Everything I Said Was Wrong: Why Indie Is Different Now
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- Опубликовано: 9 апр 2017
- In this 2017 GDC session, Ubisoft's Liz England, indie designer Lisa Brown, Spryfox's Daniel Cook, and Vlambeer co-founder Rami Ismail break down why some of their older advice for starting indie developers hasn't held up, how they'd update that advice, and how developers can better think about giving advice to each other and interpret advice.
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Liz Englands talk is important. In nearly every field. Don't let people push you or your coworkers around. They will do that to the person after you . You are not momentarily worker that magically becomes a billionaire superstar. Keep up the solidarity :)
All advice is bad... but lack of perspective is worse. Damn.
I was wondering where he was going with his talk, and that bit opened it all up. That makes want to go back and re-watch every motivational presentation, every key note speech, every GDC video I've ever consumed with the angle of "This is Perspective" rather than "This is Advice." Great bit of information that I'll take with into my future info-tainment consumption. Glad I found this!
Yeah that was so insightful .
Powerful phrase indeed
What Liz says just nails it. Covering almost every reason i am still afraid of quitting my actual jobs and try to join the industry. Instead of doing so, i still work in my regular job 40 to 50 hours a week and develop games only in my spare time since years ... lots to think about here - especially for me when i see this video.
Lisa and Rami were like a one-two punch opening/closing combo of awesome.
GDC 2025: Why My Advice in the Bad Advice GDC was Bad Advice: Why Indie Is The Same Now.
Edit: well, damn. I highly recommend you watch this to the end.
Bad Advice Considered Harmful
It's nice when someone reminds 1st world that it's not that cool in other parts of the globe... Remi's part was great, also he is good speaker and that really makes listening much more enjoyable.
whats the sarcastic talk rami was talking about, that the devs with the vertical heirarchy showed him?
Who would have guessed that talking in absolutes and giving advice to people without even knowing their background and/or goals is a bad idea that eventually backfires...
I guess the main takeaway from this talk is: Even though there's a successful person on stage, not everything they say must be true -- or that they even did basic research on the things they're claiming.
From that perspective, I think this talk was very important.
This video is a perfect example of the survivorship bias.
Only Sith deal in absolutes.
You will try.
Doesn't even have to be a successful person - can just work for a successful company. There's loads of people who survive, even though they might not have a positive impact on the company or product.
whoa, Rami Ismail's talk was wicked potent.
"I didn't know you could have imposter syndrome for a talk about being bad at something."
i found a wild jabrils
Great talk, Rami especially. As someone that's also been making games for 20 years, I agree that nothing I could ever say to anyone may really even apply to someone starting today. My journey certainly hasn't been simple or easy, but it's been my own and I wouldn't trade it for anything.
To the GDC, Please, stop producing these exceptional talks. Due to this innate tendency of pressing play when a GDC talk is stumbled upon, I am having a tough time with getting work done around the house. Sheesh! This panel was wonderful and enlightening. Thank you for making and sharing these talks. 🌸
Just listen to them while doing your household chores 😉
You can use "don't recommend channel" in your recommended feed to stop them from showing up.
Not an option gyroninja
Everyone can paint. Everyone can try to sell paintings... Art is a social thing... the price of paintings is limited to that social thing.
Everyone seems to think just making games gets money. It's a lot more complicated...
Big Kudos for understanding we can be wrong, and knowing how to change.
I met Liz England at GDC in 2014. She looked at my portfolio and gave me some good advice, though I think she also gave me some of that advice that she's now saying she realizes is bad advice.
paradoxes aside this was pretty good. though i think the main message i got was "just make games" even though they each explicitly said that was bad advice...
TL;DL: In this industry, take 3-year-old advice with a grain of salt. Trouble is: it is 3 years later now. 🤔
Your analysis is wrong now too, 3 more years passed.
I am happy to have seen this before watching all GDC talks. A lot of listening time saved.
I really love those videos. Thanks to all the speakers!
Honestly that "just make a game" refutation hit me like a truck. I tried to get into game dev out of art school in 2012, so I was right in that group she referred to who were trying to break in right as the recession hit. I also had basically no game making know-how (my school's digital art program was focused on graphic design for print and 3D modeling for movie making), and little free time. The only resource I had were a few tenuous contacts in the local indie scene that I busted my ass to make, and they all just kept telling me, "just make a game," without ever approaching how one actually does such a thing. I'm sure they thought it was good advice, but it didn't help. After four years of floundering and service industry temp jobs I ended up going back to school and getting an engineering degree. And now I'm watching this video at work while I wait for a CAD file to process. Wonder where I'll be in another four years.
