How much money do you earn from your games?

Not recognizing the leader of Labour?

 

checks asset store purchases ...must be at least -$1000+

 

Wow thats a very opinionated and not very fact based assessment in regards to the platform and the "quality assessment" bit of your comment.

You really cant show a picture of overall market value and then jump straight to saying "based on this mobile is what you want to make money". Thats a really bad analysis and literally could not be further from the truth. Unless you have a budget and ability to invest in marketing and user aquisition and get featured your chances of making money on mobile are far far lower than any other platform, and thats been a known fact for a while backed up by more research than you can shake a stick at (for instance a paid appannie account like I and many others have will let you view actual metrics for an app on the store, and from that you can make an far more reliable estimation of revenue generated etc, and many many companies and individuals have used these sorts of available stats to generate a number of reports and studies over the last 5-6 years now).

Now if your diagram was total market value of indie titles then maybe it would be slightly more useful, but only slightly.

Your market value diagram does nothing to show how that is divided up. In reality a tiny % goes to indies, majority is to big AAA publishers and developers, and most of them are involved directly with apple pitching titles to them behind the scenes for store coverage at launch. You simply cannot look at their share of the market and go "because the market is big, the money a user will make is big too" because it wont be at all, but thats what your basically saying based on that diagram and your comment?


There are always exceptions to everything, and there are a lot of indies who have been successful at mobile. That doesnt change the numbers around success rates vs failure rates however.

TLDR: In my opinion, based on looking at the stats for platforms your far better off as an indie actually targeting any platform other than mobile if you want to make money from your title - unless you have a budget for marketing, will pay for user aquisition, will work on refining and understanding your retention rates, and will pitch to apple / google play to get featured in the store.

 

Impressive post. I have always wanted to do some research into the correlation of quality and success, specifically using
​

1. A wall of images (first screenshot)​
2. A wall of images (steam icon)
3. A wall of core gameplay gifs​

Sorted top to bottom based on review ratings & review score.
Random sampling.

I've never scraped the web (steam) for data though, so not really sure where to begin or what tools can make this easier.

 

@Delivionos its a little silly to go off on a rant about people missing the point and then go on to make up crazy rating systems and draw conclusions from exceedingly broad infographics.

 

Silly because he didnt devote 40+ hours to the data, silly because you dont like it, silly because it embarasses you or makes you feel small, or silly because it is better than anything youve contributed?

Just curious, as IMO the only thing ranty here is your desire for needless censorship because you didnt like what he had to say or demand everyone spend a minimum of their entire lives diving into data before ever commenting their thoughts.

What do you expect from people casually posting on the unity forums? In that context his post had alot of meat to it.

 

Get off your high horse @CarterG81. He made a post listing all the flaws in others posts, there were a few nuggets of good information in there, however he then goes on to:

* misuse the term Market Reach (active players has nothing to do with market reach which is a measure of how much of the market your advertising is reaching).

* indicate everyone else's game in this thread is low quality or has low quality assets, when as far as I can see his own game (which he implies will be a success) would also fall in that category

* propose a rating system with an arbitrary 'success factor' of 60% and which gives equal weight to such diverse categories as fun, graphics and humour (really? humour should be a core metric... what if your game isn't intended to be funny?!?)

* conclude that video games are a 'gold mine' in a post about indie games, using charts about total market revenue without any indication of either the number of competitors nor their size (i.e. this has a very similar issue to his own point out about duration without hours spent)

---

You are welcome not to find that silly, I'm welcome to point out that I find it so.

I could have phrased it more strongly and said I found it hypocritical and misleading, but I thought that was a bit harsh given that there were some valuable snippets in the post and it seemed to be coming from a good place (i.e. earnestly trying to help).

---

If you want information on how to make money from games, on the metrics that matter, etc then there are a huge number of resources, gamasutra being the obvious starting place. For mobile games, particularly hyper-casual, metric driven games, the blogs at https://gameanalytics.com/blog are great and https://clevertap.com/blog/ is also good although they are bit more focused on selling their product.

 

High Horse, or I actually got you to contribute to the thread instead of just bashing others?

 

Pointing out when someone is potentially wrong or misleading is a contribution (e.g. I can't count the number of times I've seen scripting advice that does crazy stuff like allocating heap multiple times every frame).

 

I began to start to log everyone's games and revenue starting on page 1, so I could eventually get a wall of images/gifs showing the games. At first I was like "Wait...first post was in 2014?" then I started to do it manually.



And stopped. This would take me hour(s) probably, and that's simply not worth my time. I have better things to do with my time than to show the quality of games that didn't make money.

People's games were harder to find than I thought - mainly because I didn't even think and didn't realize this thread was so old.

