Let's say for the sake of argument that there is too much art out there, that we need less people writing novels and more people fixing potholes and whatnot - fine. How does the author propose deciding _who_ gets to make art? Even if you have an oracle who can assign some sort of quality number to an art project before it's made...how are people supposed to get better at it? It's going to take thousands of cruddy Unity indie projects to make a single Undertale or Stardew Valley. The more crappy art we have, the more good art will come later, as artists either get better or luck upon a good idea combined with the perseverance to make that idea a reality.
Read through some other posts - author is a game developer who founded his own company. This post feels like one of three things:
1. burnout, as someone else pointed out.
2. a very good troll :)
3. A somewhat poorly guided but honest attempt to dissuade people from joining the games industry (possibly mixed with 1.)
As someone who started their career in games and left - he's not wrong. The games industry is kind of shit. It doesn't pay well, the hours suck, and you might work for months or years on something that either never sees the light of day or nobody ends up playing (not to mention that in the beginning you're somewhat replaceable, there's a dozen young developers who would love to be in your shoes) - and this is just the life of a salaried game dev - the indie life is even harder.
...on the other hand, the projects and problems are interesting/unique and the people in it are some of the most wonderful I've ever met. I miss shipping games, even though I bailed out of my own volition. I don't blame anyone for wanting to join, especially as a young developer.
I remember at the age of 19 or so being asked (paraphrased) "why the hell would you want to do that?" by an ex-Bungie developer (and now good friend, even if we haven't chatted for a while) when I said I wanted to join the games industry. For better or worse I persevered, showed him I had some potential as an engineer and eventually he helped me get some interviews and a job. But I'd ask the same question of any young developer who came my way hoping to get in.
So I guess I agree with what the author is trying to say (the games industry is full-up! are you sure you want to try and squeeze in?), even if I don't agree with words he's using to say it.
> How does the author propose deciding _who_ gets to make art?
I feel like the author makes it fairly clear: those with enough privilege. If the cost of living goes to zero, we'll have near-infinite art. If the cost of living goes to maximum we all starve to death.
At very least, I was very much in love with a free-living artist who inspired me greatly in my 20s. I moved to San Francisco to hangout with her and her amazingly cool and smart friends - living on couches and doing art. I felt like a sell-out that I couldn't make it in that world and got a "real job". I found out later that she had several million dollars to her name in her early 20s. I somehow had missed the implication of her text "stopping by my dads house in the Marina, be there in a minute".
When you find out that most free-living artists have financial backing - well, the rose-tinted glasses come off quick.
That said, props to any actually desperate-artists out there. I tend to think it's a bit of a mythic trope, but I'm sure some do exist.
After reading the post and comments, it feels more like the author (Jeff, maker of the Avernum series) is cautioning against too many of us moving too far away from life-sustaining activities like maintaining infrastructure (and I would add: teaching and parenting effectively, farming, using our bodies to do most of our work, practicing being more in tune with other life on Earth).
I’ve been escaping into videogame-land during most of my free time (I’m a homemaker & parent of a disabled kid), and while it’s helped me get along with my spouse (release valve, maybe?), it is not the healthiest solution in the long run. Okay for now, and I understand I have a lot of work yet to sync my real and ideal selves (where I know in the moment what I’m feeling and have agency to decide what to do next, rather than picking up the pieces later).
Art gets made by people who have the free time and/or people getting paid to do it. People do a pretty decent job at self-selecting for who gets to make art
This completely misses the point of art. Art is just an outward expression of thought and feeling, desires, fears, hopes, pain, pleasure. The problem is not that there is too much art or too many games, the problem is there is not enough TRULY artistic art or games. Most games now are created for profit and not because someone is trying to create the world they love. Likewise a lot of “art” created now is made to be sold and not for its own sake. This does not mean something cannot be art but intended to be sold but if it’s design revolves exclusively around whether it will sell the most copies then it is not truly an expression of the inner self but rather an expression that more external possessions would be nice to have.
One answer is "no one, at least not full time, we're gonna try and get by with existing works and amateur quality art"
Which is of course fantastically unpopular and will never happen, so people will continue to brutally compete for who gets to make art instead of doing grunt work
Premise: the author has access to many more pet creative projects than ever before.
