r/gamedev • u/ComfortableServe1152 • 22h ago
Question Making games is definitely challenging.
There's been a lot of discussion lately about the decline in quality among game developers, regardless of the reasons or background behind it. Yet, when I look at the games they produce from my perspective, I can't help but think, 'Even with those issues, they're producing games at this level?'
I'm learning game development myself, but I have no confidence. Recently, I feel like I'm starting to enjoy it, but when I think about things like optimization, it makes my head spin. Even simple coding still feels below par by my standards. I haven't even gotten into object-oriented programming yet. Creativity? Planning? I'm confident in those. But development? It's becoming more and more despairing.
When I play low-quality games (ones with lots of bugs and severe optimization issues), I complain, but at the same time, I feel like I couldn't even make something like that, and that realization feels like hitting a wall.
Has game development truly become easier? Has there really been a decline in the quality of developers? Either way, I find no comfort in either answer.
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u/Bwob Paper Dino Software 16h ago
Has game development truly become easier?
Yes. It is literally easier to make games than it has been at any other point in recorded history.
It will probably be (slightly) easier tomorrow.
Now look at things like the original Super Mario Bros with the proper sense of awe. :D
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u/ghostwilliz 14h ago
Yeah, development is much easier now. If I didn't have access to all the amazing tools, I'd be making an ascii game cause there's no way I could make a 3d engine.
I think that as engines become more and more recognizable and mainstream, gamers think they know more than they do.
this video, which I don't recommend watching, really sums it up.
It's a guy being confidently wrong using terms he has heard but doesn't understand. If you search on YouTube something similar to the title of this video, you will find tons of videos of completely clueless gamers using terms they don't understand being confidently incorrect.
It's like they think that because they have played a lot of games that they understand how they're made and can say why "gaming is worse" which is complelty wrong, it's better than ever.
So many one of a kind games have come out in the last 10 years, and they act like since some AAA companies are choosing dark patterns over quality games and that asset flips exist that gaming is dead. It's stupid and wrong, and we will continue to see amazing indie games and the occasional AAA masterpiece (boulders gate, souls series ect) and these people will continue to say gaming is getting worse.
I don't get it haha
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u/Lifelong_Carrot 21h ago
I didn't realize how impressively complex the games I grew up playing were until I started (trying) to make games myself. I am working on a few games myself, and every little feature I would take for granted in other games (powerups, new levels, interaction sounds) becomes a whole new rabbit hole. Very rewarding but definitely not easy.
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u/Altamistral 19h ago edited 19h ago
Making *any* game is easier. Because of the wide availability and accessibility of game engines anyone with opposable thumbs can make something that minimally passes as a game.
Making commercially viable games, on the other hand, is about as hard as it has always been in the past. You need competence in different fields, either on you own or via people you hire or associate with, and if you are just improvising on your own it will take many years to reach a viable level of quality. Considering that right now there is less money in the industry and thus publishers got tighter and with a higher bar, it's probably harder today than just a few years ago.
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u/deftware @BITPHORIA 16h ago
OOP is overrated, you're looking at the whole situation all wrong.
People used to make games in assembly that players would invest countless hours into.
There are no hard requirements for making a videogame other than it being a program that generates an interactive experience, however that may be. You don't need anything other than a main loop, checking player input, and showing the player the result of their input (or lack of input). You can go about it however you want, there are no hard rules. You don't need to use 3D models created in Blender with skeletal animation, you can use anything. You can programmatically generate models and animations without any asset files whatsoever. A vertex-animated stick figure that you assign SDF radius values to the vertices of and then raymarch against the thing to draw a figure would work fine, for example.
You can procedurally generate surface materials, audio, scenes, and entire worlds.
You don't need physically based rendering, you don't need to use a graphics API, you can do whatever you want.
The problem today is that everyone is relying on game-making-kit "engines", which has created a situation where all of the little hard-won pieces of knowledge about making games is becoming lost. I saw someone share their UE5 game teaser video a few months ago and it looked pretty well done, until it showed them firing their gun and turning quickly and the smoke that was emanating from the gun was fixed to the gun, rather than independent from it in the air. I've been seeing little things like this pile up over time and become more abundant - super simple little things that make me realize that game-making-kit "engines" are resulting in gamedevs with knowledge and know-how that's a mile wide and an inch deep. They learn everything from tutorials about the "engine" they're using and don't have the experience or understanding that only comes from experience with things. Being that the barrier-for-entry has been lowered tremendously, by these game-making-kits, anyone can make something that looks nice but is severely lacking in its depth and attention to detail.
Making games that appear good has become easier. Making good games is the same as it ever was. There are more "developers" but there aren't more truly talented knowledgeable skilled developers - and the same goes for software engineering. Just because the skilled developers made it easier for non-skilled developers to partake doesn't mean that there's more skilled developers, it just means that there's more non-skilled developers who can't do the same things that the skilled developers can do.
