– [Falcon] Gamers are an
enthusiastic and committed bunch
but some things take
just a little bit more.
Hi folks, it’s Falcon
and today on Gameranx,
10 things in video games that
require serious dedication.
Starting off at number 10,
it’s creating mods and custom maps.
You may not know it
but you can find many
passionate communities
of creators making mods, new maps,
even total conversions of some
of the best games out there.
Everybody knows about
the modding scenes games
like Skyrim and the Bethesda Fallout games
and there is some truly incredible stuff
made for those games.
Sure, some is bizarre, but
a lot of it is really great.
It’s really the fans that
keep those games alive
over the period of time,
like we’re still talking about those games
and people are still playing them.
Some people try to make games
more beautiful and impressive
and can really make some incredible stuff
in what we’d call an aging game.
And beyond that, some of the
most important work being done
in the modern community
is a lot of bug fixing
and getting games working
on modern systems.
Bethesda’s games are
far from the only ones
with a lot of mods though
and not the oldest either.
Now, look at the Doom community.
They’re making levels
and mods for this game
and it’s been 30 years since Doom came out
but a lot of people in that community
just started as regular fans
who wanted to make something
for the games they loved
and they have become
artists in their own right.
Look at some of the maps
people made recently.
The visuals are incredible
for a game this old.
It’s not just mappers who are
dedicated, there’s musicians,
passionate people who make
music just for level mods.
It’s incredible and there’s an easy way
to find the cream of the crop
with the annual Cacowards,
which sounds like a
bad thing but it’s not.
It’s just a event where
they’re celebrating,
they’re still vibrant
and evolving community.
And there’s a ton more out there,
like the Mario fan creator
community is pretty impressive.
There’s people putting up Tomb Raider maps
after all this time.
And then of course you’ve got to mention
all the stuff people make
for the original Half-Life,
including an entire remake of the game.
This stuff takes hundreds of hours
of hard work and dedication to make
and these fans make this stuff
usually with no expectation
of any kind of financial award.
They just love the game.
If that’s not dedication,
I don’t know what is.
And number nine is writing guides.
Now, this one goes out
to all the total madmen
posting complete guides on
game epic cues back in the day.
Without you, I never would’ve found
the upside down castle
in Symphony of the Night.
Like in the Wild West
days of the internet,
there was really nothing to gain
from writing these game guides.
People just did it ’cause
they loved the game
and wanted to help other people out.
And finding time to play a game
is tough enough for most of us
but writing a guide for it,
especially a complete one,
you’ve really got to take that game length
and like at a minimum double or triple it,
maybe even quadruple it.
And that’s just for the amount of time
somebody’s gonna spend playing the game
to understand it enough to write a guide.
These days, guide writing
is a pretty big business
and every gaming website out
there is pretty big on guides.
There’s still an art to it though,
and people can tell the difference
between someone who
clearly spent a lot of time
learning a game inside out
vs someone who cranked out a
guide as quickly as they could.
If you really want to
see a group of people
dedicated to guide writing,
check out any given achievement guide
on Xbox achievements or
PlayStation trophies.
Some of these are incredibly
detailed and thorough
in a way that only someone
who truly understands a game inside out
could possibly write.
For all the people making
guides for the simple text base,
one for the Sweet ASCII
art, for the game’s logo
to the more professional
hyperlink and image built guides,
I think we all owe these
folks a big thank you.
It’s because of their hard work
that a lot of us are able
to finish some games,
like especially when I
was a kid back in the day,
game epic cues, man!
And number eight is getting
to the top of the leaderboard.
A whole lot of the times these days,
games include leaderboards.
And for me, getting to the top 50%
is an achievement of its own.
Back when leaderboards were localized
to a single machine though,
it was conceivably
possible to get to the top
without a lot of work
but nowadays it requires
serious dedication.
If you haven’t noticed,
there are a lot of very, very
skilled players out there
for pretty much any game conceivable.
