
Confessions of a failed indie developer - danso
http://www.altdevblogaday.com/2013/07/30/confessions-of-a-failed-indie-developer/
======
sfjailbird
A couple of observations.

You probably shouldn't think that you can get your indie game done in a year,
release, and ramp up revenue so fast that you'll soon be self-sustaining.
Sounds obvious, but most guys starting out actually believe that there's a
chance of it playing out like this. Starry-eyed optimism is probably a
precondition for going anywhere near this business in the first place, but it
must be tempered and kept in check at all times.

If you are building a game of substance (rather than a simple
puzzler/platformer mobile app - which is a lottery ticket more than a business
model), the game will likely take way longer to develop. As it should. Good
games take time. This means that you should either be very well-funded, or
have extremely low costs of living, or be working on the side of another
income (in which case it will take even longer). This is not the way to
instant riches, but since when did that ever work? Double down, dig your heels
in, this will take _years_. But the end result is an awesome game.

Further to the point, you should probably not think in terms of _the release_
that ends the project and where all your efforts either pay off or fall flat.
Instead, the game should be put in front of users continually, gathering
feedback, going back to the lab to improve it and repeating the cycle until
momentum starts to pick up. That's when you know that you are near the final
shape of the game. Don't even think about talking to the press before this.
Luckily, if there is one community that is ready to try new things at any and
all times it is gamers, so you shouldn't have much trouble getting this
feedback. (Conversely, if even the ravenous internet hordes are indifferent to
your project, you might need to tweak the formula).

While a long and hard road, a game developed this way actually stands a chance
of success in the market, unlike the 'overnight success' stories that play
well in the press.

~~~
marijn
> you should probably not think in terms of the release that ends the project

Yes. I want to stress this some more. I know several people who are/were
working on big ambitious projects in a kind of stealth mode, citing concerns
that their idea will be stolen, or emphasizing that it isn't "ready yet". I
suspect this is usually rationalizing a fear of criticism.

A single-person personal project shouldn't be worked on in isolation for more
than a few months. You'll lose perspective. Feedback is extremely valuable.
It'll help you grow your idea, and it'll help you abandon something that's not
going anywhere. (The same probably goes for small teams.)

~~~
tieTYT
Do you have any advice on how to put it in front of users to get feedback?
Friends are good for a while, but they're biased. Just go on IRC and ask a few
folks?

~~~
wpietri
Some friends host a games night, which I expect nets them a good number of
testers.

You could also just go to a coffee shop. The pitch I'd try: "Hey, I'm making a
game. If you try it for 5 minutes, I'll buy you another drink." If people keep
playing beyond the minimum, you know you're getting somewhere.

Personally, I wouldn't use IRC much, because then I can't watch people in
action. I don't make games, but I regularly watch people using software I've
made. Their words may lie, but their expressions and actions usually tell the
truth.

You might also have people try a few games, with only one of them being yours.
People like to please, so you can just say, "Hey, I'm doing some market
research on video games; would you try these?" If they don't know which one is
yours, you may get much better answers.

------
programminggeek
I think as a developer, the easiest thing to screw up is the understanding of
what a business is and how long it takes to build (and how much it costs to
run).

Say you are making $50,000 a year. The owner is probably paying more like
$75,000-100,000 when you include insurance, rent, taxes, equipment, etc.

Now, imagine you are on a small team of five - an artist, game designer, 2
devs, and a qa person. That is an outlay of about $500,000 a year. So,
shipping a smallish game in 6 months is about $250,000.

The author seemed to think that building the whole thing from scratch was
"saving money", but it was costing him a tremendous amount of time, which was
in fact costing him A LOT of money.

So, if you are trying to start a business, understand that it costs some
combination of money and time, and if you are short on one, you probably need
to substitute the other.

If you are short on both, you're screwed.

~~~
bluedino
If you don't have an artist, you need to be able to do art+code. Even if
you're making as simple puzzle game, your game is going to look a hundred
times better with jewels/blocks drawn by someone who knows what they are
doing, compared to something you hacked up in MSPaint.

And don't go super-cheap on the artist. It might take them a few hours to do
just a few simple icons/items, so pay them what you'd want per hour for a
contract job. Don't pay them $10 an hour or offer $100 to do an entire
replacement of your development art.

The same goes for music. Even an original theme song is going to take 10-12
hours of work. So asking for a $50 song isn't going to yield good results.

~~~
chii
what's a good rate for music for games? I can see two situations - you either
find an artist whose style you liked/suites the game, and pay them for an
original composition, or find an existing song that suits the game and pay a
"licence" to use it.

I have no idea how much it costs to do either - i'd really like to know.

------
crazygringo
Sometimes I wish there were an article like this on HN every day.

The relentless upbeat-ness of the startup world can get to be too much, and
it's healthy to hear humbling stories of reality.

