[HN Gopher] The Future of Games is an Instant Flash to the past ___________________________________________________________________ The Future of Games is an Instant Flash to the past Author : meheleventyone Score : 186 points Date : 2021-06-25 11:21 UTC (11 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.fortressofdoors.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.fortressofdoors.com) | wiradikusuma wrote: | "instant games"... here I am 10 minutes down, the game is still | loading at 11% | megameter wrote: | There are oodles of games that started as free games and then | made a commercial release later on. It's not really unique to web | or "instant". | | Further, there's a huuuge dropoff in interest once you do go to a | paid release. Often these games are accessed from locked-down | school or office environments as part of a "game jukebox" in the | same way that YouTube often doubles as a "music jukebox" - | there's minimal investment in what you're playing, so, like fast | food, it's more important that it leaves a good impression in | five minutes than to actually have substance. FNF's basic appeal | is akin to a fashion brand with a cool logo - these characters | could have used any number of delivery vehicles but the game, and | the game when put on Newgrounds specifically, happened to be the | right one with the right audience. And because it's positioned | for ease of access you get the high virality. When you flip | things so that the audience pays upfront, they have to have some | conviction in this one, out of a countless number of games, being | the one they should champion. It's just a radically different | proposition and only some games can cross over between the two | markets. | | FNF does benefit from having a lot more hardware and bandwidth | available these days. Music is classically the Achilles' Heel of | web gaming because it's either space-inefficient or you need to | invest in a sequencer format of some sort(which was only feasible | in Flash by fighting the available technology every step of the | way). But FNF delivers full-length audio streams without too much | difficulty, so we've clearly made some giant strides there. | bstar77 wrote: | I agree that instant games are and will continue to be desirable | for a sizable audience. Correlating that to Adobe Flash | completely lost me. | | My NES games are instant and that preceded Flash by decades. In | fact, I think the 8-bit era inspires game devs today far more | than the early-mid 2000's browser games. | lleb97a wrote: | As a solo developer considering releasing - at least a demo - as | a web-based game, this article is at least a little reassuring. | Even though I'm still not convinced that it would be easy to | monetize. Although I'm somewhat convinced that allowing people to | play your game - instantly and for free - is highly-desirable. | meheleventyone wrote: | I think it's demonstrably the case that if you get the link in | front of peoples eyeballs they will be much more likely to | click it and actually play the demo then if they have to do | anything else at all. | | The hard part is getting the eyeballs on the link in the first | place. But that's the same problem you have on Steam and other | app stores. | thrower123 wrote: | Maybe, but the barrier of entry for HTML5 games is absurd | compared to what you could do with Flash, RIP. | | Why does everything have to be so damned complicated these days? | It's not necessary complication, it's complication for the sake | of complication. | IIAOPSW wrote: | How else do you socially signify that you're a real | professional who uses complex tools and should be paid good | money because not just anyone can do what you do? | xtracto wrote: | I completely agree. I used to make games back in the GWBASIC | and DJGPP/Allegro age. I tried to retake that passion a couple | of months ago and boy the complexity of Unity or all other | gaming frameworks today amazed me. | cupofcoffee wrote: | What barrier of entry for HTML5 games? Not like you need to | install 40 frameworks to make web games. | larsiusprime wrote: | Definitely agree. Some of the game engines are taking the pain | out of this but Flash had something really special going with | its stupidly easy to use animation-first workflow. | xfer wrote: | I think virtual consoles are the answer here like pico8. But i | am not a fan of pico8 limitations and also the design tools | don't work on browser. I am keeping an eye on | quadplay(https://github.com/morgan3d/quadplay) which seems | interesting but also lacking design tools. | MrLeap wrote: | What's old is new again, I remember when flash flash revolution | was the thing everyone did in all the computer labs in | highschool. | | If everything that was popular to teens during the flash era has | a shot, I prognosticate we'll see haxe ways to box celebrities.. | uhh elaborately choreographed stick figure violence, and a whole | lot of things that are based off old warcraft 3 custom maps. Also | winter bells. Definitely winter bells. | Ronson wrote: | By far, the worst thing I ever done was Game Development. I | poured years of starting my career into it. I worked at Sony in | the UK then Bizarre Creations and had a wee go at Rockstar North. | Bizarre Creations was amazing, and everything else was terrible. | | Not too long after, the financial crisis hit and I found myself | working on the Flash Runtime just to earn a crust (my partner and | I had just got a house and her father was diagnosed with cancer | so I was kind of stuck in the wrong location). | | Then Stevo came along and that ended any hope of continuing with | Flash Runtime. I eked out some work with Scaleform. | | Then Typescript came out, then Angular, and now I work 1% of the | effort for 10000%+ uptake on my salary and never looked back. | | Game development is genuinely a mugs game and I'd urge everyone | not to do it. | gre wrote: | I went on a cabin retreat and my friend's 14 year old son was | playing this a couple weeks ago. It really is that popular. | flemhans wrote: | And it seems super similar to the old "Super Crazy Guitar | Maniac Deluxe" series of games. | wolfram74 wrote: | I wonder if certain genre's are seasonal and other's ever | green? Like, there hasn't been a new RTS that penetrated my | radar like starcraft in awhile. Maybe there'll be a bump in | sales for Crypt Of the Necrodancer.[0] | | [0]https://braceyourselfgames.com/crypt-of-the-necrodancer/ | handrous wrote: | I think "classic" RTS is an interesting case that's not | likely to return in anything like the form some of us used to | like. | | There are at least two audiences for traditional RTS: the | ones who want an experience resembling speed chess and are | focused on multiplayer, and the ones who don't care about | anything more than _maybe_ a little casual multiplayer, and | mostly want the campaign. | | Looking back, all the RTS games I played growing up, as the | latter kind of gamer, were _sort of_ bad at delivering what I | wanted, even the greats. Teasing out the elements into their | own things makes them so much better. Base-building is a | better single-player experience when it 's more like city- | builders with objectives. Moving your little dudes around a | map in service of a story is better when there's minimal or | no base-building, and certainly when most maps don't revolve | around both sides building bases while trying to destroy the | other's. Grand strategy scratches another part of the RTS | itch. Certain RPGs, another. They all shine better, doing | what they do, than RTS did, however nostalgic I am for the | _abstract ideal_ of it, which, in hindsight, was never even | really _approached_ by the actual games. | | Meanwhile, the RTS genre seems to have refined more and more | into the multiplayer speed-chess-alike space, sometimes | dropping some traditional elements of the genre in order to | hyper-focus on delivering that experience, all of which makes | it even less interesting to me (but I gather has made it much | better for people who _want_ that). It 's not the 90s now, so | you can ship a game that's almost entirely focused on online | multiplayer, with little or nothing to offer for single- | player, and it can still sell, so there's no need to try to | tack a satisfying single-player campaign on to these. | syzygyhack wrote: | Eyes on Frost Giant to deliver us the spiritual SC3 | ehnto wrote: | Some games build a community that has quite a bit of inertia | to switching. Starcraft has an enormous community and | competitive apparatus surrounding it, even if a game was | better mechanically, it's unlikely to dethrone StarCraft | without a fairly unique situation happening. The more likely | scenario is StarCraft gets messed up in some way that splits | the community into a new game. In my opinion anyhow. | toptal wrote: | This is just a rehash of https://future.a16z.com/instant-games/ | which itself is a rehash of what the co-founder of Playco stated. | marstall wrote: | Doesn't hurt that FNF is a game with considerable polish, swagger | and fun, even compared to platform rhythm games! | socialist_coder wrote: | Facebook Instant is actually a pretty incredible platform, IMO. | Tons of games on there, available to play with 1 click and no | install. They all load pretty fast and the performance is great. | | Almost none are built with Unity. It's very very rare to find one | that isn't built with a web-native game engine. | | Check it out if you've never seen it, you will be impressed. | https://www.facebook.com/instantgames/ | | The crappy thing is that iOS doesn't let you do IAPs on FB | Instant. So you can only have IAPs on Android & Desktop. Ad | monetization works everywhere though. | hoytech wrote: | > Before smartphones, Flash came pre-installed on approximately | every single consumer computing device except for home consoles. | No matter what kind of computer, operating system, or browser | your cousin was running, you could just send her a link to a | funny cartoon or game and it would Just Work(tm) | | That was not my experience with Flash on Linux or BSD. It was a | huge pain getting it to work and keeping it updated. | | Anyone remember having to load a Flash app just to see a | restaurant menu? I'm very happy you don't need Flash anymore to | browse the web. | cupofcoffee wrote: | Seems