[HN Gopher] What I Learned About Failing from My 5 Year Indie Ga...
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What I Learned About Failing from My 5 Year Indie Game Dev Project
Author : zarfius
Score : 131 points
Date : 2020-08-02 12:32 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.dylanwilson.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.dylanwilson.net)
| citizenpaul wrote:
| My experience is that anything that spending significant amounts
| of your time on anything that assists others with building their
| thing is a total waste of time. Tech or otherwise. Those people
| are mainly doing it with the goal of making money for no one but
| themselves. The fact that they don't have money already proves
| that they likely are not good at making money. One of those
| primary early ways to make money is that early on you may have to
| strike some potentially less favorable deals when you have no
| money to get your first projects off the ground. Which of course
| they are NEVER EVER are willing to do. ie profit sharing or
| something.
| [deleted]
| makeee wrote:
| My experience has shown me that tools that help others build
| faster can be quite profitable. Currently make my living from
| one such tool and most of my customers are indie hackers
| (https://divjoy.com).
| bermanoid wrote:
| Game engines are different. It's a tiny market relative to
| web, and really the only people in the market for an engine
| other than Unity or Unreal are indies, who have near zero
| revenue and even less willingness to spend it. Those two are
| so far ahead in terms of features, support, and battle-
| hardening that you'd pretty much have to be insane to pick
| anything else if you had paying users.
|
| Always be wary of any market where someone's willingness to
| try your product is in itself a negative indicator of ability
| to pay. Hit-driven markets that attract large numbers of non-
| serious dabblers are extremely difficult to sell tools
| profitably to, but it's easy enough to get minor attention
| that makes you think you might have something worthwhile
| (music production is another one that scatters corpses all
| over the place despite seeming large at first glance).
| zanny wrote:
| And Godot. You know, the 15 year old totally free engine of
| 30,000 commits 2.5 million LOCs that also does pretty much
| everything.
| imtringued wrote:
| What I noticed is that it's actually much harder to use
| Godot than expected. Yes it does significantly reduce the
| amount of code you have to write for your game but it
| opens up questions of how to structure your project
| because the scene editor doesn't actually match how I
| would make my own games if all I had was SDL2. For
| example if you just straight up write code to add nodes
| to the scene graph it will create a disconnect between
| what is displayed in the editor and the actual game.
| Figuring out how to keep the editor and code in sync is a
| problem unique to Godot and this is very disconnected
| from general software development.
| makeee wrote:
| Yeah I guess the game equivalent to my tool would be one
| that helps people build faster with Unity or Unreal. Like I
| do with React, better to latch on to a tech that already
| has huge mindshare.
|
| > Hit-driven markets that attract large numbers of non-
| serious dabblers are extremely difficult to sell tools
| profitably.
|
| If I'm understanding correctly, do you mean it's easy to
| overestimate the size of the market? That makes sense to
| me. And there's certainly an upper-limit to how much
| dabblers are willing to pay. Still, for a solo founder that
| can sometimes be more than enough. I can think of a few
| tools like mine doing over $10k/month.
| shahinrostami wrote:
| Very nice work! I've written a small API
| (https://m8.fyi/chord) to generate beautiful diagrams easily
| and quickly from Python. It's definitely not making a living
| from the income, but it is enough for a coffee every now and
| then.
| makeee wrote:
| Nice, cool idea. Is that a one-time fee or monthly? If one-
| time then I'd suggest emphasizing that fact and saying
| something like "lifetime access" (from my experience most
| people assume monthly for something like this). Also fyi,
| your PayPal button does nothing when I click it. Best of
| luck with everything!
| shahinrostami wrote:
| Thank you for the great suggestion - I've already updated
| the page to add "Lifetime Access"!
|
| Fixing the Paypal button issue will be more tricky! I
| just tried it in Firefox and it's fine, but I'm seeing
| temperamental issues in Safari. Will look into it further
| - thanks for the heads up.
| makeee wrote:
| Looks like the issue is that the element below it has a
| negative top margin of -22vw and is overlapping the
| button. Removing that fixes it for me ;)
| jt2190 wrote:
| > The fact that [your potential supporters] don't have money
| already proves that they likely are not good at making money.
