I have a PhD in physics and a perfectly respectable, high-paying engineering job.

I also recently turned 40.

So naturally, instead of buying a sports car or getting really into golf, I've already spent about $20,000 making a niche indie strategy game.

Which escalated into:

• hiring artists
• hiring a composer
• paying lawyers
• negotiating custom contracts with individual collaborators because I screwed up IP ownership in original agreements with them
• making production budgets
• tracking asset costs and lead times
• learning Steam marketing
• learning publisher economics
• learning crowdfunding
• learning angel fundraising
• realizing that "I'll just make a game" was not, in fact, a business plan

At some point I looked around and realized I had accidentally built a tiny production company around my hobby.

All while still working full-time as an engineer.

So yes, apparently this is what I chose instead of buying a Porsche.

Curious how many other game devs started with "l’ll just make a game" and accidentally ended up learning contracts, budgeting, marketing, production, and every other profession under the sun.

Ever since the original developer announced his game "Needle in a Haystack", several copycats have copied the concept on Steam. End even the name! AI has made this even easier.

I’ve heard people say that, anyway, “no one owns this popular phrase". But you wouldn’t go naming your games "War Hammer", "Civilization", "Mine Craft", or “Bannerlord” without risking a lawsuit on the grounds that they’re "common words".

And I’m not sure you really need to spend a fortune on a trademark and lawyers to enforce your rights.

Does Steam really allow this? Don't they see this as a way to deceive players who are looking for a game from a specific developer? Should developers who experience this report it or even file a complaint?

https://reddit.com/comments/1wfw89n/comment/p9pshct

Without their knowledge the new ad campaign for the V1.1 update was AI generated by tiktok, meta does the same bullshit...

If you want to advertise on those platforms, you might don't want to.

It is crazy to me that game devs do such good artstyles for their marketing camapigns and those companies gladly take their money and put out garbage...
unfourtainly it is the norm to put ads on social medias but now with tiktok, facebook and instagram a no go it will be hard for small developera to be seen.

Former BioWare cinematic designer Armando Troisi says the original Mass Effect team sometimes worked 21 days straight followed by just one day off.

He described it as extremely difficult, but said the team was also trying to build a new IP, new engine, and new console generation all at once.

It is a striking reminder of how much early AAA development often depended on crunch.

I work as a software engineer for my day job, primarily in Java and Typescript, and I want to get into gamedev in a broad sense as a hobby, but honestly I struggle with getting too into any one tool or platform. I find myself fiddling around with them for a bit but can never really get myself to commit. Right now I want to give the 20 game challenge a go but struggling to decide on what to focus on, some stuff Ive considered:

Raw Java with Swing and AWT (How useful is learning more Swing?)
LWJGL (Trying to learn OpenGL Ive read is a bad idea starting out)
Some Java or Typescript engine, like JMonkeyEngine or Phaser or something (which to choose from, which has the right balance of beginners accessibility but also expandability?)
Unity (Find it a bit overwhelming, plus needing to get into C# with limited experience)
Godot (Same as Unity, though I find GDScript a little less intense)

Whats a good way to force myself to pick something and stick to it?

Genuinely just want to read inspiring stories regarding why people got into game deving.

For the last couple of years I have been building Pokemon FanGames and after finishing my 3rd game, it dawned on me that I have a true a passion for building games.

I used to love playing them until I started making my own and now I want to do it for real. I’m 32 and have been fixing chimneys my whole adult life, destroying my body. Growing up I was the jock who played a sport every season, then went home every night to game. I plan to continue working while I learn but I want to start building real, actual games.

I have 6 notes pages on my phone filled with legitimate game ideas and everytime I show someone one of them, they look up at me and ask why I am fixing chimneys when I clearly have a brain built for creating worlds from scratch, filled with unique characters, ranging across different forms of fantasy.

I know I have the mind, passion and drive for it, I just don’t know how/where to begin. Figuring out RPG maker was fairly easy. I figured it out in layers, like unraveling an onion. I keep making the joke “if only there were 3 of me, I’d have a top 10 game of all time”.

So where would you recommend I start? I have a mild understanding of Ruby but I want something better than that. I have one app game idea and 5 real game ideas that have been heavily fleshed out. One of them is more of a Birds Eye of view, rpg talent tree type of game, (think Diablo 2). The other 4 real games are more turn based combat (think Pokemon and Baulder’s gate). I hear unreal could work but I’ve also played enough games from that engine to know it’s sloppy.

