Make Tools or Make Games?

A few weeks ago, I put my game on hold to work on a couple of tools to help make development a little bit easier. The UnityEditor API is not as cumbersome as I thought. So far everything's working pretty well (with zero allocations in the game loop, thanks profiler!), and I'm actually liking making tools and plugins far more than trying to make actual games.

For developers here who make (or have made in the past) both games and game development tools:

• Which do you prefer more overall?
• Which do you find more profitable?
• Who's more difficult to please: your game customers or your developer customers?

Cheers!

 

Your new so you wouldn't have seen it, but this topic did get beaten to death awhile back. I think there's a place for both. Right now I'm dabbling at gold mining and really enjoying it but I would never be able to fund it if I wasn't selling shovels

 

It depends. If you can only do single stuff like programming, art, sound you can sell shoves as completing game would be hard. By doing this you can collect funds for your game.
If you are a team or all rounder you can mine gold which is more valuable

 

In the past, selling shoves was a great business venture because of how little competition the shovel-business had. Unfortunately, you're going to have just as hard a time selling shovel as selling games now, I think, and the rewards are smaller as always.

 

@jpthek9 - indeed. The business grows constantly. With ever lowering entry barriers (especially financially) the market is overrun and prices have dropped to sometimes unsustainable lows left and right. In both markets.

 

My YouTube tutorials have made 100x the revenue if my game. Just putting it out there.

My tool on the asset store hot rejected for being to narrowly focused. So I can't tell you what's up there.

 

How many digits are we talking for your YouTube tutorials, if I may ask?

 

Before or after the decimal point?

 

What was the tool?

 

My game has made enough to buy a cheeseburger in the states, but not in godzone. My Youtube revenue would let me take my wife out here for a three course meal.

So we are talking about pretty small amounts here.

A little editor script I set up for run time trending of floats and ints, along with export to a .csv. Great for debugging and the like. The message I got back was the 'audience appeal was too narrow'. I'm assuming that means they figure only a handful of devs would be interested.

I'm toying with the idea of making it able to record animations at runtime and play them back. It would probably be the logical next step to increase the appeal. But for the moment I'll just hang on to it for my own use.

 

Thanks. I get the ballpark.
What's your channel? I'll subscibe ^^

 

Link in my signature. Or here.

https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCfYhN-kdbe_WXmBAFoDOA9Q

It's not bad for a hobbyist. I do this stuff for fun on weekends. Considering I would likely do it anyway, I can't complain about the revenue.

But it's certainly not enough to convince me to go indie. Not by a long shot.

 

1. I prefer making games it is more exciting to me and much more of challenge (larger scope). I enjoyed making tools too just games are bit more fun.

2. So far tools are more profitable. Both seem to be in a race to the bottom but tools aren't as far down that path yet. Not to say when you reach the bottom that you can't still make money but it then seems to be hit driven. If you don't have a hit on your hands you don't make money and if you do you make A LOT of money.

3. Reviews on both tools and games seem to be the same. There are more support requests on tools but usually feature additions make your product better which leads to more sales so I don't view requests as a bad thing.

 

Well its really hard to make a game that will sell. Wether its mobile (over 500 apps a day released, over 5 million apps already), how are you going to get any exposure or downloads in that enviroment. Steam where you have to have a game that people will play for over 2 hours (even if your game is longer and has great gameplay -- unless people are really digging it they can return it). Kongerate where they will downvote anything but the best of games. Thats hard man, hard work and you might not make any money from it (and people might badmouth your game -- even if its free) or you can sell stuff to other developers (and you dont need a full team worth of developers).

But why not do both (you probably didnt become a game dev) to sell stuff to other devs

 

First sell shovels to help other miners.
Then try your luck with mining a bit, but keep selling shovels on the side.
If you find a little gold, start mining more.
When you find a gold that can finance your mining, become a miner.
If that fails... well, selling shovels is always better than working behind a counter.

