EXECUTION Building a video games business from scratch

[splok]

An article about what @Vaughn and @splok explained about average mobile games data: A bunch of average app revenue data… and why you should ignore it

Here's the key takeaway from that article imo:

Books, Business, Education, Entertainment, Finance, Music, Photo & Video, Social & Communication and others all have a median app revenue of $0 from in-app purchases.

And that was a couple of years ago, so it's likely gotten worse since then.
It's also interesting (though not unexpected) how quickly the rev curve falls off. The #1 game makes 23x more than the #4 and 45x more than #10. I'm sure someone keeps a complete chart updated somewhere. Would be a nice dose of reality for anyone with an app idea to see how well their app would need to do to make it worthwhile. I' bet that most people's expectations are WAY off.

 

[Vaughn]

It's also interesting (though not unexpected) how quickly the rev curve falls off. The #1 game makes 23x more than the #4 and 45x more than #10. I'm sure someone keeps a complete chart updated somewhere. Would be a nice dose of reality for anyone with an app idea to see how well their app would need to do to make it worthwhile. I' bet that most people's expectations are WAY off.

I agree that people might have wrong expectations. Nevertheless, I would not give too much about the numbers in the article, because they are all estimates. Only the app owners know the real numbers.
But even if they were accurate, I would not consider them discouraging. No developer's goal is to create an average app, so the median revenue is no relevant benchmark. Besides, the article does not take ad revenue into consideration, which is the only source of revenue for many apps.
Still, I believe it is absolutely possible to create a mobile game that makes decent money, even without a big team behind you.

 

[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.

 

[srodrigo]

I need to work on getting more exposure. I'd really like to participate in some short game jams, for building more portfolio (ideally, you finish a game) and getting exposure. This would take some time (and worse, energy) from making commercial games, but has some advantages like the ones mentioned, and also being a good source of potential ideas. Unfortunately, one of the most important ones (Ludum Dare) will be on April, but I might try with one of those that last for two days in the meantime.

I also plan to create some content that can be valuable to other people, like tutorials or more blog posts. I've noticed I got more followers when I published something that added value. Not surprising

 

[MHP368]

I need to work on getting more exposure. I'd really like to participate in some short game jams, for building more portfolio (ideally, you finish a game) and getting exposure. This would take some time (and worse, energy) from making commercial games, but has some advantages like the ones mentioned, and also being a good source of potential ideas. Unfortunately, one of the most important ones (Ludum Dare) will be on April, but I might try with one of those that last for two days in the meantime.

I also plan to create some content that can be valuable to other people, like tutorials or more blog posts. I've noticed I got more followers when I published something that added value. Not surprising

How are you choosing what genre and game mechanics to use?, are you doing market research beforehand? even if not I imagine they have associated sub reddits and other message boards for whatever it is you're cooking up. Its not spam if you have a legitimate offering in the orbit of what the message boards focus is.

 

[srodrigo]

How are you choosing what genre and game mechanics to use?, are you doing market research beforehand? even if not I imagine they have associated sub reddits and other message boards for whatever it is you're cooking up. Its not spam if you have a legitimate offering in the orbit of what the message boards focus is.

Sort of. I have a look at what's (apparently) on demand, but you have to apply some imagination to come up with a game idea. Otherwise, we all would be making metroidvanias forever.

 

[OverByte]

Interested to see how your progress goes. I noticed two things from your original post. 1 - you seemed to imply you are doing everything yourself - programming, graphics, design, marketing... and 2 - that you felt progress is too slow.

I actually built a game a few years ago for mobile and figured I'd give my two cents on lessons learned since I had a similar attitude to the above. The main takeaway was play to your strengths and outsource your weaknesses. There is a ton of competition for the same audience who all have limited attention and some of what is out there is very high quality and free. If you think you can compete with what is already available to customers as a sole developer all I can say is good luck.

