What is the point of this article? The guy said he'd make a video game, and people pledged money. He's pretty upfront about what he's making on the Kickstarter page. The article author is upset because the fellow is using a tutorial? Who the hell cares? So long as the supporters get their "sidescrolling platformer action/adventure game, reminiscent of console classics like Super Mario Brothers and Sonic the Hedgehog", like he promised them, what's it your business anyway? They paid for a game, and he's developing a game. What's the problem?
Vast majority of the people, slog till the calcium in their bones disappear to learn the craft of software. HN'ers are full of Clojure learning, Python beauty appreciating programmers who would happily burn a summer down practicing exercises in Structure and Interpretation of computer programs. They would never hire anybody who doesn't know how to sort a million integers in a million different ways.
And yet after they learning how to do 22nd century algebra using haskell and learning how to bend the skies with macros some one here comes along reads a tutorial and builds an app to sell for a decent amount. This upsets their whole belief systems and makes their expertise seem irrelevant to winning the game.
This is called 'Holier than thou' attitude.
Anybody who doesn't go through the regime of K&R C -> Algorithm book -> DS Book -> Haskell -> Lisp is considered shit.
He is not supposed to win, succeed or do any thing big with software.
This happens all the time. Anybody who doesn't have a CS degree and can't handle the math/Algo quizzes is not supposed to win ever. And if he does, he is considered undeserving, lucky or just evil.
I was tasked with porting Platypus to the Mac, which was probably the most nightmarish code base I've ever seen. The entire code base consisted of hundreds of arrays, and three or four, twenty thousand line long functions. But the game was brilliant.
Anthony Flack, the creator, made a fantastic game. Absolutely brilliant.
I'm not saying you need technical chops to know how to make a game. I'm saying you need to make games to know how to make games! There's not a game developer alive that didn't play around extensively before finishing their first project.
Using a tutorial is a smoking gun that the author has not had this experience. It's literally like someone learning scales on the guitar, trying to write a song.
Except he's taking money on the preorders to that song.
He's not successful because of what he's done, he's successful because of the promises he's made.
If you don't see the problem there, I just don't know what to say.
Lets say you develop a hobby for making furniture. You start developing Tables. You read a DIY book and start making stuff. In the meanwhile, you make mistakes, you don't put as many nails where there are necessary. You put more gum than what is necessary. Your finished product is definitely a table, but you've made is so badly it could hardly last for a couple of years.
A carpenter down the street comes down to you shop and gives a detailed critique of what he thinks is wrong with your table.
Now you both go and try to sell your story, You have a table and he just has a critique. The user comes and sees your table and listens to his critique. He decides something that exists is better that just talk. Remember the user is seeing the table only, he didn't see you making it. He decides to go with your table despite the carpenters critique.
He orders 50 more tables from you to be made based on what you showed it to him.
Now the professional carpenter can argue about how bad and how many technical deficiencies exist in your tables. But you know what, the user won't even understand that language.
Because, Shipping is a feature. And the one's who ship almost always win. Sometimes even if they ship crap.
That is what is happening here.
Look, if the guy wasn't taking money for it, I'd be completely supportive. Trying stuff, MVP, and all that. Great angle for a game, great way to get started. Clearly a smart go getter.
But to use your analogy, the man has ordered 50 tables, not knowing they're likely to fall apart. The seller never revealed his lack of experience. At the end of it, we're just going to say caveat emptor?
That just doesn't sit well with me.
And I definitely agree with you that shipping stuff is #1, but I'm not sitting around idly by criticizing the work of makers. Every dollar I've made in the last 8 years has been from games, and only 2% of it or so from contract work. My own attempt at building a community around preorders has been more successful:
And I'd made 12 commercial games, some that set me up financially for years, before I felt comfortable being in a position to take peoples money before they've played the product.
Well actually I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm just trying to show you how the world is. We have to learn to live with this thing. The way programming has evolved in the years is scary to say at the least. And we may see more and more of this kind of stuff.
This is almost the same fury we saw when YC announced they would fund Ideas. Although they are not the same, but YC really was ready to fund stuff which wasn't really into material existence. While many who had working stuff might not have got funded, many of them might have had good enough experience and skill building stuff. At the same time there might have been ideas from non tech founders.
Sounds strange ain't it? These days you can do a lot of things by just knowing how to discover things and be a little productive.
No wonder yesterday there was thread on software engineers hitting dead ends at 40. There is simply too much competition and tools are reducing the barrier to entry opening a flood gate of people looking to make money here.
I think another problem might be how he claims "the game is designed, programmed, conceived, and produced by me," and then it is revealed that he is doing some pretty shady things with reusing sprites.
Plus since he is following a tutorial to make it is likely going to end up with code that is pretty similar to the tutorials code, and that might have interesting implications depending on what the tutorials author said could be done with the code from it.
But this is all hearsay, this might all just be place-holder graphics, he might just be using the tutorial to learn quickly and then remake everything from scratch. We don't know yet. However, if it is place-holder graphics, why remake Waluigi at all instead of just using him completely for testing...
1) If the guy's following a tutorial, the game will suck. I made games for years before I made one that didn't suck enough that people paid money for it, and even then, it sucked.
It's equivilant to hiring a guy to make a non trivial Rails app, and he goes out and buys a copy of Ruby for Dummies.
2) This is a great indication that Kickstarter game funding is a bubble right now, and there's going to be a crash. All the projects that people are funding take months or years to make, so the funders don't get disappointed right away. But all of the fluff projects being funded right now that won't go anywhere will come back to bite Kickstarter.
Look, if the guy was upfront that he was learning game development, no problem.
But if he can code, it's equivilant to someone following a Fruity Loops tutorial, saying they're going to make you a song. If he's creative and talented, maybe he's got a chance, after a learning curve.
If he can't, it's like someone learning to play chords on a guitar promising the same. No chance.
You're talking as if the game is already done, it's fun, but is held together with duct tape. I'm questioning whether the game will ever come out at all.
He's painting a picture about what the game will be like; his users aren't savvy enough to know whether he's going to be able to make it a reality.
If something stands out as a red flag, bringing into question whether he's got the ability to produce the project he is taking money for, it's absolutely appropriate to point it out.
I've been in the indie development scene ten years; projects like this are a dime a dozen, and a single digit percentage of them ever get finished.
> But all of the fluff projects being funded right now that won't go anywhere will come back to bite Kickstarter.
> But if he can code, it's equivilant [sic] to someone following a Fruity Loops tutorial, saying they're going to make you a song. If he's creative and talented, maybe he's got a chance, after a learning curve.
> If he can't, it's like someone learning to play chords on a guitar promising the same. No chance.
The other posts outside of this were made later, and were intended to address a slightly different point. My position could be wrong, but I don't believe I've been inconsistent :)
