Year 1: My full time indie developer life

https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/KevinGiguere/20180313/315392/Year_1_My_full_time_indie_developer_life.php

by Impossible • 8 years ago

153 33 8 years ago

May the force be with you pal.

animal531• 8 years ago

I feel for the guy, he has basically managed to step in all the pitfalls of indie game development (that the majority of people who want to create games out of passion does).

1. Writing his own engine: This is an often discussed issue, but basically it boils down to 95% wasted resources. It's all time you should have been spending on a unique angle for your game, or a specific game-making gameplay feature etc.

2. Trying to create an RPG, JRPG or MMO: As a solo person these are highly problematic. The amount of roles you need to cover for these genres is ridiculous by yourself, which brings us to him outsourcing jobs because of the large art requirement.

3a. Spending $85k (Project 1) / $15k (Project 2): There was always only a very small chance to get $85k back except by going viral (such as with the Stardew/Undertale comment), which is in itself a very small fractional percentage chance. Aim for something reasonable such as $1k expenses for a first project. $10k is already too much and few projects will make that back. Spending more on project 2 than you made on project 1 is also an issue. Cut back as much as you can.

3b. Spending $4k on PAX (essentially advertising): As he himself discusses, he had no way to gauge the impact of going, but again it comes back to it being a really big $ amount for a first time indie developer.

4. Niche games are hit or miss out of the gate: Astral Traveler is the type of (Runner) game that doesn't promote word of mouth. They for example need some angle such as being extremely hard, pretty, controversial or competitive that will encourage people that they themselves need to give it a go, or watch someone else give it a playthrough. It comes back to asking what is the hook for the game?

5. Tech Support (His new/3rd Project): Gauging whether something will be a success is very very hard. At the very least he seems to have scaled down the costs, but on the other hand it doesn't look like an extremely interesting game at the moment. A big problem for indies is to find the correct scale of game. Too small and you're seen as a throwaway cash grab, too big and as an unknown that's not pushing the frontiers of the art you'll never make your money back.

formalsystem• 8 years ago

Is 1 really that big of a mistake? I understand that it's a mistake to build a fully functional game engine to then use in production but building just enough to better grok the internals seems like invaluable information to me

yscik• 8 years ago

It's a great thing to do if you want to learn. Not so much if you want to release a game and make money. Even if you want some very special engine-level feature, you can find an engine extendable enough and just add what you need.

hjnilsson• 8 years ago

It is valuable if your goal is to learn to make games and invest in yourself. But it is not valuable if you want to make money and be successful in your indie venture.

It is possible the knowledge he gained from writing his own engine, will allow him to get a better paid job down the road for example. But most likely those $85 000 would be better spent on education.

magic_beans2• 8 years ago

Unfortunately "invaluable information" doesn't translate to sales. At all.

batty_alex• 8 years ago

Well, he says "custom engine" in the article but, he used XNA. When people hear "built an engine" they tend to assume the person spent years building it from-scratch. XNA is hardly from-scratch.

I think, in this case, the author meant he didn't use one of the big commercial engines. Aside from all that, I also agree that it's not a really big mistake.

bitwize4• 8 years ago

Yes, absolutely. The world has standardized on Unreal for big games and Unity for small to medium sized games. These come with enormous ecosystems and ready-made asset pipelines, which will dramatically decrease your time to market. Unless you're sitting on a fat pile of cash and free time that you can afford to never see again after you commit it to developing some experimental new engine and tools for the same, the smart thing to do is license Unreal or Unity.

That is, of course, assuming that you think sales are THE thing that matters in indie game development. In which case you are probably better off attaching yourself to a large studio such as EA, than going indie.

aphextron• 8 years ago

The biggest mistake for first time game devs (who are already coders) is thinking that making a game is a programming problem. It's not. It's an art/music/sfx/design problem. Unless you are crafting some crazy new shader, there is no new cutting edge code to write in a game. You use a commercial engine, third party libraries, etc. to the point that your game code is nothing but a collection of scripts essentially. The heavy lift for making a game is entirely in the creative side.

pryelluw2• 8 years ago

Spot on. I would add that there seems to be a focus on original ideas. This makes it harder to sell. Sticking with proven ideas and then slapping a creative twist is a safer sell.

gregschlom• 8 years ago

While I generally agree with the sentiment, there certainly are some good counterexamples of games that are almost purely programming problems. Games with mostly procedural content and/or novel gameplay - Minecraft would be a good example.

foobarrio2• 8 years ago

Why not both? Back in 2006 I helped someone complete a Flash puzzle game. The whole thing was a an interesting programming experience. His lead developer had family issues to tend to and I stepped in. He would come up with game-play ideas and I would prototype them while also working completing the whole game. It was a blast. The ideas that he would bring to me were greatly influenced by what he thought I could pull off in the alotted time. After I was done, he later hired some other devs and told me he found himself limiting his ideas because those guys weren't as good at implementing them. In that respect he definitely hit technical limitations even though he was working on non-technically challenging games on a well known platform.

Similarly, there was no state-of-the-art coding in this game:

* http://www.thewayoftheninja.org/n.html

They had plenty of technical challenges pushing the performance of ActionScript in browsers at the time in order to keep the game moving smoothly.

bitwize4• 8 years ago

I've delivered one small game to Google Play and am working on two more. I wrote a unique engine for each. I'm also doing all the art (I learned to draw so that I could make decent looking games). Building a game with a licensed engine feels, to me, a bit like drawing a character by starting from one of those pixel-art "dollbases". Yes, it's what the industry does now, but I didn't start writing games to join the industry; that'd be like taking up woodworking so I could work for IKEA. I started writing games to write games. It's relaxing, when programming is to me normally a cause of stress and strife.