Author's conclusion: people are spending more time on pet creative projects.
Better conclusion: the barriers to distribution have fallen so low that pet projects which existed in the past but never left the bedroom are now available to the world.
What might have just sat on a DAT cassette or floppy disk in someone's closet many years ago now becomes an upload to streaming music catalogs or game services.
Odd to focus on games when Seattle is propped up by a tech industry with people being overpaid by hundreds of thousands to make useless apps and websites.
Indie game devs are usually making things at home during their downtime. As far as I know, there’s no volunteer hobbyist bridge repair club, so they’re not really taking away from anything. Meanwhile you have companies that have an easily replaceable service like Slack selling for nearly 30 billion dollars. That’s what’s swallowing up money and consuming the time of people who’d otherwise be making something useful.
If the company hires you for a job and they’re happy with your work, you’re not overpaid. Companies are desperate for engineers that the price has inflated, the value of engineers has gone up because no one wants to make useless apps or websites without being paid.
This. Games are IMO more valuable to society than quite a few startup products. Of course the real value of startups is in the money that employs people which then goes back into the economy, whether or not the startup survives.
Volunteer hobbyist bridge clubs would be kinda cool.
That said, part of the reason you don’t see them is because of licensing and certifications. And people don’t want to be responsible for peoples lives for free.
I feel like his point is that we've put creators, of all forms of media, on such a high pedestal that we're neglecting the mundane things that keep life running smoothly.
I guess it's a job/career version of "social media is making us all lonelier." Everyone wants to be a creator like everyone wants to be an influencer...
Okay, sure, but why are we doing that? I feel like it's something more fundamental that's gone off the rails. This is a form of society-wide coping mechanism until we can identify and try out solutions to whatever that fundamental issue is.
We're not doing that. The author seems to assume that so many people are creating new art nowadays that the entire rest of civilization is being left to rot, but that's simply untrue, and a false dichotomy.
Most artists work crushing hours in sweatshop conditions, or are constantly gigging on the razor's edge of subsistence, with what little value they produce going to expenses or middlemen. Then the internet decides everything they create should be free whether they like it or not. We value the companies that distribute art and put celebrities on a high pedestal, but that's a different thing than putting creators and artists themselves on a pedestal.
The reason no one is fixing potholes or bridges or whatever is the taxpayer doesn't want to pay for it. If the pothole isn't right in front of their driveway, or the bridge isn't on their commute, or their kid isn't going to that particular school, then people consider any taxes spent on it to be theft. We no longer have a society, we have millions of individuals that happen to share a landmass in common but little else.
Seems like you're burnt out and you're trying to burn out everyone else as well. I create games in my free time for fun. I enjoy it. I have a game on Steam. It's not great but it's not nothing. And it's mine. Negative energy is what will make the world crumble, and this is a blog post full of negative energy.
I think Your reaction is why this blog post is on point. Everybody is thinking about themselves and their innner emotions, nobody is thinking about the system. Author is right that the sheer amount of artistic content created at this moment is unsustainable. And sooner or later this all will end when people doing actual work will come with forks and torches (this is of course a metaphor - I personally rather expect getting rid of dollar as global currency than actual people attacking artists)
This just strikes me as an incoherent rant from someone whose games obviously don't sell. IMO you can never have too much music, books, recipes, or games. Culture is important and as we get closer to a post-scarcity world people will expend less effort on survival and more on art and culture. Or space travel and technology that we don't need (but which we have to create because humans are curious).
Aren't all these indie games he's decrying being made on free time? Whether they are working day jobs, in school living on debt, or living with their parents, it's still their free time. Society isn't supporting the vast majority, and the experience they gain is very valuable. Show me a failed indie developer and I see someone who can at least ship.
If it's their free time, why should they spend that contributing towards fixing his bridges or maintaining his roads? Does the author do that? I know I don't, I just pay my taxes on my earnings like everyone else, occasionally volunteer, and do whatever I want in my free time.
