Haha I am literally eating lunch watching this video, taking a break from working on my game's UI, and I'm listening to the part where Tim says "In my experience, UI is usually one of the largest time sinks in a game" and I'm just nodding along like "yes brother, preach!"
Please never take this channel down. I'm a current (employed) developer aspiring to break into the games industry and this knowledge is extremely valuable to me. Just found you recently and I'm working through your videos. I don't always have time to watch every day and the backlog is already enormous but I intend to watch every one, I like to listen to them while I'm working for inspiration. Really appreciate what you're doing here.
You don't need to be an expert programmer to archive videos (and even whole channels) that are important to you. Write it up this evening :) You'll thank your self after a couple years.
I bet Tim Cain knows full well that these videos are going to show up in the curricula for game development classes across the country for years to come.
Artist here - if you're on a strict budget and have to cut on art, try to build your game around needing a few pieces of great art rather than paying for a ton of bad art. Might make sense, but you'd be surprised how many people settle for bad art and then wonder why their 10/10 gameplay isn't attracting sales.
That makes a lot of sense, and might combo well into the "simplify" tip, like, if you cut combat out then you won't need art/animations/vfx for enemies, moves, etc.
This was so awesome. Thanks for answering my statement, sorry it wasn't a question lol! "Tim Cain once made a video about a topic I suggested" is about as cool as I will ever be.
1:00 Sure, simple examples: 1. cheap + fast = you release an unfinished product, therefore good is usually missing. 2. cheap + good = someone who works alone for years on a product, after hours. No big expenditures. Then you got a good and cheap product, but with a dev cycle that maybe expands a generation.😅 Think of a lot of modders, who came up with great mods... years after the original game came out.
Hi Tim! Loved the video as usual, especially appreciated the comment about UI. I'd really appreciate having a video that's going into the numbers regarding the costs of... well, everything. I understand that this is extremely relative and loose, but any example would do and be helpful. As someone who led the company, you have this insight. Have a great day and continue to do the amazing work you always do!
I suppose "good and cheap but not fast" can describe things like Dwarf Fortress and other such "labor of love" indie games, but of course it only really works if one discounts the opportunity costs incurred by the devs who are essentially underpaying themselves all along
@@stuartmorley6894 Omori. But he has a point. Passion projects typically don't pay the cost of the undertaking. And the way we treat a lot games that are unfinished or early access with even harsher criticism than a complete game thats mediocre, does nothing to help promote taking that risk. Dwarf Fortress is a great example of this. On the one hand, its the most mechanically deep games to ever exist. Yet on the other, most people won't touch it because of the archaic graphics and UI. Tarn only really pursued a new graphics front end, and commercially selling the game, out of the need to cover his Brother's medical bills. And because of it, Overnight he became a millionaire. Omori is a nearly opposite story. A wildly successful kickstarter sold mostly on a concept and art style. But as it went through development hell, and numerous redesigns to live it up to expectations, the fan base nearly destroyed the project in revolt. The creator dragged through mud, and even threatened at times. The fact the it made it out the other side is a minor miracle. Not because of faults by the dev team, but just on the fact they kept going while the internet was actively trying to burn them at the stake. The conditions for these successes are insanely hard to intentionally replicate. Meaning we're forced to rely on sheer luck and circumstance for these projects to survive long enough to pay out. As gamers, overall, are quick to attack projects that show any signs of issue. Meanwhile, AAA publishers are allowed to get away with text book definition scams; and its only in the last few years gamers have finally started to put their foot down in the right place.
Looking the published donations they were making over $10k a month this year, I know the earlier days were worse but they weren't doing all that bad. I'm sure they made up for it with the millions they got from the Steam release too.
I usually give my friends the examples of Threes/2048 and Flappy Bird. If you don't have a writer or artist, or even if you are a single programmer, you can still make games with simple shapes and without any story, and if the core gameplay is good, people might still play it.
Hey, as a programmer, something that I always like asking others is when they've written code that they're particularly proud of, either because it just _sings_ or because they learned a new way of thinking about a problem, and times when they've written code just to have it written, that's frustrated them and that they would love to have replaced or done better. Your channel is amazing, and I love listening to your stories. Keep it up!
Just wanted to say, Tim, that I cherish your content and it is helping me in ways that would take me too long to explain. I especially appreciate your refusal to sugar-coat the industry, while at the same time exercising your ability to not tear it down every chance you get. I hope to make a game that you play, and maybe even enjoy, some day.
Tim, there are a lot of skills it takes to be a good game designer, and many just take working on a lot of projects. It's hard to learn them without just releasing lots and lots of mods, projects, or games. Thank you so much for sharing your experience with us, I'm trying to assimilate as many of your neural connections as I can :) It's helping a lot, as an independent designer.
Would be curious to get your thoughts on the dreaded "Sunk Cost Fallacy" I worked at quite a few companies and this has always been the most common fallacy I have encountered.
A bit about 3D Art vs 2D Art -> There is actually a simple Formula you can follow to determine which one will be better/cheaper for you. If you need "A lot of different characters" and "They don't need to do too many actions" -> 2D is cheaper. If you have "Not many characters" and "They need to perform a lot of actions" -> 3D is cheaper. Mainly cause animating a 3D character takes way less time than 2D characters, but creating a new 3D model has a huge upcost in time (not talking some super-simple stuff, like Cubes...). Also characters can share animations between them as long as the skeleton is similar. That said, generally you don't have that many motions in a game though, so the general rule of "2D is cheaper" will be true like 95% of the time. But if you have a very limited amount of characters - you could probably consider. Especially that environment assets are not that costly nowadays - and you can tweak their looks via a shader to make them look as they fit your game.
You also need to consider how easy it is to edit (or preferably, morph) the models, e.g. Bethesda games where they can just morph the faces of the NPCs and effectively reuse the same model for hundreds of characters.
Man, as someone who used to do UI/UX outside of gaming, the editor tools for it IN gaming (i.e. in Unreal & Unity) is such a mess to deal with. It's always taking me way more time in a game engine as compared to out of it...
Restrictions you talk about made me once again think about open source games made by their community since it's an oddball with low budget but basically non limited time frame and fairly good access to people (of course depending on projects popularity). I'm curious about your thoughts on the subject especially after watching video about flat hierarchy at Troika. I think this is as close as we can possibly get to implement that idea. Are you familiar with this way of development? Do you think we will see more projects like that in the future or will they always be an anomaly? Can they reach widespread mainstream recognition or are they doomed to always be hidden in obscurity due to their nature of being a strange patchwork of odd game mechanics and themes since they are made by players adding what they would consider fun to a project that lasts years and has hundreds or thousands different people adding things they considered fun? I guess it's best to show what I mean with an example. I believe the most iconic of such games is Space Station 13, a project that's active for about 20 years now, in tone most of its iterations are similar to Paranoia RPG but there's plenty of server types going all the way from medieval dark fantasy, through action packed Aliens inspired pvp to, what will matter to most people watching this channel, Fallout servers. There's a GDC talk here on TH-cam decribing how it works behind the scenes with players making PRs on Github named "'Space Station 13': Behind One of the Largest Open Source Games" (Pretty sure YT doesn't like us putting links in comments anymore so I'm leaving video ID: z5sjwqUten0) And if anyone's curious how that works out as a game from players perspective there are good reviews by MandaloreGaming (video ID: nLAHBexJxrE) and a bit more edgy one by SsethTzeentach (video ID: URJ_qSXruW0)
Hey Tim, I loved your video on Combat Coding and Organizing Game Code, and would love to hear more on your thoughts about game/software architecture in general, and how much you pre-plan the architecture when starting out. I find myself optimizing the architecture for the long term at the cost of short term progress/prototyping. Many thanks for your videos!
3:50 I am not sure about that. In my experience, the best game prevails. It becomes known because gamers tell each other about it. Nowadays, they will talk about it in internet forums and let's players will play such a game online, so that alone makes it known. And by let's players, I don't mean those who are paid by the publisher to play, but those who are still free in their decision and play a game out of self-interest. In the past, a demo also helped me when making game purchase decisions.
Hey Tim, could you speak more in depth about grinding? I know you mentioned in a video that grinding can be different things to different players, but I'm curious about your take on grinding as an intended feature, like hunting for exp/rare drops or crafting/farming for example. Sorry if you have already answered this and I didn't notice, I'm still catching up on older videos. Love your content, thanks!
@@lrinfi I wouldn't say there's a big push toward grinding today. I've never found a modern game with more grinding involved that what I used to do as a kid. Old school JRPGs in particular used to be absolute grindfests. Online games are different of course but that's just part of the business model I think.
Would love to hear more about your GDD process specifically show how you take an idea and write a spec for it. I feel it's the first step and isn't much on TH-cam related to game design.
Re: 2d Vs 3d - I am an amateur who started last year, I spent probably 100 hours getting 1 character sprite done for just walking from scratch and I found that while I could be really flexible with how I set them up it was very time consuming if I wanted to add any new animation (I'm sure a more talented person could do this much quicker). Additionally I found this added a lot of jank around collissions in a 3d environment (again a more skilled person probably knows what I was doing wrong). Recently I started learning how to use blender and low poly models seem WAY easier to do quickly, I guess what I'm getting at is very basic 3D is easier than you think and that a single frame of good 2D is easier to do, but if you want lots of animations you'd be better learning basic 3d.
