If you ignore the advice I game in the first thesis I talked about in my previous newsletter, and happen to participate actively in social media, you will notice - like I did - that there are all kinds people calling themselves game developers. Do not make the mistake and think they are really game developers - at least not in the same sense one could define a video game developer during 80's or 90's.
Nowadays it is really important to identify and understand different groups, especially in social media. If you do not understand what groups they are, you cannot know what group do you belong to… and that could mean trouble. As we all know, our current culture feeds on “us against them” attitude, if someone is not with us, then he is an enemy. This guide will help you to understand who you can communicate with, and who is right and who is wrong.
This brings it to my 2nd thesis:
Understand the Evolution of Modern Game Developers
Before 2005 all game developers were hard working and skilled professionals, who had learned their skills through continuous decade-long self-improvement and learning for experience in a fierce struggle for excellence. Anyone who had not enough skills, or enough willpower to learn those skills, simply dropped out. There were no free game engines or ready-made game assets. You had to build your own engine - developing a game was practically synonymous with developing a game engine - and make your own assets. Alas, a modern "idea man" (a person with only an idea but no practical skills) had really hard times.
But this last decade is totally different. There are still people who have that 'oldschool pro' mentality, but nowadays they are a very small minority, unfortunately. Game developers have been evolved into a number of distinctive groups, which I call Wannabes, Idea Man, Hobby Developers, Pretenders, One Hit Wonders, Career Professionals, Old Pros and Outsiders.
Wannabes
Wannabes are perhaps most numerous, and they overwhelm all FB groups. Wannabes are persons who suddenly have decided that they want to be game developers, because it seems like an easy job to get lots of money and fame. Usually they think that after so many years of playing games, they understand what games are, and thus they can easily develop games. Often they have a really ingenious idea to start making a MMO game on their own, and they think it shouldn't take longer than a month or two of one developer's worktime. Unfortunately, they lack all skills and all the required experience and understanding to proceed much further. You will notice it from the fact, that it is usually a Herculean effort for them to even install the game engine. There are many clear behavior patterns in this group like
Not reading any documentation
Not reading any learning material provided by engines publisher
Barraging FB groups and forums with constant noob questions which anyone could find an answer just by looking at documentation
They mix assets from several projects without checking do those assets even function together
They assume that engine should be able to read their minds
They always blame either engine or the assets or other developers
They often ask "what is the best engine", "what is the best 3D tool" etc. because they think that the tool will somehow make you "the best developer".
If they seem something "cool" in social media, they immediately demand a tutorial
If you make such a tutorial, they demand the assets which they can copy-paste in their project.
If you give them such assets, they just blindly put it in their project, probably in wrong manner, and then they are whining and demanding that you should help to make everything work again.
They are always asking and looking for a mystical tutorial, that will give them AAA level mastery in 10 easy tricks in a couple of days.
They do not understand that to achieve mastery in some skills, it takes years, or a decade of constant learning and practice
They often take free assets, arrange them as a pretty scenery (this is really easy nowadays and demands no skills), then they post a picture of it in a FB group, where other wannabes are awed, give hundreds of like and comments like "cool!", "wow!" etc. For a wannabe this gives a (false) proof that he is a skilled game developer now.
As such they seem to be unable to develop any real skills because they lack patience, effort and self-criticism.
Ideaman
There is special breed of these Wannabes, that you may encounter occasionally. While usually wannabes are encountered as flocks (you can imagine a flock of seagulls, flapping their wings, screaming constantly, trying to snap some food from your hand, and dropping their guano everywhere) this special breed is seen alone. It is like a vulture, and it is called Ideaman. Ideaman is Wannabe that has evolved, in a way that he realized his lack of skills. But he still wants to be a famous and rich game developer, it is his destiny, this world should provide him that if he wants it.
These Ideaman persons lurk in FB groups and in every social media, looking out for those stupid enough to catch their lure. Usually they first make a post about their "ingenious and unique idea", and ask people to join the project. When they see persons who clearly have enough skills to really develop a game, they will contact him offering lucrative future developing an unique game that will generate millions. These persons can paint a pretty picture of something really big, and he is offering this unique opportunity just for you.
