Perhaps there is another Discord someone could setup where part-time game creators could join. I am making a procedurally generated world simulation game that is a little bit too early in the process to showcase, and definitely not work full-time on, but it still has several tens of thousands of lines of code in it. That's just reality for making a game from zero. I would be interested in talking to other people about game creation.

I created a small community where everyone knows everyone's face/name. I am really restrictive with the number of people in the server not because I want exclusivity per se, but rather that I dont want to lose the deeper connections you develop with people in a small community. There's about 10 of us total right now.

It also helps that everyone is on the same page (serious about releasing their game) so we have a common goal to work towards together (and separately). It's great, I've been running the server for almost a year now. Everyone has said it's been really motivating.

So please, email me if anyone here wants that. Otherwise, the other discord links posted here are probably a better fit for you!

Why post this to such a large community like HN if they're adamant about exclusivity? Why not post it somewhere smaller like Indie Hackers or a reddit sub instead?

I've been working on and off on simulation games in my spare time for a few years. Written some small ones that model things like elections / voting, as well as economic systems of various flavours.

If you're interested email in my profile!

> I am making a procedurally generated world simulation game

That's so awesome. Procedurally generated worlds and systems are so powerful, and they'd only going to grow more so with AI advances.

Would you or someone in this thread be interested in part time contract work at my AI startup? We're doing a lot of procedural generation and AI animation in Unreal Engine and I'd like to have more hands on deck than just me.

https://storyteller.ai

https://twitch.tv/FakeYouLabs

Anyways, sorry you feel that I wronged you, it really was not my intention. I received over 30 responses last time and it's a lot of work to interview everyone, then video interview them. It looks like you are running a discord yourself and managed to build your own community, which is great. Maybe you have an idea how much work this is, and perhaps you are better at handling this type of work than I am :)

I'd potentially be interested, my email is in profile if you'd like to reach out. :)

Lots of work is the answer, though.

We actually got to Early Access release in ~11 months (~20 man-months). We had to learn a new programming language & learn a game engine during that time, too (and learn what a game engine really was/what it meant). Really though, I think the most difficult (and important) part was more about learning the nuances of game development, even just understanding the (understandably high) UX expectations that a player has from a game -- it took a while to really "get there" and I'm still learning, every day.

It's also worth mentioning that SimAirport was really not very good when we initially released it -- definitely rushed to release, far too early, and it was a mess at that point. After the EA release another ~3yr of full-time development went into it (and more dev resources), and it became a much better game/product in that time.

I wish I could work on SimAirport forever.

That's the downside with the games industry; it's ultra competitive and the amount of competition is increasing every day. Much of "the money" is heavily concentrated at the "top" of the pyramid, amongst a relatively small selection of titles. It's not the easy way, I can say that with confidence.

And 2) Rollercoaster Tycoon IS an aberration, since it was written in Assembly by one person!

Will Wright always wanted to make a game called "SimTapeworm", however he could never get the green light on that from Maxis or EA.

I hold out hope that some clever indie developer will figure out how to monetize the serious educational parasitic infection simulation genre.

Maybe you could make a plug-in to SimAirport, so parasites and contagious diseases could spread internationally via Vomit Waves like in Theme Hospital and Two Point Hospital and Oxygen Not Included.

https://two-point-hospital.fandom.com/wiki/Big_Kahuna:_How_t...

https://youtu.be/Z7XCXq8j4iA?t=1402

Or how about Toxocariasis Tycoon, where you try to take over the world by controlling your hosts' behavior to widely reproduce and spread out through enough people to swing the election and control the government?

Really appreciate the kind words, means a lot coming from you -- thank you!

