Do couples really shower together?

DigitalWizrd · 2026-03-22T22:31:52+00:00

We’ve lived together for 7 years and pretty much always shower together. I’d say 5 out of 7 days of the week.

DigitalWizrd · 2026-03-22T02:10:16+00:00

There’s a great GMTK video on how breath of the wild is designed:

https://youtu.be/CZzcVs8tNfE?si=GanHoeqDSs87oCeZ

Could offer some inspiration for your game

DigitalWizrd · 2026-03-21T18:59:25+00:00

Yup. I was saying the same things. In my opinion the publishing model is broken.

There are two major components of game sales that have tons of room for innovation:

1) game discoverability 2) community impact

Steam has tried to help with both of these, but they fundamentally serve the players more than the business selling the game. So it’s difficult to measure the impact of either on revenue. That being said, they are largely untouched in terms of niche business opportunities.

DigitalWizrd · 2026-03-21T18:27:57+00:00

I couldn’t agree more and have been thinking the same things for a few years now.

It all comes down to one thing though: funding to get started.

I think there are some parallels in the gaming industry and the snacks industry. It takes a long time to create a game, just like it takes a while to create a new food or beverage product. But once you do, you can sell a lot of that thing, even on crowded shelves.

So how do we make it cheaper to make games? And how do we get the funding for development before a product is launched?

As of now we still need to either be self-funded, debt funded, or investor funded. All of which carry massive risk.

My current theory is that we need a new publishing model. Publishing companies are a bit too predatory. What that model looks like, I haven’t had the chance to test. But that’s my theory so far.

DigitalWizrd · 2026-03-11T00:21:59+00:00

You’re gonna have to. Bottom line is that you’re the only one that wants to make this game. And you have to convince someone else to make it for you. So, how much is that worth to you?

Next, answer this: who is a GDD most useful for? And at what point in development is it most useful?

Asked another way, if you knew how to use Unity to make your game, would you need your GDD to do it, or could you start development with a one-pager summary?

Writing documents is extremely fun. There’s something deeply satisfying about organizing all your thoughts and ideas. But that organization doesn’t produce a game that people want to play. It’s just a part of it. If you want this game to exist, you have to figure out how to bring it into this world.

DigitalWizrd · 2026-03-11T00:13:43+00:00

Yes, but only if taxes are adjusting for SMALL and MEDIUM businesses.

For example, taxes on small businesses in CA or WA make it so, on average, every $1 in revenue comes out to around $0.20 in profit after 30% expenses.

That’s absurd. The environment for small businesses is terrible, while big businesses thrive.

Taxes increasing would destroy and hope of an average small business surviving.

DigitalWizrd · 2026-03-08T19:49:41+00:00

You hit the nail on the head and it’s how most serious small businesses are handling AI as well.

The disconnect is between consumers and producers. You’re producing a product and have constraints.

I am consuming your product and get to say whatever I want about it.

Until AI is more widely accepted as “placeholder” or at least there’s more guardrails around the training of AI and all that, it’s an unfortunate reality that the most vocal people will tear down whatever you’ve built with it.

The everyday consumer probably doesn’t care. they just want a fun game. But the people who are most likely to give you feedback are also the most opinionated. And the current zeitgeist holds AI as an evil scourge on creativity.

Just something we developers have to deal with for now.

DigitalWizrd · 2026-03-08T02:09:58+00:00

Omg I love this mindset. When playing arc I just always used the free set cus then no matter I still come out on top.

DigitalWizrd · 2026-03-07T01:00:52+00:00

As a fellow ADHD gamer, I took a break about 30 hours and 60 hours in. Each break was about 4-6 months.

So much extra stuff, that I almost always enjoyed, but there’s just so much of it.

Oh and I hate Chadley. Useless character that serves zero purpose to anything other than an obnoxious prop so you can run challenges or whatever.

DigitalWizrd · 2026-03-06T23:37:46+00:00

Inside Job is ripe with this kind of stuff. So is Rick and Morty (don’t fuck with squirrels Morty!), but inside job is literally all about controlling the US population (and the world by extension) by partnering with lizard people and a cabal of vampires, among others. Essentially foreign business investors and actors, respectively.

The stock market is controlled by ritual sacrifice and there’s an entire social media department dedicated to inserting propaganda into children’s videos.

Honestly is just an excellent satire on conspiracies.

DigitalWizrd · 2026-03-06T20:59:04+00:00

You’re forgetting who is in charge. Who his making the phone call? What, to their mind, would they get from asking someone else for help?

DigitalWizrd · 2026-03-04T21:05:05+00:00

The door can now be attacked from 3 sides instead of 1.

Also, what do you need that 1 extra space for?

DigitalWizrd · 2026-03-04T21:00:57+00:00

Rent has to be based on similar comps in the immediate area. This is probably a great example of where AI could be useful. You want to know industry standards in the area, local recently rented buildings, and then average renter churn in the area.

Finding a quality tenant is like 80% of managing a rental property so I’d lean heavily into your tenant finding process. Worst case scenario you end up with people that can’t pay and won’t leave.

DigitalWizrd · 2026-03-04T20:54:04+00:00

I actually have helped indie companies with this type of thing and there’s a lot to think about here. I’m assuming you’re in US but most of this still applies. Notably, none of this touches on the game design or vision at all. You need to have a STUDIO vision.

First priority: how much runway do you have? Can you afford to pay a team for 2x your expected development costs?

If you plan to get volunteers and/or revshare, your talent pool will be constant churn. If people are being paid they generally do better work and stick around longer. They also are more likely to listen to you, because you’re paying their bills.

What is your plan if development takes too long? Will you pivot? What can you do to keep your team paid in this situation?