If it’s got a leaderboard,
you better believe that the
people on their grinding away
are trying to get to the top
and that means they’re trying
to get better all the time.
And fairly.
Like, the biggest problem
with online leaderboards
is that unless they’re
protected or heavily moderated,
you’re gonna get fakers
using cheat engines and hacks
filling up the top of the boards
with humanly impossible times
and that really ruins the
fun for everybody else.
There’s not much that can really be done
unless the developers step in.
And sadly, it’s pretty
common that they don’t.
Still, for games that have
functional leaderboards,
there’s a lot of competition
for the top spot.
And if you’re really into a game,
it can be a lot of fun trying
to optimize your play style,
so you can eventually get
that coveted top spot.
And number seven is speed running.
The world of speed running
has really blown up in the last few years
and what was once a very niche hobby
has become the primary way
a lot of people engage with games.
And because of that,
the barrier for entry can
seem almost insurmountable.
The people at the top
in the most popular speed running games
have been almost inhuman
level of precision
that allows them to get
the best times in games,
which isn’t just something you
can do at the drop of a hat.
To get good at speed running,
you’ve got to work at it,
spend hours nonstop grinding
to get the muscle memory
to be able to pull off a lot of the tricks
that speed running requires.
Every run that takes only
a few minutes in real time
to complete equals hundreds
of hours of practice
just playing the same game
over and over and over.
It’s an almost unbelievable
amount of dedication
to a single game
that only a very specific
type of person can do.
But the results speak for themselves.
There’s a reason speed running videos
get plastered all over gaming websites,
why people report on the newest
strategies and shortcuts.
It’s because this stuff
is really impressive.
Whether it’s a glitchless run
that requires a person to
play a game for hours on end
with near perfect precision
or a sub-minute glitch run
where they manage to do some crazy stuff
with RNG values and
quirks of the game code,
it takes a long time
and a lot of dedication to
make a proper speed run work.
And number six is becoming
a video game streamer.
You hear all the time about
how great it has to be
to be a streamer.
I mean, their job is to play games,
basically 10-year-old
me’s dream job, right?
It’s not all sunshine and rainbows though.
It can actually be a lot of
work to be a full-time streamer.
This is a lot to deal with,
for one there’s a lot of technical issues,
the challenges of interacting with chat,
while playing a game and being good enough
that it’s interesting or being
interesting in some other way
to be on, to be engaging the whole time.
Look, I’m not going to lie here.
When I play a game,
I vastly prefer to just
shut up and play it.
And then there’s all the challenges
that come with dealing
with Twitch and YouTube
on the back end.
It’s kind of a lot to think
about when you’re one person
and when you think about the
fact that back in the day
like a live TV broadcast
required like 50, 60 people,
think about that.
It could be overwhelming at times
even for experienced streamers.
And these are people who have
grown accustomed to the system
and have found success.
There’s thousands,
maybe even hundreds of
thousands who have not.
People who who do great work
but for whatever reason
never manage to break through
despite their best effort.
Success can often be at the flip of a coin
and if you’re dead set
on being somebody who
streams for a living,
that could be very tough.
The amount of money you
get from Twitch and YouTube
can fluctuate pretty
wildly from month to month.
And with YouTube and Twitch’s
constantly changing rules
and algorithm,
you just never know if
things are gonna go your way
or if some random rule
changes can tank your income,
or for that matter, a
copyright troll just comes in
and tanks something that
should be important for you
but then just is down for a while.
There’s a lot to worry about
when you’re a streamer.
Obviously not the worst job ever.
It’s legitimate great for
people who can manage it
but if you’re planning on being serious
about streaming games,
it’s important to recognize
just how much dedication it
takes to make it an actual job.
I have a lot of respect
for people who manage to make it look easy
cause that is a skill.
And number five,
challenging yourself by playing
a game with custom controls.
