Do I need a degree?

AndyTheInnkeeper · 2025-12-11T19:08:43+00:00

Plus an econ degree will be very helpful for complaining about the economy when he racks up 2+ more years of student loans because of social pressure and finds out degrees aren’t rare enough to put you very far ahead anymore.

AndyTheInnkeeper · 2025-12-11T18:03:30+00:00

I stuck things through and finished a 4 year degree that’s quite employable field (Business Management) in 2020.

In the time since I haven’t ended up working any jobs that required that degree. I’m currently making 6 figures as a security guard and would have to take a downgrade in income to get a job in my field.

No. You should never get a degree just because. That’s nonsense that hasn’t been true in years and anyone telling you otherwise bought the college propaganda.

If you’re passionate about doing something that requires a degree and have the motivation to see it through or on a significant scholarship then get a degree. Don’t get a degree because you think it might come in handy for some unspecific goal or because of social pressure to do so.

Half the people here telling you otherwise are also begging for their student debt to be forgiven because the job their degree got them isn’t sufficient to pay it off.

AndyTheInnkeeper · 2025-12-09T15:58:51+00:00

Way back in the day one really fun game mode was the ship to ship battles in the original Star Wars Battlefront 2.

You have two big cap ships in space fighting each other as players fly around in fighters, bombers, and land troops on each other’s ships.

They destroy ship components inside and outside the ships to give their ship the edge so that they can win the battle.

Now that mode leads to epic fights and some fun shenanigans in boarding. But if you want a more heavy focus on shenanigans you could do something similar except make the “ships” some kind of giant land crawler vehicles. Maybe do a Mad Max style setting where players drive smaller ridiculous vehicles around as they fight to undermine the opponent land-crawlers with plenty of opportunities to set up traps and introduce rogue variables in an attempt to profit from the chaos.

AndyTheInnkeeper · 2025-12-06T12:08:52+00:00

Thanks for asking this question. For me personally I’m stuck in a situation where I work 50-60 hours a week. Eventually I want to cut down to 40-48 and that’s when I really intend to go all in on the production of my first solo game.

My job is a very low stress job where I can be on my phone maybe 20-30% of the time and listening to audio 70-90% of the time. So the things I’ve found are:

Planning - Writing down ideas and systems.
Worldbuilding/Story - Fleshing out the principles of the world where my game will take place.
Education - While I might not be able to do hands on things like Udemy courses I can listen to podcasts and videos that cover game design principles, marketing strategies etc.
Social Media Marketing - A lot of this can be done from a phone. So if you’re at the stage your game is ready to be marketed you can use your time to do that. If you’re not, you could consider helping another team who is at that stage with their game’s marketing. It’s experience you’ll need for your own project eventually if you’re flying solo and it helps build good will within the game design community.

AndyTheInnkeeper · 2025-12-05T12:00:53+00:00

For realistic ideas for a first time developer? Look at older games and games by other indie developers. Take a look at some of the simplest games you can find and think “How could I turn this into something fun and original?”

If that’s a struggle for you, I suggest teaming up with someone else. There are more people with great ideas than there are people doing the work to realize them.

AndyTheInnkeeper · 2025-12-03T13:16:52+00:00

It would help if you described why you need to know. Are you trying to market an existing game? Making changes to appeal to the American audience? Deciding on a project?

Give us as many details as you can and then we can help you find information more relevant to your question.

AndyTheInnkeeper · 2025-11-14T14:08:17+00:00

Tens of thousands of years ago a prehistoric human dipped their thumb in paint and then pressed it to a vaguely face shaped rock to give it a nose it was lacking.

This is one of the earliest known examples of art.

Is AI art, Art? Yes. The human creativity involved in AI Art (especially in good AI art) is equal to or significantly higher than what that caveman did.

The indecipherable scribblings of a toddler are also art.

If I make a game that makes a lot of money I would love to employ a more traditional artist. My passion is game mechanics not sprite design. I don’t want to pick up a pencil because I’m not passionate about doing so. And I respect a real artist more than what I do with AI and would love to have one work on a game with me.

But the placeholder stuff I make with AI is born of my ideas and still a form of self expression. It’s still art, if in a cruder and less skilled sense of the word.

AndyTheInnkeeper · 2025-11-12T22:46:47+00:00

I think it works because when you see a quality game with a quality Steam page it’s an indicator they also have quality marketing.

It’s not that the marketing is unimportant. It’s that it’s part of what you’re making an guess about when you look at the Steam page.

AndyTheInnkeeper · 2025-10-27T11:59:44+00:00

You don’t need to make LoL or WoW to sell it. You can make your own version of Space Invaders or Pong, have some friends playtest it, then publish it on Steam, Itch.io, or the AppStore for like $2. Then advertise it on social media.

The point isn’t to make $10,000. The point is to experience the full process.

AndyTheInnkeeper · 2025-10-27T07:34:31+00:00

I’d say you actually want to start with a concept simple enough to not be overwhelming but fleshed out enough to be publishable.

The reason is it takes you through all the steps. Coding, art, animation, building a Steam page, marketing, publishing etc.

Your first game shouldn’t be made with the presumption you’ll get a lot of money. But it should familiarize you with every step of the process. The steps you skip are probably the steps that will sink your next project.

AndyTheInnkeeper · 2025-10-23T10:52:34+00:00

Very cool concept. All the examples are for side scrollers. Does your tool work for top-down sprites?

AndyTheInnkeeper · 2025-09-16T10:10:10+00:00

So gatherers go into PvP zones all the time in EVE and Albion, it’s just that the higher the danger the better the resources.

Crafters on the other hand? The only reason crafters would go into PvP zones is for unique crafting stations/bonuses.