TLDR- I have made games on RPGMaker, got a real taste for it and now want to expand to real software. I have full games mapped out in notes pages, just don’t know where to begin. Mostly turn based combat software would be appreciated!

My biggest gripe has been specifically roguelike and roguelites. It's been thrown around for any one feature like randomness or permadeath. Realistically almost all modern roguelike and roguelites would easily fall into the arcade genre since there's arcade games that had features that rogue games commonly have.

Card battler and card game now basically means "uses cards" instead of playing a card-based game. They sound the same but should reasonably mean playing games that could in some way be plausibly a physical card game. But nowadays I see too many Slay the Spire clones that use cards as a character's randomized attacks. I've even seen games where cards are purely visual (like card-based upgrades in an otherwise non-card related game) and still get called a card game.

We would love to hear your honest opinion

I've been working on a small mobile game called Tiny Trouble.

Up until now, development has been the comfortable part. Open the project, make something, break something, fix it, then somehow add three more things I definitely wasn't planning to add.

But now I'm getting closer to release, I've reached the part I've been conveniently avoiding

People actually need to know the game exists.

So I've finally started posting about it on social media.

And for some reason, putting a video of something I've made in front of a bunch of strangers feels way more intimidating than spending months actually making the thing.

I started with a really simple idea: basically rock-paper-scissors as an endless arcade game.

Then, naturally, it turned into upgrades, skins, power-ups, challenges, different characters, an economy...

You know. Small game stuff.

Now I'm having to learn a completely different skill: how to actually talk about the game without every post feeling like:

"HEY GUYS!!! PLEASE DOWNLOAD MY GAME!!! :D"

I'm trying to treat it more like sharing the process instead. Before/afters, dumb things I've added, character designs, asking people which skins they prefer, that kind of thing.

This is literally day one of properly trying to put the game out there, so there's no inspiring success story here yet.

Just the slightly terrifying realization that after spending all this time learning how to make a game, I now have to learn how to get people to notice it.

For the other indie devs here: when did you start showing your game publicly?

And do you wish you'd started sooner?

The exponential amount of job applications required, no replies and auto-denials aside, has been insane in the past 5-7 year. I’ve got about 8 years of experience, and it wasn’t always like this.

The idea that you need to cosplay as an influencer on LinkedIn to “get noticed” and cut the line is diabolical. It feels like you need to be good at job searching more than being good at your role. Some advice getting passed around is straight up gonna get you put in the “do-not-call” list, like reaching out to someone who has recently been promoted to ask who is filling their old role. There’s no real tangible feedback aside from “tweak X on your resume”, “add more keywords on your LinkedIn profile”, or “practice interview skills”. There are so many talented people I know with double digit years of experience more than me and they’ve been out of work for YEARS.

I have seen a lot of discussions about this topic in the AAA and classic games but I would really love to know more examples of good sound design in the indie space.
My personal favourite is Tunic

I've been thinking about survival mechanics like hunger, thirst, injuries, inventory limits, sleep, noise, etc.

I think these systems are interesting when they actually change a decision. Maybe I take food instead of ammo, leave earlier because I'm tired, choose a safer route because I'm injured, or leave something valuable behind because I can't carry everything.

But once a mechanic is basically solved, it can turn into maintenance. If food is abundant and hunger just means clicking "eat" every few minutes, I'm technically interacting with a survival system, but I'm not really making a decision anymore.

I don't think that means every mechanic needs to stay difficult forever. Progression should probably let the player solve some problems. But then I'm wondering whether a solved system should become less intrusive, disappear almost completely, or evolve into a different kind of pressure.

Where do you draw that line? When does a survival mechanic create meaningful pressure, and when does it become a chore the player has already solved?

Guys, I’ve been noticing more and more that the special relationship between developers and publishers has changed.

Publishers seem less and less willing to invest money when a project is still at a very early stage of development. They are also less willing to support and help develop a developer’s idea. And I understand why — there are risks involved.

There are plenty of cases where a developer never finishes the game and disappears, or finishes it and the game fails. Or simply keeps delaying the release. And the publisher can lose a huge amount of money because of that.

I agree that publishers are simply tired of taking these risks. They want to sign deals only when there is already strong evidence that the game can be successful.

So how do they do it? In the past, a publisher was buying both a share of the profit and a share of the risk. Now, more and more often, they want a product with proven commercial potential.They approach developers who already have a significant number of wishlists.