~~~
soup10
Agreed. Most startups and indie games especially are fucked. More emphasis on
how long the odds are or how difficult the journey usually is for a startup or
small business would be good. I know a bunch of people working on startups who
are just so naive when it comes to the risk and low probability of success.

It's so easy to get excited about a project and caught up in hubris and
optimism.

------
pjungwir
I really enjoyed and appreciated this article. So many harsh comments! Yes,
what he did was foolish, but thank god for foolishness. And these things are
easier to see from outside and after the fact than when you're following a
dream.

I've had a lifelong dream of building my own game, and I'll be sad if I die
without trying. I'm way less prepared than the author. I've done web dev for
15 years. My last game was an ASCII roguelike in GW BASIC. I'm almost done
reading Game Engine Architecture by Jason Gregory, and building my own engine
sounds like a blast---but also like a 20 year project. Fortunately my dream
game is more like an old 2-D Zelda 1 or 3. Still, it's tempting to build even
that with 3-D techniques. . . .

The big lesson I'd apply to myself is to build something modest. That seems
even more true given my lack of experience, although I'm not sure I'll listen.

I guess the difference between the author and myself is that I fortunately
don't have the expertise to think of game making as anything other than a
creative hobby.

~~~
tieTYT
Do not build a game engine unless your goal is to be selling a game engine. If
you're going to make a game that requires a game engine, use another engine
that's already built.

Lets put this in terms of web development: You wouldn't start building a
webapp by building your own web framework first.

~~~
rgbrenner
"You wouldn't start building a webapp by building your own web framework
first."

If I were starting from scratch TODAY, then I agree with you.

I started a small ecommerce site back in 2003, and django, etc didn't exist.
So I did develop a framework from scratch in C. 10 years later, it's the
engine my new data storage startup (Nuevo Cloud).

Point is, things like web app engines and game engines aren't things that pay
off immediately. They require _a lot_ of development, and during the entire
time that you're working on it, you're basically handicapped until it catches
up with other engines/frameworks. But after it's far enough along, it can be a
big advantage, letting you do something unique compared to your competitors.

~~~
tieTYT
First, yes: You can only tell someone, "Don't reinvent the wheel" if the wheel
has already been invented.

Re: your last sentence: Isn't it even more likely that it could end up being a
complete waste of time and effort and be inferior to other frameworks/engines?

~~~
rgbrenner
Yes, that is probably the most likely outcome. That's why I said "can be" an
advantage, but maybe that's too strong wording.

------
gfodor
Honestly this guy was never developing a game, as he said, he was deluding
himself into thinking a game would materialize if he built a game engine. He
also managed to burn many bridges along the way by taking money from people in
his personal network for the luxury of spending his afternoon messing around
with computer graphics algorithms in Visual Studio. A total and completely
expected and avoidable disaster.

Honestly if you start a company and don't have a plan and can't connect the
dots to how you'll actually ship something you aren't "learning from failure"
you are just being stupid and ignorant. And selfish if you are leaning on
others to enable you to do this. If the guy read a little bit more he'd know
"build a custom 3d game engine" is not anywhere on the list of things to do if
you are bootstrapping an indie game. If anything it's on a list of what _not_
to do. Beyond that, there was _no game_ in mind to warrant building a new
engine. At least if he had a game in mind that clearly needed a stunning new
engine that current tech couldn't handle he could argue he was trying to pull
a Carmack and failed. But this wasn't the case since he had only a vague idea
of what the game he was creating even was.

The thing to learn from this example is that you should at least do a little
bit of reading on entrepreneurism and product development before trying to be
an entrepreneur and create a product. (In this case, "product development"
means "game design.") Even more simple, realize what product you are even
trying to build before you start building intellectually-satisfying but
ultimately useless software.

~~~
bandushrew
Aspects of that comment are true, but that is a pretty harsh indictment on
someone who took a real risk and worked to make it happen. Its easy to call
someone ignorant and stupid because they did not approach a problem the way
you would. Dont do it.

------
zanny
As a 21 year old, I don't see how you could try to go indie with a family and
mortgage. I'm in a position where I could now (couchsurf my family until my
thing is ready and have $0 expenses) but I just look out at a sea of mediocre
indies with "fresh" ideas that are just respins on the same old, often in the
form of some 2d platformer with sprites or on Unity.

That just isn't compelling to me, but that is a personal thing. So I don't do
it. But while I don't do it now because of my personal outlook (also
considering I'm not interested in game dev because the industry eats people
alive) I definitely wouldn't fathom risking my family for a pipe dream. And
then build my own game engine.

My question is, if you are a game dev dissatisfied with being an office robot,
why not get a few friends and make your own dev house? It would be "indie" but
you could ask around publishers pitching ideas or doing a kickstarter with
more people and a fixed funding goal, with a much better understanding that
games take 500% more time than you expect minimum, and make something big. You
have the credentials after a decade or more in the industry to attract
attention, I'd hope.

