The majority of developers should quit game development.

How do you know it's not producing some desirable effect for them? You're looking on and seeing that it's not producing anything you find desirable and thus deciding it's a waste of time. The thing is that what you find desirable and what they find desirable might not be the same thing.

 

I called the dibs on his stuff first!

 

Okay, I will pick up the mike.

I will confess, that I agree with some of your points.

I have been chasing this indie development dream for over 20 years. Since 1996, on and off, initially as a hobby, but 5 years ago after I got laid off from my last job at an architectural office, which I absolutely hate (I spent my lunch time reading Unity forum and game development forum), I finally dive in.

And being an indie was absolutely exhilarating. I FELT ALIVE. I felt I can breath.

But after few years, came the reality - as my savings and financial situation deteriorated (I didn't get a side job and was just living off my years of saving), being a profesional hobbyist seems like a pipe dream, it puts a tremendous stress on my relationships.

The thing about being an indie is that, being your own boss means you can lose your focus very quickly. There is no down time or up time so to speak, all time are work time all time are play time all blurred together.

What I have learned is that, to be an indie, requires tremendous focus, and discipline.

And I agree that a lot of us are using game development to escape our repressed desire, to seek 'freedom' in our mundane job or life. Game development used to have a nice aura of respectability to it that you can easily escape into even if you don't make any money off it. It is sort of like web develpoment! Web development used to be a respectable job back in 90s! Nowadays you can get someone from India to develop your site for $20 bucks (I get 30 email like that every day). Game developer is basically heading the same way.

Back to the topic, I agree, majority of the people are born to have a certain, innate ability for certain task. A lot of it are hereditary, like a documentary I just saw recently about the top sushi chef in Japan and his son wants to be a race car driver when he was young but eventually he went back to do sushi for his father. He has warm hands, dexterous fingers and exceptional sense of smell and taste. But he wanted to be a race car driver and he wasn't good at it.


Another good example is is this guy Dolph Lundgren



Yeh him. Remember him?

He is a horrible actor. There is no denying that. He is at best a c-rated actor. But did you know that he has a Masters Degree in Chemical Engineering at the University of Sydney, Australia, and was on his way on FULL SCHOLARSHIP to do his PHD at MIT when he got "discovered" by Hollywood? After he abandoned his study and went Hollywood, he never went back, just keep producing worse and worse movies with absolutely no redeeming quality. He often made me wonder why he made the decision to never go back to chemical engineering. He could have cure CANCER! Or maybe invent better battery than what we have now! (I am still waiting for the day when my iPhone can last a day without charging!)

But instead, he persisted in his dream. And the result is we lose one of the humanity brightest mind to Hollywood, the sewage plant that produce horrible stinking remakes year after year. And he is at the bottom of that sewage plant. He is not even good at it.


The moral of the story is, you may hate your job, but you may be born to do that job and be the best at that job, without peer. Going against that to chase a dream may make you feel good, but it is a total loss for the world. Think about the humanity!


So next time when you fire up Unity, think about Dolph. Think HARD. Think what you can bring to this world with Unity in a sea of $1 dollar and FREE-TO-PLAY mobile games. Is your game special? Are certain your game is unique enough to be remembered? Can it cure cancer?

 

Did you pick up a military job or something...? The world would be a sh*tty place to live without games, music, movies, art, etc. Bad people are produced not born while we still have negative genetic baggage, having an outlet to express those emotions helps to minimize bad behavior in the "real world".

The world needs many things, its not a dichotomy.

 

Each quote below is relevant to Game Dev and life in general I think. Please list the ones you feel are relevant to your personal Game Dev experience and how. You can also find out who said them and write it down if you wish.

"By failing to prepare you are preparing to fail"

"Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes; but no plans"

"Plans are nothing; planning is everything"

"Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning"

"If you don't know where you are going, you'll end up someplace else"

"A goal without a plan is just a wish"

"Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing"

"Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you're doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing"

"Human decision-making is complex. On our own, our tendency to yield to short-term temptations, and even to addictions, may be too strong for our rational, long-term planning"

"When planning your wedding you make so many decisions: 'Do I want this fork or that fork?' But in the end people aren't going to remember what napkin holder you choose"

"On the tennis court, one needs a cool temperament, tremendous ball sense, reflexes, speed, hand-eye co-ordination, power, timing and peak physical fitness. Off the court, the player and support team need skills in planning, execution, travel, an ability to raise funds when needed, and several other talents"

"You can spend your whole life planning. But once you're ready, get out there and start doing it"

 

Dude, everything is a chronic condition. It's the human condition, and it's a mess.