|
| This is a _critical_ thing to assess in any case where you're
| investing time and effort and expecting to get support (either
| financial or "in kind") in return. I see this ignored in many
| "startups" of all kinds (companies, social clubs, workout
| groups... anything that requires some effort to make happen).
|
| The key test is: "Can this thing continue running without me?
| Do people care enough to give something if I'm not pushing?"
| (Pay a fee, volunteer for well defined role, resolve disputes,
| etc.)
| Toyentrepreneur wrote:
| I wouldn't say it's a waste a time, just that in tech industry
| people have a tendency to overrate "selling shovels in a gold
| rush" when they have about the same odds of success. ie. Making
| a successful game vs successful game engine
| [deleted]
| hibikir wrote:
| I am not sure about that. There's this small company called
| Stripe whose entire business model is about making it easier to
| make your online store: They don't do anything you couldn't do
| yourself, but it sure mes it a lot easier. Similarly, in
| videogames, Epic makes quite a bit of money licensing engines,
| which, in practice, is all about helping other people build
| faster. We all built websites and ran companies before AWS, and
| yet they are also they might be Amazon's best division.
|
| What is difficult in those kinds of businesses is to identify
| whether there's a real market there, and to convince enough
| people to try your product. For a new kind of product, you have
| to easily show large amounts of value, because people are used
| to get things done without your product.
|
| So I'd not say that it's a waste of time, but it's just a
| difficult kind of business to enter.
| esrauch wrote:
| I'm not sure if this is what the parent comment meant, but it
| seems reasonable that it's not a lucrative path to focus on
| anyone who doesn't _already_ have a functional business
| without you. Partnering with that existing coffeeshop can pay
| off a lot more easily than the dozens of weekend game devs
| that will probably never make a cent themselves.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| > that anything that spending significant amounts of your time
| on anything that assists others with building their thing is a
| total waste of time. Tech or otherwise.
|
| I would with your sentiment if you said helping indie devs
| wasn't profitable opposed to a waste of time. There is real
| value in supporting a community, you just have to know when you
| are doing charity work.
| purple-again wrote:
| I agree with this interpretation. The article OP experienced
| a real and true 'failure' because his goal was income
| generation and the project didn't provide that. The guys he
| handed it off to may have a goal of just being a recognized
| name in the space (clout?) and so consider their time and
| effort to be a success.
|
| The whole one mans garbage is another mans treasure taken
| from another angle.
| cptaj wrote:
| This is pretty contradictory even in its biases. You assume
| people can't do anything for motivations other than money and
| then you say people should give away their work for free.
|
| The first one isn't true and the second one is simply not
| doable for poor people.
| throwaway2245 wrote:
| Counterpoint: almost all paid work is assisting someone with
| building their thing.
| ldd wrote:
| I've been developing a game full-time for the past few months.
| I've sort of thought about how my journey will end.
|
| In the meantime, I got to write a couple of VSCode extensions
| that are used at least by some people and React dependencies that
| I personally find cool.
|
| I never really thought about it, but my open-source projects
| usually end up having 15-40 stars and that means 1 or 2 support
| tickets every 6 months. I guess not being popular has its
| upsides.
|
| All that I can personally say is that, more than passion towards
| my current project, I feel as if I didn't make it, I would regret
| it deeply. So I wake up early every day to advance a little bit
| each day. I deeply enjoy the process.
|
| I hope you someday look back at your project and see it as a
| success. A failure commercially, maybe, but a success in many
| other ways.
|
| Anyways, thanks for the link to https://www.indiehackers.com/.
| chii wrote:
| A project is doomed to fail unless you setup a specific target
| success goal before you start.
|
| Perhaps one can get lucky, and stumble into success - monetary or
| fame or something. But more often than not, a project that didn't
| initially define what success looks like would be doomed to fail
| (and meandering is also a type of failure under this model).
| gameswithgo wrote:
| thank you for the monogame contributions dylan!
| daodedickinson wrote:
| How did you get married and afford rent?
| macspoofing wrote:
| It was a side project. OP mentions he has a full-time job ...