> Art is what we teach our kids is the most valuable thing. The Disney movie Coco is about a boy from a family of shoemakers who wants to blow them off and be a musician. Disney will never, ever make a movie about a musician who dreams of making shoes. Even though, well, try going a week without music and then a week without shoes and see which is more necessary.
This post gets weirder and weirder as it goes on. It seems to end up at a place suggesting that society is going to crumble around us as everyone spends their time making and playing indie video games. I think that’s a little sensational, to say the least.
Here is the central thesis. There’s a lot to get through before you get to this.
Writing a game nobody plays discharges your energy and creates the feeling of achievement, but it's all empty calories and then your car falls into a sinkhole. If your game succeeds, it’s even worse. Your customers are now also expending all of their energy too, playing your game alone in a room. Meanwhile, sinkholes.
THAT is why I say there are too many indie games. They aren't sustainable. There is too much time wasted, and that will be true until time is applied to making the world work and bridges not fall down and food be in stores. Probably your time.
This could be a premise for a computer game. Society collapses because too many people spent time making and playing indie games.
But society will only be saved if you can unite the gamers, pool together your combined knowledge from playing too much games, and put it to use in productive tasks in the real world. All those hours levelling up in game skills, finally proven IRL.
I think it's a bit more than just that, but yeah, it's not very well defined or detailed. A bit of a jobs version of everyone wants to be an influencer on social media, but it's making everyone lonelier.
It's crumbling around us in part because we decided to overspend on infrastructure we don't need for one of the most inefficient form of transportation.
Instead of improving things we already have, we decided to move to the 'frontier', or worse, demolish perfectly good streets.
Those might be the same people who say "why do you do research in field X, rather than on cancer research?". Why do you have a job as an admin rather than go back to school and become a cancer scientist?
It's easier to criticize the actions of others than to take responsibility.
Space colonization is simply jumping third or fourth steps removed from the dream of making our Earth more livable and more ecologically diverse, or learning how to build and make an acrology.
From that perspective, it's no wonder why people think it's a waste of space, because they saw no meaningful purpose. Meanwhile, we're doing the opposite of terraforming Earth, by making it more unlivable everyday.
Space research is usually funded with taxpayer money (this is changing, but a fair amount of SpaceX’s revenue is still NASA contracts). Games and Starbucks are funded by folks after-tax wages. In both cases it’s money that they earned, but they have a lot more individual agency with the latter portion of their wages than the former portion.
People do say similar things about video games and Starbucks. "A cup of coffee per day" is often used as a barometer when charities want you to donate to them.
It's not a bad question though. Someone who wants space exploration should think about that question and be able to answer it in a meaningful way.
Much of the problem being identified here is not a matter of waste, but rather a question of taste. I read a very good biography of Kafka by Reiner Stach that described how dominant literary culture was in Prague at the time. Writing seemed closer to contemporary athletics. Bankers, businesspeople, and upwardly mobile people often encouraged their kids to be writers first, and practical secondarily. The endpoint for sports is more obvious than the endpoint of writing, or music, and even especially game design, but a culture-wide appreciation and perception of the medium in question could better triage candidates for cultural survival. Does the author of this newsletter also think there are too many pick-up basketball games vis a vis potholes? I agree with others that have made the point that this has more to do with the lower barrier of entry to market.
Our culture is dominated by those entities that can make massive capital investments and industrialize culture. For a variety of complicated reasons, I would point this out as the issue. It is rather the successful entities, and not the apparent failures, that produce the problem of over saturation. I am forgetting the name of the movement, but contemporaneous with Schubert's lifetime, there was a kind of at home arts movement. The bourgeois were still not spending their free time filling potholes, but no one was aspiring to a salaried post in the grand facade of entities with immense capital reserves and an industrialized capacity to influence culture. If we were less atomized and a greater appreciation of our cultural expression was common, I believe it would be easier to come to grips with talent, or our lack thereof. It is no sin to lack talent. It only makes talent all the more incredible.
There's been a lot of rumbling for the past decade or so, mostly from misguided indie developers, that there are "too many games", as if there was ever a time when marketing a game was easy.
There are a lot of games. Bad games. Boring games. Unoriginal games. Half-assed games.