I don't remember if we actually shipped it or not, maybe it was only on a beta branch (or maybe it's sitting on a git branch still), but I actually implemented an "infectious disease" concept at one point. I think the idea at the time was for it to be a holiday "easter egg" maybe, but I don't recall for sure. I do vividly recall testing it one morning, though, and I had the "contagion" values (way) too high. I'm pretty sure the concept was wholly taken from Theme Park, where I recall one post-coaster puking agent could yield a rapid mess. The day I was testing my copy, I ended up making a video of the hilarity that ensued when a single infected passenger deplaned and suddenly there were hundreds (maybe thousands) of agents (passengers) all "stumbling around" spreading the ultra-contagious disease like wildfire, making a disgusting sound & leaving the floors covered with ick. I'll have to search the repo history -- maybe it's worth revisiting!

A disease tycoon, eh? Like SimAnt, but on a wholly different scale? =D

Would love to connect if you're ever in Vegas! Thanks again for the kind words, makes my day & sincerely means a lot to me. :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belousov%E2%80%93Zhabotinsky_r...

https://www.fourmilab.ch/cellab/manual/rules.html#Zhabo

>Margolus and Toffoli make a interesting simile between the Zhabotinsky reaction and a reef of tubeworms. When a tubeworm feels safe, it sticks a plume out of its shell to seine the water for food. If a feeding tubeworm senses any disturbance nearby (e.g. the presence of several other feeding tubeworms), it retracts its plume and waits for a few cycles before feeding again.

I always thought SimAnt should be an MMPORG!

Then the ants could catch Ophiocordyceps Unilateralis Sensu Lato fungal infections, and turn into infectious zombies!

Three-dimensional visualization and a deep-learning model reveal complex fungal parasite networks in behaviorally manipulated ants:

https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1711673114

One of the first downloadable objects for The Sims was a guinea pig (which was later included with Livin' Large), which included a communicable disease that could spread between characters, and even kill them:

https://sims.fandom.com/wiki/Illness#Guinea_Pig_Disease

>Guinea Pig Disease

>Guinea Pig Disease is introduced in Livin' Large. Sims can catch it if they are bitten by a guinea pig that has a dirty cage, or from other Sims who have been infected with the disease. Objects cloned from the guinea pig can also cause this disease. Sims infected with Guinea Pig Disease will sneeze and cough frequently, and their Comfort and Energy motives will rapidly decline. An infected Sim will die if not treated within time.

>Due to a glitch, a Sim who dies from Guinea Pig Disease cannot be successfully resurrected by the Grim Reaper. Once they are restored to life they will immediately die again.[1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebMjT1D5Nyw

>Each instance of Guinea Pig Disease is restricted to the lot the Sim was infected on, so an infected Sim will not display symptoms, be infectious, or die outside of the lot on which they caught the disease. Therefore, a Sim with the disease can safely go to a community lot or be invited to another Sim's house as a visitor. It is possible for a Sim to be infected on multiple lots, however.

>Treatment

>Keep the infected Sim home from work or school and try to keep their Comfort and Energy motives up. Purchasing The Forgotten Guinea Pig painting will clear the disease from the household after 16 Sim hours. A Sim who drinks a white potion created with The "Concoctanation Station" chemistry set will be immediately cured of the disease. Additionally drinking a blue potion will restore three random motives which, while not directly curing the disease, can help them to recover from it.

As someone that would like to create my own (basic) games, what would be the right tools and frameworks In your opinion to create art and game logic ?

The easier to learn the better haha

Congratulations and thank you for the good times!

I still firmly believe that making games -- especially under an "old-school" business model (ie no loot-boxes, no microTX, etc) -- has to rank extremely high on the "work gratification" scale.

I'm obviously super small -- but it's AWESOME to know >80k people have played SimAirport for >20 hours and ~20k have played >100hrs (!!) -- so damn rewarding!

About 5 years ago, the belief was that the ratio was in the realm of 1 : 50-100 -- based on my own data & data shared with me by other indies. Even then, there was substantial variance; genre, theme, price point, developer involvement, discounts, review score (proxy for player experience/overall game quality), etc -- were some of the key variables that I believed were having a significant impact on review-to-sales ratio variance between games.

