Now I don't know how widespread the rule of Dredmor really is but I would call it a successful game if not an enterprising niche. I got to thinking "What would I feel like / do if I had a successful game?" then I thought "Let me ask other people!" so here I am following the second thought since I don't think the first will pan out. I'll work on it I promise.
Too much effort. But I would be very happy. Doesn't really make a difference to me however; I made a pile of money from RWT in online games. Stopped now mostly since the Indian government began looking at online transactions funny, when they found PayPal wasn't giving them their pound of flesh in taxes. In my defense it's very much in demand, especially with 13 y/o kids who don't want to spend time grinding their way to the top or just want to be 1337 and recognized. If you know by now the 'noob' never gets any recognition, not that it isn't their fault for being beggars 80% of the time "HI CAN U DONATE???" "HOW U GET THAT ARMER?!??" and so forth. Yeah, THAT's the market I tapped. It also stopped my family complaining about how useless a pastime my games were, for the record.
Massively rewarding, and not just the financial side, I would imagine. I mean, knowing I have thousands of people using my mods gives me the warm and fuzzies. Seeing a much larger project come to fruition would be much more satisfying.
There's all different kinds of success, and which one of those ways is most important to you will be personal. Furthermore, there are all sorts of levels of success. I've been a systems analyst and computer programmer, and I've had a few great successes that I take personal pride in. But the types of programs I'm talking about were NOT commercial programs, nor were they games, and in some cases, the only people who knew specifically about them were people I worked with, worked for, or worked for me. The types of challenges that I dealt with are not the same kinds of challenges that game programmers deal with. I was on salary (although my success often were reflected in raises, and in one job, bonuses). And I was treated very well for my successes in some cases. After one of my greatest successes, I was honored at a party by my co-workers (I got a lot of gag gifts and some non-gag gifts as well as a very nice plaque) and used my bonus money to take one of the best vacations of my life to Hawaii (which I sorely needed, having worked on the project for many hours of overtime including holidays and New Years Eve and no vacation for 2 or 3 years). And yet the only way most people outside of my department knew about my accomplishments was that things did not break, business was smooth, and so on. Some of the programming that I did, people only noticed when things DID NOT go well. Anyway, that's my story.
Oh one more thing, my team won an award for that same project from our parent company -- the first time they ever gave that award to a department that was outside of their direct jurisdiction -- they called it the "Tabasco award", and we actually were given bottles of Tabasco lol. Apparently they used our software documentation as an example to all of their other companies and made them follow our standards after that.
Well, it is what I want to do with my life, so I'd feel pretty damn good I think. Though I don't really want to lead the same extravagant, jetsetting lifestyle that I'm sure our good friends at GLG do - it isn't really success I want so much as to put forth what *I* find fun, something that is very much me in all facets, and let it find its' niche. As for what I'd do if it were successful? Probably sink the proceeds on a project even less likely to succeed just to say I did.
I'd be incredibly confused. It'd be really, really weird and I'd spend most of my days being creeped out, staring at walls, and taking huge quantities of horse tranquilizers. Er, wait.
Elated and satisfied. Is about as close as I could get. Though I dont realy know how much more satisfaction I would get beyond that sence of completion that drives me to want to make working programs, be they games or otherwise. As a programmer, games do have the advantage that people can appreciate what goes into them, as oppsed to things that other programmers (or people that work on software) can see the work that went into it while non-programmers only see the end result. Games in my opinion have that bit more satisfaction to them (kinda like chocolate chips in a chocolate cake, the cake is good without them but the chips add that extra bit of decadence to the experience), because of what you have learnt and how your skills have improved, so for me the satisfaction is less about the game being successful (other than the justification that I can make a living off it, and thus spend more time programming) and more about the process I've learnt in making a game.
da fuq did I just read? ........ never mind. Given the usual level of weirdness at any time from the Gaslamp devs, I should have bought it as par for the course. Have an unrelated rage comic:
