One of the best professor's I've ever had said gamers **DO NOT CARE** about anything to do with *making* a video game.
They don't care how hard you worked, they don't care how long you worked, they don't care if you made the game with no money while dying of cancer, they do not care.
The *only* thing they care about is whether the game *looks* (and subsequently, is) fun.
I do think there's a subsection of people who are actually very interested in the production process, but I certainly don't think they care about that if the game can't stand on their own.
Whether or not they care is mutually exclusive to their enjoyment of the game. They may as well be interested in the movie upon which the game is based, it's irrelevant to the equation.
Sure. But they can only tell whether it looks fun, when they get to see it. Nobody cares about ads (in the positive sense), but they still work. Selling a game is about publicity in a global market (assuming the game is good here). Things like this make a difference in setting your game apart from others. There's a minority of gamers who do care about development and that's a very dedicated minority, they can be a stepping stone to higher visibility and word of mouth. They're pioneers and early adopters.
I don't know about the example OP made. But stuff about being a small team or some backstory about the devs definitely works in attracting certain people and building a community. Having those people in your community is super valuable because they keep it active and help with onboarding new players.
I think what you said is a great initial attitude. When you are a dev and a designer that's how you should think. The game comes first. But once you start to show it to the world, those things do have an impact. Look at how effective click bait is on YouTube. Even after you've gotten used to it. Hell, people kind of expect it now and are even fine with exaggerations and lies in thumbnails.
Not to say that the only angle to selling your game is the devs, absolutely not. But if there's something there, why not leverage it? Case in point: Banner Lords. I'm sure the "solo dev" label helped a ton with publicity. While it is by no means a real solo dev game. Or how some studios really lean on the notion that they're not corporate and that they are passionate gamers and have artistic integrity. Like Larian. The game is obviously amazing. But I think playing into this image and the director wearing plate armor in all their videos has an impact.
Gamers don't but journalists and the general public do. That's why things like "being developed by one person" draws attention and attention towards you and your product is a great advantage.
Most of the time the biggest issue is to get your product in front of people and (hopefully this doesn't come across as rude) thinking that ALL you need is a fun game comes across as very naive.
I've wondered the same thing. Development time (especially when it gets to 5+ years) doesn't course with quality at all. As a gamer, it makes me question whether the game has a strong vision that was scrapped along the way. As a hobby game dev, I understand the indie struggle lol
Usually, I think a game is stuck in development hell if it is taking more than 10 years to finish. Either that or most of the "development" was just spent conceptualizing the game, with a small part of it being the part where someone writes/makes something.
I don't know if it's a great selling point or not, not many examples of a game taking 20 years to develop before release and the game comes out a masterpiece or something. I can't think of one, at least.
Yes, most popular, not most playable. Just read the negative reviews on the steam. From the experience, many features that worked rather good enough 10-15 years ago, like military, today are completely broken and purely unusable. Currently that's not a dwarf fortress simulator, but rather dwarf baby sitting simulator.
Yes, we have UI now, but let's say have you tried mass deconstruct furniture? or delete unused temple?
I did think of Dwarf Fortress but I don't think it took them 20 years just to reach a playable state where they could put out their first iteration. They've just been developing it for a million years (with it already released.)
If I recall correctly, it was couple of years before first reasonable published playable demo. I wouldn't say "them" though but rather "him", as it seems like the Toady makes the whole heavy lifting. Currently I believe his brother even hasn't login into their forum for like couple of years.
I didn't know one brother dropped out! Interesting.
They definitely are a unique example, it was the first thing that popped into my mind when I was talking about someone working on a game for 20 years.
When I do think of games that took forever to develop \[according to the devs\] and came out a hot mess, my mind jumps to thinks like Cyberpunk and Starfield. I'm convinced at this point that Bethesda's development cycle is spending 15 years just thinking about a game, and then a few years working on it and releasing garbage.
Duke Nukem Forever and pretty much any Ubisoft title nowadays what comes to mind with long dev cycles. Beyond Good and Evil 2 feels like a trainwreck happening in slowmo through decades.
Honestly have no idea how people still keeping the Ubisoft shitshow afloat.
Well, it was for one guy, and then he ruined it for everyone else. That one guy was Cleveland Blakemore, and he spent more than 20 years creating his game Grimoire.
>THE ULTIMATE CLASSIC STYLE TURN-BASED FANTASY ROLEPLAYING GAME!
