🗝️ Bosskey Newsletter 17 - KennyNL bullies Small Indie Dev, Talent Model collapse in games, Lethal Company 11 year success
# 🗝️ Bosskey Newsletter #3 Things: 1 🎮 Game news, 1 🔎 Interesting Find, 1 📱Social Post. Written by a Part Time Indie Game Dev
🎮 Game News
KennyNL bullies small dev into changing his game idea
Recently on Reddit I came across this post on KennyNL who used his X / Twitter followers to bully a small dev (Hacktic) making a similar game (Flora Corner) to his, which was a dress up room game. Soon the followers started to post on X acusing the dev Hacktic of copying and plagarism. This caused the developer game to get bad PR.
I feel that is is concerning and wonder if Game Genre, Style, Mechanics can be copyright? We are iterating on previous ideas, how far is it before its called plagarism? Both the Devs have spoken in private about the matter and it was settled.
Sometimes there is cases where two ideas result in the same output.
I am Not legal expert but it feels like it’s hard to innovate and make something unique if we cannot build upon what came before us.
Kenny’s Game Reference:
The developer went to the post to clarify about his game on reddit.
Anyway after a lot of back and forth the indie creator agreed to change the game style visuals.
Link to Reddit Post: https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/s/vPo72GB71H
📱Social Post
Talent Model collapse in games
Model Collapse in the Games Industry. A case of lack of Talent and Diversity that is in the Games Industry via Linkedin. Maybe that is why games are getting bland with recycled ideas?
Hey Game Developers... we have a serious talent problem that is leading to lower quality games and failed products. And its the fault of current "best practices" for hiring. Stay with me here:
In AI spaces there's a troubling issue called "model collapse." The idea is that as models create more and more content, they end up ingesting their own outputs (or the outputs of other AI models), which causes every subsequent generation to degrade in quality, accuracy, and diversity. They need outside, non-AI inputs to stay healthy.
How does that relate to sourcing development talent? Over the 21+ years of my career, I've seen studios require more and more hyperspecialization in their talent pools. AAA studios don't want to hire mobile game developers. Mobile studios don't want to hire AAA devs. You can't get a job making an FPS unless you've got ten years experience making FPS games. A potential hire has to LOVE the games your studio makes and they need to have played all the comps too or else they get flagged as "not passionate enough" to hire.
This is model collapse for the game industry. If you only hire your biggest fans to make games just like the ones you're already making, you aren't bringing enough new ideas to the table to avoid creating bland, same-y products that are likely to bore your potential audience. All of us can think of a big budget game from the last few years that was a soulless, boring cash grab made by some of the industry's most experienced talent.
If you ask any Star Wars fan what the very best Star Wars media we've gotten from the Disney era is, most of them will tell you its Rogue One and/or its spinoff series Andor. But the writer and showrunner for those is Tony Gilroy, who has said he's "not a big fan" of Star Wars. He just wanted to tell a really good story and wasn't concerned with jamming as much fan service as possible into his scripts. The game industry would have missed out on this kind of critical success because Gilroy would have been eliminated from the interview pool before he even got past the recruiter's initial screen. Instead, we keep plopping out turds like Rise of Skywalker that are so self referential and paint-by-numbers that they have nothing to say to their audience except "give us your money."
None of this means that experience and expertise are worthless, but it should make you reconsider how you're sourcing and screening candidates. You are getting less diverse talent with fewer new ideas and with so many of our colleagues searching for new jobs right now, you owe it to your studio and our industry to minimize the hyperspecialization nonsense. Consider hiring great people who can give you new perspectives. Balance your staff. It will be transformative for your products.
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7210936592700489728/
🔎 Interesting Finds
Lethal Company Game Dev Success which is Luck 11 years in the making. I remembered seeing this post on LinkedIn somewhere about how the indie developer has been making games for a decade before hitting success with Lethal Company.
Just reminds me to stick to something long enough hopefully you find success.
Other interesting Finds🔎
Got an email from Notorious Studio on their new game Legacy: Steel & Socery. Thought it was something to include as the studio was formed by ex blizzard devs. Looks like an action Fantasy RPG Game.
Wishlist on Steam here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2344320/Legacy_Steel__Sorcery/