~~~
JabavuAdams
> As a 21 year old, I don't see how you could try to go indie with a family
> and mortgage.

Older devs can more easily have 6 mo to a couple of years in savings. It's not
fun to burn that down, but it's quite a different situation from having no
savings and student loans.

Also, having a partner with whom you can talk about money, strategize about
money, and share income / savings with is a huge advantage.

~~~
a8da6b0c91d
I am struggling to imagine how a guy working for 13 years in software wouldn't
have years of living costs covered with liquid assets. What the heck do people
blow their money on.

~~~
acuozzo
> What the heck do people blow their money on.

The interest on 130K of private student loans, to start.

------
ChuckMcM
It is always interesting to see how individuals come at the process of
creating something like this. When you combine this with the guy who created a
game for his kid using paper and refrigerator magnets to cover up undiscovered
parts you can really see the difference.

One of the coolest game developers I met was working at Maxis but also working
on their own game, but hadn't written any code. They had a notebook with
sketches of things and notes about mechanics and small essays on conflict and
resolution, risk and reward. All of the parts that are essentially a game but
not the six-sided die, the game board, the art assets, or the code. It struck
me how important it was to design the core of something before designing the
moving bits.

That said he also had about a zillion little hacks, one page programs that
would do some thing he was imagining and trying to see what that would look
like.

------
tieTYT
"When I say I started building a game, this isn’t strictly true – what I
actually built was a graphics engine."

This is really surprising to me. If you google for how to make your own game,
the first thing you see is usually something telling you NOT to do this. I
don't understand how someone in the gaming industry for 13 years could miss
this advice.

~~~
JanneVee
From the paragraph preceding about the graphics engine: "My fellow indie
friends advised me I should start small, perhaps making a puzzle game for
iOS/Android using Unity and building the company from there. Arrogant as I
was, I completely ignored this advice..."

------
elnate
"Building my own engine, whilst fun and a great learning experience, was an
expensive mistake. For six months’ work all I had to show for it was a short
proof of concept demo. I should have used UDK, Unity or one of the other
available game engines and got on with building a game, but my pride as an
experienced game engine programmer didn’t let me!"

This has been my biggest mistake. I have to keep chanting 'Build a game not an
engine'. It would be silly to start building a house by building a brick
factory but that is, unfortunately, what I find myself doing.

------
mangotree
I switched from making simple games on iOS to making simple utilities, it is
so much quicker. Games require a lot, good graphics, unique gameplay, lots of
testing.

------
vacri
_I was way too ambitious with the game I was trying to build._

In the days of yore, I became one of the admin staff for a MUD I played, and
you had to write an area. My proposal was for a vast frigid wilderness, and
was 500 rooms big. I was significantly talked down in scale by one of the
other admins, who'd written half the areas himself. The area ended up being
330 rooms in size (and the MUD prided itself on atmosphere) and it was quite a
feat to write at that size.

At completion, I was very grateful to have listened to the other admin - the
extra size wouldn't have changed the quality of the area, but would have meant
50% more work. It certainly made me more humble in accepting advice from more
seasoned folks.

Also interesting at the time - I was going to school and working in a sleep
lab. Semester break came at the time I was trying to finish the area. For a
period of two weeks, apart from the sleep lab shifts (10-12 hours) it was a
weird 'natural' cycle of 4 hours sleep, 4 hours awake and writing. I was glad
I did it... and that I don't have to do it again.

------
JabavuAdams
Sounds like a couple of my failed indie attempts.

------
jlees
For folks who liked this post, you would probably find _Indie Game: The Movie_
interesting. (It's on Netflix.)

~~~
voltagex_
And DRM free from
[http://buy.indiegamethemovie.com/](http://buy.indiegamethemovie.com/)

------
gutsy
This is a fantastic view into indie development that I don't think enough
people get to see.