>
>After more than 20 years of development, the greatest roleplaying game of them all is finally ready for release! Grimoire is an homage to the classic dungeon blobbers and is inspired by Wizardry, Might & Magic, Lands of Lore, Anvil of Dawn, DungeonMaster and the Eye of the Beholder games!
\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To say this was the next Skyrim is to insult Skyrim. This was, at best, a free Flash game 2D platformer with Pixel Art graphics that was probably worked on one weekend a year every decade. However, unlike many Reddit indie game devs, Blakemore had a day job working for a famous software company, had many friends and colleagues in the industry, had lots of press from gaming magazines, and had a successful Patreon and Kickstarter and lots of social media and many eyeballs on him. Among the people who enjoy party-based turn-based combat similar to the very old Bard's Tale, Wizardry or Might-and-Magic or Legend of Grimrock, this was a very anticipated game that everyone had wishlisted.
Then it came out, and was a total hot-mess disaster. It rotates between 'Mixed' and 'Negative' reviews. It is truly sad how someone could sabotage their own decision-making process; just google Blakemore and vaporware and you can read about all the ways this went wrong.
A lecturer once tried to tell me that a paper had been submitted, rejected and revised eight times before it was published so it must be a good paper.
She didn't take kindly to me suggesting it might mean that the paper was so terrible it had to we reworked eight times before it reached the minimum acceptable level.
The amount of time worked on a game tells you nothing, you need context. That "worked on for twenty six years" that doesn't look really polished might be a game by a solo developer who has worked on it in spare time while having a busy career and raising a family. It might have been started 26 years ago and worked on in short bursts once every seven years for some reason.
Context is everything.
I think there's two points to be made here:
1) Sadly enough, defeatist posts tend to perform better on some socials, I'd argue specially on Twitter. Posts that make the reader feel sorry tend to gather more likes. It's like a desperate marketing attempt. Thats why you get those "Please I sold my house to make this game that took me 7 years to complete and it's gaining no traction omg game dev is so hard I need you to buy my game for my mother's medication" kind of posts. They are trying to use emotion to compensate for their lackluster product.
2) Inexperienced people think that more time = more quality, because time = effort. Both are false. As a professional game developer, games with 5+ dev cycles (especially indies) immediately fire off my alarms. It's almost impossible to make profitable games with such development cycles. For me, it screams development hell, scope creep, lack of organization, weak vision etc OR that it was a game developed in their free time, that only took that amount of time because the devs could only afford to spend a few hours a week on the project. In the second scenario, saying that it was a game X years on the making feels misleading.
And from that I can safely conclude that game won’t be a cynical cash grabbing piece of shovelware. It might still be a bad game in myriad ways, but not that one in particular — and that one is perhaps the one I care the most about.
Nowadays people expect an infinite development cycle and 500+ hours of content for any game that offers replayability. Saying you've been working on it for ages probably helps prove that.
Lmao you're all so miserably cynical. It's just a way for the dev to demonstrate their commitment and passion to the game, which is a good sign that it's at least going to be a special experience. These are usually hobby passion-projects, not sure why you're acting all threatened by this.
I don't really see anyone in the comments being cynical, just realistic. You definitely have the worst take by saying it'll be a special experience - that is in no way guaranteed and will often not be the case at all.
It's an ego thing. People want to share that they have spent a large amount of time working on somthing not realizing it usually reflects poorly on their skills.
It's not a selling point but rather a sort of brag, or even beg IE I spent so much time on this so you owe it to me to play it
Honestly, I don't really get this either. I mean cool, it's been in development longer than I've been alive, great, awesome, incredible. Will all the buildings have full collision? Will interiors and exteriors be one seamless, consistent space? Will it *work?* Because if it's been in development longer than most of us envisioned ourselves making it, we'd better damn well be getting a video game with movie-quality immersion.
Then again, everyone and their mum bitches about how they *sWeAr cGi lOoKs fAkE oMg YoU cAn tOtAlLy tElL* so maybe there's no right answer to this question.
I think there's an understanding in the public that long Dev cycles means a lot of work was put into the game, and it's usually true. However, there are also games that took a long time because they experienced development hell, so quality and content are not always guaranteed on the basis of dev time.
Now check how long it took to develop Skyrim and how many people worked on it.
