One-Man Goal: A Game That Makes $40 A Day. Realistic?

I wasn't worried about your harshness. Nothing wrong with calling a spade a spade.

My point was more that it depends on what your ROI is. For me money is only a part of it. I make games 'cause I like making games, not because they might* make me money.

* Broadly speaking they do make me money, since my day job is as a game/sim designer/programmer.

 

11 games so far and currently about half way through my biggest game so far. Those 11 most have 2 versions on the stores a free and a full version. Then I have them all on IOS, Android and OSX, (I would do windows if there was an easier store to use) so in total about 30+ different binaries to support. using Vungle, Admod, Revmob and iAd plus IAP on the free ones. Life would be so much easier if you didn't need to do the free ones, but without them you get very few sales. The Free version is effectively my marketing method.

About every 3 months I have to release updates to the top 3 or 4 games to add new content, improve graphics and speed etc, this keeps the plates spinning on the top of the poles an maintains downloads. It also seems to build a fan base.

By no means is this all an easy job so if you are wanting a quick million then buy lottery tickets, the odds are probably about the same of striking it rich. Stick with it, don't give up on your first failure or the next 10. It all adds up and who knows one day I might get a crappy bird!

 

Angry's advice is SOLID. Given how terrible my art was, I learned the basics and then sought help. In the OP's shoes, I would study what's popular on the asset store (UI kits, texture packs, particle systems), and crank out assets good enough to qualify for Unity promotions (ex Cartoon FX 1,2,3).

"Trying things ALMOST beyond your ability" is deliberate practice. Doing that until "Too Good To Ignore" is how you get to success.

Gigi

PS - Notch had many years of experience, and 4 years at King.com before making Minecraft. Most 'overnight successes' aren't.

 

This is an excellent video series that speaks to just this. Seriously worth the 8 minutes.

 

I'm a one man team & earn over $500 a day. $40 is very realistic.

 

Well, bro, don't keep us in suspense. Give us your story of how you started out. What was your first project that got you to this point? What can a complete noob - for conversations sake, me or the OP - learn from your tale?

 

You're not the only one I know Hippo has made a far whack out of it too. But it's mainly down to experience with him and he's like the gandolf of games with a persona to match. A lot of us don't like to admit the failures or a sense of showing were weak in any sense. But humans learn by mistake and failure, so embrace it and move on.. I've scrapped three engines, four games a boat load of prototypes. I don't think anything prepares you for this market, so it's a case of learn from people repeatedly successful and get your head down / crack on.

Bioware and CD Projekt Red are my hero's, that's where I want to be and that's my goal. I can't rise to match or succeed them now or in the near future. But I love crafting interactive worlds with an enthralling story behind them, l'll see what happens over the next decade.

Plus cool video, I'm about to turn 29 this year and I actually thought I were running out of time. How silly is that ? Sometimes we all need a perspective check.

 

I had trouble with my firewalls. And it was worth chasing! Loved those videos. Here's the Vimeo links if it helps:
"Part 1 - The Guy Who Painted This Was a Loser" and "Part 2 - The Missing Chapter"

Gigi

 

you seem like a well grounded person... thanks for sharing your experiences. I would have to agree with you, it's more about the experience and development of your skills than actually becoming rich. Sure, there are those unique cases... but more likely than not, it is purely about the journey and what one makes of it.

 

If you liked that one and you want to hear even more, this is one is a lot longer and deals with the motion graphics field but it is also very much worth the hour it takes to watch.

Link: vimeo.com/19428188

It sums up what a lot of people post on here about. The difference between good and great is the amount of things you've done in between. Plain and simple.

Those we know by name now like Notch, Jonathan Blow, Vlambeer and many others had incredibly amounts of failures before we met them at their high points in their career.

So, $40 dollars in a day? Sure. Eventually. Right out of the gate? Probably not. But you won't even make 4 dimes in a day unless you begin now and play the long game.

 

No I'm not looking for a quick million. I'm looking for something that I have interest in and maybe if lucky enough, pays as much as my day job, which is still very far from a million. And from the comments here, it seems that this is possible as long as I am persistent enough and keep improving my game.

 

It's "Games". Plural! The take-away is that excellence requires many, many games (as opposed to 1 big game). Each failure is just one cycle of try, fail, improve, which is why I suggest 12 weeks, and why others suggest 4 weeks. Shorten the cycle, as Arkon did with his 11 games, and be infinitely more experienced than if you spent the same time on just 1 game!

