As I actually get through stuff with my own project ( yay by the way ) and I'm sort of unlocking progress as I go along I thought I'd share a bit of perspective with people who may or may not be considering doing their own project. Don't get me wrong there are some things that will always be perhaps time consuming, but difficult? No it's not impossible, you just have to study the theory behind it pretty heavily. Being someone who's doing it myself I can list perhaps three things I've done with my project or am planning to do which I've considered nightmarish and it's probably not even what most people think of.
AI is a great example of this and why I reeeee about it so much trying to point out how full of shit the discussion surrounding it is and that basically quite a few people pushing AI so much are just scam artists overselling their AI as if it's skynet. What a crock of shit, it's going to get exploited within five seconds and the whole infrastructure will come crumbling down.
Many game ideas I've seen especially the ones recently posted are not complicated to put in. Even though some games are tricky to implement don't get me wrong. Thanks to the wonders of modern software and pathfinding algorithms even getting AI setup is not that difficult.
As an example most turn based games now even stuff like Total War are just using your standard pathfinding for a campaign map. You know those army stacks you're moving around? It's simple point and click behaviour but there's a limit on the distance you can travel per turn. I could probably write up a whole thread on this if people are curious.
I was having something of an epiphany on this as I was playing older Total War games but even the older ones are very much like this. The average 4x strategy game simply relies on button input to make stuff happens. Your army size and what units is all setup using UI buttons much like an inventory, all this shit ties together.
So when you see all these devs trying to circle jerk each other through their propaganda talking about how hard game dev is don't believe them. You don't need to be someone making 100,000 polygon models and have an entire studio of 300 people to make a game, it's a fucking lie. I haven't even gone into the space sim stuff either which in reality the basic controller is just your standard FPS one without gravity depending on how simple or complex you want to make it. I'm convinced it's all something of a scam by them and journalists to get investor and ad money.
Oh and it is absolutely propaganda when they post up the cost of creating a game and the time taken, don't believe a word of it.
High-detailed art is expensive, building systems that are easy to expand in the future, without major bugs, is difficult, and balancing the various elements of gameplay to make a fun experience is a skill that takes lots of experience to develop. All of these things cost time and money.
AAA budgets are mostly wasted, though. There's a few major elements to it:
And plenty more besides, before even factoring in any of the modern culture war crap.
The flipside, indie games, is shit as well because the skills needed to make the game are very different from the ones needed to get people to play it. I said marketing is a waste above, and that's mostly because marketing departments waste shittons of money on counterproductive crap, but marketing is still necessary to get any income whatsoever. Also, the indie space is 99% populated by people who think it's easy to make a fun game.
damn, kinda sounds like were fucked from both ends huh
The good news is, distributed patronage is possible. It's most advanced in the comics space, and it's use in the games space is mostly related to porn games right now. However, if gamers are willing to go back to a subscription model, but subscribe to an independent developer instead of a corporate GaaS account, they can bypass the corrupt institutions and lay a foundation for a better industry. I'm betting my life's savings on it right now as I work on my own project with that ambition.
then you may have an investor on your hands. while i may enjoy my porn games. i do like my gaming games more. (non porn games being gaming games) so what are you working on?
I'm a veteran of the old Heroes of the Storm dev team, and I've hated to see that game abandoned by Blizzard. So I decided to make a better version of it that avoids the technical and design pitfalls that Heroes fell into.
It's early days yet, definitely not presentable for a few months. But we'll see how I and my friends do with it.