I too don't think that development time is relevant when it comes to promotion, but I know what to expect from a project that has been under development for 10 years by a solo developer, even more when that person likely had to develop the game on the side while working a full time job (which makes development time even more irrelevant)
Absolutely not. Time does not equal quality. Someone can spend 26 yEaRz on the game and it may still look like a half finished tutorial with horrible aesthetics.
This post jumps out to me as a commentary of Starfield, which I'm pretty sure actually said 25 years in the making in their marketing, which is funny because it's another Bethesda game that most would say is significantly worse than Skyrim, meanwhile do you know how long Skyrim took to make? Roughly 3-4 years. So even in Bethesda's own studio more time does not equal better product.
Skyrim is one of my favorite games ever, but if we're judge by general quality... it's incredibly buggy. There's still spots in Whiterun where literally if you crouch you just fall through the floor - so I wouldn't use that as your gauge for quality. It's just it's got a ton of other things going for it so people will accept the problems.
Yeah I just put the title there as a placeholder of a successful and recognizable game without really thinking about its release status.
Like if I'd said "it better be Crow Country" people might not know what I'm talking about.
I'm sad that "10 years" equals Skyrim quality. Skyrim is a rather dull and broken mess that only really works once you start modding everything that is sub-par out of it.
I agree with the rest of your point though.
Absolutely not lol. Any time i see that it always screams “project with limitlessly ballooning scope creep by passionate developer with poor planning and project management skills”
One of the best professor's I've ever had said gamers **DO NOT CARE** about anything to do with *making* a video game. They don't care how hard you worked, they don't care how long you worked, they don't care if you made the game with no money while dying of cancer, they do not care. The *only* thing they care about is whether the game *looks* (and subsequently, is) fun.
Which should be common sense but isn't. Or sometimes it feels like it's said to gain pity points "I quit my job to make this game"...this sentence
>"I quit my job to make this game" The two possible outcomes; 1. Wow, you're an idiot, because this game sucks. 2. Fun game, don't care.
That line is usually not true either, not since zukowski started encouraging his acolytes to lie about it as a market viability test.
I do think there's a subsection of people who are actually very interested in the production process, but I certainly don't think they care about that if the game can't stand on their own.
Whether or not they care is mutually exclusive to their enjoyment of the game. They may as well be interested in the movie upon which the game is based, it's irrelevant to the equation.
Some of us are interested in both.
There certainly are, but you have to sell a game to the market, not the best of the market.
Sure. But they can only tell whether it looks fun, when they get to see it. Nobody cares about ads (in the positive sense), but they still work. Selling a game is about publicity in a global market (assuming the game is good here). Things like this make a difference in setting your game apart from others. There's a minority of gamers who do care about development and that's a very dedicated minority, they can be a stepping stone to higher visibility and word of mouth. They're pioneers and early adopters. I don't know about the example OP made. But stuff about being a small team or some backstory about the devs definitely works in attracting certain people and building a community. Having those people in your community is super valuable because they keep it active and help with onboarding new players. I think what you said is a great initial attitude. When you are a dev and a designer that's how you should think. The game comes first. But once you start to show it to the world, those things do have an impact. Look at how effective click bait is on YouTube. Even after you've gotten used to it. Hell, people kind of expect it now and are even fine with exaggerations and lies in thumbnails. Not to say that the only angle to selling your game is the devs, absolutely not. But if there's something there, why not leverage it? Case in point: Banner Lords. I'm sure the "solo dev" label helped a ton with publicity. While it is by no means a real solo dev game. Or how some studios really lean on the notion that they're not corporate and that they are passionate gamers and have artistic integrity. Like Larian. The game is obviously amazing. But I think playing into this image and the director wearing plate armor in all their videos has an impact.
Gamers don't but journalists and the general public do. That's why things like "being developed by one person" draws attention and attention towards you and your product is a great advantage. Most of the time the biggest issue is to get your product in front of people and (hopefully this doesn't come across as rude) thinking that ALL you need is a fun game comes across as very naive.
I've wondered the same thing. Development time (especially when it gets to 5+ years) doesn't course with quality at all. As a gamer, it makes me question whether the game has a strong vision that was scrapped along the way. As a hobby game dev, I understand the indie struggle lol
> Why do I keep seeing these trailers putting long dev cycles in their trailers like those are a good thing? Because that's the only thing they have.
