Is Game Design still a valid LP?

[Leo Gura]

Notice the most time-consuming part of filmmaking is the 3D graphics, which is similar to making games. A film without much 3D graphics is made within a year.

[Shane Hanlon]

7 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

You cannot make even a playable prototype for a major game in 6 months.

"major" is doing a lot of heavy lifitng here. It would be in the same ballpark for a "major" film.

7 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Notice the most time-consuming part of filmmaking is the 3D graphics, which is similar to making games. A film without much 3D graphics is made within a year.

Totally, and you are still underestimating the work a "major" film takes. It seems like you keep comparing a "major" game to a "minor" film. Stardew valley was created by a single human being. 3D graphics was not involved in that process either.

[Leo Gura]

1 hour ago, Shane Hanlon said:

"major" is doing a lot of heavy lifitng here. It would be in the same ballpark for a "major" film.

That was said to exclude flimsy mobile games and the like.

No $60 game can be made playable in 6 months.

[Leo Gura]

1 hour ago, Shane Hanlon said:

Stardew valley was created by a single human being

Took 6 years of overtime work.

And Stardew Valley is a tiny $15 pixel game.

A single dude can record an indie film in a month. Neil Breen shit, haha 

Although it would not surprise me if Neil Breen spent years on his cringy films just so we can laugh at him harder.

Edited November 14 by Leo Gura

[Eskilon]

@Leo Gura Just learned about this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Blow wtf?

Guy is probably the most talented and unique game designer around, no cap.

Quote

 

Blow's games have higher budgets and longer development times than most independently funded games, and have custom game engines. Braid was built with a relatively large budget for independent games at the time,[84] while The Witness—which was largely funded with the profits of Braid—cost close to six million dollars.[85] The development times for Braid and The Witness were very rare for independent games at the time.[85][44] Blow created a custom game engine for both games, which in the case of The Witness took a large amount of development time. He noted that when development of The Witness began, off-the-shelf engines such as Unity and Unreal Engine were not sufficiently capable to build the game. Blow also noted that he tries to make games that stand the test of time, so owning his own engine means he can continue to provide the game to people in contrast to off-the-shelf engines that come with no such guarantee.[86][a] Braid artist David Hellman said Blow was not stressed about time or budget, and that for him "the game always came first."[87]

Blow said when he makes a game, he tries to make something he would want to play and be interested in.[88] He wants to understand the world from many perspectives,[89] and tries to uncover and understand truths about the universe through game design.[9] Blow enjoys exploring the permutations of a simple idea.[85] He described an ideal player of his games as someone who "is inquisitive and likes to be treated as an intelligent person".[90] Blow hopes the design skills he developed by working on complicated games have made Jai better designed than most languages.[60]

Blow founded Thekla because he wanted creative freedom rather than out of aspiration to run a company.[91] He used almost all of the profits of Braid to independently fund The Witness, noting that by doing so he had total creative freedom and thereby would not have to adjust the game to please the whims of a publisher.[85] The team that worked on The Witness said Blow gave them a lot of autonomy when working on the game.[92] Blow does not schedule development time for games at Thekla, noting; "we don't do it like Electronic Arts. We don't pick a quarter and ship the game. We're just trying to make the best game."[75]

 

That is a high conciousness mindset for sure, what a guy. 

Edited Wednesday at 07:33 PM by Eskilon

[Basman]

14 minutes ago, Eskilon said:

@Leo Gura Just learned about this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Blow wtf?

Guy is probably the most talented and unique game designer around, no cap.

That is a high conciousness mindset for sure, what a guy. 

Uncompromising vision, for sure. That kind of persistence is rare.

[Eskilon]

5 hours ago, Basman said:

Uncompromising vision, for sure. That kind of persistence is rare.

Yeah, but I would say the impressive stuff about him on a techinical level is that he builds his own game engine for his games. This requires insane skill to make, he knows the ins and outs of software development and programming(even creating his own programming language). But also the motivation is interesting, he does this to ensure his games will not be affected by the market in anyway, other game engines can ruin and crumble and you will still be able to play his games lol --- this is crazy dedication and commitment.

This is also pretty interesting: 

Quote

Blow said when he makes a game, he tries to make something he would want to play and be interested in. He wants to understand the world from many perspectives, and tries to uncover and understand truths about the universe through game design. Blow enjoys exploring the permutations of a simple idea. He described an ideal player of his games as someone who "is inquisitive and likes to be treated as an intelligent person". Blow hopes the design skills he developed by working on complicated games have made Jai better designed than most languages.

Pretty yellow view

[Leo Gura]

5 hours ago, Eskilon said:

Just learned about this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Blow wtf?

Sure, he is well known. He's been making artsy indie games since the Xbox 360 era.

You can find interviews with him on YT.

Edited yesterday at 01:01 AM by Leo Gura

[integral]

I agree with everything Leo said

I'd like to add that I've been making games since the beginning of time programming and I recently been using AI for about a year and it has replaced 100% of my coding.

If you're very skilled with game development then at this point AI could could help you be at best be 5% faster.

For very small basic simple projects, it could probably save you 90% of your time but that's if you already have years of hard experience.

3-D modelling is maybe 20% solved at this point and animation is 0% solved. But once these two things are solved and you could have fluid character interactions without having a manually create every animation. This would save unimaginable amount of time. Many parts of game development will be solved in a few years and that should cut time by 50%.

But 50% is still a MASSIVE amount of work.

[Staples]

The more I make things, the more I appreciate how difficult creating anything is.

I've been learning how to make 3D motion graphics (think title sequences for tv shows and movies). Just to make two minutes of animation at that quality can take half a dozen people at least six months to get it done.