I just recently saw a headline of somebody
who was playing two
Elden Ring games at once
with a dance pad,
which I mean just straight
off is completely insane.
But I also can’t help but
admire the dedication.
One of the growing niches
out there in gaming
is to play games with just
outlandish alternative controls
or with severe handicaps.
It’s not quite speed running
but these people are dedicated to a game
in a way that just seems
totally impossible.
Like that one guy
who managed to beat Mike
Tyson’s punch-out blindfolded.
How do you do that?
The amount of practice required
has to be off the charts.
Like, I can’t even really imagine.
I’ve seen people play
Rocket League with a guitar,
Dark Souls with a harp,
Overwatch with bananas,
like literal fruits.
The list goes on and it’s all insane.
Some of these setups are totally custom
and require some pretty clever engineering
to even have work, like this
one guy Rudeism on Twitch,
he wired up a bunch of
bananas into a circuit,
making them into controllers.
A lot of these games are a struggle
to get through with even
a normal controller,
let alone one of these awkward things.
I feel like just getting
used to the controls
in this situation would be tough
but some of these people
actually master the games
that they’re playing
with bananas and crap.
I don’t understand
why you would choose to
torture yourself like this
but it’s impressive.
And number four, running
a popular guild in an MMO.
Being an active MMO player
isn’t like playing other games.
It’s not just a thing you do
to pass the time occasionally,
it requires a level of dedication
rarely seen in other genres of game.
A huge part of playing an
MMO is the social experience.
And for someone who runs a guild,
a large group of affiliated players,
the actual game part can be secondary.
Like in games like WoW,
it’s all about organizing
people, setting up raids,
keeping people engaged,
and drawing in new members.
There can be interpersonal conflicts,
you have to mediate, promote,
and sometimes demote officers,
hand out responsibilities,
all kinds of stuff like that.
It’s a lot of responsibility
even a game as relatively
simple as World of Warcraft.
And that’s nothing at
all compared to something
like running a guild in Eve Online.
In that game, the majority of
the economy’s player-driven
and that money can be
converted into real-world cash,
which means there’s a
whole lot to be gained
by running a popular and powerful guild
but just as much to lose.
When you’re the leader of a corporation,
Eve’s name for guilds,
you’re not just in charge
of a bunch of players,
you’re in charge of assets,
most of which have a
real-world value attached.
Corporations aren’t just floating around,
doing nothing in Eve, they
can take over star systems,
engage in large scale
trade, and fight wars.
Like, look at the many, many
different types of roles
you can have in an Eve Corp.
Outside of the CEO, there’s directors,
communications officers,
contract managers, diplomats,
personnel managers, factory
managers, rent officers,
auditors, and general accountants.
If that sounds like a
real-world corporation,
that’s because in a lot of ways it is one.
And if you’re running the corporation,
all this stuff is your responsibility.
Whether it’s Eve Online or Warcraft,
or even something like a simple
Clash of Clans type thing,
running a guild is something
that takes a lot of dedication.
And number three is building
a video game collection.
For some folks, having a sense
of physical game collection
is the ultimate goal.
Retro video game collecting
is still a big business
and a lot of people are
looking to get into it
but if you’re actually serious about it,
you’re gonna need three things:
a lot of money, time,
and even more practice.
For more old school types,
the goal is to build a complete collection
where you get every single game released
for a given console in a single region.
Usually for these types of collectors,
just having it is enough.
They’re looking for a complete box.
All the stuff that you would get
greatly increases the
value of every given game
and they just want everything.
Now, let’s put this into
perspective just for the NES alone.
That means you’d have to
collect around 716 games
and that’s including
officially licensed games.
If you wanted to include 10th
gen and Wisdom Tree games,
that number goes even higher.
Most of these games aren’t
even worth a lot but still,
there’s a few incredibly rare games
like Flintstones:
Surprise at Dinosaur Peak
or Little Sampson, both of
which go for well over $1,000.
