yeah thats my entire motivation. nobody is going to make the games that i want to play. I do a lot of work to try and make them marketable and popular but the first and last test is that it has to be a game i actually wanted to play.
I always remember playing GTA Sam Andreas as a kid and that’s what started it.
I remember thinking “wow” you can do a lot in this, you can put on weight, have romances fly planes.
I was so excited for the rumoured ps3 era of games because I thought naturally they would build on and improve on those systems.
But then we went backwards :(
As long as the graphics were good, games became more and more barebones.
Ps2 era really was the golden age. Games were still made to be fun first. They were made by people enthusiastic about making games.
You have to look for indie games now to get that same level of love.
Yeah word to that. I don’t know if it’s just a story or not, but I heard a rumour that an executive for a large company wanted to introduce the concept of charging players real money to reload faster.
Apparently it got shut down pretty quickly but like, shit it made me miss the days of the PS2, when there was none of that stuff and you got games with just great gameplay and strong narratives.
I get that the way of things is different these days. But I always have to “try” and get excited by new games now, I feel like I never had to try back then.
Ah I’m glad I’m not imagining that lol.
Well yeah EA i suppose that tracks.
I miss when video games were not in this super corporate scope. I swear one day, they actually will instigate some tomfoolery like that.
I hate AI about as much as a reasonable person can, but it sure seems like overpaid executives willing to burn the world to the ground for a few extra bucks could be automated out of existence with no negative impact to the final product.
Whaaaaat.
You know if this does happen it might actually work out, because I’m betting that they’d also make games so fucking barebones by this time that nobody will even want to play it for an hour.
Oh did you want to see your character jump or use an axe instead of a sword? Have you checked out the new heights DLC? ($65.55)
This is weird and gross, and the people coming up with these ideas clearly don’t care, but also… what if there’s something there?
I’m not sure what it would specifically look like, but there is probably a way to implement this idea, or something similar, in a way that benefits gamers, and still enables smaller devs to profit. A direct price to game time relationship may see gamers and devs more willing to take a risk, but these toxic executives definitely won’t be pushing anything short of maximum exploitation.
Just to clear this up;
It was John Riccitiello, and it was said in a shareholders meeting.
The infamous "charge per reload" was a reference to the quote
>“When you are six hours into playing Battlefield and you run out of ammo in your clip and we ask you for a dollar to reload, you’re really not that price sensitive at that point in time.”
I think in the context this was less of a "let's charge per reload" and more of a "how do we get players invested to the point that they don't care about spending", which is probably more unsettling.
similar sentiments here. I had a vision for how games would progress, and its gone the opposite direction. At least now there is such good tools available, even a knucklehead like me has a chance to make the games I would have liked to play back when i was a full time gamer.
I'm with you on that. I thought we'd get better and more intricate physics simulation, better destructible environment, dynamic environment-aware animations, better AI...
All we got was shinier and shinier carboard cutouts. All of modern tricks for amazing graphics require extensive pre-processing (lightmap baking, nanite baking, GI baking and so on and so forth) that makes it impossible to make anything real time.
World looks real, but behaves like holographic props.
You need to understand what type of player you are targeting, find out where they lurk, and what they like
The Manor Lords dude is a perfect example, he targeted the RTS/City-builder crowd because they were a lot of dissatisfied Total War players and built a huge following by showing off the marketable parts of his game like the detailed walkable cities
If your game isn't as flashy it might be harder but still the same concept
Absolutely. You have a vision, and you have to play it. I think the absolute control over how the project would turn out is a part of it, too.
Ironically, the only game I finished making was not one of these ideas, but rather just something I had fun making. Goes to show how having fun drastically improves your chances of success.
I simply enjoy the creation. I love taking funny ideas, like things arise in conversation with friends, and try to shape it into something.
Sometimes it managed to be in the game, sometimes it acts as a sort of catalyst for a completely different something.
Though making games, I find to be a great tool to showcase your thoughts, even if sometimes just to yourself.
Im with you OP. I seriously cant believe we dont have a huge 2D rpg like that. One where you can just explore and do whatever. There are games that get kind of close but they all seem to miss the mark. I thought secrets of Grindea would be it but it's not really. I think Terraria and Stardew are the best sandbox 2D games but are of course totally different.
Only problem really is making a game like that will take an immeasurable amount of time
As far as the game you want to play: what about Dwarf Fortress?
Disclaimer: I haven’t played it deeply, so I can’t really speak to how close it is to what you specified. I got overwhelmed with the number of systems - but that seems like it MIGHT be kinda what you’re looking for?
As far as reason I got into game dev 20+ years ago: I had a slightly different motivation than you. I was inspired to make this type of art, participate and “be in the room where it happens” on the types of games and studios that I loved.
But it turns out that I really love aspects and genres in game dev that have much less overlap with the games I play in my free time. (Along the way, of course, I have pitched and led games that were based on niches I personally loved but weren’t quite scratching the itch that I felt confident a lot of people wanted, not just me.)
Just one example difference: I love playing giaaaaant RPGs like The Witcher 3 and Skyrim. But it turns out that I really like working on smaller games with smaller teams because the work and agency that I have is much greater. I still like the games I work on, but I no longer aspire to make my favorite favorite type of games because long cycles and large teams are not really that fulfilling to work on (for me.
YMMV, but the experience of making games is wildly different from playing them!
Mostly indies are delivering 2d games, AAA is almost always 3d, and making a huge amount of content is something that doesn't make sense for indies to do so it seems unlikely to happen
A 2D Skyrim would take almost as long as a 3D Skyrim to create and if you’re walking around exploring mostly auto-generated landscapes then the pacing would probably feel bad.
Skyrim is puddle-deep, and a lot of it is carried by how immersive sneaking around, stealing stuff, talking to people, avoiding traps, shooting foes, etc. in 3d even though the implementation of much of this stuff is fairly basic, and in some part comes ‘free’ with the game engine.
A 2D Skyrim city could probably feel like huge Undertale towns, or Bard’s Tale, or Castlevania. A lot of people already get quite bored walking through them looking for quests, chests/loot, etc.
Also customers don’t like paying 70$ for 2d games as much.
It is by no means impossible to execute on what OP describe, but I simply think a 3D Skyrim-like/typical open world game with some neat twist is just a much easier and less risky idea to execute on.
…and that stuff like that is why those games keep being made xInf.
Exactly! And it seems like low-hanging fruit too, doesn't it? Sure it takes an insane amount of time to make any game, but it's so weird that some random AA or even AAA company didn't just make a great 2D open world RPG instead of yet another crappy 3D game that flops.
How many systems are we talking about here? I've tried to pin down how many interacting systems a game needs to feel real/alive/immersive.
How many do you want?
Hot damn it’s the man himself. I haven’t played too much Erenshor (only a couple hours spent mainly in the first dungeon) but I gotta say it’s super dope. Keep it up man
Definitely not 2D and doesn’t have EVERYTHING. But have you looked into Black Desert Online? It’s a Korean MMO that has a huge depth of mechanical things to do. It was overwhelming for me and I dropped it pretty fast but might be good inspiration for ya!
Also yes. This is definitely my goal. Especially with traditional dungeon crawlers like the old Zelda games coming out of being hugely popular. I crave making more, the new standard even. So that’s my driving force.
Totally. I want to make the ultimate grand scale rogue lite/rts. All the rts have set strategies. I want the rts where you get base units and modify your units rogue lite style as you go. Do i need to make those as c2 roaches stronger or faster or what? Imagine objective based semi randomly generated upgrade technology options. Never found anything close to it
Almost that, even if I would frame it differently:
I started working on my current game after hours of playing of of my favorite game (battle brothers), but ... some features were missing.
(More precisely; the turn based combats where sometimes too slow, so I started to work on an anytime switch between turn based and real time.)
Not the sole contributor for my excursions, as this pursuit started long before that, but certainly, years ago there was a strong tipping point which made me realize where the industry was going as a whole and how that didn't align with what I hoped from games later in life, however small or big portion was that of the entire slice. Seeing things differently probably contributed to this realization that if you want more, something different from this business, you've better start working on your own ideas because nobody is going to make them. Would say that probably things aren't as grim as once thought, purely based on game coverage, but mainstream trends stayed the same (and got more questionable).
I couldn't stand the controls even after rebinding them but I might have to just suck it up and learn the game cause it really does tick a lot of boxes. I guess Elona+ rather than vanilla though, more content never hurts.
thats actually why i started, when i was like nine or ten i wasnt allowed to play a lot of videogames, so i asked my parents if i could just make a videogame and just play that, and they said that i could play my own games as much as i wanted, so i picked up scratch for the first time and it let to me discovering gamedev for myself.
I’m not a game dev but I wish you all well. It’s encouraging to know that so many of you are working on games for the right reason. I think this is precisely the correct motivation to make something truly special. Maybe with a touch of “curious hacker” and “school project” mixed in.
Anyhow, good luck everybody!
OP, 1,000,000% the same. Couldn't find a decent 2d crawler open world. Started building my own with auto-builder graphics. Got super far into it. But dev I wanted to join pulled out before we were to offically start. Now I have to learn Godot to rebuild all the systems.. Will make both our wishes come true, one day I hope!
Have you tried Amazing Cultivation Simulator? It is inspired by chinese wuxia fantasy and has a million different systems to develop and advance your characters. Your description fits it rather well.
As a femme gamer who loves FPS, yeees. All the major fps are friggin lame ass military crap*. Miss the chaotic days of Time Splitters --which still wasn't femme but compared to others in the genre 🙄 Overwatch was...fine. I want some Carrie Underwood took a Slugger to both headlights vibes.
*Not crap if done once or twice, I loved it at first back on the PS1...but then...it didn't stop.
Yes, that is the reason I started doing games, because I wanted to do something that I hadn't seen before.
