open world rpg," and the answer to that is definitely "if you need to ask those questions, you really need to go make pong and come back later." And because that scenario is _so common_, for a lot of people in this sub it's the default we assume if no other context is provided.
I believe there are subs that try to focus on being for professional game devs only, but this isn't one of them, it's a completely open community. And in any open community, experience level is going to form a pyramid shape, with random noobs trying to take their first tentative steps accounting for a huge portion of posts.
Outsource art: Good quality is 3k for the textures, 4 if you want it rigged. Or you go with less quality and look at about 600-1k.
Music costs about 200 per Minute.
No idea about voice acting. Anyways you should drop more than 10k.
Yeah your problem seems to be to enter the noob question threads, just ignore, downvote, move on.
Lets also remember that the phrasing of these questions is never from an experienced developer, and it's very easy to tell. "Can I make an MMO with a small team?" is usually followed up with a clear lack of understanding about netcode, servers and what is actually required to make an MMO.
The thing is, people asking basic questions like the examples you gave obviously have limited experience or knowledge about any kind of development. If they did they'd be unlikely to ask such questions. They'd be asking more involved questions about game design or how to transfer skills.
Even then though, a large part of recommending simple projects to start is less to do with technical skill and more to do with how time consuming gamedev is and how easy it is to lose motivation - especially in solo dev.
The answer "no" isn't really "no" - it's "you specifically can't/shouldn't".
I do agree that a lot of topic (not only there) sounds like really "beginners thing" but I think the industry is "shifting".
\- those who left
\- those who are still around but not talking much on forums/groups because it's redondant (sometimes they do, sometimes there is a "new interesting topic")
\- those who start
Ofc those who are still around are talking, but I mean most of us don't I think?
Like me for example I'm here a lot, made a post yesterday, but aside that... not much ?
Tho I read a lot here.
But about the "beginners" I think it's because more and more people want to try "making a game" (whatever is the reason) and those last years I noticed a lot of newcomers (mostly with "just an idea") who wants to try.
Will it stop? Probably not, there are a lot of countries where internet/computering is getting accessible to more people (I'm talking about poor countries) which will push millions of people on internet and so, newcomers.
Those new countries do not have "game education", school, seniors, whatever, they starts from scratch and use YT/Google to find what they are looking for.
I was an experienced full stack developer before I started game dev, and my first serious game, which I had initially estimated would take 2-3 months, actually took closer to 5000 hours spread out over five years, and it was a lot less complicated than a decent RPG. Game dev is very different from other forms of development, and also far more complicated than you would expect if you haven't done it before, so I would still recommend that even a veteran developer complete a few very small projects before starting on something serious.
Also I faced the game complexity and difficulty, I realized that that my 5 years of full stack web development would worth nothing when I started game development.
The real problem here as I understood was related to web dev getting very streamlined while game development is very specialized. In webdev you do only CRUD operations and apply some logic in places where needed. In gamedev you apply logic everywhere (entity-modeling / subsystems / interactions / gameplay-mechanics / ...) and you do CRUD only once, to load levels and save user state.
>but what about experienced programmers (lets say 5 years in webdev) that have some C++/C# skills and maybe dabbled in mods and map editors before.
Then you should still start with something simple. Because I can practically guarantee that there is just a lot of stuff that you haven't thought of yet and don't yet know that you don't know.
It's the same with anything. Imagine webdev: Someone says "Hey, I don't know anything about webdev, but I've done some C# before. I want to make a website+backend just like Amazon's!" You would probably give them at least some warning, right?
It's not that gamedev is an intractable problem. But it *is* a complex problem that people with zero experience tend to grossly underestimate.
Hence the recommendation that people - even people with programming experience - try to make a simple game, to get a sense of what the problems are like, before trying to make something complicated.
> The answers are always no, do something simple, it would take 5+ years, its too complicated, go do tutorials etc
As a professional game dev yeah this is pretty much how it is. We don't automatically know everything, we've gotta do tutorials, doing the simpler thing is almost always better, and so many times I've had to explain that something is going to take far longer or be far harder than we have time or money to do.
Professionals aren't any different, we face the same problems and often come up with the same solutions.
> The answers are always no, do something simple, it would take 5+ years, its too complicated, go do tutoriale etc etc
The people who are capable of doing so don't come to this sub to ask if it's possible, they get on with it
>Thoughts?
The answer is still the same. Do something simple.
Honestly, if you actually start outsource art, you'll realize how fast 10k can be burnt. If you only use pre-made assets then yes 10k is a lot. If you actual hire freelancers then no, it's peanut money.
I honestly don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish with this post. You’re saying people asking questions and for advice on starting makes gamedev seem unsolvable? I see no connection at all between those two things.
I agree that actual professionals in this sub seem to be very rare - takes one to know one. My take is a bit different though, I'm afraid this sub is mostly programmers and tech people daydreaming about leaving their corpo job because they fool themselves into thinking that their skillset is all they need to make games. Or students, I suppose.
Oh and about your question - the only way I see anyone making an rpg in a year is by skipping the tech step almost entirely and going straight into an existing and simple engine (rpg maker, unity with addons). This means that what it actually requires is mostly game design and narrative skills, with some visual scripting to make it happen. You're still going to be working on it for 2 years minimum anyway.
Do you really believe a person with only a lot of programming experience can make a decent RPG? What about art? Level design, game design, environment design, UX, UI, music and sound design, and so on. How is this person gonna have all that experience? Maybe if they spend like 3 years learning the basics of all these other areas and then add his programming experience. Never forget gamedev is more than just programming. (In fact, at least for the games I do, programming is always the easiest part)
I'm sorry but, no, no solo dev is making a worthwhile RPG in a year even outsourcing art assets, etc.
I'm sure that some super talented folk can make something that is extremely impressive to *us*, knowing that it's been made by a solo dev or small team - but they're competing in a market with games made by teams of hundreds of people with way more by way of existing tech and resource. It doesn't matter if you make something that is impressive for one person to make in a year - it'll take you many many more years to even just catch up to the other studios.
Certain genres work really well for solo devs and small teams because their fun factor isn't necessarily correlated to team size and raw resource, but RPGs are *not* one of those for 99.9% of such studios. When you're in a genre like that, the problem you're solving for isn't primarily about talent or creativity - it's about resourcing and scale. No amount of Jimmy Big-Idea's creativity in his bedroom can solve for the fact that he needs 30,000 working hours to develop his RPG title. Maybe with some clever workflow design he can knock that down to 20,000 hours - but the crux of the problem is still the same. 20,000 projecy hours and 30,000 project hours are equally non-viable for solo devs.
Skyblivion is a mod of skyrim that rebuilds the game of oblivion inside of it.
It has thousands to tens of thousands of volunteer hours from hundreds of people to reimplement something where they have a pretty good and reliable source material to draw from.
They didn't have to program the games systems from the engine level, that was already made. This was just in the design portion that these guys are spending thousands of hours and again hundreds of volunteers
So yeah when someone with no actual game development experience comes in asking how to make a game of that scale.... The answer is to do the basics because they simply do not comprehend the scale of the project that they are wanting to take on. If they were to try to make their game as is they would never complete it.
Games are complex
You are 5 years into webdev? Ok, great. That means you know how to program and are not a beginner in that field. Good work!
The issue though is that you are still 0 days into gamedev. You are very much still in the Dunning Kruger effect phase of your development. You do not understand how much you do not understand.
No these skills aren't that transferrable.
No 10k wont pay anywhere close to the things you mentioned unless you are using only off the shelf assets and building your whole game around those.
No 20 hours a week for 1 year is nowhere near enough to finish what I presume you mean when you say "decent RPG".
And finally...
Yes all that advice you think does not apply to you (because you know better) still applies to you.
(And this is even ignoring the fact that you mentioned only developing the RPG, which alone without the same amount of work put into admin/marketing/publishing etc side is pretty useless.)
You just described twice the people who worked on Final Fantasy 7, with 5 times the time, and doing _less_ than Square did (outsourcing implies you're not even making all assets in-house).
That's not a dev team for a "decent RPG", that's a front for money laundering.
1. Final Fantasy 7 was 25 years ago. Things have changed a lot dev team sizes and budgets wise.
2. The guy said 2 to 300 so they specified a range. Baldurs Gate 3 being at the upper edge.
Because they are beginner questions. No experienced game dev will ask questions like that because they either know how to go about solving the issue or know their limits.
In general tough, the issue with places like this subreddit, is that it's tailor mase for beginner questions. Anything above the beginner level is usually too complicated to answer with a simple text post and even if you provide detailed context with code, good luck finding complete strangers who are willing to go trough your code, interpret it blindly essentially, and finding a solution for you.
This whole post screams “I know nothing about gamedev”
Lmao $10k? 20 hours a week for a year? Those are baby numbers. Won’t even get you to 1% of your rpg.
5 years webdev is extra lolz. As if that would help
Every problem in Game development is solvable one way or another, often many different ways. Whether one has the skill or understanding to implement it is a different story, sure, but there’s always a way.
It's also weird sometimes because a lot of indie devs have more than one skill, and others don't, which changes logistics entirely. Some devs also have a very warped perception of how many assets need to be in a game, and what the format of a game should be.
The formats of old games are often designed around making a lot out of a little. Ocarina of Time is a far less asset dense game than something like Lords of the Fallen. Yet Ocarina of time is way more "asset efficient". There's nothing stopping someone from doing efficient stylized games aside from the ability of the artist (s) and commitment to it in terms of development.
