{"id":1579,"date":"2014-12-17T11:47:47","date_gmt":"2014-12-17T17:47:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jeffwofford.com\/?p=1579"},"modified":"2018-06-20T17:25:26","modified_gmt":"2018-06-20T23:25:26","slug":"the-rise-and-fall-of-the-lone-game-developer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jeffwofford.com\/wp\/?p=1579","title":{"rendered":"The Rise and Fall of the Lone Game Developer"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the early 80s, all it took to make a game was a computer, some graph paper, and a lot of determination.<\/p>\n

Games were created by brilliant individuals.<\/p>\n

\"Early<\/a>
Richard Garriott circa 1979<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Their designs were often groundbreaking and sometimes deeply artistic.<\/p>\n

\n
\"Donkey<\/a><\/div>\n
\"Joust\"<\/a><\/div>\n
\"Archon\"<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Their choices defined much of what we see in games today.<\/p>\n

\n
\"Ultima<\/a><\/div>\n
\"WoW<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Some of these auteur game developers\u00a0even made a decent living.<\/p>\n

\"Lord<\/a><\/p>\n

Playing their games inspired me to make games of my own.<\/p>\n

\n
\"Atari<\/a><\/div>\n
\"Atari<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

By the mid-90s I had a degree in computer science, and landed my dream job at Origin Systems.<\/p>\n

\"Origin<\/a><\/p>\n

But the industry had changed. The days of the solitary, brilliant, auteur developer had passed like rain on the mountain<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Now games were made by massive teams with massive schedules and massive budgets.<\/p>\n

\"Assassin's<\/a><\/p>\n

Big budgets required big revenue, and big revenue required small risks.<\/p>\n

\"Video<\/a><\/p>\n

My dream job turned out to be a nightmare. I was working harder for less money than my non-game-programming peers in exchange for the privilege of making games.<\/p>\n

\"Average<\/a><\/p>\n

But I didn’t make games. I made little pieces of games.<\/p>\n

\"Particle<\/a><\/p>\n

So I moved into management. I thought that more leadership would mean more creative control. It didn’t. I still didn’t make games. Now I didn’t even make little pieces of games. I made schedules and budgets and meetings.<\/p>\n

So I got out.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Then, just for fun, I started making Flash games.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

With Flash you could create\u00a0art and code in the same space. The games were small and focused. You could make a pretty good game by yourself. And Flash was everywhere, so you could publish your work to the world.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It was a dream come true. I could make whole games\u2014not just pieces. They could be as strange or as fun or as experimental as I wanted. There were no schedules or budgets or meetings to fuss over.<\/p>\n

Then the dream got even better. It turned out my little games could make a little money.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Then came the iPhone, and suddenly you could make a lot of\u00a0money.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It was a renaissance, a second chance. For the first time since the early 80s, an individual programmer or a small group of developers\u00a0could make a living creating fantastic wonders that made people smile while stretching their view of what games could be.<\/p>\n

It was another golden age. For others.<\/p>\n

\"Fez<\/a>
Fez<\/a> by Phil Fish<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Limbo<\/a>
Limbo<\/a> by Playdead<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Minecraft<\/a>
Minecraft by Notch<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And for me.<\/p>\n

\"House<\/a>
House of Shadows<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Doug<\/a>
Doug dug.<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"pixa\"<\/a>
pixa<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And then, suddenly, it was over.<\/p>\n

So many people rushed to make games for the iPhone that supply exploded and prices collapsed. You literally couldn’t give games away.<\/p>\n

\"Number<\/a><\/p>\n

Soon the only people making money on small games were those who made their games into billboards and markets.<\/p>\n

\"Dragon<\/a><\/p>\n

It was the opposite of creativity. The opposite of art. And the type of fun these games delivered was bargain-basement: addictive but empty, like sucking sugar through a straw.<\/p>\n

\"Candy<\/a><\/p>\n

Even small, indie games were no longer innovative, beautiful, or human. They were machines designed to latch onto a human brain and feed it all the right chemicals to keep it entranced.<\/p>\n

So I got out.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Now making games is a hobby for me, as for millions of others.\u00a0Just a hobby.<\/p>\n

Small game development isn’t totally dead. Occasionally a game will make a splash and the creators will reap rewards for a few months.<\/p>\n

\"Monument\"<\/a><\/p>\n

But almost no one makes a steady living. Zynga<\/a>, Rovio<\/a>: today’s superstars are tomorrow’s street sweepers.<\/p>\n

\"Will<\/p>\n

And if your game does do well, there are always a thousand hungry developers willing to steal and repackage your idea.<\/p>\n

\"Threes<\/a><\/p>\n

Creating small, beautiful games is no longer a living. But it is a grand hobby. A 48-hour game programming competition like Ludum Dare is the highlight of my year.<\/p>\n

\n
\"Connected<\/a><\/div>\n
\"Proletarian<\/a><\/div>\n
\"Claustrophobia\"<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

I get so pumped in those 48 hours, I have a hard time coming down.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When I was in college they told us there would always be a demand for software developers. In general that’s still true.<\/p>\n

I always wondered what it would look like when it stopped being true, when the need for developers dwindled, and programming stopped paying the bills.<\/p>\n

Now I know.<\/p>\n

For the lone game programmer that day has already arrived.<\/p>\n

Twice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the early 80s, all it took to make a game was a computer, some graph paper, and a lot of determination.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-games","category-ludum-dare"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jeffwofford.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jeffwofford.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jeffwofford.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jeffwofford.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jeffwofford.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1579"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.jeffwofford.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1579\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1782,"href":"https:\/\/www.jeffwofford.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1579\/revisions\/1782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jeffwofford.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jeffwofford.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jeffwofford.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}