If I had stuck to my core competencies - programming - and outsource some of the graphics, animation, modelling instead of learning how to do all of this and then doing it much more poorly than someone from Fiverr. I'm glad that I got some base understanding of how the various tooling worked but it was a real eye opener to me once I started outsourcing some of this.

Take this image which became my play store banner. I spent hours trying to make this and then finally outsourced it on Fiverr and paid $25. Even if I had the same skills to make this it would have taken me hours.

Similarly I implemented my own path finding system instead of spending $99 for the top one on Unity. I felt like the game would only work if I custom built this piece. Completely false, I should have been more resourceful and found a way to use existing libraries to make it work. This would have again saved a ton of time.

Anyway I think you get the point. I've since moved on from games but sincerely hope you do well. If you or anyone else is interested PM me and I'll send you the link to the full retrospective I did after I released the game which contains some other lessons.

 

[srodrigo]

Interested to see how your progress goes. I noticed two things from your original post. 1 - you seemed to imply you are doing everything yourself - programming, graphics, design, marketing... and 2 - that you felt progress is too slow.

I actually built a game a few years ago for mobile and figured I'd give my two cents on lessons learned since I had a similar attitude to the above. The main takeaway was play to your strengths and outsource your weaknesses. There is a ton of competition for the same audience who all have limited attention and some of what is out there is very high quality and free. If you think you can compete with what is already available to customers as a sole developer all I can say is good luck.

If I had stuck to my core competencies - programming - and outsource some of the graphics, animation, modelling instead of learning how to do all of this and then doing it much more poorly than someone from Fiverr. I'm glad that I got some base understanding of how the various tooling worked but it was a real eye opener to me once I started outsourcing some of this.

Take this image which became my play store banner. I spent hours trying to make this and then finally outsourced it on Fiverr and paid $25. Even if I had the same skills to make this it would have taken me hours.

Similarly I implemented my own path finding system instead of spending $99 for the top one on Unity. I felt like the game would only work if I custom built this piece. Completely false, I should have been more resourceful and found a way to use existing libraries to make it work. This would have again saved a ton of time.

Anyway I think you get the point. I've since moved on from games but sincerely hope you do well. If you or anyone else is interested PM me and I'll send you the link to the full retrospective I did after I released the game which contains some other lessons.

EDIT: Empty response, I hit the wrong button

Thanks for sharing your experience. I've changed my mind since and now I'm pretty much focused on programming, design and maybe marketing. I did make my own graphics for Game 1, but they were so simple (two 8-bit sprites) that it would have costed me more time to outsource it. I also picked free sounds from a website, and they were good and took me 0 minutes to make. And for more complex games where graphics matter more, I'm going to either get stock assets (which can be purchased for cheap, or even free, and some have really good quality), or outsource it. I think this is a good approach, I can focus on making/designing/coding the game.

At the end, I think it's a compromise between the time it would take you to make X, and the time it would take you to research for and existing implementation/asset/etc., the cost (and translate that to time somehow), plus the time to direct someone in case you outsource it. Experience should help deciding what path is worth in every case. But I definitely agree that focusing on your strengths is the approach most people take, although some basic understanding is useful and necessary.

I'm interested in that link, I'll PM you

 

[srodrigo]

you felt progress is too slow.

I can't find this bit, but maybe was about making graphics.

What I feel slow about sometimes is coming up with ideas that I can make. I have a lot of ideas, but they all are too big for less than 3 months (my sort of current limit). Finding something simple that doesn't feel like ripping some other game off and looks modern is what takes some time. I'll work on this to have a better pool of ideas ready, so as soon as I finish one game, I can start with another one.

The above is one of the reasons I might get into mobile games. Some kind of mobile games tend to be simpler than most PC games and people still play them, which is great for single devs or small teams. And I also feel like mobile users are easier about developers iterating (releasing early and making constant improvements) than PC users (where releasing on Early Access can be very counterproductive if your game is not ready). I was playing around yesterday with my Pico-8 to prototype a candidate for a mobile game. I'll carry on with that today.