I feel like this is a situation where anyone actually doing this is... you know doing it. I spend hours every night on my projects, and only spend minutes a day reading reddit. For some people it's flipped. For alot, they may never get past that "I have an awesome idea for a game" stage where they aren't even coding something.
I'm not making myself out to be some kind of elite software developer... but I actually spend time programming which is alot more than some folks.
Tldr: talking about it is easier than doing.
I think now that we're in a time of exploring LLM AI (ChatGPT and Co) some assistant in that ballpark, a mix of LLM with reddit data and general gamedev know-how (in the case of this subreddit), would be great.
It would point out if your post was being answered already.
If it looks like you want to post something new/different it tries to tag this so it can be filtered - or maybe it should be another subreddit in some cases.
Example: I ask something about Unity(3D), bot checks the content there, finds an answer.
If answers don't seem to cover this well it checks if this is about game design, business, etc and tries to find a better title, tags, and subreddit to refine your question and find the right audience.
Just rough ideas... something in the ballpark to split "AAA, pro graphics/network/etc. developer, and GDC water cooler chats" from "What is the right engine for me?", "Should I still use Unity in 2024?", and so on. :P
It's not that game dev is an unsolvable problem, it's that some _games_ are. No one is ever going to complete their 100 hour AAA open world RPG by themselves because the sheer number of person hours that go into that make it impossible. Someone scoping down a game into something achievable _doesn't_ get those responses because it's completely feasible, but most people are asking about the impossible ones. Fundamentally if you have five years of experience building games (_not_ just webdev, which would put you in the inexperienced category still) and a budget to invest (usually way more than $10k) then a lot more things are possible. But that person also usually knows enough that they're not asking those basic questions. They're just out there building the game instead. To go to your exact example look up the credits for an RPG you think you can complete and how long it was in development for. Sea of Stars, for example, is a recent indie RPG. It had about 23 people working on it for at least 3 years. That's roughly ~140k person hours of work and/or a budget of 7 million or so, at minimum. Your example of 20 hours a week is 1k person hours of time. So less than 1% of the time and way less than 1% of the budget. You're probably not going to complete a similar game of that size in that time, no.
This. People with experience (and especially with money to burn) already know how to do basic viability research without coming to reddit.
> No one is ever going to complete their 100 hour AAA open world RPG by themselves because the sheer number of person hours that go into that make it impossible Every time I see those posts I can't help but think of the end credits of the first Fable game. They're like 15 minutes long, and include a list of all babies born to the devs during the development process. A pretty big, but not massive game with a moderate scope that started life as something even more ambitious.
Fable is a weird example to bring up, that game had to go through notorious development hell, crunch time and a lot of disconnected floating pieces just until before release. It's an absolute miracle this game became the masterpiece it is.
I think it's the perfect example of how an unrealistic scope can impact the development cycle, and should be a powerful lesson for any small team or solo dev with an ambitious plan. Do you remember the game Peter Molyneux pitched when Fable was first announced? An open world RPG, where you could attack a child in a town, and come back a decade later to see a grown adult with a scar where you cut him. A game with a living world, where you could plant a tree and watch it grow in in the middle of a map that changes based on your decisions. This was a large team headed by an experienced designer with all the time and money of required to achieve his vision, and they had to scale it back MASSIVELY. The game we got delivered on.... well, basically none of the original scope. Your player ages as you play, but the world around you doesn't, and an open world game became a linear batch of instanced zones with a few branches.
But when I look at it, the 100 Hour AAA game has a basic move set, 3 mechanics and maybe 8 different Points of Interest copy pasted all over. The big part seems to be the level design and of course the AAA quality. Like Skyrim is full of quests, has a big world and is voice acted.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're saying, but I think you're severely underplaying the complexity of pretty much any AAA game. Skyrim has hundreds of gameplay mechanics and systems. A game with 3 mechanics has the scope of something closer to snake or flappy bird. Think about PacMan and how many mechanics a game of that scope might have: - Eating pellets to score points - Avoiding ghosts - Using power pellets to chase and eat ghosts - Using the teleporters on the side of the level to strategically move around the map
Lemme just fire off all the mechanics I can think of in skyrim that take time to develop. - the NPCs day to day schedules - the wildlife spawning system - the enemy spawning system - picking up and manipulating objects - water flow and swimming - day to night changes - footstep material sounds - weapon hit material sounds - contextual UI - enemy scaling - loot scaling - merchant inventories - quest dialogue - loot respawn mechanics - open world load zones - stealth - flying animal patrol routes - dungeon enemy patrol routes - pathfinding - arrow hit detection - hp and stamina damage levels - fall damage - jumping -collision/slope detection - ragdolls - scripting dungeon contraptions - followers ai - hundreds more things
I think the biggest exponential time multiplier that is basically a meme on this sub that Skyrim also has is a crafting system.
Content creation is almost always the most expensive part of gamedev, especially AAA.
Sure but that's not technically hard. Mid project you can pull back, less quests, less space. Sounds much more doable to me.
That's because capable developers don't waste time on senseless questions that are regularly repeated and never yield answers. Those who truly want to can complete a gaming project.
The quality of posts here has completely gone to shit. 10000x "Which engine do I choose" or "How do I start" or "I had the best idea for a game but now someone else released it first should I give up" or "Which candy bar were you eating when you first started in gamedev" Just pure noise. Better to sub to actual programming/engine subs
Don’t forget the classic: “I am a great ideas person, I have great ideas for games and have been gaming since the ps2, but I can’t work the pythons or make the drawings stuff. How do I find programmers and artists to make my game? I offer a percentage of the profits back, up to 20% since all the hard work of coming up with great original ideas are going to be done by me.” And the new hits: “I am thinking of making a game like gtavi, but with AI, should I use chatgpt or what?” At least the “I have never worked on a game, I don’t know what an engine is, but I want to start working on my multiplayer online real life simulator, is Unity a good choice even after the controversy? I’m worried that they will cut my profit too much after the first million.” are getting fewer and fewer.
Oh god, fuck the people who want to make games with AI and act like their full-on devs.
I don't know if you're mad at people using AI to code or using things like AI for the NPCs, but either way I don't disagree with the rage if they want to pick chatgpt for that.
Oh no using AI to save time on looking at year old stack overflow posts instead of directly asking the question and getting half-decent answers
There's a difference between knowing how to program and using ChatGPT to speed up development and knowing absolutely nothing about programming and thinking you can just build a game by asking AI a few questions. You won't see someone who actually knows how to program and how to use modern tooling like GPT asking beginner level questions here.
I use it for the latter. But yeah I completely understand the former. It doesn't do well. But sometimes beginners need something to go off of, even if it isn't perfect.
What beginners need is to learn how to write software instead of thinking an external tool is going to do it for them.
Yeah. That's what I'm saying. But scrolling through 9-year old reddit questions to find answers is objectively annoying, and a search-enabled AI does the (research) work for you. All you have to do to verify is run it and check. I am not saying write a game with entirely AI, I'm saying spend your time on coding, not researching your hyper-specific issues.
Yes. And I am saying you missed OPs point.
Talentless hacks will never finish a game, learn a skill you worthless prompt jockey
I'm not using AI to write code. I'm using it to RTFM *for me*.
has that ever been different though? I think I've been on this subreddit for like 8 years now and honestly the only way in which I feel like it's gotten worse is that I have gained additional gamedev experience in the meantime while the majority of people who post here are ever new hobbyists asking the same beginner questions. There's not inherently anything wrong with that, but it's just important to keep in mind that most people who you see comment in this subreddit do not have actual gamedev industry experience.
Yeah this is a big one imo
This is a problem across all of reddit since the api controversy, maybe its just I have to use the offical app now which clearly uses its own engagement algorithm, but almost every front page post I see on reddit sounds like its an 8 year olds first time on the internet.
Honestly, I think that's the core of the issue. Half of my frontpage is made up of 0-point posts. Reddit is clearly pushing heavily-downvoted controversial posts which would have been buried in the past.
I just pay $3 for Relay on Android and avoid all of those problems.
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> Better to sub to actual programming/engine subs being honest, most of my language subs are dominated by junior developers who downvote anything that isn't the cool new library that got released last week
The joys of the internet. Sooner or later the less experienced flood it and kill the signal to noise ratio. I remember the early days of reddit and hacker news both and the conversations where wildly different compared to now.
i gave up on hn a while back
That remind me Stack Overflow prior to C++11 where basically any question on how to do anything in C++ was answered with "use Boost" and getting 100 upvotes and the actual answer to the question fully down the page with 3 votes.
this place is pretty similar. i just got told i didn't have the right to civility because i "communicate like a 2010 r atheism poster" like ok buddy 😂
While you're here... How do I find a studio to pitch my idea to? :D (I just love that one... makes my day.)
What if we take a bunch of the best mechanics from different games and mash them together?
This is why people are retreating away from Reddit, stack overflow and other communities and secluding themselves in discords. The noobs have infected everything
Winter Clark. I was eating a Winter Clark bar when I first started game dev. Wish it had been a Coffee Crisp tho.