 

Respect.

 

On the other side of that coin, who are you/we to tell Dolph not to be happy and make crappy B movies? On his deathbed will he be more satisfied having lived the life of a hollywood actor or most probably another cog in big pharma developing viagra for dogs? (or cog in some corp developing batteries, whatever)

I have friends who went to MIT, they haven't changed the world yet. Even releasing a crappy game I am likely to touch more lives than working as an engineer in some corporation.

 

I thought the write up on dolph was disrespectful and short sighted. I don't see anyone here bothering to get a degree. You're basically saying "yeh I'm thick but dolph should slave away furthering mankind while I have fun".

Hows that work? It's a bit like the guy who worked all his life in construction building up from brick layer to houseowner then being taxed much more than everyone else because he worked all his life for it.

Fact is people like dolph should be the norm, people who work very hard and enjoy the fruits of their labour. Instead you have a dullard majority demanding the people who work hard, work harder so they can sit around and sponge further.

 

Yeah I agree, somewhat. Of course, people should do whatever they want. As an engineer, I have little doubt he made more money being bad at c-rated movies than he would have being a chemical engineer, and probably had to do far, far less on a daily basis.

But that said, I think that people are often looking for the wrong thing with game development, they are looking for 'self-actualization' from a position where they have to make little attempt to deal with or relate to the greater economic and social society. They are looking for a free ride to success without the fuss of having to deal with people or deal with business plans...they want instant stardom based on their own brilliant ambush on the games industry, with the press of a key to upload to Steam or whatever. This is a fallacy and bound to be problematic for 99.9% of people who attempt this.

I think most games are escapism and most 'hobby' game development is an attempt to financially gain from escapism - sure everyone is a special snowflake with a special snowflake game idea but why is it so hard for those people to deal with the harsh reality of the industry? Because they went into game development in their basement precisely to escape it! Spending half an hour a day with other game developers, wearing your game ideas and your progress on your sleeve, would sort out most of these people before they bogged themselves too hard. But no, other devs are too 'negative' and the idea is too special for other people's eyes!

What to do about it? Nothing, of course. It's no one's problem but their own. But it's a real problem worth discussing and I think the OP, despite a lot of dark bombastic statements has made a lot of relevant points. I think the state of hobby game development, and the state of these forums, would be a lot better if many of the developers here were either approaching game development from a much more business-oriented perspective, if they are trying to be commercially successful, and/or actually approaching it from a casual, hobby perspective, rather than an apparent casualness that hides a drying bank account, failing relationships, and a burning narcissistic desire to make a lot of money and be famous without having to leave the basement.

 

I don't agree, there is small indie teams that are passionnate , still they remains pro in many levels like communications, go to events to present their game etc ...
http://www.earthlockgame.com/

 

I agree with the basics of this. Except for using the term hobbyist. A hobbyist is someone like myself who does this truly for a hobby. It is something I do for enjoyment the same as I enjoy archery, playing games, hiking and so forth. A hobbyist does it out of passion. For fun. Satisfaction. Making money from it is not even considered. Although in my case I have occasionally thought it might be fun to pursue it in a business sense as a supplemental income later on say for retirement.

Sure people can try to make money from their hobbies. And I think that is what you are getting at here. If you're trying to switch from doing your hobby just for the fun to turning your hobby into a business to make money.... then you need to really make the switch and start treating your hobby more like a business and less like a hobby. I think that is what you are saying?

 

That's kind of the point though isn't it?

@GarBenjamin the point I'm trying to make is that IMO people often describe their game ambitions as a 'hobby' in order to avoid critical feedback and the risk of failing to live up to expectations. It's like the pre-alpha stage of game development - "don't shoot me, I'm just a hobby (pre-alpha) dev!" And yet you know later on that it wasn't really a hobby when some of the fallout from the implosion reaches the forum.

I'm doing game development because of passion, like most people, but I am aiming to be commercially successful and I'm not afraid to say so. So I'm interested in any way that I can reduce my risk of failure, and I talk a lot in 'heated' arguments about how to avoid commercial failure, and I'm willing to hear people's feedback about my plans and approach. And every stage of my game development I hope to make public for anyone interested, not just because it is good to have feedback but also because it will hopefully help me to spread the word, generate interest and attract people to my game, all of which are essential parts of being successful on release day. If I am six months or a year into development of my game and no one is interested, it's probably a good reason to reevaluate what I'm doing.

