Eniko FoxMar 20

for some reason youtube is trying to get me to watch a bunch of gamedev advice videos even though i almost never watch anything like that and i'm finding a lot of them have very offputting titles/thumbnails

its hard to express what i find offputting about them but as someone who's been making games fulltime for 10+ years it just has this whiff of grift to it

Show threadEniko FoxMar 20
i think part of it is that i know gamedevs who are actually shipping commercial games wouldn't put out videos telling you what to do/what not to do so confidently. not just because, yanno, they're busy shipping games not making videos, but also because most devs who do this for any amount of time for an actual living will absolutely not speak in absolutes
Show threadEniko Fox
just weirds me out that there's this entire ecosystem of people who tell other people how to make games for a living and i'm sitting here looking at it going "who the fuck *are* these people?"
Mar 20 at 6:04pmWeb
Show threadEniko FoxMar 20

to elaborate on the "not speak so confidently" thing. like. do you think anyone doing this professionally would recommend that you start an utterly absurd roguelike and then work on it for 17 years until you have a hit on your hands? cause that's cave of qud

do you think people would recommend cloning SMB3 and making it gay? cause that's kitsune tails

i could go on but i think i've made my point

Show threadEfi (nap pet) 🦊💤Mar 20
@eniko make a first person shooter with stolen assets, you'll make millions
Show threadJef PoskanzerMar 20
@eniko Now wondering what other past hit games could be cloned and made gay.
Show threadJanek @ IndieDev.siteMar 20
@jef @eniko all of them, please get to work
Show thread0x0961hMar 20

@eniko I've watched quadrillion of these videos, and they boil down to five advices:

1). Do what's popular now
2). Get X thousand wishlists
3). Post on socials (preferably tiktok and twitter)
4). Get publisher or get lucky
5). Buy my courses and donate to my patreon, I'll tell you more secrets for $9.99 per month

Recently there's #6: use coding llm, but don't use art llm, because it's unethical (a.k.a. "you might get cancelled on twitter")

Show threadJanek @ IndieDev.siteMar 20
@0x0961h @eniko 2.5 out of 6 are unironically good advice though
Show thread0x0961hMar 20
@hardpenguin13 @eniko I would say "get lucky" and "post on socials" are the most solid in here, wishlists are kinda too, but they rely on both of those, so yeah.
Show threadJanek @ IndieDev.siteMar 20
@0x0961h @eniko making a marketable game is the most important to be statistically successful, if one doesn't know what that term entails then looking for what's popular is not a bad idea
Show thread0x0961hMar 20
@hardpenguin13 @eniko That's how we usually end up with Next Fest made from Supermarket Simulator and Lethal Company clones and 50 variations of "what if it's Balatro, but [insert another gambling game in here]"
Show threadJanek @ IndieDev.siteMar 20
@0x0961h @eniko OK
Show threadRatsnake Games 🔞Mar 20
@0x0961h @hardpenguin13 @eniko I'm sure that *some* of these games that are just "thing that was popular 12 to 36 months ago, but slightly different" are reasonably successful, but it is pretty rare for those to become breakout indie darlings
Show threadRatsnake Games 🔞Mar 20
@0x0961h @hardpenguin13 @eniko ... and honestly, i suspect a lot of them just fail outright because they launch into an overcrowded market
Show threadDave?Mar 20
@eniko This is in most professions. Becoming an expert in something usually means you've seen how the best laid plans can go wrong.
Show threadNikita LisitsaMar 20
@eniko In general, absolutes said with confidence are usually complete bullshit
Show threadataylorMar 20

@eniko IMO the sign of actual experience is speaking more confidently about something the more specific the case is.

Like, in my field: "How do you make a game render fast?" is not a question I can really answer. But "how do you fix [specific bottleneck on a certain type of GPU]?" very much is.

Show threadSnowFoxMar 20
@eniko I haven't watched the videos in question, but it reminds me
of all those fluff pieces asking a rich person about the secrets to success (or "day in the life" pieces that are like: get up at 4 AM, check email, yoga, go to work... more yoga, dinner, check email again, video call with another continent, go to bed at 10), when it's mainly: Generational wealth, collecting the fewest racism/sexism debuffs, lying a little, and luck.
Show threadOlivier GroulxMar 20

@eniko it's weird because most teachers have this profile - not a lot of industry experience because their job is, well, teaching.

But the ecosystem of youtube vs. a school is quite different I suppose. Teachers at schools rarely goes "You guys are fucking lazy dev if you used uint32 instead of uint8, pls subscribe to my Patreon".

Hopefully?

Show threadRatsnake Games 🔞Mar 20
@eniko the standard reference on screenwriting was written by someone with two produced movie scripts, which sit at 5.3/10 and 4.4/10 on IMDB respectively.
Show threadGabriele SveltoMar 20
@eniko it sounds a lot like those people who make videos about how to do financial trading. They are most certainly not doing what they're telling people, it's 100% grifting
Show threadEsteban Küber Mar 20
@eniko The ones that I enjoy is "here's how I figured this weird thing I wanted out!", and the best ones are maybe 3 minutes long.
Show threadMaya ZimmermanMar 20
@eniko I did a bit of a dumpster dive on this stuff because I was fascinated by it (and ruined my YT algorithm) and it is almost exclusively the domain of people just starting out, who have not achieved success, and who parrot Chris Zukowski, who markets games, but does not make them. The #1 biggest advice in all these videos is absolutely do not make a Platformer and Zukowski has shifted from "make a dark game" to "make a cozy game" in the span of a year.
Show threadEniko FoxMar 20
@mayazimmerman no shade to zukowski but I would probably do the opposite of what he says because by the time he gloms onto a trend you're way past the time where you can develop and release a game and have that trend still fresh by the time your game is done >_>
Show threadMaya ZimmermanMar 20
@eniko 100%. Plus, just, if you're not making a game you want to make, for money reasons, why not just get a job? It will almost definitely pay better, and immediately. So many of these videos are like Don't take risks, don't put in too much time and effort, don't try to make it big, just ship products, and burnout is a big enough problem with game dev without eliminating the passion.
Show threadλzydMar 20
@mayazimmerman @eniko It is quickly becoming more realistic to try to directly sell things (like games) than it is for someone to actually land a software dev job. See the large exclusion of junior devs from the hiring pool and the difficulty of even senior devs getting employment. Not that I disagree with either of you (those gamedev videos are grifts and you should make what interests you cause it's the only thing that's gonna sustain).
Show thread🌈 Andrew ☄️Mar 20
@eniko from what I’ve seen most of these videos are people just starting out, who are cherry picking things from other videos that resonated with them, or without the experience to know how limited their absolutes are. They’re often enthusiastic, but rarely a source of wisdom.