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Re:Ask HN: Any recommend resources that helped your game dev... by andai on Friday February 28, 2025 @02:37PM (#43209436)
I think the most useful feedback would be that you should probably put some time into studying what a game actually is.

It might be that what you are trying to make actually isn't a game, but more of a sandbox, or a platform, or a space for people to hang out. That can work too, e.g. the website MaidMarian had a "game" that was just a bunch of people flying around talking to each other. There was nothing to do, but it was cool and it was fun (at least until the novelty wore off).

(There's also singleplayer sandboxes, but the multiplayer ones are ironically easier to make good, because in Jason Rohrer's words, a human being is an infinite novelty generator.)

Based on your post, that seems to be the case here! You seem to be making "spaces". So that can totally work. You might study previous examples of such games that are not really games but "spaces".

At any rate, it seems that at this point you're mostly just experimenting and trying things out. You are having trouble communicating the vision because there is no vision, or you're trying to find out what the vision is / discover what's cool / what works. That's fine too! You don't need to feel bad about that.

But when you present it as a game, there are certain expectations about what that means, e.g. it's expected that a game has a "point", and here there does not seem to be one.

I'm not sure if there's a better word for what you're making than a game, but that might be worth investigating if using different language here would be helpful for presenting the ideas.

Re:Ask HN: Any recommend resources that helped your game dev... by stevekwon211 on Tuesday March 04, 2025 @01:40AM (#43251069)
You’re right. Sometimes I’m not even sure if what I want to make is really a “game.” Games have rules and goals, but what I’m building doesn’t have those yet. So is it just a space for people to hang out, like a portal? Or maybe a 3D social network? Or something like Garry’s Mod, a sandbox for creativity?

I need to figure out the best way to share my vision and make something people will keep using and enjoy. That’s going to take a lot of thinking, trying, and messing up. Your comment really got me thinking. I’ll keep digging into it. Thanks!