Few things in life are as guaranteed as this formula:
(Deliberate Practice + Opportunities to Fail) * Years = Excellence

Gigi

 

Care to list their failures? Since AFAIK they both pretty much made a hit with their first.

 

It brings to mind this article I read awhile back. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/05/the-most-dangerous-gamer/308928/

I think failures is probably not the right term to use. I think the point of what I was trying to say was that these people didn't just download Unity with zero knowledge of video games and churn out gold in three months. They had experience behind them.

I will look for some write ups on Notch. But I think someone posted earlier about a stent at king.com maybe? Suggesting that he had at least a few years of experience making games before Minecraft.

 

Is it possible to have one-off success? Doug Nguyen of Flappy Bird proves the one-hit wonder is possible. The people we admire though, generally did it the hard way. Starting at 8, Notch improved enough to eventually earn 4 years with King, before spending years on Minecraft itself. Blow's tale is similar, as is Jenova Chen, and Will Wright, and Sid Meier, and Bill Gates, and Steve Jobs, on and on ... The difficult years matter.

"Learning from your mistakes is smart. Learning from others' is wisdom."

Gigi

 

Yes, its possible to make that much a day. I've done it before. Not so much now because I've been slacking off. But with "zero coding ability" and 20 hours a week is it realistic? Well, by the time you've learnt what to do, the app bubble may have burst so I would say probably not. But who knows? Just do it for fun and see what happens!

 

I've mentioned it a few times on the forum but basically it went like this:

Always messed around with games programming from the ZX Spectrum days but I couldn't figure it out, tried some game creator on the Atari ST but never finished anything. When i got my PC I found DarkBasic, tried that and couldn't do anything with it. At that time I'd become a hobby film maker/VFX artist & musician so put all my creative energy in to those.
I found Unity by my usual random searching for game engines that I might be able to understand, it wasn't free & I had no confidence in that I'd be able to make anything worth releasing, so I never bought it & moved on A few years ago 1st March 2012 to be exact that time I bought an ARDrone quadcopter that you control with your iPhone. I took it out for a test flight whilst recording the footage, which is here. I crashed it about 10 times and broke it. So pissed off I looked for a simulator that I could use on my iphone to practice flying it, there wasn't one.

I decided I'd try and make my own and checked out Unity again. At that point they were giving away the iOS & Android basic licences for free, so I signed up for those and made a simulator with help from the internet and my cousin.

Anyway, I released it and it sold pretty well & still continues to sell. I then released a top down driving game which flopped, a space invaders type game which flopped, a spin off of my ARDrone Simulator with Zombies in it, that flopped too. All through that I was working on various prototypes and tests,

Lastly I made a fishing simulator, something I'd always wanted to do but couldn't. I aimed for realism rather than those horrible arcade Bass fishing games that always get made. If you don't know how to fish in real life, you'll catch nothing in my simulator.

Anyway, turns out I wasn't the only person who wanted that type of game. Originally it was PC only, I released a early accesses version through my own website & promoted it through a facebook page. It began selling pretty well. More and more people were asking if it was coming out for mobile devices. In the end due to demand, i released it on iOS & Android. It's been in & around the top 10 in sports on both platforms in the UK and other countries since it's release on Jan 31st this year.

I contacted Microsoft & Sony when my game was at number 1 in the charts, Microsoft fed me the same jargon about their ID@Xbox scheme which i was already a member of, Sony however were great & I'm now a licensed Sony dev & working on releasing the fishing simulator for PS4 & PSVita.

So to sum it all up, the one thing I've learnt the most from my failures and success is to give players what they want, if that happens to be what you want to make, then go for it! Find out what players are asking for, it's usually something obscure that the bigger studios won't touch but would have enough demand.

Hope that helps. Wow, apologies for the manuscript above!

 

Yes I think this needs to be reiterated, you need to do many small games to start with, don't jump into your mega epic as a first game. Firstly by taking about 12 weeks per game you don't get bored with it and start to wander off creating other partial games, secondly you actually finish and release something. Each new one I do I gain from all the previous ones, building up a library of useful and reliable stuff for shop IAP and adverts etc.

My current game is my epic that has been on and off for 9 months now, in the time I've been working on it, I've release 3 smaller games in the meanwhile. The money from these pays for my assets I use in my epic. As a result I actually have good artwork in my big one.