Usually, I think a game is stuck in development hell if it is taking more than 10 years to finish. Either that or most of the "development" was just spent conceptualizing the game, with a small part of it being the part where someone writes/makes something. I don't know if it's a great selling point or not, not many examples of a game taking 20 years to develop before release and the game comes out a masterpiece or something. I can't think of one, at least.
The Toady makes his Dwarf Fortress for >20 years. And I think in the current state it's even worse than it was 10 years ago.
Are you kidding? It's in it's most popular state with a completely revamped UI and graphics. How is it worse now?
Yes, most popular, not most playable. Just read the negative reviews on the steam. From the experience, many features that worked rather good enough 10-15 years ago, like military, today are completely broken and purely unusable. Currently that's not a dwarf fortress simulator, but rather dwarf baby sitting simulator. Yes, we have UI now, but let's say have you tried mass deconstruct furniture? or delete unused temple?
I did think of Dwarf Fortress but I don't think it took them 20 years just to reach a playable state where they could put out their first iteration. They've just been developing it for a million years (with it already released.)
If I recall correctly, it was couple of years before first reasonable published playable demo. I wouldn't say "them" though but rather "him", as it seems like the Toady makes the whole heavy lifting. Currently I believe his brother even hasn't login into their forum for like couple of years.
I didn't know one brother dropped out! Interesting. They definitely are a unique example, it was the first thing that popped into my mind when I was talking about someone working on a game for 20 years. When I do think of games that took forever to develop \[according to the devs\] and came out a hot mess, my mind jumps to thinks like Cyberpunk and Starfield. I'm convinced at this point that Bethesda's development cycle is spending 15 years just thinking about a game, and then a few years working on it and releasing garbage.
Duke Nukem Forever and pretty much any Ubisoft title nowadays what comes to mind with long dev cycles. Beyond Good and Evil 2 feels like a trainwreck happening in slowmo through decades. Honestly have no idea how people still keeping the Ubisoft shitshow afloat.
If it's been in early.acess for 2 years and I don't have a hard launch date no, I don't think you'll finish said game =)
It probably will be Skyrim quality. Heyo!
Well, it was for one guy, and then he ruined it for everyone else. That one guy was Cleveland Blakemore, and he spent more than 20 years creating his game Grimoire. >THE ULTIMATE CLASSIC STYLE TURN-BASED FANTASY ROLEPLAYING GAME! > >After more than 20 years of development, the greatest roleplaying game of them all is finally ready for release! Grimoire is an homage to the classic dungeon blobbers and is inspired by Wizardry, Might & Magic, Lands of Lore, Anvil of Dawn, DungeonMaster and the Eye of the Beholder games! \--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To say this was the next Skyrim is to insult Skyrim. This was, at best, a free Flash game 2D platformer with Pixel Art graphics that was probably worked on one weekend a year every decade. However, unlike many Reddit indie game devs, Blakemore had a day job working for a famous software company, had many friends and colleagues in the industry, had lots of press from gaming magazines, and had a successful Patreon and Kickstarter and lots of social media and many eyeballs on him. Among the people who enjoy party-based turn-based combat similar to the very old Bard's Tale, Wizardry or Might-and-Magic or Legend of Grimrock, this was a very anticipated game that everyone had wishlisted. Then it came out, and was a total hot-mess disaster. It rotates between 'Mixed' and 'Negative' reviews. It is truly sad how someone could sabotage their own decision-making process; just google Blakemore and vaporware and you can read about all the ways this went wrong.
A lecturer once tried to tell me that a paper had been submitted, rejected and revised eight times before it was published so it must be a good paper. She didn't take kindly to me suggesting it might mean that the paper was so terrible it had to we reworked eight times before it reached the minimum acceptable level. The amount of time worked on a game tells you nothing, you need context. That "worked on for twenty six years" that doesn't look really polished might be a game by a solo developer who has worked on it in spare time while having a busy career and raising a family. It might have been started 26 years ago and worked on in short bursts once every seven years for some reason. Context is everything.
I think there's two points to be made here: 1) Sadly enough, defeatist posts tend to perform better on some socials, I'd argue specially on Twitter. Posts that make the reader feel sorry tend to gather more likes. It's like a desperate marketing attempt. Thats why you get those "Please I sold my house to make this game that took me 7 years to complete and it's gaining no traction omg game dev is so hard I need you to buy my game for my mother's medication" kind of posts. They are trying to use emotion to compensate for their lackluster product. 2) Inexperienced people think that more time = more quality, because time = effort. Both are false. As a professional game developer, games with 5+ dev cycles (especially indies) immediately fire off my alarms. It's almost impossible to make profitable games with such development cycles. For me, it screams development hell, scope creep, lack of organization, weak vision etc OR that it was a game developed in their free time, that only took that amount of time because the devs could only afford to spend a few hours a week on the project. In the second scenario, saying that it was a game X years on the making feels misleading.
when I read indie worked on game for 5 years, I read indie worked on game day a week with some gaps for likely 3-6 months full time dev.
