Done. Now lets bring this thread back on topic. 8-}
To bring the thread back around, given I’m feeling a touch happier today. It does mean that as an indie I’ve got SOME chance of gaining traction with an audience at least.
While I was watching the stream, I was reading the chat and you could see there were loads of people watching it and saying something along the lines of “oh this is just another counterstrike clone? if only someone would make a proper successor to Rainbow Six”. So I know there’s an audience out there who want a proper “tactical” fps game. My biggest challenge of course, aside from making said game, is to actually reach that audience. Knowing an audience exists and being able to reach them are two different things.
The thing is, there ARE gamers out there who want some of the gameplay experiences they used to. I guess older gamers who have a history of playing specific genres that have for some reason fallen out of fashion. I want to make games for them, for a small group of dedicated players who actually are a proper community.
Just to relate one anecdote here, back when I was working on the Worms games, in my “spare time” (yeah right) I was working on a Halflife mod called The Sherman Project. It was basically a remake of Rainbow Six for the Halflife engine. Things were going great until we lost our main character artist and things starting falling apart. Anyway, there was a strong enough community of players who wanted the R6 experience that a bunch of them got together and took what we’d started and finished a mod called Hostile Intent. The mod itself was pretty nice 
Now step forward more than ten years and there’s still a small community on facebook for Hostile Intent, people who enjoyed the experience, people who worked on it, people who supported the development.
THAT is what I want. I want to make games for people with that kind of loyalty. I want to make experiences for those kinds of players, not just some bunny hopping script kiddie with ADHD.
And Unreal Engine has helped me at least dream of doing that once again. So yeah, positive feels right now
I approach the audience dilemma from a different angle … I make games that I want to play … and hopefully there are people who will enjoy these games as much as my team and I do.
I am in the advantageous situation of not having to earn my bread-and-butter from making these games … but that might change in the future and I would have to re-evaluate what projects the team and I decide to develop.
For now however … we continue to focus on games that we want to play or are fun to play.
Kind of agree here, I just got my wrists slapped by engine while trying to be different.
Well at least it looked like that on first glance. But after looking deeper at core of all problems, i changed my mind.
For gimmick gameplay it is very hard to make rules that are fun. My idea was very limiting on many aspects of gameplay, while very cool if i could pull it off.
But I could not, so moment i decided to drop my very cool idea at core of gameplay everything started to work.
It looked like engine approved this new version, but i know it is not engine or epics fault.
They created engine with some set of assumptions for what it will be used. Moment you go for uncharted territory you need to code it all yourself.
Also you want engine to be good for everything and small, and preety etc.
It is simply impossible, epic was forced to made choices what unreal is for, and they made, they could not make engine for every possible game.
Having said that … they have given you the source code and the power to change it. It all depends on what you need it to do … if the engine doesn’t suit you and you can change it … change it … or try to find someone who can help you change it.
Not many engines out there with the quality of Unreal Engine … give you that option. 8-}
Thats along the line what I meant further up. There are games out there I absolutly love, of course indie games. And I heard of them because people liked them and not because they were hyped in a x-million-dollar campaign.
Up until quite recently it was quite hard for a single person or a small team to come up with what f.e. UE4 provides. No surprise, its developed through, how could one person do that? People telling they could develop a full engine alike all alone have an attitude problem in my opinion.
Now its a realistic option for small devs to range their game design from anything that has been past (like the 1992 style that I do like so much) up until the very lastest bag of rendering algorithms.
This is easy to explain.
In the 90’s gaming was a very small market, those of us who played videogames were considered “weirdos”. A minimalistic sidegroup in the Society.
But the marketplace continued expanding and games attracted people everywhere.
Now, in order to succed you need to follow the Law of supply and demand, and what people demand is that type of games.
Us that in the past were the market now we’re just a mere segment, who value depth and gameplay over everything else.
But there are still savvy folks who develop for this audience, and luckily they can reach more people than they would in the 90’s.
I think we are arriving to a similar breakthrough with HMD’s, those who get an Oculus or whatever will be the new “weirdos”, and it will grow until it becomes mainstream.
AAA publishers need to think of the bottom line, shareholders etc.
And in the end its the consumers fault for buying said products and/or believe the hype.
I’ve been caught out before 
We all have
That said, related directly to Rainbow Six not being very Rainbow Six like, may I point you in the direction of Ground Branch? 
Hehe… yeah I’ve been following your development. Things seem to be going well for you! 
I’m looking forward to playing the game! But from what you’ve shown, it looks like you’re going more for a simulation thing.
I’m just happy to beaver along with my game and not worry about it being “realistic” or having to be worried about gun nerds telling me the bullet drop on my weapon is wrong because a specific shell casing would have a different magnus effect
Did you see the new terrain stuff from GDC btw? I thought of Ground Branch when I saw it, thinking it would be almost like an ARMA sort of game. Without the wonky UI hopefully
Coming from an MMO genre, AAA publishers are listening to the vocal minority rather than the quiet majority. There is a reason why “grindy” MMO’s are hugely successful… the build on the human instinct of competition, cooperation to achieve goals, among other things.
Games that I have tried to play nowadays are… lame. Only 4-8 total skills, all player gear is essentially the same. Max level in a week, etc… etc… These are games designed for instant gratification rather than “working towards something”.