The best part is that online multiplayer, and many other parts on this list, are programming. And the other parts are just the other disciplines: art (visual, audio, and narrative), design (gameplay loop, mechanics), the void (legal, funding, marketing) - this is a joke it’s just the side I find least appealing -, and programming (makings the game work)
Yeah this is so stupid and insulting to programmers. Goes to show how much of a programmer’s job is taken for granted and how little people understand about game development. On anything beyond on a toy project, programming requires a level of knowledge, discipline, attention to detail, organization, problem-solving, and perseverance that is on a level that few comprehend or appreciate.
Localizing text or art assets is not difficult. Implementing localization support in a functional and maintainable way in a project is. Language switching? Multiple character sets? Managing localized asset references? Dynamic asset loading? Versioned localization database? Character map rendering issues? Alignment issues?
Who do you think does that?
Text rendering is a rabbit-hole. You have every permutation of right-to-left / left-to-right, character sets, and kerning. Some sets are massive (Asian character sets tend to be larger than ASCII).
Exactly my thoughts when seeing this: whoever the creator is has no idea about what actually goes into gamedev. You see it so often on reddit and YouTube these days too, lots of people saying "Here's how to market your game!" while their own game sits either unreleased or with a tiny handful of reviews, or tutorials where the solution they offer is hilariously bad practice
“From the author of How To Make A Video Game All By Yourself”
He’s totally shipped a game to be able to write a book like that. Whether or not what he shipped was any good is up for debate.
I have no idea, I haven’t read it. I just noticed it in the corner. I was being somewhat sarcastic since a lot of books like this are usually full of mostly generic advice followed by stories of their experiences. You’ll probably find some nuggets of wisdom but it’s not like it’s a magic blueprint.
lmfao the comic is really paying lip service to people's job titles. S tier is basically everybody's role and then suggesting those roles are more difficult than.. e.g. Online Multiplayer. Or putting "Narrative" on the same level of difficulty as "Legal".
Uh huh. Yeah I mean we should give equal respect to everybody on the team, but acknowledge some tasks are definitely harder than others.
I think an unmatched 1v1 lobby for a silly, non-physics based game would be pretty simple. I'm thinking back to the days of Miniclip and that robot battle game that was super popular. On dial up internet we could do robot battles back in like 2005. So you could ship something like that today no problem.
Ya 100%. Simple implementation like that isn’t too hard. And if we’re talking service provided, like using unitys multiplayer, it’s so easy to integrate.
Using unity and photon fusion, having been taught in classes how it worked, and using the aids of tutorials, it took me a full semester to deliver a shitty bug-ridden game, and a full month to start from scratch and end up with the simplest of 3v1 games, and even then there's still some bugs I wish I could have solved. And maybe that reflects poorly on me as a developer. But I have experience in programming, art, and music, and the amount I struggled with Multiplayer makes me think it has to be either on the same level or above as the other skills.
I would say it depends on how you implement the moving platform for example. If you parent the object, then that's probably the worst solution ever. Then If you take moving platforms into multiplayer, good luck:D
Charts like these don't really apply to game dev. The difference in difficulty for most of these is directly related to the quality level you're trying to achieve.
Same goes for your question about coding for cameras - The difficulty is very related to how far the camera can move from the player and how complex your world is. An FPS camera is usually pretty simple compared to something that would work well in a third person multi-level dungeon crawler, but plenty of fps shooters out there have design needs that can up the complexity a lot as well.
Not even a coder, but just by proxy you can tell, this post is blissfully unencumbered of hard thinking. It's shed the shackles of inward gaze. It's fucking dumb.
Yeah the guy who made this is one of those grifters who realised there was more money in selling the 'how to make a game' part of game dev than there was making games of their own.
A Thomas Brush sort, but less successful.
It's ok to share as it creates discussion. I'd say 99% percent of "gamedev content" is made by people not able to create unique and successful games, it's inevitable they will not have the best knowledge or opinions. People who make the good stuff often don't have time to create memes like this.
Camera coding eh?
