Games

The emperors new games

This is a phenomenon I observed for quite a while now and I call it "The emperors new games" based on the fairy tale "The emperors new clothes" because the phenomenon is so similar.

The emperors new games are games that look new and great, but in reality they are nothing new or great, in short overhyped games.

Uebergame 1.1.2.0 released

This update adds a mostly nonexistent Battle Royale game mode and 4 completely new large scale levels exclusively made for that game mode.

The backstory is that, since almost every multiplayer game has Battle Royale style game modes now, I thought I need that as well, or better said, people suggested that to me. I even met people who wanted to team up with me creating such game modes, two of those seemed serious with it, so we set up tasks to do and a schedule, where I would be designing the levels and the other person would do the coding.

My experience with social media for video game marketing

I still remember all those people telling me things like "Dude you need to use social media for marketing etc it is so great and will do so much" and similar things, so I looked into it and used some methods of course and this will be a little breakdown of the results.

So these are the things I tried:

Youtube:

Indie developers suffering from cognitive dissonance

Some time ago I watched a presentation about indie games and how much money they earn and the result was that 82% of all indie games make less than minimum wage, 7% make enough to at least survive and only 11% make profit. To make it simpler, you got a 90% change of failure, if you go into indie game development. Imagine applying for a job and the boss tells you "Well if you work here, there will be an 82% chance you will be paid worse than in any other job or not paid at all, 7% chance you get the worst payment and 11% chance you get more than the minimum".

Open source game development is now just mobile game development

Of course I'm still observing the open source game development scene (which is mostly nonexistent, but this is not the topic now) and noticed a clear trend towards mobile game development, so much that almost everything looks to be just geared towards the mobile market. It seems to have been an easy transition, since the open source game development scene was mostly 2D or retro game development anyway, but now the rise of the mobile market has given it so much justification that basically everything is just mobile game development now and nobody tries to do something real anymore.

Are proprietary developers better for open source, than open source idealists?

Well this is mostly from my experience in the past, but now I think I got enough confirmation that I can formulate this as a theory, at least regarding game development:

Proprietary developers benefit the open source development more, than the idealistic people dedicated to open source development.

 

A closer look on the usefulness of game asset stores

After my article on why most open source game art is useless I wanted to also take a closer look on the usefulness of game asset stores. Since they are quite common now and an essential part of most game engines, people might think they are very useful and a great invention, so let us break down if that is true.

Why most open source game art is useless

Well first let me tell you the events that lead me to this conclusion. My initial idea was to create an open source 3D shooter, because there was no actively developed 3D shooter for years now, so I thought I just make one on my own. I thought it cannot be that hard, since open source gives you so much benefits, like using other people's work and combining it to something new, so you end up with much less work. There were certain things on my checklist of what I need like:

1. Open Source game engine

2. Open source game code

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