Over time, changes to the UX have been made (by Valve/Steam) which appear to have increased the rate at which players leave reviews -- quite substantially, it seems.

On the whole, I think that a far higher percentage of players are leaving reviews now (ie a lower review-to-sale ratio), but I also believe that the variance is even higher now than it was before. It's still helpful for making estimates, but I don't think it's as highly-correlated as it once was (~5yr ago it was much more consistent & highly correlative).

On how it got where it is, including a fun back story, I wrote a blog post: https://willem.com/blog/2018-02-21_updating-snake-97/

It must be said: developing a game and have it enjoyed by millions is something very special. Things really went bananas when I was invited to an art gallery showcasing art inspired by my very game: https://willem.com/blog/2022-04-18_snake-97-high-scores/

It makes me feel humble and grateful.

Are you able to get meaningful income from it? (Google Play store mentioned it contains ads tho I haven't seen any)

Part of the game's (organic) growth is (kindly + infrequently) asking players to share their high scores with their friends. It saves me from having to advertise the game to reach new players. (If a player shares his or her highscore, ads are even less frequently shown, as an hidden reward)

Sounds like a great group! Making a game yourself can be very tough, but also rewarding. Having people to share your experience with is really important. If you ever want a guest who spent many long years working on a game and came out of if scared but a happier person, please reach out.

MobileUO is a Unity-port of ClassicUO, which is an open-source C# client for Ultima Online. My hope was to get support from community on Patreon to keep developing it but the financial support didn't really materialize. But it's ok because close to a thousand people seem to be using MobileUO daily to play UO on their mobile devices and are happy with it as it is.

Sandbox City is a really mini-tiny-not-even GTA style game for mobile where the player gets to run around in a city, driving cars, and running over pedestrians and zombies. I'm working on adding more content into the game but it already gives me decent passive income from ads and IAPs. I also have it published on CrazyGames (html5/webgl online game platform) and it is also played a lot there and bring in additional income.

I'd be interested in joining your Discord. My email is in my profile.

Here's some info (okay, a lot of info) on what I'm trying to create for anyone curious:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/17ACH1XLCn7hkKz2dhuL1c_nx...

And now I am currently working in a few other prototypes and tools. Would be interested in joining

Personally I wouldn’t recommend anyone rolling their own engine

It’s not even the time it takes, there is a lot of compatibility issues that need to be dealt with that are overwhelming

I've only ever done various ludumdare or other misc gamejams, maybe 20 in my life. No substantial games to show/demo. Have used many tools and frameworks over the years, such as flash, libGDX(Java), Visual 3D, Unity, and finally a die hard Unreal Engine fan.

There is a lot of other posts already here of far more successful and qualified folks. So if not OP, if there are other communities with less restriction. I am always open to more.

Discord: namrog84#0880

Ah i was coming here to warn you about that.

Ill brace for downvotes but if i can light a candle for just one person, that would be fantastic.

A big misconception about the economy of games is that they are content - economically-wise. An example of content is music or movies, think spotify or netflix.

This is absolutely not the case. Economically, games work like software: a handful of games are played for years and represents 98% of the playtime / money.

Treat games like a startup: what will make your game still be played 10 years from now?

Dont think "im gonna do one game and then another". Think "ill make one game". You wouldnt think "ill make a startup and then another and then another" even though you could its not really how youd think about this stuff right. Do the same with games.

One game. One startup. One product. Played for years on end. Diverge from that strategy and chances are you wont have a good life as a game developer like millions before you.

That being said, lets say you want to make a "content game", that is, a clone (your 2d platformer with a nice plot and rpg elements). Nothing wrong with that but just understand that on the long run it wont be sustainable economically, even if you take a lucky jump.