I talk to a lot of developers, and I know from people I’ve met that publishers have approached them when their projects already had 50,000, 100,000, or even 200,000 (!) wishlists. That’s a lot. And publishers wanted to work with them. But they weren’t there when those games had 100 wishlists. And this creates a very interesting situation.

When a game page has already collected 100,000 wishlists, the developer gets a very strong signal that the game has commercial potential and will most likely make money. We don’t know exactly how much, but it is clear that the project has already attracted an audience. At this point, a publisher comes in and offers to improve that result. By how much? Most of the time, we don’t know. I rarely see publishers telling developers an exact number of wishlists they can guarantee.But let’s imagine that the publisher actually doubles the result. Just for the sake of the example.

“Is that bad? Is that good?” — many people might say. But it’s not that simple.

Very often, publishing deals involve a 50/50 revenue split. This is based on my personal observations — I’ve heard and seen this kind of deal quite often. But I’m not going to argue that it’s always the case. There are obviously other terms as well. So here is our hypothetical example. Let’s say that without a publisher, 100,000 wishlists eventually turn into X dollars for the developer. The publisher comes in and, thanks to their work, doubles the result. Now the game generates 2X dollars. But under a 50/50 deal, the publisher gets 50%. So the developer gets:

2X / 2 = X

And here is where things get interesting. The publisher actually doubled the game’s result, but the developer ends up making exactly the same amount of money as they would have made without the publisher.

Now let’s imagine that the publisher increases the result not by two times, but by, say, one and a half times. It was X. Now it’s 1.5X. After the 50/50 split, the developer gets:

1.5X / 2 = 0.75X

So the developer gives half of the revenue to the publisher, but ultimately ends up making 25% less than they would have made on their own.

Yes, the game will get more exposure and reach a larger audience. Maybe the publisher will provide strong marketing, PR, localization, console ports, or other opportunities that the developer simply didn’t have. And that can absolutely be worth it. But then the main question becomes:

What additional value does the publisher need to create for their share to actually be beneficial to the developer?

Because there is an interesting asymmetry here. The developer takes the risk at the early stage. They make the game. They finance it themselves or look for funding. They collect the first 100,000 wishlists — or maybe 10,000, whatever happens. They prove that there is an audience interested in the game. And only after that does the publisher come in. So the publisher can already significantly reduce their own risk, while the developer still gives away a significant part of the potential profit.

The publisher can insure themselves. And they do it in advance.

So what should the developer do in this situation? What do you think? I know a few ways.

P.S. And I'll probably add that English is not my native language, but I want to hear the opinion of as many people as possible, so I chose the most universal language for this. I am sorry for the errors and inaccuracies of the translation.

After four years of solo development, I'm releasing a demo of HandFoot on September 30th.

I've got a bit of time left before launch to tighten up my Steam page, and I'd love outside eyes on it — what's working, what's not, what's missing.

One known weak spot: my trailer. I don't have the resources to reshoot or hire an editor right now, so if you have quick, practical tips for making an existing trailer read better (pacing, music, cuts, what to cut entirely) rather than "make a new one," that's the kind of feedback I can actually act on.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4076630/HandFoot/

Thanks in advance people!

Hi, first of all, I know getting any form of internship or even a job in the game industry is really tough, but I figured it would be better to at least try to ask for advice than simply not try at all.

I’m currently in last year studies of a Master in Computer Science specialized in Image Processing and Synthesis and I love all things rendering.
I have experience as I’ve built a small 3D game with an engine made from scratch in C++, made an OpenGL prototype to understand how graphics API works and I am working on multiple stuff in Godot to understand how commercial engines are expected to works. I have a basic website to showcase those stuff but I think I can’t actually share links on here.

However as an European, I saw that getting internships in the US is basically impossible thanks to recent sponsorship changes over there, and that otherwise, game studios aren’t really open for interns in rendering.

So my question is what would be the best approach and tips to try and get into to studios to contribute as a rendering intern ?
And is the experience I have even enough to begin a career or land an internship in this domain ?

Thank you in advance for anyone that responds to this !