You know what there isn't an excess of? Great games. Games which serve particular niches really well. The "colony sim" genre has enjoyed a bit of a renaissance since RimWorld proved you can have a big niche hit without replicating the entirety of Dwarf Fortress' detailed simulation - but there still aren't a ton of interesting games in the genre, such that even a highly derivative game like Going Medieval gets a ton of interest.
And that's just one niche! There are many others. Make a game you love, make it great, and you can probably succeed. Don't make boring crap that nobody wants to play.
Oh wow, that's a depressing read but the guy might be right.
We as society highly value art and artists and celebrities. But we don't value helping random fellow citizens that we've never met. The result is that people are eager to make art, but you won't find a similar level of motivation for repairing infrastructure or playing taxes to enable repairs.
But if our infrastructure gets bad enough, life becomes frustrating for everyone. And genuinely helping others might be more fulfilling than making art that nobody cares about. So I'd support the conclusion that we need less people making art alone and more people helping others.
I think this argument falls flat because for some things (mostly digital, or even interactive, like games) people are more likely to publish them.
I bet for every published indie game there are 50 paintings or drawings someone made and has not published - or musical performances not even recorded. I don't see anyone complaining about those. It's kinda like telling people what not to do in their free time. And I am 100% sure not all of those games mentioned were made as a way to make money or NOT in the creators' free time. Maybe they have aspirations to professionalize, but that's not the point.
Because you can? I don't necessarily disagree that there's too many videogames, but of all the things to get upset about, too many video games is really at the bottom of the list of things to get upset about.
Later in his post, he generalized to all media but keeps the details video game specific.
Basically, I feel like his point is that we've put creators, of all forms of media, on such a high pedestal that we're neglecting the mundane things that keep life running smoothly.
Basically, a job/career version of social media making us all lonelier, I guess. Everyone wants to be a creator like everyone wants to be an influencer...
Or maybe just the barriers to entry have significantly fallen. I remember making stupid games on my C64 back in the day, the difference was I didn't have a way to get it to people beyond my immediate family and friends.
Couple low barriers to distribution with a culture that encourages constant hustling for money and this is what you get.
"Writing a game nobody plays discharges your energy and creates the feeling of achievement, but it's all empty calories and then your car falls into a sinkhole."
I love this quote. However, the correct interpretation is not that too many people are making (or playing) games, but that too few people get any sense of achievement from the stuff they get paid for. My trick is to spend some creative energy on optimsing my shitty job. Then at least I get the sense of achievement AND get the crap work done quicker. (I kid. My job isn't that bad. Mostly.)
Video game tooling got good enough that the velocity increased massively from 20 years ago where companies were writing their own engines. There might be more folks working in games, but it's probably not the sole reason for the increased output. The team size for indie games shrunk dramatically while quality simultaneously went up due to tooling improvements.
There's lots of supporting work for assets and logic that can be plugged in to game engines. Even when you need your own stuff, there's other forums to get that work as needed. This is distributed and shared work now instead of being under one studio roof. Plus the tools for producing that stuff probably got better too. The efficiencies are compounding.
There's also been success with much simpler visual styles (Stardew), meaning not as much work needs to go into 3D modeling and advanced stuff like that. The worlds you play in now didn't necessarily have to get bigger either. Again, Stardew switches screens like old RPGs. It didn't seek to render a bigger world than games that came before it.
Same for the distribution platforms. You no longer need a slow corporate entity to handle making physical disks and shipping them worldwide. This lowers the barrier of entry by a lot when combined with the previous gains.
This author got used to the incremental graphics and technical improvements being marketed by game companies and thought that's how it always would be. That part still exists, but it's just in a much more crowded space these days.
[+] [-] a_t48|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] a_t48|4 years ago|reply
1. burnout, as someone else pointed out.
2. a very good troll :)
3. A somewhat poorly guided but honest attempt to dissuade people from joining the games industry (possibly mixed with 1.)
As someone who started their career in games and left - he's not wrong. The games industry is kind of shit. It doesn't pay well, the hours suck, and you might work for months or years on something that either never sees the light of day or nobody ends up playing (not to mention that in the beginning you're somewhat replaceable, there's a dozen young developers who would love to be in your shoes) - and this is just the life of a salaried game dev - the indie life is even harder.