a bit of a far-fetched conclusion from a black swan. | | Browser games allow you to fast prototype but people don't care | at all whether the game is Flash or instant, written in C++ or | you need to install some software to play it. The only thing they | care about is the game good. | | Flappy bird had insane success as well, why not claim the future | of games is mobile? | lilgreenland wrote: | I'm secretly hoping for this type of success for my game. | Realistically, I'm just glad I have a creative outlet. | | https://landgreen.github.io/sidescroller/index.html | | It's also free, open source, no ads, no micro-transactions, web | based, no freemium, no data harvesting, no gacha, no crypto | harvesting. | gen_greyface wrote: | this is really good. | ogurechny wrote: | Side note about "instant multiplayer Minecraft": Minetest is as | instant as possible for a native application: you download the | client (about 25 MB), then connect to any server, no matter which | games and mods run there, and have all the needed assets streamed | from it, too. Non-existing nickname is all the identification | player needs, IRC-style. It is even inter-operable across major | versions and forks, at least to some extent. Of course, it has | been this way because it has a typical relatively small and tight | open source community, but, from a cursory look, it is possible | for a public server to have a protected spawn/sightseeing area | with rules and information, then (auto)grant new players who want | to participate various gameplay privileges based on their | progress. | | It doesn't seem that web client built in the same manner is | impossible. What's impossible is, most likely, telling a browser | to give you a gigabyte or two of memory to keep the local world | area, then step aside and forget about it. | hackererror404 wrote: | Sadly there's nothing "instant" about this... Takes a long time | to load and it's pretty clunky once it does. | sktrdie wrote: | Gamedev has got to be the most rewarding type of software coding | there is. It's a type of coding that is much closer to actual | artistic creation rather than engineering. The sheer amount of | creative & engaging stories, puzzles, real-time strategies and on | top of this entirely multiplayerable online allows for an | infinite amount of types of entertaining creations... all made | possible thanks to code. | | Sure there's untapped potential in all kinds of types of | software; hell people are reinventing 2d design (think Figma etc) | & issue management (newly released GitHub issues). But surely | building "yet another react form" feels like coding an already | solved problem. | | What I mean is that gamedev has possibly the most untapped | potential for coders wanting to make something truly amazing, | with a sheer infinite amount of possible creations. | | You're not approaching the creation with the usual "what problem | am I trying to solve" but rather "what's the most fun thing I can | build?". | jokethrowaway wrote: | I agree wholeheartedly; it's also much harder and not very | economically rewarding on average | ChrisRR wrote: | Unfortunately it's not. If you're working on a small 1 or 2 | person game where your work blurs the lines of art and | engineering, you're highly unlikely to be successful. For every | Undertale there are literally hundreds of other indie games | that barely earned a penny | | It only takes a small studio of like 10 people before you're | practically never touching anything creative and are working on | software tools and under the hood functionality just like any | other dev job | hypertele-Xii wrote: | You're thinking of money. The parent poster was talking about | art. If you can _afford it,_ gamedev allows you to blow not | only your own mind, but also the minds of everyone else - | especially new generations who have learned the medium from | birth. | ChrisRR wrote: | Any amount of hobby projects allow to blend software with | whatever your interests are. | | Everyone probably has other hobbies that they could easily | write software for | roenxi wrote: | I dunno, much like how most people aren't artists, I think | most people probably wouldn't get a lot out of game | programming because they just don't have that combination | of creative spark and narcissism to think they can create a | great game. | | Most of the actual fun in programming is that feeling of | ongoing small puzzle solving. | renewiltord wrote: | I had quite a bit of fun many years ago making an | Arkanoid clone that included gravity and a tilting paddle | that would react to the impact of the ball. Only two | people ever played it: my brother and me. | | And I've lost the source code, but I recall it being very | easy to make in Love 2D. | | It was fun, at least. And I'm a huge fan of this kind of | mass low-grade creativity. | wizzwizz4 wrote: | If you still have a binary, LOVE 2D games are reasonably | simple to decompile. | renewiltord wrote: | Fascinating fact. Thank you. I have nothing. But it | should be easy enough to replicate. | simplify wrote: | > Most of the actual fun in programming is that feeling | of ongoing small puzzle solving. | | Not for everyone https://josephg.com/blog/3-tribes/ | derefr wrote: | This seems to also be defining game creation in terms of | money: a "great game", as if something has to be widely | appreciated to be great. | | Artists make art because they feel a need to express | themselves. There are often less-stressful, more | commercial uses for their same talents, but they do art | instead, because there's something nagging on their minds | to be expressed out into the world. (Often an artist-in- | general will learn a new artistic medium just to express | a feeling they don't feel can be expressed with their | current toolset!) | | And nobody ever said the artistic process itself is | _fun_. It 's toil for the reward--the satisfaction--of | _having communicated your thought_ in a way that seems | capable of truly touching other people. Just like the | "petty art" of the prose writing we're doing to each- | other here -- but with much more labor and intent put | into each stroke, such that there is more value to be | wrung out of each moment of experiencing the result. | roenxi wrote: | > It's toil for the reward--the satisfaction--of having | communicated your thought in a way that seems capable of | truly touching other people. | | The programming community is almost exactly the group of | people who believe they can truly touch others by | developing practical software. And programmers are | usually really bad at truly touching others with artistic | games. | | Most people are quite bad at expressing themselves, let | alone most programmers. I think contributing to open | source is probably a greater source of satisfaction for | most than programming games. I've had a hopeless stab at | both, and making a small meaningful contribution was much | more satisfying than expressing myself badly through a | game. | hypertele-Xii wrote: | What about contributing to an open source game? I have | code in Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. | derefr wrote: | > And programmers are usually really bad at truly | touching others with artistic games. | | I think you missed the key words "seems capable of" in my | statement. | | Satisfaction in creating art doesn't come from _actually_ | touching other people 's emotions, i.e. witnessing them | being touched. (People who need that feeling, should best | avoid becoming artists, and instead become _entertainers_ | or _performers_ , where your craft is done "in | communication with" a direct audience.) | | Satisfaction in art comes from when you've polished your | work to the point where _your mental model of other | people_ is touched. It 's actually completely | solipsistic; it doesn't depend on whether any real person | ever sees the art at all. Just whether you _think_ your | target audience (which can even be a fictional character, | or a dead person, etc.) would like it if they ever _did_ | see it. (Art can also be entirely for yourself -- though | works of art of the complexity of games usually aren 't.) | | As such, you can be truly bad at expressing yourself, and | still receive satisfaction from creating art -- as long | as you're also bad at predicting how other people will | react to your art+. | | Luckily for fledgling artists, skill in the craft of art, | and skill in judging art quality, are usually developed | together. So, when starting out, you can be satisfied by | bad art, because you don't yet know it's bad. (Though | this _does_ mean that people who start out as art | _critics_ , have a very hard time of becoming artists, | because they know from the start when they have no inborn | _talent_ for art, and that discourages them from doing | the practice required to develop the _skill_ for art.) | | ----- | | + It could also be that you're bad at the craft of art, | _and_ have a well-calibrated mental model of people, but | you 're just driven to create art for people with | weird/outre/"bad" taste, who are especially moved by | exactly your brand of unskilled art. But that's beside | the point I'm making here. | hypertele-Xii wrote: | > People who need that feeling, should best avoid | becoming artists, and instead become entertainers or | performers, where your craft is done "in communication | with" a direct audience. | | Modern games technology allows this. I know many an | independent developer in tight community with players. | There's this dude who's making this game who emails me | closed beta builds and I think he's an artist. He often | watches streamers in his community playing his own game | and having a laugh with them. It's very personal. He puts | his biggest fans into the game as NPCs, it's adorable. | oreally wrote: | > I think contributing to open source is probably a | greater source of satisfaction for most than programming | games. | | I've never had better satisfaction in games compared to | open-source. The focus on iteration making the games | trumps any jockeying about over features/correctness/'is | this needed' in open source contributions. | hypertele-Xii wrote: | I'm going to save that in my quotes collection. | Beautifully said. | jayd16 wrote: | >It only takes a small studio of like 10 people before you're | practically