 

Man, this thread is depressing...

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

...

I think we have the answer Langston... it get's a effn job.

 

Just a note - if you really think that in 6 months people are going to be banging down your door to play a game you put together yourself ... you may really need to re-evaluate the state of the indie dev industry.

There are so many games coming out at so many levels of skill, that unless you have a ton of industry contacts and a reputation you've been hiding in your back pocket, nobody will even know that your door exists. Don't judge by the unity forums, go through Steam over the last 6 months or look over the good stuff on IndieDB.

 

I dont know yet whats normal in terms of interest for a project like mine, but I will find some way to evaluate it and decide whether I am doing the enough on that account.

Guys like me and you, we have to just go for it and roll with the punches, or otherwise we´re going to be the epitome of "those who cant, teach". I´m trying to be very broad about my approach, I´m trying to get my priorities in order and get my fundamental approach right, and I will always keep my game and my plan out there for public criticism and feedback. But until the ball starts rolling, who knows what to expect? The basis of my plan is constant re evaluation.

 

The thing about Dolph is that, he is a highly motivated individual. When he was young, he became the European Karate Champion twice, and was the captain of the Swedish Karate Team. He is also fluent in 3 languages.

And he didn't just got in MIT. He got in with FULL SCHOLARSHIP into MIT. There is a huge difference.
To get into MIT is difficult enough, but to get in through scholarship, and a full scholarship at that, is even far more difficult.
Let's not forget he wasn't getting into MIT to do a mere bachelor, he got in to do a doctorate.

The point is, he is a fairly smart guy to say the least, probably smarter than majority of the people in this forum. And he is highly motivated and determined person. But the problem is in his current pursuit, which yields horrible result for him, all that smart and talent completely wasted. I have no doubt that if he was to work in big pharma or tech firm after getting his MIT PHD he would have invented something remarkable. He might be a cog in the beginning doing viagra for dogs as you said, but he will eventually invent something remarkable, maybe cure cancer. Because he is that kind of person, smart, highly motivated, ande extremely determined.


BUT HE IS JUST NOT CUT OUT TO BE AN ACTOR.
.

 

I agree. Who are we to say the "majority of game developpers should stop" ?
The majority of musicians amateurs should stop ?
The majority of photographs hobbyst should stop ?
Some of them target a professionnal work as photograph or musician so they'll have to ask themselves it if is what they like the most and find some method and stay focused.
While some of them practice it as a hobby and gain some money from it, and the others practice it with passion without bothering about money.
Until you are honest with yourself what you want or what you like to do than it is ok. We should let other people free from their choices, like anyone they learn from errors and practice, and they keep or let down an hobby on their own.

If they find after a year making a game is not so fun or it is too complicated or too hard to gain lot of money if it is their goal, than good, let them experience and take decisions.

 

Maybe game dev isn't cut out for you.
I think you need to be a poet.

 

This sums up a game dev's life:



"...Workin' hard to get my fill
Everybody wants a thrill
Payin' anything to roll the dice
Just one more time
Some will win
Some will lose
Some were born to sing the blues
Oh, the movie never ends
It goes on and on and on and on....."

 

The real game dev theme song:


You had plenty of money, 2002.
You let the mobile market make a fool of you.
Why don't you do right,
like some other men do?

You're sittin' down wondering what it's all about.
You ain't got no money, Steam won't put you out.
Why don't you Greenlight,
like some other men do?

Now if you had prepared 20 years ago,
You could've been the first Angry Birds.
Why don't you do right,
like some other devs do?

Get out of here,
get me some money too.

Why don't you do right,
like some other devs do?

 

@Billy4184 Ok I get that. I am sure there are many people who say they are making games simply because they love games (are a big-time gamer, etc.) or game dev yet secretly they are always hoping to strike it rich. Yes, I do believe there are probably a lot of folks like this.

And I can understand that I guess. So they don't want to "put it all on the line" and come right out and say "I am an Indie Game Dev. I will make my living from games. I am really doing this for money!" I don't think it is necessarily "bad" for them to be afraid of saying that and instead hiding their true intentions behind the "just doing it for fun" thing.