Most games are played heavily within the first year, and thereafter not so much. Indeed, game revenues in general are even more front-loaded than movie revenues; for most games, 80% of the game's lifetime revenue is made in the first 6 months of release, which is why DRM is a thing on new games but usually gets removed in a patch a few months after release: to stop piracy during those crucial first few months. (With movies, excluding blockbusters which live or die by their box office, most of the revenue is made after the film leaves theaters from licensing deals and consumer media sales.)

Excluding subscription games like MMOs, only a tiny handful of games continue making substantial amounts of revenue after 6 months. Games like Minecraft, Terraria, and Stardew Valley are the exception, rather than the norm.

Don't let that dissuade you. As a solo developer, you only need a few thousand in sales to make a good living.

Where do you get this stuff?

I don't think much of the software out there behaves like this either. It might apply somewhat to game or software franchises, though.

For example, LibreOffice has had multiple major releases, but has been around for a bit over 12 years, a bit longer if you include the predecessors. Ubuntu LTS is usually supported for around 5 years, but Ubuntu as a whole has been around for almost 20 years.

Similarly, Counter-Strike was released over 20 years ago, even if there's been multiple separate games over the years. It's more or less the same story for Battlefield and Call of Duty.

That said, that's setting your own goals unrealistically high, since those are the exceptions when compared to any number of unsuccessful games. If you try to compete against games like that, you'll just burn yourself out. Most startups aren't necessarily built for the longevity either, but rather to have a product hit the market within a reasonable time frame and budget.

If you want, make games, fail, iterate, fail some more, iterate some more, maybe eventually succeed. Have a look at some grounded experiences from other folks, for example watch this video titled "How to Survive in Gamedev for Eleven Years Without a Hit": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmwbYl6f11c

I didnt start receiving publishing offers until 13 months after I started development (and notably, when I started adding serious art to the game).

Currently trying get a small project off the ground while working full time at a large company. The goal is to get enough momentum on a project to find a good jumping off point.

The project is a multiplayer adaptation of frogger, where players are competing be the last man standing dashing across roads and rivers. The USP is allowing players to push each other around, this really adds to the competition (you can push people in front of cars, off of logs etc)

The target audience is "skibble.io users" so bored students / employees looking for something to do over zoom. So I'm building it out as a webpage with no login and as quick as possible time to game.

I have some info here https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=72732.0

And there is an old local-only prototype here https://danslocom.be/gamepages/crossy.html

They all had a day job.

Sometimes game dev related, sometimes not so much. But they all sacrificed a large portion of their free time at least until they started to generate enough money to survive on game dev alone.

In the end, the game is its own thing. It better be fun. It better be enjoyable. Otherwise all the above doesn’t matter.

The way I see it, making a game is art. I want to make games to express my ideas, and my feelings, and I want to do the best I can to convey those feelings and ideas in my games. The moment you start seeking player feedback for your game you are no longer making art, you making a product. I suppose that is all well and good if your goal is only to make money (although I highly suspect that this often has unintended and sometimes opposite affect).

Seeking player feedback is like Michelangelo asking random people on the street how he should have carved the statute of David.

This is my art, this isn't a collaboration, I don't have any desire at all to sink, time, effort, and talent into someone else's ideas, especially when they aren't willing to sink any time or effort to do it themselves, they just want to sit back and call the shots without having any skin in the game at all.

This seems like a loose/loose situation to me, the game often ends being worse in the end, and the artist becomes a cog/slave to the masses (who often don't have the foggiest clue of what they really want, or what makes a good game, because they aren't putting real time and thought into how the mechanics will interact, what is technically easy or hard, they just trow out "It would better if it did x, y,z").

Collaboration and feedback can be extremely helpful for creative endeavors. Successful writers have editors, successful musicians have producers, successful directors have EPs, etc. Sometimes the one-man-army approach works, but especially early on, it's best to get feedback.