To do a game in 12 weeks or less, spend a day or two at the start and fully design it with a scope that you know can be done in the time limit. Also If when creating your game you find yourself for more than a day on some hard bit of the game and getting bogged down, redesign that part of the game and make the roadblock go away. keep up the momentum.

One last bit of my opinion, I don't think it's possible to create a game on a store without coding skills, the odds of you being able to solve all the problems you will encounter with pre bought scripts and assets is very small.

 

I just hit a roadblock myself and its to do with scripting... not to do with not being able to script, but scripting can be a pain. And you're right there isn't much on the asset store that can *really* put a game together for you. There is the likes of playmaker/uscript etc which lets you do some things, some `actions`, but really it still seems like it's at too much of a low level and takes a lot of fiddling around to put logic together. I'd love to just have a whole library of little bits of logic or `objects` with a certain behavior that you can skin or tweak and be done with it, in some wysiwyg fashion. It does seem that most projects have to have some amount of scripting, even a tiny amount. I have been trying to make what I thought was a very very simple game and again it is turning out to be taking ages and has so many more steps and requirements to make it actually function that I didn't realize. Oh well. Then I looked on the asset store and wondered if any of the tools there would `do it for me` but alas no. Not even for a simple game, or at least not with a fair amount of work still. It has to be easier than this.

Back to the drawing board for me. I don't know if I can tolerate a 12 week project.. that's 3 months. Maybe 1 month tops. Even 2 weeks gets me bored, lol

 

What I wouldn't mind seeing is a thread where experienced people post simple game ideas/plans/designs laid out with a specific timeframe of how long it will take to implement... or perhaps as a post mortem type of thing for games they actually finished in 1 month or whatever, so then people can really gauge better how long a given level of complexity takes to implement.

 

You can usually look at the good developers - mika mobile or rebeltwins look at how much time there is inbetween releases. But i think it will be around 6 months+. I dont think you can make a significant enough of a game (simply because its too easy for everyone else to make such a simple game) otherwise, it will just ignored -- unless you are going for a lottery ticket based thing where its just going to go viral somehow. Though I think we reached the point where its going to take more time then that now (year+), where you are going to have make a real game even on mobile.
http://www.appannie.com/apps/ios/publisher/mika-mobile-inc./
http://www.appannie.com/apps/ios/publisher/cezary-rajkowski/

 

Their first what? Their first piece of software? Their first game? Their first public release? Their first commercial project? Their first published work? Their first thing released under a particular name? The first thing they did with investor backing?

First of all, I wouldn't necessarily look at prior work as "failures" just because it's not a hit.

Secondly, the first thing we hear of from people is typically their first big hit because that's a part of what makes it a hit. Fully half of someone's "first hit" is that it's the first one. If we had heard of prior stuff then either that would have been their first hit instead or we're probably in or nearby their social/professional circles. Not hearing about prior work doesn't mean it's not there.

Also, once you get onto a hit then it's probably beneficial to stop pushing prior stuff in many cases, as you'd get to that hit by trying different stuff until you find a thing that works. When you do that you perhaps don't want to dilute it by bringing up prior stuff that didn't work so well.

 

Coming from a guy who is not rich at all, making $1 a day is 99% unrealistic, I bet a fraction of the people on this forum make that much, and of the people who know Unity pretty well I'd say its less then 10%.

I crunched the numbers, and was like wow! $40 a day is like $1,200 a month, If I had that I'd be so happy. I think I now know the key though, I'm not going to share it yet until I've tested it, but my plan is by the end of this year to have a game that makes at least $1 a day, and not from buyers who are lost purchasing my game but instead from actual people interested.

 

Derkoi, would you please repost your story in this thread? Such wonderful progression, beginning with years of professional experience in a related field, before beginning your recent learning loop - try, improve, repeat - until you became too good to ignore!!!

Given your sign off, "apologies for the manuscript", I suspect you've yet to realize how inspirational your story is. It might help to consider starting your thread this way: "Gigi asked me to share my story, so apologies, in advance, for the manuscript." I hope you seize this opportunity to inspire tens of thousands.

Gigi

 

I'd be interested to see what your current games and marketing techniques are, there is always money for good games with decent exposure. I'd probably say with the populous theory on console "drought" and the amount of shunned "shovelware" quick and easy games made. Now is probably the best time to emerge with high quality games.

