Being an old school web-based sports sim dev in the era of vibe coded games
The developer of the web-based sports simulation game Basketball GM reflects on the evolution of web development since 2012. He discusses the challenges of maintaining a niche, profitable game in an era of rapidly changing technology and market competition.
Why it matters
It provides insight into the sustainability of indie game development and the shift in web technologies over the last decade.
Back when I started working on the web-based version of Basketball GM in 2012, web development was very different. npm was brand new and hardly anyone used it. Bundling/deploying JS was very primitive, a lot of people still were just concatenating files together. And things like TypeScript, React, async/await... these did not even exist yet!
The article is a personal reflection from a developer with no political or social agenda.
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