Hey Tim, question for you, not sure if you’ve already touched on this or not, but what are your views on Micro transactions and DLC? Would love to hear your take on both the positives and negatives in the current video game marketplace! Thanks!
I always felt some of the buildings in The Outer Worlds that were closed for refurbishment were originally meant to be open and exporable and have quests associated with them. Some of them are even mentioned in the lore. I think ultimately that was either cut content or time and/or budget constraints meant they never happened.
9:30 weeeeeeeell, kinda both yes and no. 3D solves all the different view angles and depth for you. But it comes at the cost of having a 3D-modeller and animator.
@@cmdr.jabozerstorer3968 you bet I use it, and it does make the game easy. But that's okay. So does just rolling a mage. I read the history of that mod and all its challenges and it's clear that it wasn't easy to implement.
@@ikeduno7973 I started a new DA2 playhtough recently on Normal Mode, with that Mod and all the DLC weapons and I've not once had to use a health kit in combat. I may have to up the difficulty.
@@cmdr.jabozerstorer3968 the game is so rich with choice that the leg-up comes in handy. It's taken quite a few playthroughs to arrive at 'human mage w heart of gold'. You?
Thanks, Tim! What would be your advice for ambitious sole developers with no time constraints who want to make the best cRPG possible? I know this sounds naive, because it's such a herculean task, but still, one can dream... 😅
@@deathsheadknight2137 @CimaPizz Hehe, I wish. I remember playing with RPG Maker back in my childhood, and planning to distribute my games at school. After that, I abandoned the dream of making games until recently, when I started playing with C++ and Unreal 5. Hopefully this hobby can, one day, materialize into a actual game. On the topic of RPG Maker though, we usually make fun of it, but some great games came out of the engine, like Omori and Lisa. You should check them out!
I’d pick a few features that you REALLY want and concentrate on making them stellar, and reduce scope on everything else. Make a game that people say “that game has the best feature X I’ve ever seen!”.
These are some great tips! I do have to disagree partially with the changing the game concept to 2D point. In my opinion it is the exact opposite. Partially due to available resources. If you are in a rush on a 3D game there is no shortage of content you can simply purchase. Character models, building models, animations. You name it, you can find it and integrate it. That is so much harder to do with a 2D game. It is also easier to make a 3D world feel alive and fun with relatively little work. Add a vault mechanic, throw some objects with colliders and rigidbodies in the world and a few lights and you have a scene that looks great and feels good to explore. For a 2D game I feel like level design increases drastically in difficulty. But I think you hit the nail on the head when you said you just have to weigh what your good at versus what you are not as good at
Hey Tim, wondering how you feel about "essential" NPCs that can't be killed because of the possibility of getting soft locked on the main quest? And how do you think that could be handled in the best way? Thanks, love your videos!
They certainly would! We could have made Fallout much faster with modern tools. Maps, dialogs, scripting...all of those tools have improved. I will make a tools video. Just comparing Fallout's tools to Arcanum's tools shows a big improvement.
Good morning, Tim. I think this is very helpful advice for all game developers but indie developers or smaller teams in a big studio. When you are really limited on time, budget or staff, you have to make some hard decisions that also don’t compromise the quality of the game.
I will point out that "fast and cheap" is quite achievable, but it can only yield "crap". The problem is is that customers dont like this outcome, even though they chose the price point, time-frame, and were fully informed of their choice. This can be a constant battle outside of gaming when you're dealing directly with your customer, commissioner or client.
Hi Tim, what roles does generative AI, once we've figured out how to compensate for the content, play into this topic? Do you think that with the current trend of generative AI that we will ever reach a point in the future where teams will only get smaller and smaller or can just start smaller and spend less time using these technologies to create comparable high budget games that in the past would require 10s or 100s of people without actually having a high budget? And conversely you think generative AI put new pressures on indie devs to deliver more high quality productions, that we usually see in high budget games, in their games as a side effect of these technologies?
So in terms of understanding that mention of complexity vs richness, is it fair to infer that richness mainly refers to "luxury features" of presentation (rather than mechanical features of gameplay)?
A lot of games on Steam are getting shredded in reviews for "not being worth the price." I think you're walking right into this if you just reduce content without reducing price. I actually wonder if releasing bigger games that are a bit buggy is not the better play.
Doing generated terrains, for example, would probably be longer to make/test right? I wonder if there're good libs out there that already do that for your game (maybe cheaper than hiring people to do that, right?)