 

At the very big risk of sounding ageist and not meaning to offend you, I thought you were still at school? Which means someone else is paying all your life bills. $1 per day when I was your age would have felt like I'd won the lottery. Also I think you live in Australia yes? if so the bare minimum net you need survive here is approx. $25000 per year. If I am wrong about your age and circumstances I apologise in advance.

 

I am in higher education. And the government pays my bills, as in they pay me money then I pay my bills.

 

Sure. You can do whatever you want if you're willing to skip sleep and bust ass. Depends on how bad you want it.

 

You could just hire a programmer (e.g. me) to do it for you. That's a variant of the answer I get whenever I need help on art.

I think you're running into a variation on the problem that we programmers run into all the time with art. Programming and Game Art are two highly technical fields, that you improve on through much practice. I can sit down and hammer out components to a system in a timely fashion, and be able to debug them quickly, because A) I write code as my day job, and B) I've had plenty of failed prototypes.

Conversely, you can create a high-rez 3D mesh that is fully textured, create a UV map for it, create a low-rez 3D mesh that accepts the UV map, and make it not look like total crap, in a matter of hours (probably about as long as it takes for me to get code that works right.)

I also have the same problems with the asset store for art assets. Despite the community's best efforts, there are no art packs that 'just work' - I can't go to the Asset Store and find art that I can just plug into my game to get off the ground - game art is a function of the game rules.

TL;DR? We're in the same boat bro. Now, what can we do to help each other get out of it?

 

I treat all assets as base / prototypes to expand on, I've had multiple issues with store bought artwork from even the highest rated sellers. Ranging from out of bounds UV mapping to some seriously bad animation / couldn't decide which way the character should face.

There is no escape on the coding and artwork side, you need to invest in the tools that make life easier for you and it's nothing short of bloody difficult. On the art side we have, nuke / mari / quixel / modo / a few copies of 3DSmax and Z-brush. Also we use Photoshop / Adobe after effects / Adobe illustrator.. For the coders we have a stack of books and we all use Visual studio (some actually prefer MonoDevelop, but whatever floats their boat).

For GUI we have Noesis and Daikon forge and finally we will be purchasing SpeedTree for Unity 5.0 when it's released. For level design we use world machine and ATS.

It's never ending and a hell of a lot to learn, but it doesn't matter as long as you can get where you need to get.

 

No apologies!

Thanks for the insight.

 

I've never really thought of it that way, but now that you say it, I'm kicking myself for not realizing this sooner. Thanks for that insight.

I've never heard of most of those tools (Nuke/Mari/Quixel/Modo).

We programmers use Visual Studio yes, but there's more to it than that. ReSharper is an invaluable tool for performing the refactors needed to make your code compact, efficient, but most importantly maintainable. We also need to map out our logic and relationships sometimes (especially if you're a visual learner, like me.) I personally recommend Argo UML for mapping class/component relationships, if you don't have access to Visio for some reason.

The stack of books are probably your biggest tool, though, because programming tools only help so much; what you know or at least can use is the true measure of what a coder can accomplish.

 

Thing is it's different when you have a team and code reviews, personally the main benefit I've found working in a team is when you get stuck you just ask and someone will help you. I live in both camps I've been coding 15 years and doing artwork for 10. Due to that PBR is causing slight brain trauma, it must be a diffuse texture I tell you?!! NO ALBEDO NOOO!

With being in a team, different people are assigned to different parts of the game. We have people here who know far more than me, whilst they are some times sloppy (or should I say complacent?) Many of the extreme divison and workflow process becomes inane and when your up against a time with hundereds of thousands of lines of code they still know how to track down an issue in minutes due to experience. It's more about getting things done, I enforce a commentary section and at least a visio outline of hooks / interconnects like you mentioned. But constantly revisting and compacting code when the code is already sufficient and maintainable takes a back seat. IF I had a larger team it could potentially step up in priority.

As a one man band, I did everything possible to make MY life easier. It was difficult trying to keep a track on everything I'd done. Sometimes I wouldn't visit a section for a month or so and look it with my eyes glaring over and I'll admit I could of been more efficient.

Quixel:

Modo:

Nuke:

Mari:

 

It's funny you mention the timing of refactoring. Ideally, refactoring is something that happens while the code is still in-flux, and not 'finalized'; if I'm two weeks from release, I totally agree that the last thing you want to be caught doing is refactoring - but, if you haven't made a solid commit yet, definently use those ReSharper hints and make that code cleaner/better.

