Story about your first dollar from making games

So i made this game in 3 weeks http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/free-released-orbital-defender.286138/ and currently reading and planning about making my first dollar with it.

I wanna read your story about your games that made your first dollar guys

 

Lol wuttt :O

 

Lol wuttt :O

 

I made $500 using Unity to develop an application for a professor at FDU. He wanted a menu driven program with interactable 3D geometry that would look and perform the same on computer, web and mobile. Those requirements just screamed unity lol. I also made some stuff in flash for $30 an hour... and then it got scrapped when Apple's new version of Java (the first release of Java 7) broke Adobe's ipa exporter lol. I even got to work with SandSwept briefly for $1000 monthly to do general programming stuff (mutual termination when school picked up).

So far, I have completed less than 3 of my own games and have sold none. I bet the ending of that story was very disappointing

 

Well the first game I worked on that made money was "Madden NFL '96". It did alright, I guess.

 

I mean that's right you've been making games and music for over 200 years now LOL.
Wish my life was that prosperous to want to live 200+ years haha.

 

Oops 300 not 200 lol.

 

Not really game, but game graphics... I made some flower models to Turbosquid. I kinda forgot that for a while, and after 4 months, I re-visited my Turbosquid page, to see that I sold it not only once, but TWICE! I earned like 10$ with it (after TSq cut, taxes, etc), that I couldn't even get (because didn't have an ITIN number back then), but that was thrilling, and a great experience

 

I once got a Blockbuster gift certificate as a runner up prize at a Street Fighter 3 tournament.

Does that count?

Cause if not, never. I've never made a dollar off of a game.

 

I made a dollar, but I needed at least $20 to get the money... so I never actually got to spend it.

 

how do you made it ? and is it stop at dollar ?
did you use 20$ for the assets or marketing ?

 

It was through Kongregate, they have a system were you need at least $20 to actually get access to the money and I never reached that much.

 

With my 4 games I've made a grand total of $18.50 through Kongregate in the past 3 years. At this rate I'll only have to wait another 4-5 months before I can access my money! The anticipation is palpable!

 

I bought a quadcopter and crashed it. I wanted to practice flying again on a simulator but couldn't find one, so i made one myself. It's still selling an average of 30 copies a day and to date has sold almost 40,000 copies.

 

How much plays needed to get the 20$ in there ?

Glad to see your story guys

 

My first game, a webplayer game, has earned a whopping ~$0.50 from having on it hosted on a couple of game portals for a year. So that doesn't count.
My second game, released on Android, had someone actually purchase the upgrade IAP. But that was just $0.99 minus fees, so that really doesn't count either. However, with about 275 downloads it has managed to earn me about $7 in ad revenue since release, so there we go haha. Even though that's such a small amount, it still feels awesome. I like to think of it as all the people who played my game chipping in to buy me a six pack

 

It was a trip to get money *from* Microsoft on my first Xbox Live Indie Games game. The funny thing is, I would have marked it as free if that was an option, since I just mess with making games to have some fun. My first one made a few hundred dollars and my second made $3000. It was enough to later help justify buying a Unity Pro license (and way too many Asset Store things), so that's kinda cool.

 

As a rough guess, your game can pull in about $1 per 1000 plays on Kongregate. However, the biggest cut you can get from their ad revenue is 50% by including their API and remaining exclusive to their site, so you only get 50% of the money your game gets goes to you.

If you're looking to make anything more than a bit of pocket money, Kongregate probably isn't the place.