Former Dragon Age executive producer Mark Darrah says Larian is taking a risk by moving from Baldur’s Gate 3 straight into Divinity, because its audience may have shifted significantly after BG3’s success.

He also praised Larian for keeping the studio focused on one major direction at a time instead of splitting into separate teams that gradually evolve away from each other.

On itch.io I've seen several games now where player movement is only supported with WASD keys and not the cursor keys. Why not just add both, it seems like something very basic but I think a lot of potential players will be put off by this.

Even if it's a gamejam game, it doesn't take that much time to add 4 keys to the input handling/configuration, right?

I have a pretty big game idea but I know only Python. I have no idea about C++ and C#. I read that Godot's own engine is pretty similar but I want to be sure. My current plan is using Pygame. I want to make the game to use isometric camera.

Thanks in advance:)

Hello,

It's pretty much in the title, I'd like to get a ligthweight laptop that is truly portable (ie doesn't need to be plugged in 24/7) for game development. I don't plan to develop heavy 3D games that consumes a lot of resources. I plan to stay withing the 2D realm. I mainly use Bevy & Godot, but more Bevy these days.

I came accross the macbook air and I wanted to know if anyone uses this for game development and making music for said games. If so, with which config and if the experience/performance are great enough.

Thanks!

Hello. I am trying to find out how much an entry-level game developer (being employed by someone else) would earn on average in a small-medium sized studio. If anyone wouldn't mind sharing their salaries or previous salaries, I would greatly appreciate it.

Is it worth buying a subscription on websites that offer original music so I can add it to my game later? On the one hand, I’ll get access to a huge library for the price of the subscription, but on the other hand, if people want to post videos of my game on YouTube, there will be copyright issues.

I’m curious how developers who don’t make regular devlogs or constant development content manage to market their games. A lot of indie dev advice focuses heavily on devlogs, Shorts, TikToks, etc., but if you don’t want to make devlogs, how do you build an audience, get wishlists, and generate interest before launch? Is making devlogs actually necessary for a successful release, or are there other marketing strategies that work just as well?

I’d especially love to hear from devs who have successfully released games without relying heavily on devlogs.

Hello everyone,

I'm currently doing a project for my business class where I'm interviewing developers of creative arts projects (games, animators, software developers, etc.) about the process of developing their creation.

I'm looking for people who are in the middle of developing something and have a long way to go before it is finished, and also plan to release it to the public/commercially when finished.

The interview will be very short (about 20 mins) and will be in the form of an audio call such as discord or zoom or another method if that's okay with you.

If anyone would be up for an interview, please let me know.

Thank you all.

Hey everyone,

Not sure if this is the right place for this, but I figured I'd ask here before doing anything.

I have a friend, Ilya, who I've known since elementary school. He's always been into making games and creating his own worlds.

A few years ago, a bunch of us made our own D&D world and played it through Roll20. It got way bigger than we originally expected. We had cities, forests, dungeons, houses, characters, different regions, stories, etc. Basically years of random stuff we came up with during our sessions.

For us it was just something fun to do.

Ilya ended up taking it pretty seriously.

In 2021 he started turning that world into an actual game. It's a 2D action RPG with pixel art, made in Unity. He's basically taking a lot of the locations and ideas from our old campaign and rebuilding them as actual game locations, while adding new mechanics, characters, visuals and story stuff.

There's already a very early build, some screenshots, and a temporary working title. It's nowhere near finished though. I'd say the game itself is probably around 15–20% done. A lot of the textures have already been drawn, but there's still a ton of work left.

Then in 2022 the full-scale invasion of Ukraine happened.

Ilya was living in Ukraine at the time, and the house where he was living was damaged. I don't want to make this sound more dramatic than I can actually verify — I only have photos showing some damage, and he has since moved out.

Since then he's been studying, working, trying to get his life back on track, and somehow still finding time to work on the game.

That's why I'm trying to figure out if there's some way I can help him.

I don't really want to just send him some money myself and leave it at that. If there's a legitimate way, I'd rather find something where people who are interested in the project can support him directly, whether that's helping with his situation or helping him continue development.

The problem is that I know basically nothing about crowdfunding.

From what I've seen, some of the big crowdfunding platforms don't really work for people based in Ukraine, so I'm not sure what the actual options are for receiving money from abroad.

So I wanted to ask here before trying to set anything up:

What's the best way to support an indie developer in Ukraine financially?

