make money with create games

hello
i'm a unity begginer and i wish to ask
does making games is profitable
and for what platform is the best for making money
thank you

 

Have you ever written a story? Drew a picture? Have you ever imagined anything?

 

this is not so dificult for me
but take mush time
does it profitable ??

 

You can't make much money from games, these days.

But if you want to put on out, at least you can make something special.

 

Unfortunately, making games is not profitable. There was a thread on here a while back where people actually posted the income they received from games they had released and the majority were less than $200 a month on average.

Of course, in some exceptional cases someone will make a game that proves extremely popular, like Minecraft, but that sort of thing is like winning the lottery, or releasing a music single that reaches the top 10 on the charts. Exceptionally rare.

It's no better if you start working for a company like EA or Ubisoft. People in the games industry are generally paid less than their equivalents in other IT sectors.

Making games is really something you do for the love of games, of you want to make money there are far better ways to do it.

 

thank you so mush

 

The experience is priceless though

 

At least you got straight to the point that you're after money not making a great game or interested in the experience of making your own game. So kudos for that.

If you hang around long enough there is usually at least one person who drops in to say money is just waiting to be picked up. So maybe give it a day or two.

 

I can tell you right now - if you're after at least steady money flow. Make something worth buying and put it on the Asset Store. Making money with games - been using Unity two years now and haven't made a dime. But that could partly be because I don't release things and just enjoy making things. I do hope the game I'm making now can make money, but then again - I've been in the game modding/dev field for almost 2 decades - so I've put my time in it to have the experience to make something worth purchasing, if I decide to release something. It takes time, more time and even more time to get to that point.

Unless ur like one of the above that mentioned - just getting lucky. It does happen, so nobody can say it can't happen.
But don't make your game having high expectation of becoming a millionaire overnight - because you have more chances of getting struck by an Asteroid than that. But still - it can happen (being a millionaire almost over night). But yeah, don't expect it though.

 

In general, making games is not profitable. Not unless you're very, very, very good at it.

As a beginner, if you're not going to do it for fun then maybe this isn't the thing for you. It's harsh, but you shouldn't bank on making money from your games. But if you can keep making games because you enjoy it, then you might stand a chance.

 

Well you can make a somewhat decent living with it i believe. But you will have to be strongly determined and have the will to succeed.

Ps : Don't hope to become a millionaire tho lol.

 

What about a thousandaire?

 

Shoot making 2 / 3 grand a month would fullfil my wishes. Which in the long scheme of things - isn't really that much.
Where I live - cost of living isn't that much depending where you live. However some places are 1500 a month for a 1 bedroom apartment lol. (which to me is a lot). I'm sure it costs more than that in the big cities however.

 

You're right and hit on an important part of this. If the person is living in an area of the world where the cost of living is very low then the odds are obviously much better. Where I'd want at least $5k per month to do this full-time (living in a small town low cost of living for USA) someone else may want $500 per month to do it full-time if they are living in certain regions.

So it is all heavily dependent on where you are as to whether you can expect it to be worth your while. I've seen a few posts around here over the past couple of years where people mentioned for them where they live making just a few hundred dollars per month is quite a nice chunk of money. For those people full-time may be a much more viable option.

And actually it generally always goes this way with everything making money in general.

 

After almost two years of doing this as a hobbyist/freelancer I'm getting to the point where I could see it becoming a full time, sustainable career path. If I put another two years into it.

So, is game making profitable for a Unity beginner? No. You will likely measure your income in cents for the first year.

Can unity game development be profitable? Yes. You will need to throw years of time into it, but you can make this a viable career. There are plenty of people who do.

Is game dev the most profitable thing you can do with your time? No. Not by a long shot. There is almost always something more profitable to do then making games.

So make games if you love making games. But don't make games if you love making money.

 

Yup yup, like I'm sure 200 dollars a month to somebody out in Vietnam is a nice chunk of change for them.
But yeah, cost of living varies everywhere you go, kinda sucks and wish it was the same general area everywhere, not "Omg 3 bedroom house for 600 a month" then 5 miles down the road "om*g a 3 bedroom house for 5500 a month" lol.
I mean I'd be happy getting anything, but 2/3K would be my comfortable area. But obviously more is welcome to come my way haha.

 

I can honestly say that $5000+ for the year would do me well in jamaica. However i do want to be able to afford a decent house, i hate my current neighborhood.

