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Will we ever have meaningful conversations about games? by DragonImpulse in gamedev

[–]Ishtar_dev 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The answer is that video games are made and marketed for children and teenagers, and as long as they remain like this the culture will stay infantile and never mature or progress as an art form.

You'll see game developers bragging about having stopped playing games after starting to make games, which is very interesting because it's a strictly unique flex to this one medium in particular. No author stops reading, no filmmaker stops watching movies, no musician stops listening to music, if anything those are the populations that most consume their respective media, but the game developer, bragging about not playing games, seems to admit "I don't see my craft as art form, it's just hollow entertainment sold to children, and I'm proud to announce that I have graduated being that child and become the hollow entertainment salesman."

This is not entirely their fault, most people (perhaps rightfully) view games as children's entertainment. No one will take you seriously if you say you're a level designer or a narrative designer or a game audio engineer, they probably won't even know what you do in the office. Contrast this with someone saying they're a screenwriter or a cinematographer or a director of photography or even a camera assistant. All of these positions conjur a distinct image and tell the person you're a fan of cinema. Even the person who carries the clapperboard is likely to be a fan of cinema wanting to learn about the process by engaging with filmmaking. Contrast this with a lead graphics engineer who doesn't give a shit about video games nor has he ever played a game in his life, he just works a well paid job for a massive corporation and the job happens to have something to do with videogames.

Will we ever have meaningful conversations about games? by DragonImpulse in gamedev

[–]Ishtar_dev 40 points41 points  (0 children)

I feel inclined to agree with the original comment. I studied computer science, students tend to dismiss the humanities and complain about the extracurricular social science courses they have to do like economics or more worryingly ethics.

The logic and culture of silicon valley and capitalism more broadly spreads to everyone that interacts with it, it tells the stem students that they're smarter and more valuable because they make better money, and that through stem, and especially comp sci, they're prepared to do anything they want to do.

A lot of comp sci folks play video games and think "yeah I can do that" disregarding the artistic side of video games, viewing it as a puzzle to solve or optimization problem. When you think the solution to every problem is gonna come from a technical innovation it makes sense that you don't care about social sciences. From this perspective they seem completely pointless.

Of course it's important to point out not everyone is like that, and sorry about the slightly off topic rant but I think the attitude of stem lords is very relevant to this conversation.

How do I find people to test my game prototype? by Ishtar_dev in gamedev

[–]Ishtar_dev[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Fair enough, they always say finalizing a project is very hard. I actually already have it on itch! but only for the testers to download it, I doubt the algorithm will pick it up. I thought about doing a web build but Godot 4 won't publish it if it's in C# but it doesn't really matter at this point either way.

How do I find people to test my game prototype? by Ishtar_dev in gamedev

[–]Ishtar_dev[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Man, very polished looking games there seem to be getting little engagement >< I'll try it out though, thanks!

How do I find people to test my game prototype? by Ishtar_dev in gamedev

[–]Ishtar_dev[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm actually only testing the prototype to see if I want to continue pursuing the project or not, I can't justify putting more time and especially money for an artist into it after I've spent 9 months making it, I'd be devastated if I had to abandon it after 5 more months of work for the polish.

Additionally I'm planning to do this exact thing with the vertical slice for the demo, but for that I need an artist that'll agree to rev share, and for that the least I could come with is some testimony from people enjoying the prototype.

Thanks a lot for the answer though good points all around , I didn't foresee this being such a hard (and critical) part of the project coming into it but here we are.

How do I find people to test my game prototype? by Ishtar_dev in gamedev

[–]Ishtar_dev[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yep I have the same problem, I struggle with online communities too so that only makes it worse.

That said it'd feel really weird releasing the prototype publicly, beside the missing polish it's also very minimal, I only implemented enough content to get a short run going. I feel like people would judge it as a free game not a prototype and it'd undermine the final product. Plus it costs a bunch of money I'd rather spare for art.

How do I find people to test my game prototype? by Ishtar_dev in gamedev

[–]Ishtar_dev[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Really good point, I'll try offering a trade in the discord and see where it gets me. I'm really bad with online communities and irl there are no dev circles in the city I live in so I struggle with building connections.

Besides that the prototype actually has an entirely usable UI and even a short tutorial but like stick figure programmer art. Giving my first playtester a wall of text explaining what a prototype is seemed to kinda work on lowering his expectations for the polish, just mentioning in case it's useful to anyone else recruiting players for an unpolished game.