never touching anything creative | | I've worked at AAA studios on AAA games with 500+ devs and | you still get to play with art and fun ideas. How do you | think they trick kids into spending 12 hour days at the | office? | | There are some that retreat into bank software levels of | detachment but it seems to be the exception, not the norm. | meheleventyone wrote: | > But surely building "yet another react form" feels like | coding an already solved problem. | | > What I mean is that gamedev has possibly the most untapped | potential for coders wanting to make something truly amazing, | with a sheer infinite amount of possible creations. | | Whilst I agree there is a lot of common and drudgey work in | gamedev as well even in extremely creative projects. | larsiusprime wrote: | Author here! | | I have mixed feelings about this. When you do something | creative for a job it takes on an entirely different character | than doing it for yourself. Another thing is that gamedev is | still software coding (among other things), and only a fraction | of what you're doing amounts to the "fun bits" related to | making interesting game design decisions. The majority of it is | endless slog in trying to get collision detection to stop | snagging on corners or figuring out why your fire status effect | is cancelling as soon as it's applied (turns out it's because | fire is cancelling ice without checking for the presence of ice | in the first place, and ice turns enemies wet when it expires, | and wet status cancels with fire status, so setting things on | fire made them wet, which means they're no longer on fire). And | 50 million more thing like this. | | I enjoy it, but then there's also the fact that the industry | itself has a lot of pathologies that "boring" software | development doesn't, lower pay and worse working conditions as | an employee, and extremely turbulent ever-changing conditions | as an independent developer or freelancer. | | Whenever some kid tells me they want to go into games for their | career, I like to trot out the probably-apocryphal story of the | Jewish rabbi who refuses to let a proselyte convert until he's | come to the rabbi three times and been flat refused twice. I | use the same method -- "no kid, you don't want to go into the | game industry for all these reasons." If they keep coming back | despite all that, they at least know what they're getting into. | jimmySixDOF wrote: | Ok but consider the recent interview this week with Unity CEO | John Riccitiello who said: "real-time 3D | content"--a category that includes games and material with | game-like interactivity--will account for almost half of all | visual digital content by the end of the decade, compared | with what he estimates at only about 3% today. [1] | | That's in addition to his estimate that more than 15% of | Unity development today is outside the gamer space. | | Over time I agree with him and think the better part of 3D | UI/UX game design elements will make their way in to | traditional enterprise software and web stacks. They will be | both more functional and beautiful to work with as a result. | | [1] https://www.theinformation.com/articles/unity-ceo- | predicts-a... | chromanoid wrote: | > Over time I agree with him and think the better part of | 3D UI/UX game design elements will make their way in to | traditional enterprise software and web stacks. They will | be both more functional and beautiful to work with as a | result. | | Lol, what better part? Game UI serves the game. UI of | serious applications serves the user. Traditional | enterprise software and web stacks will be inspired by | serious well done consumer software that serves the | consumer and is so pleasant to use that they want this at | work too (see e.g. https://www.se- | radio.net/2021/01/episode-442-arin-bhowmick-o...). Nobody | wants to fumble seriously in inventory screens and go | through click fests that are meant to keep you in-game. | chromanoid wrote: | This. | | 10k games were released on Steam in 2020. In 2021 Q1 there | are 316k games available on iOS. When creating a game is what | you like, it might be rewarding, but the coding work is | usually not very rewarding when it comes to the details. | Especially because game ideas are usually not as original as | most people think... | | When you are not a code monkey, coding is always highly | creative be it games, missile control systems, high frequency | trading, insurance policy management etc. It might be easier | to imagine fun in the idea of coding for a leisure activity, | but in reality it can also feel very shallow. | iamwil wrote: | One thing jumped out at me above that I had a question on: | | With the problem about status effects, how is this typically | implemented? Do the rules for interactions exist within the | game objects themselves, as if-then-else statements? If so, I | can see why that would be error prone. Even if those rules | exist in abstractions like "Burnable" and "Metallic", it's | still hard to see the side effects of changing or adding a | single rule. | | Does anyone ever implement it in a single place, where you | can query for the interactions between the different status | effects? That way, all the rules are in one place, and being | able to query for it, the results would tell you how it came | to that conclusion. If not, how come? | larsiusprime wrote: | I just used it as an example of a bug I had last week and | that I solved in 30 minutes -- the point is not how one | individual bug occurred, but that there are a million | boring technical things to do. You spend most of your time | doing things other than enjoying the fruits of creative | fulfillment. | | A significant amount of my time is not even spent coding, | but doing admin and spreadsheets. | iamwil wrote: | Yes, game dev has a lot of grind to it. It was just that | one example was related to something I've been thinking | about: how come status effects and rules aren't in one | central place to be queried? That way, you can spend 2-3 | mins on it rather than 30 mins, because the system can | just tell you how it arrived at that conclusion. | | But I hear you. 30 mins probably isn't enough frustration | to warrant something like that. What spreadsheets? Like | systemic design in spreadsheets? Or you're doing | accounting? | larsiusprime wrote: | Yeah if you wanna talk architecture I have a bit of YOLO | code that drags on me. | | But actually in this specific case like 99% of my | elemental interaction code is in the same place just as | you recommend! | | In this specific case the problem was entirely that I | added a new rule to make ice decay into wet when it was | removed, but didn't add a check to see if ice had been | applied in the first place before removing it. And of | course, that was all in the elemental interactions file. | 28 of the 30 minutes were spent in just puzzlement why | the fire wasn't applying and checking a bunch of | irrelevant dead ends before I thought to check "oh | obviously it's probably the elemental interaction code, | go check the elemental interaction file." 2 minutes were | spent fixing the actual code. | larsiusprime wrote: | Missed your comment about spreadsheets. Yes! So many | spreadsheets. | | So a bunch of design work happens in spreadsheets, yeah, | that and long form google docs. Then a lot of business | and admin stuff too (if you're an independent dev which | means you're making games AND running a business). | Whether that's accounting or projections or any number of | other sundry things. | jasonwatkinspdx wrote: | So there's nearly as many answers to your question as | there are gamedevs. | | I've seen quite a few use an OO modeling approach. That's | fallen out of favor for good reason. | | Another approach is Entity Component Systems. I suggest | googling for one of the better blog posts on that. | | Another approach is to build the equivalent of a datalog | engine. | | An approach I favor is to have a stack per entity, and as | you parse input events things get stacked up. Then a | processing pass iterates across popping things off the | stack. If you know how MTG rules work it's roughly the | same idea. | | None of these are a panacea, because you can have logical | contradictions in your ruleset that are subtle and only | emerge in very niche situations. | | It's definitely very difficult problem. What you suggest | is similar to what I termed the datalog style. If you've | ever tried to debug a prolog or datalog program, you'll | know that it all being in one file is a trivial concern | compared to the emergent complexity and potential for you | to have misstated your logic or included contradictions. | hypertele-Xii wrote: | Agreed wholeheartedly. | | I'd add that engineers have their place in gamedev as well, | because many artists don't _know_ how to make computers create | worlds. Engineers generate the possibility space where artists | can work. Sometimes, _fast code is needed_ to unlock | capabilities no-one could have pre-imagined of. | ehnto wrote: | I've been loving following the Star Citizen project as | they've just been throwing intense amount of money and work | at really hard problems, due to an almost unbridled scope at | the beginning. I think most game projects would have been | reigned in by publishers or ran out of money by now. | | Whether someone believes the project will succeed or not is | an interesting question, but you can't deny that they've made | great progress at the fringes of a lot of game mechanics. | ehnto wrote: | It's unique in that it lets you create something that is quite | immersive and more tangible instead of ephemeral. It feels more | familiar to working with your hands than any other type of | coding, and pretty much anyone can understand or enjoy it. | | My partner doesn't care that I wrote a really sweet cron job | for collating web orders today, but she can instantly grok how | cool a game idea is and have fun playing. | taneq wrote: | > Gamedev has got to be the most rewarding type of software | coding there is. | | Well sure, when you're doing the fun bits for fun. | | > It's a type of coding that is much closer to actual artistic | creation rather than engineering. | | Unless you're in a team with both artists and coders, which is, | y'know, all of the commercial ones with a chance of