Why developers forgot about Roman or Greek mythology in new fantasy games ? i think Might and Magic 8 - (25 Years ago was released ) was last fantasy game i played that had Minotaur , Medusa , Titan , Hydra etc... As if whole industry shifted towards new creature chimeras and totally forgot about real mythology. One of reasons Witcher is popular is because they used creatures from Slavic mythology in my opinion .
Hey Tim, I have often debated with friends on this and I wanted to know your opinion on it because of your experience in the industry. What is more important for a game, story or game design? I know ideally there should be a balance between the two but that is so rare to find. What's your view on it?
Adversity breeds innovation, without tight budgets and time schedules we wouldnt have diamonds in rough but instead ground to dust and packed with lot of dung. Some devs need good kicking to produce good stuff it seems.
This is great but it sounds like you are speaking to someone who has enough money to hire people. How does someone get funding or how do you make a presentable game with no money? I live in Argentina and I have a full time job that I need to pay my bills. I just released a small free game and I want to release a commercial game in the future. But how can you release a successful commercial game without money? It seems unrealistic. Maybe I could just keep making small puzzle games, sell them for cheap, and not expect much, and see what happens. Meanwhile I could get a game dev job. But releasing a commercially successful game as a normal person with no money seems unrealistic to me.
That depends on luck and skill. There are commercially successful games made by 1 person with no money, like Undertale. You gotta have something very unique / different / special, and you need to be super lucky that it somehow goes viral. Then you can do crowdfunding and hope there is enough interest.
People have managed to make commercially successful games by themselves in their spare time, but it took a long time for them to make those games. And as people have pointed out, there is an element of luck in any game's discoverability, because there are so many games out there. I don't want to discourage you from making a game. In fact, I encourage you to do it. But understand that it is a long term commitment with no guarantee of financial success. But if you are doing it because you love making games, you are already successful.
As far as "discovery" goes, I really do not think its as important as you believe it to be, unless you are specifically talking about games being developed with low-graphical fidelity. If you are making a RPG and put it up on steam, and the graphics are mediocre or better, it is going to be seen and wishlisted if people have interest after seeing it. There arent too many games from classical genres with high review scores that have low total player counts. Of course exceptions are there.
Gut reaction to your "maybe a sound effect is enough". Imagine I said "just change the hue to differentiate UI elements". How would you like that? Well, if someone is deaf instead of being colorblind, what you said was just about as bad. It is an extremely bad piece of advice, and from someone who is colorblind, please think about people with hearing disabilities. Don't give advice like that. Unless your game is Guitar Hero, a game should be playable without sound. It will not feel as good as with sound, sure, but it should.
You’re right, I should have appended “for non critical UI elements” to that statement. If it’s something a player needs to play the game effectively, it can’t just be a sound effect.
Haha I am literally eating lunch watching this video, taking a break from working on my game's UI, and I'm listening to the part where Tim says "In my experience, UI is usually one of the largest time sinks in a game" and I'm just nodding along like "yes brother, preach!"
Please never take this channel down. I'm a current (employed) developer aspiring to break into the games industry and this knowledge is extremely valuable to me. Just found you recently and I'm working through your videos. I don't always have time to watch every day and the backlog is already enormous but I intend to watch every one, I like to listen to them while I'm working for inspiration. Really appreciate what you're doing here.
You don't need to be an expert programmer to archive videos (and even whole channels) that are important to you. Write it up this evening :) You'll thank your self after a couple years.
I bet Tim Cain knows full well that these videos are going to show up in the curricula for game development classes across the country for years to come.
Artist here - if you're on a strict budget and have to cut on art, try to build your game around needing a few pieces of great art rather than paying for a ton of bad art. Might make sense, but you'd be surprised how many people settle for bad art and then wonder why their 10/10 gameplay isn't attracting sales.
That makes a lot of sense, and might combo well into the "simplify" tip, like, if you cut combat out then you won't need art/animations/vfx for enemies, moves, etc.
Another reason why there needs to be artists in higher positions that understand this
This was so awesome. Thanks for answering my statement, sorry it wasn't a question lol! "Tim Cain once made a video about a topic I suggested" is about as cool as I will ever be.
1:00 Sure, simple examples:
1. cheap + fast = you release an unfinished product, therefore good is usually missing.
2. cheap + good = someone who works alone for years on a product, after hours. No big expenditures. Then you got a good and cheap product, but with a dev cycle that maybe expands a generation.😅 Think of a lot of modders, who came up with great mods... years after the original game came out.