...on the other hand, the projects and problems are interesting/unique and the people in it are some of the most wonderful I've ever met. I miss shipping games, even though I bailed out of my own volition. I don't blame anyone for wanting to join, especially as a young developer.
I remember at the age of 19 or so being asked (paraphrased) "why the hell would you want to do that?" by an ex-Bungie developer (and now good friend, even if we haven't chatted for a while) when I said I wanted to join the games industry. For better or worse I persevered, showed him I had some potential as an engineer and eventually he helped me get some interviews and a job. But I'd ask the same question of any young developer who came my way hoping to get in.
So I guess I agree with what the author is trying to say (the games industry is full-up! are you sure you want to try and squeeze in?), even if I don't agree with words he's using to say it.
[+] [-] erulabs|4 years ago|reply
I feel like the author makes it fairly clear: those with enough privilege. If the cost of living goes to zero, we'll have near-infinite art. If the cost of living goes to maximum we all starve to death.
At very least, I was very much in love with a free-living artist who inspired me greatly in my 20s. I moved to San Francisco to hangout with her and her amazingly cool and smart friends - living on couches and doing art. I felt like a sell-out that I couldn't make it in that world and got a "real job". I found out later that she had several million dollars to her name in her early 20s. I somehow had missed the implication of her text "stopping by my dads house in the Marina, be there in a minute".
When you find out that most free-living artists have financial backing - well, the rose-tinted glasses come off quick.
That said, props to any actually desperate-artists out there. I tend to think it's a bit of a mythic trope, but I'm sure some do exist.
[+] [-] meristohm|4 years ago|reply
I’ve been escaping into videogame-land during most of my free time (I’m a homemaker & parent of a disabled kid), and while it’s helped me get along with my spouse (release valve, maybe?), it is not the healthiest solution in the long run. Okay for now, and I understand I have a lot of work yet to sync my real and ideal selves (where I know in the moment what I’m feeling and have agency to decide what to do next, rather than picking up the pieces later).
[+] [-] mitchdoogle|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] suifbwish|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neutronicus|4 years ago|reply
Which is of course fantastically unpopular and will never happen, so people will continue to brutally compete for who gets to make art instead of doing grunt work
[+] [-] scotty79|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Legion|4 years ago|reply
Author's conclusion: people are spending more time on pet creative projects.
Better conclusion: the barriers to distribution have fallen so low that pet projects which existed in the past but never left the bedroom are now available to the world.
What might have just sat on a DAT cassette or floppy disk in someone's closet many years ago now becomes an upload to streaming music catalogs or game services.
[+] [-] friedturkey|4 years ago|reply
Indie game devs are usually making things at home during their downtime. As far as I know, there’s no volunteer hobbyist bridge repair club, so they’re not really taking away from anything. Meanwhile you have companies that have an easily replaceable service like Slack selling for nearly 30 billion dollars. That’s what’s swallowing up money and consuming the time of people who’d otherwise be making something useful.
[+] [-] jbluepolarbear|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Mikeb85|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rejor121|4 years ago|reply
That said, part of the reason you don’t see them is because of licensing and certifications. And people don’t want to be responsible for peoples lives for free.
[+] [-] solarmist|4 years ago|reply
I guess it's a job/career version of "social media is making us all lonelier." Everyone wants to be a creator like everyone wants to be an influencer...
Okay, sure, but why are we doing that? I feel like it's something more fundamental that's gone off the rails. This is a form of society-wide coping mechanism until we can identify and try out solutions to whatever that fundamental issue is.
[+] [-] krapp|4 years ago|reply
Most artists work crushing hours in sweatshop conditions, or are constantly gigging on the razor's edge of subsistence, with what little value they produce going to expenses or middlemen. Then the internet decides everything they create should be free whether they like it or not. We value the companies that distribute art and put celebrities on a high pedestal, but that's a different thing than putting creators and artists themselves on a pedestal.