success. | | > The sheer amount of creative & engaging stories, puzzles, | real-time strategies and on top of this entirely | multiplayerable online allows for an infinite amount of types | of entertaining creations... all made possible thanks to code. | | It's the game designer who gets to do all this creating, not | the coders. Unless (see point 2) you're in a tiny team hoping | to win the lottery. See also "the kid fresh out of gamedev boot | camp who wants to be a designer and is confused when nobody | wants to join their team because everybody else has already has | their own great ideas for a game which they've been working on | for 10+ years while they also learned to code or model." | | > But surely building "yet another react form" feels like | coding an already solved problem. | | Try building "yet another 3D model loader (that has to handle | the quirks of three different modeling programs and eleventy | different graphics cards)" - it's just as much reinventing the | wheel, but with the added bonus that if you really cock it up | you can hard lock your computer. Or my personal favourite, | "debug this third party open world game engine which is clearly | just a model viewer with a for() loop around it and the object | loading part in a separate thread with zero synchronization." | :D | | > You're not approaching the creation with the usual "what | problem am I trying to solve" but rather "what's the most fun | thing I can build?". | | Sure but 99% of professional game coders don't get to do this. | This interdisciplinary paradise is the domain of hobbyists who | never get paid and of the tiny minority who are there at | exactly the right place and time (and also probably never get | paid.) | | Career traits: Fun, lucrative, attainable. Pick any two. This | applies to gamedev as much as any other line of work. | | This rant brought to you by distant, slightly salty memories of | my brief stint in gamedev. | munificent wrote: | As someone who worked at EA for eight years, I think you are | viewing the world with pretty jaded glasses. | | Yes, most game dev is not a magical utopia of coding whatever | you feel like and watching the magic happen. But it's also | not a horrific grind where you are treated entirely as a code | monkey for someone else's art. | | There is an entire continuum between these points and | different companies and teams will lie at different points on | it. I have worked on games where I was so deep in the bowels | of tools and tech that I couldn't even tell you how the game | was played (maintaining the UI editor for Madden, which was | actually a lot of fun). And I've worked on games where I sat | right next to the designers and artists and had a lot of | influence on the game itself (Henry Hatsworth, where I wrote | the level/animation editor and in-game AI engine). | | I think overall, most game dev jobs do have a few things | going for them compared to other domains: | | * You get a greater opportunity to work on cross-discipline | teams. During my time at EA, I worked closely with artists, | UI designers, producers, technical artists, sound designers, | etc. It was _wonderful_ to not be in a programmer | monoculture. It 's good for the soul to be around people who | think differently. | | * People outside of your work have a more immediate | understanding and appreciation for what you do. There is some | prestige to being a game dev and at the very least most | people can at least visualize a video game. If you work at a | typical non-famous non-FAANG software company, your job is | almost totally invisible. | | * You're working on a game. You might not spend much time | literally _playing_ it, but it 's still more fun when | debugging to poke around a football field or dungeon than a | spreadsheet full or insurance rates or whatever stuff most | typical CRUD devs are dealing with. Game development often | feels concrete and tangible in ways that other software | doesn't. | | But there are some downsides: | | * The market factors the intrinsic rewards above into | compensation, so game dev pays less than other software | fields. The massive number of young people who want to do it | also drives salaries down. | | * The overtime is often awful. | | * A side effect of the above two is a constant brain drain. | Experienced devs age out and leave when they want to start a | family and have sane hours, to be replaced by another crop of | fresh-faced kids who will work for peanuts for the cachet of | being a real game dev. That means there is often a large lack | of software engineering maturity on teams. Tons of spaghetti | code, broken processes, poor estimation, and other self- | inflicted wounds. | | I really enjoyed my time at EA (except for the overtime and | often crappy code), but I'm also glad to not be working full | time in games any more. | cableshaft wrote: | It's rewarding, but also exhausting. Either you put | months/years of your life into something that pretty much no | one plays, so it almost feels like why did you bother (other | than you gained some skills along the way), or it gets some | success and then you get bombarded by neverending expectations | from entitled gamers. | | Among Us: "I definitely burnt out. It was tough because during | all of this, we weren't able to see friends and family. Being | so tired from working, I couldn't even go visit my family | during covid and had to spend holidays alone...That was | definitely the hardest time." [1] | | Minecraft fans getting angry at Notch for daring to take a | vacation I remember, and here's one about a fan getting PISSED | at an update with only one new thing to play with: [2] | | Stardew Valley fans mad for how long multiplayer update took "I | love you ConcernedApe and your game, Stardew Valley, but people | are getting impatient. I am getting impatient. You've had your | vacation, your space and your earnings." [3]. | | Or Shovel Knight "We wanted another Shovel Knight game, but we | didn't want to make it. We're sick of making Shovel Knight | games." [4] | | The book Blood, Sweat, and Pixels goes into this more, | especially for Shovel Knight and Stardew Valley. | | I worked on several games in the industry, a few small free | ones on my own were popular but every game I worked on for a | company failed to be successful or enter the gaming zeitgeist | at all. It almost feels like a waste of my time when that | happens, and often lead to layoffs. I got out of the industry | after the third company in a row where that happened. | | [1] https://kotaku.com/among-us-developers-say-they-burnt-out- | af... | | [2] | https://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/comments/iaeqj/dear_notch... | | [3] https://community.playstarbound.com/threads/rip-stardew- | vall... | | [4] https://www.fanbyte.com/features/shovel-knight-dig- | interview... | nicetryguy wrote: | The romance wears off fast once the ideas are in place and the | tedium sets in. The fun brainstorming and dreaming parts amount | to about 1-2% of the project, then you actually have to build, | draw, tweak, and fix the damn thing. | bitwize wrote: | But oh man, does the high ever hit when you finish building | and tweaking some feature, and your dream gets a little bit | closer to reality. The video game you imagined playing, | sometimes actually in your dreams, sits right there in front | of you... maybe not close to completion but a little bit | closer. And you can share it with your close network of | playtesters a.k.a. friends and family. | chromanoid wrote: | Usually a bunch of indie game developers invest years and by | the end 1000 people buy/play the game... How is that rewarding? | | I would claim it's the most risky type of software coding. And | because of that probably also the most "dirty" way of software | coding... | samkelly wrote: | I've spent like the last 10 years of my life making a few | games that nobody will ever play. I don't feel like the years | were wasted though, because the games were rewarding to build | and stuff doesn't need to make money to be worth the time | spent. | chromanoid wrote: | Sure, but would you support a generic global statement like | this? | | > "Gamedev has got to be the most rewarding type of | software coding there is." | | I am also a game development enthusiast, but I would say | this is the reason why it feels so rewarding. The way of | programming is not the reason, in my opinion. | city41 wrote: | I see where you're coming from, but I strongly disagree since | you said "coding". I actually feel like the coding part of game | dev is quite rote, boring and pretty much totally figured out. | At least, for games that smaller teams or individuals can make. | One of the best games ever made imo, Hollow Knight, was made | with virtually no code at all. They used Playmaker, a visual | game scripting engine for Unity. | larsiusprime wrote: | Believe me there's plenty of rote work non-fun grind work to | be done even with no-code and lo-code engines, I've used | plenty myself. | ArkanExplorer wrote: | I think its difficult to extrapolate this based on the success of | a single game. | | What is clear, is that the 30% commission charged by platform | holders is absolutely stifling creativity and output, in apps and | games. | | Plus, the extra costs from VAT and refunds. | | Friday Night Funkin's chief innovation is that it basically | bypasses this by using Kickstarter to fund production. | ehnto wrote: | It's an insane margin. You still have to pay tax on that at | some point too. You put your heart, soul and dollars into | producing a piece of software and between the platform barons | and the tax man you may not even get 50% of it, depending on | where you live. | mattfrommars wrote: | I agree. And who came up with 30%? It seems to be industry wide | extraction fees. Why stop at 30, why not 50? | ArkanExplorer wrote: | 30% made sense when you were getting white-glove service from | the platform owner, when that platform was actively building | out new features, when there was little competition from | other software, huge growth in customer base, and when | bandwidth and ecommerce generally were still expensive and | difficult. | | Now, the platform owners have dropped all developer support | to basically zero, are just sitting on core systems that were | created 10+ years ago, have no curation, and