Game Development

How do you experience good and bad reviews and feedback on your games? Are you ecstatic or proud when reading positive reviews? Is it difficult to read reviews listing a lot of negative points?

How does it depend on the proportion of your contributions to the project?

I've occasionally wondered about team titles, how individual developers feel when reviews turn out majority or overwhelmingly negative. For very small teams and individual devs, I've often wondered how they feel when receiving "negative" feedback, especially reviews pointing out many flaws.

Today, I posted a Steam review with a long list of things the title is lacking. Personally, I would have never released a title in that state, and for money. I feel bad about pointing out many flaws on indie titles. But I also see no way around it. It's only honest to list what I see and notice. For a review, honesty is key, and allows others to see these things that are not visible from a store page or game trailer.

I'm interested to hear your thoughts and experiences.

Almost four years after our reporting on the games industry's unseen crunch at outsourcing studios in SE Asia, Chris received an email that demanded we return to this story once again.

Reporting on a specific outsourcing studio with abuse, with occasional references to the broader industry and its dependence on outsourcing studios.

I found the announcement (quoted in the article) interesting and worth sharing, even without knowing or seeing the game.

Excerpts (I recommend reading the full thing):

My primary inspirations were the Japanese living doll myth and my experiences urban exploring in Germany (many backgrounds were crafted from photos I had taken).

The final act obviously deals with a difficult topic, sexual assault. I wanted the ending to be shocking, that was intentional, but never to cause harm. Instead, I thought I had crafted things in a way that would act as a jumping off point for some difficult discussions.

Secondly, the girl was never meant to look underage. In retrospect, I should have been more careful to ensure there was no ambiguity. Because she’s a doll (not human), I didn’t consider the possibility of misinterpretation as thoroughly as I should have.

This was also written long before the #MeToo movement, and I was a lot less educated on all the nuances of topics like these at the time.

If I had written it now, in my mid-30s, in 2025, it would be very different. Still, some choices I stand behind:

Do you have experience representing difficult topics in art? Weighing or deciding on respectful or acceptable representations, on the degree of deliberately shocking or uncomfortable representation?

Or do you remember scenes in games or otherwise in art that you found uncomfortable or shocking? In a good (well-represented or tactful) way or a bad way?

Just saw this interesting article by the Witchfire devs on creating big games with small teams. Really interesting read!

First, i know this place is mostly for video game design. But i don't see many other places for game design beyond video games, and i have no idea where else to go for guidance with designing a sport.

I had an idea today for a new variety of bowling that i think would be best played with duckpin balls and pins. Problem is, those are apparently really expensive. A quick look online has a single ball going for $60-$80 US, and candlepin balls aren't better.

Less recently i wrote rules for another sport that would require mostly original equipment, and i don't even know where to start with getting totally custom equipment made. I guess talk to a smith or welder?

If anyone here has experience with this sort of thing, how do you get equipment for experimental games/sports without spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on it? Is this why apparently nobody makes new sports?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/30302028

video by GDQuest
very awesome to see tutorial and encouragement for 3D game
Godot would get much greater recognition if there were more 3D games made with it.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/29456639

Hall made a post on reddit's r/gamedev yesterday giving an outline of how he believes they came down to the amount they wanted to charge him, which includes:

Then there are five listed items they supplies as evidence:

An @ rocketwerkz email, for a team member who has Unity Personal and does not work on a Unity project at the studio

The personal email address of a Rocketwerkz employee, whom we pay for a Unity Pro License for

An @ rocketwerkz email, for an external contractor who was provided one of our Unity Pro Licenses for a period in 2024 to do some work at the time

An obscured email domain, but the name of which is an employee at a company in Dunedin (New Zealand, where we are based) who has never worked for us

An obscured email domain, another employee at the same company above, but who never worked for us.

From the video description:

The Deepest Games are DUMB. How is it possible that this generation of game developers, who are clearly articulate and educated, be so obsessed with the idea of creating deep meaningful games, and yet consistently produce games that are shallow and automated? Also, why does it seem impossible for the depth of the games of the past to be re-created? There clearly isn't any technological barrier, so what is the problem?

One of the major problems that I discuss in today's video is the obsession modern developers have with making smart games and being perceived as these masters of human psychology and technology. Where this stems from is hard to know for sure, but there is clearly a trend of developers being able to find the areas of their game that contain the potential for depth, and then systematically eliminating them. Ironically a lot of these areas are labeled as "outdated" but what I think developers and reviewers really mean to say is dumb. No one would argue pixel art is outdated. No one would argue that Mario 3 and their favorite Super Nintendo games are outdated. What they mean is that these games are presenting the player true punishment and no smartly devised system to go around the punishment.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/28810732

There are accusations that a necessary part of the the Homebrew Channel uses code stolen from Nintendo. It uses libogc, which is the C Library for Wii and Gamecube homebrew. The allegations say libogc uses either code from the Nintendo SDK, or code decompiled from games using it. However, some people are claiming this isn't true. However as of right now this message remains on The Homebrew Channel's GitHub page:

This repository is archived and will not accept any further contributions.