If you’re a collector more
interested in graded games
that are in mint or near mint condition,
then it’s a little more expensive.
The price on these graded games
have dropped significantly
in the last year or so
but certain games still
go for a lot of money.
Of course, getting the games is one thing
but these days if you
actually want to play ’em,
it requires some work.
A lot of old cartridge
games had internal batteries
that now need to be replaced
if they’re gonna work.
And a lot of older consoles
need repairs to remain functional.
That means any good collector these days
doesn’t just need a space
to store this stuff,
they need to learn how to use repair tools
like a soldering iron to get
the old games working again.
But at least now there
are a pretty fair amount
of YouTube tutorials out there
to make soldering a
little easier to try out.
But to go that far
requires a lot of dedication to old games
and it’s really above and beyond.
And number two,
playing multiplayer games
at a tournament level.
eSports is where the big dogs play
and the best players in the
world compete at this level
in a manner that most of us
can’t even begin to imagine.
The level of individual skill
every player and a team needs to play
in a major game tournament is just nuts.
It’s constant practice, theory
crafting, and strategizing.
That’s just playing the game too.
There’s more going on than that.
You have to be good at the community,
you’ve got to get your name out there,
you’ve got to build a personal brand.
There’s a reason
so many popular eSports
personalities are also streamers.
The skillsets basically go hand-in-hand
and it gives you
something to fall back on.
Most players who compete
on an international level
first get started in their local scene
and build up their name from there.
Thing about eSports is that
there’s no standard pipeline
to getting into the major leagues.
It’s pretty much all up to you
to make a name for yourself
and make the right connections.
That’s the part that people
don’t talk about as much.
It’s almost important as
the gameplay side of things.
When push comes to shove,
how skilled you are at your chosen game
is the most important thing.
But if you don’t have a sponsor, a team,
you may not be able to enter
a lot of these tournaments
and all the skill in the world
doesn’t mean squat if you
can’t be there to play.
Anyone who manages to play
in the local tournaments
deserves some respect
because it takes
determination to get there.
And then number one is pretty
much the holy grail here.
Making your own game,
like becoming an indie
developer, you know.
Let me tell you about Hollow Knight.
I know most people probably
only heard about the game
after it came out
but I remember looking at
it on their old website
many, many years ago.
I have no idea if you can
find that website anymore.
I didn’t find it on the Wayback Machine
but it was mostly just a
simple map and the name.
And it had to have been
around 2013, maybe 2014.
And that game came out in 2017.
That game of course went on
to be just a huge, ridiculous success.
But that took some time.
The day it came out, it wasn’t
even on the Steam front page.
That’s nearly four years of
hard work and uncertainty.
And then compared to some other
indie developers out there,
that’s nothing.
The two-man Dwarf Fortress developers
have been working on that
game for nearly 20 years
and only just recently put it
on Steam for people to buy.
That’s on the extreme end but
for most indie developers,
especially the ones with
only one or two people,
it takes a long time to even
get a basic looking game done.
Yeah, there’s tools to make things easier
and some of ’em you don’t
even have to know how to code
but when you make a game,
you have to make literally everything.
Everything in the game
has to be created or purchased by you
but it’s either time or
money and both add up quick.
To be an indie developer is to be someone
who dedicates years of their
lives to a single project.
And at the end of the day,
people might not even like it.
Or maybe people like
it but nobody buys it.
You really just don’t know
how things are gonna go down.
Sometimes it just comes down to luck
whether a game is gonna
gain mainstream attention
or just gets forgotten about.
There’s just so many
things that can go wrong
when making a game.
And if you’re an indie, double it.
There’s so much awesome stuff
coming out of the indie scene,
all for people
who probably have no
expectation of huge success.
They just want to make games
that they want to play.
If that’s not dedication,
I don’t know what is.
And that’s all for today.
Leave us a comment, let
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I’m Falcon, you can follow
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and we’ll see you next time
right here on Gameranx.