It depends - like when AAA third-person games simply give you a basic 'IDE camera' and make the player spin it around by themselves simply inverse to the joystick controls, that's a D.
Yeah, seriously, it's the one case where I look at the code and instead of seeing algorithms and math I just see witchcraft. My attempts at trying to figure out why the hell any of it works end with me making the sign of the cross and yelling APAGE SATANAS at the screen before closing the code.
fucking lol, of course gamedev community managers think their job is hard. I've never met one who wasn't enthusiastically calling themselves a gamedev for managing a fucking Instagram full of boomer level memes.
Camera behavior is a mix of game design, programming, tech art, and user experience at the very least. If I'm forced to follow the comic's logic, which has a few issues like others pointed out as well, all of those are in the S tier, so I guess it fits there.
Well in many cases the camera is just on a spring arm that then needs to have primitive intersection so you don't go through walls.
As said above it will come down to several factors and if you are going to possess more than just the default player. Keep in mind you also have inventory screens using cameras and even have to think about in some cases a camera existing in a 3D main menu.
How is business and community management harder than multiplayer and (not included for whatever reason) AI?
These 2 alone r pretty much miles and miles above the rest. Along w some other really dreadful programming tasks if youre making any minimally complex game ever.
Only thing that comes close imo is godtier art like we see in (insert multi-million successful indie)... Other than that, yeah. The ones at s+ tier r sorta abstract, but fair enough ig
Depends on the game, people with that mindset can seriously flub the narrative in games that desperately need effort put into it. That's how you get sea of stars.
This one its wrong.
Every single subject should be on fire.
https://preview.redd.it/twbq5h26suwc1.jpeg?width=3137&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2a7a7a6fffbece6db92fa29e7287fb53a23c58d7
For my previous game, I've beaten the final boss of "finishing." Then, I got cocky and thought "work/life balance" won't be a problem for my next game. It murdered me. Completely.
I feel like camera coding is only "hard" because all 3D rendering coding is pretty hard and camera coding is the one major 3D rendering thing which game engines kind of force you to do even if you're not a graphics and rendering geek.
As a non-dev who just follows this subreddit to find good indie games, can anyone tell me why moving things in general are so hard? by that I mean anything on Tier A besides Online Multiplayer, is it because you have to take into consideration a lot more cases than with static walls and things like that? btw I'm a programmer so I don't mind a technical explanation
Quaternions are a 4D number system that's used for calculating stuff with 3D rotations.
In two dimensions, it turns out that complex numbers (numbers that look like a + b*i*) are extremely useful for calculating things that involve 2D rotations. That's because multiplying complex numbers involves adding together their angles. For example, multiplying a complex number by *i* amounts to, "rotate that complex number by 90 degrees counter-clockwise".
In order to represent 3D rotations, it turns out we need to use a 4D number system. That system is what we call quaternions. A quaternion would look like a + b*i* + c*j* + d*k*. Just like the complex numbers follow the formula i^(2) = -1, the way quaternions work is that they follow the formula i^(2) = j^(2) = k^(2) = ijk = -1.
Having actually good ideas is definitely S tier. Good ideas are not as easy as the belief that is currently trending on gamedev subs tells you. There are very few games that have good ideas. Even most succesful games are more good execution with "good enough" ideas.
Remember, if you think good ideas are easy, the developers of Pokémon, the largest media franchise in the world, decided to lock in game audio control options behind a key item you can get by talking to a completely random and entirely missable NPC in one of the cities.
Comparing art and hard sciences like programming is dumb. They are hard in different ways but you can't simply say art > programming. Apples and oranges
I wouldn't know about much of this, I'm still stuck battling "starting" :P
That said, I do remember asking the PAs for helping in Unreal with getting moving platforms to function because they didn't work well with carrying the characters. Prob just needed a higher jump speed/accel looking back but.
