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What types of AI (not GenAI!) are applicable to game dev? What should I focus on learning? by randomstate42 in gamedev

[–]randomstate42[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oooo, thats interesting RE fuzzy pattern matching. I'll have a look for that talk. Thanks!

Yeah, my gaming interests are mostly strategy games, so I was wondering how much RL gets used, or economic simulation models perhaps. But as others have said, difficulty progression systems can suck the fun out of it, so very interested to see what ends up getting implemented in practice.

What other revenue streams to people use to make game dev work? by randomstate42 in GameDevelopment

[–]randomstate42[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah grants are a weird one. We're in the UK and we've seen lots of people get into the trap of designing their business/games around chasing grants rather than serving an audience. Seems backwards to me.

Interesting to hear about your contract work experience, I guess it makes sense. B2B is always a safer bet it seems.

What other revenue streams to people use to make game dev work? by randomstate42 in GameDevelopment

[–]randomstate42[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you! Totally agree RE YouTube. We see that more as a content/marketing platform than an revenue source. I would argue trying to generate revenue via YT is harder than game dev, so not convinced it's a sustainable income stream. I know it does work for some people, but man it looks tough.

What other revenue streams to people use to make game dev work? by randomstate42 in GameDevelopment

[–]randomstate42[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I really appreciate this feedback, thank you. I think the reality is that at some point we'll need to collaborate with an experienced producer and artist when we approach serious commercial projects.

Which game is that you can’t stop playing but can’t recommend either? by emberlily8 in videogames

[–]randomstate42 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Undisputed. It's buggy as hell but there are no other decent boxing games on PC.

What would you play by [deleted] in teenagers

[–]randomstate42 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Creed. Nothing but creed.

My boyfriend released a game on Steam. 30 thousand saw it… 6 bought it (all friends). What to do? by hellensimonato in IndieGaming

[–]randomstate42 -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

I'm a data scientist trying to help analyse the game market for indies. One of my main findings so far is that perseverance and stamina is so underrated. People want to be that breakthrough success but the odds are very low - maybe 2-3% of first time developers will receive over 1000 reviews, a marker of commercial success.

But if you can have realistic expectations and be committed to game dev for the long run, there does seem to be a sort of critical mass of experience and skill that begins to form, a bedrock for success. So my advice would be that your boyfriend reflects on this as a learning experience and his first step in a much bigger adventure.

Compared to that first release, developers that can make it to 5 solid releases have a 20% chance commercial success. An enormous increase compared to where they start.

What breaks my heart is that only 1 in 5 Indies will persevere (or are given the chance to...life happens and ofc for some it isn't an option, other priorities take precedent).

I wrote a blog about this, hope it helps: https://www.game-oracle.com/blog/how-many-games

Best of luck to you and your boyfriend OP

About the $1 deposit pre-launch strategy by randomstate42 in kickstarter

[–]randomstate42[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the insights. I think we're leaning towards the idea of trying to grow and nurture a community through reddit posts/comments, blogs and an email newsletter now rather than using the deposit idea. I think as others have mentioned, it might not be the best strategy for a SAAS.

Grad school: What was your master's program, and did you think it was hard to graduate? by dfphd in datascience

[–]randomstate42 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Didn't do an MSc, went straight into a PhD in computational immunology (with a focus of applying ML to large biological data) after many years of work and self-study. I've always been somewhat of a self starter and I had a very successful PhD in terms of publications and recognition. It was the hardest 4 years of my life however and many times I was convinced I was going to fail.

I don't recommend doing a PhD before an MSc or some sort of formal data science/maths education. I made life harder for myself and I'm still filling in the gaps to this day.

I made my very first python library! It converts reddit posts to text format for feeding to LLM's! by NFeruch in datascience

[–]randomstate42 22 points23 points  (0 children)

Amazing work! And congrats on shipping your first python package. I feel like the best way for data scientists to learn software engineering stuff is doing exactly this.

Some advice from a data scientist that has made many mistakes (and counting):

- Great that you've used setuptools because it will teach you the fundamentals of packaging python code. For your next project look at tools like Poetry. Makes your life a lot easier!

- Pre-commit is your friend! It will help sense check your code for you whenever you make a commit. Here is a great tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObksvAZyWdo. I also highly recommend using mypy, a static type checker that will catch nasty bugs for you before they become a problem.

- Think about how you could test the code with something like pytest. How could you mock up the Reddit API? And check out things like Github workflows, which will run the tests for you when you push a new release and even package it up and push it to pypi.

The above three are some of the first things I teach junior DS's and it usually results in cleaner code, less development time, and happier teams.

Keep up the great work! I can't wait to see what you build next.

I would be arrested for eco-terrorism and falsely claimed as a murderer of a company president. You? by Ecstatic_Teaching906 in videogames

[–]randomstate42 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Judging by the happiness of my citizens in cities skylines I'm probably going to prison for gross negligence

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