Please note when playing video games: you must take these things seriously!
– [Falcon] Gamers are an
enthusiastic and committed bunch
but some things take
just a little bit more.
Hi folks, it’s Falcon
and today on Gameranx,
10 things in video games that
require serious dedication.
Starting off at number 10,
it’s creating mods and custom maps.
You may not know it
but you can find many
passionate communities
of creators making mods, new maps,
even total conversions of some
of the best games out there.
Everybody knows about
the modding scenes games
like Skyrim and the Bethesda Fallout games
and there is some truly incredible stuff
made for those games.
Sure, some is bizarre, but
a lot of it is really great.
It’s really the fans that
keep those games alive
over the period of time,
like we’re still talking about those games
and people are still playing them.
Some people try to make games
more beautiful and impressive
and can really make some incredible stuff
in what we’d call an aging game.
And beyond that, some of the
most important work being done
in the modern community
is a lot of bug fixing
and getting games working
on modern systems.
Bethesda’s games are
far from the only ones
with a lot of mods though
and not the oldest either.
Now, look at the Doom community.
They’re making levels
and mods for this game
and it’s been 30 years since Doom came out
but a lot of people in that community
just started as regular fans
who wanted to make something
for the games they loved
and they have become
artists in their own right.
Look at some of the maps
people made recently.
The visuals are incredible
for a game this old.
It’s not just mappers who are
dedicated, there’s musicians,
passionate people who make
music just for level mods.
It’s incredible and there’s an easy way
to find the cream of the crop
with the annual Cacowards,
which sounds like a
bad thing but it’s not.
It’s just a event where
they’re celebrating,
they’re still vibrant
and evolving community.
And there’s a ton more out there,
like the Mario fan creator
community is pretty impressive.
There’s people putting up Tomb Raider maps
after all this time.
And then of course you’ve got to mention
all the stuff people make
for the original Half-Life,
including an entire remake of the game.
This stuff takes hundreds of hours
of hard work and dedication to make
and these fans make this stuff
usually with no expectation
of any kind of financial award.
They just love the game.
If that’s not dedication,
I don’t know what is.
And number nine is writing guides.
Now, this one goes out
to all the total madmen
posting complete guides on
game epic cues back in the day.
Without you, I never would’ve found
the upside down castle
in Symphony of the Night.
Like in the Wild West
days of the internet,
there was really nothing to gain
from writing these game guides.
People just did it ’cause
they loved the game
and wanted to help other people out.
And finding time to play a game
is tough enough for most of us
but writing a guide for it,
especially a complete one,
you’ve really got to take that game length
and like at a minimum double or triple it,
maybe even quadruple it.
And that’s just for the amount of time
somebody’s gonna spend playing the game
to understand it enough to write a guide.
These days, guide writing
is a pretty big business
and every gaming website out
there is pretty big on guides.
There’s still an art to it though,
and people can tell the difference
between someone who
clearly spent a lot of time
learning a game inside out
vs someone who cranked out a
guide as quickly as they could.
If you really want to
see a group of people
dedicated to guide writing,
check out any given achievement guide
on Xbox achievements or
PlayStation trophies.
Some of these are incredibly
detailed and thorough
in a way that only someone
who truly understands a game inside out
could possibly write.
For all the people making
guides for the simple text base,
one for the Sweet ASCII
art, for the game’s logo
to the more professional
hyperlink and image built guides,
I think we all owe these
folks a big thank you.
It’s because of their hard work
that a lot of us are able
to finish some games,
like especially when I
was a kid back in the day,
game epic cues, man!
And number eight is getting
to the top of the leaderboard.
A whole lot of the times these days,
games include leaderboards.
And for me, getting to the top 50%
is an achievement of its own.
Back when leaderboards were localized
to a single machine though,
it was conceivably
possible to get to the top
without a lot of work
but nowadays it requires
serious dedication.
