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Comment by dirkk0 | Hacker News Reader

"For the lone game programmer that day has already arrived.

Twice."

If one sees 'the art of lone game programming' as a genre then this might be true. One successful lonely game programmer leads to a gold rush of many lonely game programmers digging the iKlondike for gold.

But I am pretty sure that there is always room for the brilliant idea that no one can grasp when you pitch it. I personally would have talked Notch out of the idea for Minecraft with the usual arguments (blocky graphics, not state-of-the-art, there's no real goal, etc pp). And when I played it, I was like - omg, I could have done that.

There always will be a lonely (game) programmer doing something extraordinary that you didn't think of in the first place or even despised. And then there is the next Notch, and I will again say - omg, not again.

And some of us have big ideas and don't dare to join the art of lonely game programming.

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Except that the myth of the one-idea-making-a-fortune is mostly that. A myth. Minecraft, as incredible as it was, wasn't the only game of its kind. People routinely underestimate the role of luck in these things.

There is room for the one great idea. But the point is that the minimum production values on the platforms that sell that idea has risen beyond one person now. As it did in the 16-bit era in the late 80s and early 90s. I thought it was interesting that Monument Valley made it into the list at the end. Made by a graphic design agency, not a bedroom coder.

Have you played any of the similar pre-Minecraft games? They are all almost universally completely different from Minecraft - interacting with the voxel environment is not the main point of the game.

Minecraft drew heavily from other games, yes, but it was also revolutionary and one of the first games to have such an open development cycle. There is a reason that such a poorly designed and buggy game is arguably the biggest indie franchise of all time.

Yes. They are not 'almost universally completely different'. There are elements in Minecraft (which didn't originate those elements) which are not in them, certainly. Minecraft brought a bunch of cool things together, I agree. And it was compelling enough to go places. But the idea that this was a thunderbolt of inspiration that hit notch with the best idea ever that then changed the world is just fantasy.

Post-hoc rationalization is humanity's only superpower.

I don't know if anyone with any knowledge would argue that. Minecraft Alpha was decidedly dull. I think, more than anything else, the public development cycle was a huge part of Minecraft's success.

I also wonder how much piracy contributed. I know I pirated the game before I bought it.

>> But the idea that this was a thunderbolt of inspiration that hit notch with the best idea ever that then changed the world is just fantasy.

It was a series of thunderbolts and Notch and the whole Mojang gang are freaking geniuses in my opinion.

I disagree. There are no "minimum production values" if your game is good enough. A ton of popular indie games today (Hotline Miami, Risk of Rain, Gunpoint, Valdis Story, Terraria, many of Vlambeer's games...) are still made with pixel art using GameMaker, for example.

Minecraft succeeded not because it was one out of a hundred block-based games that got lucky, but because it had a perfect mix of simplicity (slick interface and controls), immediacy (play in your browser), wonder (explore forever in any direction), and persistance. I guess you could point to Infiniminer before it, but if you've ever played it, you'll know that it was slow and clunky in a 90's sim-game kind of way.

> There are no "minimum production values" if your game is good enough.

Which is just a tautology.

Hotline Miami - 2 core devs + 2 others; Risk of Rain - 2 core devs + others; Gunpoint - 1 dev (Tom Francis FTW, yay!) Valdis Story - Dunno, but website says "we" and mentions a few different people in blogs; Terraria - 2 core devs + others; Vlambeer - 2 core devs + others.

It is very difficult, almost impossible for a single developer to make a competitive game now. Not actually impossible, but the dev needs to be almost preternaturally productive. It is much more common to find programmer + artist + others teams, as it became after the transition to 16-bit. Very common to have programmer + artist for pre-alpha prototyping, contracting additional programmers + additional artists + sound guys (as for several of the games you cite) + platform conversion teams + music, etc.

> pixel art using GameMaker, for example.

Pixel art can have high production values. Pixel art was still the main requirement for 16-bit games, well after the demise of the bedroom coder.

If you think that, say, Risk of Rain doesn't have many person years of production input, you're deluding yourself. Try making something equivalent yourself this year.

Yeah, if you're looking specifically for 1-person developers, it's hard to find them. But I think that's because most people aren't comfortable making the art or music for their own games. (Or choose not to out of time pressure.) If Derek Yu had chosen to sell the original Spelunky, I think it would have done well. I think Towerfall might count, since I know Matt Thorson has done the art and music for most of his games. Nidhogg has been pretty successful lately, as well as Samurai Gunn.

For the record, I don't think pixel art has to be particularly high quality for the game to be successful. Right now I'm playing an alpha of Vagante and having a ton of fun. It's looking like it's gonna be a hit. The graphics are muddy and kind of NES-looking with lots of cheap rotations — and that's OK.

> Try making something equivalent yourself this year.

I'm actually planning to do just that. So I guess we'll have to see!

> I think that's because most people aren't comfortable making the art or music for their own games.

Right, them's the 'production values'. They aren't comfortable because the quality bar is pretty high, even on pixel art, high enough that you really need an artist to do it, not a lone coder.

I think the situation isn't quite as bleak as he says in the OP anyway. The age of the lone coder is gone, I think. The few exceptions are exceptions. But the age of the prototype-in-a-game-jam-get-crowd-funded-and-build-a-product-with-a-small-team isn't over, though the bubble has definitely burst from when every kickstartered game seemed to reach its goal. So while I think he's right that the market has eliminated the lone-coder approach to game development, the ability to bring a good small game to market is as good as it has ever been.

As you said further up, it is PC that is the heartbeat of that.

Good luck on your game.

Another great one-man-team is Lucas Pope, creator of Papers Please and (currently in development, but the demo has already seen great reception) The Curse of The Obra dinn, as well as a few Ludum Dare games.

Yup. The first person that came to mind for me was Terry Cavanagh. Also a one-man phenomenon.

I don't think he does the music for most of his games, though.

But I am pretty sure that there is always room for the brilliant idea that no one can grasp when you pitch it.

You're right, but I don't think the author would claim otherwise.

The article is not about the possibility of breakout success, but about lone, reasonably skilled game developers being able to make a consistent living. Not the same thing.

I see, and I agree, you have a point.

I still stand to what I wrote , because I think it is important to stress that it is important to follow your ideas, even if their odds might be low. Being downvoted is somewhat ironical on a meta level.

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