Hello, just wanted to share my story as a reminder with all the lay offs in the gaming industry, it has been terrible outside of it too. I’ve been working as an automation QA for a pretty decent software company and I was about to hit like 11 years on the job. Also on the side I’ve been trying to get my own indie game dev studio off the ground with releasing 3 small games in the past 3 years.

After saving for like 10 years and living in small rented apartments, last summer I finally managed to secure enough money so I can get a loan to buy my first apartment. After a year of dealing with contractors (yes, they are that slow!!!) I finally moved and was hoping to be able to focus my free time on my game again. However literally first Monday we have a meeting with a head of our department and they said we are practically being replaced with A.I. So around 60% of the company is gone across all offices in 3 different continents…

I guess my dream has always been to go full time game dev, it’s just I was hoping to be able to do it on my own terms and not kinda being forced into it. But with no real money coming in from my previous games I might not be able to make payments for the place I bought and spent most of my adult life saving for.

So now I guess I don’t have a choice but to go all in on my current game. If you want to check it out and leave feedback on how it looks or even wishlist, you can so here STEAM

Wish me luck guys and gals!

  • Luffy@lemmy.mlEnglish
    25·
    2 hours ago

    So let me get this straight: you say its not generated with AI, yet you include the fucking Prompt of ChatGPT?

    The translation:

    Heres the Translation into German. I have chosen a clinical, depressing tone (spoiler: it didn’t, its quite meta) to underline the tension and hard ethical content of your game.

    • Miaou@jlai.luEnglish
      8·
      2 hours ago

      You were not kidding lol. Also the case for Italian. Not for French and Spanish though. Not very consistent copy paste skills

    • Road_Warrior_10@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      38·
      1 hour ago

      This is just the translation on the Steam page it has nothing to do with the development of the game. Simple as.

      • Luffy@lemmy.mlEnglish
        6·
        1 hour ago

        Still, marketing is a part of the game, and also one of the easiest things to do without AI via deepl or something

        • boonhet@sopuli.xyzEnglish
          2·
          4 minutes ago

          without AI via deepl or something

          This deepl?

          Also note that Google Translate is AI too. It uses neural networks. Has for like a decade I believe.

          Really what it seems to me you’re saying is that nobody should use machine translations and one should always hire a translator for translating things into/from languages they don’t speak?

    • Road_Warrior_10@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      31·
      3 hours ago

      Right now it’s not. We will try to get there when it’s close to release and all other work is done.

  • Wispy2891@lemmy.worldEnglish
    31·
    3 hours ago

    I don’t like the genre but from the trailer it seems very interesting, good job 👍🏻

  • ExtraMedicated@lemmy.worldEnglish
    8·
    6 hours ago

    I got burned out developing business software and lost my job after 13 years. I’m lucky if my previous game makes $100 in a year at this point. So now I’m wondering at what point I’ll need to give up on my dream of being a full time indie game dev and start looking for a new job.

    • PalmTreeIsBestTree@lemmy.worldEnglish
      12·
      5 hours ago

      Start looking. It’s a very saturated market. Unless you can get some YouTubers or streamers to play your game then it’s not going to make much of anything.

  • MentalEdge@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    19·
    9 hours ago

    You may want to try to deliberately get away from the “unreal fivey” look.

    I like the underlying style but the strong reflections and resulting high contrast image really hits that “unreal five” look in a bad way, which I suspect will turn a lot of people off.

    It’s unfortunate but “indie unreal five game” is the new “steam asset flip”, in that it is something that makes people skip a game. It’s easy to slap realistic lightning into games now, so it has stopped being an indicator of quality, and slowly become the opposite.

    Try to find something that works with the games style that you can do to the shading or post processing that sets you apart.

    I might mute reflections a bit and add at least some grime and imperfections to surfaces. The cleanliness of surfaces together with unreals realistic lighting is a big part of the “indie unreal five” look.

  • Road_Warrior_10@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
    692·
    11 hours ago

    And the funny thing is, the company isn’t even doing bad. I found out from a friend who still works there that they are aiming for a sale at the end of the year, so effectively this is a way for them to pump up the stock. They will say their profits went up by 50-60%, but it didn’t come from more clients, but from not paying wages. And this way stock go up. Also same friend said they are struggling a lot with AI. It can be helpful with coding, but It can’t do everything, and they are literally asking it to do everything or at least hold long enough until the sale goes trough . Just greed… and hundreds of families put in a bad spot, so already rich people on top can make a lot of money fast instead of also a lot of money, but slower…

    • BougieBirdie@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      272·
      10 hours ago

      Well, on the bright side, at least this teaches you the real value of AI is that it tells people what products to avoid:

      image

      If it wasn’t AI it would be something else though. Working for the man always sucks.

      We will watch your career with great interest

        • jorm1s@sopuli.xyzEnglish
          7·
          3 hours ago

          If you really want to sell the no gen AI thing, you might want to consider cleaning up the steam page translations. For example the finnish translation contains these lines:

          Tässä on käännös suomeksi ilman pitkäviivaa:

          …

          Jos haluat, voin tehdä myös tiiviimmän ja myyvemmän version, joka sopii pelin kauppa- tai esittelytekstiin. Haluatko, että teen sen?

          which roughly translate to:

          Here’s a translation in finnish without a long line:

          …

          If you want, I can also make a more dense and a better selling version , which fits in a game’s store page or decription. Do you wan’t me to do it?

          Personally I don’t mind AI being used for the store page translations, and I can see how easy it is to make a mistakes like that, but maybe anyone reading that would get a slightly better impression of the game without those extra bits.

    • Wildmimic@anarchist.nexusEnglish
      17·
      10 hours ago

      I’ve been on the receiving end of “making the bride look good” for selling the company too, 3 times in my life. Either you still have a job but everything around you falls apart because there aren’t enough people to keep shit running, or you lose the job; both variants suck. I always was on the team “keeping my job”, but it also always ended with me fleeing as soon as i could because working conditions deteriorated fast.

      Wishlisted your game !

      • Road_Warrior_10@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
        1·
        4 hours ago

        Thank you! We actually had a few changes in ownership before, but it didn’t really impacted us. This time the current ownership got real greedy!

  • lyralycan@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    38·
    11 hours ago

    So many people’s lives are damaged by corporate decisions… Hope things look up, and that Steam excuse makes sense but damn that sucks.

    As for the game I love explorations into real-life fucked-up experiments! Will definitely be playing aha

    • Road_Warrior_10@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      6·
      11 hours ago

      Thank you! Yeah, like I said the company was already doing good and it’s not like people or on top were poor. Just pure greed

  • 0ndead@infosec.pubEnglish
    11·
    3 hours ago

    I have doubts about the legality of that Steam payment policy. Seems like grounds for a class action lawsuit.

  • GottaHaveFaith@fedia.io
    4·
    9 hours ago

    uuh I had the demo for your game already installed but still havent played it, maybe today…

    I was also inspired by the explosion of weird indie horror games to pick up Godot, but time is what it is, good luck!

  • viral.vegabond@piefed.socialEnglish
    9·
    11 hours ago

    That game looks good from the trailer! Great sinister vibes, and it kind of reminded me of portal a little bit with the omnipotent computer voice. That elevator music -was- pleasant! Lol