How hard is being a GameDev in your Continent?

I'm curious about the life of the indies from all around the world, especially from Eastern Europe, how you guys are handling your lives while doing indie? professionals, also can share your experiences.

So, first, say from where you are, and tell us in which mode are you playing this game called Game Dev!

 

From England here. I would say it's fairly easy. The internet's not too bad. It's a fairly compact place so not too hard to travel. Since one of the biggest markets is America and they share our language, that's pretty handy. It rains a lot so it means your stuck inside anyway so might as well make games. And there are lots of pubs to go and think about your next game. There's decent paid jobs if you need extra money while indie-ing. There's free libraries where you can work too. England is quite a creative place too. With music, art, fashion and so on. We're always looking for the next big thing. Unlike some countries which like to stick to traditions more.

The bad side is the living costs are quite expensive compared to some countries. But not as expensive as, say, Sweden or Iceland.

I am making a living off indie games but if I lived in a cheaper country I would be living very nicely!

 

I guess Finland counts as Eastern Europe.

Government benefits help alot to stay afloat even if you don't succeed.

 

I live in Switzerland. Doing it as a hobby is pretty easy here. Software Licenses, Assets, Hardware, etc. are easy affordable with a regular job.
Doing it as a professional is really hard, though. There are no big game companies here. Considering that Switzerland has one of the highest salaries, the costs of running a game company are just too high. As a solo developer I would have to at least make 90k $ a year to even consider doing this as a professional (without counting in other development costs). It is hard to compete with an eastern european country that usually pays 1/4 of the salary we have here.

 

I'm from Greece. It's a mess. Taxation is a mess, no one knows what they're doing, they don't understand what we're doing, we were audited once because of that (they found nothing weird in the end, but still) and we're paying an insane amount of taxes. And we still have capital controls which makes getting stuff we need all that more complicated and time consuming.

 

Biggest challenge in Australia is wages. Australia is a high wage country, even your low end laborers are starting out at 60K+. Skilled laborers are even more expensive. On the flip side, game companies don't make that much money. So you end up with a situation where you can get paid more for stacking boxes in a warehouse then you can for working as a professional game developer.

There is some of local government support, which does help. But there is very little on the federal level. Games just don't make enough money to attract the federal governments attention.

This culminated in a local AAA collapse a few years back. There are now very few big studios left in Australia. Instead we have hundreds of little indie outfits. Some of them go on to do quite well. Others quietly fade out after a few years when everyone moves on to corporate programming.

Games in Australia are still a decent place to work. But there are plenty of other better places to work available here too.

 

Finland and the other close by Nordic countries are Northern Europe. Either one should be on the list BTW

 

I live in Alaska. There's nothing here as far as games and 3d in general. It's pretty expensive cost of living, about on par with metropolitan Canada.

I do 3d art as a hobby, but it's all I'm doing right now. I have passive income -- just enough to pay the mortgage -- and my wife has a decent job. So I can justify spending a year or a little more to start a new career.

We'll be moving to Canada in another year or so, and I'm hoping to be able to land some kind of game related work by then. Doesn't have to pay big or anything, but it would be nice to be involved with serious projects and work with professionals.

Don't move to Alaska. There's just not much of a point.

 

California SF Bay Area - Its fortunate I speak the Internet's defacto language, and the language most game dev help is written in. Lots of local devs here too. Easy to find outside local help if you want to pay for it, though the cost is high. Easy to find local people who would want to collaborate. Day job pay is above average, which allows for self funding for outside assets to be purchased or created. I would think this is one of the more optimal places to live and do indie game dev.