More technical, but by any chance, does anyone have experience with engines/frameworks to make mobile games? I'm trying to stay away from Unity, as there are too many things I dislike, but they provide (or say so) integration with mobile app stores (IAP, ads, etc.) and releasing the games (building the executables) seems straightforward too. This convenience alone could be a reason to give it a try. I'm interested in Godot, but you need to do some stuff (although it looks like only once) to get integration with these services. I could give my current tool (MonoGame) a try for mobile, I saw some open source libraries to integrate these services, and don't seem to require any recompiling as Godot does for its templates, although I wonder whether I'll hit any roadblocks, as it's a framework more focused on PC and console.
I might just spend one or two days trying this out with different tools, but any previous experience sharing would be appreciated.

 

[Vaughn]

I have never programmed myself, so I cannot share first-hand experiences. But the devs at the mobile companies I worked for, told me that it is easier to build cross-platform games with Unity than with native technologies. So they were able to adapt games for iOS, Android and Web. Also, the unity asset store offers a great variety of assets incl. IAP-systems, graphic templates for 2D and 3D, etc. Might be worth a look:
Unity Asset Store - The Best Assets for Game Making

 

[splok]

I need to work on getting more exposure. I'd really like to participate in some short game jams, for building more portfolio (ideally, you finish a game) and getting exposure. ... I also plan to create some content that can be valuable to other people, like tutorials or more blog posts.

Not to say that it can't help, but be aware that exposure to other developers (especially aspiring developers) isn't the same as exposure to customers. Sure, developers may also play/buy games, but would the time and effort be better spent addressing your target market directly?

 

[srodrigo]

Not to say that it can't help, but be aware that exposure to other developers (especially aspiring developers) isn't the same as exposure to customers. Sure, developers may also play/buy games, but would the time and effort be better spent addressing your target market directly?

I'm pretty sure there is some press keeping an eye on the big game jams. I'll double check though.

Getting exposure to other developers is part of my strategy to open the door to work-for-hire, as most and the best gigs come from contacts.

 

[OverByte]

More technical, but by any chance, does anyone have experience with engines/frameworks to make mobile games? I'm trying to stay away from Unity

What are the dislikes for Unity? This is what I used to develop the game I mentioned and I was pretty impressed with the tool. It's got a lot going on at first but pretty intuitive once you get into it. It also has a ton of assets and the community is very large (I'd guess the largest of any game engine). I think I had one or two minor platform issues that had to be addressed with OS specific code, 99.9% worked flawlessly across platforms (iOS & Android) and you can write code in C# which is a nice language to use IMO.

 

[luniac]

i use unity for mobile games.

 

[minivanman]

I just thought of something, my grandson built a video game business from scratch. 8 years ago when he got here he had 0 video games worth $0. Now he has 100,000 video games worth probably $1 million. lol I think all the kids are way ahead of us.

 

[srodrigo]

What are the dislikes for Unity? This is what I used to develop the game I mentioned and I was pretty impressed with the tool. It's got a lot going on at first but pretty intuitive once you get into it. It also has a ton of assets and the community is very large (I'd guess the largest of any game engine). I think I had one or two minor platform issues that had to be addressed with OS specific code, 99.9% worked flawlessly across platforms (iOS & Android) and you can write code in C# which is a nice language to use IMO.

Unity is a very powerful tool, I agree with that. However:

• The UI is messy and dated.
• It's littered with bugs. Even using it for 30 minutes is enough to get annoyed.
• Worse, many of those bugs get closed without even a reply to the person who took their time to open it. Some of them have been there for years and years, with users praying for them to be prioritised, but nothing.
• They add features at a very high pace. Too high. And it's only made the 2 points above worse.
• It's a very closed platform. You don't have access to the code. This might be ok for many people, but having the options to read and modify the source code (without paying Unity a fortune) can save your bacon in many ways. Probably not a big concern at the beginning, but making games seems risky enough per se, with quite a lot of lack of control, to make it even worse if you can avoid it. This means you are at their will to fix bugs that are blocking you, for example.
• There's been some problems with their ToS recently. They had to step back and change them to be more flexible, but they have the power of tearing your business apart if there is any concern, not even breaking their ToS. As an example, some devs still making little money complained they got threatening emails saying they had to upgrade their version, apparently by mistake and with a later apologise, but gives an idea.
• They can change their ToS at any time. Now, you can accept the new terms or use a previous version (this happened after a big problem they had with another company), but as soon as you upgrade (and will need to, eventually), you need to swallowed them.
• C# is ok as a language (not great for games, but not terrible either for small ones). But the way Unity is made (it was created by a few kids with very little experience, and it's reflected on how Unity works) embraces bad coding practices. This is tolerable for small projects (although can be annoying), but Unity is well known for being a bad choice for large ones.
• If doing 3D, Unreal Engine seems miles above. It was originally written by professionals, not amateurs.
• Incompatibility between versions of Unity. I believe this is a good thing in software (keeping compatibility with old s*hit leads to worse problems in the long term than breaking changes earlier), but I've seen ridiculous situations (a.k.a horror stories) when combined with bugs where devs had to switch between different versions of Unity to complete a project, because A feature was broken in the latest version but the old one didn't have a new feature they needed. How insane is that?

And this is only the points I can come up in 10 minutes straight out from bed, and having used it briefly compared to other tools. There are probably more I could come up.

There are good points though. To me, the only clear advantage compared to Godot (which is the most similar open source alternative) or frameworks is the easiness to export and integrate third party services (IAP, Ads), specially for mobile. And, given that I want to stick to 2D games, Unreal is not an option, as its 2D is subpar compared to 3D.

TL;DR: Powerful tool, but they are focused on shipping new stuff instead of on making it stable, and has some ToS concerns.

EDIT: Having said that, I don't hate Unity or something like that, I just think it's not for me. Even though, I'm still considering using it for mobile. Definitely not for desktop or consoles, but for mobile seems to have some good selling points. I'd like to see performance though, I've seen many games made with Unity that performed terribly in good mobiles, but this could be the devs' fault.

 

[luniac]

Unity is a very powerful tool, I agree with that. However:

• The UI is messy and dated.
• It's littered with bugs. Even using it for 30 minutes is enough to get annoyed.
• Worse, many of those bugs get closed without even a reply to the person who took their time to open it. Some of them have been there for years and years, with users praying for them to be prioritised, but nothing.
• They add features at a very high pace. Too high. And it's only made the 2 points above worse.
• It's a very closed platform. You don't have access to the code. This might be ok for many people, but having the options to read and modify the source code (without paying Unity a fortune) can save your bacon in many ways. Probably not a big concern at the beginning, but making games seems risky enough per se, with quite a lot of lack of control, to make it even worse if you can avoid it. This means you are at their will to fix bugs that are blocking you, for example.
• There's been some problems with their ToS recently. They had to step back and change them to be more flexible, but they have the power of tearing your business apart if there is any concern, not even breaking their ToS. As an example, some devs still making little money complained they got threatening emails saying they had to upgrade their version, apparently by mistake and with a later apologise, but gives an idea.
• They can change their ToS at any time. Now, you can accept the new terms or use a previous version (this happened after a big problem they had with another company), but as soon as you upgrade (and will need to, eventually), you need to swallowed them.
• C# is ok as a language (not great for games, but not terrible either for small ones). But the way Unity is made (it was created by a few kids with very little experience, and it's reflected on how Unity works) embraces bad coding practices. This is tolerable for small projects (although can be annoying), but Unity is well known for being a bad choice for large ones.
• If doing 3D, Unreal Engine seems miles above. It was originally written by professionals, not amateurs.
• Incompatibility between versions of Unity. I believe this is a good thing in software (keeping compatibility with old s*hit leads to worse problems in the long term than breaking changes earlier), but I've seen ridiculous situations (a.k.a horror stories) when combined with bugs where devs had to switch between different versions of Unity to complete a project, because A feature was broken in the latest version but the old one didn't have a new feature they needed. How insane is that?

