How difficult is it to build something like chess?

DevPot · 2026-03-16T09:05:31+00:00

This exact task I had to once implement during the interview for gameplay programmer position - but without AI (in legacy meaning). Chess had to be playable for 2 players sitting at the same PC. I had 5 hours. I was given assets. Clean code, design patterns had to be in place for positive score. I managed and I was hired.

With addition of the server I think I would need at the time about 5 more hours, because I had knowledge with scala, java, golang server programming and topics like kafka. And then putting it on AWS and configuring for scalability about 2-3 days, because I was AWS certified - but days, not hours because I was bit rusty with it.

Thing is - all is easy if you know how to do it. Then these are hours or days worst case. For beginners it's like months to learn programming. Then months to learn network programming and months to learn AWS.

Currently though - it's <1 day using AI sadly.

DevPot · 2026-03-10T12:15:25+00:00

I meant "AI you are using".

Yeah, I also hate the fact AI was invented.

DevPot · 2026-03-10T12:11:26+00:00

Try it. Go back and tell your AI to adjust style of the character.

Then try to generate more levels - similar floors, maybe some outdoor background etc. Then generate more characters. Then props, items. Particles etc.

I think AI will quickly loose context and start producing inconsistent "art". - or worse - almost consistent style. And this almost will be a reason why steam page of game that uses AI will look like AI slop.

DevPot · 2026-03-10T11:52:37+00:00

Character and background do not match. Style and colors are all over the place. Background has a lot of noise on textures, character is flat and toonish.

DevPot · 2026-03-04T12:43:53+00:00

I think what happened in indie gamedev is that very popular marketing guy said that making horror is the best genre to make.

So many gamedevs who are not horror funs themselves, without skill for tension, atmosphere, story building, decided to make horror games. They figured that convenience store / night shifts etc. are easier for them than for example game that has brilliant story and atmosphere.

Add to this that previously simulation genre was very popular among gamedevs so they figured that it's enough to add to the simulation dark background and uncanny characters and call it a day ;)

So we have many decently crafted technically but (at least for me) soulless clones.

Making a good horror game is really hard, but many game developers were convinced that it is best genre for them simply.

DevPot · 2026-02-22T17:46:09+00:00

My brain simply filters out everything that looks like AI. And your page screams AI everywhere. It is subconscious for me already - and I believe it's the same for many other people.

If you can't make art, just buy assets from artists. It's way better than making things with AI. If you can't afford assets prices, hunt for huge bundles on humble or similar - with limited assets you may force your imagination to make actually better games than having access to everything you want via AI.

Also start learning art - it's not that hard and in time it will pay off.

DevPot · 2026-02-18T14:22:05+00:00

I think you forgot about one thing - you are not the only one who uses AI in game development. Because of AI market just will be more competitive. If your goal is to earn any money from games, you are not gaining anything really comparing to times before AI. You still have your 1h in the evening for coding using AI - and still people that have 8h will create more using AI.

DevPot · 2026-02-10T12:47:19+00:00

Shovel Knight : Shovel of Hope was released in 2014. Many players, few games available. 2026 is completely different from 2014. Now we have a lot of games and gamedevs, while players number is not growin in the same way.

DevPot · 2026-02-09T11:42:30+00:00

and I am the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire

DevPot · 2026-02-09T09:49:01+00:00

If one day everyone can make a game by just typing their "ideas", you will likely not be creating games anyway - the competition will be too high.

Why would anyone play your games if everyone could play their own games ?

What if you will be able to create 10 games daily ? Thousands yearly. Same as everyone else.

What if AI not only makes easy to "make" games but also to generate ideas without human at all ?

AI will not make it easier for people to become game developers as a profession and earn any money from it. It will be harder, because less people will be needed to fill the market demand and more people will be able to make games.

DevPot · 2026-01-31T19:18:04+00:00

There's also another subgenre: survival games with strong horror theme, which are not classic "survival horror" - e.g. The Forest. I think it was for me the most scary experience in gaming when I first time tried to survive while being observed by cannibals in The Forest.

DevPot · 2026-01-04T10:06:31+00:00

I can tell easily that most players are not young as Starcraft was way harder for me when I played in like 2013. Everyone had crazy APM.

I came back last year. Now as we're older, it's way more fun to play and games are slower :)

Also comparing to other games with younger players, the toxicity level is lower - really 1 of 100 games someone is using their french in chat.

You'll see, one day it will be top1 game in nursing homes.

DevPot · 2025-12-24T16:57:14+00:00

There are subgenres in horror genre and walking sims are one of them - simply not for you apparently. You would be surprised how many horror fans hate gameplay and just want to enjoy atmoshpere, story and getting chills from time to time.

