[...] your way to a game dev fortune

This guy made a fortune remaking old games

http://store.steampowered.com/app/203210/

 

His game look awesome. Constistent art style.

 

Zork(s), PlanetFall, HHGttG, Leather Goddesses of Phobos....

 

Yeah you really dont need to do anything new or special just do it well.

 

@Aiursrage2k I agree with you completely on that! It's why I focus on smaller scale games and also lowres pixel art. I'd rather make a tiny game that is very well done than a huge game that is half-assed.

And right now I am actually scoping smaller and smaller and smaller. At one time I had a vision of a sort of epic platformer game. Then an huge shmup. Then a large underwater adventure (actually I still want to do that one). Then a smaller platform game (my halloween game) and a game composed of mini games (my Christmas game).

Then I got into 3D and started on a decent scale FPS Action Adventure game with magic. Then I scoped smaller and started again on a 3D sci fi FPS Action Adventure game. Then I realized I was still scoping too big and placing too much importance on things that are not that important. So I scoped out a more reasonable 2D hybrid game that I have been working on for a couple weeks or so. Then earlier today I scoped even smaller and decided to do my own special version of Space Invaders.

I've jumped around from project to project a lot. A lot of it was for experiments and learning how to best work with Unity (for me) and a lot of it was because I recognized the scope was bigger than I want to deal with.

Right now I am thinking I will focus on games along the lines of Space Invaders and other early 80s arcades games. Just because this is something I can complete fairly quickly and that means I will be able to spend more time polishing the game and making it really unique to me before I burn-out on the project.

That is the kind of thing I used to do and somewhere along the way over the recent years I kind of lost my way. I think a good part of the cause was from seeing so many big games being created around here. Of course many times there are multiple people working on them too. And actually I think many of them were started a bunch of graphics made and then just fizzled out.

Anyway, yeah I am about 95% decided now that I am going to do this and get some games on Steam and see how they do. And I will be starting very small scope. Stick with that for a while then come back to this hybrid game.

Actually I am not sure this invaders game will be for Steam. Because I am actually making this for two reasons: 1) I've had several people (mainly programmers coming from working with Assembly and C) contact me asking for more info on how I use Unity (they read about it on my website game dev journals) and 2) as a test to see if this scope feels right.

 

Shadow of mordor, reskin of batman arkham + assassin's creed

 

That is very true, I've had a quick look at some RPG frameworks and from a fringe look they all seem focussed on being "user friendly" i.e. no code and I'm not really sure how extensible they are. I've used a framework before and realised it was far more work than just doing it myself.. There's a dialogue system which seems more advanced than the state tree one I made in UE4 which is cool, so that's a defo..

Some of the mocap animation sets would save me a metric ton of time, but I'm not sure if I'm going over the line by using them.. I suppose I could integrate our own anim's with it..

 

However I mean it literally for shadow of mordor
http://moviepilot.com/posts/2387914

 

The story sounds a lot different when they tell it:
http://www.puppygames.net/blog/?p=1369

Funny, I've enjoyed it MUCH more than Batman Arkham Asylum.

 

Interesting read.

 

With all due respect to the dev(s) making those games ... it shouldn't be taking 2 to 3 years worth of man-hours at a cost of $120k to $180k to make these games.

Either they are spending way too much time on polish (I'll revisit this again below), need to scope smaller, switch dev tools and/or dev workflows, improve development skill (resulting in higher dev speed) or something along those lines.

When you do this kind of thing as a business you have to approach it as a business. These games appear to have each made from $20k to $60k. This means they shouldn't be spending more than $10k to $40k worth of their time and out-of-pocket money to make & market the games. At least not if they want to make a profit (for Indie Game Devs that just means make it worth their time so they can live and continue making games).

I know that some folks may not agree and feel this is just horrible but... when I do this if I think the first game will most likely bring in under $10k then I cannot justify spending more than $5k of my time and out-of-pocket money creating and marketing it. Which means I should be spending no more than $3k (that's my time and any outsourcing and other expenses) to actually create it. Although there is an exception to that.

The exception is if I just want to do the first game at a break-even or even small loss just to build up a base of existing customers. And this is a pretty common thing in many ventures. You break even at first at best to build the business. Although in reality anyone doing this should expect not to turn a profit for at least the first year or two. That's just how business building works. It's why most businesses fail within their first two years.

Back to the polishing thing. This may be the real culprit why so many people are losing money in game dev. Some polish is good. But polishing and polishing and polishing is just a waste of time and money. We have to keep in mind that every hour we spend on the game has increased the cost of the game development and increased the amount of sales we must make just to break even.

The article shows they are valuing their time at $30 per hour. This plays a big part in it as well. If we look at their numbers based on a rate of $12 per hour they look a whole lot better. And this is why it is certainly easier for people in countries with a low cost of living to build a profitable business in game dev. On the other hand if we bump that up to say $50 per hour we'd see an even bigger loss for these games.

For a space invaders style of game honestly I'd be looking at a max development cost of $2,500. At $50 per hour that gives me 50 hours to complete the game including polish. Then I could devote another $2,500 worth to marketing activities. So if I did everything myself the maximum amount of time I would feel is reasonable to spend on such a game is 100 hours total for development and marketing.

Only when I know first-hand that I (as in myself personally) am making games that will make more sales because my game(s) is/are doing it can I justify spending more time on them.

Just wanted to share that so people know it is not about "trying to knock out a junk game in a day or two". It is about trying to approach it with business sense and make it a worthwhile endeavor. Development speed is incredibly important for game dev if a person wants to be a successful Indie game developer. And that includes not pouring tons of hours into polishing a game. There is a limit as to how many sales a game will make regardless of how much polish you pour into it.

In case you wonder why I set the numbers as I did and think "well what about the other money? You've only included half of it". That other half of the money is on reserve for the ongoing work. Interacting with the community, making & releasing bug fixes and implementing feature requests and so forth. These are ongoing costs that may last a year or more after release. You have to account for them.

 

I think he started working on those games before unity and unreal were free because theres no way a game like that would take that long today

 

wow.

 

Shadow of Mordor became the best game in the Assassin's Creed series after they added Batman combat and superpowers.

 

The comments on the article are interesting.

• No Art assets get reused between projects
• Only the rendering code is reused, everything else is custom
• 'Every pixel is hand crafted'

So many of the things mentioned in this thread.

Really? I struggled to get into the game. I really couldn't stomach playing Assasian's Creed in a LOTR setting. The Rangers were not assassins, they were trackers and hunters and fighters.

The game was good, but the constant dissonance between the theme and the mechanics prevented it from becoming a great game.