If you haven’t noticed,
there are a lot of very, very
skilled players out there
for pretty much any game conceivable.
If it’s got a leaderboard,
you better believe that the
people on their grinding away
are trying to get to the top
and that means they’re trying
to get better all the time.
And fairly.
Like, the biggest problem
with online leaderboards
is that unless they’re
protected or heavily moderated,
you’re gonna get fakers
using cheat engines and hacks
filling up the top of the boards
with humanly impossible times
and that really ruins the
fun for everybody else.
There’s not much that can really be done
unless the developers step in.
And sadly, it’s pretty
common that they don’t.
Still, for games that have
functional leaderboards,
there’s a lot of competition
for the top spot.
And if you’re really into a game,
it can be a lot of fun trying
to optimize your play style,
so you can eventually get
that coveted top spot.
And number seven is speed running.
The world of speed running
has really blown up in the last few years
and what was once a very niche hobby
has become the primary way
a lot of people engage with games.
And because of that,
the barrier for entry can
seem almost insurmountable.
The people at the top
in the most popular speed running games
have been almost inhuman
level of precision
that allows them to get
the best times in games,
which isn’t just something you
can do at the drop of a hat.
To get good at speed running,
you’ve got to work at it,
spend hours nonstop grinding
to get the muscle memory
to be able to pull off a lot of the tricks
that speed running requires.
Every run that takes only
a few minutes in real time
to complete equals hundreds
of hours of practice
just playing the same game
over and over and over.
It’s an almost unbelievable
amount of dedication
to a single game
that only a very specific
type of person can do.
But the results speak for themselves.
There’s a reason speed running videos
get plastered all over gaming websites,
why people report on the newest
strategies and shortcuts.
It’s because this stuff
is really impressive.
Whether it’s a glitchless run
that requires a person to
play a game for hours on end
with near perfect precision
or a sub-minute glitch run
where they manage to do some crazy stuff
with RNG values and
quirks of the game code,
it takes a long time
and a lot of dedication to
make a proper speed run work.
And number six is becoming
a video game streamer.
You hear all the time about
how great it has to be
to be a streamer.
I mean, their job is to play games,
basically 10-year-old
me’s dream job, right?
It’s not all sunshine and rainbows though.
It can actually be a lot of
work to be a full-time streamer.
This is a lot to deal with,
for one there’s a lot of technical issues,
the challenges of interacting with chat,
while playing a game and being good enough
that it’s interesting or being
interesting in some other way
to be on, to be engaging the whole time.
Look, I’m not going to lie here.
When I play a game,
I vastly prefer to just
shut up and play it.
And then there’s all the challenges
that come with dealing
with Twitch and YouTube
on the back end.
It’s kind of a lot to think
about when you’re one person
and when you think about the
fact that back in the day
like a live TV broadcast
required like 50, 60 people,
think about that.
It could be overwhelming at times
even for experienced streamers.
And these are people who have
grown accustomed to the system
and have found success.
There’s thousands,
maybe even hundreds of
thousands who have not.
People who who do great work
but for whatever reason
never manage to break through
despite their best effort.
Success can often be at the flip of a coin
and if you’re dead set
on being somebody who
streams for a living,
that could be very tough.
The amount of money you
get from Twitch and YouTube
can fluctuate pretty
wildly from month to month.
And with YouTube and Twitch’s
constantly changing rules
and algorithm,
you just never know if
things are gonna go your way
or if some random rule
changes can tank your income,
or for that matter, a
copyright troll just comes in
and tanks something that
should be important for you
but then just is down for a while.
There’s a lot to worry about
when you’re a streamer.
Obviously not the worst job ever.
It’s legitimate great for
people who can manage it
but if you’re planning on being serious
about streaming games,
it’s important to recognize
just how much dedication it
takes to make it an actual job.
I have a lot of respect
for people who manage to make it look easy
cause that is a skill.