Maybe just start a little personal project for your own fulfillment other than monetary means, it could develop into something bigger/you use those skills for a company down the line. Idk, it's tough, lul. I'm currently working for a game company, yet all I wanna do is work on my own stuff when off the clock, hah (since the work I'm doing doesn't align with my genre interests) Hard to have energy for it, but... bit by bit wins the marathon, I guess.
It's called "post hoc ergo propter hoc" and it is insidious.
Solid demonstration of self awareness over time. Even outside of a game design context this is insightful.
Listen to everything. Take nothing as the gospel truth.
Preach it sister!
What was the sarcastic talk the company in the fourth talk mistook as a serious one?
Rami is right, if you drop out of school in the Netherlands (University). You bet the state will go after your ass if you don't get your degree in a certain time frame. If you don't get your degree, you are basically a loan slave for the state for the next 30 years.
The good thing is that education is relatively cheap if you get your degree, as your first bachelor is state funded.
That first degree is also rarely appreciated for a wide variety of social and psychological reasons.
Rami is too real. I love that man. Great talks.
Keep making games...or don't...depends on what you can do...also don't listen to me...damn, this is confusing af.
Rami basically made every GDC talk ever invalid.
Only if you take his word as gospel
True. What he said is yet another advice...so take it as you like :)
"Rami basically made every GDC talk ever invalid"
I don't think so, I think his bit (and this talk in general) was meant for the audience as much as it was for the 'advice givers'. There is an onus on the person receiving feedback or advice to process it and take it in a way that is sensible in the grand scheme of things regardless of the reputation of the person giving that advice, and that no one should draw an absolute conclusion from a single person's comment.
Rami has charisma, that's why his talks are fairly enjoyable. But yeah as Nicholas said, there's an onus on the listener to take advice for what it is. Personally I prefer to watch post-mortems the most, because then we hear the developers describe their experiences and from that the listener can draw their own conclusions.
Whereas advice is ultimately something that the speaker wants to present, it's packaged information, but doesn't necessarily represent reality. Also some advice givers just want to pontificate their ideas and don't even put them into practice.
So, take it for what it is.
Watching talks is also a way for people to get inspired to do their own projects. And in that case, no GDC talk is ever invalidated because as long as it can inspire someone it has value.
I enjoy postmortems myself most as well...they always present the good parts and shed light on the problems of developing a commercial game. I might not learn anything practical from them (at times) but I get the general idea of what might go wrong and what good my occur while doing certain things. Also they are things drawn from experience, not theory. (I said "things" because I didn't want to say "advice"...)
My last sentence in the original comment was sarcastic ofc...I didn't intend to bring down the importance of GDC talks because I LOVE GDC talks. I'm subscribed and will watch all of them as they come out. I'd watch them in person but you know...there's most of this huge globe called Earth between me and GDC. Would like to go there some day tho.
I've changed my mind about Rami Ismail, great talk.
great talks , liked the second one the most.
Kind of surprised that after a talk like that Liz England still works at Ubisoft
a lot of nice advices, thank you
Rami's section is a great cap to the panel but this is all very worthwhile to watch.
This is very refreshing, very good talk.
Rami is so good at giving talks
This has been the single most informative GDC presentation that I have ever seen.
Spryfox's Daniel Cook advice is great, before and after, really top notch.
Holy fuck the last speaker, Rami from Vlambeer is actually someone who used to go to the school I'm going to right now.
Rami, the school is still complete garbo.
Like we have a 3D teacher who thinks that people still do textures in Photoshop? It's literally so bad that I'm sharing my Gumroad account on which I semi-regularly purchase tutorials with any artist in my year who I get along with just to make sure that they at least learn something useful.
Rami is too real man. Love him.
Link to the sarcastical talk about virtual hirearchy referenced in the last talk?
So humble .. Nice talk !
Rami always motivates me ...
tip: Never thrust any news or article that has terms such as "videogames digital distribution" or "digital downloads".
I watched this whole video straight through and I didn’t find a lot of meaning I couldn’t derive from the first 10 minutes except for Rami’s portion. I’ve watched so many of Rami’s talks and livestreams, and I’ve had conversations with him at events, and he is so inspirational and insightful. It might be ignorant, and definitely ironic, but I view Rami as extremely wise. If you don’t feel like watching the full hour, go to 44:45 because whether you feel mind fucked or enlightened, it was pretty cool to listen to.