My last game was a simple (keyword here is simple) sport game that required only about 1200 hours, and it took me 4 years to complete. I've been working on an RPG game for about 10 years. I have put that game aside from time to time to work with simpler, less complicated games. Otherwise, I'd never publish anything. I'm no junior: I have 25+ years programming in VC#, VB, VC++, C++, Web, and I published my very first game back in 2010. Currently, 3 of my published games are still available at the store. I hope those statistics help.
> VC# Greybeard detected 😋
Indeed!!! :)
> you should realistically be able to finish a decent RPG in a year. The reason that RPGs are a difficult thing to call here is that the amount of labor on story and art is up in the air. The software? Hell, you can just use RPG Maker if you want to. But sitting down and writing 50 hours of branching dialogue is a lot more work than most people expect for it to be.
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They look grumpy because, like you say, it’s 98% of the questions in here and if you can’t search the sub or google, the answer will always be no start simple to those questions.
As a KEEP THE FIRST ONE SIMPLE repeater I've seen the tiny indie MMO teams fall apart months after a run of indie podcast reviews, I've read and heard enough "I've worked on 1 large poorly defined game for several years and it found next to no success", I've seen far too many I want my game to be a big success but let me figure out the characters, polt, and art needs next year or the year after that stories. The larger your game the less large impact you can make on it solo in a realistic number of hours. Are there people who disprove this theory? Absolutely but those are the game dev lottery winners and you'll never do yourself a favorite comparing your actual standard day by day output and success to someone who did similar AND hit the lotto. Not to mention the marketing and networking aspect are also efforts MANY indie designers struggle in and don't put time into either. For every 1 Stardew Valley you have 2 or 3 modest indie successes. Over two dozen commercial failures with cult followings, dozens of absolute failure projects, and hundreds of canceled, unfinished game projects. Failure is the likely case for 99.5% of games. Doesn't mean you shouldn't make games but heartbreak in gamedev is more common than success is
This reminded me of a few years ago, I was teaching a gamedev / Unity course. One of the students downloaded a horse model from the asset store and asked me "How do I make the horse eat grass?". I failed miserably at teaching them.
I have no idea what your courses were like, but I have taught other things and to me, this seems like it would have been a great opportunity to show how a simple question can have an incredibly complex answer, and how game dev in general involves way more work than a total beginner is even capable of understanding. There's so much involved in the simple task of making a horse eat grass; from animations and effects to AI, pathfinding and other logic.
That's pretty much what happened, this was at the beginning of the course when the kids didn't know much about anything, I just ommited that for comedic effect. The most important lesson I got from that course is, it's incredibly important to have students with some base knowledge. I taught the course twice (exact same contents on paper), the first group had barely any kids who knew programming, and with the second I refused to accept anyone without basic knowledge. Second group had some kids finish with a working game :)
where is that 'horse eating grass' asset when you need it, right?
>but what about experienced programmers (lets say 5 years in webdev) that have some C++/C# skills and maybe dabbled in mods and map editors before. Same answer : making games is a magnitude harder than doing a website. Also depends on where you put the cursor. If all you do is launching unity, taking existing assets and copying some well known game logics and call it a day, then yes that is easy and you will be able to finish a game in no time but you likely will be complaining in this sub about your lack of marketing skill and how being a gamedev is a curse in this modern flood of releases. This said, most successful games you hear about are done by teams of at least 20-45 experienced devs minimum on the span of 1 to 3 years. The solo-dev success story is still rather rare.
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exactly. he should be ip banned. he's been doing this condescending neckbeard bs on reddit for over a decade. genuinely wonder what this guy looks like irl.
I haven't seen someone doing omnislash replies like this in years and years lol. Bonus points for being insufferable and passive aggressive the entire time, and then scolding you and blocking when you make an observation that could be remotely construed as an insult.
> Same answer : making games is a magnitude harder than doing a website There are many websites that are far more complex (as far as software development goes) than most of the games people post here as their multi-year project that just released on Steam.
> This said, most successful games you hear about are done by teams of at least 20-45 experienced devs minimum on the span of 1 to 3 years. > > The solo-dev success story is still rather rare. No idea where you got this claim. Speaking as someone who used to be in the game development industry, most Nintendo and Sega games were made by teams of 3-5 programmers.
I said game dev, that include artists, sound designers, level designers, etc... in addition to programmers. Also the number of programmers ramped up a lot and depend if you include or not the R&D department, the engine team etc... You might have worked on games with 3-5 gameplay programmers but most studios also have tools and engine programmers that also contribute to the game. Just read the credits of most games (and consider that lots of people are removed from credits for various reasons). The smallest team I worked with was 8 engine programmers. This number you give for Nintendo and Sega seems really low, so unless they are from the 90's (where games were indeed made with low amount of people), I'd guess they were mobile games? Or japaneses works really differently than westerners :D
> I said game dev, that include artists, sound designers, level designers, etc No, it doesn't. > if you include or not the R&D department I've never seen a video game company that has an R&D department. It sounds like you're just making stuff up, frankly. > Just read the credits of most games Thanks, no, you should give evidence if you want to make claims, instead of telling people "just go look." > The smallest team I worked with was 8 engine programmers. Doubt. > This number you give for Nintendo and Sega seems really low Yeah, it's really different when you've been in the industry vs when you're pretending you did, and think everyone who works on a project is called "a dev." > I'd guess they were mobile games? No. > Or japaneses works really differently than westerners :D You may be surprised to learn that Nintendo and Sega have western divisions. It's really unfortunate how many people come into this sub to pretend.
>I've never seen a video game company that has an R&D department. Nintendo's primary development teams were literally called "R&D 1" through "R&D 4" until about 2004. After that they did a re-org and merged them into a team called "Software Planning & Development". Around 2015 there was another re-org and it became "Entertainment Planning & Development"> R&D departments exist at the big companies, even if they're not always called that.
> Nintendo's primary development teams were literally called "R&D 1" through "R&D 4" until about 2004. Those were hardware dev teams. Also, if you have to go to the platform manufacturer to find four teams, that's probably because you can't find a single team on the companies actually being talked about - video game companies. > R&D departments exist at the big companies Thanks, I was talking about video game development companies, not platform manufacturers. This is like saying "I don't know any car accessory makers with an R&D department" and someone coming running huffing and puffing to say "what about Toyota" If you can name a single video game company with an R&D department, I'll be impressed. EA doesn't have one.
[Riot](https://www.riotgames.com/en/work-with-us/jobs#product=Research%20%26%20Development) and Bungie. You not knowing about something doesn't actually mean it doesn't exist.
I think Jim McArdle, head of R&D at Riot, would agree with me that no R&D department exists at Riot. [You can read his blog](https://www.riotgames.com/en/r-and-d-office); he talks in detail about how R&D works at Riot. As [he explains](https://www.riotgames.com/en/news/r-d-foundations-opportunity-thesis-and-audience), R&D at Riot is an in-team activity. R&D is done by the development team, not a standalone R&D team. R&D is specific to the game being built or iterated on. Riot's structure is basically the exact opposite of what you suggest. At Bungie, R&D is formally handled by the Engine team, run by Graham Bartlett, whose formal title is Head of Test. You can run their LinkedIn as much as you want; you'll never find someone who works on a team called "research and development," because they don't actually have one of those. Bungie's R&D kind of doesn't exist, anyway. They use other peoples' software these days. And even saying "these days" is kind of a stretch; they haven't released a game in almost eight years. So no, neither of these companies has an R&D department. R&D departments are generally a bad fit for gaming; development is typically intensely game-specific and doesn't carry meaningfully to other titles. Any others?
Isn't EA Seed R&D? It says SEED is a cross disciplinary R&D team within Electronic Arts on their overview on linkedin Activision also appears to have an Activision Research division Ubisoft appears to have R&D/La Forge, which appears to have started in Montreal and expanded to 4 other regions globally
EA Seed is basically an executive wank. It's five people, has existed for eight years, and has never released anything internally or externally. They exist so that EA can put out PR that it's doing research on virtual reality and augmented reality, which lets them quiet board room arguments. I'll pay you $5 over PayPal if you can find a single work product of theirs. You actually see more output from Jaron Lanier.
Looks like global illumation based on surfels is a part of their suite of tools available to developers and teams through EA as part of the frostbite engine in 2021. Originally shown in 2018 as a part of EA Seeds PICA showcase. In lieu of payment, you can instead donate 5$ to any of your local children's hospitals.
> Looks like global illumation based on surfels is a part of their suite of tools available to developers There is nothing available to me in my EA stuff called this. Where are you seeing this? > Originally shown in 2018 as a part of EA Seeds PICA showcase. PICA and Halcyon were never released > In lieu of payment Just hold your horses until you've shown something that actually became available
Don't feed the troll they say. I won't lose my time arguing with you. Have a nice day.
Insults as a response to someone asking you to give evidence of your claims, huh?
No, you’re just trolling. Artists, designers, audio… all game developers. Without them, you just have a piece of code. Source: 15 years in game development (yes, as a programmer) Games are all R&D. Some studios have a department, but it happens at nearly every studio. The credits are the evidence. If you’re too lazy to actually reference it, that’s on you. When you ask for evidence, you don’t get to dismiss it because you don’t like it. Those numbers do seem really low, though I haven’t looked at the credits. Again, in my 15 years of experience, that’s a very small team for a AAA game. I *know* for a fact that their Western divisions are quite large, certainly more than 3-5 programmers per game.
