HN Explorer

Ask HN: Hackernews for game developers?

5 points by SuboptimalEng ↗ HN
I recently got into game development and am wondering if there are any forums, people or tech focused websites worth following for interesting game dev news.

For reference, I follow game developers like Jonathan Blow (Braid + The Witness + Jai Language), ThinMatrix (Equilinox), TheCherno (Hazel Game Engine), Carter Anderson (Bevy Game Engine).

11 comments

[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 39.8 ms ] thread
markus_zhang
I'd also recommend follow indie long-time legends such as Jeff Vogel. Jeff Vogel is the kind of indie developers most should follow. He never released anything that reaches millions of computers, but his consistency beats most of the game development studios out there, including professional ones. I believe his business model and development strategy should be copied by anyone in the Indie business.

Basically he targets a niche market and does so well that he can always rinse older products into remakes and re-remakes. His player base is not huge but is very loyal.

SuboptimalEng
I saw his talk on GDC (Game Developers Conference) about this exact topic - it made it to my bookmarks list!

It's called Failing to Fail: The Spiderweb Software Way[0] for anyone curious.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stxVBJem3Rs

markus_zhang
Yeah he is really good at game development but he is even better at game business handling than most of the people out there (including me). I think he also shared some of the revenue numbers and you can see they are good, but never good enough for retirement. That's the best an average indie developer can get IMHO.
muzani
I buy all the Spiderweb games but rarely finish any. He's sadly top 5% though with an incredible work ethic and great games. Most won't be able to make a living off the craft.
markus_zhang
I do the same. Actually I only started playing the first game. I guess most Indie developers will go out of the business after or even before the first release, so sad :(
skibz
I enjoy reading https://www.gamedeveloper.com/ (formerly Gamasutra)