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Comment by dsirijus | Hacker News Reader

I think the main issue here is that people don't clearly delineate making games from making money.

You wanna make games? No one's stopping you from creating the most whackier experimental game this world has ever seen.

You wanna make money off that? You gotta wade through all kinds of shit, as is usual in most businesses. And before someone mentions Minecraft - it is such an outlier that it's not usable as argument in any discussion.

I don't subscribe to the self-entitled tone of the article that making games in itself is something virtuous and should be basically subsidized. I love Koster though, Theory of Fun for Game Design is what made me really interested in game development.

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You're misreading the issue. The issue is whether anyone can make money other than the few oligarchs who got in early. Whether anyone can make money unless they are pandering to the lowest common denominator for the sake of mere profitability. Whether even the top quality titles can make money given the need to spend at insane rates in order to be visible.

It's absolutely true you can do it for the love of it. Not questioning that. But the above is a recipe for a crash.

So what?

Do one for the money, the second for the show, third to get ready, and then make proper games. That's exactly what I'm doing now. Quite literally.

I can't wait to start doing games I'd like to play! Just few more months.

>I think the main issue here is that people don't clearly delineate making games from making money.

>You wanna make games? No one's stopping you from creating the most whackier experimental game this world has ever seen.

Creators still have to pay rent, buy food, and pay other bills. So unless you're privileged enough to be able to pay your bills without making any money, then yeah you do need money to make games.

The guy who made Banished contracted his way through the lengthy (something like 4 years) development. Functionally it cost him a lot of money and effort over time, but he did not need the extra overhead of a publisher (unless you consider Steam a sort of pseudo-publisher, which it is).

Money is just a thing we use to get other people who don't like us enough to work for us for free to do things for us. There are ways to get resources to make development possible beyond saving up a ton of cash (which carries a lot of risk in and of itself).

And how many do succeed in the end?

The main reason I ended up in boring IT world instead of gaming, even though I do know a few people in the industry, is a consequence how the whole industry works.

More so in Europe where not so many games make a hit. For each Crysis and Killzone there are lots of 1 game closed studios.

Almost none.

I think you are correct. Koster seems to get a bit too political in his article, but I think there is room in gaming for a "subsidized" system, albeit more like HBO: one subscription base, content creators get paid essentially based on their number of users/viewers. Such a system does not have to be exclusive of course.

Side note: I also read A Theory of Fun almost a decade ago and it is still one of the better books I have read on the subject.

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