It's really depressing that game development has become mainly a dark pit for developers. Most of the stories end up in 3 categories: work for a shitty mobile company that reskins every game with awful monetisation, work for big studios while being exploited or work indie without certainty of making a buck or stability. There is a reason why most developer advise to make games as a side project passion while having a job in other sector of software development.

Is there no way back, where upstart companies can make hit games and become mega stars, like iD in the 90s?

Is the resources required to make a hit PC game too high today for an upstart to succeed, or is it just big gaming houses controlling the distribution channels?

This echoes many of my experiences in gamedev as well. It's really soul-crushing to be working on games that are poorly designed by people who has no business making games, or are designed to exploit some addictive impulse. It can really sap your enthusiasm for the medium as a whole.

It’s honest answers like this that make HN great. Maybe start working on a game you would like to play as side project; if your personal situation allows for that kind of freedom.

You might want to look into board games a bit. That industry still tends to thrive on making a quality product they can sell (unless it's on Kickstarter, then sometimes it's just about having really cool looking minis, with gameplay an afterthought) and not so much about how they can microtransaction the game to death.

It pays much worse than game programming though, unless you make a major hit, so you'll need to keep a day job, especially now that there's way too many games released every year that it has the same visibility problem as like, Steam does.

But you get to work with all sorts of people, and do so in person (like I'm going to an event in a couple weeks where I will be playtesting other designers' board games, and even a couple games by publishers themselves, and get to talk to and be friendly with the people who work for the publisher), and I've found it generally more fulfilling than my time in video games, personally.

Although that being said, I do miss video games and I've started working on one in my spare time again recently.

I think it is better you utilise your game programming experience to the more saner versions, mainly 3D graphics/3D scientific visualisation kind of roles.

They are almost on par with giving you the same satisfaction that your best gamed experience gave you with better pay and should I say most likely better working conditions as well!

If anyone has a strong background in 3D graphics and is interested in Counterstrike please do send me a message -- I'm building 3D analysis utilities for games[1] rather than games themselves which cuts out much of the complexity while maintaining many of the same technical problems. Email in profile.

[1] https://rewind.site

> I'm one of those kids who grew up playing now "classic" games wanting to become a game developer themselves.

This is why I got into development. I am so far away from that in the dev world nowadays. It is sad because it sounds like the video game industry does not promote healthy work environments.

Ditto. I started out on a Spectrum 48K+ as a 10 year old kid in the mid-80s trying to write games in Sinclair BASIC. My dream was to write my own version of Defender/Defender II/Stargate[1].

Professionally, I have never worked in game development and doubt I ever will, but I have a couple of web versions of Star Castle (https://arcade.ly/games/starcastle/) and Asteroids (https://arcade.ly/games/asteroids/) that I've built that I feel 10-year-old me would probably have enjoyed.

[1] Actually it still is, but now using WebGL. Watch this space.

Starcastle is still one of my favorite games. Simple enough but frustrating to master. I swear I spent more quarters on that damn game in my early teen years than I've spent on Steam games as an adult (when factoring in inflation). LOL

I also spent my childhood programming Trek games on the sinclair (kit).

I missed out on the kit computers of the early 80s, although it seems like that scene is undergoing something of a revival with lots of new machines - and not just Pi based - popping up. Confession: I spend way too much time watching content on channels like The 8-Bit Guy on YouTube.

I was an OS developer for the 3DO, and the first PlayStation, an then went on as a lead game developer for various publishers. The games industry is a cesspool, with the worse aspects ambition and creativity pressured together into the perfect storm for youthful slavery. Fuck that industry.

Do ever do any game jams? Those might be exactly what you are looking for.

I can second that, game jams got me back into enjoying gamedev. Try joining https://globalgamejam.org happening at end of January.

Haven't gotten around to that yet, but the idea has been brooding for a while...

Go and do some! I find it scratches exactly that itch. Best part is: When the game jam is over, the project is finished!

What is your opinion on larger companies that produce beloved games like Blizzard? Have you applied? Is there some reason you wouldn't?

At the present I mostly dislike large companies, as their games nowadays tend to "monetize" more and choose "safe" options in game design thus making them less appealing. It's kind of like Marvel movies. Great production, but after you've seen a few of them you lose interest, unless you have some kind of special attachment to the universe or the characters.

I respect Blizzard's history and games, however I feel it is going downhill, especially after their Diablo Immortal fiasco: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmkHAlhCvWg To those who are unaware: Blizzard has historically been a company making awesome games mainly for PC. Blizzcon is an annual conference where hardcore Blizzard fans (mostly PC gamers) come to learn what's next for them. Diablo 3 was released 6 years ago, so naturally people have been expecting the next installment. And then Blizzard says to those people that the next Diablo is a mobile-only game (co-)developed by a Chinese company. Naturally, this isn't what most of the series' fans were expecting and are excited about.

The Diablo immortal fiasco is certainly a dramatic misstep in terms of who they're presenting to, I'd agree. It was also quite painful to watch. However, I was pretty excited to see the announcement of a future remaster of Warcraft 3 from the same event.

You certainly have a point, but I think it's also really easy to develop a characterization of a company based on relatively shallow information. I had a conversation with a friend recently who's not quite in the same situation, but is worth recounting anyway. We live in Vancouver, BC, home of one of EA's campuses. He went to school for game design, then proceeded to not do anything relevant for about 6 years. He has no professional game design experience to speak of, yet has a tendency to speak as though he does. It seemed to be a surprise when I broke this down for him. When I asked "We know multiple people at EA right now, who, despite EA's reputation, speak highly of the company. You have a certification of some sort, why haven't you applied?". He proceeded to describe what he thought of EA, based on some of the decisions they've made, some of the games he's disliked, and the internet's opinion of them. The conversation went well, but I had to feed him some harsh realities, I hope he does well.

My point is not so much that it's not valuable information, but it's not a lot of information to bet potentially very valuable experience on. If you can say "I worked for Blizzard and it really wasn't for me. But I gave it a shot." then that might give you a lot more information in terms of what you do want to do.

This relates to me a little as well. I'm at a crossroads as a developer. Having been a web developer for a few years, with no degree at the moment, I'm trying to figure out where I want to be. A few years ago the prospect of working for a large online auction corp. I had a very strong suspicion that I would not do well—culturally and otherwise—at this company, but it was double the money and I was at that time not doing anything constructive. So I set my ego aside for a while and proceeded to take the job and subsequently confirm my suspicion. It wasn't all bad, but near the end it got pretty bad. It was a mistake I don't regret. It cost me a lot emotionally, but now I know which kind of companies I won't work for. I have a lot more information to go on, and sometimes those risks are worth taking.

>The best gamedev experience I had was working on an indie title with a very small and tight team. But that enterprise went bankrupt and the team disbanded.

That's the hallmark of having gamers as your audience. They reward the copycat garbage and publishers that mistreat them and exploit them, but they would never think of buying an indie game. They get what they pay for, and unfortunately so do the rest of us.