Going Indie

The hit games sell enough for you to make a living off it. You'd have to consider what you're going to do about art though. It's becoming increasingly difficult to compete with casual games on an art basis unless you're know someone (or talented yourself).

 

If you make 7 games in a year part time then I'm willing to bet those games won't be of very high quality ^.^

Anyway, as luggage said you can live off of it, but it will probably take years before you get to that stage. I have been going full time at this for a year and half now (I never did it part time), and I'm still not making enough to support myself (but starting to get close now).

Having said that when I started I was making very poor games, because before I started trying to sell them I only did it as a hobby, and never really made anything 'finished' before. If you are already good at making and finishing games then you could probably be making money faster than I did.

 

Some advice: you'll get a lot of replies to that post, because a lot of people have opinions on this subject.

Be careful to find out who the poster is and their past experience in this field, before considering their advice, as most probably don't know more than yourself about it.

No offense meant to anyone (it is not in any way directed to the previous posters in this thread), just a bit of friendly advice (and yeah, the same advice can be given about THIS advice, but it'd still be the same advice )

I don't have any first hand experience in making games that I sell myself, so I won't give advice on it, but not all people are that considerate.

 

Ask funpause how long it took them to write atlantis
( ok ok they cheat, they use the prolific ptk game engine )

pat.

 

Are funpause one person? Do they do it part time?

 

If you ever need any bitmap graphics, send me an e-mail at

[leon at leon brown creations dot com] << change 'at' to '@', 'dot' to '.' and delete spaces

I can make your game look professional

I will send you samples of my design portfolio

 

Now now, there's no such thing as cheating.

A bit pricey that engine though, isn't it?

 

Here's probably a little different advice. I'm a java developer, 4+ years experience. I love games. I started with mobile game development together with an old friend. Set up shop, made business contacts, had some prospects. I put a hell of work into writing games, had a lot to learn. Had some highs, a lot of downs. Mobile business is, I suppose(!), slightly more complicated than casual games for indie developers, but this doesn't really matter, it's still game development. After ~2 years we decided to change course. I figured following out: more than developing games I wanted to have a successful business. And there're, that's what I'm currently finding out, much better businesses for small teams.

However, I still develop games. But my business model changed: I want to become financial independet first before I go into fulltime inde game dev.

Some few points to consider for you (all very biased):

• Games are real time applications. Meaning: one of the hardest software to develop. Even if you are a good programmer, that's a tough nut to crack.
• Games need polish, more than most other software. You won't need a musician and 3d artist to develop a business app. You can do it by yourself, but this triples your effort
• 4-7 quality games/year is completly unrealistic for one person, even if you are already familiar with games.
• Games, no matter what you do, are - in terms of development time - expensive to develop. When you sit on your game for 6-18 months, calculate what that's worth. If you want to run a business, think about what your ROI is here.
• Now, the holy grail of questions: "what can I make, how many games can I sell etc". Just browse the forum. You will see that it ranges from 0 ~ big hits. My conclusion: you cannot count on any numbers as an indie. There's no "defined need" that your game fills and from which you would be able to draw concrete numbers from. That's the biggest problem IMHO and the reason I do something different now.
• My most important advice I like to give you: it might happen that your priorities change. But as an indie developer, you're in for the long haul and making your special game might be not so important anymore. This point can come sooner than you think. That's what happened to me.

There's a lot to say about this. What I wanted to say is: find out if developing games is really something you want to do fulltime.

Just my .2$

 

I actually worked on Funpause part-time until the day before Atlantis was released. We're two people (the other person being the artist/designer). Between the two of us we also have three kids

If you're planning to make a living out of developing games, don't you think you'll make $200 back? That's how much PTK costs. I figured it would take more than $200 of my time to come up with something similar.

Best regards,
Emmanuel

 

Agreed, it's simply amazing how people can't justify costs like fmod and ptk.

