this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2024
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Making Portal for the N64 will give you much more exposure and media attention than making just another indie game statistically likely to fail and never get any attention. The guy made a name for himself with this project. Now when he creates an original game, it will get a lot more attention for being made by the Portal 64 developer and have a much better chance to succeed.
Right. Cause we see countless games being advertised as “from the one person that made the hit and run remake”. Or “from the developer of that cancelled Mario project”.
No, the project becomes known for the controversy of being shut down and people forget about it.
We need more indie games and publishing your own indie game is worth way more than popping out another fan wank that’s likely to get you a lawsuit.
You won't see a game advertised as "from that developer who made that thing", rather the dev's employers will see that through their job application.
There's a long history of modders being hired for things. CounterStrike was a mod to Half Life; Valve hired the modders to help make Source. Desert Combat was a mod to BattleField 1942; DICE hired the modders to help make BF2. Any coding project that someone participates in can be used to get a job.
Making indie games is only half the battle. Indie games often don't have the polish that comes from experienced coders - indie games tend to succeed on their ideas, in spite of a lack of technical expertise.
Back 4 Blood is got a lot of traction initially by saying it was a spiritual successor and made by the same people as Left 4 Dead (1). Of course, nobody plays it anymore because it turned out to be a meh game, but boy did people check it out!
CD Projekt RED also hired some mod developers.
Maybe not countless, but those absolutely exist. Retro City Rampage? That was originally "Grand Theftendo", a GTA 3 demake for the NES. Some of the AM2R (Metroid 2 remake shut down by Nintendo) developers are currently developing a Metroidvania after a very successful Kickstarter. Guess what the headlines about it focused on? Yup, the fact that they made AM2R.
It’s also a very good bullet point when interviewing to work for a game studio. Which is something that won’t be in headlines.
Actually we don't really need more indie games. The amount of games released is increasing 14000 games released in 2023 2000 more then 2022. Most of them are not good.
Those indie games are still better and more creative than the last 3 dozen of Ubisofts soulless open world clones.
I would take a gamble on an indie game over any fucking corporate live service scam.
If that name was "Gimmicky", that's all I took from it honestly. Using an N64 to learn to program games is one thing, but this obsession with making full fledged games on dead consoles is just bizarre. You're catering to a very specific niche. Plenty of people see "on N64" and immediately pass by it because we have no ability or reason to play that. Most of us would have to emulate it on another device anyways, entirely defeating the purpose.
Oh, and quick questio(don't cheat): what is the dev(s) name(s)? Cus I sure as hell haven't noticed that part at all in any of the convos. Just "that guy who made".
Making a game on the N64 today shows you can work within the limitations of much less powerful hardware. From a hiring perspective, it means you can say “I ported Portal to the N64” which says a lot more about your skill set than “ I made a 3D FPS with these neat twists”. It stands out.
I don’t know the name of the devs, but I would certainty pay more attention to their next project if I knew that it was made by the same people, which you can include in the description of your next game.
In Unity?
So, it took 15 minutes right?
Yes, because US game devs are so well known for their small install sizes. Are you serious?
I’m a little confused about what you mean. Is the implication that nobody (particularly employers) would care about being able to optimise a game because US games are so inefficient as demonstrated by their massive install sizes? That’s my guess but let me know if that’s incorrect. If my interpretation is correct then I don’t think that would make much of a difference. It’s not about needing to hire people who can do optimisation, it’s about the skill that went in to it and standing out from everybody else. If you were capable of learning that, on extremely old hardware with what I would assume requires a lot more manual work to do basic tasks compared to more modern game engines, imagine what they could do with all the extra tools!