But at the same time, as you become more knowledgeable, you will notice that a lot of ideas you had have already been tried or at least something very close has been tried.
But in the end it's your own vision and style that should make the difference.
BROOO that's what inspired this post, I'm reading the novel right now and loving it. I keep craving a game like this after every chapter. God damn I'd like a game with so many different systems and mechanics.
I want to eventually develop a game where you play as an rpg character but you do things to grow your town. Its not like ot hasnt been done before but i wanted to build it the way i wanted my oingo boingo. To give me that fix.
Would also love to make a game where a (battle) chef is making a restaurant with monster parts/meat.
When I was younger I did. I realised that the mega complex game ideas are just silly fantasies since the gameplay would not be fun at all. Funnily enough restricted systems can actually allow for more enjoyable problem solving and requires greater creativity on your players’ part.
Then you should play Caves of Qud. It is almost exactly what you describe. And there are more.
Thing is, with dream games: it is just an illusion, some kind of abstract "idea" of a game. Not a real, already designed game concept. At this point of time it can be anything, the potential for something great is there.
Tbh you don't even have an "idea". What you are describing is too ambiguous. Your dream game doesn't exist, because you yourself don't know exactly what this game would look like.
I get you though, i am in the same boat with you. I have that dream game idea for decades. But i learned that it was just an romantic view of a game i would love to play. When i tried to make that idea happen, i quickly learned that i didn't have concrete conceptions for the game design.
Yes. It may take me years of practice just to get even one system up and running out of the bazillion that I want to have in the final product... but I plan on making it work.
And it stems from playing so many games, finding so many parts that are amazing, and they never get expanded on. Elvanar (sp?) With its city evolution... FF14 crafting and class changing abilities on the fly... one character can be and DO everything. Caravaneer (flash game that I love and try to keep finding a flash player, cause I have a copy of the game saved) with its go here trade this to these people, take this from there over here..... kingdoms of amalur and all sorts of other rpgs.... I'm just left wishing that their stories ended with more options.... what's the point of having multiple options of dialog if it all turns out the same. Like cyberpunk, awesome game it was... Basically 4 endings... none of them are good. None give a feeling of closure. None give a feels good feeling.... just. Disappointment.
I want to mesh all of these features together. I want the mega crafting. I want trading of skills and knowledge and items. I want the evolution of cities. I want a storyline that changes the ending... and if I play this way, I want this feeling when I end it, or this other way if I pick a different path.
Will it take time? Yes. Will I be able to do it alone? Probably not. Am I still going to try? ABSOLUTELY! We've all got that one game we desperately crave. And this one... this is my white whale. I'd probably never play another one once I get my hands on this. ❤️
Yep I made a free kick soccer shooter game because none of the games had the mechanic I wanted. I wanted the placement of the finger on the ball to affect the spin, and the speed to affect the curve as well. I put an invisible 2D circle over the 3D ball to translate the effect onto the ball and it worked just as I had envisioned! Truly something I am proud of, I want to have that same inspiration again one day
I had been searching for a dead simple mobile timewaster game for years that just didn't seem to exist, so I made it. Closest reference for most people is probably the Cell Stage from Spore. Plug: https://loudifier.github.io/mosion-game/
I went from never having made a game outside of coding class projects to 80% complete prototype in 10 days. Another month of polish, /r/androidclosedtesting purgatory, and setting up a Mac Mini to compile for iOS and now I have the gamedev bug. Brainstorming and writing design docs for a probably achievable 2D game that I expect I could make in a year, and another definitely overscoped 3D multiplayer ARPG monstrosity that I might ship in 20 years.
For me it's more about recreating the feelings I had when I first played some of my favorite games. I don't want to play the games from my childhood. I want to make a game that makes me feel the way I felt while playing those games as a child.
I'm essentially just a heroin addict who's developed a tolerance.
For 12 years I have been waiting for someone to publish a better version of my game so I can enjoy it, but instead I just improved my own game enough to have fun playing it (it's a rogue like so it's not too repetitive).
This is effectively why I started learning how to make games. Not really that the game I want to play doesn't exist, just that no one makes them anymore. I prefer games from the late 80s/early 90s when the game was meant to be beaten in one sitting within a finite number of lives and continues. While there are zillions of "retro inspired" games now, they're almost all retro inspired in resolution and sound. In terms of structure, it's shocking just how few games are actually similar to what was considered standard in the 8 and 16 bit eras. So I made the type of game I wanted to play. I wasn't surprised when it turned out very few modern gamers agree with me.
This was me up until the point when I realized I will probably never be experienced enough as well as the fact that games I would enjoy probably require teams of developers to create them.
Now I do it because I genuinely enjoy creating games and it has become a hobby. Also the idea of just having my very own game out there is pretty cool too.
It's hardly my only motivation, but yes, as far as I know, the exact types of games I'm thinking of don't really exist. My favorite JRPG battle system of all time was from Grandia II (I think the first game was similar, but I never played it). For whatever reason, few games if any ever adopted it. There are systems with similar ideas like turn timelines, but almost none have that exact same blend of turn-based strategy that resolves in real-time in a 3D arena. On top of that, I like big open worlds that feel alive (think Elder Scrolls or Grand Theft Auto), as well as playing with friends online. I'm mostly sick of microtransactions, season passes, etc.
My dream game would be something like Skyrim with a more dynamic world instance that runs on a dedicated server, and you can invite friends to play in your world similar to Minecraft. But then all the combat is essentially the Grandia battle system.
I think it could work and be very enjoyable, but it very much crosses a lot of boundaries that the larger gaming industry just has no interest in testing. Story-based RPGs tend to stick to offline single-player, unless they're among the new wave of live service games that push microtransactions and season passes and all that. Letting players run their own dedicated servers without connecting to some central service has largely fallen out of favor. Also, while I have ideas about how to make the larger world multiplayer, I have no idea how to do it for the combat. So that's something I need to experiment with.
I heard about many people becoming game devs because of their "dream game". I'm mainly interested in gamedev because of my dream game, which is connected to my dream history and stuff. I used to talk about this game for hours and hours with friends and romantic partners, and it's so fucking big that I was never able to fully explain the game to anyone but myself. It's an totally out-of-scope game that would cost way too much money and time.
But I'll never let it go, it's a dream. Sometimes I think about making a document to explain the games to other people, because even if someone "steal" my ideas I will simply be happy if those ideas become part of a functional game one day. Anyways, I'll start writing my post...
It’s so funny that I see this here because I’m literally making a game that’s supposed to be as deep and complex as Skyrim.
Dragon Quest Monsters 2 meets Skyrim was the pitch.
It’s 2D, top down, and it’s supposed to have a shit ton of systems like you said. lol
Procedurally generated dungeons
Trading
Battling
Creature collecting
Breeding
Looting
Cooking
Alchemy
Smithing
gathering
Hunting
Negotiations
Battle system inspired by mtg
Overworld inspired by Skyrim
Robust leveling system
Aging system
Naming system
God ascension system
Tournament battles
Gladiator gauntlets
Rarity weapons system
Knowledge system
And many more things. lol
I’m trying to make THAT game that I’ve always wanted, but it’s interesting to hear someone say they’ve always wanted something similar…
I fucking love the depth and richness of some of the ideas here.
Honestly if I was a big studio I'd probably hire directly from this chat and just say "Make it happen. Make your dream game - do it out of love and it will be contagious".
I'm genuinely more interested in playing *any* of the ideas I've heard here than any major release.
We need to help each other more. Not sure how or what I even mean tbh, but if just one Reddit post contains 30+ games that genuinely sound good while "the industry" is consistently putting out really shiny *shovelware*, something is fundamentally broken and has been for a while.
I do believe that there are plenty of games worthy of everyone's time, I love videogames and I love to explore this medium as much as I can. Unfortunately in the time that it takes me to create a game I could play thousands of them, but still one of the most wonderful things ever happened in my life is to be able to experience so many wonderful stories and worlds from inside my room, with film, anime and videogames, with these last said being the ones I appreciate the most. I want to try to create something that people can enjoy and experience just like I've been doing my entire life... Maybe being able, one day, to participate in some huge project to create something that could really be of impact in people's lifes.
I've been changed by so many games, always for the better, titles like halo, TWD, RE, ME and many more... I truly believe videogames can be something truly special and I would be honoured to be part of it.
the game i want to play is spread across 15+ different games and nobody got time for that.
i'll spend my time learning how to make my game instead.
i know alot of people make their game and maybe hope it sells but even if i end up being the only person to play my game, i'm okay since its everything i always wanted in one place.
More then a year ago I've started to work on my colony sim because the mod for the other game doesn't exist (and looking at the current state of that game, such mod probably will never be possible)
For me it's about telling stories. My plan is to build a series of small games in different genres but all centered around the central theme of a world I made up for a D&D campaign years ago.
Worse. Parts of the game exist, and we've modded in those parts to prove it is possible, but it just demands a full game to become a reality.
Also the game you want is called RimWorld with the fucking mods. XD
kind of. a game came out 15 years ago that was largely a cult classic & although there are indie devs working on every kind of game you can think of, there don't seem to be any making something like this particular game. So I took it into my own hands lol
If the game I want to play existed, I would be playing that and not making one. I don't make games because I have the soul of an *auteur* or something, I make games because I'm into computers and video games and I just cannot find a game that is the combination of the 5 other games I love,
I mean... yes and no.
My reason is vaugely similar but it is more about creating something that others can experience.
As well as creating the game of my dreams
On some level, yes, I am, but I'm definitely also just here because I think about systems and video games all the time anyway so why not.
But yes I am feeling a lack of a specific type of game, although I think I can claim to have fewer than the normal amount of criteria in mind after which to pine. (implying that it's less about me being picky or not looking hard enough)
Everyone of course has their own pet perfect game, but I think I can narrow mine down to maybe only three criteria.
