too much gamedev advice focuses on making a success. success is such a complicated, often random, and subjective thing. i want more advice on learning from your failures or even openly celebrating failure. destigmatize failure please 🙏🥲 - ThreadSky

alienmelon.bsky.social • 33 days ago

too much gamedev advice focuses on making a success. success is such a complicated, often random, and subjective thing.
i want more advice on learning from your failures or even openly celebrating failure. destigmatize failure please 🙏🥲

Comments

omnia-dev.itch.io•33 days ago

I think what's far more important, especially for the indie game development communitites out there, is to view game development as an art. The focus should be shifted away from the nebulous concepts of success and failure-- and toward creating a game that the creators can and should be proud of.

eline.bsky.social•33 days ago

I found failure talks/panels always so much more insightful and applicable.

touloutoumou.bsky.social•33 days ago

i'd love to see game design teached as an art form and not a business.

I mean like most people i have to work to make a living but I'd rather make art that speak to me

kimera.world•33 days ago

I think that these are very linked points, too. For game design to work as an art form we need to have confidence to make things that might fail. Commercial products cannot fail: they need to make money and guarantee follow up. Art can and should fail because that is how you best explore ideas.

kimera.world•33 days ago

I think that the attitude towards failure is much better if we approach games as an art form that may not necessarily generate revenue, since when making art you WANT to recognise your failure as much as possible because that's how you think of more things to work on.

kimera.world•33 days ago

Basically if you don't feel like you're failing it doesn't mean you actually aren't failing, it just means something is stopping you from recognising it. The danger of commercial games to me is that "well it's selling well and people like it" can be what blocks you from actually exploring ideas.

alienmelon.bsky.social•33 days ago

i’m preparing a talk about this rn & it’s an interesting point u bring up because, with this deteriorating state of industry, the best way to teach it is as an artform since u can’t at all guarantee a job in games anymore… imo that’s presently the best way to approach it (sadly with silver lining)

touloutoumou.bsky.social•33 days ago

it's depressing but yeah I 100% agree with this.

stuffedwomb.at•33 days ago

wow i really love this line of thought!!!

coolbug.bsky.social•33 days ago

Looking at videogame history through the lens of other art mediums' history is incredibly eye-opening and really explains so much about the often toxic culture. No other art movement found commercial success this fast. It completely skipped many of the philosophical phases that other mediums enjoyed

stuffedwomb.at•33 days ago

agreed!
imo there is a kind of deep internal confidence needed!

"This is what I want to do."

Without this comittement, the endless failings tend to kind of erode the joy of the work and make you so miserable that you become afraid of even trying?

stuffedwomb.at•33 days ago

so for me, accepting that i'd fail a lot very early on was absolutely crucial. It's a comittement to being really bad at something for a while imo. And the failing never stops anyway, so you better get used to it right away haha

nrowland2.bsky.social•33 days ago

One of the best pieces of advice is to do it for your own fulfillment. If success comes, then that is a bonus.

alienmelon.bsky.social•33 days ago

i'd like to add to this that a long time ago i gave a small talk at GDC on how money isn't everything and success can be measured in other ways that are not based on capitalist standards. some people walked out: http://www.nathalielawhead.com/candybox/gdc-talk-transcript-alternative-paths-in-indie-dev
still proud of it tho xD

wavemonade.bsky.social•33 days ago

This is especially true for people who just post games for fun or cant get any money through games. what matters is that you yourself like your game or enjoy making it 😸

coolbug.bsky.social•33 days ago

I can't wrap my head around how anyone could find this controversial. Like imagine how different this talk would be received at SPX, it would be so obvious and mutually understood that people would question why there needed to be a talk. Games are uniquely divorced from the culture of art making

alienmelon.bsky.social•32 days ago

it’s interesting you say this. i think sometimes there’s like two industries. the very mainstream one that’s all about money, monetization… then the space more dev friendly that also has space for art. the two don’t intersect that often.

coolbug.bsky.social•32 days ago

I think it boils down to profitability. Games achieved higher profitability than comics, and did so at a very fast rate. The "dev friendly place for art" culture is often nurtured and established during a phase when the medium isn't really making -anyone- money, and that didn't really happen for us

coolbug.bsky.social•32 days ago

It still exists, but it's a very very small subculture whereas in most other arts, even profitable ones, that culture is kind of baked in

becausebecause.bsky.social•33 days ago

My most successful game isn't my best made game, so I agree!

mrjackphil.bsky.social•33 days ago

At least you have a successful game, ha ha

becausebecause.bsky.social•33 days ago

Heh, depends on if someone considers it a success or not! I did get a few thousand from it over a few months, and then it quickly dropped off. If it hadn't been ported to consoles i think I'd have got about £50 lol

furbyfubar.bsky.social•33 days ago

This talk by @tinysubversions.bsky.social is about weird Internet art in general, so not specifically about video game, but it makes a point that way more talks about "finding success" still need to cover. https://youtu.be/l_F9jxsfGCw?si=WUFBYJokLXsu3QsD

mrjackphil.bsky.social•33 days ago

I've spent 10 years and still continue to figure out what I want from game development.

Tell a story? Make tools? Play with mechanics? Can I handle that solo? Can I manage a team? Can I make money from it? Should I?

It's like a self analysis habit. And I return to try again every time.

steinmakesgames.bsky.social•33 days ago

Depends on how you define success. Most often it's implied that it means "financial success", but it can be so much more!

violetofthevoid.itch.io•33 days ago

oftentimes success is born directly from failure.

almost every prolific dev who has made an indie darling has a back catalogue of games that were learning experiences.

in order to succeed (unless you are some unicorn prodigy) you more than likely will need to fail first.

dislekcia.bsky.social•33 days ago

Failing big and failing hard! https://bsky.app/profile/dislekcia.bsky.social/post/3li5ju56ubs2m

alienmelon.bsky.social•33 days ago

oh my god this is amazing

hgims.bsky.social•33 days ago

Making quick bad artstuff is the start of your journey in most artforms. The problem with it in Game Design is that the "quick bad artstuff" still took a month or two to make, so people see it as more of a negative

Or something like that

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