Josh Klint said:
experienced some similar problems and the only way around it was to focus on one specific niche and give people something they can't say no to. The results of my work will be made available tomorrow. I've followed your stuff in the past and if things work out with my new tech, I will happily offer you a job working on a revolutionary new game engine technology, if that is interesting to you. You will get equity in the company and a lot more creative freedom than you would have working elsewhere.

When I read this, I was betting myself $100that the OP would say no.

And when I read more, he kinda waffled, because he didn't want to turn you down, but also didn't want to accept. IMO this is the problem with most solo devs. Your literally offering him a job to potentially be a business partner, and do what he has always been doing. With an experienced person, but at the cost of winding down his own thing. or combining efforts.

Too many solo devs deep down don't actually want to collaborate. Your literally in the same space as he is, all his experience is transferable. But most would rather work on their own thing, than combine efforts, even tho 5 miles away your doing somethign very similar. It's a huge problem in game dev.

Look,

So, to make a long story short, I worked on a mod started by a guy a decade ago. he left, we stayed, made somethign from it, released, was successful. Decided to do an indie thing inspired by his mod, he found us again saying that he wanted to work on the mod, We said we had an indie thing that was an evolution of what he started, and if he would be interested in that. He looked at it, and demanded fundamental unrealistic changes, we said no, he left.

At his core, he was a solo dev, and even tho he was incredibly talented, he was not good at working with others, now he works for Walmart, and he will need to go elsewhere for his creative expression.

It literally makes no sense to me. We are carrying this guys vision, and it evolved to somethign better, and instead of being humbled that we are doing an indie version of his mod, he thought he had the right to demand fundamental changes. It's not his baby any more, he abandoned it. I don't think he will ever be a part of a creative project he didn't start. He even had the self awareness to say he might not be a good leader, way back when. Anyway.

I think the OP would be foolish to turn down such an offer.

It's like if 2 people are making their own games, but through the magic of the internet find each other. They start talking, and realize they are working on almost the same thing. Most devs go cool beans and good luck with that, and maybe support each other a little. Most of them don't make the radical suggestion of merging projects. I find this kind of attitude incredibly frustrating.

So, the OP doubled down, looks like I owe myself $100.

IMO, you should at least talk to the guy, and see how you guys can work together. If the goals and directions are the same or similar, combining efforts just makes sense.

To quote a member of my core team, “don't let sunk costs drive your decision making”.

You have dedicated your life to paving this one road, your too busy paving your road, to realize there are others paving another road to the same destination. You refuse to entertain the idea of collaboration, because you spent 20 years working alone, and you've gotten used to it. Your afraid to follow another's vision because you don't know if it's the same as yours.

And no, the guy in my situation left because he had unreasonable expectations of his place in the organization, he thought he could come in and decide the vision, after he literally abandoned the vision.

The guy basically offered you a job or a business partnership. To combine efforts and transfer your skills. But you would rather work alone. What if a x years from now you read a news update here or somewhere else, saying this tech is the hot new thing, and people are building games on it, and it's overtaking epic? Then you'll be like, maybe you should have at least had that conversation to see what might happen. But by then it's too late. But you still got your engine right?

Who knows, maybe if the guy sees your engine, he will want to collaborate? or join your vision? If you don't have that conversation, youo'll never know.

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Maybe this guy is the answer to the business partner thread, you had earlier?

The harsh truth i had to deal with with Leadwerks was the realization that what I had created was not very valuable to other people. I mean it has been successful, to a degree, more so than many others, but it did not achieve widespread adoption. I don't know if you've talked to a lot of people at conferences or gamedev groups, but the response I always got when I told people I had a new engine was basically “fuck you”. This is without even knowing what engine I was talking about, what features it had, etc., their decision was already made and nothing I could say would ever change that, before I even started talking.

I struggled for years to answer the question “what problem does Leadwerks solve?” and then when the NASA people contacted me, I saw a big customer with a very specific problem I could fix. I went to conferences and asked developers if they were having any problems with performance in VR, and for the first time people were interested in what I had to say. I did this before writing any code for the new engine, and then once I had verified what my target was I started R&D, during which I discovered techniques that made it much much faster than I thought was possible.

Unfortunately, having good code, having good features, these things don't really make the difference between success and failure. If you can't pitch the product to people in a couple of short sentences and have them interested, it won't really get beyond that. That's what I have found, at least.

selahattin3 said:

Epic Megagrants are for projects that use UE4. You can also apply if you want to switch your project from another engine to UE4. It's not a thing you can apply for your independent projects. It is to help improve the UE4 ecosystem, not help independent engine developers. You should have known that before applying.

That's exactly what I thought and told him, but he thinks otherwise.