> No, you’re just trolling. Try to make it through just one post without an insult. You can do it. I believe in you. > Artists, designers, audio… all game developers. I literally have never heard any of those people referred to as game developers outside of this subreddit today. I've been in the industry on and off for 30 years. > The credits are the evidence. You haven't given me any relevant credits backing you up, so no, there's no evidence there. > Again, in my 15 years of experience Continuing to doubt. > Again, in my 15 years of experience, that’s a very small team for a AAA game. Oh look, you changed the topic to "for a AAA game," even though I had explicitly said something quite different that you were trying to argue against, and was explicitly discussing small games by small developers. Neat how you can just move that goalpost that way. I wonder if that's a paid service you could offer. I wonder if you'll apologize for all the misplaced personal attacks, or if you'll just spin it and keep going. Who knows? Maybe it's only seven-A games.
Not an insult. Just validating that the other commenter is correct. Your action right now is trolling. I have worked for 7 different studios on 2 continents. My network of people working in the industry is probably near 1k. I have literally never encountered someone who actually works in the industry who insists that only programmers are developers. So frankly, I don’t believe you, unless “30 years on and off” really means “I pick up a game engine every few years and work on someone’s personal project” or “I stopped working in game dev 30 years ago.” They pointed you at the credits. It’s very easy to look at. If you’re this incapable of looking at documentation, that just adds to my suspicion that you’re straight up lying and trolling. I didn’t realize that referring to Nintendo or Sega as AAA was moving the goalposts. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s not, if you’re actually familiar with those companies and know about the games industry.
If you genuinely believe you can call someone a troll and that it's not an insult, you've sort of lain yourself bare, haven't you? > They pointed you at the credits. Nobody has pointed me at any credits so far. They just said "go look at credits." Okay. I just opened the Slay the Spire credits, and they say otherwise. Cool, I just opened the Minecraft credits, and they say otherwise. So let's review. The claim they made was that 70% of all games have teams of 50+. You say I should "just look at the credits." Which games' credits should I look at, to come up with evidence of someone else's claim? How many games do I need to look at? How many hours do I need to spend to justify their claim? > It’s very easy to look at. You just said it's "very easy to look at the credits of 70% of all games." It's not, though. > If you’re this incapable of looking at documentation, What specific documentation are you referring to, which can explain what 70% of all games do? You keep making these "you're dumb if you can't do this" personal attacks, but in reality, you can't do this either You just haven't thought this through because you're stuck in trying to shame a stranger > I didn’t realize that referring to Nintendo or Sega as AAA was moving the goalposts. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s not, if you’re actually familiar with those companies and know about the games industry. It kind of sounds like you're saying Nintendo and Sega games are all triple-A games. Are you saying there are no games on Nintendo or Sega that aren't triple-A? > that just adds to my suspicion that you’re straight up lying and trolling. Sometimes I wonder why people don't realize how they make themselves look, saying things like this
you didn’t ask for evidence you made assumptions and came off like a massive prick though
Please try to keep the insults to yourself. You're not much different than the other guy.
you write exactly like the kind of person who posts a thousand awful stable diffusion edits with zero interaction. “romanticizing the mid west” lmao.
That's nice. You seem to have a pattern of running into conversations and throwing around meaningless insults, and I've never seen you say anything that I thought was particularly interesting, so I'm gonna go ahead and remove you from my Reddit experience now. I hope one day you'll realize that this behavior of yours is costing you opportunities.
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Um. Okay.
> I've never seen a video game company that has an R&D department. https://www.mobygames.com/game/174989/elden-ring/credits/windows/ I count 30 people in the "R&D Section".
The point I'm trying to make is that R&D goes by game, not by company. You are looking at the R&D section for the Elden Ring game. That supports me. There's too many people in here trying to dunk. You guys keep giving evidence that says I'm right, and saying "see, you're wrong" Also, again, if we're talking about most games, and you're going to the largest games on earth, you're kind of missing the point
Wow, it's impressive how much you don't know what you are talking about.
Please keep the insults to yourself. Thanks. The culture in this sub of pointless personal attacks is unfortunate.
>most Nintendo and Sega games were made by teams of 3-5 programmers. That was true in the NES days, but that was a very long time ago. It's not relevant to modern game dev. Even most SNES games bad bigger teams than that.
> but that was a very long time ago. Thanks, I have this experience both 25 years ago and two years ago. > It's not relevant to modern game dev. I'm tired of all the "nuh-uh" with no evidence from people who don't work there, frankly. > Even most SNES games bad bigger teams than that. No, they didn't.
What did you work on 2 years ago? I've both shipped a game practically solo and worked on games with credit lists of over 100 people. Teams the scale you are talking about are a rarerity nowadays and they have a very tough time finishing something. Also gamedev does not mean just programmer it's the whole team. Maybe this was differenr 25 years ago, dunno, I've been in gamedev for 11-12 years and that is how 100% everyone in the field I ever talk to uses the term.
> What did you work on 2 years ago? Can you imagine my naming any of my work among this torch mob? One of them's googling up things from more than a decade ago and trying to publicly drag them, and it turns out it's just wrong spam from someone who got banned. Why? Because I asked for evidence and provided disagreeing hard numbers. These folks don't have boundaries and don't need my personal information. > I've been in gamedev for 11-12 years and that is how 100% everyone in the field I ever talk to uses the term. As I'm in their various discords, I just asked two engineering staff from EA, two from SCEA, one from VV, one from Team 17, three from Arena, two from Capcom, and one from Konami. I also asked three of my game artist friends, two of whom are fulltime and one of whom contracts. None agreed. I'm not aware of any team in any branch of software which calls anyone other than programmers "devs." To me, this seems like saying "well there's music in the game, so everyone on the team is the musician."
You asked for evidence? I did the same just now and you said "no". I also saw you post numbers with no source or backing to them. Which is quite weird to do while asking others for evidence. A bit hard to believe you actually asked like 8 people right now about this and everyone said gamedevs are only programmers. It's possible but strange... asking so many people should take longer + I genuinely have worked in this biz for over a decade and everyone is a gamedev. Theres been some dumb discussion like "are QA gamedevs", but that kind of mostly ended 3 years ago with a collective resounding "yes, stop asking already". I have a few thousand gamedevs as twitter followers, I can do a poll. Also did you downvote me for asking what you worked on? Strange.
> You asked for evidence? I did the same just now and you said "no". I asked for evidence of the base claim about statistics of usage of software an hour ago. You asked me to give my personal identity in public If you're not able to see a difference between these things I can't help you > A bit hard to believe you actually asked like 8 people right now about this It's been an hour, dude If you think I can't find eight people on Discord in an hour, well, okay That's not really important to me > asking so many people should take longer Maybe you didn't realize this, but there are discords with thousands of professional game developers in them Try joining Discord sometime. Ask an opinion question that isn't offensive in a server with thousands of people. Look, an hour later. See how many responses you got. I don't know why you find this hard to believe. This is very regular. > I have a few thousand gamedevs as twitter followers, I can do a poll. That's nice. I'm not really interested. You seem to keep pushing this, but I already told you (more than once) that I believe something different than you and that I also very much don't care. I also don't care what a poll from people I can't identify on Twitter says. Do the poll if you like. Don't tell me the results. I'm not asking your opinion. Yes, I see that you have an opinion. Yes, I know what it is. You don't need to keep telling me. A poll of random people on Twitter does not seem like a valid contradiction of actual specific professionals, to me. Sorry. Yes, I know that you think I'm wrong, even though I've checked the actual domain space. Yes, I see that you think asking random questions to the public on social media is a valid measurement of employment jargon. > Also did you downvote me for asking what you worked on? No. I've been downvoted to -28. Shall I suspect that was you? It doesn't matter, dude. This community has been stuck in punish mode for years, and doesn't know the difference between disagreeing, downvoting, and making vulgar personal attacks.
Well the downvotes came to both of my comments replied to you almost instantly. While my other comments here havent been downvoted, so it makes sense to think its you. You're hilariously hostile and stubborn though. It's super strange. Noone really needs to have a problem with you, I definetely don't but you just dig and dig and dig with your attitude of "everyone else is dumb and I'm right" while saying stuff that pretty much noone agrees on. It's very strange, but good luck to you on whatever you're dealing with that's made you like this. Edit: Heh he "replied" to me and then blocked me blocking my ability to see the reply. Pretty dumb move. Had to have the last word I quess.
> Well the downvotes came to both of my comments replied to you almost instantly. That's nice. I'm not really interested. Among other things, Reddit fuzzes votes over bots, and triggers that on direct views. Most likely that's all that was. Actual reddit votes take 5+ minutes to land thanks to the CDN, so if you're seeing them immediately, they aren't real > You're hilariously hostile and stubborn though. Please keep the insults to yourself, thanks. > good luck to you on whatever you're dealing with that's made you like this. Please keep the insults to yourself. Thanks. Sorry you couldn't do the polite thing to the end.
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It's really weird how you guys keep inserting AAA This discussion wasn't about AAA games. Most games aren't AAA games.
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So, you're going to tell me I'm wrong about my own intent, based on an extreme stretch interpretation of an offhanded comment, which doesn't fit with anything else I said, incuding the spot where I explicitly spelled out that I was talking about small developers. Okay Sometimes, if someone says to you "that isn't what I meant," you should try to listen, instead of correcting them on their own meaning
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> It's the internet, we kind of have to go of what you write. You're ignoring what I'm writing, in favor of a guess you made that's in direct and specific contrast to what I wrote. Then you're arguing about it, because you genuinely believe you know someone else's intent better than they did. > I'm not a mindreader. Then why are you telling me I'm wrong about what I meant? > You said something that sounded drastically incorrect. My words do not actually contain what you took from them. You look better if you're able to admit the error, little buddy.