Better still, what I favor doing, is to learn why ReSharper suggests some of the stuff it suggests (for instance, remove unused Using directives, move variables declarations closer to their usages, convert if statements directly inside of functions to a if !condition return; setup to reduce cyclomatic complexity) and integrate it into your coding style, such that ReSharper serves as more of a detection tool, than a 'OMG change all the codez!' tool. This alone has made me a lot better of a programmer both at my non-games day job and in my personal projects.

Now I just need to get better at this whole execution thing...

EDIT: Thanks for the videos too, I'll take a look at those and see about integrating them into my workflow.

 

I'd like to share my story as well.

I am a professional developer and team lead with more than 12 years of experience. I always wanted to create my own games, but have never worked in a game dev company, because they offer low salary compared to other industries. A year ago I had a lot of free time and decided to give Unity a try.

Now I have 6 games released for mobile platforms, and my income is 30$ to 50$ a day, which mainly depends on the mood of AdMob. Started with Unity Free, I slowly became a Unity Pro/iOS/Android subscriber.

Instead of trying to create something unique, which could instantly make me rich, I decided to start creating games in most popular genres. To get started I created a trash endless runner game, which I didn't promote at all. Then I created a match-3 game, and another one, a bubble tap/break, a castle defense, and another match-3, and finally a more complex endless runner. Only 2 of these games actually had a warm welcome, while "complete S***" was one of the softest comments about my castle defense game... or was it about my endless runner?..

I suggest giving your dream a try, 40$ is a real goal, but you must understand this is not going to be cheap. You can't create a game for free - it will eat your time, and assets will cost some dollars as well.

But remember, both time and enthusiasm are precious. Until you 100% sure of what you are doing, I advise you to follow the rule: don't start projects, which you can't complete in 1-2 months. If you are a beginner, that should be closer to 1 month than to 2.

 

So, funny story - my most successful game, Zombies vs. Knights? I wrote that in one month. Sure, it's a horrible game in that I took a lot of control away from the player, but the numbers don't lie - an average of 35 plays per day, and usually one eurocent per day out of it. My other games on Wooglie average 5 plays per day, and took much longer.

Also something that proves you right? I made that game for "free"...over a month, with many hours of personal time invested. Free game means you make 1 eurocent per day out of it. Buy some stuff and earn more than 1 eurocent a day from your games (The Hero's Journey hasn't broken that threshold yet, sadly, and I spent $40 on assets for that game...)

 

Well, I'm doing exactly opposite of what you are saying. It's been over 6 months or so I'm working on my game Warfront Defenders.

It's not a quickie, and have a high chance of falling flat on it's face if I go by your statistics. Mostly, I can hear people earning money by Ad based quickies. And going for a 6 months cycle is a definitely no no.

But now, since I'm already into it. I'm trying to find a way out. Find a kinda crash protection for my game. I think the key to it's success would be early and effective playtesting. I'm trying to figure out how to do that remotely.

How did you handled that? GameAnalytics? How did you gathered feedback? Did you chat with the testers? Or just left it in the forums to be played and commented.

 

I can tell you a way that dosen't work - just leaving it in the forums to play/comment. Most of the time you'll get plays, but no comments (or, no helpful comments.)

Something I'm doing now is going on GameJolt's live chat, and soliciting opinions from live people there (just don't do it too frequently or you'll burn 'em out, because they're real people.) I've had some very helpful feedback from that at the end of The Hero's Journey.

Probably the most helpful feedback was after release, getting someone to LP my game - they had all sorts of cool stuff to say. I'd get some YouTuber to LP your game while it's in Beta, and get their feedback that way - doing that, you have the benefit of also seeing a gamer actually play your game, which may expose otherwise obvious design holes. This is something that when my current project is mature enough, I will do posthaste.

 

Well, the rule is about completing a project, not about making money with it. What can prove this rule is correct? I only have my experience to share. Before I finished my first game for mobile devices, I started 2 big projects: a 3D tower defense with 10 maps, and a physical puzzle with 50 different levels. I failed and abandoned both on the stage of creating content and levels.

I spent half of my income during this year on the Asset Store, because I am not an artist. Alas, 9 out of 10 assets I purchase is a trash or can't be used in mobile games.

 

Don't get me wrong, making a long project is not a bad idea. Especially, when you know what's going on, and when you know how to complete it.