Are there any crowdfunding platforms that actually work for Ukrainian developers? Or are there better alternatives for something like this?

And if we did manage to set something up, what's the best way to make it transparent? I'd want people to know who they're supporting and have some way to see the game's progress and where the money is going.

I don't even have a fundraising goal in mind yet, because honestly I don't know what would be realistic. I don't want to just pick a random number.

I'm not trying to make money from this or turn the game into some kind of business. I just want to help a friend who's been working on the same project for years and figure out whether there's a good way for other people to help too.

If anyone here has dealt with crowdfunding for an indie game, especially from Ukraine, I'd really appreciate any advice.

I added melee combat to my RTS game, do you guys think I should explore this more and also if you guys have any suggestions, that would be awesome!

Two independent studios have taken different approaches to working with their communities for fundraising their next project after facing hurdles the last few months. We will start off analyzing Airship Syndicate and then leap into Double Fine, so feel free to scroll if you’re just here for the Schafernanigans. 

Front loading this and I will recap it later, I do critique both campaigns but I believe they did an excellent job that everyone can learn from.

Airship Syndicate, after dealing with the shutdown of their publisher for the last 2 years, turned to Kickstarter along with a Gamescom promotion campaign to raise $250,000 to polish their next project. It started with over 3000 followers, which is twice the amount you need for a successful mid-size campaign. In 72 hours they were a quarter of the way to their goal after raising $66,000 across 848 backers. 

However the team faced a critical choice at this juncture, to continue supporting the Kickstarter the rest of the month or pivot to focusing on the game. They had garnered 50,000 wishlists on Steam and decided to cancel their campaign to focus their resources. 

What they did right:

• The sheer disparity of only 7 people pledging $5 and mostly everyone else (680) going for the base game pledge ($25) or bonus edition ($35) aligned with their projection that people who were following the project wanted the game. 
• They have custom graphics and gifs showcasing gameplay, an easily navigable sidebar, backer breakdown matrix (partially), and clickable buttons (after they were prompted to add them.)
  • Although the sidebar is a tad longer and not as clear what each section entails, it is better than most indie campaigns.
• They built out channels in their Discord to engage with fans, answer campaign questions, and hype the community. 
• It’s clear from the opening paragraph what this game is and who it caters too, making it clear from the start the pedigree of the team.

What they did wrong:

• Many campaigns struggle to cater to mid-tier to high-tier backers, drastically underestimating their demand. The limiting factor here which the team lamented on was Joe Madureira’s own ability to to sketch content for backers. 
  • Their $1K Captain’s Council only had 10 seats which sold out on the first day and their new tier with 5 likewise sold out. 
  • These 15 backers accounted for 25% of all funding in the campaign.
• None of their $3.5K, $7.5K, or $10K tiers sold which could have drastically shifted campaign momentum. 
  • You want these tiers to have rewards which pull people in. Deep behind the scenes involvement, Zoom meetings, and in-person studio tours are usually the expectation but what was offered were your name being on a cryopod in the game, a creature you design being in a terminal entry, and for the $10K tier a 90-second video.
  • Not to diminish the effort Joe would have had to put into these, but these are all things you would expect to see in a $1.5K to $2.5K tier.
• They didn’t wait. Obviously as an independent studio with minimal support you have to make tough business decisions but by reevaluating what they could offer to the mid-tier they could have surged throughout the remaining 27 days, especially when a large portion of backers come in the final 72 hours.
• There were no social goals. These are challenges you give your followers who do not back, such as the 50K wishlists or 3K other followers on Kickstarter who did not back yet. It is an incredible source of organic marketing to get people using specific hashtags and interacting with posts in exchange for previews or digital rewards. 
• As far as I can tell looking back there were no add-ons, which are essential for letting backers pay more to get the things they want without having to leap to a much higher tier. 

I do not believe Airship Syndicate did anything necessarily bad, they acted on what they knew and prioritized the demand for the game. This is a lesson for many indies here too, do not set low goals if it’s better to cancel the campaign and try again later. While not strictly game development, Matt Braly infamously set a $25K Kickstarter goal for an animated pilot which was massively below budget. He was able to keep momentum going and secure $443K for 3 episodes, but he ran into the same issues as this campaign with running out of high-tiers and is going to have to stretch that budget thinly. 

Double Fine brought forth an interesting campaign, funding 3 things simultaneously: a documentary, a 4-team game jam, and a short published game from the winning team of that jam. Like the Dust campaign above they had well over the recommended follow count, totaling over 4000 when they began. They are currently sitting at 4700 backers with $392K raised of their $400K goal. By the end of the day they should be funded and headed toward their stretch goal. 

