Like many of us, I've been hobbying away on some SaaS that wraps an LLM. But I often worry, isn't this just adding buttons to an LLM call? What's the real value here? Quick money grab and wait for copies? Or do my 20 years of saas and business development actually make my SaaS better then others?
Many of us have the exact same thought process. Related: I have heard indie game developers have stopped the traditional practice of updating a dev log as a form of marketing and community building because people will point their LLm at it and create your own game before you do
I have some strong feelings about this particular story (people point LLMs at your devlog)…
- Video devlogs were long a shitty way to make a community (I can explain this one in more detail, but in short, the tradeoff between opportunity cost and video quality is a Pareto curve that is bad at all points on the curve, if your goals include both “make game” and “build community for players with devlogs”, the way out is to drop one of those two requirements, either “make YouTube/Twitch/TikTok channel” replaces “make game”, or you build some other audience for your devlogs)
- Good devlogs don’t have that level of detail, to let people easily recreate games
- Most games can’t easily be replicated by LLMs, in short, the people who are good at steering LLMs like that are making their own games.
This is not the first time I heard this story. Sometimes it comes with the lamentation “back in the day people could build communities with devlogs” and no, that was generally not a good way to build communities. It was mostly good streams from YouTubers who were making the game in order to make YouTube content or it was mediocre streams from random devs. Throw in a few people who are famous game devs who choose to stream and get a big audience because they already have a community.
It doesn't need to recreate your game. It can still muddy your marketing and redden the ocean. Especially if someone is in the business of trying to front run an indie game, they don't need to be any where close to a full or good game to attempt to steal any mindshare your project had.
AFAICT this is a fear that some game developers have, that someone will steal their game and run with it, and the stories told are more repeated based on this shared fear than based on realistic scenarios. People repeat it because it’s a good story.
And yes, I’m aware of some situations like 0x10c and the like.
I frequent a couple of game development communities, and it's kind of hilarious that some people won't even talk about their general game concept for fear that others will steal their idea. Like wow, you're making another rogue deck-builder, I have to steal that!
The idea is not valuable, ideas are a dime a dozen. The actual value is in your implementation.
LLMs will generate. Taste continues to dictate what to keep/discard. (Note that taste can get you to good, but good won’t get you to money on its own)
It's still true for now. AI can't yet make a game with complex mechanics feel good to a human, although it can speed up a lot of the implementation.
neals · · focus · HN ↗
talloaktrees · · focus · HN ↗
klodolph · · focus · HN ↗
- Video devlogs were long a shitty way to make a community (I can explain this one in more detail, but in short, the tradeoff between opportunity cost and video quality is a Pareto curve that is bad at all points on the curve, if your goals include both “make game” and “build community for players with devlogs”, the way out is to drop one of those two requirements, either “make YouTube/Twitch/TikTok channel” replaces “make game”, or you build some other audience for your devlogs)
- Good devlogs don’t have that level of detail, to let people easily recreate games
- Most games can’t easily be replicated by LLMs, in short, the people who are good at steering LLMs like that are making their own games.
This is not the first time I heard this story. Sometimes it comes with the lamentation “back in the day people could build communities with devlogs” and no, that was generally not a good way to build communities. It was mostly good streams from YouTubers who were making the game in order to make YouTube content or it was mediocre streams from random devs. Throw in a few people who are famous game devs who choose to stream and get a big audience because they already have a community.
jayd16 · · focus · HN ↗
klodolph · · focus · HN ↗
AFAICT this is a fear that some game developers have, that someone will steal their game and run with it, and the stories told are more repeated based on this shared fear than based on realistic scenarios. People repeat it because it’s a good story.
And yes, I’m aware of some situations like 0x10c and the like.
ASalazarMX · · focus · HN ↗
The idea is not valuable, ideas are a dime a dozen. The actual value is in your implementation.
sashank_1509 · · focus · HN ↗
setr · · focus · HN ↗
jayd16 · · focus · HN ↗
There's no moat in an idea either so I guess it's down to marketing budget.
sampullman · · focus · HN ↗
ben_w · · focus · HN ↗
It requires discernment, taste, on the part of the user to be able to point the LLM at the weird parts that look wrong.
Even with that, the LLM can only fix most of, not all of, those rough edges.