$168Mil in 20 Months | Amazing Fastlane Success Story

[Guest-5ty5s4]

@EmotionEngine @bluffcatcher there has been a lot of game dev talk on this forum in the past! it's definitely a viable path.
I haven't seen a lot of success stories from it on here, but that doesn't mean it's not possible. Of course it is.

Just being equipped with the knowledge of what makes a business good or bad should help you tremendously in your game dev journey...

For example, with Need, player feeback is paramount. It's not about what the developer wants, it's what the players want.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[EmotionEngine]

@EmotionEngine @bluffcatcher there has been a lot of game dev talk on this forum in the past! it's definitely a viable path.
I haven't seen a lot of success stories from it on here, but that doesn't mean it's not possible. Of course it is.

Just being equipped with the knowledge of what makes a business good or bad should help you tremendously in your game dev journey...

For example, with Need, player feeback is paramount. It's not about what the developer wants, it's what the players want.

Yep, I mostly agree although what makes gaming software unique is that it can provide many types of experiences. Right now the top games are Call of Duty, Fortnite, Apex Legends, Counterstrike GO and all are essentially the same genre. Other games specifically in the indie space still sell. Celeste (a 2D platformer) sold over a million copies with a team of 6 people. The advantage to indie development is the ability to experiment and prototype. In the end, what players want is mostly "anything or everything" if it's good, and that is even subjective.

 

[Guest-5ty5s4]

Yep, I mostly agree although what makes gaming software unique is that it can provide many types of experiences. Right now the top games are Call of Duty, Fortnite, Apex Legends, Counterstrike GO and all are essentially the same genre. Other games specifically in the indie space still sell. Celeste (a 2D platformer) sold over a million copies with a team of 6 people. The advantage to indie development is the ability to experiment and prototype. So what players want is mostly "everything" if it's good, and that is even subjective.

that's true. The issue there is that games are largely "art," which is subjective and risky, and more subject to passion, like MJ talks about in TMFL.

It's hard to compete in a business where many people are willing to work for free! But the OP in this thread is a good model, going after viral, addictive, simplistic mini-games.

 

[Fr33zerPop]

I agree with you on Unity, but 2D is not history. I was going 3D when developing my own game and a few folks on here told me to do 2D because everyone else is doing 3D. You can also keep 2D visually interesting with solid art, parallax (scrolling backgrounds), camera zoom, and object rotation. 2D also has more charm to me but that is fairly subjective.

I'm personally doing everything myself (design, art, coding) and self-publishing. The goal is to start posting to online stores/developer programs after I quit my day job next year.

As mentioned earlier, be careful not to simply create a "job" for yourself. I was an indie game developer in the days of Flash (and eventually Unity). Game development was challenging, rewarding work and pressed many of my brain's buttons with art, code, concept, etc. But after making a whopping $2.50 USD installing MochiAds (ad server) into my games, I realized I was simply creating a job for myself--and not a particularly stable one. Being an indie game dev is a business model not unlike telling your parents you want to be a rock star. I got lucky and actually sold that $2.50 profit game to a Flash-game aggregator in the Netherlands for about $3k. A fun win for an indie game, but not good business--and certainly not Fastlane thinking. What was I going to do? Tell my wife I'm now working on my 2nd hit game?

So, you love the jam. I do to, and have a whole book of fun sketches and concepts. But being the specialist (art, code, game design) hoping for a hit wasn't the path to sustainability. If you find the way to CENTS/Fastlane your way to success AND get to still be the guy sketching out fun mobile games, please share! Getting to be the artist/specialist AND the Fastlane businessperson is a balancing act I haven't yet seen. But that's not unexpected.
No one owns 20 restaurants and cooks in all of them, too.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Guest-5ty5s4]

As mentioned earlier, be careful not to simply create a "job" for yourself. I was an indie game developer in the days of Flash (and eventually Unity). Game development was challenging, rewarding work and pressed many of my brain's buttons with art, code, concept, etc. But after making a whopping $2.50 USD installing MochiAds (ad server) into my games, I realized I was simply creating a job for myself--and not a particularly stable one. Being an indie game dev is a business model not unlike telling your parents you want to be a rock star. I got lucky and actually sold that $2.50 profit game to a Flash-game aggregator in the Netherlands for about $3k. A fun win for an indie game, but not good business--and certainly not Fastlane thinking. What was I going to do? Tell my wife I'm now working on my 2nd hit game?