all of their | fixed and marginal costs have been pushed towards zero. | | You can go into the Steamworks dev forum for example and find | ongoing major platform issues that have been raised for | years, consensus gained from a lot of other devs that they | need to be fixed, and just never addressed or even responded | to by any Valve staff. | flohofwoe wrote: | It's not as simple as declaring "instant games" as the future. | The idea has been around for a long time after Flash got killed. | Both WeChat and Facebook made a big deal about "instant games" | (e.g. see https://www.facebook.com/games/instantgames), but so | far there don't seem to be any breakout hits (at least on FB, | don't know what's the situation on WeChat). | | There seems to be a general disinterest by investors, developers | and gamers, apparently it's very hard to monetize instant games | over a longer period. Even if there are some bursts of | popularity, those games are soon forgotten because people don't | stay around. | | A single game can change that, but nobody knows when this will | arrive and what it will look like. | meheleventyone wrote: | The funding of "cloud gaming" and interest from investors like | a16z as noted right at the top of the article mean it's on a | bit of an upswing in terms of interest. | _dibly wrote: | I feel like a lot of time was spent convincing the reader that | instant games are the future and not explaining the benefits and | potential shortcomings of the area. A significant amount of the | article is filling in background information. I didn't need two | pages on why Apple and Steve Jobs are the worst thing to happen | to instant games, the explanation of how flash games were once | monetized, or a rundown of all the different ways that they (or | indeed any digital service in the modern day) could become | profitable. | | The article starts with a point that there is a huge spectrum | between the arcade-style instant game and modern "full" games but | then never really addresses that gap. They highlight that these | games can be on a maintained third-party streaming service but | then go on to focus mainly on browser games and make points that | don't even apply tangentially to things like Game Pass or | PlayStation Now. | chairmanwow1 wrote: | This article takes a while to get to its point. I'm still not | sure I understand what "instant" means in this context. Also I | find the whole premise pretty claiming a single game => systemic | market shift. | FailMore wrote: | a browser based multiplayer game you can access with a link | ChrisRR wrote: | So the entire point is basically it's a flash game which | doesn't need flash. Where has this person been? | meheleventyone wrote: | Like this for example: https://dotbigbang.com/game/ee5d9ed9e9 | 684cad865cf04cd425406a... | | Although I'd argue that instant games don't necessarily need | to be multiplayer. For example Friday Night Funkin isn't | right now IIRC. | sofixa wrote: | Well, almost everything on Stadia matches that definition. | You need to create an account and buy the game ( bar the few | free games like Destiny 2 and a demo for Hitman WoA), but | it's basically accessible via a link, playable in a browser | and multiplayer when the game is. | meheleventyone wrote: | The point is that instant games are frictionless so having | to create an account and buy the game adds enough of a | barrier that clicking the link -> playing a game has a | significant drop off in terms of people who will actually | play the game. | | Stadia could do that but hasn't yet. A really strong demo | for them would be to let you click a link and be playing a | AAA game immediately. But as the article notes you have a | scale problem immediately because you still need to run | expensive hardware to support that. | sofixa wrote: | > A really strong demo for them would be to let you click | a link and be playing a AAA game immediately. | | That's what happens, as long as you have an account. | Considering most games are paid, it's entirely reasonable | to expect an account-type barrier to entry. | | From memory, at least some Flash game sites, which is | apparently the baseline, required a login. | stale2002 wrote: | > entirely reasonable to expect an account-type barrier | to entry. | | Yes, we can expect there to be a barrier to entry. | | But that is what I would expect this to fail. | | I can both expect that stadia will have this significant | barrier, and also think that it is going to be harmed | significantly by it. | larsiusprime wrote: | The successful ones (particularly Kongregate) didn't | require a login, they let you play for free as an | anonymous user, and then tried to incentivize you to | login after the fact. Requiring it up front cuts out an | enormous amount of users. | meheleventyone wrote: | Right but a demo is trying to convert people from not | being a user into being a user. If you require an account | to run the demo you are cutting A LOT of potential | customers out of your acquisition funnel. You are in | effect saying "become a user to see if you want to be a | user". If you can only give that experience to people | that have made an account AND bought a game that's even | more you've just dropped on the floor. Whereas dropping | someone right into the demo/game/product with no | obligation shows them the value proposition immediately. | | This doesn't just apply to games, building a new | programming language? Embed a web playground with your | hello world example in the landing page! | Jakobeha wrote: | I really wish internet games were the future. Both from the | producer and consumer side - as someone who tried to make games | before, and currently owns a low-end mac (great for productivity | but bad for gaming) - I really believe the ideal is web-games | that are easy to start and work everywhere. | | The issue is that at least in my experience web game engines | _suck_. JavaScript is slow and awful for large-scale software, | even today. Frameworks which compile into JavaScript and WASM | (e.g. libGDX) compile incorrectly, leading to obscure awful bugs, | and they 're still slow because JS. Your best bet is a general- | purpose game engine like Unity or Godot which can export to web, | but still, the web export is often broken, missing features, and | just slow. Even tiny games I've played on itch.io either don't | load or play super slow, and sometimes that might be the dev's | fault, but often I think it's the state of web-gamedev in | general. | socialist_coder wrote: | > Your best bet is a general-purpose game engine like Unity or | Godot which can export to web | | Totally disagree about Unity. Unity's web export is awful. If | you want a good web game you need to use a web-native engine | like Pixi, PlayCanvas, or Phaser. I guess the Haxe & Godot | tools are good too but I've never used them. | | The huge advantage with using a Javascript/Typescript based | game engine is that you can use the latest & greatest build | tools like Webpack, and the latest ECMA/javascript features, | instead of some proprietary tool chain that hasn't seen a major | updated in years. | | I think mobile game companies who have only been using Unity | and have all their games built in Unity will have a hard time | transitioning to mobile because you just cannot use Unity to | make good web games. You have to rebuild them in a new engine. | | But, if you use a web game engine, you can still target mobile. | So, I would not use Unity for any new mobile/web game projects. | jedberg wrote: | > My 15-year old nephew who isn't part of the game development | scene almost certainly noticed this game before I did. Just think | of all the other trends you and I are likely missing no matter | how close we think we're paying attention. | | People like to make fun of me when I talk tech with teens (TM?). | This is exactly why. Because as much as we think we're on top of | all the latest trends, sometimes we're just too not hip. | jsnell wrote: | Is FNF really so significant that it was important not to miss | it? Looking at Google Trends, it's already peaked, and peaked | at far less interest than say Among Us or Fall Guys. It does | appear have more longevity than Fall Guys did. But right now I | just don't see either the cultural or commercial significance. | | https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=roblox,among%20us... | | (But I hadn't heard of the game before now, so maybe dismissing | it is just a bias on my part.) | jedberg wrote: | > Is FNF really so significant that it was important not to | miss it? | | Probably not, but I also learned about Roblox, Snapchat, | Instagram, and TikTok from teens long before any of those got | popular in my usual bubbles. In part because when I would | tell my usual bubble about them, they were dismissed as fads. | ipaddr wrote: | vsco.co is the next bubble. | jedberg wrote: | Funny you mention that. I have in fact heard about that | one from some teens as well. Don't use it much though, | since I don't really know anyone on the platform. I still | haven't figured out how it differs from Instagram, other | than the ownership of the site. | andredz wrote: | Maybe it is because I was a teen then, but I heard about | vsco a long long time ago (unless ~6/7 years is not | long). I thought it was already on its death throes | though, barely anyone I know uses it. | MeinBlutIstBlau wrote: | I think it's not so much that you're not "hip," but you aren't | concerned about the minutia most kids are nowadays. My 2nd | cousin told me recently he hated reading in school because | "there was no sound." It was incredibly eye opening to me to | see how starkly different growing up between us was. Not that | I'm some enlightened millennial, but often in the earlier days | of the internet, reading and images were all we had. Now as a | more tech inclined individual, I see what the current | generation appreciates as annoying and excessive. | | Perhaps market research should interview 10-16 year olds more | often? | larsiusprime wrote: | Yup. I feel like a bunch of stuff is absolutely invisible to my | industry bubble until it has a standout hit that makes a ton of | money or starts getting talked about by someone everyone knows | and trusts and then becomes impossible to ignore. And the | lesson then should not be that "wow