My own mind goes back and forth on this. Actually 16 years ago I tested the water as an Indie Game Dev. Although at that time it wasn't called that it is the same. Back then they were still known as shareware authors. So I made a game and released it as shareware and received many high ratings on various download sites by the site reviewers. During the next 6 months I sold around... well I am not sure now exactly but I think it was less than a dozen copies at $8.95 each.

And that actually made me realize something very important. Up until that point I had believed if I just made a decent solid game it would sell well. I did only a very tiny bit of marketing and mainly because I didn't know how. My goal was just to make $1,500. And I fell way short of that. Anyway, that experience made me realize just how important marketing was. I saw other people making games that I could knock out in a week and do a better job at and yet those games were far more popular. Because those devs were simply much better than me. Not at design or development but at marketing.

It actually was a pretty big life changing moment for me. It changed a core view I had up until that time. So I spent the next 10 years studying Internet Marketing and building online business testing out different ideas and strategies. I intended to only spend a year or two then return armed with my new skills and give shareware another attempt. But I fell down the rabbit hole and became obsessed with learning marketing and online business.

Anyway, I say all of that just to say I think all game devs get this urge at some point to make money from their passion. I truly do this for fun as a hobby. It is something I have done for the past 30 years. And one time in 2000 I had the urge to switch from purely for fun to testing the water on making money from it.

And I still do think about it from time to time. Some days I think quite clearly about how I would do it. How to approach it if I ever decided to sell my games again. But those thoughts quickly fade away as I get caught up in the joy of designing and building my current game experiment.

So maybe it is just not so clear cut. I'm about as true of a definition of a hobbyist dev as anyone could be I think. Yet still occasionally my mind does think "hmm... you are a lot more experienced now... you won't make the same mistakes... maybe it is time to put it all to the test again".

 

Nicely said GarBenjamin, that describes me pretty much as well. I think we all can agree that hoping to strike it rich is fine, I don't see a problem with that, unrealistic as it may be.

The guys who have no other day job and support themselves and depend on their current game to pay their bills, those are the guys that need to be realistic and do some marketing and forecasting of sales to make sure they are on a sustainable path. If they aren't they go broke and possibly declare bankruptcy, just like any other small business.

There are tons of small business in tons of industries....most of them go bust after a few years. Since this is a gamedev forum we are laser focused on this one industry, but in reality ANY independent gig you take on is a huge risk and only a small percentage of people will succeed.

 

Anyone who risks their livelihood on the game industry expecting to make money in 2016 is a straight up moron. This is just about the worst set of conditions you could ever imagine starting a business in.

If you're gonna chase a dream, cool, just make sure you can afford it when the dealer collects all the chips you dropped on the table.

 

Well it doesn´t seem to me like you´re missing anything that you need in order to succeed.

But here´s the thing. You´ve done the preparation, but it seems like you don´t have so much experience of trying and failing, bar that one game a long time ago. After that time, you stopped and put your effort into ´preparation´ while others just kept hammering at it until they broke through, not worrying about all the times they got knocked down. It seems to me like you need to draw up a new, brief plan based on what youve learned, lock it in and then just go full bore, reevaluating your approach whenever something doesn´t work out.

A little while ago @ShadowK asked my why I don´t just start working on my game, and not worry about waiting until my skills got better next year. And I thought, he´s absolutely right, it would be a total waste of time to wait. But the only thing is that I don´t want to have a 9 to 5 job during my game development, or otherwise it would take too long, so at the moment I´m working at freelancing and building up my asset store portfolio. As soon as I have enough to eat spaghetti and tomato sauce, it´s full steam ahead.

 

Yeah I agree or I would have quit my day job awhile ago. I guess the roundabout point I was trying to make is I don't see it *that* different from doing something like taking a couple hundred thousand and starting a restaurant. The restaurant may have slightly better or worse odds of going bellyup in a couple years(it is a notoriously high risk category like gamedev) but your smarts, perseverance, and business savvy are probably what will propel you to sustainability in either industry(oh and luck).

In either case you are also more likely to eke out a living rather than striking it rich if you do succeed while your not so smart friends who take a plain old boring job out earn you(but envy you).

 

I don´t agree. It isn´t too hard to make money, but you have to learn and evolve fast, which means small mobile projects, on reasonably fast schedules, in traditional genres, and balanced effort at all aspects of game development. All the stuff that @Gigiwoo talks about.