Hi Tim! Loved the video as usual, especially appreciated the comment about UI. I'd really appreciate having a video that's going into the numbers regarding the costs of... well, everything. I understand that this is extremely relative and loose, but any example would do and be helpful. As someone who led the company, you have this insight. Have a great day and continue to do the amazing work you always do!
I suppose "good and cheap but not fast" can describe things like Dwarf Fortress and other such "labor of love" indie games, but of course it only really works if one discounts the opportunity costs incurred by the devs who are essentially underpaying themselves all along
It could describe a bunch of really good Indie games. Undertale is a good example. One programmer for the most part, brilliant game.
@@stuartmorley6894 Omori. But he has a point. Passion projects typically don't pay the cost of the undertaking. And the way we treat a lot games that are unfinished or early access with even harsher criticism than a complete game thats mediocre, does nothing to help promote taking that risk.
Dwarf Fortress is a great example of this. On the one hand, its the most mechanically deep games to ever exist. Yet on the other, most people won't touch it because of the archaic graphics and UI. Tarn only really pursued a new graphics front end, and commercially selling the game, out of the need to cover his Brother's medical bills. And because of it, Overnight he became a millionaire.
Omori is a nearly opposite story. A wildly successful kickstarter sold mostly on a concept and art style. But as it went through development hell, and numerous redesigns to live it up to expectations, the fan base nearly destroyed the project in revolt. The creator dragged through mud, and even threatened at times. The fact the it made it out the other side is a minor miracle. Not because of faults by the dev team, but just on the fact they kept going while the internet was actively trying to burn them at the stake.
The conditions for these successes are insanely hard to intentionally replicate. Meaning we're forced to rely on sheer luck and circumstance for these projects to survive long enough to pay out. As gamers, overall, are quick to attack projects that show any signs of issue. Meanwhile, AAA publishers are allowed to get away with text book definition scams; and its only in the last few years gamers have finally started to put their foot down in the right place.
Looking the published donations they were making over $10k a month this year, I know the earlier days were worse but they weren't doing all that bad. I'm sure they made up for it with the millions they got from the Steam release too.
I usually give my friends the examples of Threes/2048 and Flappy Bird. If you don't have a writer or artist, or even if you are a single programmer, you can still make games with simple shapes and without any story, and if the core gameplay is good, people might still play it.
Hey, as a programmer, something that I always like asking others is when they've written code that they're particularly proud of, either because it just _sings_ or because they learned a new way of thinking about a problem, and times when they've written code just to have it written, that's frustrated them and that they would love to have replaced or done better.
Your channel is amazing, and I love listening to your stories. Keep it up!
Just wanted to say, Tim, that I cherish your content and it is helping me in ways that would take me too long to explain. I especially appreciate your refusal to sugar-coat the industry, while at the same time exercising your ability to not tear it down every chance you get. I hope to make a game that you play, and maybe even enjoy, some day.
Tim, there are a lot of skills it takes to be a good game designer, and many just take working on a lot of projects. It's hard to learn them without just releasing lots and lots of mods, projects, or games. Thank you so much for sharing your experience with us, I'm trying to assimilate as many of your neural connections as I can :) It's helping a lot, as an independent designer.
Would be curious to get your thoughts on the dreaded "Sunk Cost Fallacy" I worked at quite a few companies and this has always been the most common fallacy I have encountered.
Good morning Tim! Love your videos. I hope you're staying warm this of year
I think in the triangle "cheap" is short hand for cost effective and "fast" is short hand for time effective
A bit about 3D Art vs 2D Art -> There is actually a simple Formula you can follow to determine which one will be better/cheaper for you.
If you need "A lot of different characters" and "They don't need to do too many actions" -> 2D is cheaper.
If you have "Not many characters" and "They need to perform a lot of actions" -> 3D is cheaper.
Mainly cause animating a 3D character takes way less time than 2D characters, but creating a new 3D model has a huge upcost in time (not talking some super-simple stuff, like Cubes...).
Also characters can share animations between them as long as the skeleton is similar.
That said, generally you don't have that many motions in a game though, so the general rule of "2D is cheaper" will be true like 95% of the time.
But if you have a very limited amount of characters - you could probably consider. Especially that environment assets are not that costly nowadays - and you can tweak their looks via a shader to make them look as they fit your game.
You also need to consider how easy it is to edit (or preferably, morph) the models, e.g. Bethesda games where they can just morph the faces of the NPCs and effectively reuse the same model for hundreds of characters.
Man, as someone who used to do UI/UX outside of gaming, the editor tools for it IN gaming (i.e. in Unreal & Unity) is such a mess to deal with. It's always taking me way more time in a game engine as compared to out of it...