And this is only the points I can come up in 10 minutes straight out from bed, and having used it briefly compared to other tools. There are probably more I could come up.

There are good points though. To me, the only clear advantage compared to Godot (which is the most similar open source alternative) or frameworks is the easiness to export and integrate third party services (IAP, Ads), specially for mobile. And, given that I want to stick to 2D games, Unreal is not an option, as its 2D is subpar compared to 3D.

TL;DR: Powerful tool, but they are focused on shipping new stuff instead of on making it stable, and has some ToS concerns.

EDIT: Having said that, I don't hate Unity or something like that, I just think it's not for me. Even though, I'm still considering using it for mobile. Definitely not for desktop or consoles, but for mobile seems to have some good selling points. I'd like to see performance though, I've seen many games made with Unity that performed terribly in good mobiles, but this could be the devs' fault.

You're bringing up some outdated points.
Unity is very stable now.
Unity's 3D is as good as Unreal now.
I haven't encountered many bugs but i admittedly make simple games.
The UI is fine to me, that's completely subjective.


What i am really worried about is that Unity plans to go public next year.
Who knows how that will affect pricing.
I've enjoyed the price of FREE until i make money, and Unity has made tons of money off me anyway with their asset store.
I hope they don't change this.

 

[srodrigo]

You're bringing up some outdated points.
Unity is very stable now.
Unity's 3D is as good as Unreal now.
I haven't encountered many bugs but i admittedly make simple games.
The UI is fine to me, that's completely subjective.


What i am really worried about is that Unity plans to go public next year.
Who knows how that will affect pricing.
I've enjoyed the price of FREE until i make money, and Unity has made tons of money off me anyway with their asset store.
I hope they don't change this.

That's definitely not been my recent experience, neither for people I read complaining daily about several crashes a day. Maybe those people are using older versions, not the latest ones? I'm glad it's worked well for you though.

Without going into detail, there are more concerns apart from Unity going public. Their new CEO comes from EA, which was on the top of most hated gaming companies for years. I know there are users worried about this, and how that could affect to the product. But time will say. In any case, it's an example of how we lack Control when using this kind of proprietary tools. Not saying that we shouldn't use them, but just something to take into account. Given a very small overhead for using a more open tool, I'm personally inclined to take that road. But this won't always be the case, unfortunately.

 

[luniac]

That's definitely not been my recent experience, neither for people I read complaining daily about several crashes a day. Maybe those people are using older versions, not the latest ones? I'm glad it's worked well for you though.

Without going into detail, there are more concerns apart from Unity going public. Their new CEO comes from EA, which was on the top of most hated gaming companies for years. I know there are users worried about this, and how that could affect to the product. But time will say. In any case, it's an example of how we lack Control when using this kind of proprietary tools. Not saying that we shouldn't use them, but just something to take into account. Given a very small overhead for using a more open tool, I'm personally inclined to take that road. But this won't always be the case, unfortunately.

dam several crashes a day sucks lol
The EA CEO dude has there for years now, and so far so good.
Things can change at any moment of course.
But if Unity all of a sudden did something really bad, there would be massive backlash.

I've been using Unity since 3.0, so im really used to it now. I really like the relatively simple cross platform building, and the unity component based workflow, and i the C# .NET style programming compared to other things out there.

 

[srodrigo]

Interesting study (by Unity) about mobile games ads. Same conclusion as per what @Vaughn explained, reward videos rule.
http://images.response.unity3d.com/Web/Unity/{149b1a2e-f137-4a49-8f76-5760b58d5258}_UnityAds_SurveyWhitepaper_FINAL.pdf

 

[srodrigo]

Weekly update 6

12.4 pomodoros average in 5 days, although I did some extra work here and there that I didn't track.

Felt a bit exhausted after a very busy month. Spent most of the time prototyping and investigating ideas.