So, you love the jam. I do to, and have a whole book of fun sketches and concepts. But being the specialist (art, code, game design) hoping for a hit wasn't the path to sustainability. If you find the way to CENTS/Fastlane your way to success AND get to still be the guy sketching out fun mobile games, please share! Getting to be the artist/specialist AND the Fastlane businessperson is a balancing act I haven't yet seen. But that's not unexpected.
No one owns 20 restaurants and cooks in all of them, too.

A million times this. It's like two different buckets you need to put your brain in.

 

[EmotionEngine]

As mentioned earlier, be careful not to simply create a "job" for yourself. I was an indie game developer in the days of Flash (and eventually Unity). Game development was challenging, rewarding work and pressed many of my brain's buttons with art, code, concept, etc. But after making a whopping $2.50 USD installing MochiAds (ad server) into my games, I realized I was simply creating a job for myself--and not a particularly stable one. Being an indie game dev is a business model not unlike telling your parents you want to be a rock star. I got lucky and actually sold that $2.50 profit game to a Flash-game aggregator in the Netherlands for about $3k. A fun win for an indie game, but not good business--and certainly not Fastlane thinking. What was I going to do? Tell my wife I'm now working on my 2nd hit game?

So, you love the jam. I do to, and have a whole book of fun sketches and concepts. But being the specialist (art, code, game design) hoping for a hit wasn't the path to sustainability. If you find the way to CENTS/Fastlane your way to success AND get to still be the guy sketching out fun mobile games, please share! Getting to be the artist/specialist AND the Fastlane businessperson is a balancing act I haven't yet seen. But that's not unexpected.
No one owns 20 restaurants and cooks in all of them, too.

I've been working in the professional AAA game development / game engine space for 20 years.

I'm familiar with the game development process and understand it's not sustainable to do all the work myself, and that I'll need to even contract out work. It's a process and it's difficult. Expecting to win right out of the gate is foolish, but I will try this on my own. I come at this scenario with much different approach vectors than you did.

 

[MattDMND]

Hey matt, would love to collaborate. Let me know if you would like to speak.

Cool. Please send me an e-mail at hello [at] mxs.vc
Let's chat.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[MattDMND]

Are you working on a hyper-casual game? I'm curious about the self-publishing process of hyper-casual games and the profit margins. What can you tell about it?

Not yet working, but in the market research phase. I'd like to add a "game" area to my startup studio, so trying to find an inexpensive, fast'n'easy way to test the water with mobile games self-publishing through licensing and re-skinning, which most of the success stories said is the fastest and less expensive way to go to turn some profit, enter the market and then you can scale up your game and produce some cool product.
For now, just researching around, as I'm focusing on my main SaaS+marketplace product.

 

[WillHurtDontCare]

It usually takes between 1 and 2 weeks to develop the prototype of a hyper-casual game.
After the development of the prototype, developers record a 30-seconds raw gameplay footage, then send it to the publisher.
Publisher runs a mini ad campaign for testing of the prototype, to test 2 key metrics.

1-CPI (cost per install, how much money they pay for ads to buy 1 user.)
2-Retention (how long does the player play the game?, does the player come back tomorrow?, does the player come back next week?)

This is such an important takeaway - if you're working in an industry with scale potential, where you can build prototype quickly, and where you only have to measure a small # of KPIs, wealth seems like an inevitability.

Good for them. And great thread, thank you @bluffcatcher