And number five,
challenging yourself by playing
a game with custom controls.
I just recently saw a headline of somebody
who was playing two
Elden Ring games at once
with a dance pad,
which I mean just straight
off is completely insane.
But I also can’t help but
admire the dedication.
One of the growing niches
out there in gaming
is to play games with just
outlandish alternative controls
or with severe handicaps.
It’s not quite speed running
but these people are dedicated to a game
in a way that just seems
totally impossible.
Like that one guy
who managed to beat Mike
Tyson’s punch-out blindfolded.
How do you do that?
The amount of practice required
has to be off the charts.
Like, I can’t even really imagine.
I’ve seen people play
Rocket League with a guitar,
Dark Souls with a harp,
Overwatch with bananas,
like literal fruits.
The list goes on and it’s all insane.
Some of these setups are totally custom
and require some pretty clever engineering
to even have work, like this
one guy Rudeism on Twitch,
he wired up a bunch of
bananas into a circuit,
making them into controllers.
A lot of these games are a struggle
to get through with even
a normal controller,
let alone one of these awkward things.
I feel like just getting
used to the controls
in this situation would be tough
but some of these people
actually master the games
that they’re playing
with bananas and crap.
I don’t understand
why you would choose to
torture yourself like this
but it’s impressive.
And number four, running
a popular guild in an MMO.
Being an active MMO player
isn’t like playing other games.
It’s not just a thing you do
to pass the time occasionally,
it requires a level of dedication
rarely seen in other genres of game.
A huge part of playing an
MMO is the social experience.
And for someone who runs a guild,
a large group of affiliated players,
the actual game part can be secondary.
Like in games like WoW,
it’s all about organizing
people, setting up raids,
keeping people engaged,
and drawing in new members.
There can be interpersonal conflicts,
you have to mediate, promote,
and sometimes demote officers,
hand out responsibilities,
all kinds of stuff like that.
It’s a lot of responsibility
even a game as relatively
simple as World of Warcraft.
And that’s nothing at
all compared to something
like running a guild in Eve Online.
In that game, the majority of
the economy’s player-driven
and that money can be
converted into real-world cash,
which means there’s a
whole lot to be gained
by running a popular and powerful guild
but just as much to lose.
When you’re the leader of a corporation,
Eve’s name for guilds,
you’re not just in charge
of a bunch of players,
you’re in charge of assets,
most of which have a
real-world value attached.
Corporations aren’t just floating around,
doing nothing in Eve, they
can take over star systems,
engage in large scale
trade, and fight wars.
Like, look at the many, many
different types of roles
you can have in an Eve Corp.
Outside of the CEO, there’s directors,
communications officers,
contract managers, diplomats,
personnel managers, factory
managers, rent officers,
auditors, and general accountants.
If that sounds like a
real-world corporation,
that’s because in a lot of ways it is one.
And if you’re running the corporation,
all this stuff is your responsibility.
Whether it’s Eve Online or Warcraft,
or even something like a simple
Clash of Clans type thing,
running a guild is something
that takes a lot of dedication.
And number three is building
a video game collection.
For some folks, having a sense
of physical game collection
is the ultimate goal.
Retro video game collecting
is still a big business
and a lot of people are
looking to get into it
but if you’re actually serious about it,
you’re gonna need three things:
a lot of money, time,
and even more practice.
For more old school types,
the goal is to build a complete collection
where you get every single game released
for a given console in a single region.
Usually for these types of collectors,
just having it is enough.
They’re looking for a complete box.
All the stuff that you would get
greatly increases the
value of every given game
and they just want everything.
Now, let’s put this into
perspective just for the NES alone.
That means you’d have to
collect around 716 games
and that’s including
officially licensed games.
If you wanted to include 10th
gen and Wisdom Tree games,
that number goes even higher.
Most of these games aren’t
even worth a lot but still,
there’s a few incredibly rare games
like Flintstones:
Surprise at Dinosaur Peak
or Little Sampson, both of
which go for well over $1,000.