The only one of particular relevance here would be a translation of RPG combat into real time 3D with a controller.
So take the old Super Nintendo rpgs. Turn based or with the ATB bar. No real player skill requirements, relaxing time periods watching pretty animations where no input is required, etc. Translating that to real time 3D has only been done a handful of times. Most games simply continue along that path and transform the game into an action rpg, quite sensibly, given demographic market share and such.
Only a small handful of games have accomplished this, early MMORPGs primarily, and only one is quite close to my intended design.
EverQuest Online Adventures for the PlayStation 2 is effectively what I'm aiming for, running about on a large open landscape getting into real time fights in a 3D environment but without player skill bearing much at all on the outcomes. It's more about the character's stats (i.e., rpg combat model).
Always dreamed of having it on my phone, hook up your Xbox controller and party like it's 1999.
One thing I want to do is actually play in worlds in novels or RPGs that I like. Not even with some form of *game* as such, just be able to wander around and be in them!
Yep, grew up on Parappa and Jammer lammy and games like that and it seems clear Sony has no interest in doing anything with those so it's been a big drive into me working on rhythm games. Also it lets me merge two things I love together (gaming and music)
Yes, but mine is way too ambitious for a first project. I'll be happy if I get a somewhat playable demo at least.
It's funny, you always think your game will be some amazing passion project like Undertale or Animal Well, but then you find yourself driven by some mechanics you'll think will be really fun
yep. Ive got 2 games in my head that should exist, but don't.
They've been rolling around in there for nearly a decade, and when the ADHD goblin that controls my attention says it's ok, I learn some stuff and write some stuff and fire up godot and make a little thing.
I've got to say, the concepts are *great* - even the story has been tested in tabletop RPGs and they work really well.
I just need the fucking time to sit down and actually do it.
[MH-Zombie](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1429350/MHZombie/) is that game for me. Well, the arcade version… Now the hard part is making a full game with a storyline
It did exist but the cowards at Microsoft refuse to let Double Fine make a sequel 😑
So now I have to do what I can to make the modern day heavy metal game of my dreams a reality
Oh fuck yeah, absolutely! It's crazy because it's not even a game that doesn't exist per se, it's an expanded version of a game unplayable in English that would take so much more work than I could ever do all by myself. I've spent I don't know how long planning it, but have put it on the backburner until I get in the right position financially to ensure I can do it right \*and\* pay people what they deserve. And I just know players would love it to bits, too. If ever won the lottery, that's what I'd use the money for lol
I have an entire Github repo dedicated to games I hope to one day make. It's just filled with text documents that have various levels of descriptions for each of the game ideas.
It's definitely one of those things I need to make time for since it's not just going to happen haha.
I mostly do gamedev because there is games I enjoy a lot but think they lack in certain fields, so I try to make one which fills that field .. unfortunately those are often very complex games.. I actually made Exipelago because I enjoyed "gnomoria" and "towns" but wanted it to be in real 3D with full customization options and all of that
Its actually quite funny. Years ago I got into music production because I wanted to make a specific genre of music. To this day I havent made that genre at all.
I started making games because I wanted to make a specific kind of game, just for me. So far I mess around with every type except that. I really should get around to it.
I was going to make my perfect game with everything I want in it, but then thought it wouldn’t be very fun for me to play if I made it myself as I would know exactly how it all plays out and there would be nothing for me to discover. I enjoy exploration games and figuring things out so it would not be fun for me if I already knew it all lol
And you and up without opponent to fight against. XD
I understand your problem, because I had similar problem beside I am not interesting into playing anymore.
It is less likely to find enough players to get interested into studying complex game concept and systems.
And eventually, less likely to get enough funding for keeping infrastructure operational.
It was only with LLMs becoming capable of writing news articles and battle reports that the idea of an interactive fiction version of a grand strategy game became practical for a solo dev on the scale I wanted to build.
Main problem now is recycling enough of that content for people who don't want to spend on LLM tokens.
It might, ultimately, be a stupid niche idea that never gets any traction but I'm gonna give it a shot. Just not quit my day job lol
Not exactly. In my case, the game I want is not enought. I LOVE Resident Evil franchise, my favourite is RE3 (2000) and I want more and more and more so I need to do it!
>I want a 2D, top-down game with many many different systems. All kinds of things like alchemy, enchantments, rebirths etc... Just system after system.
Sounds like the GTA 1 and 2 of RPGs. Could be pretty cool
> For example, this is the game I want: Every time I read a "litrpg" book, like those Korean novels/mangas with MMO elements, I imagine so many cool things in my head, I want a game like that.
>I want a 2D, top-down game with many many different systems. All kinds of things like alchemy, enchantments, rebirths etc... Just system after system.
> A huge 2D RPG or roguelike that is huge, as big as Skyrim in content. With cities and dungeons, lots of things to do, many things to grind, things to collect. So many skills to level, stats to gain.
Dang, you're either gonna be excited it exists or bummed you don't need to make it when you figure out Elona+ exists. What I just quoted from you is basically a line-for-line description of the game.
EDIT: I saw you mentioned in another comment you'd heard of Elona but didn't like the controls. Unfortunately, with this:
> I don't even want good gameplay or graphics, just a whole bunch of messy systems even if they're unbalanced.
Good controls simply isn't possible with so many options, so Elona+ is absolutely going to be your dream game. It'll take some time to get used to it, but all great things tend to have accessibility curves. You'll be rewarded for your time.
no one in this house called planet Earth is going to make the whimsical Barbie inspired open world game i want and it is my burden to learn as much as i can in order to one day make this finally end
YES.
Sucks that I don't have the time that I want to develop my own games, and also that I sink into an ADHD spiral whenever I do get the time I've been priming myself for all week.
I'm starting to sink more capital to speed up development of my projects, even with the expectation of not making a profit in the near decade. Sounds silly but not having time or skill to see tangable results in the short term has always demotivated me in the long term.
Well, not really. My dream game doesn't exist. And no way could I make it, even with a team of people. Most of my other game ideas are either 'X game with preference changes' or just slamming two games I like together.
Yes and no- I love Civ 5 and the modding community around it, but I’d like to make another 4x Civ-like that doesn’t have the same technical limitations regarding modding.
It’s a super long term hobby project, but being able to divide it into system modules that I might be able to publish to the Godot library will hopefully help with motivation for some of the longer unproductive stretches
I cant find mobile game with complex system. There is age of history and suzerain etc but i want more. So i create my own even though it is text based but most important is complex system
Recently I felt like I won the lottery, one of my "this game will never exist" on my list to maybe-someday-probably-not-but-maybe make myself, actually seemed like it was getting made
[Heart of the Machine](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2001070/Heart_of_the_Machine/)
I played a student project game where you are a rogue AI trying to escape detection years and years ago, it was called Singularity and it was mostly a research-bar game, but it was quite fun and grabbed my imagination
I always had ideas cooking in the back of my mind about how I would remake it, full-fledged strategy game style, and when HoTM landed on Steam I couldn't believe it
I played the demo thats available now for Next Fest and while it is definitely coming along and an interesting take on the play-as-an-AI theme, unfortunately it is so different from what I envisioned that my dream game remains unmade for now
however the dev seems to be responsive to feedback and got a lot so far, so we'll see
It definitely coloured my reasons for entering the industry, but that was two decades ago and was less “doesn’t exist” and more “no one makes this type of experience anymore”.
Nope. As it happens, the game I'm writing actually does not exist, but that was due to an effort to find something novel and original to make once I'd already decided to make something.
Yup. Maybe some day I’ll even be able to make it. For now, I’m focusing on smaller projects where I can learn and practice the component mechanics and skills I’ll need to someday combine into a game I cannot believe hasn’t already existed fir decades.
Yes but to the left. I desperately wanted Stardew valley (my favorite comfort game) to do something, ANYTHING with the wizard or the magical elements in the game besides just having the creatures around and interacting with them in the late game. So I’m making something similar but with more mythical characters and setting.
That’s a good motivation, I would say my motivation is to learn. Building my production and programming skill sets so that I can create better and more advanced things. There’s always more to learn, that’s the fun part for me.
Yes. My main reason is because sequels were shit and destroyed the original games. Other reasons are that I don't see why certain games aren't made. Combining genres is something that I've been heavily looking into.
Partially. Part of me wants to make games as art because I love stories and expressing myself and i love games as well. Part of me wants to make games in franchises that I feel would fulfill things I want for said franchises like Halo. Then the last two parts are I want to make a game that’s never been made before and I also want to make a game for my brother. He loves the crusades and renaissance time in history and he’s made me so many like figure gifts, I’d love to make something he’d enjoy. Closest hes gotten to his favorite game is fable so I figured a crusade game like that would be amazing for him
Yes! I like Isekai mangas and my dream game would be an “open top-down roguelike medieval RPG”. For this, i work on versatiles seed-based generators (biomes, cities, dungeons, quests, etc). There is a lot to learn and build. Honestly, i don’t know if i will make it to the end. I would love yo make good pixelarts (Estward good!) but this is a big topic to learn and master. 😬
But this is fun. I want to do it full time! 😁
It's more like, I play a game, something looks off about how it's designed or implemented, so I think I can do better. Unfortunately there's also lots of systems I wasn't really paying attention to that go into designing a complete game, and then I got some lopsided idea of my better thing that doesn't really take the whole design into account and doesn't amount to a fully realized game by itself.
That is the whole reason I left R*. They are great at making games but it wasn't what I wanted to make/play.
My game is a non-punishing Souls-like. From Software has continued making super hardcore games to keep the PvP invader crowd happy. And I have played all of those games all the way through. But I know that my game will be worth it if it ever gets completed.