4 games is totally unrealistic for any kind of quality. Quantity doesn't pay the bills because people won't buy turds.

2-3 games is doable with a high quality though. You'll want to make one game first, sell that, get a feel for the market before comitting to it.

And for gods sake, don't think in terms of one hit wonders, cos they almost never happen. If you do think along those lines, just do the national lottery instead.

 

Oh, it is? On what, exactly, do you base this, if you don't mind me asking? Is it the number of sellable games you manage to complete each year, perhaps?

 

FWIW, I took a slightly different approach to starting my business than most people here.

My goals with Land of Legends (my first game) are to break even, and be in a position where I have assets under my belt and can hit the ground running on my next project.

I am full-time, and have been for ~1.5 years working on this project. By the time it's done (very, very soon) I will have invested 1.7 years on LOL. But LOL is much 'bigger' than many of the games here.

I also have a team of 4 others, part-time. My dev partner has put in a huge amount of time while juggling a job and family. I also have an artist, a UI designer, and a sound/music guy. They're all working on commission, or in one case, free (for exposure and future paid work from me.)

I have racked up around $25k now (maybe a bit more) in debt and interest. I do expect to make that back over the next 2 years. As should any budding business person/entrepreneur, I've been keeping my living expenses below the poverty line.

In my case, I ran the numbers based on the audience I was trying to reach, projected per-copy revenue, and my own costs. I did a feasability study to look at whether or not my platform (C#/.NET) could really do what we needed it to, and whether I could learn it quickly. The answers in all cases were yes. The numbers looked doable and relatively safe, and I have an exit strategy in the event of catastrophic failure (which thankfully seems highly unlikely at this point.) I felt comfortable jumping into this project because I've been an (non-games) dev and project manager for years now, and I believed I had the skills to do this project. I wouldn't have had the skills for a project of this size a few years ago.

Our plan required that we find a publisher, and we did. Shrapnel Games has been great to work with, and the situation will almost garauntee that we'll come very close to making our money back, and profitability is a very realistic option. Either way, our next game should be cheaper to develop, higher quality, and should be positioned to use our existing customer base to make more money.

My advise to you: Be honest and critical with yourself now. If you do not have a firm grasp (and I mean a FIRM grasp) on what it takes to run a sustainable company, I recommend not trying to go with that approach first. There's little risk and much to be gained by starting as a part-time hobbiest. You will grow your skills, build your assets, find your niche, and generally position yourself better for when you are ready to make a full-time business out of it. The only real cost is lost free-time.

Sorry for the long post, but hope it helps as a case study.

-Hiro_Antagonist

 

In the beginning I was very cheap too. Then I realized that unless you throw your money away buying useless stuff, you get the money back quickly.
I got back the ptk money just with 7 days of sales of my first mediocre game Spin Around. I learnt C (thanks also to patrice to be honest) and now I am able to release both mac+pc games the same day.

My worst expenses were Torque and Blitz. With torque never managed to compile anything (my fault probably, I'm a bad programmer), with Blitz I made only USM then luckily switched to C and PTK

If I didn't use PTK 2 years ago, now I would have given up completely the indie business.

 

You must get on well!

 

Now before you get other answers, please tell us: what is for you "decent living"? if you live in California decent living will SURELY be out of reach.
If you live in Romania you can get decent living with indie earnings

 

This year I've only managed one game, I might manage another by the end of the year. So you can see how it can be hard to get our so many games. In my first year I did 4, but 2 of those were total junk, and one was a sequel which only took a few weeks to make on top of the previous game.

When I say decent living, I'm talking about UK, which is pretty highly priced, especially when it comes to property. If I lived in Bulgaria I'd be living in a mansion by now (but I doubt getting broadband in Bulgaria is likely)

 

Wishful Thinking

I assure you they won't work for free if you stand to make $20,000 off it. You're going to have to put some bucks down or be willing to share the profits.

 

You know his friends, do you?