I had a good laugh at this. So many titles have taken money and silently failed or seem to figure they can stay in early access indefinitely. On the plus side early access seems useful to smaller devs that are close to finishing but need a bit more cash and free QA. But is also a bit of a scam the way is it’s used for many others unfortunately. Find a genre with a passionate fanbase, make a prototype, collect some cash and fade away.
Any way, not to suggest it’s a bad writeup as I enjoyed reading about the author's experiences.
There are certainly some advantages to being in a smaller company, but there are also gigantic downsides. The biggest one being that you have no budget. You are effectively competing with every other solo indie developer with a Unity install and a Steam AppID.
Being in a AAA studio means your impact is substantially reduced, but it also means that the project you are working on would probably have more ambition and excitement around it.
At this point, I'd much rather work on some dirty, boring tooling for the Battlefield team than be responsible for the entire game engine on a 3-man team.
Indies & small shops can release genre-defining titles, but the experience as a developer in this context is statistically very, very bad compared to AAA - even accounting for parties like Microsoft taking a flamethrower to the entire segment.
Which statistics? Almost every article I've read about game development describes AAA game studios as a horror show of workplace exploitation. I seriously doubt this.
How is that possible? There was no competition at all?
YesBox•3h ago
I've been developing a city builder game "Metropolis 1998" [1] for over 3 years. My life has been constantly pulled in two or more different directions (e.g. creativity/artistic expression vs. logic/software). Most of the time the environments that allow these forces to thrive are incompatible with each other.
Since working on my game, I've been in a happy place where I get to go full throttle on both of those. I've created my own engine and I am designing the game, directing the art, handling sound design, marketing, UI, UX, environment design, etc, etc.
[1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/2287430/Metropolis_1998/
My Steam page is perpetually far behind the current state of development: https://x.com/YesboxStudios
qiine•3h ago
I am always impressed by what solo devs can achieve.
melvinroest•3h ago
dejobaan•2h ago
MrGilbert•2h ago
thom•1h ago
pyjarrett•1h ago