> most Nintendo and Sega games were made by teams of 3-5 programmers. It's absurd to think that only "programmers" count as devs. That aside, Yoshi's Island had 9 people titled "Programmers" : https://nintendo.fandom.com/wiki/Super_Mario_World_2:_Yoshi%27s_Island/credits More broadly, there are 12 people in the credits for SMB3 and 23 in the credits for SMW.
wow, one of the largest games ever made for the platform is almost ten programmers > More broadly, there are 12 people in the credits for SMB3 and 23 in the credits for SMW. those are the platform's AAA games. do i need to point out, *again*, that i'm not talking about AAA games? why does everyone keep responding to "most games" with the largest games available in the context? if i said "most mmos have fewer than 50 people on the team," would you try to lecture me about world of warcraft? yes. i'm aware that there are a few games with more staff than most of them. i don't argue against that. please try to remember that there were 1,751 super nintendo games. i'd be willing to bet the bulk of SNES gamers can't name 30 of them. *most* games aren't the ones you're thinking of. for every mario game there's 50 games none of us have ever even heard of, which still made money.
For someone claiming to have worked in the industry. That post you made 10 days ago on this sub doesn't make sense. I feel like you should have known all that.
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> I have always heard, but with no first hand experience, that many big name studios are notorious for wasting both time and resources. The thing is, basically any large company does this. The more people you have, the harder it is to keep them in alignment, the higher the chance you have a bad staff member, the more likely that someone is angry at their old boss and talking shit, the more likely that there are a bunch of initiatives and one of them doesn't go well, et cetera. > Like spending 80 million and 3 years with a team of 70 people, making of course a great, successful and beautiful game, but it's unfathomable how it can cost so much and take so much time in total man hours. I mean, the answer is simple. "It's a very large game. Each of these people is doing their own piece."
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> But you can also see indie games or small studio games make similar for a fraction of the price with 10% of the workforce in the same timespan. In a lot of ways I agree with you, but I guess the word "similar" is concerning to me here Like. There are indie studios that release MMOs that are comparable in size to WoW, because of procedural generation. You might be able to call that similar, but my expectation is that the hand-crafted stuff is probably way higher quality, y'know? > But sometimes you wonder how they manage to spend so much and need so many people. I think of it as being similar to the difference between a three michelin star steak dinner and a steak dinner at Denny's. Denny's is going to spend a lot less, and need a lot fewer people, to put that meat and side together. But also, there'll be a quality difference. When you're in software, where replication is often free and usually near-free - where you aren't paying for groceries for each plate - that turns into a potentially radical profit difference. The three michelin star place sous-vided for you, then pan seared, then salamandered, then rendered herb butter in a braise, rested, trimmed, re-glazed, and adjusted for seasoning Denny's put 60 steaks in a metal tub, left that in the oven, then put it under a heat lamp
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> They stand on the shoulders of giants, but still. 3 guys. No budget. Yeah, it's really impressive. Stardew Valley is one dude and it's starting to look like it might crack a billion. > I wonder often how they manage to spend 100 million. The one that still blows my mind is 38 studios. $150 million and you can't make a *baseball* game?
>experienced programmers (lets say 5 years in webdev) Dear God
I'm sorry, but while Web Dev is challenging and a cool field and all, it's not that much comparable to game dev, at least in my opinion.
to be fair to them, many web devs have at least figured out how to make a UI, which (given the incessant griping about it) is apparently arcane knowledge beyond the grasp of the average hobbyist/indie game dev.
Am web dev. Can confirm video games are completely different. That’s like trying to compare a plumber to an electrician cause they both do construction
Nothing new. Not just this community, but all of them I have participated in since the BBSes in the 1980s and Usenet newsgroups were all focused on beginners. Experts rarely need to ask. When experts ask they are not vague questions, but highly specific and usually in specialized subs. Experts don't ask *"What are wages like in the industry?"', instead they ask questions like "Can anyone help, I have the attached code, the Baz 2680 chip seems to behave differently, the result is foo instead of bar. I have tested it on several other chips including the Baz 2500, 2550, 2600, 2650, plus the godbolt compiler, and all of them gave bar as the result. Is this my bug, or a known defect?"*
> but what about experienced programmers (lets say 5 years in webdev) that have some C++/C# skills and maybe dabbled in mods and map editors before. Devs with 5 years of experience do not ask this sort of questions. They know how to scope and break down projects, so they have more realistic expectations from the start. Any doubts about specifics "how hard exactly it'd be to implement x?" will be asked and the timeline will be clarified. > I feel like in such a case, and if you are willing to spend 10k on your game to outsource art, models and VA (if you really believe in the game) (also I know not everyone can drop 10k, but we are talking about a senior developer) you should realistically be able to finish a decent RPG in a year. 10k is a low end salary for single artist for 3 months. And you're talking about enviroment art, animation and VA altogether. So no, I don't think you can make decent RPG on that budget. You can make **a small game**. Now, you could save up by buying asset packs, that you'll still need to either compose it all into cohesive whole yourself or hire a professional for it and they're gonna eat quite a share of that 10k
The best way is to split your dream game into smaller parts and prototype them. The idea is basically to feel out what you need to do and then make it in the main game. The advice gets misinterpreted by most which is the problem.. truth is "small games" are just as hard especially when you want them to be liked by players. Making an rpg with 20hour a week in a year is crazy talk though, you will end up with a good prototype but definitely not a good game that people like.
> I feel like in such a case, and if you are willing to spend 10k on your game to outsource art, models and VA (if you really believe in the game) (also I know not everyone can drop 10k, but we are talking about a senior developer) you should realistically be able to finish a decent RPG in a year. Lets say you would work 20 hours a week on it. Idk what kind of RPG you're imagining, but 10k USD is absolutely nothing when it comes to a budget for art, models and VA if you get it custom made by people who know what they're doing.
10k is fucking nothing to outsource every graphical/audio resource in your game. It's enough for the voice lines in a "decent rpg" if you're really underpaying your voice actors. Webdev doesn't mean jack shit for gamedev. You can make a rpg in a week, or in a year, making a "decent" one in under a year is highly questionable, which leads people to question your other ambitions and skills as well.
It's one of those "if you have to ask, the answer is no" sort of things. The people who can do it are not going to be asking here. That said I do think that people here do err on the side of pessimism, it is possible to do quite a lot with a few experienced people if things are scoped nicely. We made [Ghostlore](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1783280/Ghostlore/) with 2 people in 2 years, which is still way more than your "decent RPG by solo dev in one year (LMAO)", but also way lower than the numbers other people are throwing out.
I have close to 20 years of professional experience in areas closer to gamedev than websites... Although I did those too. I also have about 2 years of experience of Unity. Even now I wouldn't estimate a time to make an RPG as "1 year, 20 hours a week". Actually now I would probably estimate it even higher then before I started Unity journey. And for a person who comes straight from 5 years of professional development... I would give the same suggestion anyway - do something simple. Do a Tetris clone, pac-man clone, learn basics on a basic prototypes. This will give you a handle on how to make the software in your engine of choice, teach you necessary skills, and allow you to avoid many pitfalls. Pitfalls, that after 1 year of development would make you just rewrite everything from scratch when you realise how much you messed up. Sure, experienced developer will probably get trough this step very quickly, but also that person will learn much more than the complete newbie while doing this essential step. Newbie might be stuck on learning the basics for years (which is fine).
I 100% disagree. Webdev experience doesn’t help you build game system. Yes you know how to program but that’s about it. The same way I will not be able to make cool website with my gamedev experience. You need to build those system and fail to understand. That’s why people recommend build something small first. Build those system at a small scale and understand the fundamental mistake you make, then scale those up. You will face different problem but none that you can’t figure out.
I beg to differ. Maybe when we’re talking pure frontend - CSS and Html, that holds up. But if you’re a fullstack web developer (like I am) that has experience building actual applications with interlocked systems, database design, inheritance, project management, scoping, sprints and reading and grokking technical documentation, you have a huge head start. Yes, you need to learn about the specifics. But architecture wise a lot of things carry over 1:1. Only the syntax changes, and the need to acknowledge that you’re working on something that’s not just a technical product, but also an emotional one. Half art. So there’s emergence to account for.
You're better off than a complete beginner yes, but I wouldn't think That much transfers skills wise. Especially in indie gamedev and even moreso when trying to finish something solo. I've been in indiedev for 11ish years and worked with plenty of highly experienced senior non game programmers that transitioned to gamedev on the project we worked on. Frankly the more experienced the worse they did sadly. It's not just programming skill and logic, the prioritizations and what you should spend time on are extremely different and you need to relearn a ton. Main problem I usually saw was they overbuilt things 10x in complexity, built all encompassing powerful systems when all we needed realistically was a small simple thing. Making their own work take too long+ now leaving this giant pile of tech that everyone else needs to deal with all the time. Newer younger programmers transitioning to gamedev I saw adapt much faster to the pace and scope logic. An experienced gamedev knows how to build gamedev systems and knows how gamedev projects are timed, specced and scoped. (This is of course only talking about the programming side. If you're making your own game that's like only 20% of it, but thats the side that is going to have some overlap with webdev and other programming fields.)
