I was wondering what are the chances of suceeding in the gaming industry? Do you think it would be wise to also have a back up job?

I personally think that you should be learning to program games, or perhaps working on a title while you are doing your full time job (whatever that may be).

Most companies are going to want to see work you have done, so maybe you should make a few demos to show off your skill and talent. Having a degree of some sort in computer science or programming is also going to help a good bit. Also where do you live? Are there companies near you that are in the game development business?

Hi,

I will be honest with my answer.
I believed for a long time that it was possible to live from
the earnings of budget games sold in retail, but then sold worldwide. Nowadays I doubt it very much. I got a deal for some budget games, that will be sold standalone in retail (2 countries), nice. But still not enough to live from. Also if you made more games, with the motivation, I could earn more. Is still difficult. The same publisher and others won''t invest in dozens of new budget games. They plan everything carefully. I noticed it with the publisher I got a deal with. You can submit of course. But it''s very difficult. And it looks impossible. Even if I would get 25% it isn''t enough. The games will be published in 2 countries. In other countries I didn''t find a budget publisher at this moment, unfortunately. So thats a fact. I experienced it. I got some other to finish projects however. And then I will take my conclusions. Also the spirit is to do it as a drive, I want to make a game of commercial quality. And the publishers response is in general positive. But still time to get a deal, the earnings are not enough to live from. Getting a Developer Work for Hire Contract and a close cooperation, like Webfoot with eGames and also with Cosmi. And at the moment with Wizard works, is brilliant. But extremely difficult. Publishers got enough developers they know and got experience with.
I worked also with eGames for a while, but didn''t get the chance like Webfoot. That''s called competition.

Dealing with the big publishers, chances are mostly zero.
I read an interview with four big publishers. And the chances to get a signed contract is little. Of the hundreds of submissions, (each year) there are for instance only 10-20 (or even lower) new (pc) developers that will be signed. I got more detailed info about that. So the chance is little. Only for the Xbox there are more possibilities, but that is an other story and platform. For the PC it''s a zero chance in general. That''s why I only focus at budget quality games. GOD, the independend retail budget publisher is for instance not any more available, it''s sold to Take2. It''s very difficult even for the budget line to survive on the PC market. It''s very worse. In America there is a big competition between developers and also between publishers.

GTI + (WIZARD WORKS, HUMANOGOUS), - MICROPOSE -ATARI -HASBRO -,
is today owned by INFOGRAMES.

EXPERT SOFTWARE - HEADGAMES is today related to Activision Value.

And there are and were more publishers who are/were in a take over situation. Also the same is with developers. Also there are tons of developers (professional organized with support of a investor) who are going bankrupt each day or week.
It''s buisness, but it''s difficult.

Check the story of Sierra online Dynamix , Eidos financials and the story of John Carmacks Studio etc...

Ten years ago, there were possibilities to become even rich with writing of games. Nowadays even for big games, it''s not at all easy to break even. And many of those games (ten years ago) were even not of good game play. But todays publishers are very difficult with handling of submissions. They got enough choice. And they need to survive first, that''s why they take an extremely high royalty.

Selling a game in a single store you find in your local shop marketplace or on a general e-commerce intersite is nice, but not enough to live from or even to break even in most cases.

Real arcade isn''t the direct solution, I hope it will be, but I doubt. But perhaps Realarcade is a solution for part time developers. That''s what I am trying to figure out. But for a full time developer, at the moment not.

So for serious parttime budget development, it could be a solution (I hope so). With the money you could go on holiday
So for your question, you need to have a day job. And as a hobby/professional you could do part time development for Realarcade. But the problem is that there is at that point also big competition growing, so I am very curious about the long term on that point.

But doing this fulltime is almost impossible and it won''t be changing any soon or even later.

Fucking true. When I realized this I had spent 6 years at making a videogame, reality bites, after that I got extremely suicidal but I thought time will make it fade away but it didn''t. Nevermind

So, what you are saying is that not to even bother getting into the gaming industry if you are trying to live off it?

Sad but true , the fact that we are headed for another video game depression is not helping either. Even the big companies are feeling the heat. I for one am a network administrator by day , game programmer by night. I will continue to make games and demos until someday blizzard or some other big company hires me but until then , I got to eat.

Well, you see, it depends on where you live whether you can live from your the money you earn by developing games.

This is really true. If I would live in Russia for example I would earn alot more from my games than their university professors or their high-ranked officers. In Germany though its just the income of a lower job, but I could live from it under the following circumstance:
- You only count in the months you worked on the game and not the months it needed to be on the market to get in all the money.

This sounds a bit weird. But read it again and it''ll make sense.


Cool eh?
Unfortunately though its not enough for my personal ambitions for life. Anyway I don''t need any of the part-time job normal university students have.

So you''re saying that all of us "regular" programmers working in good (but boring) jobs in the business world shouldn''t up and quit our jobs and hope we can bust into the world of game development?

Damn.

There goes plan #4b. Time to move onto plan 5c.

Yes I would say so. Or move to Russia.

You talking about writing your own games, and then going to the publishers. What if I went out and worked for BioWare, same shit different day!??!?

"I''''ve sparred with creatures from the nine hells themselves... I barely plan on breaking a sweat here, today."~Drizzt Do''''Urden