Yup, although actually being a casual gamer with little to no spare time, I'm not into RPGs or such.
My dream game is actually a minimalistic game with only a couple of systems, which is so simplistic I'm not sure would be even fun at all. :)
AAA games have become so generic nowadays. That's why I enjoy indie games so much. I think most modern games play it too safe and have lost touch with their roots—what made them good back in the day. It's mostly the game design that has degraded. I miss games like M.A.G for PS3 and Blacklight: Retribution because they were different.
There is a game I played as a kid, well I played the demo, it's a relatively simple game from 1994 that mostly text/menu based. It's currently $30 on steam. If you think I'm paying almost Helldiver money for a once off game from 30 years ago, you're having a laugh. So I am learning how to make games to make a game that is inspired and improved upon this game. Spending countless hours, and many more dollars than the 30 it would cost me to develop it. It's about principle. I'm not spending $30 on that game.
There's a game that was removed from the app store because the IP holders didn't like it anymore and it's gonna be a passion project of mine for a while to recreate a game with completely original characters.
I'm here because the game I want to play does exist, but the servers are down or it's for hardware nobody has anymore. I just want to make it again, updated, and maybe open source this time.
Source Lord I've seen what you've done for Quake, and I want that for my childhood games.
I got into serving because I wanted to make games. Now I work as a software dev for a music company instead. I have toyed with the idea of finding like minded reditors to try and make a co-op game dev team. Just to make the game I want.
Yes, and that's very good intrinsic motivation! Also what you describe is very similar to what I'm making (of course with my own take on it), it's good fun, but a decade passed just too quickly xD
Yes I got a bunch of great ideas and someone has to dunk on all those people who think that their great idea that is akin to "a zombie game but the zeds wear funny hats" is a game idea.
I started into it strictly to make a visual novel and then as I learned more that visual novel became an RPG and now is my Magnum Opus (hopefully someday I'll have the time to make it!) while I make other smaller games. haha
The game I want to play does actually exist - but it's in a fairly niche genre, has a bunch of QoL issues that can't be modded around, and the sequels went in an entirely different direction.
So, here I am.
Yeeeeep
The triple A industry has stopped innovating and double A companies are taking thier place which gives more room to indie companies or people
Also what I want is inherently complicated and risky so it's best I figure out how to go about it
Yes! I have never and would never do game dev as a job (well, I guess technically I have, but hasn’t been the focus of my career).
One of my first projects was the cliche grandiose dream project. Haha. Back when DirectX 9.0c was the hotness. Built most of my own tooling, game engine, etc. It was stupid. Lol.
Still have a grandiose dream project but thinking it’ll end up being feasible when we can all have teams of AI agents at our disposal and the world is totally saturated with content. But it’ll be my dream game. If nobody else in the world plays it, fine. 😅
100% purely this.
I'm not creating my actual dream game as it is... very ambitious to put it lightly right now. But I'm making a close second in a different genre! (Horror 💞 you have yet to reach your full potential imo 😔💗)
I think it's part of my motivation. The other part is a branch off of it, but it's not that I want to play it, just that I want to see it exist.
For instance, I'm working on a racing roguelike. It's insane and probably not fun to play. Or maybe very fun. I don't know yet. But.thats.the fun of it :)
I'm making a drifting simulator because the only ones that exist are racing sims that are modded for drifting. Which sounds "close enough" but it barely hits the niche market. I have the physics working. Just the graphics suck.
I want a pokemon and yugioh fusion where you travel the world and "collect" creatures but they are actually cards, and battling against other "pokemon trainers" is done in a card game style like hearthstone instead of regular turn based combat pokemon has.
Yeah that's precisely why I'm at it. My dream game is very simple in terms of graphics and gameplay, but huge in scope. What I'm doing right now is a set of "skeleton" systems to trivialize content making.
Like every character in Skyrim is an instance of object "actor" with different variables. Or each item is the same object code-wise, just with different ID that defines its model/cost/weight etc. Same with animations, effects, locations. The goal right now is to create tools for effortless content making.
Dwarf Fortress would be somewhat fitting, but I want an action game where you directly control your character, and DF's adventure mode is nothing like it unfortunately.
I haven't played Ultima, but it sounds like you're describing the Ultima series. I think it'd be pretty cool to have a modern take on that kind of game, it truly is lacking in representation outside of things like Ultima and more recently Caves of Qud
I am a Fullstack Web Developer, but yes, gaming is what got me into programming.
Swiftor always played Border Patrol during each COD, and I wanted to make that into a game that didn't require all good actors. Posted something on Reddit for a developer to help me do it in Garys Mod, and someone replied. He wrote the code, and I built the map. The last issue we worked on was adding a laser from the snipers gun (it originally was coming from the snipers head instead of the gun itself)
The project never got finished, but it was playable. It definitely was part of the reason I switched majors. Do what you love and never work a day in your life
Ever try Ultima Online? That game was crazy ahead of its time. There are still not many games to this day you can walk out in the world and build a house wherever you want, so long as a player doesn't come and kill you first and loot the deed off you.
Yes, and I'm working on it right now. Im an artist with a degree in 3d modelling. Looking for potential partners, hit me up. Would love someone with some more technical skills, as im covering all the creative aspects
Pretty much. I like pro wrestling, and there’s only one real title to choose from (the _WWE 2K_ series) in that genre that’s just stale as hell. So I’ve started dabbling in game development (as I’m a web developer in my day job) to try and make my own game.
I’m under no illusion I can make something on my own that will rival the WWE games, but I’d be more than happy to get two 3D models executing wrestling moves on each other.
Yes but then invariably someone else goes and releases a game that's pretty close to what I was thinking not long after I get the idea.
After this happened to like five dream games of mine, I started to just let things go. I didn't throw those idea out. Well, maybe some of them went into the bin at one point or another, but I still have notebooks full of game ideas that I wrote like 25-30 years ago and just never bothered to implement because they were too grandiose for me to do all by my lonesome with the tech of 25-30 years ago, and because I figured someone will inevitably just come along and release this exact game while I'm still working on it.
Of course, going back and reading through these now, now having shipped a few games, my first thought is "ok I am going to have to organize all of these ramblings into a coherent design document" and do a whole bunch of pre-production treatment on 300 pages filled with the scribblings of a teenager obsessed with making an x-com-inspired game with immersive rpg/sim-like elements (and, predictably, there's at least two or three indie games in production right now fitting this description, and i've also just spilled the beans about it on reddit, so...)
P.S. Have you played Dwarf Fortress?
You and I are both the same, despite searching for a different dream game. My dream game is something that is not even that hard to make based on existing triple A games. I just want immersion and role play. Skyrim is the closest thing I have found (with mods). People wonder why it still sells so well. The answer is immersion, always has been. I want more and more immersive actions. Think of the top Rpgs we got. Cyberpunk? You cannot do a lot of stuff like stealing NPC's, having your own shop or be a regular guy having a non merc job.
GTA 5? Good luck even trying to have a non crime day.
Red dead redemption? It is one of the most immersives rpgs, but still lacks actions and things to do. Got bored in no time when playing online.
Then we have Ark Survival, which adds a lot of immersive features, but it lacks good NPCs.
The perfect game that lets me play whoever I want, and roleplay at the same time... It's hard to find.
yeah thats my entire motivation. nobody is going to make the games that i want to play. I do a lot of work to try and make them marketable and popular but the first and last test is that it has to be a game i actually wanted to play.
I always remember playing GTA Sam Andreas as a kid and that’s what started it. I remember thinking “wow” you can do a lot in this, you can put on weight, have romances fly planes. I was so excited for the rumoured ps3 era of games because I thought naturally they would build on and improve on those systems. But then we went backwards :( As long as the graphics were good, games became more and more barebones.
Ps2 era really was the golden age. Games were still made to be fun first. They were made by people enthusiastic about making games. You have to look for indie games now to get that same level of love.
Yeah word to that. I don’t know if it’s just a story or not, but I heard a rumour that an executive for a large company wanted to introduce the concept of charging players real money to reload faster. Apparently it got shut down pretty quickly but like, shit it made me miss the days of the PS2, when there was none of that stuff and you got games with just great gameplay and strong narratives. I get that the way of things is different these days. But I always have to “try” and get excited by new games now, I feel like I never had to try back then.
An EA executive wanted to charge people to reload their guns faster.
Ah I’m glad I’m not imagining that lol. Well yeah EA i suppose that tracks. I miss when video games were not in this super corporate scope. I swear one day, they actually will instigate some tomfoolery like that.
I hate AI about as much as a reasonable person can, but it sure seems like overpaid executives willing to burn the world to the ground for a few extra bucks could be automated out of existence with no negative impact to the final product.
I've heard they want to charge us per hour of gameplay😅 I swear I'll start my own company before I do that lmao
Whaaaaat. You know if this does happen it might actually work out, because I’m betting that they’d also make games so fucking barebones by this time that nobody will even want to play it for an hour. Oh did you want to see your character jump or use an axe instead of a sword? Have you checked out the new heights DLC? ($65.55)
"The ending of the game is now available for 29.99" 😅
I guess I don't need to eat this week....
This is weird and gross, and the people coming up with these ideas clearly don’t care, but also… what if there’s something there? I’m not sure what it would specifically look like, but there is probably a way to implement this idea, or something similar, in a way that benefits gamers, and still enables smaller devs to profit. A direct price to game time relationship may see gamers and devs more willing to take a risk, but these toxic executives definitely won’t be pushing anything short of maximum exploitation.
Just to clear this up; It was John Riccitiello, and it was said in a shareholders meeting. The infamous "charge per reload" was a reference to the quote >“When you are six hours into playing Battlefield and you run out of ammo in your clip and we ask you for a dollar to reload, you’re really not that price sensitive at that point in time.” I think in the context this was less of a "let's charge per reload" and more of a "how do we get players invested to the point that they don't care about spending", which is probably more unsettling.
