
I Am the Cheapest Bastard in Indie Games - etrevino
https://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2019/08/i-am-cheapest-bastard-in-indie-games.html
======
tempodox
Previous discussion (Δt ≈ 12 hrs):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20804998](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20804998)

~~~
dlbucci
I kept refreshing 'cause I thought HN was out of date, but it kept saying '2
hours ago'...

------
DeusExMachina
For years I have heard that being a game developer is a miserable job, with
long hours not matched by an adequate pay.

Does somebody have an explanation for such cut-throat industry? Software
development generally offers good jobs, so why isn’t that true for game
development?

The possible explanation is the race to the bottom to offer games for cheap or
free, as the article mentions. But then, why does that happen in games? There
is plenty of software orders of magnitude simpler than games that gets sold
for much higher prices.

What am I missing?

~~~
faitswulff
It's essentially the music business but for programmers. Non-essential
consumer product, everyone wants to do it, discovery is terrible, and the
companies that are lucky enough to get big aren't incentived to treat their
employees well because there's so much competition to get into the field.

~~~
C1sc0cat
Its similar in Charity work but with more bullying and even less pay.

I am not joking, I did a high end hr/ir course a while back and all the
participants where surprised it wasn't the City Investment Banking type of
jobs that had the worst rep for bullying etc.

~~~
mumblemumble
I'm not surprised at all. Between friends who work in finance and friends who
work in the nonprofit sector, I can tell you that one group never got forced
to cancel their birthday or holiday plans at the last minute to cover for some
giant screw-up on the boss's part while said boss spends the same evening at
home with the kids, and the other had things like that happen almost
regularly.

Which isn't to say that finance jobs aren't stressful and grueling, but they
at least seem to be a bit more inclined stop short of being personally cruel
to their staff.

"You should be happy to work here, we're doing God's work" is a powerful force
that's easy to abuse. And, in finance, everyone knows that nobody else is
there for the deep personal sense of fulfillment, either.

------
DizzyDoo
I've been a full-time indie developer for four years now, and it is tough. I
don't know if it's that much tougher than most other small businesses, I have
friends who are dairy farmers, structural engineering contractors, graphics
designers, an itinerant preacher or two... they've all got tough aspects to
their respective professions, in some ways they're easier than mine, and in
others way, way harder (I don't have to maintain the health of three to four
hundred cows, for example.)

What I appreciate about Jeff's blogging over the years is his focus on
sticking to a secret sauce, his is clearly an ability to put together
classical RPG's with lovely writing. The reason I've been able to be a full-
time indie is that I do both all the programming and all the art
(painting/animating/modelling/etc) (As an example, I'm currently working on:
[https://store.steampowered.com/app/654960/The_Eldritch_Zooke...](https://store.steampowered.com/app/654960/The_Eldritch_Zookeeper/)).
The fact that I need to sell half the copies than a team or two is, it turns
out, a massive advantage. That, and the specific voice I bring to the
writing/design of the games, helps keep me going, and selling copies in a
competitive environment that's shifted a lot since I started in 2015.

Finding that secret sauce, that niche, I think that's pretty important.

------
hoorayimhelping
Discussion last night on the same post:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20804998](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20804998)

------
xez
He already claims to hire freelancers from places where the USD is more
expensive, so I don't see why he hasn't considered just allocating his art
budget into hiring one person from these places? Personally I can tell you
that there are many places where 40k is more than enough to live very
comfortably for way over 20 months.

I'm guessing the logistics of hiring someone internationally make that
unfeasible? Maybe some sort of partnership could work? I'm not familiar enough
with the legal caveats there

~~~
mumblemumble
If you hire a full-timer, you damn well better be able to keep them busy 40
hours a week for 48-50 weeks a year. Not only that, but your need needs to be
relatively constant, because you've committed to getting 40 hours out of each
individual week.

The likelihood of that actually matching well to his needs seems vanishingly
small to me. More likely, his needs are wildly variable in time: He wants to
get most the art together at a specific point in the development process, and
then, after that, only needs bits and pieces as he notices the need. Working
with contractors gives him that kind of flexibility.

Even if he _could_ rearrange how he does things to make it meet a full-timer's
needs, that doesn't make it a good idea. Now he's turned collaborating with
that person into a daily task, which might play hell with the rest of his
creative process. Especially if, like most of us introverted creatives, he
works best with long blocks of uninterrupted concentration.

