Let me just move this project to the "unfinished" folder

popcar2@programming.dev to Programmer Humor@programming.dev – 848 points –
i.vgy.me
33

You don't, you just release it as is and call it Early Access

Just make sure the ingame store is functional so you can sell more add-ons to your vaporware - star citizen is the most profitable video game to ever not be released.

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Don’t forget to shut down your studio days later!

“Due the global economic circumstances, we were forced to make the incredibly tough decision to say good bye to one of our staff members, cutting down the work force by 100%”

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This is why modding games is great. Most of the hard engine and framework stuff is already done for you, so you get to focus on content creation (the "fun" part).

Still difficult, but it requires a fraction of the time and effort that making a game from scratch would take.

weird. for me, the "hard engine and framework stuff" is the fun part, while the content creation is not boring, but just very hard for me :P

I'm so glad I made games as a hobby before I got anywhere close to graduating. Killed that dream real fast. It felt like shit having to play your own game so many times the game lost all meaning and it was hard to gauge if it was even fun anymore.

Reminds me of learning to play a piece of music you love. By the time you master it, it seems all the magic has disappeared.

I tried to teach myself piano. I actually enjoyed it when I was learning it, however I was really enjoying the progress I was making and less about the music I was playing. I wonder though if you get really good with music, you can probably learn and play new pieces much more quickly so maybe the magic won't fade as quickly.

I think you appreciate the piece in a different way, it's less magic and more knowledge.

Game making professionally is more like going all the way to playing a full piano concerto to a paying audience.

Sure you start by learning to play the piano, which is fun, but you also have to compose several pieces that people will like enough that they'll pay to hear them, organise the concert, learn the specifics of public performance and so on.

The cycles were the pieces you compose are shit because they're limited by your limited piano playing knowledge so you go back to learning some more only to find out you learned it all wrong hence your current technique will never be good enough so you have to relearn a lot of what you thought you already knew, is not fun and the having to learn everything else needed to organise the concert because you have to make the whole thing generate $$$ even though all that you really wanted was to play the piano, is also not fun.

For somebody working in a large game company, it's the difference between a hobby and a job, whilst for somebody doing indie game development it's the difference between a hobby and a business.

Is that the same effect like playing a piece you love over and over and suddenly you can't hear it anymore?

I think it's even stronger, because sometimes you'll repeat the same 10 seconds a thousand time to master it until you feel like jumping out of the window.

I’m also glad I did it as a hobby before I started viewing software development as a job. No code from me if there’s no money on the table.

Oh I actually love programming. I just hated writing games it turned out lmao. I love front-end development especially.

This. I started with 2d browser games. Turns out that was way too much work for me and landed in front end. I'm totally enjoying it now

Interestingly it's becoming more common to use front end technologies like React in AAA games, for things like in-game menus, and development tools.

The third half is always the hardest

The fourth half is pretty easy though.

That's only because the fifth half usually is as difficult as two halfs at once.

Just release unfinished DLC for $35, release a "definitive version" even though that was only the first half of the DLC, release the even more unfinished second half of the DLC and still leave a bunch of shit from the base game unexplained. Yeah I'm still salty about something, how'd you know?

Spend 42 hours making a professional quality message queue and entity component system then shelve the project because you got bored.