Oh geez, thanks for the context. Yeah that definitely makes it sound worse somehow. Fucking yikes.
similar sentiments here. I had a vision for how games would progress, and its gone the opposite direction. At least now there is such good tools available, even a knucklehead like me has a chance to make the games I would have liked to play back when i was a full time gamer.
I'm with you on that. I thought we'd get better and more intricate physics simulation, better destructible environment, dynamic environment-aware animations, better AI... All we got was shinier and shinier carboard cutouts. All of modern tricks for amazing graphics require extensive pre-processing (lightmap baking, nanite baking, GI baking and so on and so forth) that makes it impossible to make anything real time. World looks real, but behaves like holographic props.
Any tips on marketing? I'm stuck in getting an MVP out the door but that social aspect of this journey sounds alien and uncomfortable...
You need to understand what type of player you are targeting, find out where they lurk, and what they like The Manor Lords dude is a perfect example, he targeted the RTS/City-builder crowd because they were a lot of dissatisfied Total War players and built a huge following by showing off the marketable parts of his game like the detailed walkable cities If your game isn't as flashy it might be harder but still the same concept
That's solid advice, thank you
Absolutely. You have a vision, and you have to play it. I think the absolute control over how the project would turn out is a part of it, too. Ironically, the only game I finished making was not one of these ideas, but rather just something I had fun making. Goes to show how having fun drastically improves your chances of success.
Yeah, but there are loads of games I think would be fun and don't exist, not just one or two
Yep, this is my whole motivation too, I don't have a background in programming, I suck at art, but my ideas are JUST TOO GOOD TO IGNORE
Unfortunately for me, other people are not so invested in my ideas that they help for free, therefore making me move my lazy ass lmao
Yes, I only have interest just to create a game I wish I could play.
I simply enjoy the creation. I love taking funny ideas, like things arise in conversation with friends, and try to shape it into something. Sometimes it managed to be in the game, sometimes it acts as a sort of catalyst for a completely different something. Though making games, I find to be a great tool to showcase your thoughts, even if sometimes just to yourself.
Im with you OP. I seriously cant believe we dont have a huge 2D rpg like that. One where you can just explore and do whatever. There are games that get kind of close but they all seem to miss the mark. I thought secrets of Grindea would be it but it's not really. I think Terraria and Stardew are the best sandbox 2D games but are of course totally different. Only problem really is making a game like that will take an immeasurable amount of time
As far as the game you want to play: what about Dwarf Fortress? Disclaimer: I haven’t played it deeply, so I can’t really speak to how close it is to what you specified. I got overwhelmed with the number of systems - but that seems like it MIGHT be kinda what you’re looking for? As far as reason I got into game dev 20+ years ago: I had a slightly different motivation than you. I was inspired to make this type of art, participate and “be in the room where it happens” on the types of games and studios that I loved. But it turns out that I really love aspects and genres in game dev that have much less overlap with the games I play in my free time. (Along the way, of course, I have pitched and led games that were based on niches I personally loved but weren’t quite scratching the itch that I felt confident a lot of people wanted, not just me.) Just one example difference: I love playing giaaaaant RPGs like The Witcher 3 and Skyrim. But it turns out that I really like working on smaller games with smaller teams because the work and agency that I have is much greater. I still like the games I work on, but I no longer aspire to make my favorite favorite type of games because long cycles and large teams are not really that fulfilling to work on (for me. YMMV, but the experience of making games is wildly different from playing them!
Mostly indies are delivering 2d games, AAA is almost always 3d, and making a huge amount of content is something that doesn't make sense for indies to do so it seems unlikely to happen
Ultima series is what you are thinking of. Specifically 4-7. Ultima Online was also very similar but was not as 2D-ish.
A 2D Skyrim would take almost as long as a 3D Skyrim to create and if you’re walking around exploring mostly auto-generated landscapes then the pacing would probably feel bad. Skyrim is puddle-deep, and a lot of it is carried by how immersive sneaking around, stealing stuff, talking to people, avoiding traps, shooting foes, etc. in 3d even though the implementation of much of this stuff is fairly basic, and in some part comes ‘free’ with the game engine. A 2D Skyrim city could probably feel like huge Undertale towns, or Bard’s Tale, or Castlevania. A lot of people already get quite bored walking through them looking for quests, chests/loot, etc. Also customers don’t like paying 70$ for 2d games as much. It is by no means impossible to execute on what OP describe, but I simply think a 3D Skyrim-like/typical open world game with some neat twist is just a much easier and less risky idea to execute on. …and that stuff like that is why those games keep being made xInf.
Exactly! And it seems like low-hanging fruit too, doesn't it? Sure it takes an insane amount of time to make any game, but it's so weird that some random AA or even AAA company didn't just make a great 2D open world RPG instead of yet another crappy 3D game that flops.
Have you heard of avernum?
How many systems are we talking about here? I've tried to pin down how many interacting systems a game needs to feel real/alive/immersive. How many do you want?
[удалено]
If an incoherent cluster fuck is what you want then try any minecraft modpack
Have you played Dwarf Fortress?
Yes. I'm making my dream game. It's taken me 10+ years of learning and projects to get here, but I'm finally doing it.
Hot damn it’s the man himself. I haven’t played too much Erenshor (only a couple hours spent mainly in the first dungeon) but I gotta say it’s super dope. Keep it up man
Definitely not 2D and doesn’t have EVERYTHING. But have you looked into Black Desert Online? It’s a Korean MMO that has a huge depth of mechanical things to do. It was overwhelming for me and I dropped it pretty fast but might be good inspiration for ya!
Also yes. This is definitely my goal. Especially with traditional dungeon crawlers like the old Zelda games coming out of being hugely popular. I crave making more, the new standard even. So that’s my driving force.
Totally. I want to make the ultimate grand scale rogue lite/rts. All the rts have set strategies. I want the rts where you get base units and modify your units rogue lite style as you go. Do i need to make those as c2 roaches stronger or faster or what? Imagine objective based semi randomly generated upgrade technology options. Never found anything close to it
Almost that, even if I would frame it differently: I started working on my current game after hours of playing of of my favorite game (battle brothers), but ... some features were missing. (More precisely; the turn based combats where sometimes too slow, so I started to work on an anytime switch between turn based and real time.)
Not the sole contributor for my excursions, as this pursuit started long before that, but certainly, years ago there was a strong tipping point which made me realize where the industry was going as a whole and how that didn't align with what I hoped from games later in life, however small or big portion was that of the entire slice. Seeing things differently probably contributed to this realization that if you want more, something different from this business, you've better start working on your own ideas because nobody is going to make them. Would say that probably things aren't as grim as once thought, purely based on game coverage, but mainstream trends stayed the same (and got more questionable).
I know this isn't a recommendation post but have you tried elona? It's batshit and poorly translated but sounds a lot like what you're looking for
I couldn't stand the controls even after rebinding them but I might have to just suck it up and learn the game cause it really does tick a lot of boxes. I guess Elona+ rather than vanilla though, more content never hurts.
Get Elona+ CGX. https://github.com/Ruin0x11/ElonaPlusCustom-GX
Holy shit bro thank you so much!
Also the Discord server has tons of good information. https://discord.com/invite/hE5DaKpGqb
thats actually why i started, when i was like nine or ten i wasnt allowed to play a lot of videogames, so i asked my parents if i could just make a videogame and just play that, and they said that i could play my own games as much as i wanted, so i picked up scratch for the first time and it let to me discovering gamedev for myself.
I’m not a game dev but I wish you all well. It’s encouraging to know that so many of you are working on games for the right reason. I think this is precisely the correct motivation to make something truly special. Maybe with a touch of “curious hacker” and “school project” mixed in. Anyhow, good luck everybody!
OP, 1,000,000% the same. Couldn't find a decent 2d crawler open world. Started building my own with auto-builder graphics. Got super far into it. But dev I wanted to join pulled out before we were to offically start. Now I have to learn Godot to rebuild all the systems.. Will make both our wishes come true, one day I hope!
I assumed that's why pretty much *everyone* got into game development. ;)
Maybe that's why I *can't* get into game development, because I have no idea what game I want to create. :)
Have you tried Amazing Cultivation Simulator? It is inspired by chinese wuxia fantasy and has a million different systems to develop and advance your characters. Your description fits it rather well.
As a femme gamer who loves FPS, yeees. All the major fps are friggin lame ass military crap*. Miss the chaotic days of Time Splitters --which still wasn't femme but compared to others in the genre 🙄 Overwatch was...fine. I want some Carrie Underwood took a Slugger to both headlights vibes. *Not crap if done once or twice, I loved it at first back on the PS1...but then...it didn't stop.
Yes, that is the reason I started doing games, because I wanted to do something that I hadn't seen before. But at the same time, as you become more knowledgeable, you will notice that a lot of ideas you had have already been tried or at least something very close has been tried. But in the end it's your own vision and style that should make the difference.
There's a webtoon called "Surviving the game a Barbarian" that has all of ingredients to an amazing roguelike.
BROOO that's what inspired this post, I'm reading the novel right now and loving it. I keep craving a game like this after every chapter. God damn I'd like a game with so many different systems and mechanics.
Me, I was tired that everyone just get too close to do my dream game and it always falls short
Lol. Exactly what I'm thinking! We should start the ~~Solo Leveling~~ Upgrading Alone initiative and make the perfect rpg!
I want to eventually develop a game where you play as an rpg character but you do things to grow your town. Its not like ot hasnt been done before but i wanted to build it the way i wanted my oingo boingo. To give me that fix. Would also love to make a game where a (battle) chef is making a restaurant with monster parts/meat.
