Building a video games business from scratch

[srodrigo]

Hi there, I decided to create a progress thread, so I'll have to feel ashamed if I don't make good progress

A bit of context: I'm a software developer. I quit my job a few months ago to work on personal projects and move back to my country, after saving enough money to survive for some time (I couldn't stand working on a day job any longer anyway). My original plan was to make a SaaS platform, but I did a better market research and my idea didn't look as good as I thought.

So I decided to go for making video games, which I also like a lot and was postponing it for very long.

The video games industry is huge (more than films + music combined), so there is money there, although at the moment it breaks the commandment of Entry (also Control, if you think about how distribution works, mainly through third-party stores). Professional tools are available for peanuts, and anyone taking a course on Udemy can make and publish sh*t games (many don't even qualify for "game"), so it's also a saturated market. It looks kind-of self-publishing books. A difference (after reading a few threads by authors here) is the amount of time it takes to make a good game in average, compared to a good book. But it's not impossible to succeed, there are independent developers making good money.

The important stuff:

Goals

Even if this is a potential Fastlane business, my first goal is just to make it a viable business. Ideally, it would remain as a one-man shop for a while until it gets traction. From there, I would see how to make it Fastlane, which might involve spending longer (a few years) or good money making something really great; a.k.a. shooting for a "hit". But that will come later. I'm aiming to make at least a minimum wage income within months 6-12, and a mid-class income within months 18-24. Not sure whether this sounds conservative or not, but given how long it takes to make this kind of products, it even sounds optimistic to me.

Current skills

I have no experience in shipping games, although I've made a few half-backed ones. Current skills more in detail:

• Programming: good
• Game Design: ok, and getting better
• Music: have a background, although not in composition, but still better than nothing
• Art/Graphics: this is the fun one. I've been working on it for a few hundreds of hours for a year already, but still far from looking great
• Marketing: have some notions (read books and other stuff) but have only shipped one mobile app before, so still learning

These are the bared minimum skills required to make a video game that makes money. Quite a lot of things, and very different between them. It's been a few months learning the last 3 while working on a game, and felt really overwhelming, because things like art can take years and years to master and I'm quite behind. I can always outsource some stuff once the thing is making some revenue though.

Plan

I started making a game two months ago, and realised that it would take far longer than I was expecting (specially due to being slow making graphics). I'm parking this to start with the plan below, but probably reusing the tech I built, so it wasn't a waste of time.

1) Make a first game for free in less than one month: this should take me through the whole process of releasing a game, not just making it. I'll probably use free stock assets and music. It doesn't need to be a full game, just the bare minimum that you can ship for people to play.

2) Make a second -commercial- game in less than three months: this one should be small, but still a full game that I can charge for. Managing scope will be critical to reach this goal, 3 months is quite a short time to make something decent.

3) Make a third -proper- game in less than 12 months: this should be the one that starts making some money. Ideally, a 6 months project, but might take longer.

I don't want to make longer plans for now, there's a lot of work to do above, but as an idea each game from game 4 should ideally give more traction while trying for find out what can be a hit one at that time (trends change quite fast).

Freelancing (either in the same industry, or any other kind of programming stuff) will be considered if things don't work out as expected, or if I need to get money to pay freelancers.

Difficulties so far

I felt quite uncomfortable with taking long to ship stuff. This is the main reason to step back and do 2 small pieces of work first. This way, I'll get something done and iterate from there.

It can feel overwhelming as hell when you have to learn about so many different things (which I have to do anyway, learning at least a minimum about each is vital). I struggle with art, which means I'll have to either buy it (stock art) or outsource it at some point if I want to go fast, although I'll keep honing my skills here and in other areas.

Anyway, I've started 1) today, I'll post updates.

 

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[splok]

You know this is a hard path, but it sounds like your head is in a far better space to tackle this than most people. I don't mean this to sound overly critical (I comment on this kind of thread as much to remind myself of these things as to help others), but your posts brought a few questions to mind that I thought you might benefit from thinking through.

My original plan was to make a SaaS platform, but I did a better market research and my idea didn't look as good as I thought. So I decided to go for making video games

So did you also do market research on games? and your research showed games to be a better option than saas? That sounds a bit like saying "Option A wasn't guaranteed to make me a billionaire, so instead, I decided that I hate money and will work really hard to not have any." Clearly there are people making money from games, but I would love to see the objective research process that shows games to be a better path.

minimum wage income within months 6-12, and a mid-class income within months 18-24.
1) Make a first game for free in less than one month
2) Make a second -commercial- game in less than three months
3) Make a third -proper- game in less than 12 months

This is probably a good, high-level, way to look at the goal, but the next step has to be looking at your expected earnings per product versus the time investment. From your release plan below, that means your 2nd game will need to make enough money to give you your desired income for the 1yr+ that you'll spend on your 3rd game. (Games never release early. If you give yourself a year, you're going to use every last second of it, and then probably a few months more too.)

end up spending 1-2 years on my first game and making peanuts, trap that most indies fall into.

So instead, you're just delaying the trap by 4 months?

Imo, the better path is to stick to small projects, but build them with every intention of making each one profitable. Can you find a way to build something in 1 month that would give you your desired ROI for 1 month of time?

The real business in the game industry is publishing. The big publishers make their money year after year, while great studios die. Their risk is spread over many, many titles. Their biggest title of the year essentially covers their losses on the rest of their portfolio. I know you can't release 100 AAA games this year, but I know you can release 10 of something.

Consider this: Is a game built in 12 months necessarily 12x better than a game built in 1? Is it going to earn 12x as much? I'm sure you've played 1 month games that were great and 5 year games that were terrible, right?

Now obviously, you'll argue that your 1 year game has a higher chance of success than your 1 month game. You'd (hopefully) be right, but is it 12x higher? That's FAR less obvious. That's also an easy trap to fall into. It mostly works in the real world... spend more time on something, it gets better, you sell it for more. Software (of any kind) doesn't work like that though. That's why it's such a great fastlane endeavor. Once you've solved the user's problem, throwing extra time at something doesn't necessarily make it more valuable (and can even make it less so).

Given how difficult is to earn money from the first few games

Are you sure it gets easier later? Conversely, are you sure you can't make your first game profitable?

So I'm going probably going to try to release a vertical slice for game 3 (maybe for game 2 as well), for free, then charge for the whole game when released separately

Does the demo model actually work now? (Now meaning in 2019, not 1 example 5 years ago or whatever) Are you sure? I'm not saying that it doesn't, but be sure that your business model doesn't hamstring you from the start.


I'm clipping the next few quotes up pretty badly, but I hope you see the point:

I'm very careful about the "programming trap". I'm focusing on making games, not on writing the perfect code that adds an extra 5% of value
you never know when you can get sucked into the trap without even realising.

• These are the bared minimum skills required to make a video game that makes money.
• I've been working on it for a few hundreds of hours
• I'll keep honing my skills here and in other areas.
• I'm adding my own engine on top. It didn't take me more than a few weeks to have something basic up and running
  
• Game dev sounds like a risky enough thing per se, I'd try to stay away from closed/proprietary programming tools

Do you really need to master all of those skills to release a profitable game?

You're spending hundreds of hours getting good at art. That's great if you want to be an artist. If your goal is to release games, maybe those hours could be better spent? Next you'll be spending hundreds of hours getting good at music, then the next thing, etc, etc.

You're taking weeks to build your own basic engine before you release your first, 1-month game. How much risk is using Unity for a 1 month, or even a 1 year project?

You want to consider risk? Then actually consider it. How many indie studios never turn a profit because of over-reliance on proprietary tools? Compare that number (pretty close to 0%) to the number that fail because they never release anything worth buying (close to 100%).

This is exactly how games never get released and why indie studios die.
You can't do everything. You probably could, but there just isn't enough time.