Fair enough, sometimes art is collaborative, but even in your example it's collaborative with a very small group of experts, who also have skin the game. It isn't collaborative with 80 different arm-chair musicians, or 100's of arm-chair writers. Seth McFarlane doesn't give a rats ass what YOU think would be funny in family guy, nor should he. Taylor Swift isn't soliciting her fans if they think a key change in a song is a good idea.

So why in video game dev is it expected that the devs have public discords where anyone can jump and and spout off anything, and that they pay attention to, and incorporate, every suggestion from some random steam comment?

From an artistic point of view feedback from players is essential because games are based around an interactive dialog with the player. As a sculptor you can see the end result. As a game dev you can’t see how other people will play your game and it’s incredibly eye opening when you do.

The idea that the 'untrained eye' of the random playtester gets to make creative decisions about the game overall.. simply because they showed up to playtest the game, is a bit much.

Often programmers and artists don't even get full creative control over the work they do at game studios, random playtesters are far from ruining Michelangelo's David. Michelangelo is not even in full control, the techniques he learnt, skills he obtained and decisions he made earlier in the work, limit his sculpture too.

There is a way to integrate playtesters without demoting Michelangelo from control over the work.

But a game has a time component to it. Its asking a lot more of the player. It needs to be fun, or the player will stop playing and your vision will stay stuck in the game. Some feedback is helpful to make it fun and let them experience/ see your vision.

For Art, Open Studio events are really rewarding for artists to get their art out there and also talk to visitors. I did it for a few years. Putting your art out there for public consumption was hard. Some loved it (some enough to buy a few things), some did not. But I could talk to some of them and I grew and got better.

For games one of the fun things I do during the year is go to "Figg Fest" https://www.bostonfig.com/fest-homepage/ Its been virtual, but I liked it better in person. Game makers display their games, and most have a version to play (some simplify as 2+ hour board games at a 5 hour convention...). I like talking to the board game makers, their inspiration and how they develop. They teach us visitors and watch us play.

But if Solo development is your thing, thats cool too. I get not having things "wateredown by committee" but feedback can be helpful.

But I don't know everything. I'm not even a pro player at my own game. This is where the player feedback comes into the picture. I'm not trying to make my game from a very unique idea. But it's a mish mash of ideas I got from other games. I take feedback to know that I'm not doing something offensive/player denigrating accidentally.

I got few good ideas from my players which I included. Many ideas I have straight away denied to be included, because it didn't fit into my vision for the game/or I lacked the skills/efforts to give it justice.

I'm making a game, to scratch my itch of building something. Something that makes me happy, when people play the game and really like it. People keep coming back to give it a try. Sometimes even after weeks. Its nice to hear their feedback. It's nice to discover that people have been talking about your game in your absence, where you are not the first one to introduce the game.

I don't get actual users appreciation/feedback at my day job. No one says there they liked the attention to detail that was given there. This is why I'm making the game.

What the GP describes is making a game for others.

Both have their places.

as a PT hobby currently I'm building a new interactive sim, with game-like aspects, related to democracy. Goal for UX is a mix of education, persuasion and entertainment.

However, after some time, I decided to work on some side projects that were in a completely different field.

I started playing with the PlayCanvas game engine and created a 3D PvP based browser game.

Currently, the game is in the alpha stage and is called Enion Online.

Link: http://alpha.enion.io

P.S. Industry Idle has been open sourced a while ago, if anyone is interested in the code[3]

[1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/1574000/Industry_Idle/

[2] https://store.steampowered.com/app/2181940/Cividle/

[3] https://github.com/fishpondstudio/industryidle

I started with big ambitions the initial inspiration was Battle Brothers, Underrail, Jeff Vogel's old Exile RPGs and Caves of Qud (never played but seen lots of talks and material on it). Now it's evolved (devolved?) into a procedural simulation game of sorts. I wrote lore and world building. I want to do something deep and engaging that has high replay value - even with shabby graphics for years and years and something that I can continue to add content over time and expand the depth and scope of.