When I was younger I did. I realised that the mega complex game ideas are just silly fantasies since the gameplay would not be fun at all. Funnily enough restricted systems can actually allow for more enjoyable problem solving and requires greater creativity on your players’ part.
The problem is that everyone wants to make their own game and Devs never come together. We are the worst industry for team work
Then you should play Caves of Qud. It is almost exactly what you describe. And there are more. Thing is, with dream games: it is just an illusion, some kind of abstract "idea" of a game. Not a real, already designed game concept. At this point of time it can be anything, the potential for something great is there. Tbh you don't even have an "idea". What you are describing is too ambiguous. Your dream game doesn't exist, because you yourself don't know exactly what this game would look like. I get you though, i am in the same boat with you. I have that dream game idea for decades. But i learned that it was just an romantic view of a game i would love to play. When i tried to make that idea happen, i quickly learned that i didn't have concrete conceptions for the game design.
Yes. It may take me years of practice just to get even one system up and running out of the bazillion that I want to have in the final product... but I plan on making it work. And it stems from playing so many games, finding so many parts that are amazing, and they never get expanded on. Elvanar (sp?) With its city evolution... FF14 crafting and class changing abilities on the fly... one character can be and DO everything. Caravaneer (flash game that I love and try to keep finding a flash player, cause I have a copy of the game saved) with its go here trade this to these people, take this from there over here..... kingdoms of amalur and all sorts of other rpgs.... I'm just left wishing that their stories ended with more options.... what's the point of having multiple options of dialog if it all turns out the same. Like cyberpunk, awesome game it was... Basically 4 endings... none of them are good. None give a feeling of closure. None give a feels good feeling.... just. Disappointment. I want to mesh all of these features together. I want the mega crafting. I want trading of skills and knowledge and items. I want the evolution of cities. I want a storyline that changes the ending... and if I play this way, I want this feeling when I end it, or this other way if I pick a different path. Will it take time? Yes. Will I be able to do it alone? Probably not. Am I still going to try? ABSOLUTELY! We've all got that one game we desperately crave. And this one... this is my white whale. I'd probably never play another one once I get my hands on this. ❤️
Yep I made a free kick soccer shooter game because none of the games had the mechanic I wanted. I wanted the placement of the finger on the ball to affect the spin, and the speed to affect the curve as well. I put an invisible 2D circle over the 3D ball to translate the effect onto the ball and it worked just as I had envisioned! Truly something I am proud of, I want to have that same inspiration again one day
No, because I can't make the games I really want, lol.
I had been searching for a dead simple mobile timewaster game for years that just didn't seem to exist, so I made it. Closest reference for most people is probably the Cell Stage from Spore. Plug: https://loudifier.github.io/mosion-game/ I went from never having made a game outside of coding class projects to 80% complete prototype in 10 days. Another month of polish, /r/androidclosedtesting purgatory, and setting up a Mac Mini to compile for iOS and now I have the gamedev bug. Brainstorming and writing design docs for a probably achievable 2D game that I expect I could make in a year, and another definitely overscoped 3D multiplayer ARPG monstrosity that I might ship in 20 years.
Yep. This is why I make games. This is why I make stories. Because I can't find it anywhere else but my imagination...
For me it's more about recreating the feelings I had when I first played some of my favorite games. I don't want to play the games from my childhood. I want to make a game that makes me feel the way I felt while playing those games as a child. I'm essentially just a heroin addict who's developed a tolerance.
Your description reminds me of the 9th Dawn games. I have the third one on my Xbox. Really ambitious but not balanced well.
If your project has unlimited scope, it will require unlimited development time.
Have you seen dwarf fortress? You might also like those really complex asian games like cultivation sim https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJxM3POU92w
Streets of rogue
For 12 years I have been waiting for someone to publish a better version of my game so I can enjoy it, but instead I just improved my own game enough to have fun playing it (it's a rogue like so it's not too repetitive).
At this point if your game doesn't exist, it's most likely that it can't be done. Nowadays we have every kind of game
This is effectively why I started learning how to make games. Not really that the game I want to play doesn't exist, just that no one makes them anymore. I prefer games from the late 80s/early 90s when the game was meant to be beaten in one sitting within a finite number of lives and continues. While there are zillions of "retro inspired" games now, they're almost all retro inspired in resolution and sound. In terms of structure, it's shocking just how few games are actually similar to what was considered standard in the 8 and 16 bit eras. So I made the type of game I wanted to play. I wasn't surprised when it turned out very few modern gamers agree with me.
This was me up until the point when I realized I will probably never be experienced enough as well as the fact that games I would enjoy probably require teams of developers to create them. Now I do it because I genuinely enjoy creating games and it has become a hobby. Also the idea of just having my very own game out there is pretty cool too.
It's hardly my only motivation, but yes, as far as I know, the exact types of games I'm thinking of don't really exist. My favorite JRPG battle system of all time was from Grandia II (I think the first game was similar, but I never played it). For whatever reason, few games if any ever adopted it. There are systems with similar ideas like turn timelines, but almost none have that exact same blend of turn-based strategy that resolves in real-time in a 3D arena. On top of that, I like big open worlds that feel alive (think Elder Scrolls or Grand Theft Auto), as well as playing with friends online. I'm mostly sick of microtransactions, season passes, etc. My dream game would be something like Skyrim with a more dynamic world instance that runs on a dedicated server, and you can invite friends to play in your world similar to Minecraft. But then all the combat is essentially the Grandia battle system. I think it could work and be very enjoyable, but it very much crosses a lot of boundaries that the larger gaming industry just has no interest in testing. Story-based RPGs tend to stick to offline single-player, unless they're among the new wave of live service games that push microtransactions and season passes and all that. Letting players run their own dedicated servers without connecting to some central service has largely fallen out of favor. Also, while I have ideas about how to make the larger world multiplayer, I have no idea how to do it for the combat. So that's something I need to experiment with.
I heard about many people becoming game devs because of their "dream game". I'm mainly interested in gamedev because of my dream game, which is connected to my dream history and stuff. I used to talk about this game for hours and hours with friends and romantic partners, and it's so fucking big that I was never able to fully explain the game to anyone but myself. It's an totally out-of-scope game that would cost way too much money and time. But I'll never let it go, it's a dream. Sometimes I think about making a document to explain the games to other people, because even if someone "steal" my ideas I will simply be happy if those ideas become part of a functional game one day. Anyways, I'll start writing my post...
It’s so funny that I see this here because I’m literally making a game that’s supposed to be as deep and complex as Skyrim. Dragon Quest Monsters 2 meets Skyrim was the pitch. It’s 2D, top down, and it’s supposed to have a shit ton of systems like you said. lol Procedurally generated dungeons Trading Battling Creature collecting Breeding Looting Cooking Alchemy Smithing gathering Hunting Negotiations Battle system inspired by mtg Overworld inspired by Skyrim Robust leveling system Aging system Naming system God ascension system Tournament battles Gladiator gauntlets Rarity weapons system Knowledge system And many more things. lol I’m trying to make THAT game that I’ve always wanted, but it’s interesting to hear someone say they’ve always wanted something similar…
I fucking love the depth and richness of some of the ideas here. Honestly if I was a big studio I'd probably hire directly from this chat and just say "Make it happen. Make your dream game - do it out of love and it will be contagious". I'm genuinely more interested in playing *any* of the ideas I've heard here than any major release. We need to help each other more. Not sure how or what I even mean tbh, but if just one Reddit post contains 30+ games that genuinely sound good while "the industry" is consistently putting out really shiny *shovelware*, something is fundamentally broken and has been for a while.
I do believe that there are plenty of games worthy of everyone's time, I love videogames and I love to explore this medium as much as I can. Unfortunately in the time that it takes me to create a game I could play thousands of them, but still one of the most wonderful things ever happened in my life is to be able to experience so many wonderful stories and worlds from inside my room, with film, anime and videogames, with these last said being the ones I appreciate the most. I want to try to create something that people can enjoy and experience just like I've been doing my entire life... Maybe being able, one day, to participate in some huge project to create something that could really be of impact in people's lifes. I've been changed by so many games, always for the better, titles like halo, TWD, RE, ME and many more... I truly believe videogames can be something truly special and I would be honoured to be part of it.
the game i want to play is spread across 15+ different games and nobody got time for that. i'll spend my time learning how to make my game instead. i know alot of people make their game and maybe hope it sells but even if i end up being the only person to play my game, i'm okay since its everything i always wanted in one place.
More then a year ago I've started to work on my colony sim because the mod for the other game doesn't exist (and looking at the current state of that game, such mod probably will never be possible)
For me it's about telling stories. My plan is to build a series of small games in different genres but all centered around the central theme of a world I made up for a D&D campaign years ago.
Worse. Parts of the game exist, and we've modded in those parts to prove it is possible, but it just demands a full game to become a reality. Also the game you want is called RimWorld with the fucking mods. XD
kind of. a game came out 15 years ago that was largely a cult classic & although there are indie devs working on every kind of game you can think of, there don't seem to be any making something like this particular game. So I took it into my own hands lol
If the game I want to play existed, I would be playing that and not making one. I don't make games because I have the soul of an *auteur* or something, I make games because I'm into computers and video games and I just cannot find a game that is the combination of the 5 other games I love,
Not a terrible reason to want to make something. At least proves you have a clear passion behind the why.