 

[srodrigo]

Routine

I've tried to come up with a proper daily routine, but it didn't work Some days just get messed up by unexpected things you can't control, and only makes you feel bad for not following the plan. This doesn't mean that I don't usually do the same every "work" day. I actually do, but if somehow it doesn't work out, I stick to weekly goals, which are more flexible and you can make up the time next day if you need, for the things you couldn't get done today.

Instead, I've set up a weekly work routine for a few months, and it's worked pretty well so far. I work 6 days a week (might need to be cut down to 5 for short periods when I feel too stressed):

• Sun-Fri: Roughly, I do and average of 11 pomodoros (30+5 minutes, instead of the standard 25+5) of work on projects, and 2 of study. "Study" means that I spend time learning things related to making games (art, music) or business. Sometimes I do this when I get stuck on a task, but I like to schedule separate time for honing my skills, as there are so many areas to improve (game design, graphics, music & sound, and marketing). I usually end up doing more than this if I feel with energy, but I like to set up a minimum weekly average. I also try to limit it to 12/4 per day, otherwise the next day can suffer from low energy.
• Sat: Day "off", which means that I don't usually work, but spend more time studying. I also do things like going outside for longer periods, which I don't do on the rest of the days.

I try to do as much work as I can in the mornings, when I'm far more productive, and leave the evenings for study and other things.

I'm quite strict about limit the amount of coding hours. Coding is a very brain intensive task, and you can really mess things up and waste next day's time if you do too much in a day. That's why I've got about a 11-12 pomodoros/day limit for coding, and it's worked very well so far, getting a lot done and not getting stuck too much. I'm fine with working for more than 11 pom's if I'm doing other stuff like music, graphics, or preparing some marketing stuff, though.

I also set up some "guilt-free time", specially on Saturdays, when I can do whatever I enjoy even if it's not productive. This is important to keep some sanity in the long-term. And I try to go for a 30-45 minutes walk at least every 2 days.

Things that have been working well so far

• Pomodoros: I get so much more done than working until I feel exhausted and then waste time. Giving priority to *focused time*, instead of *many hours*, has boosted my productivity, while still keeping some energy for improving my skills in the evening. I can't recommend this technique enough.
• I quite enjoy making games. It's hard work (and very challenging, both technically and artistically), but it's been quite rewarding. I can't imagine at the moment keeping this pace on a day job that I don't like as much.

Things that need improvement

Still need to set up daily time for:

• Meditation
• Exercise/Walks
• Proper family time (5 minutes every 30 minutes doesn't qualify)

Also, try to keep my mind cool when I struggle with things that I'm less proficient with (specially art/graphics). I know it takes time and practice, but sometimes if feels a bit frustrating and can drop motivation.

And need to avoid wasting time in:

• Reading too much. Sometimes I find interesting articles that I read and, when I realise, 30 minutes are gone. Not only that, but I've spent my mental energy on that instead of on work, which tends to suffer. I need to set up proper time for reading important stuff related to what I do, but be more strict about time.
• Twitter. It's important to be both active and keep an eye on what other people in the video games industry say. But I really need to limit this to a couple of times a day. Checking Twitter in batches is far quicker. Better spend 30 minutes in a row 2 times a day, than do it during pomodoro breaks and get yet another thing in your brain background when something catches your attention. It's more about mental energy and loss of focus than time.
• Planning too much. It's ok to plan, specially when you want to release stuff, but plans longer than 3 months tend to change enough to not waste too much time on this.

Apart from all of this, I try to write a blog post every few weeks. I'm not sure it's helping much to get attention, as I'm not focusing on proper/methodical blogging, but it helps me learn new things and get a few followers (a.k.a potential buyers) from time to time. I'd like to build a better blog website and do more focused blogging, but I can't cram in more things at the moment.

 

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[Kingsta]

Here's a game 3 friends and myself are making. Took us about a year, will be at the end of this month, to get to this point! Looking forward to following your journey.

 

[Soundmaxx]

Music: have a background, although not in composition, but still better than nothing

Hi there,

My name is Chris, I do make some music in my free time which i sell in stock music online libraries.
I haven't had any request for a game so far but i would love to get involved.
I'm not the greatest composer like but people seems to like what i'm doing

SoundmaxX's profile on AudioJungle


Have a listen and if you find anything that can work within the game you can have it for FREE. I can even edit it to fit your needs. If not, I can write something unique (full track, sfx, sound design).
The only thing is that I can spend only 2-3 hours a day in music making as I'm a slowlaner myself I've got a day job and kids... Happy to help though! If you think i can add some value to your project with my music, get in touch to start working on it

All the best!

 

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[srodrigo]

Hilarious. My mobile game, that I haven't updated in almost 4 years since I made it, went from a few hundred installs to almost 8000 in 3 months. LOL.

The game is still dead as it is because 7 day retention is 1%, pretty bad. But a few thousand installs and a few hundred daily users are more interesting than flat radio silence as before. I think the reason is that it appears in the list of similar games on a game with $50M downloads. But I can't be 100% sure (I can't remember it showing up there before). It's all organic traffic, so that must be why.

It's generated $7 from ads revenue in total. I reported somewhere on this thread that it was at $1-2. Still not enough "passive income" for a lambo, but it's growing on its own.

I was thinking about removing the game from the store before Google did for me because I'm so behind the required updates. But I'm going to update it to comply to all the new stuff and let it do its thing. It's a ballache because Unity bought some ads company and now I need to move it over there, but doable in 1-2 days.

 

[Vaughn]

I'm focusing on PC at the moment. After exploring both PC and mobile, I decided against mobile, as it looks heavily focused on free-to-play and hooking (a few) users to spend money. That's not something I'm really interested in and I'd try to stay away for now, as you also need LOTS of users (1+ million) to make enough revenue to even make a low salary.

I haven't explored web games much to be honest, maybe I should. I read a recent article, talking about how web games might take over other platforms. It's something I'm keeping in mind for the future.

Interesting thread. As I worked as a marketing manager for a mobile games company, let me add my 2 cents:

First of all, I think your estimations about earnings on mobile are not accurate. Of course, it depends heavily on the kind of game you develop and its quality, but it is absolutey possible to make a living from mobile games, even without a company of thousands behind you.

The company I worked for started with 3 people and had 50 employees at its peak. We had one successful game, one of those freemium MMO strategy games. The game has about 100,000 MAUs, so not really much, but it makes around 1,000,000 EUR a month.
And the game really is not a high end top quality product. Graphics are shitty, basically static jpgs/pngs with almost no animations going on. But it has some very unique features that keep players engaged. The key to its success is the loyal community. Many players stay with the game for 5+ years (that is an eternity in the mobile world), and some of them spend amounts equal to a medium-sized car for in-app purchases.

But even if you do not make an MMO (which needs a backend, 24/7 maintenance and customer support, etc.), you can be successful. Remember the asian guy who developer "Flappy Bird"? Arcade game, pixel graphics, really simple gameplay, but highly addictive. He made up to 50,000 USD per day just by showing ads in the game. And he did not spend one buck on marketing, his success was completely viraly.

Of course, these examples are not what is normal. But they proove what is possible.
In my opinion, mobile has some big advantages over desktop:

- Bigger audiences. Hundreds of millions of people, especially in Asia (and Asians are crazy about games) do not own computers or have no access to (landline) internet. But they own phones and have access to mobile networks. And their numbers will grow for years, unlike the number of computer owners will.

- Marketing on mobile is easier. App Store Optimization (ASO = keyword research + conversion rate optimization) is free and if you do it in a smart way, you can create a steady stream of downloads without spending a dime. In addition, user acquisition costs as little as $0.50 per download in emerging marketings and around $3-5 in developed countries. Also, you can easily create a community if you implement social features into your app (something that I have not seen in desktop games to this extent) and benefit from viral marketing.

- Free to play / freemium games have higher revenue potential. I understand if people say they do not like the micro transaction stuff. But that is the way to make money, given you do not have AAA-titles. An indie game on steam will make you about $10 - $20 USD per user, if it is of decent quality. And people will be hesitant to buy it because they can not test it upfront. Free to play games allow users to test, and if people like it, they will be more likely to spend money on it. And good games can create lifetime-ARPU of way more than $20. Besides you can generate extra cash from non-paying users with ads, or with offerwalls (they download an app from a list, you earn ad money, and users get a share of this money in in-app currency).

