Game Dev Quick Links – Sept 2017 Edition (Where I read lots of game dev stuff so you don’t have too!)
Welcome to the September edition of quick links for the Bristol Games Hub newsletter. Let’s dive in…
Fixing our broken internet culture is increasingly key issues for those working in the industry. GI.biz are doing good work in opening up discussion on this and from my POV, no it should not just be the price of making games.
For sure, we could all just treat this as being ‘the cost of doing business’; some parts of the Internet are toxic (Reddit sure as hell being a prime offender) and serve to encourage and validate hugely anti-social and abusive behavior.
The indie games are too damn cheap so says the excellent SteamSpy – and he’s got a point! We spend a huge amount of time and energy to create a game and while pricing is not a science, we should be unafraid to ask what we think it is worth.
And here lies the problem outlined in the title. The indie games are too damn cheap.
You can find indies in any other big entertainment market: movies, comics, music. Everywhere else small creators face the same problem: making the ends meet with a relatively small audience. It’s never easy for a small guy and it will never be, but in most other industries indie products are still sold at the same price as big AAA titles from established brands and companies.
Besides, it’s inefficient. Some studies point to 35 hours per week being the maximum one can work at peak productivity. One study found that eight 60-hour weeks produces as much as eight 40-hour weeks, yet game developers swap stories of 80-hour-per-week months.
So why do we do it?
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A Great Becoming... 