But if you are a one man army, a beginner to game dev, then you should seriously consider using my rule. What if you spend a year implementing your fresh and innovative game idea, but nobody will play it? Many top mobile game studios went through it, and we are talking about a one man goal. The risk is huge, and the less you know about game dev, the bigger is the chance that you will fail. For example, two completely identical games, one set in space and another full of elves, can have downloads with different orders of magnitude.

 

Answering your second question, I don't know. There is no crash protection for games for sure. But it looks you are doing it right with playtesting. Feedback is extremely hard to get: when your game crashes, 99 out of 100 players will silently give it 1 star.

I didn't have to handle all that. When I decided to give 1-2 months rule a try, I just made several match-3 games, which almost never crash, run smoothly and have problems only with design of GUI and graphics. And I don't regret, because I managed to learn so much. That's why my rule could be so useful.

I have another useful advice: let your colleagues, friends and family play your game. Yes, they will never provide a negative feedback. But watch them carefully, while they are playing the game. Is there a spark of interest in their eyes or no? When my colleagues and friends were playing my worst game, they all kept silence and some of them were covered with blush.

 

I have a tale of woe to tell about an indie friend of mine, and maybe a warning to others.
About a year before I went indie so about 4 years ago, a friend of mine gave up his day job earning really good money to go indie, a one man band. He used his savings to create what he thought was his epic idea. It took him about 2 and a half years to finish as he was a bit of a perfectionist. Well he ended up making just a few thousand from it and so completely disheartened with the indie as a day job idea, he gave up and went back to paid employment, dream over! in that same timeframe I would have made 6 games, not because I am better and faster than he, but because I will ship it when it's good enough to play and improve it over time with upgrades. collectively all my games add together to make a living out of. even the dollar a day lemons all add to the pile.

So, I would definitely avoid anything that is going to take over a few months to do, especially when you are starting out.

 

Hmm... it seems I'm in trouble.

One important thing I missed out was my year long participation in One Game a Month during 2013. That way I continuously bombarded prototypes into Kongregate audience and after that year, I picked the most successful prototype to be made into a game. I chose the project based upon the interest in the audience. Kong seems to be a nice place to shoot unfinished games . They don't mind. I'll investigate Gamejolt. A quick chat is what I need.

@Asvarduil : Let me complete to a stage where it's playable. And may be the LP youtubers take a look at it and consider playing it. I'm trying to get as fast as I can to that stage.

It's not that I didn't see this coming though. But I really want to have a go at this before I get into that line, doing quickies. A tactics I'm considering is getting the game released episode wise. Not 50 maps at a time. One at a time. But with 7 levels. With 60 to 90 mins of play time.I think mobile players have the appreciation for well executed short games. Also, I get to analyse the feedback and make the next game better. This is the plan that I have.

'Certainty of death, small chance of success. What are we waiting for?' - Gimli

 

Hah! Good story. It highlights what conceited idiots most of us are about our game ideas. There's no money in indie except those selling the shovels - like UT. And I will groan very loudly if someone mentions 'notch' once more.

 

Research shows that you can make anywhere from $0 to $1^Infinity in as little as 0 to 1^Infinity days.

If people knew how to make money off of video games, then they'd crack the goose that lays the golden egg. If they weren't assassinated for the information by AAA companies first.

Everyone wants to know how much their game will make. Very little is known about what is actually takes. It almost seems random.

Good games can make nothing, or millions. Bad games can make nothing, or millions. These nothings or millions can be gained in a time range of a few days to decades of time. I've read developers who broke even after a decade, while at the same time developers who got hundreds of thousands in a few months.

Realistically, if your game isn't total crap, you are looking at somewhere between $7000 to $700,000 in a matter of 3-36 months. Those numbers are AFTER the 30% cut of vendors like Steam Yes, that is next to useless information. However, it shows that even the most mediocre of games which are totally unknown can at least give a tiny bit of money, while at the same time great games that also become well known can strike it big.

Dev time seems to range from 6 months (for people who are obviously competent) to perpetual alphas (for the incompetent). Most amateurs (they have to be amateurs, just because of how slow they work) seem to make 6 month games in 2 years. So it takes many 4x as long as competent people. This is not a random number I am making up, but is based on 6 articles I read during research. It was very common to read either 6 months OR 2 years, and all games are practically the same type: simple games, made by the same type of business: indie, ranging from teams of 1 to 8+. The games that took 2 years to make, were games that SHOULD have taken 6 months to make. This is even admitted in one of the articles by the devs themselves who talk about their greatest weakness being incredibly slow work speed.

