My 6 month Indie Game Dev Post Mortem

I'm not going to argue with the graphics, they look bad, yes. Still, I believe that what fundarian might have learned while making these games and not focusing on gameart might have value in itself. And perhaps in future projects with custom art he will focus on different things that he has focused in these ones. Iterative and incremental development, one should build upon the knowledge acquired in previous projects.

It took you WAAAAY too long to create those games. 30 days for 8 hours a day for a game that looks that it was made in 2 days.

But may I ask you how many games you have published? I ask this because you're saying 1 month is "WAAAAY too long" to release these games. The publishing process of a game, and he released in different platforms, even with the new edgy game engines out there, takes time. Integrating ads, Testing the game, Reviews, handling metadata, etc. Even if you have already done it before, it takes time.

1 game per month, is pretty good, most people set out for ambitious projects, with custom artwork and accomplish NOTHING.

... but if you do have experience then by all means quit your job and focus full time on developing games... A hit game can make more money than almost any 9-5 job.. that is if you know what you're doing.

Yeah, I get it, we're all gamedevs and we want to stay positive, sorry I don't believe in positive thinking. Quitting your job is only a good idea if you can afford it, if you can afford it, quit your day job and do whatever you want to do: windsurf, painting, skydiving, gamedev. But don't go into gamedev trying to make money, hit games are fairytales, they require:

  • heavy investment
  • a great team
  • a genius on the helm

And most important, all of the above + luck.

I think the community here is overly optimistic and thinks if we spend enough time and effort on a good concept, it will sell a lot, make a lot of money and we'll all be gamedev superstars and piss off everyone else who "works for a living". And this is becoming progressively true, the money you can make off games in the mobile stores is plummeting down, the mobile stores are saturated. People expect free software and games, and making software and games is expensive.

tl;dr: don't quit your job. don't expect to make money off gamedev

/r/gamedev Thread Parent