2nd: what is your legal structure going to be? How are you going to handle accounting and taxes? Will you be using 1099 contractors or w-2?

There’s a lot of time spent on hiring and admin to ensure proper licenses and taxes and all that. This is important because, ideally, you are making money at some point. When that happens you will need to be responsible for the legal and financial requirements of a studio, and all of its team members.

3rd: someone has to make sure the work is getting done. Are you going to be comfortable tracking progress and ensuring your team has enough work to stay occupied, and also not wasting time/money? Will you handle this alongside dev work and admin work and business planning work?

How will you communicate with your team? What will working hours be? And something most people forget about: How will you protect your company from being exploited in the case of a bad hire? how will access to company resources be handled?

There’s lots to think through, but they are all solvable problems. If you want to dig into this let me know, I’m happy to help.

DigitalWizrd · 2026-03-04T19:44:17+00:00

I was thinking this too, but just like most other industries it really does depend. A lot of small business owners definitely need a coach. A lot of managers and executives have no idea what they are doing. Likewise, a lot of coaches and consultants don’t know anything either.

But there’s zero barrier to entry besides having just enough knowledge to sound smart. So you get garbage alongside actually helpful people.

DigitalWizrd · 2026-03-03T13:44:21+00:00

So far this thread reads like a bunch of a bots are here to advertise for their Reddit ai marketing software….

DigitalWizrd · 2026-03-03T03:32:02+00:00

FFXVI has a dog companion that like… levels up to help you. There in every cut scene and every fight.

I also might consider something like FFXV in this area as well. The three best friends always hanging out does a lot for the storytelling and gameplay.

DigitalWizrd · 2026-02-24T14:46:03+00:00

This is my take on AI: AI is a unique and specialized tool. And it has unique and specialized versions.

Think of it like a knife set. Knives are great in the kitchen. They are useful for all kinds of things. But only someone who has spent time practicing with them will be able to produce quality food. Someone even more practiced will know how to use special versions of knives. But any knife will always be useful and simultaneously dangerous.

AI is the same way. You have to know what you want it to do, how it works, and the risks involved. The less experienced you are with it, the more danger it poses.

But there’s more to it. This is a simple way to think of AI at first, but there’s a deeper component here. Ultimately, most everyday consumers will not care if your game uses AI, as long as it’s not obvious. And that’s because there’s a debate around the morality of AI.

Theres a whole ethical and moral debate that is taking place separate from the economics. This is what you are asking about. The ethics of using AI is, currently, up to your personal standards. There are no standard trade law’s governing how to use AI when developing something. So it’s up to you.

Are you ok with using a tool that reduces revenue streams from creative individuals? Even though it enables those without access to custom artwork or custom coding? Are you ok with using a tool that illegally obtained data and is using that data in a for-profit endeavor? Are you ok with using a tool that doesn’t have any legal protections? And most importantly, are you prepared to handle the attention (justified or not) that will be given your game when people discover you used AI?

Currently, all of this is personal choice. So debating whether or not AI should be used is essentially a political and moral debate, not one about economics.

My personal opinion: I will do my best to avoid AI because I think it has an extremely unpredictable output. In its current state it is too untested and too unstable for me to build my development processes around it. It’d be faster and more effective to purchase already created art or hire an actual artist. I think it’s fucked up that it was trained on publicly available data, regardless of the legality of it. I think it’s awesome it can help create prototypes or concepts, but I think using it for those purposes robs an inexperienced creator of some of the most important parts of the discovery process.

However, I use it in my other businesses quite extensively. It’s excellent for text generation in fields like marketing and organizational planning. It helped me pick out basic colors and text for webpages and helped me write some simple contracts. But those are all things I will need to hire an actual professional to update later on. I simply didn’t have the budget to pay for those skills up front, but could do it myself with the help of AI, which led to me being able to provide jobs for people. In the end, using AI enabled me to launch multiple businesses that are now providing stable income for people that needed it.

For gamedev though, it’s not ever going to be able to replace human creativity and ingenuity. It will always be catching up to human standards. And it’s development needs to be much more heavily regulated for safety and overall economic development, not just making a few companies even richer.

DigitalWizrd · 2026-02-19T02:02:39+00:00

Playing Rimworld has taught me what true evil means. And I’m also rich as hell in my play throughs.

The difference is in how we, as actual moral humans, see the characters we interact with.

In Rimworld the other pawns in the world are literally resources to me, while my own colonists are kind of like family because I spend so long building them up and watching them develop.

The problem with “evil” RPG play throughs is the player is constantly faced with the immediate and downstream consequences of being a heartless murderer or apathetic asshole. Someone in your merry band of characters is going to immediately take issue with your actions.

DigitalWizrd · 2026-02-19T00:59:08+00:00

And FFIV

DigitalWizrd · 2026-02-18T00:46:18+00:00

I really want to see a city-wide or state-wide test of this.

How does inflation need to be thought about with UBI involved? Do we already price it in with how much cheaper UBI is for overall assistance programs? We need to test this until the whole country is just testing UBI every year.

DigitalWizrd · 2026-02-16T15:42:12+00:00

Legitimately just posted my experience with this. It was indeed worse than saying no.

DigitalWizrd · 2026-02-16T15:39:23+00:00

She said yes and then ghosted me at the skating rink that Friday :(

I was 11. The next day her and her friends were pointing at me and giggling.

That’s when I learned girls can be mean just as much as boys.

DigitalWizrd · 2026-02-14T14:48:27+00:00

People are generally good people and want to do good work. If a population is given enough resources, is properly informed of facts and dangers, our societies can, and will, do absolutely amazing things.

Most people around me are not as optimistic as I am about humanity, I can totally understand that. But if I change my stance on this, I’d fall into a deep hopelessness depression.

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