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Comment by cableshaft | Hacker News Reader

List of video games supposedly developed by just one person: https://www.gamespot.com/gallery/the-14-best-games-developed...

I say supposedly because I know Jonathan Blow paid someone to do all the art for Braid, and licensed all the music (I even saw him demo Braid before release with his programmer art at GDC back in 2008, it did not look anywhere near as pretty, so he made the right choice). But the artwork was so extensive I'm not quite sure that really counts for your criteria.

That may be true for some of the others in the list as well, if that's the case. Stardew Valley I know was all one person, though. Also I really enjoyed Gorogoa, even though it's a smaller game, and that was done by a single guy who quit his cushy tech job and spent 7 years teaching himself how to draw and make games before he released it. It's a super clever interactive comic panel puzzle game that was well-received, though. Think it's on Xbox Game Pass right now.

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Lucas Pope is for sure a solo dev. He wrote a custom shader for Obra Dinn while he was also writing the storyline. It's a pretty incredible feat.

Here’s a pretty wonderful timelapse of Pope getting the player’s hand working in the game: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IQdpeN_OERM

A custom shader is an incredible feat?

Well, no, but arguably that one was: https://danielilett.com/2020-02-26-tut3-9-obra-dithering/

(But yes it's a bit weird not to say that the feat was, uh, making that whole game).

I have no game programming experience. What is a shader and what other things needs are required to make a 3d object realistic. I think wireframe and then lighting is another. Seems shading is yet another which provides skin. Other than animation is there anything else?

A shader is the human-editable code that gets compiled into the GPU to do graphics rendering. In terms of 3D objects, "wireframe" is broken into vertices and fragments, where vertices are points in space and fragments are the interpolated positions between vertices. You pass any information you want to the shader from your main CPU process (e.g. time elapsed, screen resolution, textures you want to use, click events, random variables you conjured) and the shader executes whatever you code you wrote for it -- maybe it adds a blur effect, thresholds colors into black/white, mines bitcoin, it just executes whatever shader code you wrote, however creative you wanted to be. Some really cool examples at shadertoy.com

An interesting solo game dev is also Jason Rohrer [1, 2]. I'm not a gamer, but I found his frugal work and life philosophy inspiring.

1: http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/jason-rohrer/

2: https://usesthis.com/interviews/jason.rohrer/

This does not go back very far does it. Must have been a fair number of iconic games written by a single developer in the eight-bit era.

Lords Of Midnight by Mike Singleton springs to mind, as does Sandy White's astonishing Ant Attack.

I'm sure there's a bunch if you go back to early arcade days or Atari/NES, like you said. But I had a hard time finding them with a Google search.

Also if you count Flash/mobile games, there's a bunch there too. I would count in that instance. I released several Flash games back in the day where I did the code, sometimes art (sometimes I collaborated with an artist), sometimes I did the music too, and at least some of the sound effects (any that couldn't be generated with a synthesizer I purchased). And I released one game on iOS/Xbox 360 where I did everything as well.

But they were tiny games compared to behemoths like Stardew Valley.

Braid shouldn't be on there. While it was done by a single programmer, he didn't do the artwork. He was smart enough to hire someone with good taste.

> say supposedly because ...

... because they did not write the compiler for their game.

There are quite a few two-person teams for indie games, one artist and one developer (more often it's three people, but two people is common also). I doubt most people would consider those teams a "single person creation".

In Braid's case, it was one developer and he contracted out the artwork, just as much artwork as in those two-person teams. So is it really a single person creation? It either could or it couldn't depending on your criteria (if he made all the critical decisions, some might say he is, while others care more about people who can both code and do art, two different fields that it's rare to find one person that can do both of them well). That's all I'm saying.

Also a compiler is a tool, much like a hammer is to a carpenter. If you want to get that precise then there's no point asking the question, because short of "I found some pretty rocks on the ground and stacked them", there wouldn't be hardly anything that would count as a single person creation.

> In Braid's case, it was one developer and he contracted out the artwork, just as much artwork as in those two-person teams. So is it really a single person creation?

Exactly, by the same logic Donkey Kong was made by a single person. The art and design was by Shigeru Miyamoto and the development was outsourced to a team of six.

I guess this is a joke because he is writing the compiler (and language, Jai) for his new game. I think he has a team now though.

To make an apple pie from scratch you must first invent the universe

Yeah, I feel like you kind of need similar categories as you see in speed running. For example, there are 100% speed runs, any% speed runs, no glitch speed runs, etc.

Similarly, building an entire game from nand gates is a different kind of impressive than using an existing game engine + buying commodity art assets. However, using an existing game engine / art assets will probably result in something that looks better and can be more ambitious.

> ... because they did not write the compiler for their game.

That's like saying a painting isn't a single person creation because the artist didn't make their own brushes from scratch. Maybe true technically, but splitting hairs to the point that it makes the conversation about something else entirely.

I, pencil is an interesting essay, but it's not what OP is asking about, I don't think.

For sure. "And did you mine the sand and process the silicon for that computer? I don't think so."

hold on now, don't tell me you were using preexisting atoms to facilitate your art? I guess all great artists really do steal

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch you must first invent the universe.

Every day is less impressive to create an entire product by one self, the ammount of tools created to simplify or automate common tasks give us a lot of work done.

But the expectations rise too.

Breakout. Built by Steve Wozniak, solely. Exploited by Steve Jobs, Solely. For Atari.

Chuck E Cheeses - Founded by founder of Atari, Solely.

> Chuck E Cheeses - Founded by founder of Atari, Solely.

Really stretching the definition of solely when you have to ignore the people who did all the actual work in creating chuck e cheeses - i can “create” a restaurant, but without cooks, servers, hosts, graphic designers, construction/reno people, etc. it’s not going to be fun for the whole family

extrapolating that idea into PC video games makes it seem ridiculous; the solo-produced video game wouldn't run anywhere without the work of hundreds of thousands of individuals within the computer field -- but I wouldn't consider the people who worked on , for example, SMD resistors , to be collaborators with the video game production.

in other words ; 'cooks, servers' are generic components of a restaurant; the 'fun for the whole family' bit comes in as part of a custom set of things on top of the generic restaurant experience that were thought of and attributed to the people responsible for the concept -- in this case the Founder.

I disagree. There is a categorical difference between using tools, markets and platforms others made and hiring staff who control the output. It’s like using an open source framework (ruby on rails, say) vs hiring or contracting a team of devs. The founder of chuck e cheese hired a graphic designer who had creative input, cooks who designed the menu, even managers who came up with hiring practices and things like that. To discount that input is to be elitist, you can’t convince me otherwise.

I highly recommend the Braid soundtrack.

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