this is a perfectly | replicatable formula" but, "maybe some of our assumptions are | wrong." | | Which makes me further think -- how many OTHER transformative | trends are we missing, because they AREN'T money or media based | and thus destined to _eventually_ pierce our industry bubble? | [deleted] | the_lonely_road wrote: | Holy shit its like this author just experienced his very first | 'cultural wave' phenomenon and then decided that literally every | small detail around it was some critical reason for its success. | | There are probably labs out there they have figured out how to | send 'viral waves' out into the economy and profit from it, but | thats all this is. Game of Thrones was an example, The Walking | Dead was an example, Fortnite was an example, and Roblox was an | example. Those examples highlight two very different viral | culture waves. The kids playing games and the grown ups watching | tv, but they highlight the exact same phenomenon. | | As for this game itself its probably exactly like Among Us and | the million other little indie games like it that shot up in | popularity 'out of know where' except it wasn't out of nowhere at | all. It was a couple dozen HIGHLY interconnected Twitch streamers | all getting into the same space and then 100's of follow along | mid tier twitch streamers hoping to ride the new bandwagon to | higher viewership. | larsiusprime wrote: | Hey there author here! | | > It was a couple dozen HIGHLY interconnected Twitch streamers | all getting into the same space and then 100's of follow along | mid tier twitch streamers hoping to ride the new bandwagon to | higher viewership. | | I have access to the traffic stats behind FNF and this is | demonstrably false. There was a lot more to it. Twitch was one | small part of this phenomenon. | | I'm happy to welcome critique but could you please be less | dismissive and instead make a more substantive critique? | stragio wrote: | I think your article is great, hope you are right and align | with your worldviews. Is @Tocelot your Twitter account? | larsiusprime wrote: | No I'm @larsiusprime. @tocelot is the a16z partner I quote | at the beginning, but I'm not associated with that or any | other VC firm. I'm an independent game developer and | consultant with a blog. | derefr wrote: | > It was a couple dozen HIGHLY interconnected Twitch streamers | all getting into the same space and then 100's of follow along | mid tier twitch streamers hoping to ride the new bandwagon to | higher viewership. | | I mean, until Twitch is no longer such a big thing, that sounds | like you're describing a likely repeatable formula for success: | make a game that will catch on amongst these couple-dozen | Twitch influencers. | | And it seems like a good property for such a game to have, | would be a really low barrier to entry, to entice them into | trying it in the first place, when _they_ don 't see anyone | else playing it. | | As such, I can see the validity in the argument in the article | is making -- and I'm not sure why you think it's a "small | detail." | | It's not like that set of Twitch streamers has ever made a game | go viral that _didn 't_ have this "pick-up-and-play-ability" in | some way or another. The property is just created in different | ways for different games. | munificent wrote: | _> a likely repeatable formula for success: make a game that | will catch on amongst these couple-dozen Twitch influencers._ | | Sure, but like half the world's game devs are all trying to | do exactly that right now. | | Similar to the stock market, game development is an novelty- | based ecosystem. That means that there is essentially no | long-term repeatable formula for success. Any formula will | eventually discovered by others, over-exploited, and players | will lose interest and go elsewhere. | shuntress wrote: | The problem isn't the formula (good enough game, readily | accessible, noticed by players.) | | The problem is that last step, "be noticed", is extremely | hard and mostly based on luck/money. | | And this is 100% "long-term repeatable" if you can | continually deliver "good enough" games after being | noticed. The obvious example is Call of Duty. | derefr wrote: | If the set of Twitch influencers is relatively static, | presumably you could just cater to the exact peculiarities | of their tastes in games to the exclusion of the wider | market, the way that some authors try to cater to the exact | peculiarities of the tastes of a particular editor. | saturdaysaint wrote: | A lot of this article (possibly the majority?) is actually | spent explaining why Instant Games haven't taken over the | world, despite some success stories. This is why he goes into | some detail on Apple - if they can't go on iOS devices, there's | a real ceiling on the trend. | | I really enjoyed this article, but it's a bit of a discursive | brain dump, which is why I think a lot of the criticisms have | essentially been misrepresentations of the actual article | contents. | jchw wrote: | If your only critique of the article is _why_ FNF got popular, | then that seems like a really minor critique overall. But | honestly, comparing it to Among Us makes me doubt you on this. | First of all, simply pointing to Twitch streamers is giving | them too much credit. Twitch streamers may be early to trends, | but seldom do they start them alone. Secondly, Among Us is | particularly good for streaming because it pushed a lot of | streamers with pre-existing relationships to stream the game | with _eachother_ , and lead to interesting content for that | reason alone. | | I will gladly agree that Twitch streamers may have helped boost | Among Us out of its slump. I also agree that it helped FNF too. | But you know what else helped Among Us and FNF? Millions of | views on YouTube, Tiktok, fanart on Twitter/NG/elsewhere, mods | across the entire Internet, etc. and where it's fair to say | that Twitch could've been the catalyst for Among Us, saying | that it is the catalyst for FNF without further evidence seems | patently unfair. Big platforms like TikTok and YouTube are more | than capable of driving viral sensations that are bigger than | the entire audiences of "a couple dozen highly interconnected | Twitch streamers." (For clarification I regularly watch a | couple of the Twitch streamers you are likely grouping into | this category so yes I do know how large their audiences are.) | danShumway wrote: | > mods across the entire Internet | | I think Among Us's mod support is underrated for a multi- | player game, and I think it did a lot to improve the game's | longevity. | | I'm hesitant to make broad sweeping claims about the game, | but I agree that looking purely at streamers is probably | underselling its success, even though streamers did obviously | play a big role in bringing it to more people's attention. | jchw wrote: | Agreed. I have only checked out a handful, but even just | Town of Us and Crewlink completely transform the | experience, not to mention countless neat aesthetic and | other misc mods. (I remember a Korean user went fairly | viral when they posted a full Sanrio-themed reskin of the | game.) Having a game that can be modded is a real win/win. | | What's so weird is it feels like this lesson should've | already been learned. Several prominent franchises were | born as mods to other games, and TF2 even went as far as | simply making mods part of the actual game and compensating | modders in the process... Yet it feels like a lot of this | is left on the table in the walled garden world of gaming. | Marazan wrote: | The post isn't about FNF, it's about the Flash Game eco system | and what was lost and now slowly being refound. | | And a high quality "Fuck you Steve Jobs" as well. I'm here for | any posts that says "Fuck you Steve Jobs" | larsiusprime wrote: | Author here! | | Couple of things -- despite the admittedly click-baity headline, | I'm not 100% convinced that "instant games" are definitely the | future. Nobody can predict the future with certainty. And as I | state up front in the article FNF itself is obviously an outlier | which should not serve as a model to try to replicate step by | step. | | My main point is that instant games -- which is to say browser | games -- are actually already the past and the present (even if | they're not necessarily taking over everything else just yet), | and most people are unfamiliar with a bunch of weird details | about how they began in the first place. | | The article's actual thesis is not necessarily to prove to you | that instant games are the "wave of the future" but to point out: | | 1) Even games industry insiders are often massively out of touch | with trends | | 2) Browsers games represent the _potential_ to disrupt existing | gatekeepers and platforms | | 3) Browser games had a weird and unique ecosystem that | represented a 'minor league' of games that provided an on-ramp to | further professional success, _especially_ for international | developers, and we 've largely lost that today | | 4) Modern platforms want to own the entire stack top to bottom | (editing tools, playback engine, discovery, and marketplace), but | trying to capture so much value yourself and tightly controlling | the environment can actually stunt the ecosystem | | And yeah the article is really long. I'm chronically unable to | write short articles when I have a lot to say and that means I'm | taking the sincere risk of boring some of you to death while you | wait for me to get to the point, sorry about that! | Marazan wrote: | The one thing I think you missed from explaining the economics | of the old Flash Game scene was Mochi. | | By getting you the pre-roll ads Mochi gave you a way of being | rewarded on a per-play basis which A) bypassed the risjk of up | front sponsorship number B) allowed absolute total amateurs to | not even bother with sponsorship and just dump a game with | Mochi ads onto the net, if it took off they would rake in the | bucks. m Add on top of that the Mochi microtransaction | infrastructure and I'd say Mochi was as important, if not more, | than FGL for boosting the ouptu of games. | larsiusprime wrote: | Mochi was mentioned in the article, but yes, I did gloss over | it, thanks for bringing it up. I used Mochi ads myself! | OmarShehata wrote: | I disagree that Mochi was as or more important