| also, is marriage contingent on an income level?
| brianwawok wrote:
| Both marriage and divorce rates have a very strong
| correlation with income in the US.
|
| It also makes being unprofitable and living in your parents
| basement harder.
|
| (Obviously GP missed that this was a side gig)
| searchableguy wrote:
| > Both marriage and divorce rates have a very strong
| correlation with income in the US.
|
| https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jomf.12629
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5464617/
| dillonmckay wrote:
| I think more along the lines of having a partner in a healthy
| relationship requires some time put forth, which unless the
| partner is pair programming, time is not being spent on
| development efforts.
| gentleman11 wrote:
| Money can be a large relationship stressor and source of
| concern leading up to a lifetime commitment
| blargmaster33 wrote:
| If you want a quality partner then yes.
| komali2 wrote:
| It's only a failure if you judge success by monthly income. I'm
| not saying that's not a good way to measure success, just
| pointing out that it doesn't have to be the only measure. A
| therapist told me this recently when I was struggling to find
| meaning in life.
|
| Success can be tons of stars on GitHub - I would feel very good
| if I had positively benefited that many people. I think a major
| downside of capitalism is how it attempts to attach a price tag
| to both the concrete and the ephemeral - how can you put a price
| tag on the good feelings one gets for creating something useful
| from the world? But nah every side project has to be a hustle and
| if it isn't making you money, drop it in a second.
|
| As for support requests, you don't really have to reply to them.
| You have control over your level of involvement in a project.
|
| How much less enjoyable does your backyard garden become if every
| weed you pull you think "excellent, I've just increased the value
| of my house by .12$. Ah shit there goes inflation, hold on, my
| weed pulling nets me less than a dollar an hour, maybe I should
| do some contracting with this time instead?"
| slfnflctd wrote:
| Backyard gardening is riddled with inefficiencies in every
| imaginable way, and is not for everyone. The only tangible
| benefits I see are for people who receive positive benefits
| from the actual experience of doing the hard work _and_ somehow
| use it to benefit others (directly or indirectly). If you 're
| not sure that applies to you, stay away.
|
| Same goes for a lot of other things. Sometimes you have no
| choice but to do stuff that sucks and really isn't helping
| anyone, yes. Try to keep it to a minimum.
| komali2 wrote:
| I think this doesn't cover all the positives of gardening.
|
| Getting sun (vitamin D, a tan, mood stabilizing effects of
| sun, sleep cycle stabilizing effects)
|
| Fresh air (dopamine)
|
| Increased backyard beauty (every time you look out your
| window you get to enjoy it)
|
| Sense of accomplishment
|
| Potentially fresh vegetables
|
| A little bit more post-apocalypse skills lol
|
| Contributing to local bee health
| nonbirithm wrote:
| Maybe the stuff doesn't universally suck, but would be soul-
| crushingly boring for one person yet completely engrossing
| for another. It might not change the fact that doesn't help
| anyone, but I would say there's no need to say it's always
| the goal to be productive in working towards something or
| have it be helpful to others in the end. Sometimes I just
| enjoy building things in itself.
| slfnflctd wrote:
| I guess I'm coming more from the perspective of someone
| who's played with a whole lot of different things and is
| starting to realize the personal value (for me) of
| targeting my efforts better. I tried to be clear that I'm
| not saying it's a bad idea for everyone, but that at this
| point in _my_ life it 's counterproductive. There are other
| ways I can get the same benefits micro-scale agriculture
| provides with much greater potential rewards attached.
| kevinventullo wrote:
| I remember having a conversation with coworkers a while back
| about what we do if we didn't have to worry about money. So
| many people talked about starting a business! I guess the
| upside is that businesses can be self-sustaining long after
| you've passed, but from my perspective, the vast majority of
| good one can do for the world is not easily or practically
| monetizable.
| barrenko wrote:
| Failing is hard. I'd definitely try to get my kid into sports so
| he can learn to lose early and often.
