It’s been my experience that dedicated places for fans of certain games or franchises to congregate always devolve into a never-ending cycle of “Everything is wrong and this game is terrible. I have 3000 hours in it.”.
No one hates a game like the most dedicated fans do. For instance, I put a significant amount of time into the Forza franchise over the years. The Forza community (both the subreddit and the official Forza forums) might be one of the worst I’ve ever experienced. No one is ever happy with or about anything.
Basically, if you really like something, avoid the fan communities at all costs. You’ll end up finding out about things that are supposedly “game ruining” that you never even knew or cared about and then you won’t be able to un-see it.
Glad he ignored the negativity and succeeded. Personally I don’t see the appeal of this type of game though. But, different strokes and all that.
I honestly couldn’t figure the game out…I’m glad people enjoy it, but I’m too smooth brained to have gotten anywhere
If you get stuck or don’t know where to go next, you can ask the mayor. He will give you a hint for the next location.
I have a poor sense of direction and just get lost a LOT.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s not to listen to jaded assholes online.
I get the feeling a lot of gamedev communities are full of people who haven’t built anything anyone wants to buy, and so get super bitter towards anyone wanting to try, or anyone who manages to make something that actually picks up steam and becomes successful.
They’re the sorts of people that will go “X Game is objectively bad!” and then shill their own game which is also bad.
The same happens in art and animation communities, where something will become popular and people will disguise their feeling of “Why can’t I get that?!” with “pfft, it’s objectively bad!”.
Most Indie gamedev communities are super supportive of each other, or at least that’s been my experience from TIGSource to Itch.io days.
Speaking as someone who knows a little about game development from formal education in the matter
99% of people on the internet critizing game development have not the faintest idea what they are talking about.
A quick, translation guide (joke):
“I understand that might not be easy but” - would be super easy but there is a list of good reasons why we shouldn’t
“Seems like it would be easy too…” - its a pointlessly impossible endeavour to spend any time on this.
Also with gamedev there is the additional “I have this great idea but I don’t know how to code” community too.
statistically speaking not every game will be a commercial success.
I am sure you are right, but r/gaming is a general gaming board. It’s not really focused on game creation/development.
This is called survivorship bias
I wonder if the opposite principle also has a name.
The first comment imo. is fair. It says that the market is saturated, so it is difficult to succeed, but it doesn’t rule it out by default.
The other two comments are just plain hostile and ended up being wrong. Lets call it dead troll bias or something?
Not really. It should be obvious that not every indie game will be super successful. This is just proof that some random reddit comments saying a game looks boring from an early trailer don’t mean shit, because basically everything will have those.
Right so it’s not really proof of anything.
Well it’s kind of proof that the opinions of haters don’t meant shit. If both good/successful games and bad/unsuccessful games have them and they don’t affect the outcome at all, they have no value.
Might as well give up before even trying! Wtf is this defeatist attitude.
Oh come on. It’s a perfectly valid point. For everyone who has a successful game there are probably thousands of people who don’t. It does no one any good at all to suggest that all you have to do is believe in yourself. You also have to make a good product, and generally just be lucky.
Plenty of people rightfully don’t go into video game development because they cannot afford to not earn their money back, if you are lucky enough to be able to risk it, then absolutely go for it, but if you were living paycheck to paycheck it unfortunately isn’t a reasonable ambition.
Not every game will be successful, on this we fully agree. But for every successful product there will be effort that needs to be expended. There will be struggles and failures along the way and criticisms will abound. The point that I take from the post is that it’s not worth giving into the negativity and let that detract from your efforts. “Don’t take the negativity too seriously” is a perfectly valid message, against which the “survivorship bias” criticism is poorly levied.
The takeaway here isn’t and shouldn’t be quit your job and pursue your dreams in all scenarios.
WTF is this feelgood fascism?
What has fascism got to do with any of this?
No need to get technical. It is a colloquial term to describe the "think positive’ evangelism which implies that failure is due to just not thinking positive enough.
reddit specifically has also become a cesspool of hateful, miserable, morons.
And bots.
sometimes at the same time.
Some takeaways here:
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Don’t give up on yourself or your dreams.
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Keep a steady income going while you work on those things, because then your work can be your art for yourself instead of desperately trying to make something sellable before you run out of cash, and treating yourself to a latté feels like you just blew money on a steak dinner using funds that aren’t coming back. That stuff is scary.
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Game Dev / Gamer reddit has some gem, but on the whole it is full of very, very bitter people. They got that “everything you do is gonna suck and I’m totally saying this because I care” treatment, and they pass it right along. You’re better off finding /starting a local club.
- Of course, ignore #2 maybe if you’re one of those self-help book authors who is “so tired of their megacorporate 6-figure income after 10 years” and they have zero debt and saved most of that as a runway and can live on 45k a year. Sure, take the plunge and find your soul or whatever lol.