Dropping out may be the correct advice for that kid, there's no way that lady could know that he''ll "turn to drugs and die". Rami let him self get bullied by some Chinese lady because he threatened her livelihood.
the last talk was well-intentioned and cute but overly humble to a rhetorical fault, _obviously_ good advice exists... he specifically contradicted himself - in Africa, just because he gave bad advice at first doesn't mean good advice didn't exist, he just learned it afterwards
to be clear, his story about being in Africa was about learning the right advice, an instructor told him that when asked for advice on whether 'someone should stay in school', the correct answer is _always_ 'yes' because the other option is death, which is _never_ a better result
oh and I can't believe that lady ever gave the advice that building a game through committee was the best way... this is the plague that's ruined so many artistic endeavors
Great talk. It's a great analysis of what used to be true and what is true today.
Question Everything.
Everything?
Including this statement?
Damnit. I was hoping someone would reply with a simple "why?" and I would spring the trap and say back "why not? :^)", but nooo, you had to use a confirmatory questions first. Way to ruin my clever trap, you jerks. : (
I don't see how "why" is the obvious reply to your comment...
@Zavius Firerave: Coz I figured everyone knew about this iconic image:
i.imgur.com/fUcSxd5.jpg
@30min That is what is called synthetic happiness. Which is finding happiness for something that brings unhappiness.
Who would've guessed that motivational speech and absolutes are not great advices.
Rami is still great at talks
When will captions be available for this video?
disappointed that the first talk didn’t include the portmanteau “dependulum”
Lots of very important things thru out the video
"Group brainstorming is the ideal way to generate creative ideas"
Lmao, definitely glad she brought this one back to the middle of the pendulum.
I've always heard the opposite. A camel is a horse designed by committee.
That's a difference between brainstorming and decisionmaking. Brainstorming is just tossing ideas out there; decisionmaking involves filtering down to what you're actually going to use. Even if you just have one person who's ultimately making the decisions about what your game will include, one strong creative voice, it's good for that person to have a lot of options to choose from!
I hear you. I actually don't think there is anything wrong with brainstorming by committee, because sometimes you can get some really creative ideas, but you can also get some poor ideas as well. Either way, the decision-making needs to be handled by the smallest group of responsible individuals or head decision maker.
Its amazing how few people are aware of, or willing to entertain, the significant drawbacks that in-person interactions and group dynamics bring. There's loads of research showing that when you get people together, any sort of rational or merit-based goals go out the window. We're just not built for that. Introverts get quiet, aggressive extroverts or charismatic people get their way. Tall people get inherent advantages. Weird things like that. All of them work directly against any ability to be reasonable or to find the 'best' solution.
But we've got tools to deal with these things! Computers and the Internet! Those personal dynamics mostly disappear when people are not interacting face-to-face. They are still present to some degree, sure, but they are much more muted. And better systems can be built to improve on that. Want brainstorming and don't want introverts and meek people to be disadvantaged? Create a system where submissions are blinded or are hidden until every person has entered something, then revealing all to all and developing from there. If companies intentionally and consciously decided to build themselves to take advantage of technology and to acknowledge and use tech to work around our human weaknesses and flaws, they could be extremely successful.
Brainstorming is everyone shouting ideas. Design by committee is when you analyze every detail with quantitative research and make all of the decisions with those numbers.
Rami's speech was ridiculously eye-opening.
Make Games.
bottom line in this industry conventional knowledge is for chumps, and relevant advice is few and far between.
good to see youve learned
"Turns out when you put people together with other people, they do weird shit" 🤣🤣🤣
LOOVVVVEEDDDD Liz England's talk. So good.
That guy with the beard is awesome
On the other hand, if you tell someone something like "yeah drop out of school and learn on your own, it's fine"... chances are the person is shopping around asking people this same question until they hear what they want to hear.
Thanks, now I feel old having been a lead game designer in the industry for over 35 years LOL
As someone who came here long after the upload date, why the dislikes?
I loved this talk so much, I actually clapped when each person finished.
Well FML in working on a multiplayer game soon to use Amazon Web Services. I'm freaking out now. I never took this guys advice but still. I'm still doing it bc of the time invested. Hopefully I'll fail fast if I fail.
Maybe have it run other places?
Update? How was did you fail?
So basically, you should look at advice as a variable and not a constant
this is relativistic, agnostic, empathetic gospel. the last talk is just gospel. wanting to do the right thing, seeing you fail permanently. kudos for any attempt at verbalization of that
BRUH rami came so hard at the end they shoulda just made it 15 minutes lmaooo
I am a simple man; I see Nuclear Throne in the thumbnail, I click.