How long have you spent on your game so far? How long have you spent trying to marry turn-based combat with 3rd person view? I wager you could have made 2 or 3 decent-size mobile games by now, and probably make a little bit of money. As game devs we have to be honest about what is difficult and what is not, and IMO making money isn´t all that hard. Some people make a living off weekly clones and reskins, not that I agree with the practice but it shows that making money requires something of a practical approach, and is not beyond most devs.

 

Dude, Gigi who has actually practiced what he preaches posted stats on his revenue and it is less than minimum wage. How is that easy to make money?

I could work for about 3-4 weeks and make more than that brings in the whole year.

 

Honestly, I would compare starting a restaurant as a safe, conservative investment compared to starting in the game industry today. If you don't have any contacts in the industry, you might as while invest in lottery tickets. If you want to gamble, fine, personally I've spent a huge amount of time in casinos and I certainly don't judge anyone for it. But understand that you're just rolling dice.

Uh yeah. The mobile market is absolutely impossible to make money on right now. You can disagree all you like, I just put this post on top of the long list of "Billy is delusional" posts.

I could be wrong though, but like "words words words" too much, need more "action action action"...

 

Well for me it is more of just the way I approach life. I see it all as just a bunch of experiments and learning opportunities. Like in 2008 I started getting bored of IM stuff and switched to learning the stock market and dabbled in that for several years. So probably really only 7 to 8 years of hardcore marketing and online business income building. I just like to learn and experiment. I ended up being able to double my money in the stock market and so I got bored with that and haven't done it in several years.

Anyway, I have a great job with a great company working with great people. Actually is only the second company in my life where I can honestly say I actually enjoy all of my co-workers and it is a pleasure working with them. I also work out of my house 99% of the time. So basically I am already "living the dream" in a sense and that is probably why I have no deep burning desire to be a successful Indie Game Dev. If I do it again it would only be to do an experiment and see what it is like now and if what I learned made a difference. But I wouldn't have any deep pressing need to make it succeed. Only to give it an honest attempt so the experiment wouldn't be tainted.

 

I´ve seen people who make money easily, and Gigis approach is consistent with theirs. But I think in his own case he either aims at apps (not games), which is harder, or makes games that are too simple and are easily copied. If he made something like a 2D platformer with good graphics rather than casual abstract games it would be easier IMO to succeed.

Earlier on before my Big Game Idea took hold, I spent a LOT of time on Google play. What I found is that for people who are not so experienced or well known, it was actually better to add quantity (or complexity) over quality. A good example is the Air Strike project from the asset store, there are quite a few games out there using it that look like a mish mash of asset store graphics and horrible design, some set in space using Unitys late F-16 fighter model and things like that, which had hundreds of thousands of downloads. Why? Because although it was obviously not a polished game and was a bit of a mess, people felt that it was sophisticated enough to be worth trying out. But when youre making another tetris or whatever, unless you do an A++ job on graphics and presentation theres no reason for people to try it out.

So if you want to make money on the mobile market, I would suggest trying to make fairly simple 3D games with good graphics, because while they are not usually the most popular, they always seem to go down reasonably well compared to remakes of Jumping Block or whatever.

@frosted for the mobile industry you don´t need to already know people, you don´t need luck. What you need is a reasonable quality game in an established genre, the ability to peddle it, and the ability to put them out on a schedule of 1-2 months, probably using freelancers or the asset store to make that possible. I can´t vouch for it through my own experience, since I havent tried it, but I´ve seen it happen.

 

Wow Billy, the mobile market is really easy to make money on?

Cool man, go do it! I await the post mortem with baited breath and will be the first in line to congratulate you on beating the odds.

 

If your strategy will virtually guarantee your success on mobile then it seems foolish to not do it. Because you could simply knock out 2 to 3 quality platform games this year and take that money and reinvest for your Big PC Game next year. That just seems like a very smart thing to do, doesn't it?

 

The problem is that an investment of a year or so is something that nobody wants to make when they are not sure of themselves. But the evidence is there. What is required is a lot of consistent hard work and patience.

@GarBenjamin I´m not sure at the moment whether it is easier to make money off the asset store, or with games. But I´m going to, as I said before, make a mobile game on a fast schedule (1-2 months) with the foundation of my space combat kit, which I am busy finishing, and possibly another character game in 3rd person to work out the kinks in that respect. The question is, how to I spend my time best to become free of the need for a job in the shortest time? Whatever is fastest is what I will do. In the meantime I am doing a little freelancing also to keep "artistic angst" at bay, and give me another financial platform.