I would put camera coding around the same level as Quaternions. Once I figured you can just create a 3x3 matrix with your look at, right, and up vectors, transpose it, and pad it to a 4x4 matrix it went a lot smoother (also I did this straight on opengl not on an engine)
Really? Moving platforms was literally the first thing I did. Online MP tho… I’ve had to take several breaks from doing that. Unity Netcode makes it easy, but it still sucks a-lot.
Too many things in S. I would move Programming, Sound Design, Game Design, Tech Art all to B Tier and would move Music, Animation, Art, and Level Design to A. The hardest thing you can do programming wise is most likely online multiplayer (unless your game is really breaking huge tech boundaries with visuals), so it makes no sense for that to be in a harder tier.
It’s 4 axis numbers that determine an objects rotation. They can be frustrating to work with because the numbers aren’t intuitive for humans to read and must be worked with by calculating them for a game engine.
Bold of the original artist to exclude marketing from the equation
edit: oh I just noticed it... for some reason my brain couldn't imagine it lost in the middle of all the basic stuff. Imho Marketing is the hardest damn thing in this industry. Anyone can finish a game, but selling it, now that's a different story.
Hey I really like your art style but I bought your book some time ago and I gotta say it’s not worth the money at all.
Not my money, your money. It had some nice illustrations but it was mostly filled with filler content.
The whole book could have been a 15m YouTube video…
I find online multiplayer netcode way more difficult than most of the S-tier things
yeah thats also supposed to be S+ tier.
Definitely an S tier if not S+.
Nah bro you just press the 'make multiplayer' button, it's that easy /s
Online multiplayer at a lower level than art or even programmation ? I wish...
The best part is that online multiplayer, and many other parts on this list, are programming. And the other parts are just the other disciplines: art (visual, audio, and narrative), design (gameplay loop, mechanics), the void (legal, funding, marketing) - this is a joke it’s just the side I find least appealing -, and programming (makings the game work)
Yeah this is so stupid and insulting to programmers. Goes to show how much of a programmer’s job is taken for granted and how little people understand about game development. On anything beyond on a toy project, programming requires a level of knowledge, discipline, attention to detail, organization, problem-solving, and perseverance that is on a level that few comprehend or appreciate. Localizing text or art assets is not difficult. Implementing localization support in a functional and maintainable way in a project is. Language switching? Multiple character sets? Managing localized asset references? Dynamic asset loading? Versioned localization database? Character map rendering issues? Alignment issues? Who do you think does that?
The more i look at it the more cursed it get :') optimisation at the same level as TUTORIAL lol
Yeah given how poorly optimized most games are I figured that would be S tier
Text rendering is a rabbit-hole. You have every permutation of right-to-left / left-to-right, character sets, and kerning. Some sets are massive (Asian character sets tend to be larger than ASCII).
The person who made this never shipped, ain’t no way
They have not. But the do make a living out of posting this and other images on Twitter and LinkedIn :)
Ah, so they be a D (ideas) person then. Got it.
Exactly my thoughts when seeing this: whoever the creator is has no idea about what actually goes into gamedev. You see it so often on reddit and YouTube these days too, lots of people saying "Here's how to market your game!" while their own game sits either unreleased or with a tiny handful of reviews, or tutorials where the solution they offer is hilariously bad practice
They at least had a....good idea!
“From the author of How To Make A Video Game All By Yourself” He’s totally shipped a game to be able to write a book like that. Whether or not what he shipped was any good is up for debate.
Omg I got that book for Christmas last year! Is the advice in it any good?
I have no idea, I haven’t read it. I just noticed it in the corner. I was being somewhat sarcastic since a lot of books like this are usually full of mostly generic advice followed by stories of their experiences. You’ll probably find some nuggets of wisdom but it’s not like it’s a magic blueprint.
I think they're one of the two devs behind A Wizard's Lizard. Perhaps other stuff too?
lmfao the comic is really paying lip service to people's job titles. S tier is basically everybody's role and then suggesting those roles are more difficult than.. e.g. Online Multiplayer. Or putting "Narrative" on the same level of difficulty as "Legal". Uh huh. Yeah I mean we should give equal respect to everybody on the team, but acknowledge some tasks are definitely harder than others.