Then you have incompetent developers like The Indie Stone, who suffer from significant feature creep to the point of making a game a perpetual alpha. Mind you, I speak from experience. I talked with the programmer from Indie Stone, and he said some of the dumbest things I've ever heard, and seems to be driven more by emotion than reason. Literal blasphemous statements in terms of game dev. Stuff Gamasutra authors would facepalm about. It didn't take long for me to realize WHY they are in a perpetual alpha, developing so slow.

I use this example to talk about the fact there are hundreds of factors which go into dev time, not the least of which is how fast or slow you or your team works. There are common pitfalls you need to look out for. Dwarf Fortress for example, is in perpetual alpha because it is literally just a massive game of feature creep indulgence. No testing, no design, no thought into the features. Just feature after feature being added without a care for the game. This is most likely WHY it is so popular, so it works for him, but it also means the game transcends perpetual alpha, and into what is more likely an eternal alpha.

 

I re-read the OP in more detail and I wanted to add two things.


1) Marketing. From what I read, the greatest weakness in Indie development is the lack of marketing. It seems that most indie devs complain about their game not being known, and when it IS known? The money floods in. Mind you, by "flood in" I might only mean a few thousand a year because the game is just crappy, BUT even crappy games that are well marketed can produce significant gains for the dev. Proper marketing, I imagine, could be the DECIDING FACTOR in success or failure- in relation to financial investment. A common theme you will see is that "Steam Sale = Most of the Profit". There are many articles which talk about how little they made until they had a Steam sale, or were featured on the front page of the apple store.

2) Hours to complete a game. This is rarely documented. Although I have nothing to back this claim up, it is my firm belief that the vast majority (especially of slow developers) do nothing more than jerkoff 90% of the time, slacking and being uber lazy. I think this is because they want to avoid work, because of how difficult and draining it can be to make a video game. Especially if they dread certain aspects of it. (One dev may dread the art aspect, another the programming of boring things, the next the programming of complex things, etc.)

I know it's a joke, but from many articles I read in the indie dev field, I think it is a joke which has some truth to it: Indie Devs seem to spend most of their time contemplating suicide.

I jest, but since I work in the social field and have my degree in the area of psychology, it would be of no surprise to me if the slow work speed of many indie devs wasn't due to depression and the common woes indie devs have. This, along with the assumption that many seem to barely know what they are doing...even when they come from professional backgrounds. That makes sense to me, since the vast majority of people in our world seem less than competent at their jobs. At least compared to the more exceptional people doing the same job, anyway. That makes even more sense because most people hate their job, with their motivation usually DESTROYED by leadership and peers as opposed to boosted or inspired by them. "Soul crushing" is a pretty common word to describe how many people feel about their jobs, especially in relation to their boss or more disliked coworkers. Soul crushing leadership combined with a lack of proper training from incompetent leadership (who were promoted by incompetent leadership) seems to just create a trickle-down effect of incompetence- none the fault of anyone involved except the leadership. If people are not trained and you crush their souls, OF COURSE they won't do well. Why should they?

Indie Devs with little training in game development + depression associated with Indie Woes = Slow Completion Time.

Common complaints among self-employed people usually apply to Indie Devs. One of these complaints is the lack of stability in their life- especially relating to finances. Many devs have to quit their job, risking their mortgages all on chasing their dreams. This is why crowdfunding sources are so beloved by all. This is also why it makes total sense to me why people would work slow, because they are in constant need of breaks, motivation boosts, or destressing. I know, because I very often have to work significantly slower at my game just because I reach a point where I begin to...well...just plain not want to work on it anymore. It isn't for a lack of motivation, it isn't because I'm depressed, it's because I guess I have to destress. However, I'm sure all of it ties together.

I usually have to take a break once I complete a major aspect of my game. A big feature, if you will. The drain of that big feature is simply the straw that broke the camels back. The rest of the straws are the same things all indie devs have to work through. Even if you don't have depression, you can still have many depressing straws just for the fact it's a very difficult task to make even a simple game. Even GOOD stress, is stress. Stress requires us to slow our work for many many reasons, not the least of which is a short vacation for our minds.

edit: Wanted to mention that a big factor in slow working and slacking off is a common complaint for self-employed people. You have to motivate yourself, and it's not always easy. Sometimes it's just plain difficult. It is easy to slack off when you are your own boss. Even more so when you already have the money or don't need it. This can multiply if you work from home with people you're supporting who (even when informed) do not always understand you are at work and should not be disturbed constantly. A common complaint I've found among people who work at home, is that their family does not understand that they shouldn't be disturbed constantly as if they were not at work. To make games, one must be focused on the task and even a brief distraction can literally reset hours of work as you have to get back in "the zone".

