

Ask HNL: tips for new indie game-developers? - ido

It seems some people[1] actually manage to live off of donations, others from ads on their games' homepage, direct download[2] sales and so on.<p>But these all seem like fairly unlikely ways to actually make enough money to live off of.<p>Does somebody here actually make a living as an indie game dev?  Any tips for motivated young programmers trying to break into the field?<p>----<p>[1] http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=31614<p>[2] E.g. Steam, direct2drive, etc..
======
unalone
As a former indie developer who made games for free, here's the one thing I
think you might take from my experience:

There are a _lot_ of people who make games. Pretty much any basic idea you can
think of has been done before. The best way to stand out is to polish the
stuff you make, because otherwise you'll be looked over. If something's
polished it can rise above a more-featured game because more people will take
the time to play it.

~~~
ido
Did you do it part time or was it your main job?

~~~
unalone
I was a student: I did it entirely as a hobby, and I didn't do it particularly
well. My advice comes not so much from learning how to develop a good game (in
the time I thought of myself as a developer, I made nothing above "bad"), but
more from playing lots and lots of indie games, and trying to figure out which
ones were standing out the most in my mind.

Polish is tricky, but generally it entails playing over a game again and again
trying to make things perfect. This showed up most in RPG development: when
the battle system in every game is the same, you learn that what matters
_isn't_ your system, but rather how you manage to use that system to
constantly grasp attention. (In fact, if you ever have time to develop games
without worrying about it for money, I'd suggest you download a standard RPG
development kit: that'll teach you how to make addictive games despite having
almost no control over your basic systems. That way, when you begin making
your _own_ games, you'll have a feel for what's going to get at people and
what they'll ignore as "yet another game system".

------
stonemetal
What kind of games do you want to make? For web based games there really seem
to be three models ad supported like urban dead, freemium like mech quest, and
portal paid like anything on Yahoo games.

In non web games it seems to mostly be try to get carried by enough third
party distributors to make enough money at the 10-20 dollar price point.

~~~
ido
I would rather do non-web games (I've released a couple of small roguelikes) -
think diablo on a smaller scale, with simple 2d graphics but more complex and
interesting game play.

My older games were all several man-weeks of effort (1 week off from work to
develop each + a couple of months of bug fixes and polish in my free time) and
were received reasonably well.

If I do it full time and bust my ass I think I can produce fairly viable small
games for about 6 months man work each.

I have enough money saved up for surviving ~1 year of zero income.

~~~
stonemetal
In that case look at the major inde friendly platforms. Most of the current
consoles offer a market place for downloadable games, maybe the iPhone, green
house, steam. I can't think of any other distribution channels off the top of
my head but then I don't follow indie game development that much.

~~~
ido
Thanks, steam was my first thought too (as well as the XBox store).

I haven't heard of green house and a quick google doesn't seem to bring up
anything about the right type of green houses ;)

Do you have a link handy?

~~~
stonemetal
playgreenhouse.com Another that just occurred to me is startdock.com (the guys
behind sins of a solar empire and GalCiv)

~~~
ido
playgreenhouse seem awesome, thanks a lot!

------
oscardelben
[http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2009/03/so-heres-how-many-gam...](http://jeff-
vogel.blogspot.com/2009/03/so-heres-how-many-games-i-sell.html) comments here:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=521416>