The reason no one is fixing potholes or bridges or whatever is the taxpayer doesn't want to pay for it. If the pothole isn't right in front of their driveway, or the bridge isn't on their commute, or their kid isn't going to that particular school, then people consider any taxes spent on it to be theft. We no longer have a society, we have millions of individuals that happen to share a landmass in common but little else.
[+] [-] derfnugget|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] v-erne|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Mikeb85|4 years ago|reply
This just strikes me as an incoherent rant from someone whose games obviously don't sell. IMO you can never have too much music, books, recipes, or games. Culture is important and as we get closer to a post-scarcity world people will expend less effort on survival and more on art and culture. Or space travel and technology that we don't need (but which we have to create because humans are curious).
[+] [-] dahdum|4 years ago|reply
If it's their free time, why should they spend that contributing towards fixing his bridges or maintaining his roads? Does the author do that? I know I don't, I just pay my taxes on my earnings like everyone else, occasionally volunteer, and do whatever I want in my free time.
I don't see the problem.
[+] [-] pessimizer|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] claudiulodro|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] musicale|4 years ago|reply
2. Making shoes these days means working in a sweatshop somewhere, which isn't an appealing dream.
3. Disney makes more money from music soundtracks than from shoes, so you can see which one they might want to promote.
4. Musicals are a popular animated film genre; shoe-icals, not so much.
[+] [-] ModernMech|4 years ago|reply
Here is the central thesis. There’s a lot to get through before you get to this.
[+] [-] HeckFeck|4 years ago|reply
But society will only be saved if you can unite the gamers, pool together your combined knowledge from playing too much games, and put it to use in productive tasks in the real world. All those hours levelling up in game skills, finally proven IRL.
And thus, the economy was saved.
[+] [-] solarmist|4 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30185251
[+] [-] kiba|4 years ago|reply
Instead of improving things we already have, we decided to move to the 'frontier', or worse, demolish perfectly good streets.
[+] [-] sorry_outta_gas|4 years ago|reply
computers are great creative outlets for selfexpression toying around with games isn't a bad thing
I also find the shoe making thing is a bit odd because for a lot of people it's a similar creative outlet.. for this person it's blogging
[+] [-] trixie_|4 years ago|reply
Why do people never say the same thing about all the money spent on video games and Starbucks? Which is arguably a lot more money.
[+] [-] rlayton2|4 years ago|reply
It's easier to criticize the actions of others than to take responsibility.
[+] [-] kiba|4 years ago|reply
From that perspective, it's no wonder why people think it's a waste of space, because they saw no meaningful purpose. Meanwhile, we're doing the opposite of terraforming Earth, by making it more unlivable everyday.
[+] [-] SllX|4 years ago|reply
Space research is usually funded with taxpayer money (this is changing, but a fair amount of SpaceX’s revenue is still NASA contracts). Games and Starbucks are funded by folks after-tax wages. In both cases it’s money that they earned, but they have a lot more individual agency with the latter portion of their wages than the former portion.
[+] [-] ModernMech|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mitchdoogle|4 years ago|reply
It's not a bad question though. Someone who wants space exploration should think about that question and be able to answer it in a meaningful way.
[+] [-] brailsafe|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blockwriter|4 years ago|reply
Our culture is dominated by those entities that can make massive capital investments and industrialize culture. For a variety of complicated reasons, I would point this out as the issue. It is rather the successful entities, and not the apparent failures, that produce the problem of over saturation. I am forgetting the name of the movement, but contemporaneous with Schubert's lifetime, there was a kind of at home arts movement. The bourgeois were still not spending their free time filling potholes, but no one was aspiring to a salaried post in the grand facade of entities with immense capital reserves and an industrialized capacity to influence culture. If we were less atomized and a greater appreciation of our cultural expression was common, I believe it would be easier to come to grips with talent, or our lack thereof. It is no sin to lack talent. It only makes talent all the more incredible.
[+] [-] TillE|4 years ago|reply
There are a lot of games. Bad games. Boring games. Unoriginal games. Half-assed games.
