rawb

it wasn't like he was steadily building some alternative

He should have said he is taking a 6 month to a year break.

In retrospect, the downfall started with S2, in that case.

He had some savings, but he's spent 100% of that during covid

If the show was left how it was, quality-wise, the same as it was S1, would many people have complained?

I think most people would still drop the same amount of money on it.

he made mistakes with S2, but nothing that I think preluded a downfall

he had hard problems to solve, the biggest being "how to get new fans into this show"

I meant the trend of putting more and more time and money into making a superficially better product

yeah, I still don't know where his time went

Rob will spend 100 hours to do 10 hours of work

It's not very complicated: He's extremely inefficient.

that's about the ratio I observe

maybe 5:1 instead of 10:1

He also is kinda a perfectionist

He wants to release things he is proud of

He started to have "standards" for what he was doing

It's directly observable going from OG Unforgotten Realms, to S1 of Unforgotten Realms on the Escapist, to the first half of S2, to the second half of S2 onward

and he still has those

He could have released a half baked Uquest but chose not to

This as well

but they miss the point of how you become/stay successful in a creative industry

we all make fun of his hot dog streams, but fuck, they were SOMETHING

you can't go from moving 100mph, doing new projects monthly, being exciting and funny in new ways all the time

to just.... I make 10 DnD videos a year

Honestly, I think UQuest might not have turned out much different; he had all the money he asked for, but assigned his wife to do a huge amount of work. She left, he lost all her time and work investment.

On top of that, he really had absolutely no clue on how to program the game he was trying to make.

$100k is nothing, that money was "show me there is interest in me doing something bigger"

because, even with only "2 years" he could have put out a fun-enough indie game

and he made one smart decision, which wasn't to focus on it 100% of his time

he knew he had to stay relevant while he made the game

He could have. That's what I was saying with him being extremely inefficient, and agreeing with Polu on the perfectionism thing

He had a specific image in his head for what the game should be, but he didn't have the knowledge he thought he had to make that come to life; he would've had to either completely rework his roadmap for the game to get it out in two years, or completely overhaul the production of it, probably hiring people that actually know what they're doing.

And also not mixing personal life with business, to the point where your wife leaves you and you lose half your shit in the game.

working on the game with ~30% of his time, I still think he could have released something

He could have, but he seemed too adamant to change the idea of the game for the most part.

Hell, it wasn't until almost the 2 year mark was up, I think, that he was like, "Yeah, I have absolutely no idea how to get this coded the way I want the game to work, switching to Unity, have to do all the code over from scratch"

This is honestly a question for Rusp

he's the only person I know making a game rn

i will fucking kill you

lol Pirate

Rusp spends 70% of his time on bed wars and 30% on his game

perfect comparison then kappa

He is about to release GOTY too so its possible

And Rob's in the business of selling his time, same as any other YouTuber/streamer

there's not really supposed to be a "personal life" split

By that I mean "don't make your wife do half the work in the game if there's a chance she could leave you before it's finished"

well I mean that could apply to

any non-official game team

^

where there is a risk of somebody just leaving

yeah, I'd rather have two people working on something, than one who just contracts everything out

the main problem with one person making a game would be

spreading your time across differing disciplines

you need to program the system, design the system, draw graphics, compose music, arrange music, design levels, make a way to implement the levels, actually implement the levels

anyway, I'll be back later

I want Rob to stream goddammit

a lot of different needed skills that you'd have to "switch modes" between all the time

but yes Pirate, I'm also very excited for your game

well the programming is almost done, then I just have to write out all the needed assets and figure out if garbage will help with the graphics

i'm not sure if it will release before rusp game or not, depends on garbage

I think Rob viewed a lot of the work he was doing in a similar way, that it would transfer between development attempts

or at least, a lot of it would

if he had an actual partner the 2nd time, with Nisovin sticking around

it might have panned out

Sorry, was AFK. Pirate, you're right about that.

nisovin is too busy helping with the godot game engine to help rob anymore sadly

I guess I said his wife specifically because that's the situation that happened.

but I think that first attempt was what he should have walked away from when Krysta left

would have freed up more of his time

to do other stuff

30% is a lot

week-to-week

But while AFK, I thought of another thing:

I'm pretty sure Rob rarely had a strict roadmap, if a roadmap whatsoever.

I mean he had to have had at least something

like a sticky note or text file at least

But not something to detail the process from beginning to end, even an outline of it.

Because I remember from the Unforgotten Realms season 1 DVD commentary, he straight up said he often didn't have ideas of how shit is supposed to turn out

ideally you have everything planned out before you start designing and everything designed before you start implementing