For those reasons, I would recommend to reconsider mobile games. I would go for it if I had programming skills.
By the way, depending on the technologies you use, it can be possible to create cross platform games, that work on mobile as well as on web browser with only small adjustments. Might be a smart approach as well.
Feel free to reach out if you have further questions about the mobile games market.

 

[Vaughn]

Spoiler: Quote by srodrigo

That's interesting. The numbers I made a few months ago were about just Ads, not microtransactions. I based them in things like the first answer on this post https://www.quora.com/How-many-downloads-does-a-mobile-game-need-to-be-successful

Now let's say we have 2 active million users per month.

This gives us 200,000 advert clicks per month.

Lets say the average cost per tap (the amount you get paid for a user tapping on an advert) is 2p. We base the cost off actual taps as some advert systems do not pay for impressions.

So this gives us 200,000 taps * 2p = £4,000 per month.

I'm not sure that's accurate though, but as an idea. Do those numbers make any sense to you? If so, we'd need about half a million downloads to live of Ads at £1,000 per month (which is not even the minimum wage in the UK).

For microtransactions, I found this:
Mobile Apps' Average Revenue per User Benchmarks for Q1 2018 - Marketing Charts

Globally, the report reveals that combined in-app purchases and in-app advertising revenue totaled $1.70 per user over the 90-day period of analysis

So, $1.70/3 per month, which equates to $0.57 per user. We need to subtract a 30%, so the remaining revenue is about $0.40 per user per month. If we want $1.000 monthly revenue, that's about 2500 users needed. I wonder though if that average is realistic, as I doubt a game with 2500 users would even be visible on the stores.

The MMO example you put is interesting, at least it was making 10x compared the MAU.

The Flappy Bird example is an outlier. I wouldn't even consider the game to be any good or fun, but regardless of that, it was released in a complete different moment, with a far less saturated market. And the game just went viral after some time, for apparently no reason. Sounds like a lottery ticket to me. I would say that game wouldn't have any success today. People often talk about Flappy Bird and Minecraft, as if they were the same case, and they are outliers but miles away in both quality and deliberate work to make the game great and build a community.

About user acquisition, you say user acquisition costs as little as $0.50 per download in emerging marketings and around $3-5 in developed countries. If that's accurate, given the average monthly revenue per user is around $0.57, you need the game running and making money for over 6 months to just break even. Are you sure that ASO can bring enough users for free? In 2016, there were 500 new games released to the Apple Store PER DAY Over 500 games now submitted to iOS App Store every day
I imagine that's increased in the last 2 years. Is the ASO on those stores good enough to bring your game to your user's eyes? We are talking about Steam games getting buried, and there are "only" about 25 games released per day.

You can also make your paid game testable by releasing a demo. If people don't bother downloading a free demo to try a game they are supposed to be interested in, I doubt they will play the same game for long even if it was for free.

Maybe I'm getting the wrong impression, but the combination of games designed to hook players with addiction problems (instead of adding value by making a good game), the expensive user acquisition, and the extremely over-crowded stores, makes me very reluctant.

Regarding ARPU:
First of all, AppsFlyer (the company that delivered the ARPU study), bases their findings on their own data. They are a tracking provider and gather their data from apps, that have their SDK implemented. That means, publishers need to choose their service willingly, and the data is not a reflection of the entire industry. In this context, it is important to know, that AppsFlyer is a Newcomer. Competitors like TUNE or Adjust are in the market way longer. In the last years, AppsFlyer ran a very aggressive marketing campaign. To gain new customers, they offered their services for free. As a result, their SDK is implemented in about 70% of all apps, but most of them are indie apps or owned by start-ups. Many successful apps (and I know some employees who manage those apps) work with competitors. So AppsFlyer data reflects rather the lower end of the success ladder, and I do not consider their findings an accurate reflection of the market.
Besides that, average data is never a good indicator. ARPU differs massively from country to country. Many apps are simply crap. Many set stupid pricepoints (f.e. there is no point in creating a premium currency package of $0.99, because the majority of buyers would also purchase more expensive packages).
So if you aim to create the next average connect-3 game for India and Pakistan, you will have a hard time making money, for sure. But if you create a quality app with a quality product page, if you target the right markets with proper translations, if your IAPs add value without being pay-to-win, if you show the right ads at the right time, then it will be no problem to outperform the average numbers.
Of course, the number of organic users will be low for the start. But with proper ASO, additional marketing measures (especially social media marketing and PR), you can create a steady stream of downloads.

Regarding ASO:
Creating visibility even for new games on iTunes or Google Play is absolutely possible. It is not easy though, because the algorithms are very complex. But if you invest the time learning about it, you will probably make it better than 90% of your competitors. By the way, I am currently writing a book about this topic. So if someone is interested, I will let you know as soon as it is ready for publishing. Maybe we can figure out a discount or a free chapter ;-)

Regarding Ad Revenues:
Honestly, I do not see much truth in your example. Click conversion is typically calculated based on impressions, and the assumption, that 2 million MAU create only 2 million impressions is... well, let's call it "debatable". So the first assumption already is not realistic.
Ad revenue depends strongly on the price model but also on the ad format. Video (and in particular incentivized video) creates better conversion rates than interstitials and interstitials outperform smaller banners. CPC is rather unusual for mobile apps. Most campaigns I ran, were CPI or in some cases CPM.
Typically, we saw eCPMs around $10 (for industrial countries). And we did so, although we blocked direct competitors from the strategy genre, who tend to be the high spenders in advertising, from running ads in our games.

Regarding Demos for Paid Apps:
I don't know one single example for this approach. For apps, the common way is to publish a free app and offer additional levels as an IAP.

Last but not least, I think the claim that freemium apps target players with addiction problems is over the top. Sure, there might be some people, who do have problems with their spending behavior. But it is only a very small portion. Most people spend money because the purchased goods add value to their experience. Actually, I was surprised that many players of our games had very strict limits (like XX EUR within 4 weeks) and stick to them consequently.
I consider the freemium model to be fairer than paid apps, because players can decide for themselves how much money the game is worth to them.
Besides that, PC and console games also can cause addictive behavior. If you want to be 100% sure to avoid harming someone and focus totally on value, the safe way might be to write a book instead of programming a game ;-)

 

[BellaPippin]

Here's my fiddy cents because I'm on ongoing treatment for both so I know exactly how you feel. Happens to me all the time. I can only speak for myself and MY experience but see if you can relate to some of the stuff...

Mostly I have a background in which my parents would always make me feel my achievements weren't enough. I'd bring home a B in math which was like awesome cause I'm not a numbers person and I'd get a "well it could have been an A" as a response. Far from "pushing me" it was more of a continuous, daily pattern of never being enough which is very different. Ofc they would tell all our acquaintances how proud they were of me but when talking to me it could have always "been better"... well now I'm a perfectionist and my fear of failure and to be uncomfortable not knowing stuff and practicing until I know it is so strong it took me forever to manage it a bit. Having a controlling partner didn't help, again I had to be walking on eggshells to not "mess up" to avoid triggering aggression. So a total recipe to never start, give up if it looks anything less than 5 stars, not look for feedback to not look stupid, etc. I get a lot of impostor syndrome because when I do achieve things I discount the hard work as hard work (like it should have come easier) OR if I procrastinated or took me longer than I had planned I discount the work as luck or I'll find some excuse.

A lot of times, when you feel "what's the point" "meh": it's not lack of motivation but rather fear disguised. Fear of failure, fear of criticism, fear of putting your product out there and not getting the response you want. If you are anything like me one bad experience really sets you back because it sort of "validates" all your insecurities. Then of course you feel bad either way, and the cycle repeats.

