
Year 1: My full time indie developer life - Impossible
https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/KevinGiguere/20180313/315392/Year_1_My_full_time_indie_developer_life.php
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animal531
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
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

~~~
bitwize
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.

~~~
disease
What about 2D games? It seems GameMaker may have the advantage there. I've
completed six game jam games and am looking into moving towards a slightly
larger project and am currently considering Phaser and GameMaker, but if the
2D has come along in Unity maybe it is worth trying.

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

~~~
purple-again
Agreed, it reminds me of the Game Dev games with all the bubbles popping up as
you progress that was addictive and fun.

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fourseventy
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.

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georgeecollins
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.

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doesnt_know
> 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](https://i.imgur.com/fwiiOed.png)

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nathas
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.

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markbnj
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.

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yitchelle
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_beans
Grit and generous relatives.

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

[https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/844rve/my_first_ye...](https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/844rve/my_first_year_as_a_full_time_game_developer/)

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gowthamgts12
May the force be with you pal.

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Dude2023
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
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.