If you are getting into the indie scene hoping to have a million seller, then unless you are a rare genius (e.g., Notch) your $85,000 is better spent on Powerball tickets. Do it for love of the craft, whether you use your own or a licensed engine. And for God's sake start small.

foobarrio2• 8 years ago

I agree with the sentiment but this guy quit his job to be an indie developer. This changes things a bit since he needs to now feed himself with this work.

didgeoridoo• 8 years ago

I think his third game (with the “tech support” theme) has a real chance of blowing up in a way that the first two didn’t. It’s an interesting “Papers, Please”-esque concept, and I could see it getting great traction if executed well (great challenge balance, good-enough story, etc.). It intuitively feels pretty YouTuber-friendly, so developing early relationships with some smaller to mid-size gaming channels might be a good way to get on their radar and get alpha/beta versions of the game in front of their audiences.

I definitely would not have said the same of the first two games, which didn’t appear to do much to stand out to potential customers. They were labors of love, pieces of art maybe, but that unfortunately doesn’t drive commercial success.

Best of luck to the guy!

mistersquid• 8 years ago

I was initially skeptical of the idea of "Tech Support: Error Unknown" but Giguere's (OP author) description intrigued me for two reasons.

First, the game narrative is novel and might appeal to industry types who only indirectly interact with CSR teams (i.e. not people who staff CSR or support but who familiar with or work in an industry that requires support). "Tech Support: Error Unknown" has the potential to create a myth structure around tech support and that is just hands down cool. :) But, the title really should move out of the realm of genericism. It should be evocative like "Tech Support Nightmares", "Bug not a Feature", or just "Error Unknown".

Second, wow what a novel idea for a game. I wonder if the procedural "adversary"/interlocutor/chatter function were abstracted if a different algorithm could be used. For example, the algorithm for "Error Unknown" would be suitable for his game but a different algorithm might be better suited for actually simulating training for companies that need to train CSR reps.

That could lead to a secondary (or primary) market of companies looking for ways to assess or train their reps.

I also wish Giguere the best of luck and will be interested to try his new game when it's available.

bleezy• 8 years ago

I think Tech Support: Error Unknown is the perfect title.

yitchelle• 8 years ago

One thing this @dragon_slumber (the author of the article) had is the grit. To push it out after 1 year, solo, is an incredible effort. Hope that 2018 works out much better for him

magic_beans2• 8 years ago

Grit and generous relatives.

fourseventy• 8 years ago

I had a very similar experience to this guy. Worked on my first game for about 4 years before quitting my job and working on it full time for the last year leading up to the launch on steam. My game had a similar lukewarm response and was also a financial disappointment.

It's very hard to make a living in game development, even big game studios have constant layoffs and bankruptcies. Especially now since the indie game market is extremely saturated.

Dude2023• 8 years ago

Still sounds less financially risky then e.g. marrying with kids in same country which is way more mainstream. Unless you start playing with debt.

tdb7893• 8 years ago

I wouldn't consider kids that much of a risk, I know about how much they are going to cost (i.e. most of my money) and I'm insured for any of their unexpected medical issues. I guess I could lose a lot of money in a divorce but the ones I've heard of are much less costly than these games.

markbnj• 8 years ago

I enjoy reading these articles but in the end I don't think they're very instructive as to the chances of success or failure. Game design is such a specific creative talent that it's a little like my saying I quit my job to become a full-time songwriter and didn't make any money. Kind of the expected result the majority of the time.

nathas• 8 years ago

Really sounds like he needs to stop paying for art assets and start paying someone to handle marketing...

While I haven't played his games, I don't think the game play really matters as long as it's "good enough". Most games aren't going to be the 0.01% smash hit; you just need a regular audience that appreciates what you're doing, and enough eyeballs that are caught to say "hey, I'll gamble my $5 on something that looks fun".

I think this is partly hubris. I see startups fall into the same pattern - "well it's a great product so our customers will evangelize", "if we add X feature we'll get more sales [even though no one has asked for it]", "if only it was faster, we'll get more sales [even though no one complained about latency]".

No, you need to figure out who you're selling to and how to make the customer aware you even exist. It's a big pond.

georgeecollins• 8 years ago

People who love games should make them, but people who want to make a living from games need to understand that is a business that doesn't always reward passion.

The good news for this guy is he has dipped his toe in the water and learned from it. Experience always makes you better. Others have pointed out the poor return on creating your own game engine.

Here is a point I would make: If it is a business for you, think about what kind of game people are likely to buy, as opposed to what kind of game you can do well. One of the reasons why there are gluts of certain kinds of games is that they are often the kinds of games that are relatively easy to make. Also, people who enjoy making games often are fans of similar games. There are ways to test how much traction your game is likely to find in the market before you make it.

mwill• 8 years ago

Reddit discussion from last week, where the author responds to some comments:

https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/844rve/my_first_ye...

doesnt_know• 8 years ago

and even erroneously has the "RPG Maker" tag on Steam

This is unfortunate, but is effectively a consequence of an enormously over-saturated market. People casually browsing through Steam will make instant snap decisions about a title.

Having that tag for instance will prevent Steam from ever showing it to me as is one of my (many) excluded tags[1].

It's completely brutal and as a developer I sympathize, but as a consumer/gamer the market is so completely and utterly tilted in my favor that I can "afford" to ignore 99% of titles that I might otherwise probably enjoy and still have more entertainment to last a life time.

[1]https://i.imgur.com/fwiiOed.png

Year 1: My full time indie developer life

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