There's a book called The Artist's Way which is to kind of unblock yourself through a 12 week thing of exercises, and one of the main tasks is to write three pages every morning. Total brain dump. You can just write "I don't know what to write" and that'll do. For me it will usually be all the stuff floating in my head at the same time, for you it might be different. This makes room in your mind. It may seem silly but boy does it make a difference. Please give it a try.

The other task is to take me-time, at least once a week, alone. Since it's aimed for creatives you are supposed to do anything that will fill that newly made space in your mind with inspiring, feel-good stuff from where creativity draws from, but honestly it's just "me-time" doing stuff you enjoy and calms you down. The kind of stuff you inner kid wants to do, and not be scolded.

Like someone up there said, you need to disconnect, making yourself feel guilty of not hustling 24/7 when you aren't that type of person is setting yourself up for failure. For some people doing that is their me-time. For you is playing videogames, so be it. I actually just pre-ordered the Animal Crossing Edition of the Switch coming in March, went halfsies with my bf, 1) because there's a ton of co-ops we can play with his kids on the weekend and have fun together --we still got quite a bit of cold days ahead anyway--, 2) to play Animal Crossing and have a second thing to do when drawing isn't an option, big plus the soundtrack is relaxing AF.

Most of the time I "meh" at turning on the TV, I "meh" at turning on the XBOX, I "meh" at sitting down on my desk to sketch, and then I end up browsing Reddit and going to bed at 8... might as well had just played Fallout and deco my camp and enjoyed that time, even that is more intentional than scrolling through memes. It's like you build a debt with yourself of doing stuff you like because you guilt yourself about it. At some point you made up your mind about "what you should be doing" and if you don't live up to it you punish yourself. Even when it doesn't come from someone else, you make up "the standard" yourself.

Finally: I've got two friends that made an indie game, they worked full time in my friend's garage and pretty much lived there and it STILL took them three years to finish (It's called Trials of Azra if you wanna check it out, on Steam). And they worked their butts off on the marketing, posting on social media, going to expos with the demo, getting guest posts and mentions in blogs, etc. etc. I realized recently I know NOTHING about marketing and how important it is. I probably been underestimating it all this time. So be patient, it's not just coding and putting it out there and that's okay. It's a big enterprise. It will take time. Block time to code a bit and block time to play games. Work Hard but also Play Hard. Get there in one piece, you know. Don't compare yourself to others' processes.

 

[srodrigo]

This post is to explain a bit more about my approach to treat this more like a business, not just "hey, I'd love to make X game, let's get started!", which can be a dangerous road.

About the kind of games I'm going to make, it was a mix of things that I like, things that players might like, and things that a single person can make in a reasonable time (e.g. don't make an RPG, you'll spend years). After a lot of thought and research I chose to make old-style arcade games, mostly "pixel" ones. There are a few reasons for this:

• The genre should have its audience, as 30-45 years old people (even older) tend to like this kind of games they played in their young days. Nostalgia is a good seller.
  
• It always depends on the game, but they tend to take far less time than, say, a 3D shooter.
• I personally love this kind of games, which makes me feel excited about working on them.
• Even if there are a lot of old-style games, I couldn't find many arcade ones. The idea is to make them different, not just clone them. Make them feel modern in some ways, and old in some others. This kind of combination has been used successfully by some people.

This might work or not. The way market research is done in this kind of projects doesn't really guarantee results, but it's better than nothing. At the end, is not "this app makes A, B and C features great to use and looks good", this is far more subjective.

Another special thing about video games is that soft-proof is tricky. You cannot just set up a landing page with a few made-up screenshots of a mobile/web app that sort-of show the key features of your app. Here, if you were to do that, you'd need to create almost final art first, which takes quite a while and tends to change (so ends up being a lot of wasted effort). Videos would be even worse, you'd need to code a prototype + make final graphics/music. And some third-party stores can be unhappy about people setting up mock pages. Usually, you need to either code a prototype that implements 80% of everything with placeholder assets, or make a vertical slice with 80% polish of a small chunk of the game.

So I'm going probably going to try to release a vertical slice for game 3 (maybe for game 2 as well), for free, then charge for the whole game when released separately. Let's say a game has 100 levels, I'd release 10-20 for free, with 80-90% polish, and then see what's people's reaction. If it's good, carry on. If it's not, see if there are things that can be addressed; or whether the kind of game is just not in the players' interest at this point (as I said, trends tend to change a lot, that's one of the reasons why releasing often is important), in which case it might be better to salvage some work and move on.

Some stores also offer the choice of something called "early access", which is an alpha of the game that you upload and people buy, with the promise that you'll finish it. This can be a great way to release early and make money early, but it needs to be done carefully; if you upload something that still needs a lot of work, players can leave bad reviews and hurt your future sales.

Marketing is difficult. Apart from the traditional ways of doing digital marketing, there are journalists and streamers out there, but there are so many games that they tend to be busy and it's difficult to get their attention. But if you make a good game, the chances increase.

 

[srodrigo]

Hi @splok Thanks for the detailed feedback. You raise fair concerns. I'll answer your questions separately, and I take good notes about your advice. I hope I haven't sliced your write-up too much.

So did you also do market research on games? and your research showed games to be a better option than saas? That sounds a bit like saying "Option A wasn't guaranteed to make me a billionaire, so instead, I decided that I hate money and will work really hard to not have any." Clearly there are people making money from games, but I would love to see the objective research process that shows games to be a better path.

It is as it sounds. I didn't have another idea at that point in the pipeline (well, I thought of building a trading bot for crypto-currencies for personal use to start with, but I'd like to avoid getting into something that might be falling apart right now). I've been postponing the games thing forever and even making career paths "for real money and job security" (e.g. writing business software). While I don't regret (had quite a successful career so far), I wanted to work as a game developer since I even started working. I know it's not an objective business decision and I'm biased, as 99% of indie developers.

I agree with you that making games is, objectively, probably far riskier than going for a SaaS (although, as in everything, it depends on the games and the SaaS's). It has a lot of potential, but I don't think it's a better path. I'm aware of this. There are other things that are kind of similar (like self-publishing books). Still, it's possible and I want to do my best to make it viable. Maybe I'll regret later, but better regret for trying than for not trying. I'll make sure I don't do stupid things like getting into debt or spending 10 years making little money. I'll review how it's going frequently, and whether it's getting traction or not. If it doesn't in a reasonable time span (2 years in my mind), I'll think about it. There are other options on the game industry apart from making games, and having made and release them can be useful going for other paths.

I'm not approaching this as "let's make my dream game that will take 4 years and hope for the best". I'm trying to figure out how to make it, at least, a business that makes a sustainable income (which, being honest, it's hard to figure out, most people are still trying to). That's my mid-term goal. I really understand your point though!

This is probably a good, high-level, way to look at the goal, but the next step has to be looking at your expected earnings per product versus the time investment. From your release plan below, that means your 2nd game will need to make enough money to give you your desired income for the 1yr+ that you'll spend on your 3rd game. (Games never release early. If you give yourself a year, you're going to use every last second of it, and then probably a few months more too.)

You are right. After reviewing it, the plan above doesn't really make sense unless the 3rd game is far less than 12 months. I put 12 months as a hard limit, but you are also right in that it usually takes longer. So I should probably reduce the limit at least by half. (More on this on the points you make later about more shorter games vs. one long game).

So instead, you're just delaying the trap by 4 months?

My idea was to ship smaller things to get experience and some exposure. The more games you make, the more traction you should get (in theory). But with the plan I include above, with game 3 could take up to 1 year, sounds like I'm delaying the trap I'll have to rethink that.

Imo, the better path is to stick to small projects, but build them with every intention of making each one profitable. Can you find a way to build something in 1 month that would give you your desired ROI for 1 month of time?

That's a great question. I doubt that will be the case for a while. The more name you have in the industry, the more coverage and other opportunities to reach your audience. I'm starting from scratch, so it's going to be challenging to make good money from 1 month games, at least at the beginning. At least, that's what's happened to most indies I know, some of them have been in this for many years, but they had a hard start.