Made a small game on pico-8 in about 2 days, and released it for free with donations (which is pretty much the same as for nothing). It's a prototype for a potential mobile game.

Made my homework about investigating the fantasy console idea. More info on the next post.

Have been reading about how mobile games ads work.

As part of investigating mobile games, I played a few of the top 50 on Android, the ones that look feaseable for one person. Some of them were addictive, but had such a bad performance that ruined the experience. It seems like people still play them...

 

[srodrigo]

About fantasy consoles

Before I carry on, this sounds like a WFT thing, but it's really an emulator of an invented game console with certain constrains, and a development environment. All targeted at making games development easy and enjoyable, with nostalgia playing a big role, and fast iteration and quick feedback.

After investigating my idea, a fantasy console might take AGES to make, it's a large project (probably talking about years). The software developer inside me would love to make one, but it takes quite long. And there are big challenges like defeating Pico-8 and gather their community, which are things that don't look like happening easily. Even more flexible alternatives (flexibility is something people asked for) haven't succeed yet, and I don't think they will (see last paragraph). There is room for improvements, but you are really competing in many areas that look quite strong. Possible? Of course. Unlikely? A hell lot I think.

So I think it's probably better take advantage of the existing successful one and of the existing community. Serving the crowd

I tried to guesstimate the number of sales (a.k.a potential readers of my books, plus pirates) of Pico-8, but I couldn't find a clue. I had a look at Twitter/Facebook/Reddit to have an idea and tracked numbers, but it's difficult to say. It seems to have some adoption as a learning tool in some schools too, which is interesting...

I think the guy who made it has a potential productocracy. People talk about Pico-8, share stuff, and go crazy about it (myself included, recommending it to friends). I was exceptic, but tried it and it makes the game making experience fun, nostalgic like in the old days of homebrew games, but without all that friction, and has built a large community making it the defacto fantasy console. I think is the most fun game making experience I've ever found since the old days.

I would bet my time on creating stuff around Pico-8. I have an idea for a book targeted at young people (10-16 yo) or adults with no coding experience. Then, maybe even a series of books, there is a lot of room. There are already some sort of magazines (called picozines) which are both for sharing updates and tutorials. So I think there might be room for more specific learning material, although its success would depend on the success of the tool itself.

 

[srodrigo]

About mobile games

Had an idea for a game with voxels, but that involves some 3D. I'm inclined to leave it for now.

Have been trying to use/learn Unity in the last few days. I read about 'Ori and the blind forest' being made with it and gave Unity another go, specially given it's got great integration with mobile stuff. The experience has been bad. I don't think I can get used to it and feel productive. I feel like fish in the water with frameworks that don't have an editor, but can't get used to engines with editors. Also, I find doing some simple 2D stuff like trying to make a cube fit in a rounded hole. As there are so many happy developers out there, this is not Unity's fault, it's mine. I'll try again this week... I'll force myself to like it and be productive with it.

Explored other options in the meantime, focusing on tools that have good integration with Ads, IAP, and (less important) ladderboards, and are more focused on mobile than desktop/consoles (as I already have a good framework for this). I tried one tool so far, after discarding some others for not having good integration out of the box; I'm not convinced, as the workflow didn't feel fluid, even if this framework has been used for shipping well-known successful mobile games. I need to try another one (Corona SDK) tomorrow and the day after. I'll probably just build some small prototype or game to test the tools, that's the best way to check their limits.

 

[srodrigo]

TL;DR
Re-reading the posts above, seems like I spent a lot on tools research and stuff, but I've spent most of the time thinking/prototyping ideas for mobile games, plus testing this Pico-8 thing that then gave me the idea of books.

 

[loop101]

TL;DR
Re-reading the posts above, seems like I spent a lot on tools research and stuff, but I've spent most of the time thinking/prototyping ideas for mobile games, plus testing this Pico-8 thing that then gave me the idea of books.