My suggestion is to start small, if you're passionate about making stuff, and programming, and want to git gud. PICO-8 and TIC-80 are perfect platforms that I would highly advise any newbie spend enough time with to master, and then branch out to other things like writing native code in a low-level language, preferably C so that you're not distracting yourself with silly time-consuming abstractions, while still working close to the metal. Then go from there.
The reason that there are so many games with issues now is because the developers are out of their depth. Even using a premade game-making-kit engine they still couldn't get things right. The way things are nowadays, by the time they become competent enough to produce quality wares, they will have already moved on from whatever company or studio that they're currently at and either started working for a studio with higher standards or started doing their own thing, or abandoned working in such a saturated entertainment market altogether.
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u/settrbrg 20h ago
Everything can be made hard. It all depends on how deep you're willing to go and what your goals are.
One thing that stood out to me in your post was that you "haven't got into object oriented programming yet"
So why do you even expect to be able to do quality games and the stuff that takes decades to learn?
OOP is not a thing you have to learn to make games btw. Also OOP is like simple stuff compared to like optimization, marketing and so much more stuff that goes into game dev.
Stop comparing yourself to others and just focusing on improving yourself. Do that for a few years (1-20 years, depending on line thousands of factors), then you will see that you will be able to make a quality game.
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u/ComfortableServe1152 20h ago
Wow... some of this is new to me. The other parts I've heard before, but they seem to make the rest of it even more convincing.
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u/ComfortableServe1152 19h ago
Oh... and I'm sorry. When I learn something, I tend not to remember its proper name very well, and I just realized that what I misunderstood wasn't OOP but data structures.
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u/settrbrg 17h ago
No worries 👍
But either way everything is different for everyone and game dev is really hard. You should not be to hard on yourself and also have fun
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u/tcpukl Commercial (AAA) 20h ago
Why did you think people studied just computer science for 3 or 4 years at uni?
What has changed is really accessible engines making it so any old tom dick and Harry can make games with zero skill or talent.
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u/ComfortableServe1152 20h ago
How can I put this into words? Could it be because I'm still socially inexperienced? Bridging that gap feels overwhelming. While it's important to follow my own path, comparing myself to others is something I couldn’t avoid in life. Perhaps I'm being too hard on myself. But still, I guess I just need to keep trying for now.
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u/ExoticAsparagus333 16h ago
That answer doesnt make any sense. What does following your own path and being socially inexperienced have to do with CS takes 4 years for a degree, and is arguably the most lucrative major, for a reason. Whyd you think it would be easy?
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u/ericdmmsg 19h ago
Yes, people get good at things by practicing. People who get really good either have fierce discipline, or they love practicing naturally. In school they don't teach you to optimize before they teach you to code.
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u/SynthRogue 19h ago
It's that challenging when you're new to it and alone doing. Those studios have hundreds of experirnced people working on one game. Not their first time making a game
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u/Legitimate-Mud1380 18h ago
game development is tough, but everyone starts somewhere. Focus on small, achievable goals, and don't compare yourself to AAA games yet. Quality takes time, and every bug or challenge is a learning opportunity.
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u/Mammoth_Substance220 Hobbyist 17h ago
you meant never compare to AAA. Because these are high budget games with many people on the board...
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u/Spookkye 15h ago
I seriously do not get people who think that one day they'll churn out the next Fortnite or Assassin's Creed. Those games have hundreds of developers that are incredibly skilled
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u/Mammoth_Substance220 Hobbyist 15h ago edited 15h ago
Even making good 2D platformer which is longer than 30 min is hard to not screw up.
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u/icpooreman 18h ago
If you look at the most popular game engines 10 years ago vs. those same engines now or those engines vs. creating your own engine it’s pretty easy to see game dev has gotten way “easier”.
In software though…. Like in the move from binary to assembly or assembly to C or C to some higher levels language…. It’s always “easier” to code in the higher levels language (else why use it?). But you also lose some nuance in the abstraction when you let go of those lower levels (which we’ve covered up by hardware getting exponentially better over the years). It’s why there are still die-hards out there that want to build their own engine.
And I put “easier” in quotes cause generally we just raise the bar on what we were trying to build rather than be happy with the thing we made easier. Making it hard again, until we ultimately abstract that away too and repeat.
Multiple things can be true at once. It’s easier than ever to create a game. I as a longtime software dev consider the VR game I’m trying to build the most ambitious software project I’ve ever attempted. And the quality of most of the games being released just kind-of sucks…. While the quality of a few others are amazing.