 

Sell shovels with teleporters installed secretly. Once a miner finds gold with your shovel it'll immediately send it over to you! Now it's time to look for a good spot to build your mansion...

 

Not sure what do you mean by tools but near me , creating assets is way more important that just programming a paper.
I mean , I spend way more time in learning graphics , modeling , animating , texturing and other in-game assets than making a game in unity. It's such a headache but I'm learning this stuff more and more everyday.

I think making game is better than making assets. Unity asset store is not even close to what Google Play Store is. I hope all the developers have a good luck, so they can get some publicity
of their game!

 

He means building assets for the asset store rather than building a game.

 

You will need those tools to make your game, so technically by making tools you are indirectly making your game except you're actually doing it right by creating a good foundation and working environment.

Make the tools that you need, which are probably tools that other people need.

 

It does seem the unity asset store has become much more competitive and saturated. It use to be a lot easier to come up with ideas for assets that hadn't been done before, but now there has been an flood of new people contributing. There is obvious a lot of programming/development talent out there and it is showing up in some pretty sophisticated assets that become harder compete with. Obviously many more people are now making a living from the asset store. It's hard to now identify some small pocket of development that is underserved, whereas before it was a bit more obvious that a certain area simply lacked any solution at all. I guess there is still some legs left on it, but for sure the competition has ramped up and it's hard to compete with people who are clearly much more advanced in their abilities. It's kind of as though the 'AAA' developers have noticed that the store was enough of a platform and are now flooding in with their professionalism and expertise, drowning out the more 'ametuer' background that was there before.

 

Thanks man.

 

Games
-You have a great idea or vision you desire to clearly express
-You have the skills to make and sell the game or you have few skills but want to make the game for yourself and friends
-You are committed to finishing your idea

Tools
-You don't have a complete idea but you understand how gameplay mechanics work
-You write modular code and readable code
-You might have a complete idea in the future that will make use of some tools
-You want to help / sell to the Unity Community

 

Tools
+ You've completed games in the area for which you plan to write tools.

How can you expect to write a useful tool for developers if you haven't been in their shoes and experienced the end-to-end workflow required to complete a game? (Although, as others have pointed out, the increasing quality of Asset Store offerings is doing a better job now of winnowing out those tools.)

I enjoy both. With so many games to "get through," gamers seem quick to form strong, vocal opinions about them, while developers will work you a little more patiently to determine if your tool is a good fit for their project.

Games let you switch gears more often. Unless you're building a long-term community around a game, most of the duration of effort is in building and marketing the game, with some after-release support. With tools, on the other hand, most of the duration of effort is in support. Your tools customers may be developing their game for two years or more, and you'll want to be there for them in case they uncover bugs or need other types of support.

 

I used the word modular, didn't I? Just shove it in where it fits

 

i am not good at marketing or anything. I actually develop stuff as a hobby. It seems that my unity plugins are more profitable than all my games

 

Good point! Unity has a financial interest in the success of plugins, so they're like a marketing partner, whereas with games you're more on your own. (And sorry about my grumpy post yesterday. I still believe you should have experience using tools in actual projects before trying to write tools for other developers, since this will give you insight into making the tools useful. But I certainly didn't want to discourage anyone from doing whatever they want to do!)

 

Problem for me lately is losing my enthusiasm for making games OR tools. I've kind of lost my oomph for doing either. Games seem more fun, but they're not always fun to actually make. Development can get so technical. Tools seem 'easier' in a way because you know you can address a real need that certain people have, or solve a problem, whereas games are a bit more nebulous and artistic with a less obvious audience. Most of the time it seems most game developers have no real idea who their audience is or why their audience would like their game. More wishful thinking.

