quote:

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Original post by LordKronos
With any luck, I'll see you there.

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Now there's an Idea. I'll have to post a thread here as we get closer to the IGF date. All of us who have succeeded in getting our games done and are planning to attend the IGF (or just planning to attend regardless) should arrange to meet someplace at the competition. We'll see, it's still a ways off...


[edited by - ironside on March 21, 2002 1:43:15 PM]

Of course it''s not just about money! It''s about having the chance to work in something we love, not spending a lot of time in boring stuff while reserving our extra minutes for gamedev''ing. I''ve been making games as a hobbyist for about 7 years now, and I think shareware gives me a chance to do it full time... why not to use it?

And yes, as Ironside, I think hard work and motivation is the clue here. Put enough effort, and sooner or later you''ll get what you want.


--DK
--H. Hernán Moraldo
http://www.hhm.com.ar/
Sign up to the HHM''s developers'' newsletter.

You need:

Set up a goal in your live. Yes this really what I want, motivation.So you love this so much to invest more hours in your spare time as developer. This is your hobby. You make from your hobby your work.

Do you have a dayjob, so you could live.But one thing you are your own boss.

Planning. So you know what you are doing and when, results etc.
What are your qualities, programming, design, art.

Where can you get people with other qualities of the one you don''t have.

etc.

So it''s been nearly a year to the day when I first posted this thread. It''s amazing to go back and read all the things I thought a year ago and the perspective I had. These forums are both a blessing and a curse, a blessing in that they record your perspective at a particular time in your life and a curse for the same reason.

I was actually quite surprised how much my outlook has changed in the last year and I thought it would be fun to post an update a year later.

quote:

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Original post by Ironside
For me, I work for a fairly well known software company,
doing pretty repetitive testing and not learning a whole
lot of development skills. It has always been my goal
to work in the games industry, but just recently I realized
that I don’t want to work for some big name game company.

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I was working for Microsoft as a Tester at the time doing way more manual testing then is reasonably healthy for a developer to do I''ve since left to work as a contractor The hours are better (no forced OT), I have more responsibility (Lead Dev), there''s more pay, and I get paid for every hour I work.

On the flip side the benefits suck and there''s no paid vacation. I managed to keep my Microsoft benefits for my family via COBRA and I’m pretty happy with how things are now. My job doesn''t burn me out like the last one did, but now I have to guard against complacency. Before there was a strong urge to get out of my job putting a lot of necessity on Indie game dev. Now that my job situation has improved I dont have that same source of necessity, I have to generate it for myself.

quote:

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Original post by Ironside
I want to be an independent, making my own rules and writing my own games the way I think they should be written.

---

Looking back on this I think it’s a relatively noobish reason to become an Indie. It’s important but it’s more of a perk of the job as opposed to a reason for the job. Now I want to be an Indie because I want to work from home, I want to be near my family, and I want to be accountable to myself. I want to build a business that some day will out live me. I think it’s more about being an entrepreneur and building something from nothing that motivates me now. Not the fact that I’m idealistically enraged with the retail industry and I think it’s my job to do better. I no longer have the attitude that somehow I will be successful because I know how to make games better then anyone else.

quote:

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Original post by Ironside
I want to have my first puzzle game completed and generating revenue inside of 12 months and I want to exit my 9-5 job in the following year.

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LoL, it was great to read this line. If it wasn’t for naive ambitions what project would ever get started? I’ve been working steadily on the Katsu’s Journey project for the past 12 monts of nights and weekends. My friend who I was collaborating with created the web site for our game and company, he’s also in charge of design and production. We are on our second artist and work is progressing steadily.

I knew when I started the project that I was trying to do something just outside of what I knew I could do, I wanted to stretch myself a little without attempting to build the impossible. I just didn’t foresee all the different issues that would come up, converting the engine from DX8.1 to allegro, loosing 3 months of work due to harddrive crashes. Converting the editor to using WTL instead of my own custom MFC like classes…. But those are all stores for the postmortem

If I was to estimate our current progress on Katsu’s Journey (we haven’t really added any features from the initial design) I would say that we are half way done. Once you’ve invested this much time and energy into a project the only choice is to press onward or come to grips with wasting a year of your life. (Something I’m not prepared to do)

quote:

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Original post by Ironside
If my game(s) are not generating enough income on their own to support my family then I will work contract work to fill in the gaps.

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…to which Jester replied….

quote:

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Original post by Jester101
I really hope you all know what you''re doing. Only because there are some success stories it doesn''t mean it is easy. I know nothing about you, but if I were you, I wouldn''t even think about doing this without already earning a couple of thousand dollars a month with my games.

---

At the time I thought Jester just doubted my commitment or my ability. I was so hugely pumped up about indie game dev at the time that I wasn’t going to let anything stand in my path. I had the overconfidence that is the product of pride and ambition. I think these things are important, but you don’t want to make any life changing decisions based on them. I see now that jester was speaking as one with experience. Now that my job is better and I have a comfortable dev schedule for Katsu’s Journey I realize that I could keep this going indefinitely. There’s no huge rush to being full time that I need to take inordinate risks.

This post could easily be 6x as long if I posted everything I want to say, but I’ll leave it there. I’d be very interested in hearing what some of your experiences have been over the past year, how your perspectives have changed etc.

If your interested in learning more about the lessons we learn each month as well as status of Katsu’s Journey you can visit the Rainfall Studios homepage linked in my sig and check out the plan files, or sign up for our newsletter that we send out once a month.

