u/SeaStable821

Felipe - I've had many, many fun hours with KSP in the past. Truly a technical marvel what you were able to pull off with the tools you were working with. I'm also a big fan of Stationeers, and what RW have been able to achieve and learn while making that title. To see you join forces and share knowledge now is really heartening in what is otherwise in many ways a dark time to be a game developer.

God speed and good luck!

If you haven't def check out the Other Games forum over on Bay12Games (the Dwarf Fortress developers)!

I think that the very best games - the kind of games people point to and say, look, this is art - are ones that are deeply meaningful to us. But they don't necessarily carry "important messages". They have stories that have all kinds of colour, and texture, and feeling. And there's things we can think about. Things that might be relevant to our lives, that help us process things, reflect on things, get through things, laugh at things. That's definitely "good", but it's a kind of meaning can't be distilled down into something pithy like: "work together with your friends" or "vengeance is bad".

Ursula Le Guin once said this...

"As a fiction writer, I don’t speak message. I speak story. Sure, my story means something, but if you want to know what it means, you have to ask the question in terms appropriate to storytelling. Terms such as message are appropriate to expository writing, didactic writing, and sermons — different languages from fiction."

https://www.ursulakleguin.com/message-about-messages

Also, once we talk about "positive influences", I think we're already on the back foot, like we're still defending games against accusations of being a "negative influence". Do we feel the need to claim that books can be a positive influence? Or movies? There's lots of terrible and "socially harmful" books and movies out there too!

Science Fiction used to be derided and ghettoised from "proper literature", and that's something Le Guin used to rail against. I think games are in a similar space now in terms of the broader culture. Only they're even more popular, so it's quite strange.

But yeah, in terms of a more concrete example of the above... We might want to run to examples narrative-heavy games. And I do love those, but instead I would offer this recommendation of a video about Dark Souls:

"Dark Souls Saved Me", by Nakey Jakey. -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSJkxLdIlyE

It's not any explicit "message" of Dark Souls that got to him. It was a deeper meaning behind it. Really an example of games as art, as meaning.

I know you're talking in relation to 'failure as a product in the market'. But I think it's important to be careful with how we label things. It's something you created. You brought it into existence. Right off the bat, on some level, you can't fail having done that. Also, it's a cool looking game! And I reckon you learned a lot having made it. So I would absolutely contest the 'fact' that it's failed. Don't let sales figures determine the ultimate value of what you make.

Good luck! I worked in-house at an animation studio in Tokyo a decade ago now. That helped inspire me to start working on my own game project in my free time. Situation was similar to what you're describing. Very strong talent in certain areas (art, animation, storyboarding), but big gaps in other areas (technical stuff like shaders), along with dependency on certain 'gaming' revenue.

A text based noir detective themed game, set in a fictional 1930s American city. Made in QBASIC. Worked on it on and off from around ages 14-19. It had a few dozen rooms. There was a day-night cycle, with the color of the text changing to dark at night (prob not very user friendly hah). You could call a taxi to travel between regions of the city, with the taxi driver having a bunch of randomized conversations. There was a club you could go to and watch randomized shows, but you needed to buy and wear a suit to get past the bouncers. Also, you had phones (one in your office) that you could use to call people.

This was back in the 90s and I lost most of the work unfortunately. I still have a compiled executable of an old build but won't run on a modern computer!

Congrats on the coverage!!

Hey. I started working on my current game way back in 2015. It was a free time only project until just two years ago, when I was able to secure publisher funding and some grants to go full time. Hopefully not too much longer before it's finished haha.

One of the things that helped me stay motivated was previously spending a decade learning Japanese before being good enough to work as a translator / interpreter. Some things just take time, and your current skill or project status is not a predictor of what it will look like in a few years.

Another thing was having a very clear idea of what I wanted to achieve thematically. I wasn't sure about a lot of mechanics, but I knew what kind of feeling I wanted the player to have. That has helped me gradually zero in on everything else.

Finally, I scoped it fairly narrowly at the beginning. Not hard enough you might say, given that the game is still not done! But enough that I was able to make a little tangible progress each month, and that helped keep me motivated. If I was trying to do something scoped for a team of 10 then I would have given up.

Hey WA game dev person here. I run a little indie studio. May I ask why you were thinking of the industry?

Master of the house, keeper of the zoo
Ready to relieve 'em of a sou or two
Watering the wine, making up the weight
Pickin' up their knick-knacks when they can't see straight!

Thanks!! Yeah I've got an internal build I'm sharing with a few people, but nothing ready for a public demo just yet.

Hey everyone! For some years now I've been working on a little game about a friendly Innkeeper who enjoys serving beer, appearing nonchalant, eavesdropping, and stealing. Some demon summoning is also involved. :-)
I've hit a cool milestone today with positive coverage from Rock Paper Shotgun.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/innkeep-satisfies-my-craving-for-a-fantasy-game-thats-just-a-grim-drudgery-simulator

Come give me a wishlist over on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/925500/Innkeep/

Hey everyone! For some years now I've been working on a little game about a friendly Innkeeper who enjoys serving beer, appearing nonchalant, eavesdropping, and stealing. Some demon summoning is also involved. :-)
I've hit a cool milestone today with positive coverage from Rock Paper Shotgun.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/innkeep-satisfies-my-craving-for-a-fantasy-game-thats-just-a-grim-drudgery-simulator

Come give me a wishlist over on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/925500/Innkeep/

Hey everyone! For some years now I've been working on a little game about a friendly Innkeeper who enjoys serving beer, appearing nonchalant, eavesdropping, and stealing. Some demon summoning is also involved. :-)
I've hit a cool milestone today with positive coverage from Rock Paper Shotgun.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/innkeep-satisfies-my-craving-for-a-fantasy-game-thats-just-a-grim-drudgery-simulator

Come give me a wishlist over on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/925500/Innkeep/

Lo all. I've put together a new gameplay trailer for Innkeep as part of the Realms Deep 2023 event. A new narrative trailer will be dropping during the live stream event tonight as well. ;-)

Hope you enjoy it!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/925500/Innkeep/