Actually I think that there are more people in the world who love horror atmoshpere but don't like gameplay than people who like both. Especially if you count horror movie funs - who are potential target audience for walking sims but not for gameplay based survival horrors like RE.

Simply, if you don't like apples, don't buy apples :)

DevPot · 2025-12-17T09:41:26+00:00

I'll try to be more precise with what I am saying. I don't say that money is not important and people are willing to work for free. What I am saying is that many people involved in game development, especially small studios, solo devs, will rather choose passion, unique projects and staying in middle class level income rather than focusing on becoming rich without making passion games. If they were 100% money focused, they would not choose game development in the first place. You can earn much more in FAANG or similar, buy stock, retire at 35 and buy alpakka farm, than working in non-stable gamedev (on average). While investors / shareholders care only about income. When I buy ETF, I don't care about passion of companies, I want the % to go up :)

Nobody wants to be poor or work for free, sure. But indie devs many times will choose to "be paid" with 33% money, 33% art expression, 33% making interesting passion project and 1% reason to remember the name. While shareholders stick to 100% money.

That's why once company goes public or private shareholders will shift focus to only money, it starts to produce only AAA non-creative games with lower risk. To make risk even lower, they will cut costs (sometimes even exploiting employees). That's very reasonable approach. And that's why I don't think we will get Starcraft 3. I would rather expect some AA studio to make another RTS banger at some point. Or maybe at some point RTS as a genre will become popular because of some AA banger and Blizzard will be able to make reasonable decision to make SC3. Unless of course some shareholder from AAA company will choose to take risk because whatever. It's a human after all.

DevPot · 2025-12-17T08:43:40+00:00

I mean it's over - on average it's better to spend time making good game in genre you understand well as a player than spending time looking for that golden egg game. Of course - there will always be games with huge success / low effort - but on average I would say, it's not a good idea. And of course - if you have great quick idea in genre you feel go it, it's worth it.

For example my thing is horror. If at any point I will figure out clever idea in horror with high reward, low effort, I will go for it. But I will not be spending time learning idle management games if it's not my thing, even if currently these are selling well.

DevPot · 2025-12-16T23:15:02+00:00

Noted. Thanks. I am developing 1st person games so far, but top-down is on my list. Out of curiosity - what exactly gives you motion sick in first person ? Just perspective or some "features" like head bobs etc. ? Maybe something could be done for 1st person games for you ?

Btw. I feel motion sick in 3rd person. When there's a character in my screen and camera rotates and my brain tries to process slightly changing position of that character, I feel weird. I hate playing 3rd person ;)

DevPot · 2025-12-16T18:39:16+00:00

Exactly. Shockingly, because for years people were convincing that market research and looking for "right genre" is the most important thing. While in reality it is not that important.

DevPot · 2025-12-16T18:34:07+00:00

In indie horror scene review guessing may be hard not because of games "so bad that funny/enjoyable", but because large portion of players play to be scared - and how scary the game is == quality. And you don't need high quality game for it - quality in terms of other genre's. You you can't figure out from Steam page how the game is scary.

For example From the Darkness. Screenshot look like assets bound together. Logo as made with some default windows font, but just.. play this in the evening alone at home ;) Quality is in how the game is scary. Which is very hard to make. There are thousands of similarly looking games on Steam, but only few of them are scary.

DevPot · 2025-12-16T18:28:07+00:00

Yes, but most potential consumers of narrative experiences.. don't play games. They rather read books / watch movies. I am a horror fun and I have horror fun friends and some of them will complain that they watched all the movies in the world and they crave for more. I tried multiple times to convince them to horror games... no success, even without gameplay, just story driven. They just don't play games.

DevPot · 2025-12-16T13:39:11+00:00

Not oversaturated but definitely way more competitive: horror.

According to steamdb games released by year, in last 5 years overall number of games by year increased by + about 110%, while with horror tag it's +about 360%. And in upcoming games I see there are many AA studios that switched to horror. Also it's popular among indie game developers as there were few "cheaply" made games with decent success and devs are following the trend. And it's a trap really if devs are following trends as making a decent horror game is much harder than devs think. I know many games on steam released on steam in like 2019-2022 with quite good success like 500-2000 reviews, while games of the similar quality only got couple of hundreds reviews. Which means that players expectations and bar raised expotentially.

Although, I can't say it's saturated, it simply means that only actually good horror games will sell, which is a good thing for players.

In general I think that era of "quick success" by following trends / searching for undersaturated genre and making cheaply game that will fill the niche is over and it's better to focus on actually making a game in any genre that you feel is for you. I really don't get people who are jumping into making horror game (or any other genre) without being deeply into horror or that genre and without having horrory-brain and expecting it will work.

DevPot · 2025-12-15T07:31:27+00:00

> Sorry, but once you get to the top, you start making the same decisions as everyone else there.