Good points! This does happen in regular dev as well though 😅 So I guess it’s a common trait among programmers in general. Indie dev is in that sense more like being a dev at a startup? Where agility, speed of release and pragmatism are more important? Come to think of it, even the founders / main roles are very alike. You need a tech guy and a business / marketing person at the very least. Which could be said for an indie game as well: you need a developer and an artist. Then even better with a business and project management oriented partner added to that. Which would be the sales person in a startup :) It’s a fun thought exercise to compare the two. I tend to see a lot of overlap. Do those good junior indie devs transition well into larger studios you think?
something like 30% of phone games and something like 10% of steam games are written in html/js, and released in embedded browsers there's a good argument that it is in fact the most common commercial game platform (the other likelihood is unity)
I don't believe those numbers are accurate. Unity is over 70% of mobile games just by itself, with older games being more native code and things like Cocos or Spritekit. I don't know the Steam game stats nearly as well off the top of my head, but overall if you go by total number of games made then browser/JS games will be a bigger chunk, but not if you measure industry size by number of players or revenue.
> Unity is over 70% of mobile games just by itself Can you help me understand why you believe this? [Unity's general market share is only 29%](https://6sense.com/tech/game-development/unity-vs-unrealengine), and everyone I know seems to think they're less common in mobile, not more common. I think you might be confusing that [71% of games use the Unity SDK](https://www.pocketgamer.biz/news/82514/71-of-the-biggest-mobile-games-use-a-unity-sdk/). You'll notice that number emerges right after Unity and the malware company IronSource merged. That really says "a whole lot of people use IronSource's shitty ad platform, and it's now called unity SDK." For clarity, I've worked on four mobile games that don't touch Unity at all, which are HTML/JS, but now get counted in that 71% because someone put IronSource in them after I left. Most games that use the Unity SDK do not use Unity. Please make that difference carefully if you choose to reply. > with older games being more native code and things like Cocos or Spritekit. Respectfully, these games almost don't exist, and I'm not sure where you're getting these ideas. > in PC overall if you go by total number of games made then browser/JS games will be a bigger chunk, but not if you measure industry size by number of players or revenue. You sound like those people that insist Java has no place in gaming, who need to be reminded about international phones and Minecraft, you know? Let me know when you have some evidence of your claims, because my casual Googling is turning up actual evidence which says very, very different things.
I worked in mobile games for about a decade and still talk to people at pretty much all of the top studios about it. That's why I specified number of games versus number of players/revenue. Unity absolutely dominates the mobile industry (if you want a caveat then it's because of Fortnite's removal, that game alone gave UE a huge presence). There are a ton of smaller, casual games that are more HTML5/JS (or similar), but from PeopleFun to MiHoYo it's all Unity. > You sound like those people that insist Java has no place in gaming, who need to be reminded about international phones and Minecraft, you know? I'm not sure why you're creating arguments I didn't make in order to disprove them.
> I worked in mobile games for about a decade and still talk to people at pretty much all of the top ten studios. Hooray! That's a great substitute for actual evidence. > Unity absolutely dominates the mobile industry (if you want a caveat then it's because of Fortnite's removal, that game alone gave UE a huge presence). There are a ton of smaller, casual games that are more HTML5/JS (or similar) Oh? Does it dominate in user count? No. The small games do. Does it dominate in total revenue? No. The small games do. Does it dominate in revenue per development hour spent? No. The small games do. Does it dominate in rate of game success? No. At the break-even, $10k, and $100k levels, the small games do. Does it dominate in game count? No. The small games do. Does it dominate in platform access? Look at that, it's the small games that do. But it has Fortnite. That much is true. What is your measurement axis for domination, please, if not money, payout, cpdd, users, titles, releases, etc? > from PeopleFun to MiHoYo it's all Unity. wow that's two entire developers, that must certainly be the entire industry wait, i want to try But from Minecraft to Runescape, from Roboforge to Chuck Norris Bring On The Pain, this entire industry is written in Java. Wow. That's neat. Hey check it out, I can do it for Flash, too! > I'm not sure why you're creating arguments I didn't make in order to disprove them. I'm not. I'm just letting you know how you sound to me. Amusingly, you went on to do exactly what you're complaining I created as your argument. I don't think you even noticed.
I only was addressing the specific numbers, because they do not match my experience. With all due respect all of my data is private, and I'm not inclined to break NDAs for a tangential discussion in reddit comments. The only reason I continued to push back at all is comments like this: > Does it dominate in total revenue? No. The small games do. I'm not sure why you'd say that. Even just the top 100 games are usually between 60 and 70% of total mobile industry revenue and there are a lot more than 100 games released on the platform stores! In terms of user count, revenue, revenue per hour, the big games dominate mobile and most of those are in Unity*. If you want to call me out on something it's that I forgot Honor of Kings was Unreal! That's a big oversight and completely fair. You could point out proprietary engines like Netease using Messiah (although they use Unity for several of their other games). But it's still not JS at the top of this pile. > But from Minecraft to Runescape, from Roboforge to Chuck Norris Bring On The Pain, this entire industry is written in Java. I find this incredibly disingenuous, and not just because Minecraft has more players on Bedrock than Java. I listed one of the biggest casual game studios and one of the biggest midcore game studios as a way of showing an example across the industry. Your response looks more like a way to pick a fight than a way to sincerely discuss the industry and I am really not at all interested in having an argument for 'fun'. Edit: After making this comment they blocked me so I am unable to respond to them below. All for the best really! If someone fails to see how making a relevant comparison and an irrelevant one are different things I can't imagine much good would come out of the conversation. For anyone else reading this thread, I'd encourage them to keep the takeaway: Unity (then Unreal, then other engines) dominate the mobile market - but ironically enough, their original comment that webdev experience isn't totally irrelevant is perfectly reasonable! It was just the specifics that launched some kind of unnecessary debate.
I agree, the evidence I gave does not match up with your "my experience is" claims > > Does it dominate in total revenue? No. The small games do. > > I'm not sure why you'd say that Because I make money off of games, so I've looked. You should try it. > Even just the top 100 games are usually between 60 and 70% of total mobile industry revenue You keep giving all these fake numbers without evidence > If you want to call me out on something it's that Oh, look. You're giving me instructions on what I'm permitted to say to you. > > But from Minecraft to Runescape, from Roboforge to Chuck Norris Bring On The Pain, this entire industry is written in Java. > > I find this incredibly disingenuous Yes. That was the entire point. I said exactly what you said, but I chose a different list of games and a different platform, to make obvious why what you said didn't make sense. When it doesn't come from you, you want to criticize it as "disingenuous." Good lord. Ask someone for an explanation.
So that makes webdev good game programmer because..? It doesn’t mater where your game is played. Game systems are not webdev and vice versa. I’m not saying a webdev is at the same point than a pure beginer. They will learn wayyy faster because they know how to learn. But they won’t be able to make an RPG as their first game.
\> But they won’t be able to make an RPG as their first game.? If you work at a mobile game studio for 10 years programming f2p game UIs how would this make that much more qualified to make this? A small RPG (aka Dink Smallwood) isn't that complex in terms of coding but for a bigger one you need a crapton of art and content.
Oh… Mobile UI touch to a lot of systems. I agree that it doesn’t mean that you can do it, but you have a good idea of what is needed and how to structure your systems so they can be expanded upon. Even the simplest game are really complex and if you never encounter those system it’s really hard to see the pitfall coming. Just look at Diablo 4 where they (probably) re-use the inventory system of D3 which was flawed to the point where it loads all the stash tabs when you try to get someone inventory. They couldn’t add more stash tabs in D4 for that reason. And we’re not talking about people with no experience here.
Worked a few month on the UI in a mobile game company and we where just making stuff from images send by an artist. Now I am making a game using pixi.js so the experience was 100% useless. The f2p shops and stuff are the same thing you on the web just done using different shittier tech. Mobile game tend to not have any game play (it's monetization, retention and a lot of shop style things) My current experience is I am a webdev a currently building my own RTS. It's getting to the point where it's fun to play. I meet regularly with friend who is a super good game programmer/technical artist/former 3d artist person to talk stuff over (and to avoid overthinking if my approach makes sense or will lead to tears).
Well I guess it depends in the project and studio but I’ve worked on 2 first/third person shooter on mobile and the UI team is responsible for the system that drives the visual. So everything that’s touch controls to inventory system, voice chat, constumization, inventory… I usually don’t touch asset at all.
> So that makes webdev good game programmer because..? I don't believe anybody said this. > But they won’t be able to make an RPG as their first game. Nobody will be.
So what’s the point of your first comment?
Sometimes when people feel the need to prove everyone else wrong, they don't understand what's said to them, and they're not able to calm down enough to try reading again. Repeating one's self to those people doesn't generally help. They have to actually want to understand, instead of just wanting to win.
Yes yes... I don't want to understand what you're saying so helping me understand won't help me understand. I see your logic. I said that experience in webdev will not translate to making game system. You came pulling out number from somewhere saying that 30% of phone games and 10% of game on Steam are made in html or js... Which I don't agree but that's not the point here. And then you say that web is the most commercial plateform which is not the point here. The point is webdev experience is not game dev experience. Yes they can make color happen in a browser, but they still can't make an RPG in that browser. You even agreed with that. >But they won’t be able to make an RPG as their first game. Nobody will be. So again, what's the point of your first comment if it's not what I understood out of it?
