I was feeling curious at what the "average life expectancy" for an indie game project is. Granted a whole lot of indie projects fail to get anything ever released, but when can you say a project is in the "safe" zone, and likely to survive? A month? A year? So I was wondering about the life of what projects (both current and past) everyone here has particapted in. To make things simple, I created a little template that you can copy/paste into your post and fill out as necessary. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Current Project(s) <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< > Name of project/game > Homepage (if available) > Total time in development >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Past Project(s) <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< > Name of project/game > Homepage (if available) > Total time in development > Success or Failure (+ reason if possible) Here's mine for starters. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Current Project(s) <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< > Name of project/game Hero of Allacrost > Homepage (if available) http://www.allacrost.org > Total time in development About 11 months now >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Past Project(s) <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< None. Allacrost is my first. [smile]

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Current Project(s) <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
> Name of project/game
Legends of Adleth
> Homepage (if available)
www.legendsofadleth.com
> Total time in development
About 7 months now
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Past Project(s) <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
None. Legends of Adleth is my first (My first game - I Have modded with Neverwinter Nights and & Created maps in Age of Empires 2)

Name: still only a working title, sorry
Website: not yet released, sorry again
Team: 2 developers (including me), 1 artist, 1 writer, 1 game designer
Game: online turn based strategy game
Time: almost a year know, beta testing in two months or so

It still very much alive, although it had its ups and downs. I think our monthly meetings (accompanied by good food and some beers) have kept the spirit alive. All of us have to do it in our free time, and working on it part-time makes the progress relatively slow. This is in my opinion where the danger of quiting alltogether comes in.
Yet I have good hopes that in a short time, we'll have something to be proud of. At least I still enjoy working on it.

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Original post by WanMaster It still very much alive, although it had its ups and downs. I think our monthly meetings (accompanied by good food and some beers) have kept the spirit alive. All of us have to do it in our free time, and working on it part-time makes the progress relatively slow. This is in my opinion where the danger of quiting alltogether comes in. Yet I have good hopes that in a short time, we'll have something to be proud of. At least I still enjoy working on it.

Sounds like my project (without the food and beer). We also all work part-time and progress is slow indeed, which as you said can be very dangerous to a project's life. I've been asked by some people before "Why haven't you released a playable version yet?", to which I have to remind them that I'm a part-time student with a full-time job, I also translate manga, and that the rest of my staff have their own lives as well. Certainly there are ups and downs. Our two major down periods were around October-Novemeber last year and March-April this year because people got bogged down with school and work and life, but it always picks back up. [smile]

Anyway good luck with your game! I wish you had more info about it though, I love strategy games! Hey, how about we have a race to see who releases first? j/k [lol]

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without the food and beer

I highly recommend this. It brings up the best of ideas, only to be forgotten the very next day. [lol]

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"Why haven't you released a playable version yet?"

If I had a dime for every...

Good luck to you too! And may the best man win.

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Original post by WanMaster Quote: without the food and beer I highly recommend this. It brings up the best of ideas, only to be forgotten the very next day. [lol]

It's kind of hard when your development team is spread half way across the globe. [sad]

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Original post by WanMaster Quote: "Why haven't you released a playable version yet?" If I had a dime for every... Good luck to you too! And may the best man win.

You mean may the best team win. [wink] ...hey, why do you have so much more rep than me [sad]

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You mean may the best team win

Our team is so strong, we see it as a single entity. [lol]

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It's kind of hard when your development team is spread half way across the globe.

True, very true. That does it make it a lot harder. I just had the luck to run in some people with good ideas and lots of energy.

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why do you have so much more rep than me.

I've posted a lot of [sad] icons, people feel sorry for me. [lol]

maby question about teams localisations is good too in this case?

Our current project is havinga downtime due to school work. But we are taking it up fulltime as a school project for 1 year. ( Call it a dream come true, Getting grades for being home and working on a project you will try to realease ).

But we have worked smootly for about 3 months on the game engine and 4 months on the graphics engine. This was a school project/competition project and we had to cut grafics to start making the game engine part to have anything playable due time.

a demo video is downloadeble from www.evokian-studios.com ( requers the codec from fraps )
mind that we are 2 programmers who has never worked with either 3d or games in this scale before. At high dos text based adventure games and small 2d games.

we are a swedish based team and work over the net. Have only had 1 irl meeting so far but the spirit is there.

Ages between 19-29.

Greetings Athos

Space Sim
www.voxelsoft.com/spacesim
2 coders, 1 modeler
About 3+ years on and off by myself, 5 months or so with on and off help, None of those 5 month old members in the team still (all droped off the face of the planet or left due to no more time to spend on the project)
Genre: Space Based MMORPG :P
Long story short: the 'safe' zone for any indy project is non existant, what determians when it dies is when the last person gives up. (or gets stoped by legal resons or disputes), You may have the motivation, you may not, your members might have motivation, they may not. IMO tho, as long as you have the motivation, and the programing skills to finish it on your own (Even if it would take years) and do not give up, you can get it done. of course, its very likey you will be codeing alone for a very long time, and you have to be willing to accept this, specialy if you wish to code a large project like a MMORPG.

oh my dog, dont get me started.

- c# irc bot (dead)
- real time strategy game (dead)
- simple pong clone (dead)
- office combat, multiplayer action game (dead)
- various websites (all dead)
- dead (dead)
- asheh (dead)


dead as a bread, with a head.