| gentleman11 wrote:
| I would argue that esports can have a similar effect, unless
| it's a moba, which sort of encourages a bad attitude towards
| losing and your teammates. Starcraft, quake, or even chess can
| be amazing
| nogabebop23 wrote:
| >> I'd definitely try to get my kid into sports so he can learn
| to lose early and often.
|
| So nobody, kid or not, wants to fail/lose all the time but
| after watching my three kids play lots of different sports the
| pain they feel after a loss is very fleeting and minor. The
| parents hold onto it for much longer; the kids just want to
| know if they can get ice cream.
| CorruptVoices wrote:
| I wish I could have figured out if I was good at Football.
| There were 120 people on the team and unless you were friends
| with the coaches kid, you never played. I was always first
| pick when doing 5th grade football because I could catch and
| was fast.
|
| Defense had 0 tryouts. There was literally 2 attempts at
| being a wide receiver. 0 attempts at being QB or lineman.
|
| I remember catching both passes, but maybe I wasn't fast
| enough? Whatever the case it was obvious it was hand picked.
| And our team won 2 of 8 games.
|
| At least no one can dispute how much I sucked at track lol.
| wolco wrote:
| You needed to join a real team to find out.
| pdfernhout wrote:
| It is true that helping a child learn about resiliency is
| important. As Carol Dweck says, the brain is like a muscle and
| effort can eventually be rewarded with skill. So it is good to
| praise effort and persistence. And failure is part of life and
| needs to be dealt with.
|
| That said, consider Alfie Kohn's writing, such as "No Contest:
| The Case Against Competition":
| https://www.alfiekohn.org/contest/ "No
| Contest, which has been stirring up controversy since its
| publication in 1986, stands as the definitive critique of
| competition. Drawing from hundreds of studies, Alfie Kohn
| eloquently argues that our struggle to defeat each other -- at
| work, at school, at play, and at home -- turns all of us into
| losers. ... No Contest makes a powerful case that "healthy
| competition" is a contradiction in terms. Because any win/lose
| arrangement is undesirable, we will have to restructure our
| institutions for the benefit of ourselves, our children, and
| our society. For this [1992] revised edition, Kohn adds a
| comprehensive account of how students can learn more
| effectively by working cooperatively in the classroom instead
| of struggling to be Number One. He also offers a pointed and
| personal afterword, assessing shifts in American thinking on
| competition and describing reactions to his provocative
| message."
|
| From the book: "If competitiveness is
| inherently compensatory, if it is an effort to prove oneself
| and stave off feelings of worthlessness, it follows that the
| healthier the individual (in the sense of having a more solid,
| unconditional sense of self-esteem), the less need there is to
| compete. The implication, we might say, is that the real
| alternative to being number one is not being number two but
| being psychologically free enough to dispense with rankings
| altogether. Interestingly, two sports psychologists have found
| a number of excellent athletes with "immense character
| strengths who don't make it in sports. They seem to be so well
| put together emotionally that there is no neurotic tie to
| sport." Since recreation almost always involves competition in
| our culture, those who are healthy enough not to need to
| compete may simply end up turning down those activities. ...
| Each culture provides its own mechanisms for dealing with self-
| doubt. ... Low self-esteem, then, is a necessary but not
| sufficient cause of competition. The ingredients include an
| aching need to prove oneself and the approved mechanism for
| doing so at other people's expense. ... I do not want to shy
| away from the incendiary implications of all of this. To
| suggest in effect that many of our heroes (entrepreneurs and
| athletes, movie stars and politicians) may be motivated by low
| self-esteem, to argue that our "state religion" is a sign of
| psychological ill-health -- this will not sit well with many
| people.(Page 103)"
| zanny wrote:
| My problem with this is the assertion that failure == not making
| a profit. For the OP, yes, if your goal is to make money off your
| code then writing free software is pretty prone to failure on
| that front.
|
| Free software is philanthropy. Even if you somehow are getting
| paid to write it, it _cannot_ be done _for_ profit. If your
| objective is revenue discarding the burgeoning international IP
| regime as a source of income is foolhardy.
|
| That being said, software for _profit_ is hugely contrary to
| software that is _used_. Its infinitely harder to see anyone else
| use your code and you must always be cognizant that your
| proprietary for sale code is always going to see orders of
| magnitude less utility and adoption than free code.