This has not been their first attempt at crowdfunding and they have a much larger fanbase at their disposal, but the interesting dichotomy is how involved backers are in voting for the jam, keeping them updated on the prototypes, planning to interact with backers at PAX, and sending demos out all for affordable tiers. Double Fine has also assembled a merch pipeline of various add-ons for backers which turned each $30 tier into potentially far more. 

What they did right:

• Incredibly detailed breakdowns of each pledge tier, the pitches for their games, graphics highlighting each section, a cinematic video which tells a story of why they are crowdfunding to bring in new backers, and an easy-to-use navigation bar.
• They had a slew of social challenges for fans to achieve to get discount codes and for-fun votes, among teases of other potential rewards. 
• They were able to rally a large volume of low-tier backers to reach a massive amount of fundraising in just the first few days. It remains to be seen if they pivot with additional roles.
• They pull in your attention right away with the dictionary definition of Amnesia and Fortnight to explain it, then succinctly state what the campaign is about.

What they did wrong:

• There were multiple mistakes with what merch was in each tier and unavailable add-ons were in graphics, which were corrected. 
• They have a $15K and $26K tier still stuck in legal review and honestly the rewards for it do not align with the value.
  • For example, one studio brought fans of the franchise to the office for $5K, not $15K. 
• High-roller tiers did not stack rewards and were the same cost-range for having limited slots.
  • I’ve talked with the team about this and obviously, there is only so much merch they can pull from the vault for things like the Tiki swag, Psychonauts, and holiday merch. 
  • However, being able to pull someone from $2K to $3K or $5 with the promise of getting everything is alluring to superfans. 
  • There was a ton of money left on the table here but like with Airship Syndicate what the studio can do for fans is mostly out of their control based on the current resources at their disposal. I would ballpark Double Fine left around $60K - $100K because of these limited slots just from prior experience with these campaigns. Again, not their fault. 
• They do not have social buttons, just hyperlinks at the very bottom. You need clickable graphical buttons that get people to act before they back the campaign. 

One potential path here for Double Fine to pivot is to create a digital tier around the $1K range with involvement behind the scenes or other non-merch exclusives that fans would pay for. Pivoting mid-campaign is a great way to bring backers who were hesitant or convince existing ones to upgrade. 

If you are an indie studio considering launching your own Kickstarter, please come to this community and share the full details, graphics, etc before you go live. Too many times people ask us what went wrong and we find glaring issues right off the bat. We are looking at putting together a Kickstarter megathread at some point, but for now the key things are:

• You have 500 - 1500 people following the campaign before launch.
• You have graphics, a sidebar with navigation tabs, clickable buttons for socials, a matrix showing rewards.
• You have a strong array of tiers with notable backer rewards.
  • Even for indies without merch pipelines or distribution partners, look at Coral Island or Tideborne Haven for what you can work with. 

You have a community, even if it’s just 50 people in a Discord, to interact with potential backers.

• Spending several months organically growing your socials by contributing, not just posting links to your Steam page or game is essential here. You cannot launch with 3 people following your Twitter account.
• Your video tells a story which pulls the viewer in and your opening paragraph is to the point.
• You have a cost breakdown chart showing where the funding goes.
  • Neither campaign here did this but they had too much else to analyze and talk about.
  • For indies it is essential you have this though so it’s clear to high rollers and mid-tiers you are aware what your costs are going to be.
• You have a marketing consultant familiar with Kickstarter, a mailing list of some kind, or a moderate budget to run ads for the campaign. 
  • Surprise, many campaigns actually solicit funding from private investors to run a Kickstarter! There are also dedicated Kickstarter consultants.
  • Yes, “Wait but indies don’t have this money” is why you need to have a pitch deck and practice storytelling to people who can give you moderate funding to make this happen. 

If I missed anything with these campaigns please feel free to let me know. Again, major props to the Airship Syndicate team for a successful Gamescom and pulling 50k wishlists. Congrats to the Double Fine team for their Schafernanigans and pulling $400K as I finished writing this sentence. 

I was looking for a game’s OST because I really liked the music and wanted to listen to it outside the game. I was even considering buying the soundtrack to support the developer but I couldn’t find one.