Laughed a bit at how all of this seemed like "bad advice givers anonymous". Advice giving rehab? :)
"So will you... ", it would slide if this was any other conference but - SO SHOULD YOU, SHOULD Liz. You little Warlock, you have to say it in Serbian for spell to work (you are fast, you saw what you wrote didn't you :D famous gamer perception).
I advise everyone to watch this so I can be in the next video.
What does super fast even mean???
What was with all the -ism? It's everywhere now.
Korvette88 the ism-schism
Should I listen to the advice in this video?
No and yes. It depends.
Listen to the advice, know that it is likely flawed, consider it as four prospectives to learn from.
strong finish
The best advice is to force the advisee to ask themselves questions.
For most things, people already know the answers to their questions. There's just something stopping them from accepting it.
That muslim guy rekt it, 5 stars excelent service
Every boss would like employees to sacrifice personal life for his company....
same goes for ted too
The last guy won the "this talk" award.
i wish there weren't a hundred game jams running at the same time these days. not only are there too many, but most of them have absolute garbage themes. or at least i wish there was a good way to filter the bad ones out.
Liz's advice has a bit of a different tone to it these days.
can somebody define "crunch" please.
Crunch time is referred to a period in the game development cycle where the team has to sit down and work overtime all the time to meat a certain deadline. For example, lets say you have a few days before you are supposed to present a prototype, but you are only halfway done, you then start crunching and working on it every spare minute you can just to get it done on time.
Thanks!
Liz England, thank you
Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.
Group brainstorming works it just takes competent conduction of the thought train. Imposter syndrome is a real issue, and some of those successful devs need to pop the bubble they live in. too many bad games and too much bad advice going on at the upper levels.
No, group brainstorming doesn't work. At least, it doesn't work if your intention is to find the best ideas. Because humans can not relate objectively when face to face. Charismatic or aggressive people will always have their ideas carry greater weight than shy, introverted people, and idea quality does not depend upon personality type.
Dustin Rodriguez
It does work, but it needs a specific team to work well, with the right people it can be the best tool out there, but with the wrong people it can be a shitshow.
No, wrong, the best type of brainstorming depends on the team and individuals involved in said team.
1:10 Gabe N. was right.
Praise our lord and savior.
He hath been working with the devil,
studying his every move and infiltrating his very essence.
He hath learned from it so that he might provide us the joy of both worlds.
For he is our one and only Gabe N.
May he provide you with the infrastructure and tools needed,
to perform gaming on Linux.
May he find the strength to provide support Linux and Proton
for years to come.
Amen.
Liz England has changed my perspective of Ubisoft, I didn't expect such humanity coming from on of there employees ;)
9:22
Her: It doesn't matter what language.
My brain: Sweet! There's this really cool esolang I wanted to check out.
Me: NO!
Great, now I am very confused.
@@andrew-v In my defense, this account used to be called something else, so that's a coincidence
trust yourself, the only voice worth listening to is in your own head
and it reppeats "grab the knife, grab the knife..."
perhaps its worth talking to a therapist about that
have a good imagination and dont give up.
Liz's talk hits different after the Ubisoft toxicity came to light.
crunching now..release tomorrow..gonna get some beer, but not to celebrate....
The Gaming industry changes fast? really? since when? in comparison the gaming industrie moves slower than a snail.
Can you please upload these on Facebook... Much love!!
Rami played lots of Among us before everyone
. That's was .
Wait what
Someone help.
😭
It Dependulums
"Should I drop out of _school_ ?"
*which* school?
android is linux. check mate
42:02 -- Good philosophy in general.
Lol, saying that you want to work to make sure that the problems that you faced aren't the problems that the next generation faces isn't actually a commitment to improving things, lol. Like, by that standard, you could make things substantially worse, and still fulfill that goal (the worse problems would be different). I mean, I know what she meant, but it seems like she put a lot of time and thought into her presentation, and it just seemed to me funny that she worded it that way. Saying that you are going to get rid of the status quo doesn't mean that you will improve things, and if you set that as your goal instead of focusing on improvement, you will likely find that you accidentally make things worse in a way you hadn't anticipated when you just set out to make radical change. But, I guess that fits with the theme of the talk: unintended consequences of not considering your words carefully enough, or how they might not be interpreted as you intended, lol. But again, I get her meaning, or at least what I assume is her meaning given context, and a more generous interpretation (she wants to improve things) than what it could be misinterpreted as meaning (she just wants change, not improvement). Anyway, the phrasing made me laugh, but I'm also a dork, so there is that.
Such valuable information, it’s such a SHAME GDC floor management didn’t replace that audio engineer.. 11 minutes in and feedback is so obnoxious you can’t even focus on what all this experience has to say. SMH. It’s a conference stage...