Restrictions you talk about made me once again think about open source games made by their community since it's an oddball with low budget but basically non limited time frame and fairly good access to people (of course depending on projects popularity). I'm curious about your thoughts on the subject especially after watching video about flat hierarchy at Troika. I think this is as close as we can possibly get to implement that idea.
Are you familiar with this way of development? Do you think we will see more projects like that in the future or will they always be an anomaly? Can they reach widespread mainstream recognition or are they doomed to always be hidden in obscurity due to their nature of being a strange patchwork of odd game mechanics and themes since they are made by players adding what they would consider fun to a project that lasts years and has hundreds or thousands different people adding things they considered fun?
I guess it's best to show what I mean with an example. I believe the most iconic of such games is Space Station 13, a project that's active for about 20 years now, in tone most of its iterations are similar to Paranoia RPG but there's plenty of server types going all the way from medieval dark fantasy, through action packed Aliens inspired pvp to, what will matter to most people watching this channel, Fallout servers. There's a GDC talk here on TH-cam decribing how it works behind the scenes with players making PRs on Github named "'Space Station 13': Behind One of the Largest Open Source Games" (Pretty sure YT doesn't like us putting links in comments anymore so I'm leaving video ID: z5sjwqUten0)
And if anyone's curious how that works out as a game from players perspective there are good reviews by MandaloreGaming (video ID: nLAHBexJxrE) and a bit more edgy one by SsethTzeentach (video ID: URJ_qSXruW0)
Hey Tim,
I loved your video on Combat Coding and Organizing Game Code, and would love to hear more on your thoughts about game/software architecture in general, and how much you pre-plan the architecture when starting out. I find myself optimizing the architecture for the long term at the cost of short term progress/prototyping.
Many thanks for your videos!
3:50 I am not sure about that. In my experience, the best game prevails. It becomes known because gamers tell each other about it. Nowadays, they will talk about it in internet forums and let's players will play such a game online, so that alone makes it known. And by let's players, I don't mean those who are paid by the publisher to play, but those who are still free in their decision and play a game out of self-interest. In the past, a demo also helped me when making game purchase decisions.
Hey Tim, could you speak more in depth about grinding? I know you mentioned in a video that grinding can be different things to different players, but I'm curious about your take on grinding as an intended feature, like hunting for exp/rare drops or crafting/farming for example.
Sorry if you have already answered this and I didn't notice, I'm still catching up on older videos. Love your content, thanks!
@@lrinfi I wouldn't say there's a big push toward grinding today. I've never found a modern game with more grinding involved that what I used to do as a kid. Old school JRPGs in particular used to be absolute grindfests. Online games are different of course but that's just part of the business model I think.
Would love to hear more about your GDD process specifically show how you take an idea and write a spec for it. I feel it's the first step and isn't much on TH-cam related to game design.
I think this is very good advice! Scope control and feature creep are constant difficulties
Re: 2d Vs 3d - I am an amateur who started last year, I spent probably 100 hours getting 1 character sprite done for just walking from scratch and I found that while I could be really flexible with how I set them up it was very time consuming if I wanted to add any new animation (I'm sure a more talented person could do this much quicker). Additionally I found this added a lot of jank around collissions in a 3d environment (again a more skilled person probably knows what I was doing wrong). Recently I started learning how to use blender and low poly models seem WAY easier to do quickly, I guess what I'm getting at is very basic 3D is easier than you think and that a single frame of good 2D is easier to do, but if you want lots of animations you'd be better learning basic 3d.
Hey Tim, question for you, not sure if you’ve already touched on this or not, but what are your views on Micro transactions and DLC? Would love to hear your take on both the positives and negatives in the current video game marketplace! Thanks!
I always felt some of the buildings in The Outer Worlds that were closed for refurbishment were originally meant to be open and exporable and have quests associated with them. Some of them are even mentioned in the lore. I think ultimately that was either cut content or time and/or budget constraints meant they never happened.
L33T - the perfect length of the video
9:30 weeeeeeeell, kinda both yes and no. 3D solves all the different view angles and depth for you. But it comes at the cost of having a 3D-modeller and animator.
DA2 had no equipment for the companions and that felt like an obvious concession to get across the finish line. I'm still glad they made it!
Theres actually a Mod available that does allow you to equip them. It may make the game a bit easier though.
@@cmdr.jabozerstorer3968 you bet I use it, and it does make the game easy. But that's okay. So does just rolling a mage. I read the history of that mod and all its challenges and it's clear that it wasn't easy to implement.
@@ikeduno7973 I started a new DA2 playhtough recently on Normal Mode, with that Mod and all the DLC weapons and I've not once had to use a health kit in combat. I may have to up the difficulty.
