How do you fund that game prototype?
gamediscoverability.substack.com
gamediscoverability.substack.com
The good news is the grind is open to all skin colors! Slap that pager on your hip and prepare for a rough night!
Once you have enough capital, you can leverage the market to provide an infinite funding stream. PLUS, as a disciplined engineer, you have the highest cost skill along with the ability to not make mistakes.
The risk is that you may find yourself giving into avarice and enjoying that high income stream from the enterprise market.
How do other people fund their band practice or painting or pottery passion? If you already have a computer and can program, your prototype probably costs less money and time than what those endeavors cost those artists.
> [To be honest] I think most local white dudes don't think of a prototype as something they "funded". They ”just made it” because they had time, space and hardware. Did their other job/parents covering tuition/lack of dependents to support/etc allow that? Yeah, but they can't see how it paid.”
Personally, I imagine class or wealth has more to do with being able to bootstrap a game than skin color. And I imagine the barriers to entry have been lowering steeply.
The article mentions skin tone, but doesn't go too deep into why that might influence things - just assumes that this is the case.
Meanwhile, as an eastern European, I see typical examples of how social class influences one's options.
To clarify my point: we're predominantly white over here and yet experience the same kind of problems, which leads me to think that it's probably not skin tone, over which Americans left and right seem to be so fixated, but other things.
Yes, there's racism - that's abundantly clear. But there's also poverty, inequality and an associated lack of access to education. Maybe we would have made more progress as a species if we stopped focusing on easily identifiable features?
So in the US at least, class issues are race issues.
Do you truly believe it's just skin tone?
However, there are many examples in the US’s recent history and present that _are_ explicitly racist. For example, the criminal justice system in the US is definitely classist, but it’s also racist.
That’s the case with most of our institutions: both classist and racist to varying degrees.
As to why the situation isn’t as dire in Europe than the US? My first question is: is it really less dire there?
But assuming it is, I’m guessing it’s one of two things: - Less recent oppression: the US has had explicitly racist policies in housing, policing, schooling, etc. in its very recent past. Some of those practices are still around, just a little less explicit. - welfare programs seem better in general in Europe: when you have no public healthcare, an all but abandoned public schooling system, and an unlivable minimum wage a wealth gap between two races isn’t going to fix itself, it’ll only grow wider.
Yes, the situation is comparably better in Europe. We don't really know what you Yankees are doing on the other side of the pond, but we don't want any of it here for sure. Your nation is a bad example to all of us.
Reading all these texts about whiteness and maleness, I suspect an important step in the process is sending someone a picture of a white penis. Okay, I have a picture, but no idea where to send it. Should I just spam everyone and hope for the best?
If we are talking about privileges, how about mentioning the most relevant one: rich privilege? Oh I forgot, this one probably does not exist. Too bad, because a rich person could easily fund the game prototype, and maybe even pay for favorable reviews.
Anecdotally, from the people I know making a living (so not being rich, just at least getting by fully on their own) as independents in music, sound design/engineering, illustration and writing have one thing in common: A 10+ year grind behind them working (either to earn money or practicing) 16 hour days, over weekends, almost no vacations or going out, investing everything in materials instead, living in tiny apartments or with their parents, taking shitty day jobs to earn enough to eat, etc.
Where the privilege comes in, is when due to ones socioeconomic status they can't make the above sacrifices even though they would have the necessary perseverance to get through.
From my perspective, we definitely need to do better pretty much globally in providing more equal opportunity within societies. But even if this aspect wouldn't exist, people are also just too naive about how much hard work is involved in these types of careers no matter how passionate or talented they think they are. For every one "white dude" that made it, there are probably thousands that didn't, because they spent most their free time playing video games and smoking weed but are blaming it on something else.
Developing the required talent and resources is best done working a day job. Go work as a cog in a game making team, they'll cover your weaknesses and build your strengths. Attempting to make a game while also "making your skills" will result all early work being vastly interior to later work.
If getting employment on a team is impossible that points to a bigger issue: you need at least 1 skill to get hired but you need 12+ skills to finish a game. Short of devs in locations without studios, most developers should start their career making portfolio pieces to get a job.
Too often people think of Indie dev as an intro into the industry: but that is like starting a restaurant to "break into" the food service industry.
It's like with prototypes in any other area. You have idea, you either convince someone that it's good (typically with alredy working prototype, which precludes funding for prototypes) or use your own time/funds. I wish there could be other way. Maybe someday UBI will give us that.
If you did not have to consider financial viability of a project, then more people would make more random stuff, which of course would produce more useful stuff, because the sample size increases, but there would also be more useless garbage.
The question is whether and in what direction/magnitude the signal to noise ratio would change in the UBI scenario.
No, current way is the most optimal I can think of in current situation. There are better ways, but not widely implementable currently.
As for more garbage - yes, there would be more noise, but ALSO more signal (in my humble opinion). Signal in this case is useful things, which would be multiplied by usability, which is a net win for me.