If you’re a collector more
interested in graded games
that are in mint or near mint condition,
then it’s a little more expensive.
The price on these graded games
have dropped significantly
in the last year or so
but certain games still
go for a lot of money.
Of course, getting the games is one thing
but these days if you
actually want to play ’em,
it requires some work.
A lot of old cartridge
games had internal batteries
that now need to be replaced
if they’re gonna work.
And a lot of older consoles
need repairs to remain functional.
That means any good collector these days
doesn’t just need a space
to store this stuff,
they need to learn how to use repair tools
like a soldering iron to get
the old games working again.
But at least now there
are a pretty fair amount
of YouTube tutorials out there
to make soldering a
little easier to try out.
But to go that far
requires a lot of dedication to old games
and it’s really above and beyond.
And number two,
playing multiplayer games
at a tournament level.
eSports is where the big dogs play
and the best players in the
world compete at this level
in a manner that most of us
can’t even begin to imagine.
The level of individual skill
every player and a team needs to play
in a major game tournament is just nuts.
It’s constant practice, theory
crafting, and strategizing.
That’s just playing the game too.
There’s more going on than that.
You have to be good at the community,
you’ve got to get your name out there,
you’ve got to build a personal brand.
There’s a reason
so many popular eSports
personalities are also streamers.
The skillsets basically go hand-in-hand
and it gives you
something to fall back on.
Most players who compete
on an international level
first get started in their local scene
and build up their name from there.
Thing about eSports is that
there’s no standard pipeline
to getting into the major leagues.
It’s pretty much all up to you
to make a name for yourself
and make the right connections.
That’s the part that people
don’t talk about as much.
It’s almost important as
the gameplay side of things.
When push comes to shove,
how skilled you are at your chosen game
is the most important thing.
But if you don’t have a sponsor, a team,
you may not be able to enter
a lot of these tournaments
and all the skill in the world
doesn’t mean squat if you
can’t be there to play.
Anyone who manages to play
in the local tournaments
deserves some respect
because it takes
determination to get there.
And then number one is pretty
much the holy grail here.
Making your own game,
like becoming an indie
developer, you know.
Let me tell you about Hollow Knight.
I know most people probably
only heard about the game
after it came out
but I remember looking at
it on their old website
many, many years ago.
I have no idea if you can
find that website anymore.
I didn’t find it on the Wayback Machine
but it was mostly just a
simple map and the name.
And it had to have been
around 2013, maybe 2014.
And that game came out in 2017.
That game of course went on
to be just a huge, ridiculous success.
But that took some time.
The day it came out, it wasn’t
even on the Steam front page.
That’s nearly four years of
hard work and uncertainty.
And then compared to some other
indie developers out there,
that’s nothing.
The two-man Dwarf Fortress developers
have been working on that
game for nearly 20 years
and only just recently put it
on Steam for people to buy.
That’s on the extreme end but
for most indie developers,
especially the ones with
only one or two people,
it takes a long time to even
get a basic looking game done.
Yeah, there’s tools to make things easier
and some of ’em you don’t
even have to know how to code
but when you make a game,
you have to make literally everything.
Everything in the game
has to be created or purchased by you
but it’s either time or
money and both add up quick.
To be an indie developer is to be someone
who dedicates years of their
lives to a single project.
And at the end of the day,
people might not even like it.
Or maybe people like
it but nobody buys it.
You really just don’t know
how things are gonna go down.
Sometimes it just comes down to luck
whether a game is gonna
gain mainstream attention
or just gets forgotten about.
There’s just so many
things that can go wrong
when making a game.
And if you’re an indie, double it.
There’s so much awesome stuff
coming out of the indie scene,
all for people
who probably have no
expectation of huge success.
They just want to make games
that they want to play.
If that’s not dedication,
I don’t know what is.
And that’s all for today.
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