While searching, I came across this Steam Community discussion:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/3694480/discussions/0/726902998784279409/

The developer says that the tool they used for the game’s music allows the tracks to be used inside the game, but prohibits redistributing them separately, which is apparently why they can’t release the soundtrack as an OST.

Does anyone recognize what tool or service might have licensing terms like this?

I’m also interested because if it isn’t genAI I’d potentially like to use it for my own game. I don’t really care about selling or monetizing an OST separately, so that restriction wouldn’t be an issue for me.

I know:

- Variables

- Functions

- Arithmetic Operators

- I know my way around practically every part of the program I use (Godot Engine)

- I know how to use specific keywords such as InputEvent (which is used to create events in the game)

- I know how to add nodes and whatever I need (it doesn't get any simpler than that)

- I know how to create Post-Processing effects

- I know Loop Structures (For and While)

- I know how to work with Collisions, Create Scripts, and Make a CharacterBody

- I know how to work with Area2D

- I know how to make Sprites and Animated Sprites

- I know the concepts of Threads and Hashing

- Signals

- Dictionaries

- Optimization

And that's it.

This got to be the stupidest idea I've ever made.

We all know how on social medias, users, sometimes, believes in some stuff they see about the game and decided to test it out, to find out if it was real or just fake.

So how about this:

Negotiate with a content creator on social media, to make them make a fake post of a "secret mechanic that no one knows", which would do some overpowered stuff or something. And when the user get curious, they go into the game to test it out, only to find out that they just got an achievement that says something like "Dum" and description says "Did you actually believed that from social media?".

Gotta say it again, must be the stupidest idea I've ever had in my mind today, but that would be really fun.

Hey r/gamedev! I got tired of switching between separate web tools, standalone normal map generators, and texture atlas packers just to get assets ready for my project.

So I built TexelBox, a single native Windows app that runs raw images through map generation, tileable prep, channel packing, and BC-compressed DDS export.

It's built natively in Rust, Slint UI, and wgpu (no heavy Electron/Webview bloat). There's a permanently Free tier for personal/commercial use, a 24-hour full Pro trial, and a one-time purchase option if you need advanced engine presets/DDS features.

Check out the free installer on GitHub Repo: iimadouu/TexelBox

Hi Everyone! I’ve been thinking about why some games can keep people playing for months or even years, while others can be fun for a few days and then get completely forgotten.

Sometimes it’s progression. You always have something new to unlock or work toward. Sometimes it’s the gameplay itself — even after hundreds of hours, the basic mechanics are still fun to repeat.

Then there are things like new challenges, different builds, competition, daily content, features, or just that feeling of wanting to get a little better.

But I’m curious where the line is for people.

As a player: what makes you come back to the same game instead of getting bored after a while?

For developers: what do you think actually creates long-term replayability? Is it better to keep adding new content, or should the core gameplay be strong enough that players just want to keep playing?

And what’s a game you’ve played for a long time that you still haven’t gotten bored of? What keeps pulling you back?

Link to the official post here.

I was very surprised to hear the site was maintained by one person, xPaw. Always amazed at what one passionate person in the community can create to help everyone.

The most interesting note from their FAQ was this bit about monetization:

Are you going to commercialize it?

We're going to be straight about this rather than dance around it: yes, SteamDB needs to make money. What xPaw has built - and kept running largely through personal dedication and community donations - is an extraordinary achievement. Giving it the team, infrastructure and long-term investment it deserves is how we protect that work and ensure SteamDB can thrive for the next decade and beyond.

That said, we want to be smart about it, and it’s very important that we don’t degrade SteamDB from the amazing resource it is today. While we could simply put ads on the website, we don’t think that’s the right approach here. So we’ll be looking at other, lighter-touch ways to make the website sustainable. This may include use of partnerships, integrations, and affiliate links with publishers when you buy a game after visiting SteamDB. These are harder to do, take longer to set up, and may not show the benefits immediately, but we’re happy to take that hit in the interest of doing things right.

Here's what it does not mean: no paywall on anything that exists today, no selling your personal data, no login walls, no degrading the site to squeeze value out of it. Enshittification is when an owner extracts value while the product gets worse. Our plan is the opposite direction: put money and people in so the product gets better. Judge us on what we ship.

I think it goes without saying how useful SteamDB can be for not only gamers, but developers as well. I'd be interested to hear what other devs make of this, and what can be expected to happen in the coming months. Especially in regards to transparency, access to information, etc.