All the best,
Dan MacDonald

Just found this topic and found it interesting, reading from the first post all the way through. I didn't check the dates at first, and was thinking all the way through, "I hope that reality doesn't dim their desires."

I've been working in and around independents for 3 years now. I don't program, I'm an artist...and not a very good one. Still I was offered the art job on a game I thought up. Seemed fair. I would expand my artistic ability, and the programmer would program, we would then split the profit. I worked typically 40 hours on the game and 40 hours at my job every week. Sometimes taking vacation time to work on the game. 9 months later, the game was released to little fanfare and sold 3 copies. I was devestated. Still I continued on.

The same developer offered me the job to do art on their next game. It was a sequel to a game they had already done. The original had sold 100 copies. I thought we could sell at least that many with all the things I'd learned about art from the first project. So we set out and 9 months later we finished that title. It actually sold 20 copies before being released last July and has gone to nearly 50 copies. I decided at that point that games were fun to make, but would never pay for my time, let alone my family.

Being very discouraged, I started posting on forums like this one and was told that Bad Milk, the IGF winner from 2001 had only sold 100 copies. That made me feel better and worse. I hope it isn't true, but my experience told me it might be. Companies like Pom Pom, that have top of the line quality games, are considering bailing on the independent thing as it is very hard to make a living with it. There are a few success stories...but they are few...

So I went forward with the next project, that will be released in a couple of weeks. I'm not all pumped up about it. I'm not even cautiously optimistic. My expectation is that we might sell 30 copies. It is a fully 3D game with good effects. The art is passable by my standards, but not great. Still it is better looking than many independents...but I've been broken down to reality I think.

I do plan on being at the IGF next week, and I've become more of a backer of the independent community. Since I'm a better webmaster than an artist, I've focused my last three months between finishing the graphics for the current game I've been working on, and creating an outlet for independent games to get some of the same treatment they might get at gamespot without having to pay the massive fees. I hope that it will give the "public" better insight into independent games, and help strengthen the community.

I think we all still have lots to learn, but I'm optimistic about independent games in the future. Considering markets of scale, there is a place for independents in the grand scheme of things. It is my thought that with more exposure, that independents will get a bigger appreciation base. I know that many independents say they aren't in it for the money...and that is a good thing b/c they won't get any. However, I would love to see more money going the independent developer's way...so they can make more innovative and original games.

Wonderful thread, glad to hear you are still at it Ironside...a year wiser, but hopefully enjoying what you are doing.

Russell Carroll
www.gametunnel.com
www.bcsoftgames.com

[edited by - cyrus_zuo on February 28, 2003 2:24:49 PM]

Thanks for the insights Cyrus,

While I haven''t gambled and made and plans that depend on me selling a certain number of copies of my game; I do want it to sell well. I took the time to identify a market that I felt I could reach and used the successes of others as an example to guide the direction for Katsu''s Journey. I hope that I will be able to sell at least 100 copies in the first year, but I really haven''t set any expectations. The real Goal is to finish it

If I could offer some advice by proxy, Steve Pavlina in his article on Networking Without Cables talks about the importance of surrounding yourself with people who are doing what you want to do. I would suggest visiting the Dexterity Forums. The forums are frequented by a vast array of successful indie developers who have made thousands (and in one case over a million) dollars on a single shareware game selling over a period of years. The signal to noise ration is quite high and I know personally I’ve grown a lot as an indie developer from interacting with these people.

While I was wide eyed and optimistic when I started out on this journey, I wouldn''t say that I’ve become cynical or pessimistic now. I''m still passionate about indie development, I love the community, and I enjoy what I do. What has changed is perspective, I think it''s grounded a little more in reality then it was before.

I wish you the best of luck and I hope I see you over at the dexterity forums some time soon

I read the messageboard there occasionally.

Wow! What a thread! This should be a "must read" for everyone thinking about quiting their day job and starting their own game company. Thank you Ironside for your honesty and follow through.

If you make $400 or more, you will have to do self-employment taxes,
perhaps for the very first time for some people. Then you will know how
much the government really takes from your paycheck.

Heh, if you think about it, April 15 is coming, which means the gov is
going to get a big fat check from the American people. What a great time
to start a war with a pocket full of cash...

I decided to enter full time game development end of last year, after having big problems with the company I worked at (they still owe me salary for over 2 months and I almost went bankrupt because of them ...)
So I had the option of searching for a new 'normal' job or to risk it and go full time indie. Actually it was an easy decision.
I knew I have to try the full-time thing, otherwise I would eventually regret not having tried all my life.
Luckily I had enough self-confidence to believe that I can actually complete a project and produce something sellable.

So beginning of January I started to work on my first game, full time. It was finished about 5 weeks later.

For making money out of my games, I chose a different approach than most people do. I submitted the game to a one-off payment publisher, who happily took it for a nice sum. Since the game's development time was only 5 weeks, and the money definitely finances my life for longer than that, it was actually a good deal for me.

Now, I know you can make much more money by self publishing, but what counts is that it reached break-even easily and that it finances my life right away, which gives me the opportunity to develop my second game without financial worries.
I plan on selling the second game for a better price (plus I can develop faster now, because I learned a lot and can reuse some code-libraries) and getting closer to the point where I can develop 2 games with the income from one, which would give me the chance to experiment with self publishing without any risk.

So for the time being, I try to combine the freedom of being an indie with a relatively 'safe' income, even if it is lower than what self publishing COULD achieve. It is almost like having a normal job for now, but it's ofcourse much more fun, I practice the skills I need and I am my own boss. I just have to make sure I produce the needed quality.

[edited by - GaborD on March 10, 2003 8:58:25 PM]