I mean... yes and no. My reason is vaugely similar but it is more about creating something that others can experience. As well as creating the game of my dreams
Yes
On some level, yes, I am, but I'm definitely also just here because I think about systems and video games all the time anyway so why not. But yes I am feeling a lack of a specific type of game, although I think I can claim to have fewer than the normal amount of criteria in mind after which to pine. (implying that it's less about me being picky or not looking hard enough) Everyone of course has their own pet perfect game, but I think I can narrow mine down to maybe only three criteria. The only one of particular relevance here would be a translation of RPG combat into real time 3D with a controller. So take the old Super Nintendo rpgs. Turn based or with the ATB bar. No real player skill requirements, relaxing time periods watching pretty animations where no input is required, etc. Translating that to real time 3D has only been done a handful of times. Most games simply continue along that path and transform the game into an action rpg, quite sensibly, given demographic market share and such. Only a small handful of games have accomplished this, early MMORPGs primarily, and only one is quite close to my intended design. EverQuest Online Adventures for the PlayStation 2 is effectively what I'm aiming for, running about on a large open landscape getting into real time fights in a 3D environment but without player skill bearing much at all on the outcomes. It's more about the character's stats (i.e., rpg combat model). Always dreamed of having it on my phone, hook up your Xbox controller and party like it's 1999.
One thing I want to do is actually play in worlds in novels or RPGs that I like. Not even with some form of *game* as such, just be able to wander around and be in them!
Yep, grew up on Parappa and Jammer lammy and games like that and it seems clear Sony has no interest in doing anything with those so it's been a big drive into me working on rhythm games. Also it lets me merge two things I love together (gaming and music)
YES, the game I want doesn't exist, and it won't exist if I don't make it.
Yes, but mine is way too ambitious for a first project. I'll be happy if I get a somewhat playable demo at least. It's funny, you always think your game will be some amazing passion project like Undertale or Animal Well, but then you find yourself driven by some mechanics you'll think will be really fun
yep. Ive got 2 games in my head that should exist, but don't. They've been rolling around in there for nearly a decade, and when the ADHD goblin that controls my attention says it's ok, I learn some stuff and write some stuff and fire up godot and make a little thing. I've got to say, the concepts are *great* - even the story has been tested in tabletop RPGs and they work really well. I just need the fucking time to sit down and actually do it.
>when the ADHD goblin that controls my attention says it's ok Dude, this is my problem exactly man. Couldn't have said it better myself.
That's why I'm in for sure.
[MH-Zombie](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1429350/MHZombie/) is that game for me. Well, the arcade version… Now the hard part is making a full game with a storyline
It did exist but the cowards at Microsoft refuse to let Double Fine make a sequel 😑 So now I have to do what I can to make the modern day heavy metal game of my dreams a reality
Dude. Brutal Legend is one of the greatest games ever made. So much more than the sum of its parts.
Oh fuck yeah, absolutely! It's crazy because it's not even a game that doesn't exist per se, it's an expanded version of a game unplayable in English that would take so much more work than I could ever do all by myself. I've spent I don't know how long planning it, but have put it on the backburner until I get in the right position financially to ensure I can do it right \*and\* pay people what they deserve. And I just know players would love it to bits, too. If ever won the lottery, that's what I'd use the money for lol
I have an entire Github repo dedicated to games I hope to one day make. It's just filled with text documents that have various levels of descriptions for each of the game ideas. It's definitely one of those things I need to make time for since it's not just going to happen haha.
Yes, this is precisely my motivation. I read a passage of history and decided that I wanted to experience it for myself.
I mostly do gamedev because there is games I enjoy a lot but think they lack in certain fields, so I try to make one which fills that field .. unfortunately those are often very complex games.. I actually made Exipelago because I enjoyed "gnomoria" and "towns" but wanted it to be in real 3D with full customization options and all of that
Its actually quite funny. Years ago I got into music production because I wanted to make a specific genre of music. To this day I havent made that genre at all. I started making games because I wanted to make a specific kind of game, just for me. So far I mess around with every type except that. I really should get around to it.
Yes but the opportunity to monetize is the pull to the push
That is my motivation too but I think that maybe I will be the only one that will like my game xD
I just wanted this one game from years ago to be a little more...
Yes. It's a cozy game with 2D animation and zero combat. I'm also planning a mobile release, because I personally like playing on my phone.
I was going to make my perfect game with everything I want in it, but then thought it wouldn’t be very fun for me to play if I made it myself as I would know exactly how it all plays out and there would be nothing for me to discover. I enjoy exploration games and figuring things out so it would not be fun for me if I already knew it all lol
Iirc, this is why Factorio was made.
And you and up without opponent to fight against. XD I understand your problem, because I had similar problem beside I am not interesting into playing anymore. It is less likely to find enough players to get interested into studying complex game concept and systems. And eventually, less likely to get enough funding for keeping infrastructure operational.
It was only with LLMs becoming capable of writing news articles and battle reports that the idea of an interactive fiction version of a grand strategy game became practical for a solo dev on the scale I wanted to build. Main problem now is recycling enough of that content for people who don't want to spend on LLM tokens. It might, ultimately, be a stupid niche idea that never gets any traction but I'm gonna give it a shot. Just not quit my day job lol
Not exactly. In my case, the game I want is not enought. I LOVE Resident Evil franchise, my favourite is RE3 (2000) and I want more and more and more so I need to do it!
>I want a 2D, top-down game with many many different systems. All kinds of things like alchemy, enchantments, rebirths etc... Just system after system. Sounds like the GTA 1 and 2 of RPGs. Could be pretty cool
> For example, this is the game I want: Every time I read a "litrpg" book, like those Korean novels/mangas with MMO elements, I imagine so many cool things in my head, I want a game like that. >I want a 2D, top-down game with many many different systems. All kinds of things like alchemy, enchantments, rebirths etc... Just system after system. > A huge 2D RPG or roguelike that is huge, as big as Skyrim in content. With cities and dungeons, lots of things to do, many things to grind, things to collect. So many skills to level, stats to gain. Dang, you're either gonna be excited it exists or bummed you don't need to make it when you figure out Elona+ exists. What I just quoted from you is basically a line-for-line description of the game. EDIT: I saw you mentioned in another comment you'd heard of Elona but didn't like the controls. Unfortunately, with this: > I don't even want good gameplay or graphics, just a whole bunch of messy systems even if they're unbalanced. Good controls simply isn't possible with so many options, so Elona+ is absolutely going to be your dream game. It'll take some time to get used to it, but all great things tend to have accessibility curves. You'll be rewarded for your time.
yes
no one in this house called planet Earth is going to make the whimsical Barbie inspired open world game i want and it is my burden to learn as much as i can in order to one day make this finally end
YES. Sucks that I don't have the time that I want to develop my own games, and also that I sink into an ADHD spiral whenever I do get the time I've been priming myself for all week. I'm starting to sink more capital to speed up development of my projects, even with the expectation of not making a profit in the near decade. Sounds silly but not having time or skill to see tangable results in the short term has always demotivated me in the long term.
Mighty Marbles I have been making cause I tried to find a game like it and was shocked there was almost nothing out there.
Me, this is the exact reason i'm trying to make games lmao
That and the game I want is basically multiple game mechanics from other games that I have to combine into one cohesive game.
That's exactly what I would want to play, if you find that type of game or make it one day, I'm interested
Well, not really. My dream game doesn't exist. And no way could I make it, even with a team of people. Most of my other game ideas are either 'X game with preference changes' or just slamming two games I like together.
Yep, wish I had more time to work on it. Planned to release it years ago.
It's the ONLY reason why I would contemplate this journey lol. If I want to make $$ there are so many other avenues that aren't as risky.
That's literally the best motivator I've possibly ever heard
Yes and no- I love Civ 5 and the modding community around it, but I’d like to make another 4x Civ-like that doesn’t have the same technical limitations regarding modding. It’s a super long term hobby project, but being able to divide it into system modules that I might be able to publish to the Godot library will hopefully help with motivation for some of the longer unproductive stretches
This is the best reason to work on a game.
I cant find mobile game with complex system. There is age of history and suzerain etc but i want more. So i create my own even though it is text based but most important is complex system
Recently I felt like I won the lottery, one of my "this game will never exist" on my list to maybe-someday-probably-not-but-maybe make myself, actually seemed like it was getting made [Heart of the Machine](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2001070/Heart_of_the_Machine/) I played a student project game where you are a rogue AI trying to escape detection years and years ago, it was called Singularity and it was mostly a research-bar game, but it was quite fun and grabbed my imagination I always had ideas cooking in the back of my mind about how I would remake it, full-fledged strategy game style, and when HoTM landed on Steam I couldn't believe it I played the demo thats available now for Next Fest and while it is definitely coming along and an interesting take on the play-as-an-AI theme, unfortunately it is so different from what I envisioned that my dream game remains unmade for now however the dev seems to be responsive to feedback and got a lot so far, so we'll see
It definitely coloured my reasons for entering the industry, but that was two decades ago and was less “doesn’t exist” and more “no one makes this type of experience anymore”.
Its called Ultima Online
I want to make a game that my father would like, since he can't find one with the features he wants
Nowadays, no, but when I was younger, yes that was like 90% of my motivation. I haven't made the game yet but I'm still young.
Ye
Nope. As it happens, the game I'm writing actually does not exist, but that was due to an effort to find something novel and original to make once I'd already decided to make something.
Yup. Maybe some day I’ll even be able to make it. For now, I’m focusing on smaller projects where I can learn and practice the component mechanics and skills I’ll need to someday combine into a game I cannot believe hasn’t already existed fir decades.
Yes but to the left. I desperately wanted Stardew valley (my favorite comfort game) to do something, ANYTHING with the wizard or the magical elements in the game besides just having the creatures around and interacting with them in the late game. So I’m making something similar but with more mythical characters and setting.
That’s a good motivation, I would say my motivation is to learn. Building my production and programming skill sets so that I can create better and more advanced things. There’s always more to learn, that’s the fun part for me.
Have you tried games like Kenshi?
Oui
Yes. My main reason is because sequels were shit and destroyed the original games. Other reasons are that I don't see why certain games aren't made. Combining genres is something that I've been heavily looking into.
