abanayev

I started my software career as a kid, building side-scrollers and platformers for desktop and then graduating to iOS. Back then, there was no Unity or Cocos2d and open-source engines were hard to come by.

Since then, I've been doing professional software development (first backend and now full stack) but never revisited game development.

In the time that has passed, games have obviously evolved a LOT, in terms of game engine sophistication and availability, types of games ("game metagame"?), and expectations of games. It seems that more indie game studios have appeared and done well.

My question is two-fold:

1. What is the state of the art for indie game development right now? If I wanted to make a game, what should I do, and what libraries or frameworks are absolutely standard?

2. What are common problems in game development that are not common in other verticals of software development? I'm imagining things like camera angles or multiplayer networking.