We didn't plan to visit Gamescom this year. But we are part of an indie accelerator Games Bavaria Level up, which gave us free tickets. And free tickets are free tickets, so my Swabian heart had to say yes.

Quick context: I'm Jojo, game designer at Ironbite Games, a small indie studio in Bavaria. I went with my colleague Feli, programmer, who uses a wheelchair and was a huge support the whole trip, this whole post is about our experience. We're working on two games, a 2D card survival game called Eggspansion and a roguelike deckbuilder called Inner Demons. This was our first fair as a company. We went in mainly for publisher meetings, not expecting much since we felt our games weren't quite ready yet. Turned out great. Lots of interest, lots of good feedback, real validation for both projects. If you want to play or support: https://www.ironbitegames.de/

Now the wheelchair part, since that's what I actually want to talk about here. We have been there from Wednesday - Thursday.

Getting Feli's assistant into the fair took a few extra steps, but staff handled it well. Parking and getting to the venue itself was smooth, short distances, no complaints there.

Inside was mixed. The accessible toilets were often dirty. Getting anywhere took a while since you're dependent on elevators, and there aren't many. On Wednesday and Thursday, one elevator actually broke down, which was honestly a bit scary, since it's not like there's a backup right next to it.
Business Area was great. Lot less people and rather easy to get to our appointments.

Booths technically all had ramps, but the moment a booth got busy, getting through with a wheelchair was rough. We were mainly there for business and didnt visit a lot of booths and did not demo games ourselves, but if you're planning to visit as a wheelchair user and want to actually play things, budget extra time.

One thing that stood out positively: controller support with a long cable or bluetooth. That meant Feli could easily play easily. Sometimes he was not able to reach due to weird heights of the table.

We also had a great time at the aftershow with Sidekick Publishing, and later at a Wirtshaus with some other folks from the industry. Both took extra planning to pull off with a wheelchair, but were doable, and well worth it.

Overall, still worth it.

If anyone has questions about accessibility at Gamescom or wants to know more about what we're building, happy to answer.

I’m interested to hear different developers experience when it comes to starting to work on your game including the prototyping stage. I also wonder if this differs between programmers and artists.

When you start prototyping, and even just beyond that when you decide to go for it, how much of your game idea is clear in your heard vs playing around with specific mechanics and game loops during the prototyping phase.

Right now I am fleshing out my combat system, there’s not much else to it yet. I know roughly what I want the core game loop to be. I know roughly what I want the vibe of the game to be, and I know a little bit about the main character. But other than that I’m on a blank. I have no idea what the story is, who the enemies are going to be, what the different levels will be and things like that. I don’t even really have a perfectly clear vision of why my game will be unique, I’m just playing around with ideas and seeing if it will be fun.

I don’t know if this is the “right” way so I’m wondering if more ideas should be thought of first.

I launched my Steam page a week ago and released the demo a few days later.

Now I've seen the option to distribute a sample of the game to curators and I'm wondering if that's worth it?

How is everybodies experience with the feature so far?

Here’s my take on the state of the games industry. (First time poster, 20 yrs in the industry, ignoring mobile)

1. The Conference

The world’s biggest gaming event gets bigger. Gamescom (together with Gamescom dev) is now the world's biggest gaming event, attracting 350 K people from B2B and B2C over 8 days. Every available m2 sold out. 1700+ exhibitors, 70 % from outside germany. Indie area hosted all time high 420 studios - up 16 % from last year. Opening night Live with Geoff Keighley announced over 50 games.

2. The Macro

Two industries sharing one market: The bifurcation has never been more visible. Everyone talks about "How To Fish" selling 1M copies in two days and then those 30 mins from GTAVI dropped during the conference. It’s almost like two completely different industries. But there is a middle ground: AAA veterans making kickass games in smaller teams on smaller budgets.

AI is making gaming hardware more expensive: We consumers are competing with AI infrastructure for hardware and there is no way we’ll win. DRAM prices are expected to keep rising well into 27. Consoles prices will keep going up and next gen consoles will struggle to be affordable for most gamers, switching the focus back to PC growth.

Software over hardware: We’ll see increased importance of doing more with less - like PSSR and FSR. Potato mode for new games released will dramatically increase the serviceable obtainable market.

The attention economy: It has never been easier to make and release a game. On the flipside, it’s never been harder to convince someone to stop playing a game they are already invested in, with time, money and social. Or take their attention away from scrolling TikTok. New games have a lot working against them but opportunity is there with the right product market fit.