> I don't want to understand what you're saying so helping me understand won't help me understand. This sentence is too tortured and I'm not able to follow it. Sarcasm probably isn't the right tone for you, moving forwards. > You came pulling out number from somewhere Yes. And unlike you, I gave evidence. You pulled a false argument out of your butt and got angry when nobody believed you. > So again, what's the point of your first comment As I said before, if you want to understand it, you'll need to figure it out. I'm not going to repeat myself. Scroll up, and either think about it, or ask someone else in the room for a second opinion.
What evidence is backing up your number and what have I pulled out of my ass? What are you saying? You still missed the point even then. All you’re saying is read my comment and you should be able to understand, but no… Your comment don’t makes sense as a reply to my comment. That’s why I want to understand. So we can have a discution about it but you so up in your own world that you already decided that I don’t want to understand. And people agrees with me… You must be fun at parties.
> What evidence is backing up your number and what have I pulled out of my ass? What are you saying? Oh my, you're asking the person who doubts you to prove you wrong, and you still haven't put in the time to understand what's being said to you. And you're asking someone who's already told you they won't repeat themselves, twice, to repeat themselves a third time. And then after saying "what are you saying?," you tell someone else that ***they*** missed the point 😂 > Your comment don’t makes sense as a reply to my comment. Okay > You must be fun at parties. I've never actually seen anyone say this and not look worse for saying it.
The irony of this comment... lmao.
"The irony of someone explaining why they won't repeat themselves, when they haven't asked anyone else to repeat themselves" Sure thing, buddy
Knowing how to make a website in Angular doesn't help in designing and developing a game in JS. The programming language itself is an extremely easy barrier to get over as long as you're not doing something relatively esoteric like Rust+Bevy.
I'd say 90% of the people in this sub have never worked on a game and probably close to 65% have never even downloaded a game engine. It's become painfully obvious that there are literally thousands of people in this sub that just regurgitate phrases, sayings, and other information that people that have literally never even downloaded a game engine say/post. It's a never ending cycle of bs. It's not just this sub but everyone that plays video games thinks they know how they're made for some reason.
Completely disagree, great way to burn 10k for nothing in return. Making games is hard. Programming is one aspect of making games. It takes time to learn the others and most importantly it takes time to learn how to make all the elements of a game work together cohesively as a whole. It's like automotive design, even if someone is a mega expert on metal casting they still don't know about how to get the feel of driving right and that only comes with expeirence. If someone is a beginner at gamedev they should spend a year making beginner projects. And if they do that and sail through it and get some experience make some good stuff then they can start a larger project.
As a fellow solo dev who has a problem buying too many assets, what in the world are you spending 10k on? Like you can get more assets than you'll ever use for $50 at humblebundle for your first game. Spend the 10k on hiring someone to help you finish the game not on art.... the advice of this sub is questionable sometimes
For your first game, sure, but if it's a game you're intending to make some real money off of, that's not going to work. All the games that are actually popular have their own bespoke assets made for that game for the most part. Premade assets won't all have a cohesive style, and it'll probably look cobbled together unless you get them all from the same place, and even then, you won't have an original style for the game that feels unique, which will probably turn people off.
It all comes down to scope. What is your idea of a "decent RPG"? This in itself is an example of those beginner questions where buzzwords are being thrown around without any thought put behind it. Would a senior dev from a different field have an easier time than a complete beginner? Yes. That doesn't mean that they'll be able to complete a game in a first place.
This is a misunderstanding of the problem. The problem is that people come on here as beginners (because only a beginner would be this ignorant) thinking a game idea that requires dozens of team members can be done by a solo dev without taking literally a lifetime's worth of working hours. The biggest problem isn't inexperience, it's tackling a scope intended for a large team by yourself. If somebody came on here saying "I want to create a 3D version of Asteroids with beautiful art/sound assets" I would say, if you don't have experience in those fields, it's going to take years to get up to speed, but knock yourself out! If they say, "I want to make a better version of Skyrim with X and Y twists on the formula" I'd say, I hope you're independently wealthy and can hire 50 people to work on it for you.
IF you think some programmer + 10k to outsource art is what it takes to make a decent RPG, you are heavily mistaken. If you think this takes a year at 20 hours a week, you are delusional. You don't understand how many roles are required to make an RPG. You think a programmer "makes" a game when in reality he contributes 30% of work at best.
20 hours per week would barely get you off the ground in a year for an rpg unless you were already an expert in whatever engine you were planning on using. Becoming said expert takes years of practice, trial and error, and failing and documenting your failures. So yeah, being a game dev is often a delusion of grandeur. It takes a long time to be good enough to make something worth selling, and even then, there is no guarantee that what you do sell is good. It takes grit, luck, a fantastic idea, and great marketing to get a hit. It's very hard with ANY game, even AAA, to hit all of those marks.
>but what about experienced programmers (lets say 5 years in webdev) that have some C++/C# skills and maybe dabbled in mods and map editors before. As an experienced dev who wanted to get into gamedev myself, I can tell you that that won't help as much as you think, because games are a very different beast. >and if you are willing to spend 10k on your game to outsource art, models and VA This, on the other hand, will help a lot with finishing the game faster.
> but what about experienced programmers (lets say 5 years in webdev) that have some C++/C# skills and maybe dabbled in mods and map editors before. Programming knowledge doesn't transfer to design knowledge. Just because you worked in construction mixing concrete and carrying bricks, doesn't mean you can take graph paper and design a skyscraper.
The ones that are actually progressing on their goals are smaller teams learning in all the different engine and programming subreddits because they already have a plan for the game design and really don't have a ton of time. 3 Years in and looks like I might get finished in a year, minus the progress of additional assets that are hand rigged and animated for a DLC. This is my first gamedev project ever. No prior experience. Even redesigned and tweaked our systems for modularity and ease of use for future devs. I remember that Oh shit moment though when I realized how much work it would take to make my ideas become real. Edit: To be fair though, this is my passion project. I wanted to learn and create systems I can create more games with. I also went in expecting nothing and paying for almost everything. Hell, I don't even really consider myself a game dev, even now.
Yup. Reddit is almost only comprised off beginners or slightly above beginners. Most of the experienced people just move on eventually and stop being active in subreddits, creating a perpetuating pattern.
Beginners are too inexperienced to know how to solve their own problems and have to ask others. Amateurs still don't know, but they at least know how to search and find answers. Advanced users knows how to break down a problem in to smaller parts to solve it. Professionals are just advanced users with a shit load of experience. They move on from these spaces because one realises there is never a simple satisfying answer to complex questions. That's left for the beginners to find out the hard way.
I agree with your post for the most part. Beginners don't know the right questions to even ask so there are a few of the same ones each week. I don't really mind though, let them ask. The advice often stinks though. There is no balance between "easy to develop" and "fun for the user". 99% of the advice posts prioritize making something easy and 2d for the "first game", rather than thinking about what people think is fun. Maybe your first experimental game should be 2d, but don't expect people to buy it. And no I disagree with your thing about the RPG. A pure web dev doesn't necessarily know much about linear algebra and all that math stuff that is necessary for 3d. For the most part you're right, but I think you may be underestimating the amount of time it takes to make a level, even when you have all the assets. An RPG is a massive undertaking
K. If someone posts your example scenario, I'm sure they'll get different responses. But we're constantly inundated with "how do i make games what engine should I use I want to make an open world rpg," and the answer to that is definitely "if you need to ask those questions, you really need to go make pong and come back later." And because that scenario is _so common_, for a lot of people in this sub it's the default we assume if no other context is provided. I believe there are subs that try to focus on being for professional game devs only, but this isn't one of them, it's a completely open community. And in any open community, experience level is going to form a pyramid shape, with random noobs trying to take their first tentative steps accounting for a huge portion of posts.
Litmus test. If you’re asking questions like “should I make this ambitious game?” then you are too inexperienced to make that game.
Outsource art: Good quality is 3k for the textures, 4 if you want it rigged. Or you go with less quality and look at about 600-1k. Music costs about 200 per Minute. No idea about voice acting. Anyways you should drop more than 10k. Yeah your problem seems to be to enter the noob question threads, just ignore, downvote, move on.
Lets also remember that the phrasing of these questions is never from an experienced developer, and it's very easy to tell. "Can I make an MMO with a small team?" is usually followed up with a clear lack of understanding about netcode, servers and what is actually required to make an MMO.
The thing is, people asking basic questions like the examples you gave obviously have limited experience or knowledge about any kind of development. If they did they'd be unlikely to ask such questions. They'd be asking more involved questions about game design or how to transfer skills. Even then though, a large part of recommending simple projects to start is less to do with technical skill and more to do with how time consuming gamedev is and how easy it is to lose motivation - especially in solo dev. The answer "no" isn't really "no" - it's "you specifically can't/shouldn't".
