Re: Do you still believe in the audio game revolution?
TBH I gave up after ECTAS bombed approximately as hard as Redsword, which also bombed harder than expected since I deliberately tried to make the accessibility BK3-like. AFAIK, nobody ever made it past the first level in that game (I think I'd know, because then someone would have complained about the second level, or noticed the problem in the third level if you die in that lava pit).
I might be able to redo the walls in Le Petit Planet to be more like wall sounds in VGStorm games. That might enable someone to discover the hallway. But why bother? Especially since I'd need to port the whole thing to Python, including the packed sounds, and that's a ton of effort for a 5min game I threw together in under 24h, which I am confident will still fail even by those standards if I do all that.
In truth, to be good at gamedev, you need to be good at people stuff. I am not. So I can't just geek up a game that anyone who is not me will care about. Then, on top of that, you need to worry about quality and hosting if you really want to break through, and you don't get reliable volunteers when you could get paid testers / actors / devs / sound designers / etc.
So for audio games to be good, you need all of the following:
1. Good programming skills for the relevant systems. All of them.
2. A good understanding of what makes games that an audience will enjoy,
3. and an understanding of how to combine 1 and 2 into a viable product.
4. The people skills to fill in all the gaps, especially in testing and sound.
5. Access to the resources: people, sounds and other assets, hosting, etc. Charisma and enthusiasm can substitute for cash, here, but you must have a high score in at least one, preferably multiple.
6. The conscientiousness to actually implement all of these.
7. To maintain all of the above until the project is complete, and often afterward, for bug fixes, maintaining availability, etc.
Oh, and you need a good idea in there, somewhere. But the creative aspect is not what we're missing. It's most of the above.
Oh, wait! I also forgot...
8. Motivation to create audio games, rather than do something less niche, or more profitable. Having all of 1-7 can get you a ton of money as a senior developer at a company that will actually pay you a living wage, even in the stupidly expensive cities where those companies tend to be located.
That last filter limits us mostly to blind people and a handful of interested sighted people. If we start with 10 million candidates, and realize that most of those filters will knock out 9/10 of the population, we're down to 10^-7. 10 million, conveniently, is 10^7. So if there are 10 million people interested in developing audio games, there are probably only 10 people, give or take a dozen, who actually can do it worth crap. You can probably already list them by name. They might be enough in number to pull Santa's sleigh, were they magical reindeer.
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