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 FoxMar 20
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?"
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 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 thread0x0961h
@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]"
Mar 20 at 7:31pmWeb
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