After I stop being an yet another unknown indie dev, your question about whether it's possible to make games in 1 month that make the expected profit, is interesting. I'd say no for the PC market, maybe yes for the mobile (and web?) one(s), but outsourcing a fair amount (if not everything) at that point. I can't say this would work really, but that's what comes to my mind as a way to make it possible.

I bet that if some indies (the ones that like making games but are flexible with which ones to make and want to stay in business, not fail with their masterpiece) could ship profitable games every month, they'd do it. I'm sure that's what some companies in the mobile market do, but they probably have dozens of people working there and are an already established business. Most small studios or one-person shops can't release quality products so often. And some of them I talked to really share your view, they want to make and release games as frequently as possible, but I don't know of any of them that have managed to make it in less than 3 months (that's outsourcing many things, and usually still takes them 6+ months in average).

The real business in the game industry is publishing. The big publishers make their money year after year, while great studios die. Their risk is spread over many, many titles. Their biggest title of the year essentially covers their losses on the rest of their portfolio. I know you can't release 100 AAA games this year, but I know you can release 10 of something.

I didn't think of that. That's really sad, but still good to know and will take it into account.

Consider this: Is a game built in 12 months necessarily 12x better than a game built in 1? Is it going to earn 12x as much? I'm sure you've played 1 month games that were great and 5 year games that were terrible, right?

Now obviously, you'll argue that your 1 year game has a higher chance of success than your 1 month game. You'd (hopefully) be right, but is it 12x higher? That's FAR less obvious. That's also an easy trap to fall into. It mostly works in the real world... spend more time on something, it gets better, you sell it for more. Software (of any kind) doesn't work like that though. That's why it's such a great fastlane endeavor. Once you've solved the user's problem, throwing extra time at something doesn't necessarily make it more valuable (and can even make it less so).

That's a very valid point. Don't get me wrong, I'm not even thinking about the games I would really love to make, as they would take even more than 12 months . So I keep in mind that I have to make smaller games. At the beginning, small enough ones that will make some money while start giving some "traction" would be perfect. I definitely agree with you with not spending extra effort that will get diminished returns.

One interesting thing here is the "user's problem", as this is more a "want" than a "need". Players are getting used to get good, or even great games for $10-20, and most of them take years to be made. I'm still trying to figure out a way of making money with 1 month games, but I'll give it a thought.

Are you sure it gets easier later? Conversely, are you sure you can't make your first game profitable?

I'd say it should get easier as you get more people to know your games and make a fan base. Most indies would not survive if it wasn't because of the fan base they build for years.

I can't say for sure that I can't make my first game profitable, but looking at the statistics, it's very unlikely. In a similar way, you could sell a $50k website to a client without a porfolio or any experience; is that likely? I don't think so.

Does the demo model actually work now? (Now meaning in 2019, not 1 example 5 years ago or whatever) Are you sure? I'm not saying that it doesn't, but be sure that your business model doesn't hamstring you from the start.

I'm not sure that it would work but, in order to try to iterate fast (if that really exists in this industry...) for games that take at least a few months, I can think of one way: release part of the game for free, gather feedback and fix whatever needs to be fixed before the final game comes out. There is this "early access" model where you sell an unfinished game, and the other option I can think of is the "demo" model. The first one sounds better, only if done properly, otherwise you can get bad reviews by angry players if your game is not ready for that model, and then better refund them all and move on, because you will probably have a hard time recovering from the bad reviews.

Do you really need to master all of those skills to release a profitable game?

You're spending hundreds of hours getting good at art. That's great if you want to be an artist. If your goal is to release games, maybe those hours could be better spent? Next you'll be spending hundreds of hours getting good at music, then the next thing, etc, etc.

I've just checked my reports and have spend around 130 hours in the last year to get a general overview and some basic skills on drawing and pixel art. It felt like much longer (That's why it's good to keep track of the time). Now, I'm focusing only on the next thing that I need, and that's taking into account that I'm thinking of games that don't require to be Picasso.

Music is much closer to where I'll need though, I can already make music for certain kind of games. For things like orchestral, I'd need more learning, of course.

My opinion is that you need at least a minimum knowledge of every area. I'm not aiming to master all this skills. If I have to outsource stuff, I'd need to know what I'm talking about, so I still think it's important. It's a matter of not getting sucked into it too much.

You're taking weeks to build your own basic engine before you release your first, 1-month game. How much risk is using Unity for a 1 month, or even a 1 year project?

You want to consider risk? Then actually consider it. How many indie studios never turn a profit because of over-reliance on proprietary tools? Compare that number (pretty close to 0%) to the number that fail because they never release anything worth buying (close to 100%).

I spent around 160 hours to build a basic engine and some mechanics of a game. I haven't split them up to measure just the time spent on the engine, but around 160 hours of initial investment and I'm now reusing it to build another game that has the basic mechanics and some basic graphics in 3 days, so it doesn't sound too risky to me (although time will say). Had I spent 3-6 months upfront, I'd have a different opinion.

Unity was a solid option, and probably not a big risk to begin with. I decided against it thinking in the mid-term, when I would rather not have such a strong dependency on a tool I can't decide on or even modify for my needs. In any case, Unity is not a simple engine to use and has some learning curve, so I'd say the amount of time saved compared to rolling a very basic engine and add just the new stuff needed next is not that much. Apart from the fact (this is a personal opinion) that Unity forces you to write your game in not a great way, and even some skills wouldn't be transferable if changing engines.

If I were to make 3D games (which I'm not because they take far longer), I'd go for an existing engine for sure. But, for the kind of games I'm making, it's not a big deal.

This is exactly how games never get released and why indie studios die.
You can't do everything. You probably could, but there just isn't enough time.

I'll keep that in mind and make sure I don't fall into the trap. There are some options to avoid making everything, such as buying stock assets (which are fine for some games, but not for some others, it depends), hire freelancers, etc.

That was long But it was valuable and I have new things to have a look at. Thanks again.

 

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[Comet]

Hi @srodrigo ,

I worked as a programmer in the gaming industry for almost a decade, and since quitting I considered taking the path of developing my own games as well.

I still hesitate about it as I'm worried it's the 'doing what you love' that MJ warns of in TMF and (elaborates more in) Unscripted .

I do believe, however, that it IS possible to provide relative value in this field and create a Productocracy, especially as an indie developer.

If you can provide that relative value, people don't care if the graphics is 2D and pixelated, 3D and voxels, if they can buy your product on GOG or on Steam or non of those and you couldn't get the minecraft.com domain as well so you just bought minecraft.net but people still find you.


I list below resources that I used when was doing research on taking this path and can help you, from the gifted designer and game developer, Jonathan Blow.

I'll just add a note here about the resources - They are video lectures on YouTube.
Which is good and bad. Here's what helped me to use them effectively:

- To tackle the YouTube trap, I download them as mp4 to my computer/device (there are sites that do it).

- To tackle the "I saw/listened to it, now I know it", I do the following:
Take my notebook, write the title of the lecture, when watch it I pause and rewind often, and write down notes. These would be highly useful when you want to refresh your memory on it - just spend 5 minutes reading your notes instead of watching an hour long lecture.

The resources:

1. How to code (games) efficiently:
Jonathan Blow, How to program independent games
How to program independent games – The Witness

2. How to design good video games:
Jonathan Blow & Marc Ten Boch, Designing to reveal the nature of the universe

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGSeLSmOALU


3. How to create good game prototypes:
Jonathan Blow, Indie prototyping

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISutk1mauPM


4. Keeping the spirit and motivation:
Jonathan Blow, Techniques for dealing with lack of motivation, malaise, depression (With a Q&A video)

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7kh8pNRWOo

(Q&A)

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECwHZlvvVH4


I hope it will be useful for you and others who decide to take the same path.

 

[Flybye]

Hi @srodrigo ....I still hesitate about it as I'm worried it's the 'doing what you love' that MJ warns of in TMF and (elaborates more in) Unscripted ...