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The internet really tends to be cruel. I used to open up about myself in some online spaces, but it only made me feel worse. Now I only talk about non personal stuff
I will listen and not judge, especially if you don’t have people in real life you can open up to.
Thank you. I feel like way beyond sociability and repairability these days, though.
Shitting on hard work and effort of indie devs and then wondering why the gaming ladscape is filled with souless corporate slop.
Yep, same day they’ll complain about Ubisoft and then pre-order the next Assassin’s Creed
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Careful now, wouldn’t want to rock the boat, how else will I seek validation
Do not consider online judgements at all.
Do your thing. Pursue your passions. Do it.I’ve found online feedback useful. You just have to be careful about where you get it and take it with a grain of salt. A very large one.
If someone gives you tips, advice, or constructive feedback: there’s a good chance they’re worth listening to.
Hostile, critical with no other feedback : almost certainly garbage.
The first comment in the image, to my mind, wasn’t actually bad. It didn’t tell them not to do something and it wasn’t critical. It just said they the category was very saturated and they should temper their expectations.
And, you’re also entirely correct that you should take even the feedback worth listening to with a grain of salt, or maybe a shaker. :) There’s a thousand and one ways to do anything, and it can be difficult to convey the difference between “this is how I would do it” and “this is how you should do it”.
(Doing software code reviews is a skill that can help teach the difference, and not everyone learns it)If someone is being mean and negative it’s fine to ignore. If someone is giving constructive feedback that’s negative it’s more worthwhile
But my passion is clubbing baby seals…
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If that is what you love, please club as many seals as it makes you happy.
Don’t let your dreams be dreams.
With 20/20 hindsight it was obviously a good idea.
But at the time of making the decision, it was an unbelievably risky plan and the odds were stacked against it. As a matter of fact, for every successful 2D platformer made with care and love that gets released and becomes successful, there are dozens that fail miserably and that you will never hear of.
Yes, believing in yourself and taking risks makes success possible, but remember that it does not guarantee it.
luck has a lot to do with success, people often forget
Luck and a good review from a relevant reviewer. The devs of Nightmare Reaper credit Civvie11’s reviews of their game to the multifold increase of sales after they sent him a redeem code. And that’s not the only game that he’s helped out.
And the other way around, too. With the best conditions, you also need luck. (while still fully agreeing)
My friend quit his job and has been making indie games since 2015. It’s been
2010 years and he’s made like $40,000 total in the time with all his games combined. His wife pays all the bills. Every time he releases a new game he tells everyone this is the one that’ll make him a million bucks. He points to games like Hollowknight, Stardew Valley, Undertale etc as proof.My friend quit his job and has been making indie games since 2015. It’s been 20 years
If it has been 20 years since 2015 then I think I overslept.
It certainly feels like 20 years since 2015. Covid and Trump have easily stressed 20 years out of me.
This has scientific backing and isn’t just a feeling: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/covid-pandemic-accelerated-brain-aging-study-rcna220048
Hey, you. You’re finally awake. You were trying to cross the border, right? Walked right into that Imperial ambush, same as us, and that thief over there.
Huh, I seem to have woken in 2011
In a just world, your friend would be able to create as much art as he wants without having to worry about who is paying the bills.
That’s literally what he’s doing. Ironically, his wife is a professional artist. She does digital art for a AAA game studio.
People forget that Hollow Knight didn’t do very well at first, also. It took an excruciatingly long time for it to pick up steam.
Yeah but the vast majority of those failed games look bad and are mediocre gameplay wise. Even if they are a true passion project. They don’t come close to the quality of games like Hollow Knight, Dead Cells, Rogue Legacy, Inside or even Pizza Tower. Most sidescrollers (including metroidvanias, rogue likes and souls likes) released on Steam are of low quality because it’s very easy to make a basic game in that genre.
Yes the genre is risky but if you make a very good looking game that stands out with top notch gameplay you increase the odds of success significantly.
Budding indie devs need to realize whether they can make such a game. If not they need to find another genre that is less crowded or a genre with a very high demand, like the horror / liminal space genre those games have a much higher success rate compared to the average platformer.
This comment sounds like it’s discouraging these kind of risks. But I feel like you should almost always take them, because otherwise your life is just hollow.
I think you’ve got to work out what your appetite for risk is. It’s important to do take risks sometimes even if they scare you to move your life forward but also sometimes don’t. I’ve seen a bunch of people really fuck their lives up because they just kept rolling the dice.
But what is “fucking your life up”? What is the end goal of life that you have to achieve, else you failed your life?
One of my goals in life is to not become impoverished due to bad financial decisions, and think of how many people quit their jobs to try to make a successful game just for their plan to not work out and them then trying to somehow get their lives back in order so they won’t become homeless.