 

There is something magical about your boundless optimism Billy. The problem is that you don't have any actual experience in any of the things you're optimistic about. You have many opinions, but no facts, no evidence, no personal experience. The actual work you have displayed, definitely needs a lot of progress.

You won't find many experienced opinions in these forums, but from the more experienced people I have spoken to, or have read articles written by, everything they've experienced contradicts your opinions. And they actually have some experience doing the stuff you talk about.

You could totally be right, your optimistic opinions could be dead on. But you don't have any facts or experience, so I'm not sure what you base your opinions on, other than ... your feelings. Ya' know? And like look at this thread - there are a lot of crazy feelings out there. Very few actual experiences.

 

I told you, I can't vouch for it through experience, but especially a while ago I spent a LOT of time researching what makes a mobile game sell or not. A decent quality, well-marketed game from what I've seen will make at least a hundred or two hundred bucks a month. This is chickenfeed? Maybe, but you make three or four and you'll be in a pretty good position to work full time on your big moneymaker if you're alone and willing to make a lot of sacrifices.

Possibly, in the places you're looking, the apps are being developed by professionals and teams, for whom this kind of money is useless. But for me and most people here, it would be a good way to start until we are able to gain recognition and experience, and invest into bigger projects.

I suggest you go to Google Play and look at all the games in a genre such as 3D space/flying games, or 3D car games, or relatively sophisticated 2D platformers, something beyond the usual "match the squares" or something. You will be able to identify those made by relatively inexperienced people, and you can gauge the success based on number of downloads. As long as the game is reasonably solid, you will find just as I have that the game usually fares quite well.

 

Sincerely, I wish you the best dude. If you can make a living in mobile I'll be the first to admit I was dead wrong.

But my money is that after you give it a try, after you put your money down on the table and start taking a real shot at it, you'll be talking like @Master Frog.

 

Do you live in the USA @Billy4184 ? If not, this could be part of the reason why $450 to $600 per month on average is enough for you to go full-time focusing on Indie Game Dev. Just as an example... that wouldn't even cover the house payment for a non-fancy "normal" 2 to 3 bedroom house in most places in the USA. Just wanted to ask because this kind of information is important when posting on an international forum like this so people can better relate to your own situation.

 

That's true, if you have a super low cost of living then it seriously changes matters!

 

I have actually considered that one day when I retire of doing what many Americans and Canadians do... relocate to another country with a cheaper cost of living.

Thailand, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Portugal, Bulgaria, Panama are popular retirement relocations.

I already live in a small town in Missouri where cost of living is low for the USA but it just makes sense to get the lowest dang cost of living possible. So yeah, I think if I ever decided to do Indie Game Dev in my retirement I would seriously consider relocating. If not to another country then at least spend time researching to find the best quality of life at the lowest possible cost in the USA to stack the odds in my favor. Of course, it is still not really a concern for me because I will already be set for retirement. But you see what I mean I am sure.

The folks starting out trying to go full-time Indie who need $5k+ per month just to "survive" man it is a no brainer to realize it is so much more difficult than the people trying the same thing yet only needing $500 per month (or less!)

 

I might be an optimist, but you guys must be the perennial bunch of pessimists! That figure I gave is for absolute beginner level games, they are games I myself would not even consider downloading because they look like crap. If you do a good job as I'm sure most of you can do, it would go a lot better.

I'm Australian, and I lived on about $150 a week for quite a while as a student. It's not too hard. You have to be alone, of course.

The way I see it is like this, most of us have a job, right? We have some savings, right? Well when you come home at night, you work on your one game per 1-2 months, until you have enough to barely live on. Then you quit your job or whatever, and live on your savings and your regular small income until you finish your game or run out of money.

If you are trying to make money, there's a lot of other things to do. You make games, you sell the assets, you sell the framework, you freelance your skills, you make a website, tutorial videos, so on and so forth. There are opportunities there, you just have to find them. FYI I made over $200 a month (oops sorry!) on Fiverr which is the lowest of the low freelance sites, and I could have made more a lot more if I was smarter about it, selling multiple gigs and stuff with a quicker turn-around. I'm going to be getting on Freelancer soon because it seems a lot better. If you find a few of these opportunities and take advantage of them you can make a reasonable amount for one person.

But if you're trying to buy a house or you have dependants you're not going to be able to do it like that. You're going to have to spend a lot more time working nights on your skills and days on your day job, before you'll have any chance of succeeding in making the transition without ruining stuff.