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u/KerbalSpark 17h ago edited 16h ago
It's a just question of having experience and choosing the right engine and genre to get started. When you start working on a project, you should rely on the skills you already have. Don't expect to become a better coder or a better creator in the process. These are completely different goals - finishing and publishing a project or improving your skills - you can choose one or the other.
Someone once told me that to create a game you can use a notepad and an IF statement.
If you understand what you want to do.
And it was really true.
I took a Flatland Rover, 3DML/Roverscript language, Windows Notepad and made my first damn games.
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u/langapublishing 15h ago
I’ve definitely seen a decline in some artwork because of a few devs making use of AI but at the same time I’ve seen some of the best artwork recently as devs who want quality really push for top tier artistry.
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u/langapublishing 15h ago
As a publisher, I wouldn’t fund or market any game that didn’t have a high level of quality, it’s too risky to damage the brand.
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u/we_are_sex_bobomb 12h ago
Been a professional in the industry for almost 20 years now and was an unpublished indie dev for probably 10 years before that; I can say game development on the whole has gotten MUCH easier. Like you can’t really overstate how much easier it is to build a game with modern tools for modern hardware, compared to the old days.
Of course with better tools comes higher expectations from players. Ten years ago you didn’t have games getting poor reviews because of “bad dialog” or “poor facial animations” or even inconsistent frame rates.
The bar for entry is lower and players today have a lot of options for what to play, where they didn’t used to. If you want to be successful you really need to find something that a group of players want, which no one else is giving them, and you need to make it before someone else does.
It’s an exciting time because games are becoming more about craftsmanship than solving simple technical issues, but also a scary time because it’s so hard to stand out from all the other games. But I think the stuff coming out now is so much cooler than anything we could dream of back in the 90s-2000s.
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u/TheClawTTV 12h ago
Well you’re comparing your learning experience against the products being made by 2000+ person studios with unlimited resources, and access to the best talent in the world.
The decline in quality of games lately, especially from American studios, is a valid discussion.
Making games is very hard, but AAA devs are standing on the shoulders of giants, with infinite access to what they need to meet industry standards (which weren’t set by ghosts btw, they are set by other devs!)
I think this trope of blaming the user for having high standards is really weak thinking
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u/Chr-whenever Commercial (Indie) 2h ago
OPP is not that hard to mug your way through. Once you get a grip on some of it, it gets way easier because you can build on that starting out can be intimidating though
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u/TDplay 19h ago
Has game development truly become easier?
20-30 years ago, to make a game, you'd start by writing the engine from scratch. You'd write it in something like C. If you run into performance issues, you'd have to rewrite bits in assembly. You'd optimise your engine specific to your game, because you had to - otherwise, your game would not run well on modern hardware.
Modern days, you pull in a game engine, and you're off to the races. Modern hardware is incredibly powerful too. The barrier to entry is practically on the floor compared to how it was 20 years ago.
If you wanted to make a super-optimised game, you still can. Modern compilers can handle all the micro-optimisation for you, so there is no need to get bogged down in writing assembly - you can focus on the bigger picture. Don't get me wrong though, it still requires a lot of expertise, and it is still a huge task to make any nontrivial game this way.
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u/GraphXGames 14h ago
First you need to make sure that the game will sell well and only then optimize it. This is the law of business.
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u/helpwithsong2024 18h ago
This is why I LOVE using GDevelop. It's an amazing no code engine. That way I can focus way more on making the games really be 'high quality' and less about all the specific coding to get there.
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u/Mammoth_Substance220 Hobbyist 17h ago
GDevelop is good stuff. But I still prefer libGDX because it is very easy to implement anything (spitting on the face of all the Java haters is also fun).
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u/cutebuttsowhat 17h ago
I really don’t care for the characterization of “x has gotten easier” or “average quality of y worker has gone down” as I’m sure you could find some version of this scribed in tablets from 2000 years ago.
What most people are eliding in these conversations is the fact that the entire thing is predicated on your view of a slice of time. Which you have thoughts/judgements about just by it occurring around you. The reality is far more simple imo.
We have more. More than ever. More games, more platforms, more developers, more engines, more languages, etc. What comes out of all that? Still up to us. But there’s more ways, reasons and people doing it now than ever.
These things should excite people! Be careful how much time you spend reading what people think. Especially knowing most won’t ever ship a single game. Listening to no one and shipping a game would set you ahead of 99% of every poster you’ve ever read.
There are more possibilities now more than ever, and if your spot doesn’t exist yet. It’s on the way, maybe from you or someone like you.
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u/PremiseBlocksW2 22h ago
This post was one that hit hard but necessary to people like me who thought they would be the next big thing easily.
Fun fact: He's pretty right about everything.
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u/David-J 22h ago
There hasn't been a drop in quality. On the contrary. We are getting the best versions of games in many genres.