than FGL. | Perhaps this was true for developers who released a lot of | games and could rack up consistent significant monthly views | across on all their games. | | I remember a big question was always: should you self sponsor | if you can't get high enough bids for sponsorship? If they're | willing to pay $5k to put their ad on your game, why | shouldn't you capture that revenue yourself? | | The answer was for most developers it was difficult to | capture that value without some kind of centralized game | portal where you could redirect this traffic and keep those | users coming back. So even if the sponsor was paying $5k and | still making money off that game, it was unlikely you could | make anywhere near that amount just from Mochi ads or | similar. | Marazan wrote: | Oh for serious game devs FGL was absolutely the most | important monetisation stream by some distance no doubt. | | But for people just starting out and, say, knocking out a | game in a weekend, unpolished, raw Mochi was incredible. | With zero effort (beyond spending a couple of weekends | making games) I had 3 figure annual revenue from games that | would have never ever gotten sponsorship. | | If you were a 16 year old hacking stuff together in Flash | that would have been hugely motivating. That's would drove | the sheer volume and variety of Flash games. | | If I could apply the knowledge I have now back to past me | I'd have easily been able to get 4 figure annual revenue | swiftly and that would have let me focus on putting the | polish on FGL level serious sponsorship games. ( I did make | one full stand alone game and it flopped, I've made more | money from people playing the demo than from full game | purchases) | jayd16 wrote: | We had instant browser games and the gold rush of mobile ate | them. The AppStore stack had better discoverability and native | performance...a lot of benefits, really. Why would we all go | back to the browser? | | I feel like a large leap is being made that instant games will | win back users when their instant-ness didn't keep them in the | first place. | | I don't feel like any catalyst is explored enough to be | convincing. | utzucto wrote: | I think the increasing difficulty of being discovered on | ever-growing platforms like the App Store is/will push more | games to other places (though I don't know how instant-game | platforms will build userbases like native app stores). | | Also, I don't think people moved away from instant games | because the instantness wasn't enough. I think it's more | about what devices kids (and people in general) are using for | everything else; people who are playing mobile games now | probably would have been playing flash games a few years ago. | I'm kindof spitballing here, but I wonder if all the | chromebooks that are used in schools now are or will be | pushing kids back to online games platforms like the old | flash sites | larsiusprime wrote: | > had better discoverability | | I don't agree, particularly in the case of mobile App stores | where the top charts are consistently dominated by the same | few games. | danShumway wrote: | > And yeah the article is really long. I'm chronically unable | to write short articles when I have a lot to say and that means | I'm taking the sincere risk of boring some of you to death | while you wait for me to get to the point, sorry about that! | | Brevity is a good skill, but given the choice between too | concise and too long, too long is probably the better direction | to err. | | I'm always happy to see articles like this on HN. I'm not sure | I agree with all of it, but it's generally pretty thoughtful | and covered some interesting points I hadn't thought about | before. Thanks for writing it! | Dracophoenix wrote: | >> Modern platforms want to own the entire stack top to bottom | (editing tools, playback engine, discovery, and marketplace), | but trying to capture so much value yourself and tightly | controlling the environment can actually stunt the ecosystem. | | If anything, I see modern platforms using more off-the-shelf | and standards based tech rather than reinventing the wheel. It | used to be the case that you'd have to download not just Flash, | but Shockwave, Silverlight, the Java applet plugin, Unity Web | Player, and all sorts of proprietary plugins just to play games | built on whatever proprietary game engine and scripting | language came with it. It was like downloading individual video | codecs in the early 90's before the advent of Quicktime. | Nowadays, you can play fully fledged 3-D games on a Web | Application built with any game engine, any language, on nearly | any browser of your choosing. No plugins needed. I don't think | web games are going to be siloed to particular platforms any | time soon. What I do think is that web games are now competing | with siloed AAA games. And this might be a good thing overall | for competition in that space. For a long time Flash and mobile | games were also-rans simply because of the limited computing | power. Very few were of such caliber either in graphics or | playability as to compete with contemporary installable or | console games and were very often mimicries of those very same | games. In the West, mobile games underwent a revolution with | Angry Birds and Infinity Blade, there hasn't been a killer app | that's reinvigorated the browser game craze of the Y2K era just | yet. But Epic's interest in itch.io might be hinting at an | attempt in that direction. | larsiusprime wrote: | The difference is, that even though Flash was proprietary in | tools (The Flash IDE) and the playback engine (The Flash | Player), what was open was distribution, discovery, and | marketplace. You didn't pay a tax to adobe to distribute your | games and you weren't limited to Adobe.com as the one place | to go for Flash games. To be clear this was not because of | Adobe's benevolence, but their incompetence -- believe me | they tried to find ways to tax Flash, but they just couldn't | figure it out until the horse was out of the barn. And this | was a _good_ thing for the ecosystem. Honestly, Adobe | stubbornly refusing to open source the flash player is one of | the things that cemented its demise. | | Compare that to say, Roblox. If you make a Roblox game, not | only will it only run within the Roblox environment, it is | only able to exist on exactly one website and one app -- | Roblox. Roblox owns the entire stack top to bottom. You can't | take your game anywhere else. | bartwe wrote: | If wasm/webgpu doesn't get too limited due to coinminers, | 'meltdown style' vulnerabilities and platform holders feeling | challenged. | | And some solution for preloading/caching/preinstalling large | (many gigabytes) assets are added. | | Than yeah webgames have a very bright future ahead, assuming a | method of monetization is found. | utzucto wrote: | I like the article, it's got a lot of the same threads that | I've been thinking about recently while developing an iOS app | and a browser game (unrelated to each other). It's also | interesting to learn about how the flash sites I used to play | when I was younger actually made and distributed money. Back | then I just assumed the devs made some cut of the banner ad | money or something. | | As I was reading it, I somewhat agreed with the sentiment I see | in some of the comments around that the article had a bit of | the "old person discovers new trend and concludes its the | future of everything" (which you see a fair amount with VR, on | Stadia/cloud gaming, the "metaverse," and other things you | mentioned FNF doesn't do) but this comment tempers that | feeling. At the very least, I think that this is an interesting | showcase of a project that is successful outside of the big | platforms and I agree that it's a direction that things could | be going in to some extent. | | Speaking about the fact it's free & open source, I think that | people --in this case the games industry people to whom this | doesn't make sense-- sometimes put too much weight on the | decision to publish source code. I think it's about focusing on | what differentiates your product from others, and in this case | it seems like the game differentiates itself with music and | personality rather than complex code, thus bandcamp & | kickstarter. There's probably a lot of software products that | don't gain anything from being closed source, and I'm no | Stallman. | | As a bit of an aside, I appreciate you mentioning the fact that | there's a whole several continents of people who aren't | American, or NA, or English-speaking, etc. and aren't | necessarily talked about when it comes to diversity. Diversity | is often based around US/CAN sensibilities around identity and | other things. Obv very difficult to fully consider the entire | Earth's population in everything you do, but just considering | the fact that not everyone is in the same place or can have the | same powerful hardware/internet connection is worthwhile. I'm | absolutely not perfect in this regard either. | | I wonder if the increasing use of chromebooks in school | (revealing my US bias) is/will push this trend forward as well. | I don't use chrome, so maybe there already is an ecosystem of | games in the chrome app store. | larsiusprime wrote: | Yeah so to clarify my bit about open source I have two | points: | | 1) It's made FNF very easy to mod, and these mods drive a lot | of viral engagement with the game. If you scan social media | you'll see that this is what keeps the community excited and | engaged when the authors themselves are not putting out | updates. | | 2) I mention it because many people see being open source as | a liability because of concerns about cloning. Seeing a FOSS | game like this pull in literal millions shows that at least | in this one case, FOSS games aren't literally doomed to | failure _because_ of being FOSS, is all. | | So my position is, no actual players care that you have a | github repo with source available, unless that actually | affects them somehow, and in FNF's case I argue it does | affect them by enabling the community to keep making more | weird content for the game (though it could be achieved in | other ways, like using a modding API like | [polymod](https://github.com/larsiusprime/polymod), which it | has been integrating with recently). | mysterydip wrote: | I've recently switched back to html5 gamedev for my hobby | projects and it's been great for online collaboration and rapid | prototyping. | | Being rid of the hoops of app store submissions, being able to | update at any time, and play on nearly any device has been very | freeing. | ch00se wrote: | Great article! Thanks so much for talking about FGL. I'm one of | the co-founders, and helping Flash developers and portals was | definitely a special time that I remember fondly. | mrkramer wrote: | The future of gaming is cloud gaming. Moore's law is our friend. | collaborative wrote: | I have been downvoted for saying this before but I will say it | again | | Indeed, the money should flow from app stores to developers and | not the other way around | | Developers provide value to their platforms. Developers don't | need them except for the fact that they enforce a monopoly on | distribution (iOS) | | The day is coming when platforms will have to reward content | creators based on usage metrics or simply up front. Platform | subscriptions, micro payments, or platform ads are the future. | And they will only get cheaper as time goes on | | A ruling forcing Apple to open up iOS to different browsers or | app stores will be the sign that change is coming | mrtksn wrote: | >the money should flow from app stores to developers and not | the other way around | | That's exactly the case and I have receipts to prove it. I have | financial records as proof of money flowing from Apple to my | bank account. | | What's the plan for rewarding the developers? If anything is | broken with the mobile games it's the model where the money | doesn't flow from the App Stores to the developers but | developers need to interrupt the player and make them buy | something so that the developers get rewarded. | | Ads in games are dreadful. | | I'm afraid that if the subscription services for games becomes | the norm, and the payment is based on engagement it will make | mediocracy the norm just like with Netflix. This will make game | development a practice of matching the spec sheet of the | subscription platform you want to be included. If it is like | Spotify, what developers are supposed to do for substitute of | the live performances if their rent is higher than $0.52? | | I never had problem with iAP or pay to play games. | [deleted] | collaborative wrote: | Let users side-load and use as many stores as they want. Or | let them choose an "Apple only mode". Monetization models | will follow that won't be affected by monopolistic practices. | I also think IAPs are ok. But the lack of choice makes | everything feel wrong | | >>That's exactly the case and I have receipts to prove it. I | have financial records as proof of money flowing from Apple | to my bank account. | | Are you sure that money came from Apple and not from your own | users? Don't forget, they chose you. Apple doesn't own them | mrtksn wrote: | I'm not looking forward to pay multiple app stores to | publish my apps. I'm also not looking forward to deal with | multiple implementation details and multiple appstore | guidelines and rules. | | The %30 cut is nothing for the service provided. The only | people I know to suffer from it are the resellers(i.e. | Spotify like services where they redistribute most of the | revenue). | | The multiple store thing is going to be a hell for the | small developers. Apple handling all the legal and | regulatory procedures for selling globally is a great | service stuff since it's something out of the reach for | most small companies otherwise. | | Users who simply can't find the app they need in the App | Store due to the limitations can use Android. | | When there's a opportunity for innovation that is not | possible on iOS because of this, it will happen on Android. | Razengan wrote: | As a developer and a user and a gamer, oh god, no. | [deleted] | colechristensen wrote: | That only happens when app stores are competing for developers | which is very much not the case. There are a million developers | chasing a small amount of potential success, app stores could | impose much more ridiculous conditions and still get more | developers than they could ever want. | | App stores also fund hardware. Ask a consumer if they want a | device 50% more expensive or better terms for developers and | guess what the outcome will be. | | It only changes if there is a lot more competition or | legislated terms for how these companies operate. | somethoughts wrote: | >> App stores also fund hardware. Ask a consumer if they want | a device 50% more expensive or better terms for developers | and guess what the outcome will be. | | What would be interesting is if instead of the Appstore | taking the cut off the top, the Appstore charged developers | based on utilization of different parts of the A13 or M1 | processor. Sort of like an AWS compute pricing. | | If iOS Netflix users are using N million hours of the video | accelerator, then charge Netflix something like N _Cost per | video compute. If an Augmented Reality app users are using N | million hours of ARKit, charge them N_ Cost per ARKit | compute. | | This could lead to more efficient iOS apps and better future | HW roadmaps. | | I'd say apriori the one difference between AWS compute fee | and an iOS compute fee would be that Amazon owns AWS | hardware, whereas Apple sort of doesn't own iOS hardware (i.e | the iOS user does). | Wowfunhappy wrote: | > Ask a consumer if they want a device 50% more expensive or | better terms for developers and guess what the outcome will | be. | | I find the Epic Game Store really interesting in this regard. | While they aren't quite _paying_ developers, they are funding | a lot of games and giving out upfront payments. | | I love it, personally--but it hasn't gone over too well with | users. | collaborative wrote: | App stores aren't competing because.. there is no competition | | Also, I didn't know app stores funded hardware. I thought the | money came from the value created by devs or from the actual | device price. I mean, should my next IAP say "fund the | development of the next iphone". How many consumers will like | that? How do Android manufacturers manage to make hardware | without an appstore? It's not like Apple has billions to | spare to actually make hardware, things must be tight | | Now seriously, none of the above are the issue. The issue is | that the iOS app store should be one of many, and that Safari | shouldn't break html5 functions on purpose to prevent PWAs | | This even spills over to Android because devs in general | aren't going to adopt wasm until it truly can be run cross | platform. Google actually benefits from Apple's protectionist | policies. Microsoft also tried to pull this with IE and we | know what happened. It will happen again (and consumers will | benefit from it). What good is a great device that can only | run few and bad apps? | Andrew_nenakhov wrote: | For a short while, in the beginning, AppStores provided some | value allowing you to select top games in category, which were | actually good. But then SEO guys took notice and all top | ratings are now populated by pay 2 win garbage games which | invest heavily in AppStore optimization. You just can't find | anything these days on Google Play / AppStore other than by | typing a full name of the app. This, of course, relegates these | services to gatekeeper role only, void of any positive benefits | for the developers. | Jakobeha wrote: | This seems to be what Apple Arcade is doing. You pay a | subscription to Apple and get access to curated games with no | ads or microtransactions. Apple pays the developers, although I | don't know how. | | AFAIK it's going pretty well. I don't actually own Apple | Arcade, but the games all look really nice, and no ads or | microtransactions. Maybe someone who knows more can comment. | lotsofpulp wrote: | I do not have time to research to which games are | implementing loot boxes or other gambling mechanics or | showing them ads, so restricting my kids (while they are too | young) mostly to Apple Arcade solves that problem for me. | | Although, who knows, maybe if Apple Arcade is compensating | game makers by how much time is spent playing their games, | then those tactics will be present in Apple Arcade too. | echelon wrote: | It needs to go further. Marketplaces should not be required for | entry into platforms whose market is essentially "everything | you'd do with a computer". Especially if the web is | purposefully hobbled. | | Apple's "protection" is actually just a racket and scheme to | control the flow of money and extract as much as possible. | | iPhones and Androids are computers and web downloads should be | first class. We've been gaslighted into this "nanny state", yet | we do much more dangerous things every day: get into cars, wire | transfer money, go on blind dates, ... | | Open and free computing is not wrong. The powers that be are | trying to tell us that it is so that they can "protect" ( = | control and tax) us. | | Apple App Store and Google Play can still exist and cater to | specific needs. Marketplaces like Itch and NewGrounds do a | better job at what they do than either Apple or Google. If | indie developers want to show up in multiple places, including | their own website, it should be allowed. | Razengan wrote: | > _iPhones and Androids are computers_ | | So are Xboxes and PlayStations | [deleted] | echelon wrote: | Those are toys. | | Nobody needs an Xbox, but they need a phone. | | Also, there are 10000 gaming options (many fully open!). | There are only two phones. | | The iPhone is the internet and the computer for most | Americans. | | Increasingly, all commerce is being funneled through iPhone | and Android. Tim Cook gets a cut of the videos I watch, the | art I buy, the donations I make, the banking I do, the | productivity apps I use, _fucking everything_. Slimy, | greedy assholes. | | They were just in the right place at the right time. The US | government isn't going to put up with them having their | Berlin Wall. They do not get to do that. | | Computing != Tim Cook's bank account. | | So stop defending these extortionist gas-lighters. | Computing and the internet aren't supposed to work this | way. | | Thank you. | [deleted] ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-06-25 23:00 UTC)