 

Haha I love this forum!

 

Starting out any entrepreneurial venture and expecting to make $5k a month, well it just isn't going to happen, either in the games industry or anywhere else. But it should be possible to make that kind of money within a year or so, if you play all the cards available to you and play them reasonably well. It's very hard to start, but a year of hard work for little pay and you break through to better places. Your experience and skills go up, your marketing skills go up, you sniff out more and more opportunities related to game development and you take advantage of all of it.

I live in Paraguay at the moment. Don't come here, there are too many blackouts and the internet is bad

 

I fully get what you are saying and probably shouldn't really be in this thread since I am not targeting Indie money making. But hey it is fun to discuss things sometimes.

I don't know about the rest of the folks but I definitely crank my expenses down low. I still drive the truck I bought in 2002. Those Ford Rangers are great btw.... over 350,000 miles on it and still running good (course I took good care of it). Still the numbers you are throwing out are "play money" to me. $150 to $200 per week it is something for sure and definitely can add up over time. I just mean I spend that much just hiring folks around here to help me out with my hobbyist personal game projects that are never intended to be sold and most of the time nobody even sees them. lol
It is just my hobby fund. The same as some spend on fishing, hunting or whatever is most important to them.

Thinking about it I would say I am almost certain the majority of skilled wannabe Indie Game Devs would make more money by freelancing around here than in making games and trying to sell them. Not all of course (not saying YOU) but I mean the normal person around here seems to work for some weeks or months then releases a mobile game. And then they get all of 500 downloads (and often less than 100) and make a few pennies. That is just the reality in many of the cases if you check out the Made In Unity forum.

If they had instead spent that time working for someone else even at say $1 per hour 60 hours per week they would have still gained the same game dev experience and yet they would also have made $300 in 5 weeks. Real honest to goodness cash they could do whatever they wanted to with it. Of course if they charged $2 per hour now they are getting a paid learning experience and ending up with $600. $3 per hour $900. You get the point. It kind of surprises me more people around here don't view it this way. Great way for them to get more experience and get (almost certainly 100x maybe 1000x+) more money too. Do this several times and they are ready to rock n roll and dive into Indie Game Dev with experience and money to help them out.

 

Can anyone say for sure, is it true what they say.... that if you don't do a good job in the marketing aspect, even if the game is not bad, you shouldn't expect to profit more than 1 grand (total) from a game? That has been bouncing inside my head for some time, because right now my marketing plan sucks. I have a "game based" marketing plan. I will try make games at a rate people do not forget the last one, and so on. And try to contact as many game review sites as possible. Does it even make sense to do it like that?

 

Everything is 'play money' at the start, in fact the income will actually be nagative at the very start, but the aim is to get somewhere by pushing through a period of hardship, in a way that will evolve your experience and skills in the best way possible. A good game should not, of course, make $200 a month, this is just the kind of game that I think anyone could make in a month or two. With experience, your income should get much better over time. And as you get regular players, find the best ways to make money in your game, get brand recognition and some good press contacts and so forth, and learn to make money from a variety of different angles, you begin to move toward it actually being a viable career. It's just that most people cannot take that first year or so of making very little money for a lot of work.

@dogzerx2 from what I've seen, it's quite possible, but it will require someone relatively well-known finding your game among the haystack, why take that chance? I heard Flappy Bird went unnoticed for months, and made virtually nothing, but only when PewDiePie played it it all changed. I would try not to leave it to chance.

 

So bribe PewDiePie. I suspected as much! :3

 

@Billy4184 - I have to say, thou doth protest too much. I am just skimming, but it seems as though you are the type who says something, doubles down on it when challenged, and then defends the hilltop in a Monty Python's Black Knight sort of way.

 

Hehe! I duke it out in the interests of finding the weak points in my arguments, often they survive admirably although I can't be sure that I'm definitely right! In any case, I'm currently attacking my financial problems by starting freelancing, selling on the asset store, and making mobile games so I should find out soon enough how easy it is to make a living.

Also, opinions are like you-know-what, everyone has one and it stinks. So I don't value anyone's opinion very much, including my own, the only thing that counts is what actually happens. I sometimes feel like defending a point of view just because despite it not being disproven, it is widely perceived as being wrong for some reason. Some people think I'm trolling, but generally I think the arguments I get into are quite constructive despite the bloodshed.