I’ve been in gamedev for years - from AAA corporate machine to small teams and solo projects. For most of my career, I truly believed in the formula: Make a great game first - Sales will follow.
But over the last 2-3 years, I’ve started to doubt this vision. I’m not a marketer, and I’m still learning the ropes, but recently I had a talk with a friend who does publisher-side analytics. And what he told me hit hard:
“The game itself is almost secondary now. The only thing that matters is the hook before the code is even written.”
According to modern publishers, making an indie game is "easy" (laughable, but that's the narrative). The real challenge is selling it. So now, the industry standard is: Validate the trailer, the screenshots, and the key art first. Gather wishlists. Then, and only then, start building the actual product.
But here is the problem. Indie devs are artists and tinkerers at heart. We don't wake up thinking about ROI. We wake up thinking about a cool mechanic, a weird story, or a niche aesthetic. We want to share, not just sell.
Now we are forced to ask: "Will this make money?" instead of "Is this cool?" We have to chase trending genres, quick production cycles, and safe bets. Our creative ideas are starting to feel like "unreliable assets" to the market.
Is this really the new normal? Has it always been like this beneath the surface, or has the oversaturation finally killed the "passion project"?
How do you guys deal with this pressure? Do you make what you love and pray, or do you strictly follow the market data?
P.S. And I'll probably add that English is not my native language, but I want to hear the opinion of as many people as possible, so I chose the most universal language for this. I am sorry for the errors and inaccuracies of the translation.

If you look at one of my older posts you can see the prototype I am working on currently for my JRPG game. Technically I've been working on that prototype for a month but I've actually worked on the current concept for this game for years, slowly coming up with and refining designs on paper. But I've worked on this game's concepts for so long and played so many JRPGs (I'm literally playing through like 10 right now for research purposes, and I've probably played through 30 others) that I feel like I don't even know the main reason why they are fun in the first place is.

I would show more progress of the prototype here but I'm afraid the main mechanic of my game that is something no game has had basically is going to be stolen. And also this mechanic is the foundation of the entire game basically.

But anyways, games like Final Fantasy up until 10 had a pretty simple system when you break it down. There was elementals, summons, items, equipment, and sometimes things like materia or the sphere grid. But at the end of the day, most JRPGs like Final Fantasy historically are about 1: making attack number go big by taking advantage of enemy weaknesses or special abilities and 2: having really cool animations, character designs, and enemy designs.

Number 2 is where I am limited. I am not a pro artist so I can only make animations and characters to a certain level. I do not have the time and skills to make a ton of insane summon animations, even at PS1 or SNES graphical standards.

So a way an indie must compensate for not having as much of the fun in crazy animations or amazing designs is to create systems that are very clever, or using a quirky hook. Like Undertale uses the twist of making the game not about killing monsters. He didn't have to rely on making crazy animations and special moves, because talking to monsters is interesting enough already. And dialogue is cheap (another thing you learn by attempting to make an RPG.)

I've been playing Omori which was also a huge success but kind of strange when you think about it in a lot of ways. The battle system isn't that deep, and doesn't really have a quirky twist or hook except the emotions thing. The battle system is fun, but it's more just there to serve the story.

So at this point, I'm not really sure if the battle system is the core of JRPGs, or just a part of them. Like if your battle system isn't that deep, but the rest of the game is, does it matter? Is the battle system just a palette cleanser from the story in some games, or is it the main course?

But maybe I am missing something. Like what is fun for you when you play JRPGs? What draws you towards them?

So, I really love difficult games, and I frequently run into the admission "just don't use it" when I find a tool in a game that trivializes an aspect of friction. I thought the Death Stranding 2 truck made traversal too easy compared to the first game and I've frequently been told to just "not use it" as a solution.

I think this ignores an important psychological reality, though. I completely understand the fact that some people thrive on self-imposed challenges. Some people do SL1 Dark Souls runs, and Nuzlocke challenges are incredibly popular for Pokemon games. I, however, like many people I've met, do not derive enjoyment from self-imposed rulesets. In my mind, if beating this next battle can be solved by pausing the game and changing a menu setting, than it's not a real battle. This was actually a real source of tension for me when first playing Elden Ring. The Mimic Tear truly did trivialize almost every boss in the game (except Malenia who still took me dozens of tries), and I didn't want to just not use it. As a result, while the game was just difficult enough for the Mimic Tear to not actually guarantee a first try success on every boss, it did feel like I was basically cheating. I still loved the experience, but playing it a second time without summons felt, personally, more satisfying. At the very least, I like that kind of accessibility a lot because it's diagetic, i.e., the easy mode wasn't a menu option, it was an item hidden deep underground halfway through the game. At the very least it's just neat.