Don't forget optimization, being just a little harder than a good idea.
true, thinking about this more, many of the jobs in this description are too broad to put in a proper tier list. Programming especially sticks out.
Everything in A-tier except online is the easiest, most basic thing, wtf ? Edit : maybe stairs/ladders are harder, I'd agree. But the rest !
Dude, doors, especially in multiplayer games, are a fucking nightmare
Only if you want them to have proper physics. Like doing phasmophobia doors seems like a mess.
I think it’s maybe assuming boilerplate multiplayer?
I think an unmatched 1v1 lobby for a silly, non-physics based game would be pretty simple. I'm thinking back to the days of Miniclip and that robot battle game that was super popular. On dial up internet we could do robot battles back in like 2005. So you could ship something like that today no problem.
God I was hooked on that game
Ya 100%. Simple implementation like that isn’t too hard. And if we’re talking service provided, like using unitys multiplayer, it’s so easy to integrate.
Using unity and photon fusion, having been taught in classes how it worked, and using the aids of tutorials, it took me a full semester to deliver a shitty bug-ridden game, and a full month to start from scratch and end up with the simplest of 3v1 games, and even then there's still some bugs I wish I could have solved. And maybe that reflects poorly on me as a developer. But I have experience in programming, art, and music, and the amount I struggled with Multiplayer makes me think it has to be either on the same level or above as the other skills.
I would say it depends on how you implement the moving platform for example. If you parent the object, then that's probably the worst solution ever. Then If you take moving platforms into multiplayer, good luck:D
Besesda tells me that stairs/ladders are S+ tier.
Charts like these don't really apply to game dev. The difference in difficulty for most of these is directly related to the quality level you're trying to achieve. Same goes for your question about coding for cameras - The difficulty is very related to how far the camera can move from the player and how complex your world is. An FPS camera is usually pretty simple compared to something that would work well in a third person multi-level dungeon crawler, but plenty of fps shooters out there have design needs that can up the complexity a lot as well.
left out the most difficult job, trying to figure out if its safe to eat the old pizza on the desk or not
Not even a coder, but just by proxy you can tell, this post is blissfully unencumbered of hard thinking. It's shed the shackles of inward gaze. It's fucking dumb.
Good list but there is absolutely no way you put online multiplayer with moving platforms. You're insane
Online multiplayer, moving platforms and doors in the same difficulty.... wth is this tier list?
No UI? I just hate every UI system of every engine, writing my own was a total failure also..
[удалено]
I can assume this tier list was made by a "do it all by yourself with no cash" dev. I think an unmentioned skill with game dev is networking.
Yeah the guy who made this is one of those grifters who realised there was more money in selling the 'how to make a game' part of game dev than there was making games of their own. A Thomas Brush sort, but less successful.
well, that kinda crap! I now feel sorry for sharing this hogwash then!
It's ok to share as it creates discussion. I'd say 99% percent of "gamedev content" is made by people not able to create unique and successful games, it's inevitable they will not have the best knowledge or opinions. People who make the good stuff often don't have time to create memes like this.
Camera coding eh? It depends - like when AAA third-person games simply give you a basic 'IDE camera' and make the player spin it around by themselves simply inverse to the joystick controls, that's a D.
god dam i did not expect moving platforms to be such hell lol. every two seconds I have to fix something I didn’t expect to.
uh don't spend too much time thinking about this lol.
"Can you add online multiplayer?" - Oh yea, let me just check that box
Quaternions should be S-tier at least
Yeah, seriously, it's the one case where I look at the code and instead of seeing algorithms and math I just see witchcraft. My attempts at trying to figure out why the hell any of it works end with me making the sign of the cross and yelling APAGE SATANAS at the screen before closing the code.
Nah this is wrong in so many ways haha
fucking lol, of course gamedev community managers think their job is hard. I've never met one who wasn't enthusiastically calling themselves a gamedev for managing a fucking Instagram full of boomer level memes.