 

So you may plan on 20 hours a week, but in reality that may be less. Just being realistic here. Especially when you have another job, and even more if you have a family or other responsibilities as well.
You will have to do research on the common pitfalls, try Gamasutra and do some research on game devs, but by acknowledging these weaknesses in game dev, these common complaints or common pitfalls, you can better avoid them, plan for them, strategize against them.

I myself use two time tracking programs to help me both manage my time and eventually give a proper post-mortem on game dev. I myself want to know "How many hours does it take?" and we as game developers should be responsible to log this information. It is very easy.

I use "ManicTime Tracker" and "Grindstone". The former for automated tracking (and times when I forget to use Grindstone, it tells me how much I worked. It also is EXTREMELY detailed and tells you how much you slack off, and what you were doing when you slacked off). Grindstone, I use as a kindof punch-card system so I can get a general idea (eventually) for how long it will ACTUALLY take me to implement a feature. By estimating before, and looking at the data afterwards, I slowly become more and more accurate at telling how long something will take me to do.

This is a game dev skill everyone needs to develop. By knowing how long a feature will actually take, you can better prioritize your design. "Is it worth 8 hours of work? Is it different enough that it might take longer? Is it worth a double of 16 hours? Hmm, I should not add this feature yet. Let me work on more important features first."

 

This is been a pretty good thread to read through.

I'm at the beginning of my story. I'm two weeks in from leaving my job and going full Indie to work on my first mobile title. Let me save you the time of telling me how bad that sounds -- I'm well aware of the biggest cons from research in the mobile market before leaving:

- Extremely saturated market / Difficult to get discovery
- Very high quality competitors
- Likewise, very competitive pricing from other games as well
- High pricing for user acquisition thanks now to Candy Crush, Clash of Clans, etc.

However, I'm a very experienced developer and see several silver linings:

+ Compared to the days of tangibles, it's far easier to distribute (No packaging, gold masters, or costly shelf space)
+ Cheaper, wider variety of art assets. I definitely agree with ShadowK that these should be treated and starting prototypes. In fact, most "sets" I have I've only pulled one or two things from. But again, compared to libraries before, it's a deluxe buffet
+ Far more mature development tools. I won't go into it in great detail, but I'm in love with Unity for a large variety of reasons. I'm able to cruise though my game programming faster than I've ever experienced in all the hobby games I've tried before.

I'm starting this journey with very low expectations on return money, but high expectations on learning. I intend to release three games by June of next year and all three titles will have a lot of work in each one. (The current one I'm on is about 60-70% done) Of course I'd love if one of them turned out to be a monster hit, but I'm not banking on it. I have plenty of acorns saved to carry me through a long winter of disappointment should that be what's ahead. Hope for the best, plan for the worst.

However, I know I'm home now. I've always loved making games on my off time, and now I'm set up to maximize the effort full time. Like Gigiwoo was pointing out, there's a lot more to gain than just money.

(Plus, I always have the backup of going back to grab the job. The one nice thing about being a senior level developer is that you don't have to worry about employment in the Information Age.)

 

Well before the lotteries were made even more ridiculous at $2 a chance, in Texas with their Pick 6 Lotto as it was in the mid to late 1990s if you had 16 some odd million dollars, yes you could win the lottery every time. And it wasn't that hard to pick up a few dollars every once in a while, write a ksh shell random number generator to pick you numbers. In Texas doing this I once had one drawing that I bought 5 tickets to ($5), 3 winning numbers on one ticket and the other 3 winning numbers on the other ticket. And with ksh shell picking numbers again I won 77 Swiss Francs in the Swiss Lottery. So I'd say ksh in Solaris works quite well. I don't play lottery anymore because that get more and more greedy and dishonest with what they are doing with the lottery tickets.

So I'd say your chances of getting rich are much better with a game than the current typical 'governmental lottery scheme'. It'd be a different story if the lotteries were still like they were in the 1990s.