I feel the main reason MJ warns about doing what you love is due to people getting lost in what they do love and not paying attention to what the customer wants. A business is about providing a service or product to a consumer, and you have to be willing to change as the market changes. They will not buy it if it is not up to their standards and/or is not what they need or feel they need. Passionate is a dirty word around here because too many people blindly follow their passion vs paying attention to #1 which is your customer.

I believe there is a balance. A balance in finding what the customer needs and having a passion for exactly that.

 

[Flybye]

Quick question: why waste your time on the first two games? Don't you think it would be better to focus all your energy on making one good game versus 3 mediocre ones? Look at Stardew Valley, for example. The person who made that game spent a ton of time and developed the whole thing himself. It is now one of the highest rated games available on the market today, and he gets all the profit.

I used to attend bi-weekly and monthly aspiring developer meetings in my town. Their #1 mantra was "Release something. ANYTHING!" Most studios and single-man operations start out small. They release small game after small game to have a library of games while also expanding their skill set. This helps to ensure they are 100% ready when they get to that one big game they dream about. I think every studio has that one big game they all want to publish. The last thing you want is to be learning new tips and tricks while making your big project. Then the game gets stuck in development hell.

I once read about a guy who decided he didn't like any of the game engines in the market. As a good programmer, he decided to just make his own engine. Great. He spent years and years and years making his engine, no income, frustrated family, and he ended up giving up his dream in the end.

My developer meetings all agreed on one thing. Start small and pump out as many games as you can. Each game becomes a learning experience. And any good coder can also recycle part of his code without anyone even knowing it. Art work, not so much, unless it is the continuation of the same game.

I got out of being a developer on the side because of getting a nice severance package which allowed me to start something I had always wanted. I will eventually get back in the game. After all, out of the 7.7 billion people only 2.53 are using smartphones.

 

[srodrigo]

Weekly update 10

POMS: 61. I set a minimum of 60 per week, so good. It works better like this than daily.

Game 2:

• Finished maze generation and included the levels on the game.
• Started integrating ads. Looks pretty straight-forward with Corona, as promised. Need to play around more to decide where to place them.

Review of the problems spotted last week:

1. Game 2 is not as exciting as Game 1 was - It didn't improve much, but it didn't get worse either. Maze generation was interesting and got my butt glued to the chair. It also feels good to get things getting closer to completion. Looking forward to finishing this game.
2. Too much social media and Fastlane Forum - Didn't put away distractions enough. At least I compensated working late some days.
3. Let leisure activities disrupt my work - Still far from having a strict daily routine. I'm going to bed one hour earlier and getting up earlier. This makes more time in the morning, which is when I work better, although I go for a short walk during the morning and usually struggle to focus again before lunch. Also brought some short meditation sessions back, but need to resume the programme I was following; can't be 100% sure about whether it's related, but I felt far more focused when I meditated consistently.
4. Got distracted with some ideas - I wasn't as disperse as last week but still keep overthinking about other things I could be doing (endless fight).

 

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[Vaughn]

Small ads are usually integrated into the actual gaming experience. So they take a share of the screen while users are playing and are a potential distraction. Interstitials, on the other hand, show up during naturals breaks, for instance after finishing a level. Thus they are much less intrusive and also they generate more ad revenues because users are more likely to focus their attention toward them and interact with them.

If you do it smart (for instance showing a "Congratulations"-screen including a half-interstitial), big ads are definitely the better option.
In addition, I would suggest offering an IAP that deactivates ads. Paying $1 for not seeing ads for let's say 1 month is a price, many users are willing to pay.

Rewarded videos are the smartest approach because they provide an actual benefit for users. If you figure out a working ecosystem, you should definitely go for rewarded videos. But at the same time, you should offer IAPs and sell the same stuff, users can earn by watching videos, in bigger quantities.

Adding ads later in your app's lifecycle is not a smart idea in my opinion. Long-term users will not appreciate them because their experience will be be worse than it was at the beginning (exception: rewarded videos).

Using both (rewarded video and content-IAPs + ads and no-ads-IAPs) is a bit risky, as ads might alienate buyers of content-IAPs. A good workaround is to show ads only to non-payers. So every IAP-buyer gets the no-ads-benefit automatically. Also, you could think about giving new users "newbie protection": They do not see ads for the first 7(?) days after the installation. This gives you time to hook them.

TL;DR:
- ads from the beginning or not at all
- interstitials over small ads, but only show them in "natural" breaks in the experience
- offer IAP to deactivate ads
- rewarded video > everything else
- rewarded videos should go hand in hand with IAPs offering the same stuff
- show ads only to non-buyers of IAPs

 

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[srodrigo]

Weekly update 12

93 Pomodoros. Working every day, basically, I want to finish the re-implementation in Unity ASAP.

Not much to tell this week, just porting the existing progress on the game to Unity, which will take a few more days. I'm not proficient with Unity, so progress is slower, but luckily I part from an existing implementation, which is really useful for re-implementing some areas quicker. I'm getting used to Unity though, it doesn't seem as horrible as before, so I think it's worth the investment.

I'm learning some bits of the engine as I need them, which makes progress slow, but at least I don't have to spend a week on tutorials before starting doing stuff. This has pros and cons, but it's working fine for me. I plan to take a course at some point to fill gaps and fix the probably terrible practices I'm using from my lack of knowledge I wouldn't do this if I was still using a framework, but Unity is huge and not so straightforward, so I think I should spend some time on actually learning the most important stuff (although if I wait for too long and keep practising by making games, it might not be needed eventually).

Given that I've made the switch to Unity, I might explore other kind of games not constrained to 2D. There are some 3D games that are actually 2D games in a 3D environment, so they don't take much extra work.

 

[splok]

I'm learning some bits of the engine as I need them, which makes progress slow, but at least I don't have to spend a week on tutorials before starting doing stuff.

I'm sure you've checked, but don't forget to start with an asset store search pretty much any time you need to do anything. Developers tend to start with the idea that they'll do everything themselves, but many, many of the assets are just amazingly underpriced for what they do, to the point that they might as well be free. Of course, their real cost is in their learning curve and integration time, but still, they can be incredible, incredible values.

Also, something that I rarely see mentioned is that digging through a well-written asset to understand how it works can be better than any course. You're basically buying source code (in most cases) to high-end for anywhere from free to a few dollars For someone that's new to development, the hand-holding of a course may be better, of course, but if you want to make an inventory system for example, there are about 100 inventory assets there to learn from, even if you still write your own from scratch.

 

[srodrigo]

I've just read about soft lunches for mobile games. Now I'm thinking about trying that out on a few countries before releasing Game 2 to the wild. Not sure how this affects future launches in other countries though... The good thing is that you get feedback from real players and hopefully will leave nice reviews for other people to see them when you do the real launch.

 

[srodrigo]

Quick update:

Not much related to video games. I started a prototype this morning, but went back in the afternoon to what I've been working on for over two weeks: a mobile app. I don't feel great about switching to apps, but at least now I'm taking action again.

I've been trying to understand what's causing the urgency. I think I found the answer: I feel that if I don't go for games now, being in my mid thirties, that won't happen in 5-10 years after I've (hopefully) broken the chains, as I might loose my interest. This might sound stupid, but it's putting me in rush mode and feeding the conflict between games and other kind of business where I can probably add more value sooner.

I've also been reading about a few topics, just to realise I might be what is called a "scanner" in the book Refuse to choose!. That would explain why I have too many interests and get distracted (these kind of people don't have that laser focus on one single thing, no matter how hard they try). The book explains ways of handling this, but mostly goes against entrepreneurship (unless you really focus on small projects). I just can't see the day to break free and devote myself to learning all my interests, making games, etc. That's why I'm taking action again, even if it's not working a game.

Finally, after doing the exercise that @holmzee suggested, I made a list of goals and dreams I want to fulfil, together with a list of mini-FTEs inspired on this thread NOTABLE! - Manufacturing a FTE (F*ck This Event!)
This helped me getting motivation and direction. But the thing that really kicked me was the Dickens' Process. This audio by Tony Robbins was great How the Dickens Process Can Completely Change Your Outlook to Life | Jean Galea

I plan to work on the app for about 3 months to get an MVP out of the door. I don't want to spend longer to validate and carry on or move on.

