Hello,

I haven't made a game in over 15 years and wanted to try my luck in this industry. If possible, guide me and answer my questions.

Are you satisfied with the income of making the game and can you manage your life with it? Or do you do things like web design and design for a living?

How did you manage to monetize your game and what method would you suggest?

Steam, web games, mobile games, Facebook??

regards,

Saeed

If your primary motivation for making indie games is the money, then your not in the right space.

Years go by with hard times and bootstrapping and sunk costs.

Braking even or making a profit is the exception not the rule.

ROI is usually measured in non monetary metrics.

But to answer your question, it all depends on what kind of indie game it is.

Mobile?

PC?

VR?

lingo1357 said:

What is the best method to monetize indie games?

There is no “one best one-fits-all” method. What's best for person A's game is not best for person B's game. Stop looking for unicorns and come up with your own plan, for the game you want to make.

GeneralJist said:

If your primary motivation for making indie games is the money, then your not in the right space.

This is undoubtedly true. It's also a sad state of affairs, and it could be interesting to dig in to why this is so, and what would have to change in order for indie game-making to become a somewhat more reliable way of making a living. There's certainly enough money being thrown around in gaming to support a large number of indie devs.

Is it a matter of low quality titles? There's some of that, but I can't make myself believe that's the primary cause. Is it marketing and lack of visibility? Is it some kind of public perception issue?

Hmmm Research needs to be done for sure.

But part of the issue I see is everything is usually done by lone wolves, even if the game is like 90% similar to the vision of another person they know, they refuse to collaborate.

Also quality and originality are issues.

Think what happened with “flappy bird” …

Tom Sloper said:

lingo1357 said:

What is the best method to monetize indie games?

There is no “one best one-fits-all” method. What's best for person A's game is not best for person B's game. Stop looking for unicorns and come up with your own plan, for the game you want to make.

There Totally is one best method, but it's a trade secret, so we can't tell you.

GeneralJist said:
There Totally is one best method, but it's a trade secret, so we can't tell you.

The secret, according to a bunch of indie dev Youtube channels, is to have multiple streams of revenue. "Just do online courses and some freelance work, build an online audience to sell to, drive a taxi, have an onlyfans" etc. And then if there's any time left in the day, maybe do some gamedev.

That's not terrible advice, but if it's intended to go on for longer than bootstrapping the first title, we're still in a bad place.

Brian Sandberg said:
The secret, according to a bunch of indie dev Youtube channels, is to have multiple streams of revenue.

Nothing new about it, diversification is a millennia-old, well established truth.

I imagine It's only been somewhat recent, perhaps since the industrial era, where having a single job and single income source became the norm. Even if you weren't directly getting income from them, people would derive value from an abundance of skills. Some used for cash, others for barter or other social exchange.

In bigger business if you've only got a single project you're likely in trouble and need to either expand or die. I try to find companies that have at least 3 concurrent projects. Even if one slips or gets cancelled, there is enough other work to keep the business from failing. The other projects can help absorb the damage done, and if any one of them succeeds it can propel the business forward significantly.

lingo1357 said:
If possible, guide me and answer my questions.

First of all, you must make a genre thats your passion. You will have to build a community around it to get any notable income, which might involves professional methods of marketing.

I made a random game to make a few bucks from it - thats sadly not how it works any more, it will not bring you money that way.

So yeah, prepare to have multiple income streams.