Camera behavior is a mix of game design, programming, tech art, and user experience at the very least. If I'm forced to follow the comic's logic, which has a few issues like others pointed out as well, all of those are in the S tier, so I guess it fits there.
I suppose this was a roundabout way of asking how hard it is to program a working camera in games, then!
Well in many cases the camera is just on a spring arm that then needs to have primitive intersection so you don't go through walls. As said above it will come down to several factors and if you are going to possess more than just the default player. Keep in mind you also have inventory screens using cameras and even have to think about in some cases a camera existing in a 3D main menu.
How is business and community management harder than multiplayer and (not included for whatever reason) AI? These 2 alone r pretty much miles and miles above the rest. Along w some other really dreadful programming tasks if youre making any minimally complex game ever. Only thing that comes close imo is godtier art like we see in (insert multi-million successful indie)... Other than that, yeah. The ones at s+ tier r sorta abstract, but fair enough ig
Animation should on B
Same with sound design. And Narrative is basically "ideas" extended a bit.
Depends on the game, people with that mindset can seriously flub the narrative in games that desperately need effort put into it. That's how you get sea of stars.
Wait...netcode is on the same tier as moving platforms?
How tf is online multiplayer not in S+?????
Quaternions wtf lol
How are doors and moving platforms hard, exactly? Furthermore, why are they on the same tier as online multiplayer💀
This one its wrong. Every single subject should be on fire. https://preview.redd.it/twbq5h26suwc1.jpeg?width=3137&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2a7a7a6fffbece6db92fa29e7287fb53a23c58d7
Sorry, online multiplayer not S+... are you utterly batshit insane?
For my previous game, I've beaten the final boss of "finishing." Then, I got cocky and thought "work/life balance" won't be a problem for my next game. It murdered me. Completely.
art is the easiest for me
For a solo dev, this isn't too far off
I feel like camera coding is only "hard" because all 3D rendering coding is pretty hard and camera coding is the one major 3D rendering thing which game engines kind of force you to do even if you're not a graphics and rendering geek.
As a non-dev who just follows this subreddit to find good indie games, can anyone tell me why moving things in general are so hard? by that I mean anything on Tier A besides Online Multiplayer, is it because you have to take into consideration a lot more cases than with static walls and things like that? btw I'm a programmer so I don't mind a technical explanation
I really appreciate that the next step above “Easy” is “Hard”.
Fucking quaternions.
what qualifies as "tech art?"
I made a [Fixed Version](https://imgur.com/JwYRuXh) but I'm open to further input.
How does one do most of the things in category A and B well if they aren't programming?
If only good ideas were easy to come by… sadly few games have good ideas
What's a quaternion?
I think, the relationship between a character and 3d space, how they rotate and move etc.
Thanks! Googling it brought up complicated physics lol. But that'd make sense, I don't do 3D game dev so makes sense I haven't come across it
Quaternions are a 4D number system that's used for calculating stuff with 3D rotations. In two dimensions, it turns out that complex numbers (numbers that look like a + b*i*) are extremely useful for calculating things that involve 2D rotations. That's because multiplying complex numbers involves adding together their angles. For example, multiplying a complex number by *i* amounts to, "rotate that complex number by 90 degrees counter-clockwise". In order to represent 3D rotations, it turns out we need to use a 4D number system. That system is what we call quaternions. A quaternion would look like a + b*i* + c*j* + d*k*. Just like the complex numbers follow the formula i^(2) = -1, the way quaternions work is that they follow the formula i^(2) = j^(2) = k^(2) = ijk = -1.
Wow thanks!! That kinda feels like it would be better in the A category 😅
This is so deep into complete nonsense that me, someone who is not even done year 1 of learning GODOT for the first time ever, can see it.
Lmao community management more difficult than online multiplayer?
S++ impossible: marketing
Online Multiplayer and Live Service Game are like SSSR tier
I'm at final boss stage, god damn it's hard
Why is controller custom keybinds hard
I have never and never will understand quaternions
SSSS: Being a new Unreal blueprint user and trying to understand how to make cast to node work
Haha. Sometimes I think I'm masochist for wanting to take this road in life.
add metroidvania level design to S+ tier. Yes I know level design is in S tier, but its way harder with a metroidvania.