|
| So when you write software from day one the objective is going to
| be to either maximize money or maximize utility. They are
| contrary to one another. Some would argue that making money ==
| ability to do more work == more utility but no amount of time
| invested into software used by a few will compare to less
| software being used by orders of magnitude more people.
|
| And there is also no guarantee of success. Its why proprietary,
| popular software exists. Making a proprietary or free product
| does not guarantee money or use. But depending on which you want
| going for one will hugely limit your ability to obtain the other.
|
| This axis also comes up in free software itself between
| permissive vs restrictive licensing. If your code is MIT / BSD /
| Apache / etc you will almost _certainly_ never make money from
| it. Anyone can just use it however they want with no restrictions
| and will do so. It will maximize its utilization with no regard
| for the ethics or objectives of said use.
|
| If you license it restrictively, IE GPL or CC-SA, you will reduce
| your potential adoption audience to not include those that want
| to distribute it in propriety without providing their users the
| same freedoms they got from you. This can, however, be the same
| exchange of utility vs money, or, more often, time. Infectious
| free software propagates slowly but does cause the general amount
| of freeness to increase through permeation. It also lets you sell
| licenses for proprietary use and is one of the only major ways to
| monetize free software consistently, see Qt.
| kabacha wrote:
| I'm so perplexed by people like this. You start something with no
| goal and... Act surprised you hadn't reached some goal?
| temporama1 wrote:
| > the downside of adding more features is that it becomes
| increasingly time intensive to fix bugs, update demos, deal with
| pull requests and respond to questions.
|
| Thibaut Duplessis, creator of Lichess, talks about this in a talk
| he gave (YouTube somewhere). He says that he's very reluctant to
| add new features due to the huge cost. The feature must be
| something very special to overcome the cost.
| cercatrova wrote:
| The simplest software is no software at all. Reduce your
| technical debt as much as possible, and focus on simplicity.
| It's like the Apple principle.
| baxtr wrote:
| People totally forget that new features add maintenance costs
| later. And I'm not only talking about business folks here but
| also devs.
|
| Regarding adding features, I like the approach here:
| https://www.defmacro.org/2013/09/26/products.html
| gfodor wrote:
| This is a solid post - I would say tho that sometimes the
| right way to view product development is through the lens of
| media. The bucketing approach in the article breaks down
| somewhat if you are not directly targeting solving a problem,
| but creating a medium for people to solve problems using
| their own creativity. So the question of features reduces
| down to how far the feature enhances the reach of the medium,
| not if they are (together or in aggregate) game changers wrt
| solving problems, because you as the product designer are not
| in then business of solving the problem, the customer is.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Yes, it's because people tend to think of features linearly.
| Eg "let's add one more feature". But since they tend to
| interact the complexity of the project grows
| multiplicatively.
| skizm wrote:
| Does the article ever actually mention what he failed at? He
| developed an open source game engine and... what? Did he expect
| people to donate to him or something? What was the monetization
| plan?
| jayd16 wrote:
| Here he defines his own success as the ability of his patreon
| to support him financially. He says he couldn't make that work.
|
| It doesn't really go into detail about whether he offered other
| direct contracts or work fire hire or other tried other
| licensing or any other strategy.
| gentleman11 wrote:
| If it's a side project, then work for hire would have been a
| side-side project, wouldn't it? That's quite a lot to juggle
| with a presumably full time job
| hhas01 wrote:
| "What was the monetization plan?"
|
| From reading the article author's failure was failing to ask
| that question of himself. With no clear objective or
| milestones, the project ate a huge amount of manpower for no
| material gain and left him thoroughly burnt out.
|
| It doesn't matter if your project is for-profit or Free.
| Identify your deliverables, identify your schedule, and _never_
| turn a blind-eye to your failures to meet both.
|
| Oh, and never mistake makework for productivity either. If your
| product isn't selling, what it _doesn't_ need is more features.
| What it does need is better marketing and sales skills. Quite
| frankly, building the technology part is the least important
| part of building a successful Product. Being geeks, it's
| awfully easy to work on (i.e. fiddle with) the one bit that
| you're naturally good at, when what you should be doing is
| working on all the parts that you're not.