If anyone wants to try to find images of all the games posted here, it'd be interested to see. I'd suggest working backwards, and just trying to find a flat number and screenshot of the game if it's linked. Or ignore this thread and just do some random sampling based on Steam data.

Ironically, this is what Delivionos did. Saying "you're wrong" is the same type of contribution he made but yours was not adding much more than "wrong!" so it was with less effort than he. So you can see why I defended him from the needless criticism.


ALSO MAYBE GET YOUR GLASSES CHECKED

 

Hah, your image is pretty funny

---

I actually thought it was pretty evident "...make up crazy rating systems and draw conclusions from exceedingly broad infographics..." but I did elaborate so hopefully that's clear. Again you don't have to agree.

I do appreciate that people are trying to make an effort to help others here, so here's my contribution... (warning there's no answers here, just more questions) ...

---

A key ingredient here is understanding yourself and what you are trying to achieve, and most importantly being honest about it (at least with yourself).

For example:

Are you making games to purely to make money? Are you making games as a passion or artistic expression? Or are you somewhere in between?

How much skin are you willing to put in the game: are you going to mortgage your house and willing to go bankrupt to pursue your dream or is this a hobby which is effectively zero risk?

Are you working full time (e.g. 40 hours), start-up time (80 hours), or hobby time (8 hours) a week?

Do you have money to spend or are you looking to raise funds or are you doing everything yourself?

What is your skill level (be honest)? Are you a programming or art expert with years of AAA experience in lead role? Are you an entrepreneur with multiple ventures under your belt? Or are you an enthusiastic student?

Do you have good ideas? Have you validated these ideas? Are you willing to adopt whatever good idea is going around?

<insert an almost endless number of questions about direction, constraints, and commitment here>​

---

This kind of assessment not only lets you put a bit of reality in to your expectations, but also can help drive your choices about what you build. For example:

If you are have a low to moderate skill level in programming with a small budget for art and you are mainly focused on making money then you might want to look at hyper casual games for mobile. Your plan should be around building easily skinnable games that you can fire out at a rapid pace. You shouldn't expect to succeed straight away: instead you should be gathering metrics on everything and using these metrics to control your decision making.

If you are highly passionate about games in a complex genre (say RPGs) and have some art and design skills with plenty of time but no cash to spare, and very little experience then you have a few options: significantly tone down your vision to something smaller and more realistic, or accept that you could spend years building something that may not even get released and if it does its probably not going to make any money.​

These are very high-level but its almost impossible to be anything but high-level when trying to compare such a diverse range of possibilities.

If anyone wants to reach out via PM to get specific... I'm happy to tear down your ideas and dreams and maybe provide some constructive criticism along the way.

Cheers,
Johnny A

 

Good post, and not just due to the obviously awesome flattery I'm still absorbing into my ever-growing ego! Or maybe entirely because of it. WHAT? YEA GREAT POST EXCLUSIVELY BC OF THE CONTENT. Seriously though good post but I can't just admit that right?

 

The answer to the thread topic.

Spoiler

 

Sorry Johnny A, but I'm gonna have to refute your entire post. It's gonna be harsh, so buckle up.

You're wrong, and I can explain why. It's actually quite simple if you just do the math.



Need I even say more?



Also just based on the scale of Rob Schneider In Grown Ups to Toy Story 3, you're clearly just a mere Celts Lose Finals, so we should judge anything you say based entirely on that.

Sorry man. This level of takedown can be a bit jarring.

 

Me too.

 

Ouch. You had to destroy my career too? Brutal.

 

I was graceful like Chewbacca in the china shop.

BTW.

 

Almost 9 thousand now from To Battle Hells Crusade. That's split between two people.

50 percent off sales have earned about half the revenue.

As we had no marketing, I attribute our small success to smartly targeted niche and competent graphics. Mostly positive reviews I attribute to choosing a good design example to work from and lots of playtesting.


With effort in marketing campaign from onset you could do much better than we did. Mimicking older games with good design is good idea as it allows focus on other areas.

If you wanted to focus more on novel design, I'd try to cut out something else. Give yourself handicap is idea. Like use asset store models or hire artist if you want most attention on design.

Reducing workload by eliminating complex technical solutions is good thing. Solving problems is fun and all, but I think if you can't sell a 3d board game you just don't understand the full process well enough yet. As such, I think starting out with tabletop board game is great place to begin.

 

That's actually pretty damn good, considering the game's marketing being pretty minimal. It's a solid game all around from what I've played.

 

I read 9 thousand players I thought how can the review / sale ratio be so off our own.

 

For a first go I'd consider that real proof of capability and market. Now to refine the process, aim at a slightly bigger target and try again. Great stuff!