@@cmdr.jabozerstorer3968 the game is so rich with choice that the leg-up comes in handy. It's taken quite a few playthroughs to arrive at 'human mage w heart of gold'. You?
Thanks, Tim!
What would be your advice for ambitious sole developers with no time constraints who want to make the best cRPG possible? I know this sounds naive, because it's such a herculean task, but still, one can dream... 😅
RPG Maker? lol
rpg maker.
@@deathsheadknight2137 @CimaPizz
Hehe, I wish. I remember playing with RPG Maker back in my childhood, and planning to distribute my games at school. After that, I abandoned the dream of making games until recently, when I started playing with C++ and Unreal 5. Hopefully this hobby can, one day, materialize into a actual game.
On the topic of RPG Maker though, we usually make fun of it, but some great games came out of the engine, like Omori and Lisa. You should check them out!
Caffeine
I’d pick a few features that you REALLY want and concentrate on making them stellar, and reduce scope on everything else. Make a game that people say “that game has the best feature X I’ve ever seen!”.
Excellent
Hey Tim! Would love to hear your thoughts on stealth in tactics games, what works and what doesn’t
Cheers
These are some great tips! I do have to disagree partially with the changing the game concept to 2D point. In my opinion it is the exact opposite. Partially due to available resources. If you are in a rush on a 3D game there is no shortage of content you can simply purchase. Character models, building models, animations. You name it, you can find it and integrate it. That is so much harder to do with a 2D game. It is also easier to make a 3D world feel alive and fun with relatively little work. Add a vault mechanic, throw some objects with colliders and rigidbodies in the world and a few lights and you have a scene that looks great and feels good to explore. For a 2D game I feel like level design increases drastically in difficulty. But I think you hit the nail on the head when you said you just have to weigh what your good at versus what you are not as good at
Hey Tim, wondering how you feel about "essential" NPCs that can't be killed because of the possibility of getting soft locked on the main quest? And how do you think that could be handled in the best way?
Thanks, love your videos!
Based on how his games handle this, I'm pretty sure he hates it.
My favourite thumbnail
it caught me so off guard i love it
Thank you! nice Video
3:30 I hear Activision spends 3 times as much on marketing as they do on development.
i guess cheap and good takes a long, long time. like an indie project where a solo dev takes 10 years to make it or something like that
Hey Tim. Weird question, but if you made Fallout today how would modern day tools affect the time it took for you to make it?
They certainly would! We could have made Fallout much faster with modern tools. Maps, dialogs, scripting...all of those tools have improved.
I will make a tools video. Just comparing Fallout's tools to Arcanum's tools shows a big improvement.
@@CainOnGames Thanks for the reply! Looking forward to that video.
Good morning, Tim. I think this is very helpful advice for all game developers but indie developers or smaller teams in a big studio. When you are really limited on time, budget or staff, you have to make some hard decisions that also don’t compromise the quality of the game.
I will point out that "fast and cheap" is quite achievable, but it can only yield "crap". The problem is is that customers dont like this outcome, even though they chose the price point, time-frame, and were fully informed of their choice. This can be a constant battle outside of gaming when you're dealing directly with your customer, commissioner or client.
Hi Tim, what roles does generative AI, once we've figured out how to compensate for the content, play into this topic? Do you think that with the current trend of generative AI that we will ever reach a point in the future where teams will only get smaller and smaller or can just start smaller and spend less time using these technologies to create comparable high budget games that in the past would require 10s or 100s of people without actually having a high budget? And conversely you think generative AI put new pressures on indie devs to deliver more high quality productions, that we usually see in high budget games, in their games as a side effect of these technologies?
So in terms of understanding that mention of complexity vs richness, is it fair to infer that richness mainly refers to "luxury features" of presentation (rather than mechanical features of gameplay)?
A lot of games on Steam are getting shredded in reviews for "not being worth the price." I think you're walking right into this if you just reduce content without reducing price.
I actually wonder if releasing bigger games that are a bit buggy is not the better play.
Doing generated terrains, for example, would probably be longer to make/test right? I wonder if there're good libs out there that already do that for your game (maybe cheaper than hiring people to do that, right?)
Good, fast, cheap applies to pretty much any industry :D
I just don't understand why they have cheaped out so hard on some games like TOEE when it could have been beyond amazing.
Good morning Tim! 🙂
Cool thanks.
