I see dead projects.... Thread

Creepy 6th sense kid aside, I is it me or are more projects biting the dust?

No, more and more people are trying to make games.

Making games is hard and time consuming, not everybody can handle it. And sometimes, life happens that prevents them from continuing.

Are you seeing more? Maybe. Are there more? Maybe. However, dead projects are far from a new thing. I've ranted before, but for as long as I remember visiting moddb, there have been many fan projects that announce, show some renders and concept art. Maybe have a tech demo showing some basic feature, and then dies.

Sure there are a lot of dead projects, everyday more and more people decide to give a shot to the gaming development but for most of them gets really hard, first of all because they don't even know where to start and the ones who actually start with something, never push the project to the very end.

The main reason is frustration rather then time or even "life commitments" I know this is sounding like a rant.
First of all only half the tutorials are actually visible in moddb , ill explain "groups" have in group tutorials and those are not always available from the main page tutorials sections.
Secondly you have a group of judgemental watchers that will undeniably make working on a project difficult doing things like mocking the developers all the way to creating a dogpile of abuse for their chosen victim developer.
Developers also have increased pressure to ensure legals are well met and tidy with nothing untoward in the modification.
Add on that to closed source games and lower access to any help not to mention the fact no ones going to get paid.
MODS don't make money unless they are extremely lucky and if you start a mod thinking you want to get paid for the work.. your only fooling yourself.
On the bright side..
some people stop making news rather then just stop work on their mod.. keeping people informed is hard work sometimes its better to just crack on with it.
How can people help ? I believe its very beneficial to have comments from interested people on your mod page , its cheers them up and spurs them onward.
Moddb could also look into why only 50% of its tutorials are showing up in the main tutorials listings, or at least ensure all mod makers know that some groups have separated tutorials listed and some processes are the same so therefore some tutorials for other game titles (eg half life) are just as suited for teaching you what's needed in another game (like angry birds) . (they both are games so tutorials for team management or bugs in beta testing will be entirely the same process )
Pushing a project wont get you far , commitment stems from your belief in your project therefore you either need to have lots of support from others or just be one very stubborn person.

The_splat wrote: The main reason is frustration rather then time or even "life commitments" I know this is sounding like a rant.
First of all only half the tutorials are actually visible in moddb , ill explain "groups" have in group tutorials and those are not always available from the main page tutorials sections.
Secondly you have a group of judgemental watchers that will undeniably make working on a project difficult doing things like mocking the developers all the way to creating a dogpile of abuse for their chosen victim developer.
Developers also have increased pressure to ensure legals are well met and tidy with nothing untoward in the modification.
Add on that to closed source games and lower access to any help not to mention the fact no ones going to get paid.
MODS don't make money unless they are extremely lucky and if you start a mod thinking you want to get paid for the work.. your only fooling yourself.
On the bright side..
some people stop making news rather then just stop work on their mod.. keeping people informed is hard work sometimes its better to just crack on with it.
How can people help ? I believe its very beneficial to have comments from interested people on your mod page , its cheers them up and spurs them onward.
Moddb could also look into why only 50% of its tutorials are showing up in the main tutorials listings, or at least ensure all mod makers know that some groups have separated tutorials listed and some processes are the same so therefore some tutorials for other game titles (eg half life) are just as suited for teaching you what's needed in another game (like angry birds) . (they both are games so tutorials for team management or bugs in beta testing will be entirely the same process )
Pushing a project wont get you far , commitment stems from your belief in your project therefore you either need to have lots of support from others or just be one very stubborn person.

That about sums it up,

But if I were to add to it I believe intimidation plays a large role, some projects just become to unwieldy.

Not to mention a lot of projects never end because they have no clear goals. I've seen lots of mods produce news for years and talk about how release is around the corner, and then go defunct. People have trouble deciding when they are done sometimes.

also one more things that's a factor computer crashes, virus or hard disk malfunction and poor backup procedures can and often do
make the best intent mod makers nightmares come true.. a year back one of my buddys lost his entire code and art library for his mod which was 1/3 the way through construction, it helped me be aware of the importance of backup and of cloud services like dropbox and googledrive.

The_splat wrote: also one more things that's a factor computer crashes, virus or hard disk malfunction and poor backup procedures can and often do
make the best intent mod makers nightmares come true.. a year back one of my buddys lost his entire code and art library for his mod which was 1/3 the way through construction, it helped me be aware of the importance of backup and of cloud services like dropbox and googledrive.

That happened to me as well. After months of development my computer crashed and I had no other choice but to reinstall Windows. I had no backups of the game's code, media or anything else... to have no backups was an extreme mistake.

Im not sure it's increasing: it has always been like this. Running a mod dev team is very hard for several reasons:

Running a game dev team online is very different from IRL, but it can be done with things like Skype meetings. But in general it is much harder for several reasons Im not going to go into. On top of this you have a team of people which skill level is exceptionally low compared to industry standards. It takes time to become a good programmer, 3d artist, designer, animator, level designer, technical artist, QA tester, etc. You will bump into many issues, such as lack of art direction, people leaving the team and no code being written for weeks, etc - the list goes on. Many teams underestimate the value of experienced team members and some doesnt even consider things such as production management, technical art, game design - ie the more abstract arts. Other teams dies out because their initial scope was gigantic. Most mod teams are plagued by the latter in some way or another.

Mod teams crash and burns for a billion more reasons.

Edited by: Nightshade

Starting a WIP, talking about it in a supportive community, modding and scripting, testing and experimenting, implementing new ideas, and most of all playtesting your own creation, is great fun. Sometimes, you just don't want the process to end.

MurDoc_Inc wrote: Making games is hard and time consuming, not everybody can handle it. And sometimes, life happens that prevents them from continuing.

Yes.

Many projects are one or two people doing something when their free time permits...when you look at a game like Fortnite, which it feels like I first heard about it at least 4 years ago...for about 2 years there was nothing, no news or anything, just that trailer...and that's a company of paid professionals working on the game for their day job...really, it's almost a miracle ANYTHING gets completed