also like. for every caves of qud or dwarf fortress there are a dozen or more teams who took out second mortgages, worked themselves to the bone... and sold like 1000 copies of their game. people still buy into this lottery narrative of indie dev - ThreadSky

merrittk.com • 28 days ago

also like. for every caves of qud or dwarf fortress there are a dozen or more teams who took out second mortgages, worked themselves to the bone... and sold like 1000 copies of their game. people still buy into this lottery narrative of indie dev

Reposted from Cat Manning

I need people to understand that starting a small studio in the early to mid 2010s is not the same as starting a small studio in 2025

(and also for people not to harass those who don’t yet understand this)

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ill-omens.itch.io•28 days ago

And even the indie darlings aren't making as much as it seems and even when they do it's not enough to live off of alone. The legend of the iirc stardew guy and the world's worst computer desk, or the nitw team and their second game, etc

monoxide.bsky.social•28 days ago

And obviously my advice is dubious anyways because they’ll be rounding up us gay teachers and aides and executing them soon anyways

monoxide.bsky.social•28 days ago

You should go work with kids and do game dev as a side job. It’s fulfilling and pays like shit and you know you’re at least not making profit for some bastard

monoxide.bsky.social•28 days ago

Not specifically you but people should do this in general. we were all lied to about being able to do “what you love” for a living so you gotta just make it work like a Walmart cashier or uber driver has to. America is a scam hustle society and basically the best u can hope for is not being scammed

murlin.bsky.social•28 days ago

Qud and DF as examples are so funny, do they expect everyone to take 20 years to make their game?

dyingsignals.love•28 days ago

I think about it a lot when people talk about Stardew being a solo effort & obviously that means devs can stil make indie games full time…like his wife wasn’t also working full time, which allowed for him to stay yknow, housed, while making it.

raiganburns.bsky.social•27 days ago

To me the "full time" aspect is the mistake too many people make. (AFAIK the Qud people made other games to keep going.) Cave Story dude made it as a hobby after work, etc. etc. etc. The idea of making games is *awesome*. The idea of "quit your job to make games" is as dumb as it would be for music.

zaaack.bsky.social•27 days ago

like starting a podcast or a band, if you have the capacity and the time why not. but if you’re raising the stakes and aiming to leverage this as your livelihood there should be a couple uhhhhhs thrown around.

raiganburns.bsky.social•27 days ago

I do sort of understand the urgency since it's like.. is the world even going to be around in 5-10 years? But yeah, why is the concept "just make stuff if that's what you're driven to do and you have time/energy, and later if that opens doors to making money from it great" so foreign?!

raiganburns.bsky.social•27 days ago

It's weird that DIY music (or DIY anything maybe) has never been easier, and yet the spirit of DIY seems completely lost (it's even hard to remember... was it all just a dream?) and now everyone operates in a delusional haze of "I'm going to be an influencer" pipe dreams. ;-;

zaphos.bsky.social•27 days ago

This could also be a selection effect where a flood of new people trying to be influencers is drowning out visibility of a quieter set of DIY people, especially for communities that have shifted to algorithmically-filtered twitter-likes over forums

gnomedrunkski.bsky.social•27 days ago

But alot of ppl are barely making it...so you have no time or energy to do any of the creative stuff...and just continues the cycle of survival of barely making it...I fulfilled you don't have the time and/or energy to do the creative stuff

butthead.bsky.social•27 days ago

I remember a very famous graphic designer telling me he couldn’t do what he did without his wife’s salary, this stretches across all creative industries unfortunately

clementinedanger.bsky.social•28 days ago

People are so enamored with the romance of the lone artist persevering through hardship with nothing but grit and dreams they don't even consider that it hasn't happened once in the entire history of humanity.

clementinedanger.bsky.social•28 days ago

Thoreau writing his little books about the pastoral peace of the countryside while his mom schlepped back and forth from the city to do his laundry.

eke.bsky.social•28 days ago

also lol stardew is like polymath shit. if i wanted to make a game i would simply program the entire thing and also compose the soundtrack and draw every piece of art

raiganburns.bsky.social•27 days ago

It's no different from Cave Story, basically any pico-8 game, the original version of Spelunk, or many of the games made in the mid-80s (okay Capcom etc. had teams of 2-4 but almost all British games were 1-2 people, and they had to program in assembly!). Huge teams/resources is a recent aberration.

tinydonkey.bsky.social•28 days ago

Why don't they just make the next balatro?

blanktapes.co•28 days ago

a sign that more folks gotta pick up “blood, sweat, and pixels” or (even better) “press reset” by @jasonschreier.bsky.social

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