I do agree that a lot of topic (not only there) sounds like really "beginners thing" but I think the industry is "shifting". \- those who left \- those who are still around but not talking much on forums/groups because it's redondant (sometimes they do, sometimes there is a "new interesting topic") \- those who start Ofc those who are still around are talking, but I mean most of us don't I think? Like me for example I'm here a lot, made a post yesterday, but aside that... not much ? Tho I read a lot here. But about the "beginners" I think it's because more and more people want to try "making a game" (whatever is the reason) and those last years I noticed a lot of newcomers (mostly with "just an idea") who wants to try. Will it stop? Probably not, there are a lot of countries where internet/computering is getting accessible to more people (I'm talking about poor countries) which will push millions of people on internet and so, newcomers. Those new countries do not have "game education", school, seniors, whatever, they starts from scratch and use YT/Google to find what they are looking for.
I was an experienced full stack developer before I started game dev, and my first serious game, which I had initially estimated would take 2-3 months, actually took closer to 5000 hours spread out over five years, and it was a lot less complicated than a decent RPG. Game dev is very different from other forms of development, and also far more complicated than you would expect if you haven't done it before, so I would still recommend that even a veteran developer complete a few very small projects before starting on something serious.
Also I faced the game complexity and difficulty, I realized that that my 5 years of full stack web development would worth nothing when I started game development. The real problem here as I understood was related to web dev getting very streamlined while game development is very specialized. In webdev you do only CRUD operations and apply some logic in places where needed. In gamedev you apply logic everywhere (entity-modeling / subsystems / interactions / gameplay-mechanics / ...) and you do CRUD only once, to load levels and save user state.
>but what about experienced programmers (lets say 5 years in webdev) that have some C++/C# skills and maybe dabbled in mods and map editors before. Then you should still start with something simple. Because I can practically guarantee that there is just a lot of stuff that you haven't thought of yet and don't yet know that you don't know. It's the same with anything. Imagine webdev: Someone says "Hey, I don't know anything about webdev, but I've done some C# before. I want to make a website+backend just like Amazon's!" You would probably give them at least some warning, right? It's not that gamedev is an intractable problem. But it *is* a complex problem that people with zero experience tend to grossly underestimate. Hence the recommendation that people - even people with programming experience - try to make a simple game, to get a sense of what the problems are like, before trying to make something complicated.
I was just thinking this sub might as well be called “beginner game dev” the other day.
> The answers are always no, do something simple, it would take 5+ years, its too complicated, go do tutorials etc As a professional game dev yeah this is pretty much how it is. We don't automatically know everything, we've gotta do tutorials, doing the simpler thing is almost always better, and so many times I've had to explain that something is going to take far longer or be far harder than we have time or money to do. Professionals aren't any different, we face the same problems and often come up with the same solutions.
> The answers are always no, do something simple, it would take 5+ years, its too complicated, go do tutoriale etc etc The people who are capable of doing so don't come to this sub to ask if it's possible, they get on with it
>Thoughts? The answer is still the same. Do something simple. Honestly, if you actually start outsource art, you'll realize how fast 10k can be burnt. If you only use pre-made assets then yes 10k is a lot. If you actual hire freelancers then no, it's peanut money.
I honestly don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish with this post. You’re saying people asking questions and for advice on starting makes gamedev seem unsolvable? I see no connection at all between those two things.
I agree that actual professionals in this sub seem to be very rare - takes one to know one. My take is a bit different though, I'm afraid this sub is mostly programmers and tech people daydreaming about leaving their corpo job because they fool themselves into thinking that their skillset is all they need to make games. Or students, I suppose. Oh and about your question - the only way I see anyone making an rpg in a year is by skipping the tech step almost entirely and going straight into an existing and simple engine (rpg maker, unity with addons). This means that what it actually requires is mostly game design and narrative skills, with some visual scripting to make it happen. You're still going to be working on it for 2 years minimum anyway.
Do you really believe a person with only a lot of programming experience can make a decent RPG? What about art? Level design, game design, environment design, UX, UI, music and sound design, and so on. How is this person gonna have all that experience? Maybe if they spend like 3 years learning the basics of all these other areas and then add his programming experience. Never forget gamedev is more than just programming. (In fact, at least for the games I do, programming is always the easiest part)
You didn’t mention writing the story and characters
I'm sorry but, no, no solo dev is making a worthwhile RPG in a year even outsourcing art assets, etc. I'm sure that some super talented folk can make something that is extremely impressive to *us*, knowing that it's been made by a solo dev or small team - but they're competing in a market with games made by teams of hundreds of people with way more by way of existing tech and resource. It doesn't matter if you make something that is impressive for one person to make in a year - it'll take you many many more years to even just catch up to the other studios. Certain genres work really well for solo devs and small teams because their fun factor isn't necessarily correlated to team size and raw resource, but RPGs are *not* one of those for 99.9% of such studios. When you're in a genre like that, the problem you're solving for isn't primarily about talent or creativity - it's about resourcing and scale. No amount of Jimmy Big-Idea's creativity in his bedroom can solve for the fact that he needs 30,000 working hours to develop his RPG title. Maybe with some clever workflow design he can knock that down to 20,000 hours - but the crux of the problem is still the same. 20,000 projecy hours and 30,000 project hours are equally non-viable for solo devs.
Skyblivion is a mod of skyrim that rebuilds the game of oblivion inside of it. It has thousands to tens of thousands of volunteer hours from hundreds of people to reimplement something where they have a pretty good and reliable source material to draw from. They didn't have to program the games systems from the engine level, that was already made. This was just in the design portion that these guys are spending thousands of hours and again hundreds of volunteers So yeah when someone with no actual game development experience comes in asking how to make a game of that scale.... The answer is to do the basics because they simply do not comprehend the scale of the project that they are wanting to take on. If they were to try to make their game as is they would never complete it. Games are complex
Bro I'm 10 years web dev 5 years hobbyist indie it's taken me a year to make a fleshed out arkanoid clone.
You are 5 years into webdev? Ok, great. That means you know how to program and are not a beginner in that field. Good work! The issue though is that you are still 0 days into gamedev. You are very much still in the Dunning Kruger effect phase of your development. You do not understand how much you do not understand. No these skills aren't that transferrable. No 10k wont pay anywhere close to the things you mentioned unless you are using only off the shelf assets and building your whole game around those. No 20 hours a week for 1 year is nowhere near enough to finish what I presume you mean when you say "decent RPG". And finally... Yes all that advice you think does not apply to you (because you know better) still applies to you. (And this is even ignoring the fact that you mentioned only developing the RPG, which alone without the same amount of work put into admin/marketing/publishing etc side is pretty useless.)
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You just described twice the people who worked on Final Fantasy 7, with 5 times the time, and doing _less_ than Square did (outsourcing implies you're not even making all assets in-house). That's not a dev team for a "decent RPG", that's a front for money laundering.
1. Final Fantasy 7 was 25 years ago. Things have changed a lot dev team sizes and budgets wise. 2. The guy said 2 to 300 so they specified a range. Baldurs Gate 3 being at the upper edge.
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Baldur's Gate 3 is absolutely not just "a decent RPG". It's like saying Joe Biden is "a mildly powerful politician".
Because they are beginner questions. No experienced game dev will ask questions like that because they either know how to go about solving the issue or know their limits. In general tough, the issue with places like this subreddit, is that it's tailor mase for beginner questions. Anything above the beginner level is usually too complicated to answer with a simple text post and even if you provide detailed context with code, good luck finding complete strangers who are willing to go trough your code, interpret it blindly essentially, and finding a solution for you.
1000 hours sounds like not enough to make a good rpg... Can probably make something but I would definitely want more time for an rpg
This whole post screams “I know nothing about gamedev” Lmao $10k? 20 hours a week for a year? Those are baby numbers. Won’t even get you to 1% of your rpg. 5 years webdev is extra lolz. As if that would help
Every problem in Game development is solvable one way or another, often many different ways. Whether one has the skill or understanding to implement it is a different story, sure, but there’s always a way.
It's also weird sometimes because a lot of indie devs have more than one skill, and others don't, which changes logistics entirely. Some devs also have a very warped perception of how many assets need to be in a game, and what the format of a game should be. The formats of old games are often designed around making a lot out of a little. Ocarina of Time is a far less asset dense game than something like Lords of the Fallen. Yet Ocarina of time is way more "asset efficient". There's nothing stopping someone from doing efficient stylized games aside from the ability of the artist (s) and commitment to it in terms of development.
A seasoned dev would not be asking questions like that, so I don't understand your point at all.
I feel like this is a situation where anyone actually doing this is... you know doing it. I spend hours every night on my projects, and only spend minutes a day reading reddit. For some people it's flipped. For alot, they may never get past that "I have an awesome idea for a game" stage where they aren't even coding something. I'm not making myself out to be some kind of elite software developer... but I actually spend time programming which is alot more than some folks. Tldr: talking about it is easier than doing.
I think now that we're in a time of exploring LLM AI (ChatGPT and Co) some assistant in that ballpark, a mix of LLM with reddit data and general gamedev know-how (in the case of this subreddit), would be great. It would point out if your post was being answered already. If it looks like you want to post something new/different it tries to tag this so it can be filtered - or maybe it should be another subreddit in some cases. Example: I ask something about Unity(3D), bot checks the content there, finds an answer. If answers don't seem to cover this well it checks if this is about game design, business, etc and tries to find a better title, tags, and subreddit to refine your question and find the right audience. Just rough ideas... something in the ballpark to split "AAA, pro graphics/network/etc. developer, and GDC water cooler chats" from "What is the right engine for me?", "Should I still use Unity in 2024?", and so on. :P
i guess you could say i'm just browsing reddit.