A big decision at the beginning was to build using C++ from scratch and not use an existing engine. So really I would say up about to the 10 months mark was just me figuring out application and software development - I come from an analytics background so in the beginning it was basic baby steps - like wrapping my head around doing everything in a giant infinite while loop, understanding how to manage memory, profile to figure out where frame rate is slowing down...not so much touching any content.

The hardest part was and is the architecture, how to add components, assets and generally organize the code so it doesn't become spaghetti as the game complexity grows - I started using a ECS early on but even still, I refactor the code structure a few times already and have simply come to accept some degree of chaos is inevitable. Next to that the UI is completely vectorized and drawn in-game so as to scale to any resolution and that has been a huge pain in the ass. There is a surprising amount of complexity in UI and I am devoting a lot of attention to it.

So now after 12 months I am finally close to the point of dedicating myself to mostly content creation and working on the game as opposed to the engine. After that I probably have to make a decision on whether to continue full time or devote some time to making some money elsewhere.

What are you talking about. Of course I'm gonna finish HoboHero [1]. Anyday now...

1 - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3pnEx5_eGm-LpaFqWNN0...

I think it's only coincidental that I'm a game developer & on hacker news. I haven't seen a lot of cross-over until this post. Glad to see it though.

My two cents - excluding people who "not work on their game full time" isn't very smart, most people have responsibilities and jobs, and can't afford to spend all the time on their pet project, and it doesn't mean they are not serious about releasing their games.

I wish you all the best on your development anyway.

You can check what I'm doing here: https://twitter.com/piropro

Some of my work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7iA3_mbd4U https://explorerdude.net https://novagame.net https://choreomania.net

Something I think would sell: https://docs.google.com/document/d/11GreRAVxi-TO8zBt_Q0xKDno...

When I switched from game development to app development I got the feeling that game development required 3x the effort to make a $1 when compared to business app development.

I guess it's like the difference between being an artist and a graphic designer

I always say the difference between software development (app, website, ect) and game development is that with software you have a predefined problem and your trying to solve it. With game development you are creating the problem and you are trying to solve it.

In my opinion software development can arguably be more straightforward as a result because you know that what you are building is meant to relieve some pain point.

I love game development but it can be very tricky to sell people on entertainment.

I don’t think I could do that. I’ve built a number of mobile games, but the longest I worked on before releasing was four months and that was hard enough.

I’ve always found it much easier motivationally and financially to launch early and iterate based on player feedback, but maybe the economics are very different with free-to-play mobile games.

I stopped doing it full time after a while and eventually went back to work. Game dev could support a family but not as well as a tech job, at least for me with my not-that-huge games.

Besides, for me I love that my game income is beer money/vacation money/new car money and not mortgage/health insurance/grocery money

I'm planning on releasing the full game this December, but the game is already not doing so well (only 4K wishlists. 12K is recommended for a successful launch)

[1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/2219580/Spaceflight_Facto...

Preferably a more guided approach (starts with A, then B, then C)

I'm interested to make my own game (2D, RPG, simple games, not touching 3D) just for fun.

The game is a machine building game. Hoping to finish within a year.

https://www.reddit.com/r/indiegames/comments/zolsc4/dominoes...

In retrospect, I probably should not have tried to build a full game engine, which is why it has taken me so long. Oh well... Live and learn. C'est la vie.

I posted an Ask HN to organize a GDC × HN meetup. Depending on interest level, it could just be a quick meet and greet between sessions, or it could be a bring your own lunch and hang outside Metreon on the grass.

It would be good to have it somewhere near the conference, but where people who haven't registered with the conference can attend.

https://discord.com/invite/mwkNcAR

I'll also ping you via email.

[1] https://boonbane.itch.io/firmament

It’s been a while for me though. The recipe is still the same. People, find your people.

Well, the creative process for games is much broader and freeform but it's like with every art.

I thought this was a game about ISO certifications for a minute.

yes.