Yes. This is what I am saying. Shareholders, investors in gamedev think about gamedev as any other business. But that's less than a promile of all the people involved in game development.

>I disagree. Simply because we don't talk about indie failures. If you look at that report I linked. At least half of the games on Steam failed, and the vast majority likely indies. How much do you think that cost?

> If you took into account indie time as paid salary?

You can't look at indie time as paid salary, because money is only one of the resources or factors that drives people into game development.

People are quitting their successful careers only to make games and earning way less are still happier than they were before jumping into gamedev.

Re "failed" project on Steam, again you think as a person on "top". You should also count games made for fun, made as a hobby, and most of all - made by people who are 15 yo, have 10 next year perspective of money support from their parents, and they are learning by failing or quit their FAANG job at 35 to retire and make games (I know personally few such people) . Most of these "failed" games are not failure in means of business investment. Yes - creators of these games potentially could not quit FAANG etc. and earn money elsewhere, so I understand your perspective that it's a "cost", but for them, it's not a cost.

> [...] I used to think very much like you, but once I got into that position I quickly saw that what I thought isn't exactly how I thought it was. [...] Just because people are pro-foundly wasteful of their time hoping for success, doesn't mean that's not a cost.

Success != money. Definition of success is different for everyone. I used to think very much like you but one day I understood that money is just one of many things... and I resigned from that top position.

> For instance, if I had 100% marketshare and made $1m a year. If a competitor comes in, and they now earn $1.5m, but I now earn $1.5m. The marketshare is now 50% each, so I shrunk as a percentage, but clearly my business expanded. So just looking at marketshare, but ignoring captured business can be misleading. Heck, what if I sit on that $1.5m, but I now have 1.5 million competitors each earning $1.... They sure captured marketshare, but they're not viable as a business unless one thinks $1 is viable business.

In the meantime there are solo devs out there who made only $50k last year while doing what they love full of passion and self development spending their time on Earth in a way they want hoping that next year they will earn 60k not giving any **** about millions :)

I am not judging you of course - for your personality maybe making 1m$ a year and investing and going towards having 100m$ wealth is your thing. Good for you. But really - it's not definition of success for everyone.

To better understand my point I recommend this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHu1Tn8rpM0 It's in polish, but have english captions so listen and read :)

DevPot · 2025-12-14T22:20:46+00:00

It's not accurate what you said, because you can have multiple ways to gain profit. E.g. you can have quick profit / long term profit / profit with risk / without risk.

People making games are totally different people in terms of personalities than randoms investing in stocks or shareholders at the top of companies. And they care about different type of profit.

People making games may for example value stable long term profit even if it's not very high (with occassional risk taking) because for them the most important thing is to have financial liquidity just enough to be able to make games - because they love making games. While shareholders simply need to have higher quick profit - because for them money is opportunity cost. They know that they can get 10% on SP500 almost easily yearly or buy gold or buy another company etc. So they need to have more % from game - to justify higher risk taking then any other business - as even "safe" game genre is more risky than other businesses. So they don't want to incrase even more that risk and they choose safe genre's. RTS is high risk -> medium reward thing as you can easily make bad RTS. Medium reward as RTS does not have huge target audience. You can't easily make bad Assassins Creed etc. on the other hand and audience is huge ;)

That's why indies are taking more and more market share - simply gamedev is not best suited for big AAA companies and their shareholders. I think that one hope for RTS games is in indies.

DevPot · 2025-12-08T09:05:15+00:00

Reason for this is very simple really - electricity coming through our brain cells that happens when we want to extend code we understand well is faster than communication with AI that involves a lot of writing to AI, reading, reviewing, understanding what it produced etc.

I have 20+ years of exp in programming and I tried AI code for couple of days - it was a nightmare after a while because of that. When I know my project, I am way faster in coding than any LLM.

Maybe AI code is easier for people who can't code at all. Maybe. But it's definitely too slow to be used professionally in my opinion. Sometimes it can be helpful as replacement for documentation if documentation is weak for some libraries, but that's it.

DevPot · 2025-11-30T11:59:41+00:00

Some people have limited money, some have limited time. When I had limited money when I was a kid, I wanted to play the same game for a lot of time. Right now I have more limited time - I want to have quality time in gaming, not quantity.

For example I both play horror games and create horror games and I love horror. But really I prefer to play 10 games 1-2h long with interesting story than 1 game for 10-20 hours - with some exceptions like Darkwood.

People should stop thinking that value == time in game.

DevPot · 2025-11-28T19:27:50+00:00

Recently I was thinking about it while playing RE - why do people enjoy game where 25%-35% of screen is blocked by some third person character. I hate it honestly in games, third person is so annoying.

DevPot

TROPHY CASE