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Comment by Rd6n6 | Hacker News Reader

I’m hesitant to participate in more game dev communities unless the people in that community are unusually serious about their projects. That seems somewhat rare unfortunately.

Actually making a commercially viable indie game takes incredible amounts of time, effort, and skill-building, but a lot of people think they can do it without that investment, and it ends up being more of a (highly rewarding) hobby. Talking to them isn’t the same as talking to somebody else who is also neck deep in their own serious project that has real stakes and real complexity

Game jams and small non commercial games are awesome though, that is a great hobby to have if that applies to any of you!

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My experience has been pretty different - though I guess games jams can have very different local flavours depending on where you participate. I found the people who cared enormously about games as games in seemingly trivially-themed game-jam communities, and the bigger/professional/more serious organisations can end up being swamped by professionalism/business considerations (But not always). Thats kinda how I got started, more than 10 years ago. Building up a network of like-minded/interesting/whatever friends I guess was for me critical in my artistic (and professional) development. And when the communities are disrupted, as in which covid, my work gets thrown into confusion. But different people find different environments conductive to making games (of different types), I know... .

Yeah, I have to agree. I've been a full-time indie game developer for six years now and I'm fortunate that my peer network consists of about 90% people in the same boat, they have a few shipped titles under their belts.

If I want to seriously talk about Steam's discovery algorithm or get some feedback, that can't really just be anyone. And if I want to talk about the game publicly its to get customers, not to show to other game developers.

Not everyone would think the same, and that's okay!

Making the same switch now. Any advice on a guide for starting in the right direction?

Amen.

As a music producer I've joined countless forums, FB groups, and game dev communities and not a single one of them has created any meaningful connections online for me. My own web site has done a far better job at connecting me with people that are really doing meaningful and motivated things in music, film, and game dev.

Because many of these communities turn into a competition for attention (even with the host site itself) and scams are rampant, I've backed off of doing anything but just posting my work without any calls to action at all. Business and my audience have been a lot less spammy and more focused since I pivoted to just posting my music without as much text as before.

Indie game developer here, 10+ years, multiple commercial titles - this rings true. I mostly spend time in communities where people are in a similar work situation, yet producing different products (programming, art, film etc).

This isn't to disparage intentional game dev communities. They certainly have their place. But often these communities are for hobbyists who want to share screenshots of their A* implementation in Godot (again, that's great), which isn't really useful to me these days.

Oh! I never thought of talking to indie film makers, but the cross over in process seems to be hugely similar. If you don't mind me asking, how have you found their reception to you? And, as cinema has become a large part of selling games (even indie ones) given that "sizzle reels" seem to account for a decent amount of interest, have these meet ups lead to collaboration?

I just quit my job to pivot to full time indie game development - what serious indie game dev communities can you recommend, if any?

Unreal slackers has a good c++ channel. The others, I got invited to through good luck as I got to know people.

Some of the less hardcore channels still have smart, interesting, skilled, and hard working people in them btw, I met a lot of really cool people in them.

Thank you so much, this is ideal! I had already settled on Unreal due to the platform support, license model and ability to work with C++.

> Actually making a commercially viable indie game takes incredible amounts of time, effort, and skill-building

Only if you don't invest in luck. Flappy bird, for example.

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