TJ Stamm

Saw a streamer actually mention an analogy I've been using for a while now, which is that, for 10-15 yrs now, the industry keeps treating each game as a new sport that needs inventing...but they all come off like the XFL trying to tweak a couple NFL rules and hope they'll become the Next Big Thing™

Yeah, those with the purse strings are the main culprits. Sad to see so many talented SP devs enter the GaaS fray only to flame out <Highguard enters the chat>.

(Stupid auto correct)
...at least on PC...
...in-roads on closing the gap...

The other unfortunate development is that Fortnite and others adopted the mobile trend of "racing to the bottom" as pricing goes, effectively offering FtP products which has now trained customers to not bother with anything they _have_ to pay for.

Indies, at least one PC, appear to be making some in-roads on profiling the gap, trying to efficiently create that which AAA forgot how to do. Still more work to do, but I'm encouraged by early trends.

I think that far too many AAA projects went and chased the GaaS tiger, forgot about making SP games. They followed mobile models by prioritizing attention/retention instead asking what was fun. Games turned into full-time jobs to play...and streamer culture and tech further supported it.

Pixel art scene of a mountain path with pine trees and snowy mountains in the background

A little WIP of foreground and background foliage. Need to loop back around and do a real pass on the ground and fix some of my colors before I lock them in.
#ScreenshotSaturday #IndieDev #IndieGame #Unity2D

Same thing, but posting the MP4 to test side-by-side with the GIF version

Working on a cool dissolve shader for enemies to use on death (yeah, I'm testing it on a player character, though). Getting to know Unity's Shader Graph a bit. All hooked up and triggering on cue.
#ScreenshotSaturday #IndieDev #IndieGame #Unity2D

Him: walks back and forth, visible strain on his face, his brain refusing to comply as he's obviously forcing himself to walk same hand/foot at a time, pacing through the living room like some broken robot. We all died laughing.

Interesting to hear that someone was actually doing that "naturally"!

Hehe, reminds me of a similar experience in college. I was with some eng friends and told them we were learning basic stuff in anim class about opposite hand/foot when one of them declares, "That's not how humans walk!"

Me: "Oh? Care to show us?"

Definitely don't want that for PC/console gaming. So my hope is that the bottom you've stated is where the market can stabilize and allow devs to target and budget appropriately and give us the multitude of experiences that we all know to be possible.

Agree with what you're saying. My only fear is that bottom hasn't been hit yet. Race to the bottom is what happened 15 years ago in mobile where bottom became FtP. Premium mobile games, even at 1.99, effectively went extinct. And we all know and see how FtP affects the design of those products

WIP of player characters with some GIFs of very WIP idles in the comments. Just getting a feel for posing and testing out some details.
#ScreenshotSaturday #IndieDev

I would guess 1.75x to maybe 2x the average length of time it takes to ship a AAA game.

My assumption is that many studios only go one-and-done...maybe get 2, but that longer tenured studios nudge the average closer to 2x.

So maybe 6-7 years if I guess the average project length at 3.5 years

Thoughts of this possibility were a non-insignificant part of why I chose to move on and work on different products in my career a few years ago. The lean towards mil-sim was becoming a red-flag. And here we see reality far surpassing what I thought might be a personal overreaction or hyperbole.

Pixel art world map of a mountainous and forested region

First pass at pulling together some visual elements and art direction for the world-map/level-select screen in my game. Plenty of polish to do once I burn in the final level progression, but seems like a good place to stop and take measure (UI hidden in this shot) #ScreenshotSaturday #IndieGame

For example, I've definitely worked with devs who were the biggest "champions" of doing baked animated sequences over interactive experiences (part of why I made some career decisions to move on) and those weren't coming from down on high (though they were supported by those on high).

My anecdotal and outside observer view lead me to believe that this is all dependent on each development studio. Some are engineering driven, others by art or anim, or others by design, story, etc. I've seen differences even within the same franchise but in different sub teams.

Funny timing on this. I literally just got done scouring the internet for some texture ref and was tearing my hair out trying to find anything that wasn't linked to AI stockpiles. The first many pages of results I get are cluttered with generated libraries.

Many of the bro examples I see are from supposed founders...in fields they aren't experienced in...which just makes them look like trend chasers, all the more.

Oh, for sure! I expect that from people on LI by default (as much as my comment didn't make that clear 😀). The detail I could add would be to say that they will never be more than cheerleaders, regardless of their "being a stan" for AI, since they don't know what they're even talking about

Just saw another thread where some bro, with no game dev experience, was trying to convince long-tenured devs about how AI could help them. Obviously, bro had no credible examples of how when repeatedly asked.

Just a weird thread with no other purpose other than to cheerlead.

Was just noting to my wife that my LI feed is 80% an AI battlefield these days. Tech bros with awkward threads being made with no true purpose other than what can only be an insidious purpose of "advertising" AI. Creatives storming the comments to set the record.

three men dressed as mariachis stand in a dirt field Alt: Three Amigos signature salute

A plethora of fun was had