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How to earn £12,000 in one year from game development?

The Challenge:
I have a 365 day runway (until 9 Sep 2012) to earn £20k (about $32k) from games development.

The earnings value is based on a UK minimum wage calculation of about £6 per hour 9-5 job, and factoring in that I will have to pay money to make them, buying in music ect, and overheads for payment providers?

Resources:
Me, Unity, PC, Mac, iPod, Android.

Currently I manage to produce game 'Prototypes' like these http://www.kongregat...Arowx/favorites

Hurdles:
Art, 3D Animation, Procrastination, Funds, Motivation, Experience, Marketing

Forfeit:
If I have not hit or exceeded this target by the deadline and proved I can make a living from games I have to dust off my CV and get a job!

So what advice would you give or better still how do you do it?[/font]

[font="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif"] [/font][font="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif"][color="#111111"]So what advice would you give or better still how do you do it?[/font]

[?] Go niche!


Don't jump into a crowded pool, go find the smaller but less-crowded pools, and swim in those. That's what I'm trying to do (my game isn't yet ready for market though).
Pick a niche that you yourself wish there were more games in, and go serve that niche - chances are others are also wishing more games are released for that market, and you can capitlize off that.

For myself, I've identified two separate and distinct niches I wish to serve, and am using one as a stepping stone to support me and to gain experience, before I attack the second. Think about two or three niches you yourself would like more games in, and then consider which of the niches are most feasible given your time frame and current resources.

[quote name='Arowx' timestamp='1316470818' post='4863541'][font="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif"] [/font][font="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif"][color="#111111"]So what advice would you give or better still how do you do it?[/font]

[?] Go niche!


Don't jump into a crowded pool, go find the smaller but less-crowded pools, and swim in those. That's what I'm trying to do (my game isn't yet ready for market though).
Pick a niche that you yourself wish there were more games in, and go serve that niche - chances are others are also wishing more games are released for that market, and you can capitlize off that.

For myself, I've identified two separate and distinct niches I wish to serve, and am using one as a stepping stone to support me and to gain experience, before I attack the second. Think about two or three niches you yourself would like more games in, and then consider which of the niches are most feasible given your time frame and current resources.
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This dude is right. Why is Minecraft so successful? Because its a niche game that everyone's been waiting for. It doesn't have to be as revolutionary as Minecraft. It just needs to satisfy a craving that many poeple have that is not being satisfied by the big game companies.

Good advice but please give me a link to the Niche finder app? ;o)

Or how do you find and assess a niche for it's potential for gamification!

Good advice but please give me a link to the Niche finder app? ;o)

Or how do you find and assess a niche for it's potential for gamification!

Not to be cheesy, but you yourself are the Niche finder app: What genres or styles of games do you long for that there aren't enough of? Go make that. Doing it that way has the added effect of your passion shaping the game before the marketing side of your personality gets ahold of it, hopefully resulting in a more innovative (and lucrative) product.

Maybe you like first-person action-RPGs like King's Field? I certainly do. Make one of those (for example) and I'd buy it. If you don't like that genre, and don't long for that type of game, don't make that genre, go for the ones you yourself want more of.
First and foremost, make the game you yourself want to play ([size="1"]which may or may not be the game you want to make).

If you like FPS games, you have a wide selection of them available to satisfy you, so you don't need to make a FPS to satisfy your game-hunger for that genre. But if you also like another genre, and you've already played the very few games that fit that genre, and ran out but still want more of that genre, then there are bound to be others wanting more as well, so go make a game for that genre.

Yeah, I agree with Servant of the Lord. Find something new and interesting to you, and the rest will follow. Ask yourself: what kind of game doesn't exist that I wish existed? Or: what kind of game did I play a long time ago that I wish existed now for iOS/Android/etc?

You could get a QA job and earn even more than that...

Dunno about earning more (most games QA jobs in the UK are about £12k before tax), but yeah I was going to suggest just getting some sort of job at an established game dev and you'll probably earn around that much.

The sad truth is, this just makes it clear that you're better off with a job - £12,000 sounds at first a lot of money, but when you're talking about it replacing a year wage, it's not at all. (Yes, you'd have to pay tax on the job salary, but he'd have to pay tax on his earnings from selling a game too - possibly there may be other taxes to worry about too.)

Unless you have some idea and plan for a new business, and are willing to risk money investing in that, I'd just say: get a job, write games in your spare time for fun. (And if you can't get a programming job - you'd have to question how successful you'd be writing games commercially anyway.)

The IPhone was mentioned, but this is just now a big bandwagon with everyone thinking they can make millions from it, so it has the most developers, but not the most users. At least target a range of major platforms (Nokia, Android).

Go Niche! I agree with Servant of the Lord with that.

I'd also suggest looking into Google+ games. They have to play catch up with Facebook and gamewise, they're not that saturated yet.