Like most Wii homebrew software, this software depends on libogc. After development of The Homebrew Channel had already started, we discovered that large portions of libogc were stolen directly from the Nintendo SDK or games using the Nintendo SDK (decompiled and cleaned up). We thought that at least significant parts of libogc, such as its threading implementation, were original, and reluctantly continued to use the project while distancing ourselves from it.

It has recently been revealed that the threading/OS implementation in libogc is, in fact, stolen from RTEMS. The authors of libogc didn't just steal proprietary Nintendo code, but also saw it fit to steal an open source RTOS and remove all attribution and copyright information. This goes far beyond ignorance about the copyright implications of reverse engineering Nintendo binaries, and goes straight into outright deliberate, malicious code theft and copyright infringement.

The current developers of libogc are not interested in tracking this issue, finding a solution, nor informing the community of the problematic copyright status of the project. When we filed an issue about it, they immediately closed it, replied with verbal abuse, and then completely deleted it from public view.

For this reason, we consider it impossible to legally and legitimately compile this software at this point, and cannot encourage any further development.

The Wii homebrew community was all built on top of a pile of lies and copyright infringement, and it's all thanks to shagkur (who did the stealing) and the rest of the team (who enabled it and did nothing when it was discovered). Together, the developers deceived everyone into believing their work was original.

Please demand that the leaders and major contributors to console or other proprietary device SDKs and toolkits that you use and work with do things legally, and do not tolerate this kind of behavior.

If you wish to check for yourself, for example, you can compare this function in libogc to this function in a really old version of RTEMS. While the code has been simplified and many identifiers renamed, it is clear that the libogc version is a direct descendant of the RTEMS version. It is not possible for two code implementations to end up this similar purely by chance.

Hey everyone!

Excuse me for the slightly clickbaity title (is it, though?). I need all the advice I can get here.

About six months ago, I ignored all the common advice and started working on the Dream Game™ as my first commercial release. I expect it to be ready in about four years.

Since I had no real marketing experience, I've been learning by listening to GDC talks and Chris Z's videos whenever I have "dumb chores" time or similar. More and more, I see proof of the great advantages of making small games: building on past releases, proving your ability to ship, and confronting yourself with the market as early as possible.

Obviously, that clashes pretty hard with a four-year first project. So I thought, and thought, and thought — and a few days ago, something clicked.

What if I were to release features of my game as standalone "mini"-games?

I'm working on a 4X grand strategy game, which is basically at least four games smashed into one. So if I'm working on the trading system, why not take a short detour and make a trading game in, say, 3 to 9 months, and release it for 10 bucks? Then do the same later for colony building, exploration, war...

I could even make a franchise out of it. The full game is called Uncharted Sectors, so the smaller ones could be titled Uncharted Sectors: [Trading Game Name], Uncharted Sectors: [Colony Management Game Name], and so on. It would build up the IP and help with brand recognition.

On the plus side:

• I prove to the world (and myself) that I'm actually releasing games, not vaporware,

• I continue working on the systems of my dream game most of the time: code can be reused and improved based on player feedback,

• Bugfixing the mini-games will probably help squash bugs in the main game, at least for the core shared code,

• I gain actual release experience, which will benefit the dream game,

• Players who bought the mini-games are likely future buyers of the full game thanks to the shared IP/brand,

• Hopefully, it generates a bit of revenue to help fund the dream game,

• And if I'm making terrible products, it's better to find out after 9 months than after dedicating 4 years of my life to it.

On the minus side:

• Total dev time will increase,

• I might get sidetracked,

• My current following might hate the idea,

• If one of the mini-games is bad, it could damage my reputation and deter people from checking out the full game.

As you can see, the downside seems pretty small compared to the upside. So either it’s a very good idea... or I’m missing something big. That's why I'm here: please poke holes in this plan and find more reasons why it might be a bad idea!

Also, on a more general note: do you know of any games that have done something like this? What do you think of the idea? I'd love to hear anything relevant to the topic.

And of course the idea is free: feel free to copy it if you think it’s interesting. :)

Chris' release videos are always more of a highlight reel, here's the full release notes.

I've been working on this game on and off for the past 5 or so years and I'm finally getting to the point that I feel I can release a demo soon. I'm almost there.

It's a sort of crafting dungeon crawling merchant game. Inspired by games like Vintage Story and Moonlighter.

The loop is simple:

• Collect resources
• Craft tools to collect more resources
• Craft gear (weapons/armor/machines)
• Use gear to adventure in procedural dungeons
• Set up shop and sell items you craft or loot for gold
• Use gold to hire workers to automate crafting or purchase items directly

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/28238032