| nonbirithm wrote:
| I mean, I'm also working on a pseudo-game engine, which isn't
| general purpose but specialized for the primary goal of being
| able to mod this already existing game, but monetization of
| it beyond the level of "donate if you want to" would be
| impractical, in my opinion. The original game is freeware so
| charging for usage to unlock features upfront leaves a bad
| taste for me. I primarily work on it because I enjoy putting
| things together and can see tangible progress towards my goal
| of being feature-compatible with the original. At the point
| that working on it starts feeling like a job, I'd quit
| immediately.
|
| If I'm trying to make money off such a side project "quit
| whenever you want" isn't sustainable. But that isn't one of
| my goals. I just want to enjoy building things and give the
| project back to the community, and I'm lucky to have a
| separate source of income to accomplish that. If nobody
| cares, then that's fine. The time I spent puzzling over the
| problems I was facing was a more interesting use of my time
| for me than sitting around all day watching YouTube, anyway.
| Also, I at least believe I'm getting somewhere with my
| project still, so I still have motivation to keep working on
| it.
|
| Maybe there's some confusion over the term "side project"
| which could mean "a thing someone developed in off hours that
| they're intending to bootstrap into a sustainable business,"
| but it could also mean "some person's hobby."
|
| But the fact that I currently have no way of monetizing this
| means I'll have to work on it in my spare time, meaning it
| will take that much longer to get to a point where I can
| declare it's shipped. Maybe I'll lose interest before that
| point. But to me _that 's perfectly fine_ and nothing to
| become gloomy over if it doesn't work out. Though, to be
| honest I might not be saying this if my project had users who
| would be frustrated with me for stepping away from working on
| it, but the reality is that it's so much work for one person
| to accomplish and at times it's draining to push forward on
| it every day, despite what I get out of working on it.
| gfodor wrote:
| Saying the least important part of building a successful
| product is building the product is nonsensical. The response
| to the tendency on tech isn't to generate anti-tech dogma,
| it's to recognize its role as one of several key things to
| focus on.
| hhas01 wrote:
| It's true though. I'd rather have so-so technology plus
| great market and marketing than the best technology in the
| world and sod all ability to sell it. You can always
| improve the technology later, _once_ you're generating the
| revenue to pay for that. But if you don't have sales you
| don't have squat.
|
| Been there, done that, lost the shirt. Lessons learned.
| gfodor wrote:
| You said technology is the least important part - not
| that it's less important than sales or marketing.
| dkersten wrote:
| Least important doesn't mean unimportant, just that all
| the other things are more important, in relative terms.
| gfodor wrote:
| Yes, and this doesn't make any sense. There are a huge
| number of elements to product development, many of which
| are less important than tech.
| tomxor wrote:
| The thing is... the alluring thing about side projects _is_
| not having that clear objective. Most of our jobs are
| directed by clear objectives, side projects are great for
| experimentation without clear potential for personal gain
| (fun, fame or fortune), often you will at least gain a unique
| experience and learn, which is a good trade for a little
| time.
|
| Perhaps what happened here is a side project grew into
| something larger, it's now just a project, and he fell into
| putting more time and effort into it without making a
| conscious decision due to popularity - perhaps that's when it
| can bite you, when you realise you don't enjoy it anymore and
| it's become one sided.
|
| I think side projects should stay as small as possible unless
| there looks to be a real potential for both yourself
| personally and the rest of the world - even then failing fast
| feels like the best idea.
| hhas01 wrote:
| For small personal projects, I think a fair rule of thumb
| is: is anyone else using it? Once that answer turns to yes,
| you need to get your exit plan in place.
|
| And +1 for failing fast. It is failing slow that's the
| disaster.
| the_af wrote:
| What's an "exit plan" in the context of small personal
| non-corporate projects?
| dkersten wrote:
| It depends on what commitments you made to your users. It
| could be as simple as just abandoning the project or it
| could be something more elaborate like handing it over to
| someone else.