Despite this being a question for everyone to answer on their own, continuously failing risky bets and losing everything to it does not look like it will be a popular answer
But why would you even care about popularity? Right wing movements are also popular right now. I don’t think popularity is any important measure at all to determine if something is right/wrong/good/bad
Not popular = nobody wants that, not because others don’t want that, it’s because what each will not choose on their own
Of course, your mileage may vary
When I say fucking up I mean things like spending all their savings and maxing out their credit chasing a dream. It could have all worked out for them if things had gone different, but it didn’t. As a result they’re a lot less happy, don’t have housing security and spend a lot more of their life fighting to stay afloat - their life is worse by almost every measurable metric. It’s not about failing life, but it is about minimizing your suffering.
Mummy, why can’t we have dinner today?
I’m sorry honey but you have to understand that daddy took a risk otherwise he would feel hollow! Sure we’re broke now because he quit his job to do a thing and it didn’t take off, and your little brother Timmy had to go live with Gramma or else he’d starve, but think of how daddy feels now! Not hollow!
Yeah, that’s not how it works when you don’t live in the US.
GPs comment was hyperbole, but it holds true for most countries.
I live in Germany and make a pretty good salary as a developer. If I could, I’d take ½-1 year off work to develop one of a few games I’ve been designing over the last couple of years. In-between jobs I always start working on them, and those 1-2 months are a blast, much more fun than regular work.
But even though I have enough savings to do so, I really can’t, because it would mean:
- My career progression will pause, less future income
- I need my savings for unforeseen emergencies
- Losing out on a year of income will worsen my chances of ever affording my own apartment/house, and will worsen my private retirement savings
When the result is most likely making 0€, it’s hard to justify the risk.
We have decent worker protections in Belgium, but if you quit your job here to work on games I don’t know if you have the right to unemployment (since you weren’t fired). Even then, it only lasts for a year or so if you have worked at the place for 5 years, with the monthly payment decreasing significantly until the last few months you only get like 500€ per month.
Yeah… The constant assumption that everyone who speaks English has to be a Yankee Doodle Dandy or that their way always applies is tiring
It’s pretty bad in other English speaking countries too.
Where do you live that nobody needs to work? I would sure like to move there.
“A family whose business failed will not just be left to starve” is very different from “nobody needs to work”.
I mean sure, your friends and family won’t let you starve. But you can’t rely on them forever. Government ain’t doing shit either: At least in my country, to get unemployment benefits, you need to be laid off or fired. If you quit your job to develop a game and fail, that’s on you. Yes, there’s also disability benefits, but those are small and require you to be disabled. Food banks exist too, but they don’t help you pay rent, nor do you get a full month’s worth of food every month.
All in all, a family with kids must have at least one working adult or HUGE savings.
So again, where’s the paradise where government will keep your rent or mortgage paid and your family fed if your game dev endeavour doesn’t pan out? I wanna move there.
I think you missed the joke
There is a great Bo Burnham clip where he talks about this.
Depends on their financial position overall. If you live below your means and save up, especially in a professional position, you can offset expenses with passive investment income. Retirement is really just getting to the point where passive income and using up savings can last you until you expect to die.
If you have passive income that covers your bills, then the main difference between working and not working (or doing work without guaranteed income) is that you’re not getting ahead as quickly anymore. You’re not necessarily even falling behind, though even that state could be maintained for a while depending on how much you have saved and what kind of credit you have access to.
But yeah, if you’re living paycheck to paycheck, this isn’t an option, you’ll have to do the work around your other job.
If take no risk then you guarantee to fail. You just got to take those risks. And if it fails, don’t give up. Just get up dust yourself off and try again. Just at different approach.
I think a few of those people are on here now still moaning about the game being popular.
This is exactly how Eric Barone felt, despite knowing in his heart that he had made something special to him. This is how he thought Stardew Valley would he received. The general gaming community are such cunts.
The reason is because; the general community aren’t the nerds that made gaming fun
The reason is, the people who like to leave reviews are cunts. Source: I hardly ever review anything, because I’m not a cunt. When I do review, it’s to a small busines (buzzword alert), and it’s always because the service was excellent.
This is a great point. I am also like this both in real life and on the internet. I don’t leave bad reviews. I only leave good ones when they are merited. My wife and I once found a bad review on Badlands National Park for the site being “too hot”.
Oh, there a good one complaining that a mountain was too tall, steep, and didn’t service food.
I mean… There’s plenty of positive reviews on steam and HK. Obviously a lot more than negative ones.
I for one would call Team Cherry a small business with excellent service
Pfft. I had to wait 7 years for my order.
the people who like to leave reviews are cunts
Also those who enjoyed the game are busy playing to write a review
i will leave an immediate review, if the product is terrible, and it has alot of those around.