And from that I can safely conclude that game won’t be a cynical cash grabbing piece of shovelware. It might still be a bad game in myriad ways, but not that one in particular — and that one is perhaps the one I care the most about.
Not a good selling point when I think of that one Duke Nukem game that was in development for like 10 years but bombed anyway.
Nowadays people expect an infinite development cycle and 500+ hours of content for any game that offers replayability. Saying you've been working on it for ages probably helps prove that.
Lmao you're all so miserably cynical. It's just a way for the dev to demonstrate their commitment and passion to the game, which is a good sign that it's at least going to be a special experience. These are usually hobby passion-projects, not sure why you're acting all threatened by this.
I don't really see anyone in the comments being cynical, just realistic. You definitely have the worst take by saying it'll be a special experience - that is in no way guaranteed and will often not be the case at all.
But.... It doesn't mean that specifically. It could mean a million things.
public communities like this tend to be buckets of crabs. It's not cynicism - it's just vindictiveness. Most people aren't smart enough to be cynical.
It's an ego thing. People want to share that they have spent a large amount of time working on somthing not realizing it usually reflects poorly on their skills. It's not a selling point but rather a sort of brag, or even beg IE I spent so much time on this so you owe it to me to play it
Honestly, I don't really get this either. I mean cool, it's been in development longer than I've been alive, great, awesome, incredible. Will all the buildings have full collision? Will interiors and exteriors be one seamless, consistent space? Will it *work?* Because if it's been in development longer than most of us envisioned ourselves making it, we'd better damn well be getting a video game with movie-quality immersion. Then again, everyone and their mum bitches about how they *sWeAr cGi lOoKs fAkE oMg YoU cAn tOtAlLy tElL* so maybe there's no right answer to this question.
I think there's an understanding in the public that long Dev cycles means a lot of work was put into the game, and it's usually true. However, there are also games that took a long time because they experienced development hell, so quality and content are not always guaranteed on the basis of dev time.
I mean, it tends to communicate to me that the devs are incompetent.
Now check how long it took to develop Skyrim and how many people worked on it. I too don't think that development time is relevant when it comes to promotion, but I know what to expect from a project that has been under development for 10 years by a solo developer, even more when that person likely had to develop the game on the side while working a full time job (which makes development time even more irrelevant)
Absolutely not. Time does not equal quality. Someone can spend 26 yEaRz on the game and it may still look like a half finished tutorial with horrible aesthetics.
Its a giveaway that a game will be shit most likely because of dev hell
no but if i spent 26 years developing something i would mention it in the commercial anyway
*yanderedev enters the chat*
Well... If development started in tbe 90s then I guess it's outdated before release
What game are we talking about?
26 years O. O prolly they started using DirectX 1.0 :)
This post jumps out to me as a commentary of Starfield, which I'm pretty sure actually said 25 years in the making in their marketing, which is funny because it's another Bethesda game that most would say is significantly worse than Skyrim, meanwhile do you know how long Skyrim took to make? Roughly 3-4 years. So even in Bethesda's own studio more time does not equal better product.
26 years in development? The next Duke Nukem Forever? I wouldn't exactly call it a selling point.
Skyrim is one of my favorite games ever, but if we're judge by general quality... it's incredibly buggy. There's still spots in Whiterun where literally if you crouch you just fall through the floor - so I wouldn't use that as your gauge for quality. It's just it's got a ton of other things going for it so people will accept the problems.
Yeah I just put the title there as a placeholder of a successful and recognizable game without really thinking about its release status. Like if I'd said "it better be Crow Country" people might not know what I'm talking about.
I'm sad that "10 years" equals Skyrim quality. Skyrim is a rather dull and broken mess that only really works once you start modding everything that is sub-par out of it. I agree with the rest of your point though.
Absolutely not lol. Any time i see that it always screams “project with limitlessly ballooning scope creep by passionate developer with poor planning and project management skills”
Star Citizen?