 

That's how I view it. For two peiple its barely living money but it does indicate we did some things right and provides solid platform to build from. For myself I find market feedback to be highly encouraging, and although this first game I have made is also one of the first turn based games I've played, I hope to return to the genre in the future and do more with it. I really enjoy the pure gamieness of TBS and I think the level of abstraction allows for really fun imagination in design.

 

So are you considering doing some marketing?

You've demonstrated that when exposed to the right people the game makes sales. That is good. I would work on exposing it to more of the right people.

 

Personal issues prevent that. I have to move onto other projects for now.

 

Thats a shame, I definately think from what I played it could really do quite well with some marketing. Definately dont neglect your chances at long tail income, you can still be earning like 5 years down the line if you market it right + put it on all the obscure sites too. There was a gdc talk about a guy who has made crappy puzzle games called stuff like "christmas bonus" for 10 years and he shows how he still makes money off games years later, but its because he also puts them on weird websites I had never even heard of!

This is the talk:

Its all round a great video either way so be sure to check it out @BIGTIMEMASTER I am certain there will be a number of retail websites that will host your game and provide long term income from a range of territories, so even if you cant market it further definately take a look at the video to see what can be gleaned from it

 

Just a quick note to clarify tbhc sales totaled 9k gross, but our actual cut was 5k usd. Taxes, returns and steam's cut ate around 45%.

We only actually made 2.5k so far for 3 months of work full time.

So for anyone else looking at actual income, your income off steam will generally be about 55%-60% of the overall sales.

 

You sound like a bot trying to make an initial post so that it can get through the spam filter?

 

So I see people are still posting on this thread. Impressive.

Well, I have an update too!

Nov. 2018: Diagnosed with cancer.
Feb. 2019: Must do chemo
Feb-Apr: Out of 63 days of chemo, 27 were in the E.R. or hospitalized due to fatal side effects that nearly ended my meager existence.
Nov. 2019: Well I'm still here. I actually released a Halloween Event for my game and not a single penny was made. I'm still at -$35k. Well, -$36k now.
Nov. 2019: Working on another game I started pre-chemo. Still don't expect any sales ever from this game, either.

 

After dealing with that S***, game dev will be a breeze
All the best, stay strong and good luck with the next game.

 

I'm afraid not, in terms of coding anyway.
Picture this. A few days ago I tried writing a simple switch statement (which I got it working eventually), but it took me 2.5 hours to get it. Pre-chemo it would have taken about 2 minutes. The thing is with this chemo, you get a lot of brain fog, and recovery can take years if it ever cures... :\
I find coding is much slower than before and an inability to focus is rather detrimental.

If you meant dealing with hardships however, then yes, a breeze. Thanks! <3

 

Heavy stuff brother, my mother in law got a brain tumor and never fully recovered from the damages of chemo/radiation therapy. But it's very individual from person to person plus where the tumor was located. Wish you the best!

Edit: you should avoid switch cases if possible

 

Ah man that sucks but I love a good success story. My sister's BF's father had a brain tumour. Sadly passed away last year, one of the nicest guys you could ever meet, but was always positive until the end.

 

So I have been with online gaming industry since 2012. I have online gaming website and I also develop and distribute games on different revenue share sites like GD, GM. My earning was very good during the time of 2018, however now earning is going very down. I used to earn from $2000-$3000 during that time. But now my earning went down from $600-$1200.

 

Is that for the whole of 2018?

 

One game, not in any public stores, 4 years, USD 250 000. Sells every day.

 

Where do you sell it?

 

Where do you sell it?

 

At my website.

 

Which is?

 

That's best comment.

I make 10 dollars with 4k download.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.DeviserSoft.SahinUzayda

 

Hey guys,

Here to share the first 2 weeks of release. Slow and steady.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.UndividedGames.DriftWorlds



"100+ Downloads"
No IAP yet
We'll see what happens.

 

Hello. I Think thats not admob.
Is that unity ads?

 

I downloaded your game 1 week ago, I really like it.

 

Didn't play the game, I watched the video promo on Google Play. It's beatiful and you really deserve to earn some money from it!
Good luck!

 

@mcmount you still havent told us what your website is. It makes your claim highly unbelieveable if I am honest!

 

Yeah Unity Ads and Google Play IAP.

 

I have no reason to go to any details, I only answered the main question in this thread. You'll find my games by googling.

 

What should we google?

 

Obviously is http://mcmount.com/

 

Their reasons are their own. Fair enough if you don't believe an unbacked claim, but if someone wants to leave it at that then why not respect it? No need to start accusing people of lying.

Why? They said they didn't want to share. What's wrong with that? We are not owed an answer.