 

[Rabby]

One thing that helps me... I find this with writing, coding, or other things that take some brain power to get started with. Before you try to actually "do" anything, sit down and make a list or outline of what you're going to do. If you're trying to get your motivation back, keep it really small. I don't know why it helps, other than that after you make a short list, you can just follow the list. It's easier to motivate yourself to step through a discreet number of list items than to "accomplish" something. But then you end up getting stuff done. Maybe it will help. Good luck

 

[srodrigo]

Hey, as you are from the gaming market may I ask you, How long would take for a newbie to develop an IOS basic game by himself? Can I do it for free?

I've thought about developing basic games for kids (Tetris esque). When I was a kid a used to create board games to play with my friends and played a bit with RPG Maker.

thanks

I'm quite a newbie as well in the video games industry, but I think I would try to spend less than a month for a first game that you can release. I made the mistake to start a game that would take me +6 months, and felt too long to start with. About how long would it take you, it depends on your skills, but if you learn something like Unity (which is quite good for mobile games, and the personal license is free), I'm sure you can make a basic game in a short time. Tetris is one of the recommended games to make for someone who is starting at this, so it suits a short schedule.

 

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[srodrigo]

Hi @rpeck90, thanks for your feedback. You make good points and questions.

What platform are you writing the games for? PC, web or mobile?

I'm focusing on PC at the moment. After exploring both PC and mobile, I decided against mobile, as it looks heavily focused on free-to-play and hooking (a few) users to spend money. That's not something I'm really interested in and I'd try to stay away for now, as you also need LOTS of users (1+ million) to make enough revenue to even make a low salary.

I haven't explored web games much to be honest, maybe I should. I read a recent article, talking about how web games might take over other platforms. It's something I'm keeping in mind for the future.

Why would your games stand out?

I want to focus on reinventing 2D old classics:

• Changing and mixing mechanics to make them fresh and interesting, not "yet another bloody clone".
• Making different/unique graphics. This is a bit vague and depends on each particular game, but as an idea. That's actually why I'm going the -painful- road of improving my art skills, I'd need them to create something interesting even if I decide to outsource this part, as you need to know what you envision and be able to talk the artists' language.

If after a few games I see this niche is not appealing enough to enough players, I'll revisit the whole thing.

Do you have your own engine or using one off the shelf?

I'm currently using MonoGame, which is a framework that abstracts away the lowest level stuff. I like to be in reasonable control of what's going on. So I'm adding my own engine on top. It didn't take me more than a few weeks to have something basic up and running, and I keep adding small bits as I need. I don't like spending a lot of time upfront to build something that I might not use.

I decided against full engines like Unity because of the reason above (lack of control, even lack of access to the source code) and how they can change the terms of service and give you troubles if they want. Game dev sounds like a risky enough thing per se, I'd try to stay away from closed/proprietary programming tools unless I need to do something in 3D. Unity brings a lot of stuff, which is good, but for 2D games that's not a big deal.

I also decided against going the C/C++/Rust + custom engine road, as it would take me longer and wouldn't focus on making any games, just tech. I will revisit this in the future if I build a sustainable business and have "spare" time, or just have a very specific need that no engine/framework offers.

So I picked something in between that works for me, and it's been a good choice so far.

How are you going to market said game? Gaming is a huge market, but has #1 seriously low attention span 2# lots of competition

That's a question that most people are still trying to figure out. I plan to build a following on social media, reach streamers and journalists, reach out players, etc. This is what most people do, and you are right saying it's difficult to get attention. My idea is to start marketing the games about 3-4 months before shipping, so the attention I (hopefully) gather doesn't vanish by the time the games are out, as it would starting marketing very early. This doesn't mean not trying to soft-prove the potential interest in the games first (which, as I said, looks tricky). I want to show prototypes to potential players before even investing months into a game that no one would play and not even the best marketing would make successful.

In terms of the overall plan etc, I think you'd benefit from an accountability partner. With software, it's easy to fall down the rabbit hole of iteration & refactoring... neglecting to realize that - in the end - most people don't care about what went into the system's development. Creating a new Ori isn't something that happens every day.

Possibly. The thing is, not everyone is as "lucky" (crazy?) as I am to be able to spend a good amount of time working on this full-time (years of day jobs and deliberately saving money first). Most people do it in their spare time. I've seen many problems with this when people just disappear (which can be understable given how long it can take to finish a game, and the limited amount of time you have if you have a day job), and I've personally suffered this multiple times, and I'm not willing to partner or rely on a partner for now (will revisit later). This might be a mistake or not, time will say.

Also, I can see two kinds of accountability: 1) the one that makes you not quit, which is the difficult one, and 2) the one that makes you work your butt off, which is always welcome. I'm a hard worker guy so 2) is covered so far.

I'm very careful about the "programming trap". I'm focusing on making games, not on writing the perfect code that adds an extra 5% of value (for me as a developer, not even for players) and takes forever to improve, so it's not worth the time. But, as a tech guy, I keep it in mind constantly, you never know when you can get sucked into the trap without even realising. As I track all the tasks and time spent, I can keep an eye on this with numbers.

You need a cause. One of the big things I see from what you've written is you're more in the exploratory phase than having a shippable product idea. This isn't a criticism, but an observation

You are right about this being exploratory at the moment. I'm actually making a first short game for free, and another one a bit longer, before I go for a "real" one that I would expect to make money from. Given how difficult is to earn money from the first few games, and that the game I was into looked like becoming bigger than I first planned to make it interesting enough, I decided going this "get my feet wet"/exploratory path for 3-4 months. Business wise, it might be wrong, but I'd rather make a few small things to learn the ropes of the whole process, than end up spending 1-2 years on my first game and making peanuts, trap that most indies fall into.

I would strongly suggest that the "gaming" market is not going to be a pathway to riches (unless you're super interested in it) - but integrating game-level technology into other products/avenues is.

I'm aware of this, and I've though about it a lot, believe me. Even to the point of not going into game dev at all and doing any other thing instead. I'm perfectly happy to park making games if I find any other product to build that solves game developers' needs, like making tools, or assets (I actually thought about making game music for developers to buy, as I have a background in music, but decided against for now). But I feel like making games is going to be more useful at the beginning, as I can learn in first person what are the pain points and what could be a good tool/other thing to make, if making games itself doesn't work out. So at the moment I'm joining the crowd, but I'm ok with moving on and serving the crowd instead when the time comes, which might be faaar wiser than making games in the long run, or at least it relies less on making a $200k+ game to give you a few years' buffer.

 

[srodrigo]

This guy is a millionaire now, the game sold over a million copies in 2 months.

The 4 years of self-imposed crunch that went into Stardew Valley

"For four years, he says, he worked an average of ten hours a day, seven days a week, on Stardew Valley. Luckily, he was living with his girlfriend, a graduate student in, appropriately, plant biology, and to help stay afloat he worked part-time as an usher at Seattle’s Paramount Theatre."

He is an outlier. He made the game he wanted to make, which happened to be in a niche that had declined. Then, he did an amazing job to create a great game, and a small publisher did the marketing for him (I doubt he would have had that skill). But for each Stardew Valley, there are many 4 year projects that make nothing. Also, he did everything, from programming to art and music. Who said it's impossible? But it took him ages.

If you want to release something quickly, just to understand the process, check out Phaser.io

It's a 2D (last I checked) javascript based engine with a simple API. I made some basic games before I decided it wasn't for me.

If you're dead set on something like Unity, perhaps try making something for VR. It's a smaller space and might be easier to create a standout product.

