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The fable of the Chicken and the Pig is used to illustrate the differing levels of commitment from project stakeholders involved in a project. The basic fable runs:
A Pig and a Chicken are walking down the road.
The Chicken says: "Hey Pig, I was thinking we should open a restaurant!"
Pig replies: "Hm, maybe, what would we call it?"
The Chicken responds: "How about 'ham-n-eggs'?"
The Pig thinks for a moment and says: "No thanks. I'd be committed, but you'd only be involved."
Damn, that's a lot fucking darker than I'd thought it'd get on reading the title of the fable.
It was actually in my management textbook XD
I know it's not the point, but I love the completely arbitrary bit where they're walking down a road together, and has absolutely no bearing on anything the happens.
It has one bearing: it puts them in the same location together
He already did the hard part! Why won't you lazy fucks implement his great ideas?
It is, in fact, very easy to code a game!
from pygame import game
game.load_player()
game.load_enemies()
game.load_audio()
game.run()
I'm glad that there's no micro transactions nor loot boxes.
That's in game.load_dlc() we opted not to include that until our game is already beloved on steam.
Make sure to add mandatory EGS accounts later.
EGS? Oh, no. We don't do that here. We're more along the lines of:
That part comes when they find a publisher.
As a software dev who's participated in a couple of game jams and several group projects,
It's like scope creep, but where the demanding client is also your boss/coworker.
Oh god have had people try this exact thing with me before.
I got asked by a team of first timers who have never done any professional coding or design if I wanted to chip in on a competitive MMOFPS they want to make.
That's not going to happen. Between the rise of cheating, the insane hardware and optimization requirements of an MMOFPS, the general lack of interest in the genre (most have died due to low player counts), and the sheer amount of time and effort involved in designing and balancing the game even after it's largely feature complete? Forget it, I'm better off buying lottery tickets than hoping for anything to come of that.
No joke, I once met a guy like this in an indie game developers meetup, and on top of that he was extremely vague about his idea because he told everyone he once managed to get a coder on board and "that rat wanted to take advantage of him and his idea", literally.
I had a guy whose pitch was "Ok, you're the president."
That was the game idea. The whole thing.
I'm picturing Microsoft flight simulator but for politics. I'm in.
There are probably a ton of incredible banger games out there that don't exist because the person who thought of it just doesn't know how to code
I can code but I can't do art. I can make a game, but it will look ugly as fuck.
You mean like an MMO where different maps are arranged in an infinite hexagonal pattern that's randomly/procedurally generated based on different biomes, that also keeps track of how many players have entered/completed each hex and begins scaling down the difficulty in said hex and evolving it into a more peaceful zone, that way the higher traffic areas eventually form safe zones/towns for low level characters while low traffic areas encourage high level characters to visit and explore, with the highest level characters able to survive unexplored areas and expand the map for all players, all while having developer tools to specifically add unique dungeons/events/items directly to tiles so that the game doesnt feel a mile wide and an inch deep but instead as if the whole world map is alive and constantly changing?
Yea... That'd be cool.
Definitely some cool ideas there but how do you deal with the long term effect of the map becoming too big?
The bigger the map the more the defs would need to stretch their resources to adding cool stuff.
Also, at some point, the inner hexes will be essential all complete cleared and new players will have to wander for a while as soon as they level up a bit.
Unlocking a new hex would be fun at the beginning but how fun will it be after 100+ have been unlocked and any more just will inevitably just feel same-y because even the best defs will eventually run out of ideas
Y'all remember that post about the "science-based dragon MMO" that topped the gaming page of...that other site...? If not, I'll include the title and image below, because it's got the same energy as this post.
Dear internet, I'm a 26 year old lady who's been developing a science-based, 100% dragon MMO for the last two years. I'm finally making my beta-website now, and using my 3D work as a base to create my 50+ concept images. Wish me luck, Reddit; You'll be the first to see the site when it's finished.
The comments were surprisingly constructive considering she basically pasted zsphere sketches over a generic background and announced she had been solo developing the most ambitious dragon fucking game the world has ever seen. It's been 12 years, I wonder how she's doing?
You know what's ironic about all this is, as someone who has seen game dev pitches (not good ones), they arguably had their shit together more than most aspiring game devs. Looking back at the skeletals, ya know they actually may have had a chance of getting somewhere. They knew absolutely nothing about the technical side, but hardly any game devs actually do. They probably still stand a better chance today of developing this than some game studios asset-mashing in Unity or Unreal. That's the true state of game dev.
As a person that has a lot of ideas and no coding or art knowledge, it sucks because I know I can't expect someone else to do it for me and I don't have the time or mental capacity to learn. I guess I can just have AI do it for me now /s
I envy you in some ways, recognizing your limits is something I wish I would have done. I came from a coding background, spent like 2 years learning unity, then eventually realized much of the cool stuff for games happen on the art side. So I learned blender... the whole pipeline- modeling, sculpting, materials, animations, each piece had it's own challenges and quirks.
It's been like 15 years since I started, I still haven't released a game... but I do have a collection of neat prototypes that no one has played. I often wonder if I've wasted my time with the whole thing. If I could go back, I'd choose one niche, specialize in it and find a team to collaborate with, but there are trade offs with that too like giving up a lot of creative control.
I think it's probably better to have taken action as you've learned a lot. People like the person you replied to and myself "know" our limitations but then we don't do anything so you're 15 years more advanced in your knowledge and I'm 15 years stagnant no better than I was from the start.
Yes this is what I tell myself to keep from going insane, I learned a lot. Unfortunately the majority of these skills I've acquired are not applicable to "pay the bills" work. By trade, I'm still building web forms and streamlining internal business processes - what would it look like I spent those years on perfecting that craft instead? What if I didn't block out my evenings and sacrifice time with friends and family? Life is always a series of trade-offs, I suppose.
Hey buddy, your value is not what capitalists are willing to pay for your time.
You can have someone else do it for you. You just need the money. Give yourself Executive Producer credits, tell them your vision and pay them to make it happen.
fuck idea guys. an idea is worth nothing until you actually put the work in
I have this idea of how to solve the world's energy problem...ok ok just hear me out... nuclear fusion....just need some smart science nerd to figure it out. Any volunteers?
I would volunteer... for money
Sure as long as you donate 100,000 USD a year to my bank account.
I've had game and software ideas swirling around in my brain, but for the longest time I couldn't program them. But now, I have enough knowledge to build parts of my grand deckbuilding game idea: An arcade style deckbuilding game with strong meta-progression. It's playable at superspruce.org.
As for some other ideas, including the simple idea of a weighted shuffle music playlist where each song has its own weight, they are still currently out of reach, mostly due to trying to access the filesystem and whatnot. Better than a month ago, where within the last month I found out how to make the browser play music
Have you considered making your deck building game an mmorpg?
But only if there's multiple endings and my choices matter.
I once read an article about a guy, whos just doing this. He is selling gaming ideas to studios. But to be fair, he did develop some indie game by him self. He just realized, that he is not good in developing and the hates the whole programming and design part. He only has good ideas.
If you're this guy, You've gotta be a really good writer and you gotta write it first.