| the_af wrote:
| But why do you have to think about this "as soon as you
| have your first user"? Not every project is a business
| and not every project needs an "exit plan". Not everyone
| doing a project needs to think in entrepreneur terms.
| cortesoft wrote:
| If you are expecting your side project to support you, it
| isn't a side project
| tomxor wrote:
| Yes that's my point, but also that I can see how in the
| transition that distinction can be lost on the
| originator.
| imtringued wrote:
| I'm really confused. The goal is making money yet there has not
| been a single attempt at monetization. Patreon is basically
| equivalent to donations. There is no obligation to pay you. Your
| highest tier is $5 a month. Even with hundreds of backers you're
| barely going to earn anything worth the effort. You could have
| easily added a much higher tier that charged at least something
| like $40 a month for support prioritization on Github. You need
| to some basic market research and find customers that are willing
| to pay and give them a reason to give you money. There are lots
| of ways to monetize an opensource project. If you want money
| you'll have to focus on money, not on your project.
|
| Your project was a success, only the (nonexistent) business
| strategy failed.
| TAForObvReasons wrote:
| > I always assumed that one day I'd be able to turn it into
| some side income and maybe eventually replace my full-time job.
|
| That doesn't magically happen. Even in the cases where people
| do turn their work into side income or a job, there's a huge
| amount of outreach and effort behind the scenes.
| [deleted]
| fourseventy wrote:
| Game engines is a really tough market to compete in given Unity
| and Unreal are now basically free. When I built the game that I
| launched on Steam I made my own game engine with the idea that I
| would open source it. The engine is now open source but when
| people ask about it I recommend they just use Unity instead.
| suby wrote:
| Do you have a link to your engine?
| gentleman11 wrote:
| Iirc, the developer of Ogre is now just using unity
| nikki93 wrote:
| He's using Unreal for his latest game:
| https://www.stevestreeting.com/2020/05/07/from-unity-to-
| ue4-...
| mrlala wrote:
| Also Godot being 100% free, and while I haven't used it crazy
| extensively the 2d portion I have used it for was amazing.
| didibus wrote:
| Yup, and now also Defold engine and Amazon Lumberyard as
| well.
| didibus wrote:
| I'm wondering if he'd still feel like quitting had it been making
| ton of money.
|
| One thing I've noticed is any passion project that becomes too
| much like work starts to feel like a chore and the passion for it
| disappears. I don't think making money off of it would change
| that.
|
| I've learned that when I do side projects, I need to think of it
| as having fun and playing. And with that, you accept to stop
| something and move on to something else as soon as the enjoyment
| is gone, and maybe come back to it later if the interest shows up
| again. It's hard, because you can let this feeling of "failure"
| creep in, like you haven't finished anything, or accomplished any
| of the projects you were excited about. But if you accept that
| your goal isn't to actually get anything accomplished, but only
| to entertain yourself and have fun doing things you're interested
| in, it helps with that, and makes the whole thing much more
| healthy.
| [deleted]
| dpcan wrote:
| I had a game reach about $600 per day in revenue for a few
| months way back in 2010. Overall I think it made around $100K,
| and another game made about $30K.
|
| So, even though I was making money, I still wanted out. The
| reasons came down to those listed below:
|
| 1) Taxes.
|
| I wonder if it's easier now, but back then, I had to manually
| pay individual counties in my state, I had to pay individual
| states, and and then there were countries. I chose not to sell
| my game in any non-U.S. country just because of this. So, the
| tax nightmare wasn't something I was interested in, and was a
| big part of exiting the game selling business.
|
| 2) Make updates or create something new?
|
| I originally did well updating my game. It kept people
| interested, and seemed to spur new sales somehow, but working
| on the SAME game for months and months and only making minor
| updates was not fun. It was work. So, I decided to make more
| games. I had one game make about another $30K, but everything
| else didn't sell at all. This was incredibly discouraging.
|
| 3) Reviews and Customer Support
|
| When you are dependent on game sales, you check your reviews
| daily, and you freak out about anything less than 5 stars.
| Every mean comment hits hard. Customers start writing you, and
| some of them are crazy. I received death threats for removing a
| small feature for example. I also received CONSTANT questions
| about getting my game to work on different devices and
| computers. I couldn't keep up efficiently.