Either way, if you're going down this route, I'd highly recommend the following

1) Stick to simple polygon graphics
2) Nail the gameplay
3) find someone to partner up with to do the music for free or cheap

The odds that you personally have the skill sets to nail the art, programming, game design, UI, and music is so low that I'd bet a small fortune against it. There's a reason even small games are built by teams, with the exception of a few individuals who are modern day Da Vincis. The reason is that these are orthogonal skill sets and if you try to master all of them in parallel, the chances of you releasing hot garbage rise exponentially.

Also, and this may be an unpopular opinion, drop the meditation. It's 20 - 30 minutes a day that could be spent with your family or working, and the benefits are pretty nebulous. I don't know if there are any single game devs that waste time with meditation.. but I'm betting not.

I really dislike VR. I know it's something new and maybe even the future, but I doubt I would be able to put the extra mile on something I hate. I expect some current niches to stay though, and luckily maybe even get desaturated when the crowd moves to VR.

I might end up partnering with someone eventually. The thing is I had bad experiences and the last thing I'd like is to be in the middle of a project and lose my partner. I'll try to avoid it for a while until I really can't carry on, or find someone worth it (which is very difficult).

About meditation, I understand your point. However, I need to fix my levels of stress (that have been building up for years), otherwise things will go wrong pretty soon If 30 minutes a day can help with that, that'll be a massive win.

 

[Nikorasu]

Im currently pursuing a fastlane similar to yours. Ive actually spent half my 20's in and out of the games industry working on freelance projects as a 2D artist, Concept artist.
Now after realizing I dont want to be an art machine for someone else's business system, Ive found a lane in game dev that has the potential to be very profitable.

This thread has some great info i didnt consider. @splok hit the nail on the head with his observations and I think youve already fallen into the trap of trying to do everything. You dont need basic knowledge or every aspect of game creation. Just know what you want and learn how to direct others to make it.

Im an artist so I know where youre coming from. Ive fallen into that trap many times of wanting the glory that comes with being a renaissance man. But thats not fastlane its a time sink that puts you farther from your goal and less likely to finish anything.

Ive actually been through the whole process of making a mobile game in unity and publishing it on the app store. A couple years back i made a match 3 game re-skin when those were big. I did a bit of SEO to choose the theme of my game hoping i could rake in money by rising to the top 10 apps of a promising keyword.
The app failed horribly i probably only got 30 downloads but i learned a lot. The game i'm developing now is more like gamifying a service than making a game.

In your first post you mentioned that making a mock prototype for your game to see if you have an audience doesnt work? This was actually my plan to actually get a crowdfunding type situation primed to fund the first release of the game. Could you explain why you don't believe that could work?

 

[masterneme]

Good luck with your ventures, I'm following a similar path as you, in fact while I was reading I saw you liking my last post on my progress thread hahaha. And I use the Pomodoro Technique too, I find it very effective.

If you want to focus on PC I will tell you that Steam is still the way to go, Itch will give you feedback but is mainly a platform for indie devs, not many potential buyers there. The same thing happens with Gamejolt, Kongregate or IndieDB.

At the same time if you find supporters and fans there they'll be REALLY supportive and friendly.

So my suggestion is to use every free resource you have available until you find a game with potential and put that game on Steam ASAP. You can create a Coming Soon page and you'll start receiving traffic and some people will add the game to the wishlist.

2019 is going to be a good year for indie publishing, AAA companies are becoming more politiced and gaming journalism too, people are tired of this, they just want good games.

There is a massive demand for good quality, 1 to 4 hours long, at 10$ to 20$ range games. And also it's estimated that there're around 1 million Linux & Mac gamers that everyone is forgetting.

And also Switch has become a gold mine for high quality indie games...

It's just a matter of creating that one little gem that provides the valuable entertainment people want and build on top of that.

 

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[srodrigo]

Weekly update

Game 1 is going well. 11 days into it (actually 9, took Saturdays off), and I've got something that could even be shipped with a bit more polish, but I'm spending more time adding stuff, and polishing, so I'll probably consume the whole month I set as a limit. I decided to sell the game instead of releasing it for free, even if it's for only a few bucks. There is a big difference when you release something you are going to charge for, the quality tends to rise a lot. Keeping scope creep under control is challenging though, there's always more you can add and polish. But this first game wasn't even going to be a full game, and I made the commitment to not spend longer, so I'll keep it simple and short.

12 pomodoros/day (avg.), in the last 6 days, making the actual game (didn't track other related stuff). 1 POM higher than last week. I expect to keep it when just coding, and increase it when I'm doing other stuff that requires less brain power.

I pinged a few more people who've been making games solo for years. They say they spend at least 3-6 months, using stock assets for free or cheap, or outsourcing stuff. I like the idea of games made in one month, but there is a minimum quality bar that's hard to meet in such a short time. They make PC games though. I'd be interested in success cases with consistently making 1-2 months games (single person or small team), if someone knows of any case study. I'll keep thinking about it, but it doesn't look like a common case (at least on PC).

Planning to try Unity again when I have some time. I'm happy with my tools and I feel I make good progress, but it's good to keep options open, specially because Unity (apparently) makes (ex)porting to multiple platforms easier. Even just for game jams it would be worth it (I can't export to web with my current tool). Also, it might open the door to freelancing, as many people use it out there (at least more than MonoGame). I'll try to schedule some learning time in the evenings/nights.

I haven't decided what I'm going to make for Game 2 yet, but I still have a few weeks even if I'm lucky and Game 1 doesn't take longer than planned, ha. I have a few vague ideas, but it depends on how long I want to spend.

 

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[masterneme]

Oh yeah the infamous Indepocalypse...

Of course indies sell less than before, everyone is making metroidvanias, 2D puzzle platformers or cloning each other and give up after their first release not doing very well.

Then someone makes something a bit different, does marketing and promotion from the start engaging the community, sells 100k units and these guys are surprised.

 

[srodrigo]

Weekly update (week 4)

12.71 pomodoros average, 7 days. Did some research for publishing on itch.io and other stuff that I didn't track though.

Done with the beta version, handed it over to beta testers. Waiting for feedback.

Planning to publish the game on itch.io next week if feedback is good. Then, I'll look into Steam or other suitable stores.

Have been working every day since 2 weeks ago. Leaving the (self-imposed) pressure apart, I enjoy it.

Learning: basically some Rust. Not related to my games yet, but useful to remind me I'm a software developer, and to improve my coding skills.

Had a brief look at what freelancing looks like. Still haven't done proper research, but looks like people want games for peanuts (or shared revenue, which usually means peanuts too), and there are much more lucrative kinds of freelancing programming (webs, apps). Not a big surprise. I'll keep digging though. People mostly ask for Unity stuff.

 

[srodrigo]

Weekly update week 5

11.28 pomodoros per day avg., 7 days. I slowed down a bit, although Game 1 didn't have su much work left so I had some time for other stuff. Also, today took my first day "off" today in 3 weeks

Game 1 was released on two stores, kind of soft launch, although the game itself fits perfectly there. I'll probably release it on Steam as well, but want to see what's the reception first. One sale so far, by a friend, lol.

Testers gave me really good feedback, specially to improve the UI of the game screen. There weren't important bugs (just one weird crash hard to reproduce), but it's a small game, so it's expected not to require a lot of bugfixing.

Haven't decided about Game 2 yet. I'll probably take a week to prototype some candidates, fix any bugs that araise on Game 1, and look at releasing it to other suitable stores.

Game 1 played it's role to give me an idea of what's the whole process of making and releasing a game. The release stuff took much longer than expected (open accounts, fill in tax stuff, prepare images, videos, create landing page, etc.), which is good to know.

Thinking about what's been mentioned above regarding to mobile games. I'll try to come up with at least one game I could make quickly to test the battlefield.

Bought a Pico-8 as a gift for myself for these last (a bit stressful) few weeks and for releasing my first game (which takes me from action faker into action taker ). Also, I might use it for prototyping new games if the development workflow is fast there. I've spent part of my day off playing with it.

Got a cool idea from a random guy on a forum, not for making a game, but a shovel I might evaluate it, although I can imagine it would take pretty long to build, but would give a new dimension to fantasy consoles and the community around them.