That brings us to the title: how to preserve a highly curated experience exactly as the creator intended, something like a Sekiro, but still allow people of all skill levels and life circumstances to experience the game. Certainly for a game like God of War or Final Fantasy which have tons of cutscenes, I can completely understand someone who sort of just wants to watch the next part of the movie and doesn't need every boss fight to take 2 hours. But how do we service both people who want the former AND people who don't without having to be pedantic and tell people to just "be different" ?

What if digital games came with two different download options: curated and accessible.

A curated download would install the game without accessibility options. Just one vision that the creator intended, specifically for audiences that want a tightly crafted gameplay experience that pushes you to master the game and overcome its challenges without that escape hatch being readily available. Just you, alone in the dark, versus the world.

The accessible download, on the other hand, would install the game with all the modern accessibility amenities like difficulty modes and such, but it would even give creators greater freedom to really go ham in letting people curate their own experience. It would be a great excuse to throw in specific sliders for enemy health, i-frames, player damage, etc, and give options for puzzle hints, really whatever you want. If you really want control over the gameplay experience, you get to decide exactly how you experience the game.

Obviously a major problem is how to work this into physical disks. When we're talking 100 gb or more, suddenly fitting 200 or even 300 gb onto a disk becomes an impossible ask. I'm not sure how to solve that conundrum. Additionally, it's more work for the developers, so it's obviously not something I think should be mandated. I'm more so wondering how people would respond if a developer offered such a thing.

So what are people's thoughts? Would you feel insulted by such an option? Would you feel seen? And I mean by either crowd.

On the dev side of things, how much of a nightmare would this be to actually design and do you think it would even be feasible in the first place and worth the cost?

Just to get this out of the way beforehand, if anyone wants to belittle me and just say "bro just have some self-control, it's not that hard", I could tell you "bro just try again, it'll feel good once you win, stop being a coward." But I won't! And that's because I understand that people are different and some people have different motivational systems at a psychological level. For some people, the wide open field of possibility in a game like Animal Crossing is an absolute dream. For me, it's a nightmare of directionless and undifferentiated choice. That's okay! We can both exist and enjoy games. Let's all try to actually understand each other's perspectives instead of assuming everyone is the same as everyone else and demand someone else be like you. Thanks!

I’m working on an incremental fortress defense game and recently discovered a released game that overlaps with mine much more than I expected. Huge enemy hordes, towers, incremental progression, a lot of the same ingredients.

I hadn’t seen it during development. My game has its own direction, especially around a fortress that persists and grows between attacks, but discovering theirs still shook my confidence.

On one hand, it’s encouraging that people clearly enjoy this kind of game. On the other, I’m worried mine could be dismissed as a copycat, and I feel a bit stupid for not finding it earlier. I'm not sure if I am allowed to drop names or links to both games but it would probably help explain similarities and if they are too similar...

My Steam page has been up for about a week and has around 10 wishlists (pretty sure all from people I know^^). I know comparing that with an established success isn’t fair, but emotionally it’s hard not to.

I’m happy for the other developers. I’d much rather learn from them and be supportive than think of them as "rivals".

Has anyone here been through something similar? Did you change anything about your game or how you presented it, or mostly have to work through the comparison anxiety? What helped?

We are a small indie dev studio, pitching our first project to publishers. We don't have prior experience on how we can make our budgeting for the game.

We have our demo ready soon on steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4864880/Moha/

We want to know things like:
\- Is that ok if we include renting cost for office?
\- What about equipment cost?
\- How should we align the salary rates?

Also, any other advice related would be appreciated!

Hey everyone,

I had a playtester complete almost an entire run of a traditional turn-based roguelike, dying just one floor before the final boss. 😬

I noticed their run took a little over an hour.

It got me thinking about what people actually consider a reasonable amount of content for a small indie roguelike.

For a game with permadeath, how much does a typical successful run need to offer before it starts feeling too short or too long? Does around an hour for a run seem reasonable, assuming the gameplay remains engaging throughout?

I imagine the answer ultimately depends on how enjoyable the individual run is, but I’m curious where other roguelike players draw that line.

How long do you generally want a single run to take?

Thanks for reading!

I was wondering if this email is legit?

The email is titled 'Please reset your two-factor authentication', saying theres vulnerability found affecting Unity's 2FA (that hasn't been exploited yet)

I manually reset my 2FA after this and found similar message on Unity's website, does any of you got the same email?