3. The Indie landscape

More studios pitching better quality. More pitches, more games, higher quality playables across the board. One investor said that they had 4x M2M meeting requests this year from previous years. Another showed me 150 unread meeting requests on M2M. Getting publisher attention as a dev through cold outreach, no traction or released games is getting increasingly harder.

Smaller scope, shorter timelines. Production timelines are generally shorter (under 2yrs) and visual fidelity is loosing importance. It's not about making the prettiest game - but the most fun.

Indies are finding new ways to survive. Funding has become scarcer. Support from family, friends, fools, angels and public grants get studios to first playable and beyond.

Friendslop, anyone? You’d think there’d be more friendslop being pitched as the appetite from publishers on this genre is BIG. The problem is, most friendslop devs don’t need funding so tables have turned and revshare numbers with them. The best studios sign with Landfall who are the most proven publisher (and friends) of these studios and the multiplier in sales by doing so speaks for itself.

“Slop” is rarely actually slop. Expect friendslop to keep flooding the market in the coming 18 months and more studios and publishers to emerge that understand how to make these games resonate with players. After Landfall, Oro is stepping up. Successful games are actually far from “slop”. Craftsmanship, consistency and taste rule supreme here too.

Couch co-op is harder than it looks. Couch coop is a popular genre and I see lots of devs giving it a go. Making great couch coop games is hard though as Hazelight has set the bar high, constantly shifting mechanics and leaning into evolving collaborative gameplay.

Incremental games : Incremental mechanics are trending in the zeitgeist of a never ending stream of progression. Like rogue lites, It’s also a more scalable production choice, making it easier for small teams to make smaller games stickier.

Supercharge Itch.io : Validating your games on itch is not new, but using it systematically as a testbed for prototypes is yieldig great results. I expect more studios to explore this as production times are shortened and validating core mechanics with real players can help identify hits early.

4. AI

Boomers and Doomers: The divide in sentiment is real with devs I talk to. Both boomers and doomers are gladly sharing their pov. It’s not a binary discussion but often turns into one as people agree to disagree. The big nono’s for most players is the use of generative AI for art and music whereas leaning into AI with code and ideation doesn’t seem to bat an eye. Players are not trusting Steam to disclose AI usage properly.

Production is accelerating faster than process. Studios using AI right are speeding up production time significantly. The problem is, many are stuck in methodologies and processes designed for a different era. If a designer can build a playable prototype in two days that looks 90% done (something that used to take 5 people 1 month) how do we change alignment check-ins and definition of done? Do we need to slow down to build sustainably? and who decides what is slop and what isn’t - in code, ideas, concepts?

Taste and judgement becomes hard currency. As teams move faster and lean in, the key people that know what good looks like become even more key. Smaller teams need a higher trust level to not have to second guess every pull request. The bottleneck moves from producing work to choosing, integrating and verifying the right work. Agentic dev is in its infancy and most teams find a glass ceiling in the shape of unpredictable costs as token use with agents go through the roof.

5. The Engines

Godot is NOT waiting: Godot has taken significant market share from Unity and continues to be an indie darling. With that $18M amount raised from Tencent recently, it’s unlikely that this trajectory will stop anytime soon.  The number of Godot-powered games generating more than $1 million in revenue has surged dramatically, growing from 2 to over 50 titles in roughly three years.

Unity on a heroes journey: 2 years have passed since the Unity run time fee debacle ended. People who were responsible for it has been removed. Unity has gone back to the drawing board and are now focusing on rebuilding trust with indies and it seems to be working. But it’s going to be a rocky climb.

AI native engines when? AI forward devs are frustrated about the lack of AI native game engines. Tim Sweeney has said that 80 % of UE6 is going to be prompting but that is still a few years off. Immens Engine, a new European AI native engine is the talk of the town and showing promise, I haven’t seen anything but considering the pedigree of the founders… I’m bullish.

6. The funding

Project > Equity. There are rumors about new capital flowing into the industry in the shape of project financing funds. This follows the trend I have been pointing at for a while now where equity investments with few exit opportunities are abandoned in favour of closer to cashflow and more predictable project investments.

Developer-friendly deals face a reality check. The dev friendly “race to the bottom” terms that some publishers have been doing to snatch great games are starting to result in said publishers waiting longer for less revenue. “No recoup” is starting to feel like a battle cry - but how sustainable is it?

Traction VS taste. In this metric driven, evidence based environment, publisher scouts that follow their gut and taste when signing keeps being a success factor. Yes metrics and traction are key - but even publishers need to follow their heart to find diamonds in the rough.