Yep. I abandoned r/gaming when I still participated in Reddit. Avoid discord game server lobbies. Have text chat and voip disabled in competitive gaming. Gamers have always been real douches, from game criticism to shitting on other players for any reason whatsoever, so if one wants to enjoy a game it’s best to stay away from the “community” at large and stick with friends or a known group. Community in quotes because there really isn’t one, just mostly a rabble of haters and tryhards mixed in with a lot of people just trying to have some fun.
Have text chat and voip disabled in competitive gaming
Only exception is TF2, you get insulted a lot but the funny moments and unexpected wins make it worth it
Other hobby spaces are no less than that. Not suprisingly, i enjoyed all my little hobbies 10× more offline. In the end while i improved on other technical sides, my philosphy got simpler. Ideally, ‘if it fits i sit’ for cats if you get what i’m saying.
Which is weird because there were hundreds of thousands of fans of OG Harvest Moon who wished Natsumi would make a SNES like OG harvest moon and they just wouldn’t listen. I am so happy Eric Barone made bank and I look forward to The Haunted Chocolatier making bank for him too.
Ok sure. There are for sure games left in the space.
Oh wow “my heart is really in it” so it will work. No. This is survivorship bias. There are a ton of passionate people who turn out a product that is ok or worse and get their milkshake drunk / lose everything.
This is like saying “yeah drop out of college. Bill Gates did it.”. You could totally be the next windows or apple or facebook… Or you could actually produce some mid tier thing you’re really invested in and not have parents ready to kick in 50k or so and just fail. 🤷
What the fuck, no? How are you getting that out of this comment? Where does this comment encourage people to quit their day job?
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Relevant username
Cube world failed because the online negativity got to the dev, who also struggled with other things. But it was ok. Lesson learned, let’s not be assholes nust because you don’t deem something as worthy.
Huh, it’s not like Reddit to be pointlessly hateful 😌
Lol pointless hate isnt limited to reddit.
Yeah, lemmy definitely isn’t immune, there’s just a lot less of it almost definitely in part because there is a lot less engagement in general.
I honestly don’t think that’s true. Lemmy has way more human engagement than reddit for the large communities. It’s still missing on the niche subjects, but that’ll catch up.
I want to know how we can pull more people on here so we do not have to use these Silicon Valley parasites.
We’re not that far out, probably another year or two. It keeps getting easier and easier to join. Piefed looks like a good avenue to recommend because it’s easier to use than lemmy. They say they’re ran by a non-profit.
I am not all that Savvy and I almost gave up trying to join Lemmy here. The first instance I tried to join did not accept my application for whatever reason and two days time, this one did within just a few hours but I almost did not bother trying a second one. Is this pie fed and instance of the Federated Lemmy here? I’m not entirely certain how all this works but the idea I wholeheartedly support and think is the future for online communication of people that are not tools.
Think of federation like the Hawaii Islands. It’s a group of types of social media, and they’re kind of similar.
Each island has its own flavor and way of traveling to other islands though. Meaning, some have commercial airplanes and some don’t, so you have to travel with your own personal boat to certain islands. Same with federation, you have the twitter style of Mastodon where they can post on the reddit style of Lemmy, but lemmy can’t really post on Mastodon.
Piefed is a reddit style and you can’t really tell the difference to lemmy, other than Piefed seems to have a better user interface. I haven’t personally tried Piefed, but the features they brag about seem great.
There are all kinds of other types of federation (or islands) that are similar to other social media types. There’s youtube, tumbler, instagram types, etc. They may or may not be able to communicate with lemmy back and forth easily.
An instance is just a computer (or many computers) someone has set up to handle all of the traffic and data, that’s it. That’s why some instances don’t get back to you, that instance owner may have had something personally come up, or they’re not really working on the project anymore. Some may be owned by big corporations as well, we just don’t know.
I hope this doesn’t confuse you more, but feel free to ask any questions and I’ll try my best to answer them quickly.
I would argue that Reddit has a lot more younger angsty teenage crowd, that’s why those types of comments are pretty common there. Lemmy at the moment doesn’t have that problem because I bet our demographic leans more towards late 20s and 30s.
Yes, there’s less in terms of there being fewer overall discussions going on. Proportionally, though, I’d say Lemmy feels very similar to Reddit in terms of hivemind circlejerking and hateposting.
I finally blocked most lemmy.world comms and started blocking users who I feel make the vibe worse, and that’s helped.
i started blocking “know it alls, or ackshually, this not how you pronounce or say it” they are up to no good, and prone to argue if you respond.
One thing I was surprised to find was the old grammar nazi shit when I first joined. Fortunately it’s died down in the past couple years but it seemed like reddit from 15 years ago so it was pretty noticeable
Your hair is stupid.
I interacted with mostly good people on Reddit outside of influence agents and trolls. The problem is the site moderation is corrupted.
It’s like they’re trained or something… like some sort of engine… that-uh that tanks their thinking…
Or Steam, for that matter.
