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points by no_wizard 2 days ago | 0 comments

Makes me wonder if a game studio could instead pepper the amount of money it takes to build an AAA title and instead give it to teams of much smaller size, and leverage the radical focus that can come with such arrangements where a team is given finite resources and has to make due, compromises and all.

Bet across 10 teams instead of one, that kind of thing.

Willing to bet a 30 million dollar budget game will play and look great with proper focus.

Even if only 1-2 take off, it’d be overall better wouldn’t it

[–] bombcar 2 days ago

Factorio is by all accounts extremely polished, and with a crew significantly smaller than many AAA titles.

There are some others that are similarly placed - Stardew Valley, arguably Minecraft (or GTNH heh).

I think the problem for the studios is they don't know HOW to do those 30 million dollar games, but they're really good at the 300 million dollar ones, and they're not selling to the users, they're selling to corporations (think Microsoft/Playstation/Target).

(It's also rare you have a game that is allowed to improve the way Minecraft, Factorio, or Stardew Valley have; go back and play builds or releases from around "when they went big" and you'll find they're horribly rough - I love Minecraft 1.7.10 but I simply cannot play without the QoL mods from GT:NH for long.)

[–] Folcon 2 days ago

> It's also rare you have a game that is allowed to improve the way Minecraft, Factorio, or Stardew Valley have

Honestly I think this is the hardest thing, I've spent a bit of time now trying to look at how indie works, including building out a small team to put something together and you either need to get funding, or it's pretty gruelling.

You can build something small slow and steady, but you've got to luck out and hit the zeitgeist if you don't want your project to collapse for a lack of money.

Or you have to have someone support you, I mean Stardew Valley famously was building for 4 years before they released, with his partner supporting him, that's a huge survivorship bias.

Project Zomboid is another game that comes to mind that's been being built for a long time for a dedicated community. However they managed to get a paid prototype out early, even though they had cash issues and a fair bit of bad luck.

Not sure what the story behind Factorio is come to think about it.

[–] rcxdude 2 days ago

Factorio was a pretty good early access success story as well. They were developing for a long time before full release and had lots of time to polish it. I think it helped that it was the kind of game that the devs could keep playing a lot without getting tired of it, and so they had a lot of opportunity to iterate on the design as they went. I think it's also the kind of game where good quality code has a lot of benefits for the game itself, given the scale of what they want players to be able to build and the need for reliable simulation for multiplayer. They also had a good principle of developing the core game design as a 'mod' itself, which made the modding interface pretty powerful.

[–] bombcar 2 days ago

Every one of my examples was also extremely lucky to hit pay dirt at just the right time (3D dwarf fortress mining simulator had a number of contemporaries that could have just as easily been "the big one"; the idea of "Harvest Moon for PC" was clearly long overdue but hadn't caught on; and Factorio hit the perfect polish (heh) needed to really capture that group (similar games existed and still exist)).

None of them can you build a successful business strategy around, really, because the vast majority of games like that do NOT succeed.

[–] rcxdude 2 days ago

For sure, this is the nature of the indie video game market. I would say factorio was a lot more unique (though not totally) at the time: The closest gameplay that really existed was the minecraft modpacks that inspired factorio but these were a little limited in exposure by their nature of being mods. The explosion in automation games as a genre was largely as a result of factorio's success.

[–] jesse__ 2 days ago

Case in point, the original release of Hearthstone was built by a team of like 10 people. Indies pull that kind of stuff off all the time, but it's comparatively rare for a big studio to do it.

[–] Folcon 2 days ago

It seems like Nintendo is the only one I've heard of routinely doing it?

And I'm not sure why? I would have thought producing and refining new IP would be good to do now and again, at least releasing something novel once every few years?

Or perhaps they prefer just buying external IP.

[–] 80fj0348i 2 days ago

You're describing Kepler Interactive (https://store.steampowered.com/publisher/kepler). They've had one massive hit and a few smaller scale successes. So it does seem like a working model.

[–] savanaly 2 days ago

Riot games tried exactly this with Riot Forge, but it was shut down because none of its 5+ games they tried amounted to much in terms of sales.

[–] shooly 2 days ago

Taking a look at one of their releases: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1276800/CONVERGENCE_A_Lea...

Seems like a generic platformer priced at €30, but don't worry! You can also buy skins for a couple extra €.

Looking at another one: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2252143/The_Mageseeker_A_...

An action RPG where you can buy extra spells for your character as a DLC...

Hmm, no idea how their business model didn't work out.

[–] npinsker 2 days ago

Riot Forge was created in order to recruit their Head of Creative Direction (https://x.com/Ghostcrawler/status/1749782446839615511).

If that's true, there may not have been many at Riot who were super passionate about it. Obviously Ghostcrawler was but was probably spread very thin.

[–] KronisLV 2 days ago

> Even if only 1-2 take off, it’d be overall better wouldn’t it

Sometimes how projects are run is weird, like how Hi-Fi Rush seemed to be doing well and then Microsoft axed them despite it:

> In his letter to staffers, Booty said the closures were “not a reflection of the creativity and skill of the talented individuals at these teams or the risks they took to try new things.” And while the changes will be “disruptive,” Booty said that they are “grounded in prioritizing high-impact titles and further investing in Bethesda’s portfolio of blockbuster games and beloved worlds which you have nurtured over many decades.”

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2024/05/microsoft-shuts-down-...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hi-Fi_Rush