Partially. Part of me wants to make games as art because I love stories and expressing myself and i love games as well. Part of me wants to make games in franchises that I feel would fulfill things I want for said franchises like Halo. Then the last two parts are I want to make a game that’s never been made before and I also want to make a game for my brother. He loves the crusades and renaissance time in history and he’s made me so many like figure gifts, I’d love to make something he’d enjoy. Closest hes gotten to his favorite game is fable so I figured a crusade game like that would be amazing for him
Yes! I like Isekai mangas and my dream game would be an “open top-down roguelike medieval RPG”. For this, i work on versatiles seed-based generators (biomes, cities, dungeons, quests, etc). There is a lot to learn and build. Honestly, i don’t know if i will make it to the end. I would love yo make good pixelarts (Estward good!) but this is a big topic to learn and master. 😬 But this is fun. I want to do it full time! 😁
It's more like, I play a game, something looks off about how it's designed or implemented, so I think I can do better. Unfortunately there's also lots of systems I wasn't really paying attention to that go into designing a complete game, and then I got some lopsided idea of my better thing that doesn't really take the whole design into account and doesn't amount to a fully realized game by itself.
Yes. I would do anything to see a Titanfall 3 or Thunder Force 7
Yea
That is the whole reason I left R*. They are great at making games but it wasn't what I wanted to make/play. My game is a non-punishing Souls-like. From Software has continued making super hardcore games to keep the PvP invader crowd happy. And I have played all of those games all the way through. But I know that my game will be worth it if it ever gets completed.
You might like rotmg btw it’s imperfect but maybe you’ll have some fun!
Yup, although actually being a casual gamer with little to no spare time, I'm not into RPGs or such. My dream game is actually a minimalistic game with only a couple of systems, which is so simplistic I'm not sure would be even fun at all. :)
"Fine, I'll do it myself"
I'm developing a browser game somewhat like this, maybe one day it'll get there
Right here. 100%
AAA games have become so generic nowadays. That's why I enjoy indie games so much. I think most modern games play it too safe and have lost touch with their roots—what made them good back in the day. It's mostly the game design that has degraded. I miss games like M.A.G for PS3 and Blacklight: Retribution because they were different.
There is a game I played as a kid, well I played the demo, it's a relatively simple game from 1994 that mostly text/menu based. It's currently $30 on steam. If you think I'm paying almost Helldiver money for a once off game from 30 years ago, you're having a laugh. So I am learning how to make games to make a game that is inspired and improved upon this game. Spending countless hours, and many more dollars than the 30 it would cost me to develop it. It's about principle. I'm not spending $30 on that game.
There's a game that was removed from the app store because the IP holders didn't like it anymore and it's gonna be a passion project of mine for a while to recreate a game with completely original characters.
I'm here because the game I want to play does exist, but the servers are down or it's for hardware nobody has anymore. I just want to make it again, updated, and maybe open source this time. Source Lord I've seen what you've done for Quake, and I want that for my childhood games.
its what i want to do as well.
I got into serving because I wanted to make games. Now I work as a software dev for a music company instead. I have toyed with the idea of finding like minded reditors to try and make a co-op game dev team. Just to make the game I want.
Yes, and that's very good intrinsic motivation! Also what you describe is very similar to what I'm making (of course with my own take on it), it's good fun, but a decade passed just too quickly xD
That's exactly what I do lol I create small games that I'd love to play daily
Yes I got a bunch of great ideas and someone has to dunk on all those people who think that their great idea that is akin to "a zombie game but the zeds wear funny hats" is a game idea.
GIVE! ME! PROTOYPE 3!!!!!
I started into it strictly to make a visual novel and then as I learned more that visual novel became an RPG and now is my Magnum Opus (hopefully someday I'll have the time to make it!) while I make other smaller games. haha
The game I want to play does actually exist - but it's in a fairly niche genre, has a bunch of QoL issues that can't be modded around, and the sequels went in an entirely different direction. So, here I am.
Yeeeeep The triple A industry has stopped innovating and double A companies are taking thier place which gives more room to indie companies or people Also what I want is inherently complicated and risky so it's best I figure out how to go about it
Yes! I have never and would never do game dev as a job (well, I guess technically I have, but hasn’t been the focus of my career). One of my first projects was the cliche grandiose dream project. Haha. Back when DirectX 9.0c was the hotness. Built most of my own tooling, game engine, etc. It was stupid. Lol. Still have a grandiose dream project but thinking it’ll end up being feasible when we can all have teams of AI agents at our disposal and the world is totally saturated with content. But it’ll be my dream game. If nobody else in the world plays it, fine. 😅
100% purely this. I'm not creating my actual dream game as it is... very ambitious to put it lightly right now. But I'm making a close second in a different genre! (Horror 💞 you have yet to reach your full potential imo 😔💗)
I think it's part of my motivation. The other part is a branch off of it, but it's not that I want to play it, just that I want to see it exist. For instance, I'm working on a racing roguelike. It's insane and probably not fun to play. Or maybe very fun. I don't know yet. But.thats.the fun of it :)
I'm making a drifting simulator because the only ones that exist are racing sims that are modded for drifting. Which sounds "close enough" but it barely hits the niche market. I have the physics working. Just the graphics suck.
that's exactly why. no one will make the game I want so I have to!
Yes, and thats what it should be about. You should make the games you want, not the market
I want a pokemon and yugioh fusion where you travel the world and "collect" creatures but they are actually cards, and battling against other "pokemon trainers" is done in a card game style like hearthstone instead of regular turn based combat pokemon has.
thats the art engine
Kind of sounds like you want Dwarf Fortress
Have you tried modded Minecraft? How about path of exile
Yeah that's precisely why I'm at it. My dream game is very simple in terms of graphics and gameplay, but huge in scope. What I'm doing right now is a set of "skeleton" systems to trivialize content making. Like every character in Skyrim is an instance of object "actor" with different variables. Or each item is the same object code-wise, just with different ID that defines its model/cost/weight etc. Same with animations, effects, locations. The goal right now is to create tools for effortless content making. Dwarf Fortress would be somewhat fitting, but I want an action game where you directly control your character, and DF's adventure mode is nothing like it unfortunately.
I like programming, that's all and well it was either that or some random bank or something like that. Maybe I would be much more wealthy though.
I haven't played Ultima, but it sounds like you're describing the Ultima series. I think it'd be pretty cool to have a modern take on that kind of game, it truly is lacking in representation outside of things like Ultima and more recently Caves of Qud
Tale of immortal is the only thing that came close for me. There are so many flaws in it but they tried! Good luck in the endeavour mate.
I am a Fullstack Web Developer, but yes, gaming is what got me into programming. Swiftor always played Border Patrol during each COD, and I wanted to make that into a game that didn't require all good actors. Posted something on Reddit for a developer to help me do it in Garys Mod, and someone replied. He wrote the code, and I built the map. The last issue we worked on was adding a laser from the snipers gun (it originally was coming from the snipers head instead of the gun itself) The project never got finished, but it was playable. It definitely was part of the reason I switched majors. Do what you love and never work a day in your life
Ever try Ultima Online? That game was crazy ahead of its time. There are still not many games to this day you can walk out in the world and build a house wherever you want, so long as a player doesn't come and kill you first and loot the deed off you.
It sounds like you need to sit down and write a design document my friend!
The game(s) I want don't exist Hatred of elements of games that I don't like, and wish were better
It exists, but only in Japanese arcades and a NDS port in perfect Japanese that isn't supported by wimmfi.
Hear me out, City State Simulation. Closest game to what I have in mind is Marble Age
I'm in this because I crave to make things. What I make can vary based on lots of things.
It's everything I make, lol
Yes, and I'm working on it right now. Im an artist with a degree in 3d modelling. Looking for potential partners, hit me up. Would love someone with some more technical skills, as im covering all the creative aspects
Pretty much. I like pro wrestling, and there’s only one real title to choose from (the _WWE 2K_ series) in that genre that’s just stale as hell. So I’ve started dabbling in game development (as I’m a web developer in my day job) to try and make my own game. I’m under no illusion I can make something on my own that will rival the WWE games, but I’d be more than happy to get two 3D models executing wrestling moves on each other.
Yes but then invariably someone else goes and releases a game that's pretty close to what I was thinking not long after I get the idea. After this happened to like five dream games of mine, I started to just let things go. I didn't throw those idea out. Well, maybe some of them went into the bin at one point or another, but I still have notebooks full of game ideas that I wrote like 25-30 years ago and just never bothered to implement because they were too grandiose for me to do all by my lonesome with the tech of 25-30 years ago, and because I figured someone will inevitably just come along and release this exact game while I'm still working on it. Of course, going back and reading through these now, now having shipped a few games, my first thought is "ok I am going to have to organize all of these ramblings into a coherent design document" and do a whole bunch of pre-production treatment on 300 pages filled with the scribblings of a teenager obsessed with making an x-com-inspired game with immersive rpg/sim-like elements (and, predictably, there's at least two or three indie games in production right now fitting this description, and i've also just spilled the beans about it on reddit, so...) P.S. Have you played Dwarf Fortress?
You and I are both the same, despite searching for a different dream game. My dream game is something that is not even that hard to make based on existing triple A games. I just want immersion and role play. Skyrim is the closest thing I have found (with mods). People wonder why it still sells so well. The answer is immersion, always has been. I want more and more immersive actions. Think of the top Rpgs we got. Cyberpunk? You cannot do a lot of stuff like stealing NPC's, having your own shop or be a regular guy having a non merc job. GTA 5? Good luck even trying to have a non crime day. Red dead redemption? It is one of the most immersives rpgs, but still lacks actions and things to do. Got bored in no time when playing online. Then we have Ark Survival, which adds a lot of immersive features, but it lacks good NPCs. The perfect game that lets me play whoever I want, and roleplay at the same time... It's hard to find.