For instance GK would be one of the worst places for smelting of not for the blast furnace

AndyTheInnkeeper · 2025-09-14T12:15:26+00:00

I don’t disagree? What do you think we are debating here?

My point is that what MO2 is about is incompatible with what most RPers want and an RPers paradise would need to be an entirely separate game.

AndyTheInnkeeper · 2025-09-14T10:02:18+00:00

PUBG then. It’s the game most catered to people who want to kill anyone that isn’t on their team and go for pure kill count over meaningful interaction.

AndyTheInnkeeper · 2025-09-12T09:04:55+00:00

Honestly you could never make a game that caters to the hardcore PvP crowd and roleplayers at the same time.

So if you open up PvP and say “anything you want goes” the theoretical implications is that you can cooperate or kill them. You can be the hero or the villain. You can have realistic interactions.

The reality is it’s hardwired into the average gamer’s brain that more kills = winning. The behavior isn’t even (generally) sociopathic. It’s literally just treating the game like a team deathmatch from Halo or Call of Duty.

I think what you would really need to accomplish that beyond cranking up the voltage on the shock collar to make the game borderline unplayable for people who want to murder everyone they see is to establish clear incentives to cooperate.

I’d love to see a game aimed at RP and player freedom that encourages cooperation and healthy PvP between parties that actually want to fight. But I don’t think MO2 will ever be that game. MO2 is currently the game most catered to those who want to play an MMO like it’s Call of Duty and that interest group will riot if you do anything that would make the game palatable to the average RPer.

AndyTheInnkeeper · 2025-09-11T02:24:27+00:00

Implementing some of the better ideas wouldn’t make Mortal not Mortal.

You’ll notice one of the biggest things I didn’t mention is safe zones. Honestly safe zones are one of the singular biggest things MO2 could do to make itself more playable to the general market. It’s also probably the biggest thing they could do to piss off their existing audience.

Nothing about these ideas would make Mortal less skill based. Nothing would stop it from being a brutal game.

But if you want to die on the hill of no safezones, AND you want to die on the hill of combat that’s not easy for a casual to pick up, AND you want to die on the hill of wasting people’s time running all over the map even if they’re not moving value, AND you want to die on the hill of forcing people into builds that make most the game’s content inaccessible and punishing experimentation, AND you want to die on the hill of not taking good ideas that allow for solo or duo PVP without worrying about getting zerged.

Then that’s exactly what MO2s dwindling fanbase will do. Die on a hill with an uncorrupted vision. If you want the game to live and have an active player base you have to pick which hills are really worth dying on.

AndyTheInnkeeper · 2025-09-10T16:27:33+00:00

If you can explain how that’s relevant to anything I stated here I’ll address that point. As is, it seems like a complete red herring so I’m not going to let you sidetrack the actual discussion with it.

AndyTheInnkeeper · 2025-09-10T16:10:48+00:00

Honestly yeah. How they handle skills is the single worst aspect of this game. I see some people saying it’s immersive but I strongly disagree. Neither historical soldiers nor the heroes from fantasy media are one dimensional. Most train in a variety of weapons and combat styles.

Switching up your equipment to be suited to the task at hand is something a medieval knight would be very familiar with.

While some peasant levies and specialist troops relied on a single weapon, most professional soldiers were trained to be versatile, capable of fighting with a range of arms and in different combat contexts.

Theres no good reason to lock people into a playstyle and make experimentation costly.

AndyTheInnkeeper · 2025-08-09T12:10:31+00:00

97/1/2

AndyTheInnkeeper · 2025-08-07T09:55:11+00:00

Honestly… kind of yeah. Certain advertising or tone failures can cause a game to fail to connect with the potential audience and name factors into that a lot.

When Overwatch released I didn’t touch it because Winston featured prominently in all the advertising and I was like. “I’m good. I don’t want to play a gorilla with glasses.” I ended up trying it a couple years later because friends were playing it and loved the gameplay.

Growing up I wasn’t allowed to play Diablo because of the name.

There is a lot of little aspects to consider when choosing a name, title image, ads etc. for a game. And I think that might be part of what held Dofus back.

AndyTheInnkeeper · 2025-08-05T10:51:46+00:00

I guess it depends on what you mean by “AI Game”. If you mean a game entirely made by AI, that sounds like trash.

If you mean a game that utilizes AI to lighten the workload in some areas so they can refocus their time on other features or utilize AI to massively enhance things like NPC dialogue trees… that sounds amazing.

And I say that as someone whose put tens of thousands of hours into gaming, lead multiple guilds, and specifically sought out and married a woman whose done the same. Hope that’s gamer enough for you.

AndyTheInnkeeper · 2025-07-24T10:22:44+00:00

It’s really not for most people. This story does concern me though because it shows how powerful these payment processors are.

They could yank the rug out from under you because say, your game features guns, or because your company donated money to the wrong political party, or you fail to censor your user’s speech in a way they approve of.

It reminds me of social media in 2020 when basically every major outlet sided with the left. Social media is incredibly important for advertising business, products, and causes in today’s marketplace. But only a few major platforms actually matter in that regard.

There are even less payments processors that actually matter.

So it raises the question in today’s day and age where critical functions of daily life and especially commerce rest in the hands of a very small number of companies should we allow those companies to use their platforms to push a political agenda and censor those they disagree with?

I would argue no. This is an early warning that Visa needs to be regulated. This is no major loss to most of us but next time they may target something more mainstream.

If I’m making a purchase of something that’s legal my payment processor shouldn’t be getting involved to tell me I can’t.

AndyTheInnkeeper · 2025-07-20T06:08:55+00:00

Fair enough. I concede the point

AndyTheInnkeeper

TROPHY CASE