 

Game development is yet way more rewarding than making tools. You have a wonderful game with wonderful luck, nothing's better than that! Making a game is pure art. When you bring the characters and environment into life from SCRATCH , it really makes your heart happy and especially when you know someone is appreciating your work , it's even better. Game development is the thing for which Unity is made , it's a game engine , used to make games. So yeah develop games! Although making tools is not a bad idea. But I still say ,

GOOGLE PLAY STORE + LUCK > UNITY ASSET STORE * 100

 

Well, it depends on what your objectives are. I'm just treating this as a hobby for the moment, and haven't tried to sell anything as of yet. I've only published the one tool to the Asset Store (update soon, I promise!) and I've been distributing that for free. So for me there are no real financial considerations. I don't have to worry about which approach will sell better, or even what manner of audience I might reach. None of that really matters. All I have to consider is which task appeals to me the most.

For the time being it is tools. But I have plenty of ideas for games, and will likely focus on them as soon as I'm done with my most recent tool.

 

Call me bat p00p crazy, but there's a spiritual factor here. Over the years you may have developed techniques and a solid workflow, yes. But if you forget why you're doing it, it's exactly as you say... making games gets too technical, it's a lot of long work hours!....no sense in doing it without knowing why.

So every now and then, I would say... stop for a bit, put on a shrug face and think... what would I really want this to look like? What would kick some ass? ...And when you find that picture that has been in your mind all along... get to work and think "I want to do that!".

 

The `what would kick some ass` doesn't do it for me either. That's kind of empty, speaking of spiritual motives. I have to be genuinely `into` it and naturally excited about it, otherwise it's really not a good fit. For me I've been moving a bit more towards art and less programming as a result, and other writing/teaching projects. I guess there just comes a time. Or maybe I'm just being too bah-humbug and need to get back on the creative bandwagon. Being creative does get my juices flowing.

 

It's the same in 3D art ... at some point you've acumulated so much knowledge that you start hindering yourself in the process with all the things you are trying to respect when creating a model. Especially aiming for a super low resolution (in polycount, shaders, texture size ... everything) even when there's no real rason to aim so low for a certain project. At some point that stands in the way because it drives you crazy instead of focusing on the flow of the model and the actual art and figuring out if some things might work just fine with a litle more budget. Just as an example.

Yes - tech ist super important but it's also important from time to time to step back and try something a little more free or "daring".

 

@imaginaryhuman Hmm... I'm sorry that you're in such a place. For me the problem with "natural" motivation is that it comes and goes, and I can't always count on it to pay a visit.
I'm not saying you just gotta pull motivation out a magic hat. Just when I feel unmotivated, it's because I gradually started to focus way too much in what I have to do, and not enough what I want to do.
By spiritual I don't mean any empty superstitions, just that when it comes to motivation and creativity, there's more than just procedure or technique. There's a lil bit of instinct. But what do I know? this very personal anyway. Was hoping it would help you ot.

Bottomline, if what you're doing becomes like a repetitive administrative job, then of course motivation crashes.

 

Personally, when I'm feeling tired of a project I'm working on, I take a break. Maybe a week, maybe a month. I'll usually either read a novel or two, or watch a TV series that I was meaning to get to, or even just play some games from my prodigious backlog.

When you focus on one thing too much, it can burn you out on that activity. This is especially true for game development, which by its very nature requires a considerable amount of time. It's part of what makes pursuing game development as a side job or part-time hobby so difficult.

When I'm struggling, a lot of the time I just need to step back from whatever it was I was doing and take a break. Maybe even take a shower and go to bed. (sleep on it) Eventually, I always return to the effort. For me it's a challenge, an obstacle to surmount. I can never entirely turn away from something like that.

 

I tend to enjoy simply building interesting bits and pieces, rather then the grunt work, boiler plate and polish that goes into a finished game. It makes tools more interesting for me.

Also note that 'selling shovels' doesn't just refer to tools for the asset store. It's anything that can keep the dream alive for game developers that one day they might be able to make money off of games. This can be tutorials, blogs, advice, consulting, engine building and a whole host of other things.

Basically making money off of the current boom in game development, rather then making money from developing games.