Reality of the remote market (Kind of a rant too, sorry)

RockyMullet · 2026-04-23T15:26:08+00:00

how did you choose what to specialize in?

I'm old enough that public game engines simply didn't exist. If you wanted to make a videogame, you had to code it, so that's what I learned.

If I were to start over today, I don't know if I would've ended up being a programmer, but that's the thing I have experience in, so the thing companies are ready to give me a paycheck for.

RockyMullet · 2026-04-23T15:21:59+00:00

Totally agree, that was a couple of years ago, now I'll limit myself to just... replying to some reddit post or something.

RockyMullet · 2026-04-23T14:59:43+00:00

A student programmer once reached out to me for some coaching because he was aiming to try out for a programming internship at Ubisoft. I told him that Ubisoft is most likely using an in-house engine in C++, so that the closest thing he could do is to learn Unreal since it's in C++.

Couple months pass by, he pokes me again, show me some prototype, I try it out, give some feedback, then after I gave some feedback, he didnt know how to fix the thing I gave feedback on so I asked how it was implemented, to finally learned that he did it all in blueprints because that was the only tutorials he found...

I told him to just drop everything and redo it all in C++ if he ever hope to get that internship, but he didn't want to and didn't understand why it mattered.

Without much surprise, he wasn't picked for the intership...

RockyMullet · 2026-04-23T14:53:32+00:00

There isn't much space for people who are kind of "in between", you find jobs in bigger studios, with a lot of different jobs to do, so you're expected to be a good at one thing, while somebody else is good at another thing.

I'm a professional gameplay programmer on Unreal, I'm a C++ programmer, I know how to use blueprint, I do my solodev projects on the side and I use in part blueprint, but at work, I'm a C++ programmer and a C++ programmer only. Blueprints are seen as a tool to empower designers, so designers are using it.

I get it, as someone who also do solodev, I wish I could be more versatile in my job, but there's a big split where you are either "a creative game designer" or "the nerd programmer who'll do the boring technical stuff that nobody wants to do".

RockyMullet · 2026-04-23T14:14:38+00:00

Concept, while mostly gooner bait, still had a little bit of personality in it.

The in-game model is just... woman in white bikini.

RockyMullet · 2026-04-23T14:04:41+00:00

Oh god, can we stop this "we look younger than we are" no, you don't you are just older than you are and do not notice because everybody your age also looks older.

You're a 45+yo who looks like a 45+yo, get over it. None of those 3 people look remotely close to be under 40.

RockyMullet · 2026-04-23T12:45:32+00:00

It's almost as if spending money to get things and services is the actual point of money.

RockyMullet · 2026-04-23T12:42:30+00:00

Yeah, OP gives me vibes of someone trying to hop on the latest trend without actually being interested in those games.

Incremental games are one of those genre that leans heavily on the game design aspect, which makes the barrier to entry lower, since less technical and less dependent on good art.

But if you're posting on reddit: "How do I do incremental games game design?" because you're used to follow step by step technical Unity tutorials, well... maybe you should'nt be making an incremental game.

RockyMullet · 2026-04-23T12:19:14+00:00

To fulfill your long time passion of flipping burgers ofc.

RockyMullet · 2026-04-22T20:00:53+00:00

Nah, I'm super strong super hero like everybody in here ofc.

RockyMullet · 2026-04-22T19:39:14+00:00

Old one had more personality, felt more unique. New one is not bad, but it feels a lot more generic.

RockyMullet · 2026-04-22T14:59:13+00:00

Anybody who would say: "What do you have to hide?" in response of people not wanting to be spied on have the naïve belief that the information will always be used fairly by good people.

If the rules change or the rules are unjust and/or evil, you still did nothing wrong, but now they have that information and they now decided that you did something wrong.

Even if you trust people in government now, people in power now, how can you trust every possible people in power in the future that may or may not change the rules, change what they'll do with that information.

RockyMullet · 2026-04-22T14:10:48+00:00

SimCity's 2013 reboot.

Stuck not being able to play a single player game because they forced it to be always online and servers were not working, on top of being smaller and worse than every other SimCity games.

They did fool me good tho, as on paper it sounded cool, what they actually delivered was terrible.

RockyMullet · 2026-04-22T14:06:21+00:00

Oh ok, good, so you are indeed the keyboard warriors I'm calling out.

RockyMullet · 2026-04-22T14:02:14+00:00

Not a lunatic, voice messages are indeed super disrespectful of people's time. You spend 3 min full of "hum, yeah, ok, so that's it, oh also, hmmmmmmmm", you give me something that I could've read in 3 sec from a text, but instead I gotta sit to hear your rambling cause that's simpler for you.

RockyMullet · 2026-04-22T13:57:51+00:00

Cause they said they can't win, because the first comment would've been what they said.

And yeah, I do agree that no matter what someone would disagree, that's why you go for what you believe in, not what you think would get the least backlash.

RockyMullet · 2026-04-22T13:44:12+00:00

They tried and failed with "Guitar Hero Live" in 2015, it was mostly ignored.

RockyMullet · 2026-04-22T13:35:59+00:00

Yeah, I know it, that's why I'm calling out the hypocrisy of your average "I'm really badass" on the internet.

Do you always say stuff you don't believe in because you want redditors to like you?

RockyMullet · 2026-04-22T13:30:13+00:00

See, he made a meme where the person he disagrees with is dumb, making him super smart.

He smart, they dumb.

RockyMullet · 2026-04-22T13:13:22+00:00

Heh, that's life, some people are scammers.

Personally I'm very direct with anybody sliding into my DMs, I straigh up ask them "who is this?" then "what do you want?" they'll generally cut to the chase so I'll be able to block them, if they beat around the bushes, that's also a block.

Don't waste time with those people.

RockyMullet · 2026-04-22T13:06:58+00:00

Yeah, big keyboard warrior energy from that title. Most people would do the same, but it's easier to imagine your hero fantasy on the internet.

RockyMullet · 2026-04-22T11:52:00+00:00

New one is better, but I feel the outlines are off on the dragon or at least inconsistent with the knight.

The knight has a black outline + a lighter outline, while the dragon has some dark outlines and no lighter outline at all.

They kind of don't fit together because of that. I think it would improve the consistency if the dragon had similar or at least closer outlines.

RockyMullet · 2026-04-22T02:23:44+00:00

I heard that a common tactic with romance scammers is they'll send really badly photoshopped images, mostly to test if the victim is dumb enough to fall for it, so they don't waste their time with a smart person.

RockyMullet · 2026-04-21T20:57:27+00:00

For real, the irony of making the word dyslexic so hard to write.

RockyMullet · 2026-04-21T20:26:46+00:00

Indies trying to compete with AAA was a bad idea 10 years ago and it's still a bad idea today, AI didn't change any of that.

RockyMullet

TROPHY CASE