mouseandmongoose.bsky.social
Spline reticulator and recovering shitposter.
Developing weird little games one pixel at a time.
26 posts
8 followers
56 following
Regular Contributor
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My secrets of shipping 16 commercial games so far is:
1) yes I need the money, so I have to ship
2) I like shipping, it feels good, so I want to do that again.
3) If I get the itch to make something else I note it down, or do a small gamejam game to get it out my system, then go back to main project
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imagining better -> at least don't make it garbage on purpose
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they have optimized for the thing it's easy to optimize for and neglected all other spaces, and declared that you can't make a big profitable video game; but the blinders are on
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We're in an industry compression cycle where each type of creative game has failed once so every executive thinks they're all unsellable.
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it's absolutely cyclical, it's essentially basic capital oversupply, the period is like 18 years or so, in my experience; happens with movies too. I remember the same death of creativity as old pipelines saturated in the mid 00s, followed by a new boom.
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almost every games gig I've ever had, I was the only dedicated writer. one time I was supposed to be mentored-by/reporting-to someone who quit two weeks before I started, so instead of training I just got all their responsibilities. on a live-service game! with a two-week content release cycle lol
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Genres should be retroactive and not prescriptive.
Make something you love, let your fans sort it out.
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"NASApunk" this "Liminal" that. Shut up! Look at machines! Look at people! Look at things and instead of figuring out what hashtag asthetics are on their funko box, actually analyze what makes them cool and channel that! Solve the design as a problem, not a checklist.
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Folks say "indies crapped on Japanese games even though their games were homages to them." no, they made homages to *past* games because they felt contemporary games were faltering. Get mad at him saying "you guys" and conflating one dev with the whole country. Don't get mad about something false.
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They (unreal) always wanted to get into the Japanese market, it just took a lot of time to get it to where it was realistically usable by Japanese companies.
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People ALSO forget (or don't realize) that Unreal and Unity didn't have their documentation translated into Japanese for most of the 360 era, certainly didn't have offices there, and all the forums were in english - it wasn't easy to use an off the shelf engine unless you were in a western country.
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Above all, I feel bad for the indies and smaller studios who are struggling financially while being ignored by the press and the general industry discourse because “AAA is bad” is a more subjectively compelling story.
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That reminds me of the logical error common in game development where a successful project will be used as a model for something that had potentially nothing to do with its success.
“This game has crouch, and it sold 10 million. We must add crouch to also sell more copies.”
Cargo cult stuff.
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I think the big things it has going for it is it is chasing absolutely no trends and was just as disjoint from the modern game 9 years ago as today, maybe less so; and people are buying it today that weren't alive when the first people started playing it.
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That’s the kind of review that makes all the horseshit worthwhile.
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especially when, in a broad historical view, they have eaten shit
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I do wonder why “living in the real world” and “realpolitik” is always meant as “dictators and fascists are here forever, let’s at least try to make money.”
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Furthermore, system complexity is a game design variable that can and should be adjusted consciously, like everything else.
Less is not always more, and your game may require more complexity in something in order to shine.
Intended player experience for a specific target audience is supreme.
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It's not a coincidence that it's computer guys and not biologists that think we're really close to becoming immortal
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YMMV, but BlueSky is actually fun, for me. And I feel it's actually fun for other people, too. I see a lot more dumb memes, shitposts, and r/showerthoughts here, and almost zero ragebait grandstanding, because it's simply not rewarded.
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The future is 'taking your severance and going indie': www.gamedeveloper.com/business/new...