|
| 4) Daily Sales Stress
|
| I would watch daily sales like a hawk. If an hour was slow, I'd
| stress. If a day was slow, I'd panic. It all had to just end. I
| couldn't market all day every day and work on new features and
| new games, so I was at the mercy of the app stores and it made
| me nuts.
|
| 5) Sales slowed
|
| Finally, sales started slowing because of all the competition
| to my game (maybe). Other devs saw it doing well and a bunch of
| clones started showing up. Some even used my assets. Some Just
| added an "!" after the name of my game and were somehow using
| my code. I wasn't getting sales because my game had been out
| for a while, and then there was pirating and fakes. I know some
| people have their own opinion about pirating, but I would get
| emails from people telling me my game gave them a virus, then
| when we got down to it, they had stolen it from some shady site
| and still wanted support and to blame me for installing an
| infected game.
|
| So, all that being said, yeah, making okay money in the game
| industry just wasn't enough to make me want to continue, but I
| REALLY like to make games, so part of me wants to try again
| anyway. Perhaps learning from these experiences will make the
| next adventure a little easier, who knows?
| gentleman11 wrote:
| What was the game? Could you elaborate on your release model
| for the $100k game? Any website or blog posts?
|
| - a solo indie dev several months in
| imhoguy wrote:
| > 1) Taxes
|
| That was nightmare. Best to outsource it completely with:
| Merchant of Record, an app marketplace or resellers.
| bdowling wrote:
| > 1) Taxes.
|
| What taxes are you talking about? You mentioned that you were
| selling through app stores, which I assume handled sales
| taxes for you in the few cases when they may be required.
| Your business income taxes would be the same as any business
| in your city/county/state/country. What else is there?
| dstick wrote:
| Thanks for sharing! That's the downside of mediocre success.
| Too little money to outsource tasks, too much to abandon and
| allocate your time resources elsewhere.
|
| Glad you made the right call and I hope you find another
| passion project soon!
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Maybe I live in a totally different universe, but it's
| really hard for me to consider a software product that
| grossed $100k to be a "mediocre success."
| qes wrote:
| In my universe, I make that (net even, not gross) in half
| a year with essentially zero responsibility for
| marketing, taxes, customer support, etc. - nobody can
| realistically steal my work and cut into my wages with it
| - far less stress - and I keep making that over and over
| again every 6 months without having to do anything really
| that new or different.
|
| In comparison, a game that grossed $100k, which I have to
| pay self-employment taxes on, and perhaps app store fees
| out of that too, sounds awfully mediocre, at best.
| shakow wrote:
| It depends on how it comes out once you divide by the
| time & resources you invested in the making of the game.
| xVedun wrote:
| If the work and stress is spread out over two or three
| years. It's likely that the time spent could easily be
| outweighed by many other jobs/projects,
| dstick wrote:
| Hehe same here but, the poster mentioned 2010 and total
| revenue. If it's $100.000 in 1 year, then sure! That
| would probably have potential for growth as well. This
| didn't read like that :)
|
| A revenue of 100.000 spread over 2 years wouldn't be
| enough to support me and my family. Living in a Western
| Europe country. I'd prefer freelancing (or a job) for
| income in that scenario, over making ends meet with a
| software product and battling off copycats and whatnot.
| It should grow month over month and if it stalls for a
| year+ at low revenue, that's most likely bad and I'd kill
| it, considering it a mediocre success! Hope that makes
| sense :)
| cutemonster wrote:
| > some of them are crazy. I received death threats for
| removing a small feature
|
| Wow, literally crazy
|
| About how many customers did you have, when those things
| happened? If I may ask.
|
| I wonder how large a group of people tends to be, when such
| crazies start appearing
|
| (I wonder how those things made you feel and think)
| looping__lui wrote:
| Thanks for sharing! Regarding 1): I can recommend the
| combination "Fastspring" for order processing and taxes
| (nothing to worry about and super easy setup) and LimeLM for
| software protection; dynamic license key generation is super
| easy in conjunction w/ Fastspring :-)
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