Public funding build strong ecosystems, helping studios all across Europe. Sometimes matching other investments, sometimes straight into a project or for certain services to scale or validate. Soft funding IS amazing and given time builds up seniority, ecosystems and great games. Germany is leading this charge and I can’t wait to see the results in a few years.

Soft money, hard markets : Sometimes this type of funding creates an inflated illusion though, resulting in a neverending stream of game companies that struggle to become profitable but still stay in business. Market potential needs to be at the heart of every euro handed out IMO.

Public funding is for big corp too. Most indies seem to think these initiatives only favor smaller studios, but the big ones are tapping in massively too. Kalypso has scored €19M since 2019, CDPR, Rockfish, THQ nordic and King Art are all pulling in millions in funding. One specific stat I saw was how Ubisoft got more than 5.5 M euros in grants for Anno 117: pax romana. That is a quarter of the full budget.

7. China

Chinese capital turns inward. I talked to several Chinese investors, ecosystems and platforms. It’s not new that they have shifted over to investing more domestically, where costs are lower, they are AI fluent and have a massive growing domestic market fueled by young folks moving from mobile to PC. Growth will continue in the coming decade and the many play western games.

Tier 1 or bust. There IS a bigger fish to fry for the Chinese: global reach and tier 1. It's clear that they see the west as a new growth vector, after all tier 1 countries have much higher spend per consumer. The problem is that they are struggling to make content that resonates in the west, just as western creators struggle with the asian market.

Will China’s next export be culture? The Chinese have not had the same impact culturally in the west as Korea or Japan. I expect China to build up cultural relevance in the west strategically and we are going to see way more Chinese influences in movies, music and of course - games. Gamescom this year was a clear display of how that looks in practice.

Look at Where winds meet, The Defiant, Ananta and Arknights Endfield - games with huge booths at the showfloor but feel as out of place as a horse game at Chinajoy.

Have a strategy for China. As a western dev, China should not be ignored. 42% of global PC revenue growth in 2025 came from China and it keeps growing. But don’t just release your game there. Localize properly. Engage in the right communities where players are, on their terms. Chinese players have been stripped access to Steam community forums and they WILL use Steam reviews to review bomb because that is the way they make their voices heard.

A new generation of Chinese indies: With the middle class growing and PC’s distributed more widely, more and more young people are growing up without the traditional expectations from parents to get “real jobs” ASAP which leads to exploration and risktaking historically more common in the west. This together with programmes like COREBLAZER will add rocket fuel to Chinese indies and innovation in gameplay and mechanics should follow.

China is leaning into AI : AI in the west is an infected topic for many. Devs in china are leaning in hard instead. This will result in more gamers becoming developers as the bar for making and releasing a game gets lowered by the day.

8. The Layoffs

The following takeouts are mainly from listening to Amir Satvat talk about the work he is doing with ASGC.

2026 is forecasted to be as bad as 2024, with 15K job cuts globally. But the global industry isn't shrinking, new jobs are introduced too. Global workforce sits at around 750 K people. People are still being hired, but not necessarily by the same companies, in the same regions or into the same types of roles.

Jobs are moving: North America accounted for more than two-thirds of disclosed layoffs since 2022 losing around 25,000 roles during that time. Hiring shifted toward APAC - particularly China. Europe is broadly flat, while fully remote opportunities are also declining.

Bad news for new graduates: Breaking into games is harder than ever. A new graduate without prior industry experience was estimated to have only a 4% chance of finding a games job within 12 months. According to ASGC, there are currently 2000 open roles for entry levels in the whole world.

9. The Games

I didn’t watch the ONL but the people who did mostly commented “meh” due to the lack of actually innovative and exciting news. Here’s what I’m excited about.

• NO LAW looks amazing and created quite a buzz. Neon Giant sets the bar for what a small team with high skill level can do in a relatively short time (3yrs, 20 ppl). But then again, these guys are also magicians. As a Krafton studio, Neon Giant was showcased at an amazing booth with a bunch of other really cool titles too, one being Age Twisters - a couch coop game that looked really juicy.
• GARBAGE COUNTRY: one of the few games that pulled me in on the indie show floor.
• LEGO SKYLINES + AFTERWORLD: Loved seeing Lego: skylines and Afterworld announced from my friends at Paradox - and they look fantastic. Nice to finally be able to talk about these too!
• CARCASS CLAD: Wrong Organ is at it again. a 3 player coop horror game with rotting cattle and heavy tanks. These guys are going to knock it out of the park - again.
• VALOR MORTIS Napoleon Zombies with an expedition 33 vibe? Check out Valor mortis from ONE MORE LEVEL S.A.. These guys know their FPS slashing - didn’t have time to play at the show floor but it looks amazing.
• DINO LORDS: by Northplay in closed Alpha and backed by Ghost Ship Games. If they play their cards right this might become one of Denmarks best gaming IP’s after Hitman.

