Ask HN: why nobody talks about game development any more?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1799235

by gsivil • 16 years ago

18 32 16 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I wonder why nobody is talking about game development in here? I am not complaining about that I am just trying to understand the social, technical and financial reasons for something like that. For example in the book Hackers by Levy a number of chapters were just devoted to game development. It seems that the big thing nowadays is the web apps and Iphone applications. What are your thoughts on that ?

wriq• 16 years ago

Web Apps and iOS/Mobile the popular platforms right now. While large commercial games require huge development teams and budgets, mobile/webapp games are commonly done with one or two people. Minecraft, for example was one guy for a long time and seems to be quite popular on here.

gsivil2• 16 years ago

I guess it is rewarding to feel that you have developed something on your own. And feel that your skills is the limit, and not a whole company. But at the same time google or facebook are also quite big companies and they seem more attractive than the traditional game companies. An other issue that I am curious about: what about the tools that are used in the game industry? There is a lot of discussion about the web tools that are used in Web apps or iphone applications. I see that it quite difficult - close to impossible for somebody to compete with the big game companies. But at the same time I think that games will be with us for ever and technically seem more challenging. I am not 'devil's advocate' I am just curious.

ojbyrne• 16 years ago

Nobody talks about shrink-wrap or enterprise software either, presumably because they're mature markets that very large companies dominate.

_delirium• 16 years ago

There's quite a few startups in the game industry, but they aren't really startups in the scale-fund-and-exit sense that the web ones are, with the exception of a few mostly web- and mobile-focused ones like Zynga and ngmoco.

A lot of the small studios' commercial ambitions are more along the lines of "profitable small business that makes us a living while maintaining our artistic independence" rather than "looking for an IPO" or (god forbid) "sell to EA".

jasonlotito• 16 years ago

There are many discussions about game development here. Why don't we have more? Probably because not as many game developers come here to post as other types of developers and startups

benologist2• 16 years ago

I make games and my startup has lots of game developers using it. It's just not HN-worthy most of the time because my blog is for my users to read, not HN.

gsivil2• 16 years ago

I guess the technical challenges that you face will be interesting and also the paths for visibility and success will be slightly different from the general use web-apps.

benologist2• 16 years ago

Yep. Although many of the challenges are much the same ... how do I get users, etc etc.

It's definitely fun solving a growing problem for developers - games aren't disconnected and audiences are massive, "I want high scores in my game" is not as simple as hacking together some php/mysql on your $8 hosting account when a popular game reaches 10s of millions of people.

I think the biggest difference ultimately is HN doesn't hold any marketing value for me or other gaming startups so none of us are making a play for it. The analytics side of my platform dwarfs many of the ones we talk about here - but the others are relevant for anyone with a registration form, so they write / submit more stuff.

waru2• 16 years ago

I'm hoping to get funding to start a game development start-up, and I was wondering the same thing. I think there's plenty of room for indie game development. You can't compete with huge companies in terms of making a game that costs millions of dollars with a massive team, but there's plenty of other games to make. The game industry has gotten to a point where it takes so many years and massive amounts of money that they can scarcely try anything that's not a surefire hit, and companies get entrenched in continuing series of already popular games (instead of something new). So I think independent game developers might start to be more recognized as crucial to keeping things fresh and innovative.

Also, non-state-of-the-art games are getting more and more popular with the Wii and iPhone, while more and more people start to play games, people who don't demand hyper-realistic graphics and who want to try new ways of having fun.

To me we're still on the tip of the iceberg of game development; it has lots of potential and places to go for independent teams of hard-working, creative hackers.

adriand3• 16 years ago

> non-state-of-the-art games are getting more and more popular with the Wii and iPhon

I think mobile platforms are the way to go for indie developers, because the technical standards are so much lower. The App Store's top charts frequently feature games that are no more complicated than many Flash games and are sometimes direct ports of them (e.g. Canabalt, Solipskier).

adriand3• 16 years ago

As others have noted, it's not true that "nobody is talking about game development" on Hacker News; however, I think you're correct it is not a dominant topic. I can't speak for other's interests, but I know for myself that although game development is something I find somewhat interesting, it is not something I pursue, for a couple of reasons.