You know what there isn't an excess of? Great games. Games which serve particular niches really well. The "colony sim" genre has enjoyed a bit of a renaissance since RimWorld proved you can have a big niche hit without replicating the entirety of Dwarf Fortress' detailed simulation - but there still aren't a ton of interesting games in the genre, such that even a highly derivative game like Going Medieval gets a ton of interest.
And that's just one niche! There are many others. Make a game you love, make it great, and you can probably succeed. Don't make boring crap that nobody wants to play.
[+] [-] majewsky|4 years ago|reply
> The least popular pony is Applejack. She is also the only one who has a real job. This is, of course, a coincidence.
If you actually watched the show, you'd know that Rarity owns a nation-wide boutique franchise that is depicted as highly successful.
[+] [-] strken|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fxtentacle|4 years ago|reply
We as society highly value art and artists and celebrities. But we don't value helping random fellow citizens that we've never met. The result is that people are eager to make art, but you won't find a similar level of motivation for repairing infrastructure or playing taxes to enable repairs.
But if our infrastructure gets bad enough, life becomes frustrating for everyone. And genuinely helping others might be more fulfilling than making art that nobody cares about. So I'd support the conclusion that we need less people making art alone and more people helping others.
[+] [-] wink|4 years ago|reply
I bet for every published indie game there are 50 paintings or drawings someone made and has not published - or musical performances not even recorded. I don't see anyone complaining about those. It's kinda like telling people what not to do in their free time. And I am 100% sure not all of those games mentioned were made as a way to make money or NOT in the creators' free time. Maybe they have aspirations to professionalize, but that's not the point.
[+] [-] jdhn|4 years ago|reply
Because you can? I don't necessarily disagree that there's too many videogames, but of all the things to get upset about, too many video games is really at the bottom of the list of things to get upset about.
[+] [-] sk0g|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Melatonic|4 years ago|reply
Spoiler: The infrastructure is suffering because someone, somewhere, much higher up the food chain, is not willing to spend the money on it.
[+] [-] blinks|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] solarmist|4 years ago|reply
Later in his post, he generalized to all media but keeps the details video game specific.
Basically, I feel like his point is that we've put creators, of all forms of media, on such a high pedestal that we're neglecting the mundane things that keep life running smoothly.
Basically, a job/career version of social media making us all lonelier, I guess. Everyone wants to be a creator like everyone wants to be an influencer...
[+] [-] HeckFeck|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dvt|4 years ago|reply
> Spotify now gets over 60000 new songs a day. Amazon now has millions of books. My country has over 550 scripted TV shows in production.
It's a weird point to make, and not really supported properly.
[+] [-] IndexCardBox|4 years ago|reply
Couple low barriers to distribution with a culture that encourages constant hustling for money and this is what you get.
[+] [-] Krisjohn|4 years ago|reply
I love this quote. However, the correct interpretation is not that too many people are making (or playing) games, but that too few people get any sense of achievement from the stuff they get paid for. My trick is to spend some creative energy on optimsing my shitty job. Then at least I get the sense of achievement AND get the crap work done quicker. (I kid. My job isn't that bad. Mostly.)
[+] [-] vsareto|4 years ago|reply
Video game tooling got good enough that the velocity increased massively from 20 years ago where companies were writing their own engines. There might be more folks working in games, but it's probably not the sole reason for the increased output. The team size for indie games shrunk dramatically while quality simultaneously went up due to tooling improvements.
There's lots of supporting work for assets and logic that can be plugged in to game engines. Even when you need your own stuff, there's other forums to get that work as needed. This is distributed and shared work now instead of being under one studio roof. Plus the tools for producing that stuff probably got better too. The efficiencies are compounding.
There's also been success with much simpler visual styles (Stardew), meaning not as much work needs to go into 3D modeling and advanced stuff like that. The worlds you play in now didn't necessarily have to get bigger either. Again, Stardew switches screens like old RPGs. It didn't seek to render a bigger world than games that came before it.
Same for the distribution platforms. You no longer need a slow corporate entity to handle making physical disks and shipping them worldwide. This lowers the barrier of entry by a lot when combined with the previous gains.
This author got used to the incremental graphics and technical improvements being marketed by game companies and thought that's how it always would be. That part still exists, but it's just in a much more crowded space these days.