------
pseudometa
Are there any more stories like this of failed indie devleoper retrospectives?

~~~
primaryobjects
I say this with humor, but this weekend, I took part in an indie 48-hour game-
jam contest. I created the game, Fire Starter
[http://dummysoftware.com/games/firestarter](http://dummysoftware.com/games/firestarter)

Created it with HTML5, targeting the desktop, rather than mobile. Didn't win,
but had a lot of fun. That's kinda like the op's story compressed into a time-
span of a few hours, sort of.

Btw, I recommend game-jams to anyone interested in indie game development. It
forces you to create something quick, take decisive actions, and finish the
game.

~~~
tinco
He participated in Ludum Dare (ludumdare.com), as did I, it's always a blast.
I think you can't be thinking of going indie without having participated at
least once sucessfully in a ludum dare (either in the jam or the compo,
doesn't really matter)

~~~
precisioncoder
I agree. Ludum Dare teaches you YAGNI. I built a better screen engine during
LD in a couple hours than the bloated disfunctional monster I was building for
my hobby game I had spend a dozen hours on. "First make it work, then make it
modular" and "Create something small that works and then iterate" are now my
game design commandments that I constantly have to repeat.

------
unz
Doesn't this guy realize that asking for money they way he did with flex
funding defies logic. If you only raise some of the money, how were expecting
to finish the project, and what about the people who gave you money - you just
scammed them. He still hasn't paid them back yet, instead saying he owes them
a game!

Trying not to be harsh, but this guy is obviously clueless - built his own
game engine - maybe he should've started by wiring together his own circuit
boards and then building an OS.

And another thing slightly disturbing about a lot of game devs - in your teens
or early twenties I can understand the desire to make Indie games, you're
young and retarded. But later on in life, late 20s and on - can you not find
something more worthwhile to do?

Sure, a side hobby making games, or your main job working as a game dev to pay
the bills, but for that be the focus of your life? Can you not open your eyes
to the multitude of problems that exist out there, in the REAL WORLD, and fix
those?

You could say the same about other artists like writers and musicians - and
thankfully, almost all of them suffer financially for their insanity. As time
progresses, Indie gamers will also realize that they are just the starving
artists of modern times (minus the groupies that writers and musicians get).

~~~
lod
First of all I would have to say that's really harsh, both on the industry and
the developer. He may have been a bit delusional and not thought the plan
through but he learned why he was wrong and got better from it.

Calling game development "useless" is a stretch however, they have always
combined math,art,computers,music,... into one single piece. They have also
personally broguht me into the world of programming.

Saying writers don't have a purpose is also a bit over the top. Some can be
reporters, others send ideas to people who otherwise wouldn't have even
considered them.

Games are a firm example of entertainment, and people get joy out of seeing
people loving their product. Can you honestly say you want to live your life
without TV, movies, games, music, writing, art, stories, dance?

~~~
unz
I'm not saying that entertainment doesn't have value. I said it's perfectly
fine if you're earning an income from creating it and it's OK as a hobby to
create. But otherwise, the market (the people that constitute the world) have
told you it's not valuable.

Art for art's sake is great, but it doesn't mean artists should get a free
pass to do whatever they want and the rest of us digging coal mines and
waiting tables give them money for art we don't like.

~~~
icebraining
_Art for art 's sake is great, but it doesn't mean artists should get a free
pass to do whatever they want and the rest of us digging coal mines and
waiting tables give them money for art we don't like._

And where has anyone said we should? I didn't see OP demanding public
subsidies. You're just attacking a dumb strawman.

~~~
unz
His wife, the crowdfund backers, and the net loss to society by him taking
himself out of productive business. Those are not 'dumb strawmans'.

And I wasn't talking about him in that comment, but the various starving
artists who usually free ride on spouse/family/friends/welfare.

~~~
icebraining
I'll give you the crowdfund backers, since they haven't got what they
expected, but who the hell are you to decided what he or his wife should spend
their money and time on? Should we start judging you for the useful stuff you
could be doing with the time you're wasting on HN, not only yours but others',
by reading your posts?

At least he probably learned useful skills building his game. What do you have
to show for the time spent here?

------
erikb
In my eyes this is not an article about a failed indie, but about one who
never started. And yes that is exactly what is the biggest source of failure:
Not starting.

You still didn't make that iOS/Android game with simple mechanics! You still
didn't earn even 1ct by selling any kind game! You still didn't start to be an
indie developer. Maybe it's still too hard to finish a 3D game with so many
different programs and IDEs. But maybe it would be easy to make a Candy Crush
clone for Android and sell it for $0.5

 _edit:_ Btw I'm sexist, but living off your wife's pay check with a mortgage
and children in the house? Wtf?

~~~
erikb
Everything I wrote here was serious criticism.