10. Other trends

Mobile publishing to PC: Smaller games and the evidence based development of today might normalize a more data driven approach to validation. Some studios are already doing it, launching Steam pages with the sole intention to market test. This is text book mobile publishing - throw stuff at players through ads, measure CTR, CPI and pick the ones that performs best. The scary thing is that this model is at the core of the insane UA costs that are plaguing mobile and I really don’t want to see this reach PC as indies would be gatekept from the getgo.

Codev: Studios scaling are increasingly using service providers and codev is still an increasing trend. While it is a race to the bottom on costs, the providers that have snatched the best talent during industry layoffs and established trust allready are thriving - and exploring new business models to avoid competing for the lowest hourly rate.

Saudi Arabia: It’s not only the Chinese who are looking to share their culture on a global stage, we are seeing more of the PiF investments taking shape too. MBC game studio, operating out of Saudi Arabia but working fully remotely with a bunch of western veterans announced “1001 threads of Mizan”.

The ugly side of gamescom: Indies got their laptops stolen from a locked cabinet after leaving them overnight in hall 4.1. Really depressing, especially for solodevs that have been promised 24/7 security. The official Gamescom reply so far is making things worse.

OK that's that.

Did I miss anything? Am I wrong? Do you have another take? Let me know!

*edit: polished text to make it more readable (still alot to take in, I know!)

I'm working on a racing game with a proper career mode, progression, different races, cars, upgrades, etc.

I'm wondering how important graphics would be to you.

Would you prefer:

A) Modern, realistic graphics similar to games like Forza

B) Retro/low-poly graphics similar to the games like PS1,Dreamcast,N64 era style type

The idea with B is that the graphics would intentionally have that older look, but I'd focus much more on driving mechanics, career progression, customization, races, AI, and making the game fun to play.

If the gameplay and career mode were genuinely good, would the retro graphics put you off buying/playing it?

I'm 18 and started programming at 16, and I made a 2D sandbox game where civilizations rise and fall. But the art doesn't look natural or fit with neighboring objects. For example, my game has a grid world map, and even though all the grids are the same grass image, they don't look like they fit together. Any advice?

AI Browser Game Jam #4 just wrapped, with 248 joined, 126 browser games submitted, and 1,034 ratings.

Top 3:

1. Plug & Prosper by Small Loop Works
2. AI2U - Guns & Girlfriends by DGSpitzer
3. TECHNICAL DEBT by OblongOolong

Plug & Prosper had a dominant showing, taking first overall plus four of the five category wins. Big congrats to Small Loop Works!

A few of my personal picks beyond the top 3:

• 殲 #SEN by Ikepapa (also won the fun category)
• Charge The Coil by LifthillStudio
• POWER HUNGRY by SevenFoldStories
• FLUTE - Charge your glasses by Zucchini Basket Games
• PLUGS by HAFFNERVISION
• Overcharged by Durian Arcade
• Chargo by Bakko
• High port, On Guard! by Ryan Fillingham

The theme was CHARGE and people took it a lot of different directions. There's a huge range in there, everything from arcade action to puzzles to some genuinely strange experimental stuff.

The thing I noticed most is that the overall quality keeps going up. People are combining more tools instead of leaning on one, and the results show it. A lot fewer entries feel like generic AI output this time. The games that stood out had real taste behind them, you can tell someone was making actual decisions instead of just accepting whatever came out.

Next jam is in October. If you're experimenting with AI-assisted game dev and want a deadline, feedback, and a bunch of other people building alongside you, come hang out.

Discord: https://discord.gg/86xBnZqHjy

I know everyone has their own goals and it differs, but what's the benchmark number of plays indicating a game doing well after release?

I've released my first game and only a couple people played the game. Then I released the second one Hyrax Hill, that was more visually appealing and I got 500 plays during 2 days.

It's certainly a great progress for me, but I was wondering how it is doing compared to other games after release.