Publish your game as a game book, and when there is any budget remaining, add graphics and UI :)
Why developers forgot about Roman or Greek mythology in new fantasy games ? i think Might and Magic 8 - (25 Years ago was released ) was last fantasy game i played that had Minotaur , Medusa , Titan , Hydra etc... As if whole industry shifted towards new creature chimeras and totally forgot about real mythology. One of reasons Witcher is popular is because they used creatures from Slavic mythology in my opinion .
Hey Tim, I have often debated with friends on this and I wanted to know your opinion on it because of your experience in the industry. What is more important for a game, story or game design? I know ideally there should be a balance between the two but that is so rare to find. What's your view on it?
Uh oh, I think my answer to story vs game design needs a video...!
Adversity breeds innovation, without tight budgets and time schedules we wouldnt have diamonds in rough but instead ground to dust and packed with lot of dung. Some devs need good kicking to produce good stuff it seems.
damn, i laughed so hard at your thumbnail! :D KAWAII!
While on topic... Compared to Outer Worlds , how bigger budget is in % and also how much more time do you have in % for Outer Worlds 2 ?
Is Tim involved in OW2 ?
@@davdav1370 they mentioned a few times they are consulting on OW2 but aren't a director as such
@@arcan762they?
Hi Tim
I actually wish more RPGs would err on the shorter site. Naturally, back then this was all because of the original Fallout's priorities: Branches, choice&consequence and stuff.
But still, were Fallout to come out today, it would get ripped to shreds.
Meanwhile games absolutely padded with repetitive filler (paste© trash mobs, random encounters over and over*) -- they're getting away with it, because it may be filler. But hey, at least it's 100 hours epic filler, MONEY WELL SPENT. :-(
* Baldur's Gate 3 is this wasteful in its "quality over quantity" approach early on, there's numerous enemy types you see once the entire game and never again. For some, the Harpies and their "Luring song", they even went the extra miles and recorded a singer for it, seamlessly blending into the game's music every time any Harpy activates its "Luring song" ability... And you may never even find those Harpies, as they're tucked away in the periphery of the game world, when any sane studio, budget or not, would have placed them as a road block to overcome on the critical path through the game.
Point is though, 99/100 developers don't have that budget BG3 had. And it painfully shows a lot of the time they still try to go "all out epic". In the movie space, Roger Corman may have been able to film the fall of the Roman Empire with two extras and a sage bush. But in the game space, even those extras and the bush need to be coded and modeled first.
This is great but it sounds like you are speaking to someone who has enough money to hire people. How does someone get funding or how do you make a presentable game with no money?
I live in Argentina and I have a full time job that I need to pay my bills. I just released a small free game and I want to release a commercial game in the future. But how can you release a successful commercial game without money? It seems unrealistic.
Maybe I could just keep making small puzzle games, sell them for cheap, and not expect much, and see what happens. Meanwhile I could get a game dev job. But releasing a commercially successful game as a normal person with no money seems unrealistic to me.
Does he say that is realistic? I missed that in the video apparently, can you timestamp it?
That depends on luck and skill. There are commercially successful games made by 1 person with no money, like Undertale. You gotta have something very unique / different / special, and you need to be super lucky that it somehow goes viral. Then you can do crowdfunding and hope there is enough interest.
You don't need money to code and sculpt so just open unity and build shit every day.
People have managed to make commercially successful games by themselves in their spare time, but it took a long time for them to make those games. And as people have pointed out, there is an element of luck in any game's discoverability, because there are so many games out there.
I don't want to discourage you from making a game. In fact, I encourage you to do it. But understand that it is a long term commitment with no guarantee of financial success. But if you are doing it because you love making games, you are already successful.
For tiny indies, find (revshare) teammates. It's hard but that's probably your best bet if you want/need to increase your production value. Good luck.
Areas that look like another area ... DA2
As far as "discovery" goes, I really do not think its as important as you believe it to be, unless you are specifically talking about games being developed with low-graphical fidelity. If you are making a RPG and put it up on steam, and the graphics are mediocre or better, it is going to be seen and wishlisted if people have interest after seeing it. There arent too many games from classical genres with high review scores that have low total player counts.
Of course exceptions are there.
:)
Gut reaction to your "maybe a sound effect is enough".
Imagine I said "just change the hue to differentiate UI elements". How would you like that?
Well, if someone is deaf instead of being colorblind, what you said was just about as bad.
It is an extremely bad piece of advice, and from someone who is colorblind, please think about people with hearing disabilities. Don't give advice like that. Unless your game is Guitar Hero, a game should be playable without sound. It will not feel as good as with sound, sure, but it should.
You’re right, I should have appended “for non critical UI elements” to that statement. If it’s something a player needs to play the game effectively, it can’t just be a sound effect.
cant believe the almost ahegao thumbnail lmao
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