First, I don't spend much time playing games, because they don't hold my attention long and they're not the best use of my time (they're a pastime, literally, a way to pass time, but I don't need many of those). I know you don't need to play games to make them, but a deep love of games probably helps motivate you to make them, and I don't have that.

Second, I'm ultimately interested in creating things that change people's lives to some extent, whether by helping them solve problems, communicate more effectively, earn more money, etc. I think many people on HN feel similarly - they are interested in building things that enable people to get more out of life, in some way, and games don't always fit that description.

Of course these are just my personal opinions.

I'm still somewhat interested in developing games but more as a way to improve my skills in other areas, such as Javascript (I'd probably focus on HTML5 games if I got around to it) and challenging stuff like AI.

waru2• 16 years ago

I guess if you're the kind of person who thinks that art can be a worthwhile and meaningful part of someone's life (and I do), and that games can be art (which hopefully most people recognize by now), then they can be seen as changing people's lives to some extent.

I can't argue that a game could be more effectual than something like Google, obviously, but I think games are a lot more than a way to pass or waste time, and definitely can provide a lot to people.

adriand3• 16 years ago

I agree on the value of art and that games can be art; however, I think the majority of time spent on games is entirely divorced from any kind of artistic appreciation or experience. Farmville and grinding for levels in WoW come to mind. A good parallel is television: some is art, much is garbage.

cubicle673• 16 years ago

I'm writing my first game at the moment, inspired somewhat by the challenge put forward a few weeks ago to make $1 from a game by the end of October. I'm writing a very simple game, and it's taken way longer than I expected.

I'm not using standard widgets, so I'm having to create a library of custom widgets.

Everything is 100% vector graphics (no images at all), so I've have to write a library of vector routines, (very) basic physics, etc

Transitions; Every non-game object (text, menus etc) has custom animate-in and animate-out transitions. nothing just 'appears' on the screen.

Games need sound, which I've never used in a desktop or web app before. This is a whole new world to me.

and so on...

I'm not entirely sure It'll be done by October 31, and when it is I fully expect to receive comments like "This is a very basic game, should be free, not worth $2". I'm pretty much doing it for the experience, but I'm also creating a game I (think) that I'd like to play.

dpcan2• 16 years ago

Games also need

- instructions

- high scores

- online high score boards

- update mechanisms / announcements

- options that can be turned on and off

- methods for purchasing

- a website

- and more....

The idea and implementation is only the first step.

I've been in the game business for a while now, and one thing I've learned is, if I say "oh, that's a simple idea, I can do that in a week..." I should add 3 to 4 weeks, and that's for a simple indie game idea.

Good luck though. I feel like you're doing yourself a disservice going for the $1 from a game by the end of October however. Why not go for "significant additional income to your bottom line"?

cubicle673• 16 years ago

I'm using the app store, so the purchasing side of things is not too bad, but yes, all the rest still apply. Haven't even started on a website yet, and I'm planning on making a simple video too as these seem like a good way to show off the game

Why not go for "significant additional income to your bottom line"?

I'd love to, but you've got to learn to crawl before you can run, as they say

gte910h• 16 years ago

Big interesting games are put together by very large, not so entrepreneurial teams these days.

Hacker news is much about entrepreneurial things done by small teams. That is a much smaller intersection these days.

jp• 16 years ago

Game developers are not aware of non-work. Also, if your game does not look like a 100 million dollars IT SUCKS! NDA, risk, OpenGL complexity == boring/dangerous, etc.

Games == Assets == IP == Millions of dollars == Risk.

thelittleguy• 16 years ago

That doesn't even make any sense.

wisty• 16 years ago

Games is a hit-driven market, like releasing a CD or building the next social network. The top performers make a lot, but the losers just lose.