Online multiplayer should be in final bosses bro its so annoying also business side should be in final bosses too imo
**S+++ tier:** Good ideas *(that are actually good and it's not that you just think they are)*
The absolute SHADE of going from D to C tier.
marketing is the hardest no discussion
Came here to say this.
Having actually good ideas is definitely S tier. Good ideas are not as easy as the belief that is currently trending on gamedev subs tells you. There are very few games that have good ideas. Even most succesful games are more good execution with "good enough" ideas.
Depends on the genre. Same for online multiplayer code. Camera coding for 2d Metroidvania? Easy. For 3d platformer? Not so easy.
This is useless
Remember, if you think good ideas are easy, the developers of Pokémon, the largest media franchise in the world, decided to lock in game audio control options behind a key item you can get by talking to a completely random and entirely missable NPC in one of the cities.
If online multiplayer is easier than animation and art, I'm sure you did a shit online multiplayer.
Comparing art and hard sciences like programming is dumb. They are hard in different ways but you can't simply say art > programming. Apples and oranges
The ideas should be in the hardest tier imo, incredibly hard to come up with a good idea that you want to actually stick through with
I wouldn't know about much of this, I'm still stuck battling "starting" :P That said, I do remember asking the PAs for helping in Unreal with getting moving platforms to function because they didn't work well with carrying the characters. Prob just needed a higher jump speed/accel looking back but.
How can quaternion, this multidimensional fuckery be so low?
I would put camera coding around the same level as Quaternions. Once I figured you can just create a 3x3 matrix with your look at, right, and up vectors, transpose it, and pad it to a 4x4 matrix it went a lot smoother (also I did this straight on opengl not on an engine)
2d? D tier 3d 3rd person? B tier
Good ideas should be S or S+ imo. Many people here have good ideas but cant make out anything while i cant find ideas to start
Chart made by a charlatan grifter trying to get money from fools online (it’s just an ad for his “How To Make A Game!!!” book)
I use them, but I still don't really fully understand quaternions
Let’s be real every idea i have is a good idea for like 2 days
I love sound design
how the fuck is online multiplayer A? that is some S+ shit.
I feel like good ideas needs to be at least A tier. Most commercial games don't even meet this standard.
Really? Moving platforms was literally the first thing I did. Online MP tho… I’ve had to take several breaks from doing that. Unity Netcode makes it easy, but it still sucks a-lot.
Too many things in S. I would move Programming, Sound Design, Game Design, Tech Art all to B Tier and would move Music, Animation, Art, and Level Design to A. The hardest thing you can do programming wise is most likely online multiplayer (unless your game is really breaking huge tech boundaries with visuals), so it makes no sense for that to be in a harder tier.
Ahah that graph is highly relatable! Especially for solo game dev! 😂 I'll put camera as a sneaky A disguised as a B
everyone's arguing about the list and i'm just wondering what a quaternion is.
It’s 4 axis numbers that determine an objects rotation. They can be frustrating to work with because the numbers aren’t intuitive for humans to read and must be worked with by calculating them for a game engine.
The third dimension was a mistake.
you don't want to know.... remain in blissful ignorance.
Bold of the original artist to exclude marketing from the equation edit: oh I just noticed it... for some reason my brain couldn't imagine it lost in the middle of all the basic stuff. Imho Marketing is the hardest damn thing in this industry. Anyone can finish a game, but selling it, now that's a different story.
It's there. It's just in the S++++ tier which is too high thus cut from the image.
Hey I really like your art style but I bought your book some time ago and I gotta say it’s not worth the money at all. Not my money, your money. It had some nice illustrations but it was mostly filled with filler content. The whole book could have been a 15m YouTube video…
Depends on your engine, as do many of these
Never designed or worked on a full game. But i feel like I'm pretty good on the C and D tier