Well… he cannot pay any kind of salary now, but everything will be compensated when game is ready and millions just start to pour in after its success. Actually you should invest not only your skills and time, but some money too… but you will get all it back with interest. Of course, since the idea was his - and idea is the most important part of this - the Ideaman will take 80%, and rest is divided amongst others. You are a major idiot if you jump into this bandwagon.
Sooner or later Ideaman notices that no one reacts his post except with sarcastic comments. So, Ideaman changes his strategy and contacts directly anyone who posts something cool in the social media. Ideaman tries to convince you to join the project using the same arguments, and giving some cheesy and honeyed praise how your skills would be absolutely crucial to make the project successful. Of course, the benefits are the same - you will get paid handsomely when the game is launched and starts to generate millions.
Hobby Developers
It is inevitable that some of Wannabes evolve into another direction, acquiring real skills. They are able to develop simple features and perhaps package it into a game. However they miss the experience, self-criticism, originality and devotion to excellence. Thus, they become Hobby Developers. These people are quite happy developing their simple games. They usually have their own special communities where they worship some 30 year old pixel art games, and fanatically try to reproduce them.
Quite common characteristics of Hobby Developers are:
They are very community oriented
Most of their time is spent chatting and mingling with other hobby developers, less actually developing a game
They are very eager to participate in Game Jams
Their dialogue is filled with quotes from game media, books etc., and
generally there is a deep void of original thought in there.
Hobby Developers are quite harmless group, unlike Wannabes who are usually just annoying, and they seem quite positive. Do not let it lead you into false assumptions, like you could have a meaningful conversation with them. Oh no… they are always interested only in their special subject like retro pixel-art games, platform games or any other decades old nostalgic stuff. If you show them your project that uses latest 3D technology and genre-defying features, it is totally beyond their comprehension, they cannot see it, because their brains are totally hardwired to see only pixel-art or something similar.
Pretenders
Some people will stay as hobby developers, but there are always few who evolve - or devolve, depends on viewpoint - further to either Pretender or Career Professional. Pretenders are a group that seems much larger than it is in reality. This is due to the fact that they have no practical skills, and thus they do not do anything productive, so they have lots of time to generate lots of fuss about themselves especially in social media - that is why they seem to be everywhere, always organising some events, game jams, discussion panels, workshops. They organise things, but rarely develop anything by themselves.
Pretenders have their focus on their self-importance, gaining power in the community and industry, making themselves look important in the game development, without doing anything real work. They wear many guises, using fancy titles to hide the shallowness of their so called "work", like
Community consultant
Business consultant
Monetization manager
Community manager
Studio manager
Product owner
Producer
Creative manager
Social media content producer
Influencer
Advisor
Keynote speaker
Top Voice
Board member
Chairman of board
Pretenders just pretend to do something very meaningful work, but practically they are just live action roleplaying game development. They have two sandbox environments for this. First environment consists of game development studios, with heavy preference of start-up studios. Another environment consists of game development organisations and associations, and social media, of course. These are ideal environments to grow your importance, because no real skills are needed, and it is very rare that someone could call your bluff. Usually it is enough to just flex your social influence, and quite soon these Pretenders are chairmen or something else. Then they use their authority to organise rules and codes of conduct that all other game developers should follow.
Pretenders working in some studio have their own distinctive behavior patterns. They often have a totally insane idea that meetings and conferences are actual development work that pushes the project forward. They are always organising meetings, which are just a burden to others, because no one can do anything productive in a meeting. They seem to think that when they have presented their latest core loop or monetization scheme on PowerPoint, it is the same as done. They do not seem to understand that others have their hands full of coding, modeling, animation etc. Pretenders have only their slides, decks and Excel sheets. However, they often are eager to take all the credit for ideas and hard work done by other people.
Career Professionals
Career Professionals are another breed. For uninitiated they may seem like Old Pros, but there is a clear difference. Old Pros have their focus on making better games with better technology, and constant improvement of skills. Career Professionals may have quite high skills, but they are always more interested in their career. It is usual to see them hopping from one studio to another, and then again after a while to third etc. Often, they do not stay very long anywhere, because they have to improve their career, collect more accolades, titles, awards etc.