 

That's contrast for you. Put another zero on that number and I would still have to move out of my current place.

 

If money is more important to you than passion, you won't stand a chance to make more than some pocket money... no offense

 

I do agree with the core concept of pouring your heart every ounce of passion into a project (game or whatever). However, I am not sure really if it is true about passion being more important than money as far as making a successful game is concerned.

Right now I am a hobbyist and my enjoyment comes simply from creating. Mainly the creating on the game world and mechanics side. The "guts" so to speak. And I place very little importance on the outside (how things look). Because I have no expectations (people either like what I am doing or they do not) I can do anything I want to do. I mean I can work on any kind of game I want to create. The only driver is my own personal interest in creating such a game.

If I was doing this for something other than passion I would almost certainly take a different approach. I'd spend a lot of time just iterating on graphics or buying hiring out high quality graphics work. Because although that stuff isn't super important to me I know it is super important to a lot of people.

I'd probably no longer just randomly decide what to build based on my own personal whims. Instead I would take a more calculated analytical approach. Look at the market trying to find an opportunity. That could be an opportunity to serve an under-served niche market. Or it may be an opportunity to cash in on some trend. Or whatever.

As much as I'd like to believe that by focusing only on creating what I truly have a passion to create I have a better chance to make a "successful game" than I do by focusing on making a game only to make money... I just don't know if that would hold up in reality.

Like I said, I'd like to believe it only because the first seems to be a "better" way. Perhaps seen as a more "honorable" way. Yet at the same time we tend to get what we are after. Focusing only on the money would make me do things that I am pretty sure a lot of people around here would say I should have been doing all along.

 

^ This guy totally gets it.

 

How about those who are passionate and spend 2/3 years making the best game they could with great visuals,content and fun gameplay only to release their swansong which ends up failing? End of the day money pays the bills and money will helps to continue your passion full time rather than doing it in your spare time around your normal day job. I could only imagine the pain of those who spend years into one product only to see it fade away into obscurity.

 

It is entirely possible to make money from producing games. It is, however, extremely risky. You are gambling when you attempt to make money off of games, and with fairly poor odds. The primary way to mitigate that risk is to make games that are specifically geared toward earning money. And even that route has little guarantee of success, and still represents considerable risk.

While games represent a fair amount of financial potential, they are simply far too risky to recommend as an investment. If your objective is mainly to earn money, you would be better off in any number of different disciplines, with a more stable business model.

 

Well of course as @RichardKain mentions there is a lot of risk involved. Despite the number of people around here who seem to sum up every failure as "the game must have sucked" simple common sense or taking the time to read the various accounts of different developers around the web will show the truth. There are people taking it very seriously putting in the time and money and still seeing failure.

There are just too many factors involved and one of them is always the whole Indiepocalypse which simply states that developers have seen their revenue steadily dropping as more and more games are being produced (or in my words "being spammed out on the market") and finding it takes more and more effort & time to get their games seen for the same reason. And I guess the two would go hand in hand to explain the drop they have seen in their income.

So anyway, you're right. Striving for quality all around isn't a cure all for it. At least not as much as people seem to think it is. It's not much different than going into a huge warehouse store and say there are a dozen fantastic things in there. However, they are surrounded by thousands of other stuff. How many people will find them?

And eventually when you have hundreds or thousands of people (well actually this is probably already the case) all striving to make top quality Indie games it still makes no difference. You can't stand out on quality when there are loads of high quality games. Which all comes back to the same basic premise once again yet still people refuse to accept it for some reason. lol

 

The truth is, extremely high-quality games often fail miserably. Sometimes this is due to lack of marketing, or bad massaging. But sometimes they just fail to find an initial audience willing to pay for them. The industry is littered with hidden gems that failed to earn back their budgets initially, but are now remembered as timeless classics. A good game, even a great game, can fail financially through no particular mistakes on the part of the developers or publishers.

This is what makes the game industry such a risky venture for making money. You can do absolutely everything correctly, and still fail to make a profit. There is simply no guarantees in an industry as turbulent and changeable as game development. Conversely, you can make spectacular blunders and reap considerable economic success. At present the whole mess is simply too convoluted for anyone to stand up and say "This! This is the way it is done!"

That's why I would recommend looking elsewhere for financial success. Anyone can gamble and make money doing it. But the odds are always against you. There are plenty of other industries where the return on investment is more stable, and where hard work and prudent decisions are more consistently rewarding.