I would encourage you start small, start with something you can finish. See my post in the other thread:

EXECUTION - Learning C (Game Programming) Progress Thread

 

[srodrigo]

I would encourage you start small, start with something you can finish. See my post in the other thread:

EXECUTION - Learning C (Game Programming) Progress Thread

I'm focused on that right know. Game 1 was 1 month. That's why I'm avoiding long projects. Making a game in 1 month was the right decision, as I learnt quickly and now I'm in a better position for the next one, which hopefully will be small too.

I had a look at your post. I follow GDU (a bit less these days though) and watched that video a few times long ago. I didn't know he makes a living from HTML5 games though.

 

[loop101]

I'm focused on that right know. Game 1 was 1 month. That's why I'm avoiding long projects. Making a game in 1 month was the right decision, as I learnt quickly and now I'm in a better position for the next one, which hopefully will be small too.

I had a look at your post. I follow GDU (a bit less these days though) and watched that video a few times long ago. I didn't know he makes a living from HTML5 games though.

Here is a post I made about HTML5 games

WEB/DIGITAL - Is there an uptick in HTML5 WebGL games?

That post mentions Matt at True Valhalla, I think he makes $100k+ yearly on HTML5 games.
Professional Game Developer | True Valhalla

Frederic at Okijin is doing $180k+ I think, his site is redirected to a web game he is doing, not sure why.

Okijin Games (@OkijinGames) | Twitter
HTML5 Rockstars: Interview to Okijin Games studio
Pie.ai - Free multiplayer game

Matt is about quantity, and Frederic is about quality. Both make excellent games.

 

[srodrigo]

Here is a post I made about HTML5 games

WEB/DIGITAL - Is there an uptick in HTML5 WebGL games?

That post mentions Matt at True Valhalla, I think he makes $100k+ yearly on HTML5 games.
Professional Game Developer | True Valhalla

Frederic at Okijin is doing $180k+ I think, his site is redirected to a web game he is doing, not sure why.

Okijin Games (@OkijinGames) | Twitter
HTML5 Rockstars: Interview to Okijin Games studio
Pie.ai - Free multiplayer game

Matt is about quantity, and Frederic is about quality. Both make excellent games.

Making games and licensing them to be re-skinned? That's an interesting business model... I would sign to make $100k a year right now, lol.

From a source I found, PC browser games make only around a 3% of the money and they are decreasing a 13.9% (Global Games Market Revenues 2018 | Per Region & Segment | Newzoo). So I'm not really sure whether Facebook is right about it. Time will say.

 

[loop101]

I mostly mention HTML5 games because of their simplicity, and likelihood they would be finished. If you decide to go native (most common on mobile), you can still keep things simple.

For example. The computer game Passage was in the first group of games to be inducted in to the New York Museum of Modern Art. Games last 5 minutes and are played on a 100x16 pixel side-scrolling screen.

Passage was intended as an abstract metaphor for the human condition. Rohrer has stated that repeated playthroughs help emphasize the finite nature of the experience.

A talk about it starts at 13:04 here

A walk through is here

It is a good example of "the game doesn't take place on the screen, but in the player's head".

 

[srodrigo]

I mostly mention HTML5 games because of their simplicity, and likelihood they would be finished. If you decide to go native (most common on mobile), you can still keep things simple.

For example. The computer game Passage was in the first group of games to be inducted in to the New York Museum of Modern Art. Games last 5 minutes and are played on a 100x16 pixel side-scrolling screen.

Passage was intended as an abstract metaphor for the human condition. Rohrer has stated that repeated playthroughs help emphasize the finite nature of the experience.

A talk about it starts at 13:04 here

A walk through is here

It is a good example of "the game doesn't take place on the screen, but in the player's head".

Haven't played Passage, although I know about it. It's an experimental game that didn't take very long to make. But the guy made nothing I think, he shares the revenue of his games here:

View: https://youtu.be/mIPmjnsCPR4?t=320


I agree about keeping it simple if possible. I don't want to get into long projects.