Usually their social media profile is filled with ex-AAA titles from several studios. It may sound impressive, but in reality it is very hollow world, where career, business and money mean everything. For Career Professional games are just a commodity to generate money, and more the better. Even awards are a mean to generate more money. That is why they have their network where they give awards to each other and their games, fooling consumers to think that those awards would really guarantee good quality.
One Hit Wonders
One Hit Wonders is a special group which sometimes evolves from Hobby Developers. This is a totally unpredictable and spontaneous event. These are developers who published their simple game… perhaps pixel art… and suddenly it started to sell very well or extremely well. This is always just pure stroke of luck. It just happened because… well… because stars were right. There probably were no big budget, no expensive marketing. It just simply went viral for reasons no one understands. These things just happen occasionally, but you cannot really plan them.
The problem for One Hit Wonder developer is that they do not understand, that their success was just luck, nothing else, it did not happen due to their superior planning or divine level skills, because there were none. However, One Hit Wonder started to believe that he is some kind of superior game designer. So, after that he tries to reproduce his commercial success with whatever happens to come into his mind.
Of course, it is very rare that such stroke of luck happens twice in a row, so they cannot understand why their new came flopped… "I am a genius designer, this cannot be"… The cause of this catastrophe has to be some outside force, because One Hit Wonder cannot believe that he himself would make any mistake. It has to the market situation or something else. Some One Hit Wonders may even start to develop conspiracy theories that there is group of envious or evil.
Truth is that if you want to reproduce your success, you should be able to really understand the reasons why you succeeded, all the details. You can do that only if you had a detailed plan from the start, and have not only succeeded, but failed too, several times, and you have always checked how each detail contributed to success or failure. Then you may have learned how you should do something if you want to achieve an other thing. Problem with luck is that you do not learn anything useful, but may stick to totally false beliefs of your own superiority. But One Hit Wonder never learns this, because he believes in his own genius, and trusts his intuition only.
Real Old Pro or New Old Pro
Real Old Pro types are like dinosaurs, they seem to belong to another era. Some of these have really started game development during 80's or 90's, but sometimes a Hobby Developer may suddenly develop an Old Pro -like attitude. Sometimes they found a new small studio, and intentionally try to keep it small, without unnecessary roles, and keep the focus on making interesting games.
There is another possibility how Old Pros appear. When Career Professional advances too much, he actually starts to devolve into a Pretender. This can happen accidentally when someone becomes a Lead, Manager or some other managerial role. Usually the lure of money and fame is too much, and devolution process proceeds beyond the point of No Return, and becomes irreversible. However, some Career Professionals notice this before it is too late, then detach themselves from the loop, and start developing games the way "like it used to be", thus becoming Old Pros.
However, it is not clear whether these could be considered a same group or not. Scholars are still debating on this matter, and a large number of them think that they should be divided into two separate classes: Old Pros and New Old Pros. Prominent game research departments in several universities have furious battles on this matter of utmost importance.
Outsiders
Then there are the Outsider developers. They are kind of a missing link in evolution tree. In many ways they are like Old Pros or Hobby Developers. These persons are often highly skilled generalists, who avoid other developers. They have their own view about development, and they are not interested what others think about them. They often avoid social media, and generally have low social interests, almost bordering a case of autism. Sometimes they can be cynical, or even pessimistic.
However, it was an early mistake in game research studies to label them as sociopaths holding some kind of grudge towards community. Later research found out that this was just a misinterpretation. They do no really care about game development community at all. They are not interested in gamedev societies, social media, meetings or conferences. They just put all their focus on their development of games and skills.
Game Scholars
Beyond those groups described above there is one group which is often encountered in this environment, namely Game Scholars. However their inclusion is problematic, because they float around in their own parallel universe, which does not really affect game development universe. Game Scholards are theoreticians, living in their Ivory Tower land. They spend all their time writing down theories about game design, game development, sociological and cultural issues in gaming. They are like many academic studies, having no practical use in game development. They have their own award systems. Usually they endorse highly some obscure games that no one really plays in real life. Thus, in this evolution tree, we can compare Game Scholars with elves, bogey man and other fairy tale creatures - we have heard tales about them, but no one has actually seen one.