HN is for vertical niches (JOS fans), and people looking to build the next big web-app (pg fans). It's also good if you want to read about geeky stuff and general business. But there just isn't the space to discuss 2 winner-takes-all product lines. The two sub-communities would both find it too noisy.

city41• 16 years ago

I disagree with your analogies. Good games tend to do well. The catch is a truly good game is not an easy endeavor. But if you can pull it off, generally you can reap rewards from it. Gamers tend to be pretty educated on their hobby, especially if you compare them to your average music cd or dvd shopper. And gamers always have room for another game if it's good (just ask any gamer about their "backlog", a completely ubiquitous concept in the hobby). Most people have no need for more than one social network. I've challenged myself to find a truly excellent iOS game that didn't sell well, and despite a lot of digging, I have yet to find one.

mechanical_fish• 16 years ago

I'm not sure I accept the premise that games are relatively undiscussed here. There are many fields that are more obscure.

But perhaps part of the answer is sitting there in your question. Younger tech is more exciting tech, and though Hackers is an awesome book, it is also a historical document from thirty years ago, when personal gaming systems were in their infancy. Now it is thirty years later. Programmers have been exploring games for almost fifty years by now. (Spacewar will celebrate its fiftieth birthday in February 2012.) Computer games, as traditionally defined, are a relatively mature field.

By comparison, the web is a youngster, only in its teens. Social networking on the scale of Facebook is a handful of years old. The era of ubiquitous omnipresent wearable mobile networked computers -- we call them smartphones for the moment -- is less than five years old, even if it can be said to have truly arrived yet. These things are very exciting, because we have no idea how they will turn out, and because you can walk down the street and see opportunity everywhere. There are so many ground floors to get in on.

And, of course, many of the new opportunities will be games. But they may not all be called games, at least not at first. For example, my understanding is that game critics are having quite the existential crisis about Zynga's work. Farmville certainly looks like a game, and it is sold like a game, but it isn't like the games that have come before. Which brings me back to my first point: Game genres which are decades old may not get as much press, but people talk about Zynga on HN all the time. Because they are new and different.

aberkowitz• 16 years ago

There's not much innovation happening in game development today. In the past -

* The Wii brought [1] 3d motion to games

* The iPhone brought multitouch to games

* The rise of GPS aware phones created location based games

* Facebook brought about mindless social games that involve clicking a cow

The only new innovation I've seen is the 3ds, and it's yet to be determined whether it's actually innovative or just irritatingly headache inducing.

[1] Herein brought / created refers to the first major commercial success.

munim• 16 years ago

I attended a facebook developer garage in my place recently, where a representative from a big social game developer confessed that very few social game developers are actually making money. Monetising social games is just hard. its a numbers game.

revoltingx• 16 years ago

Well, I'm guessing more people make web apps and other type of applications (like iPhone apps) more than people making games.

There is still plenty of good information to be found on game making at least though.

Making a game is quite an endeavor. There are just so many small things that have to be polished before it can be released.

Making a prototype can only take 2-3 weeks, but building up content is the real time consuming process.

I'm working on a MMORPG for Android and I wish I could speak more about it. It has some unique aspects due to the mobile nature of it.

I'm building a web app now that lets you create maps, quests, characters, etc for the game and anyone can play them on their Android device right away.

The idea is to offload at least some of the content creation to power users so I can continue to concentrate on polishing and adding features to the game.

In any case, it's ideas like these that are interesting to me and I guess like you, feel that they're not really talked about often. However, there are nugs here and there. I can understand that web apps are just more popular.

Anyway, you can find my dev blog here: http://developingthedream.blogspot.com

twymer2• 16 years ago

I've personally found that game developers and "normal" developers are two pretty distinct set of people.

I think the people of HN are not going to offer the type of feedback people writing games are looking for, so they post elsewhere.

Mz2• 16 years ago

Where would they post? Any links?

Thanks in advance.

twymer2• 16 years ago

http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/ General help and discussion

International Game Developers Association: http://www.igda.org/forum A lot of activity on this one about entering the industry.

Not a discussion group like here but in case you didn't know it existed: http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/

chuckmcknight• 16 years ago

Games programming is hard. Creating web sites is easy. Nobody wants to work hard any more. They'd rather create "art".

Ask HN: why nobody talks about game development any more?

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