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Ask HN: I'm quitting my job, will create a game – any advice?

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Re: Ask HN: I'm quitting my job, will create a game – any advice?

#91

Post by viraptor »

m00x wrote: post #71
satysin wrote: post #37

I would highly recommend you not quit but perhaps see if there are any more flexible working arrangements you can come to with your current employer. Perhaps you can go part time or take 3 or 6 month (unpaid) leave? I wish you all the best whatever you choose to do. Make sure you post an update when you have something to show. Also maybe go the 'devlog' route and document the process on YouTube and Twitch as those ar…

If he's not too tied to his job, leaving and finding another one in 6 months shouldn't be a big issue. Whenever I start looking, it takes me around a month to get a new gig.

This is not a normal time though and who knows what the job market for OP's area will look like. Potentially there will be lots of people looking at not too many open positions.

Re: Ask HN: I'm quitting my job, will create a game – any advice?

#92

Post by Agathos »

auslegung wrote: post #62
MeinBlutIstBlau wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying this is the route someone should take, but the stardew guy made stardew solely to build his resume up while he was looking for a job.

From what I read in Blood, Sweat, and Pixels, he’s kind of a case study in what NOT to do. I’m very glad Stardew Valley ended up being a commercial success, but if I were his friend at any point in his process I would’ve tried to get him to get something into the users’ hands immediately.

Yes, that chapter reads like the postmortem of a failed project, except it all somehow works out in the end. It’s a fascinating story but I’m not sure what lesson to take from it.

Re: Ask HN: I'm quitting my job, will create a game – any advice?

#93

Post by [deleted] »

nmfisher wrote: post #83
WhompingWindows wrote: post #13

Try working on the game 20 hours a week while keeping your job. If you truly love the concept and love working on it while still working full time, that'd be a good sign to potentially scale it up with your full 60-80 hours you'll be spending.

Have you ever done this though? This is how I started and progress was impossibly slow. At some point you’re just draining yourself of every spare hour, you’re underperforming at your day job, and you’re not really moving forward. It’s ok to do for a month or so as a litmus test, but after that I fully support diving in full time (in full knowledge that there’s a 95% chance you’ll fail). You can always get another jo…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: I'm quitting my job, will create a game – any advice?

#94

Post by jmiskovic »

markus_zhang wrote: post #87
tubularhells wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's anninsane schedule that cannot be pulled off with today's audience expectations. The main creator of the 10mg collection was on the Eggplant Show recently and talked about releasing games quarterly and how unsustainable that is.

Yeah agreed it's too fast. Back in 90s there was way less demand on resources.

I'm following the Sokpop collective, they are 4 developers that have committed to releasing 2 games per month. The main source of income seems to be Patreon subscriptions, but games also get released on Steam.

Every one game is quirky, vibrant and fun. For few of them I was disappointed that devs moved on instead of continuing working to bring out the potential, but after a while they would return to same concept and release a sequel.

Re: Ask HN: I'm quitting my job, will create a game – any advice?

#95

Post by bzzzt »

patrick_halina wrote: post #72

I used to work for Zynga. My advice is to think about how you'll gain users. The mobile gaming world is basically user arbitrage. You buy users (via the ads market) for X, and if you make more than X, you print money. It's helpful to find a creative that gets clicks for cheaper than the rest of the market. Eg. if your ads have slots machines, then it costs $25 to acquire a user. If you find some niche, like cool cars…

Maybe that's the 'most sure' way to generate money from games, but in my opinion most of those games are bland and generic. Maybe you just want money and don't care about who will play your game, but hard-core optimising your ad-gamedesign loop means losing a lot of the opportunities for fun and less traditional designs.

Re: Ask HN: I'm quitting my job, will create a game – any advice?

#96

Post by jmiskovic »

MeinBlutIstBlau wrote: post #31
squibbles wrote: post #20

Speaking from many, many years of experience: Cash is king. Nothing is more important than cash flow. A runway is not a development budget -- it is a loan in the form of opportunity cost. Always look for income at all times. And never, ever borrow money for the project. Regarding people, keep active contacts with other people. Do not shelter behind closed doors. The world moves quickly, and if your team withdraws int…

As a just average Joe gamer, art style makes or breaks a game. If you pick a style, stay with it. Indie games like stardew, skullgirls, don't starve, papers please, punch club, and darkest dungeon all proved graphics don't sell games, especially on mobile. If anything word of mouth has probably helped most of those. But mostly, the art style is visually appealing and doesn't look like lazy garbage.

More actionable, the choice of colors and their combinations is the key ingredient for cohesive and tight art direction. Pixel art, vector art, low-poly 3D - they all rely more on good colors than on shapes.

It's quite hard to pick each color from color picker wheel and ending up with something decent. Much better approach is to use pre-assembled palettes like ones on lospec.com/palette-list collection. My favorite versatile palette is edg32, but others will work better for certain moods. Working with more than 30-is colors requires experience and patience.

These guidelines can help to build something that catches attention, and assets tend to be simpler and easier to iterate on.

Re: Ask HN: I'm quitting my job, will create a game – any advice?

#97

Post by blackrock »

Create awareness.

Start a twitter account. Document your progress. Build a following. Gain an audience to sell your dreams to. Then launch it.

And give it away for free. Sell some life saving gems. The “whales” are going to be your biggest spenders.

Good luck!

Re: Ask HN: I'm quitting my job, will create a game – any advice?

#98

Post by dusted »

Spend more time than you think to think about how to deliver your games to customers. I don't mean the app-store, but how to get them interested in the game so they open their app-store and actually search for your game. Do you have a community or some other channel of communication for involving people in your game?

The 1 hardest thing about making games is making a game that's so good and fun that people will not only look at it, but also download, play and keep playing it. The other 1 hardest thing is getting people to even look at that, even if you give it away for free without ads.

Re: Ask HN: I'm quitting my job, will create a game – any advice?

#99

Post by chii »

Agathos wrote: post #92
auslegung wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I read in Blood, Sweat, and Pixels, he’s kind of a case study in what NOT to do. I’m very glad Stardew Valley ended up being a commercial success, but if I were his friend at any point in his process I would’ve tried to get him to get something into the users’ hands immediately.

Yes, that chapter reads like the postmortem of a failed project, except it all somehow works out in the end. It’s a fascinating story but I’m not sure what lesson to take from it.

the lesson is that there's no recipe for success. every success is blazing their own way, and for anyone trying, they too, will need to blaze their own trail.

Re: Ask HN: I'm quitting my job, will create a game – any advice?

#100

Post by seanwilson »

nickthemagicman wrote: post #8

Create an MMO but also an MMO framework so other people can use the framework. The framework might actually turn out to be more popular than the game.

Working on a game engine is the ultimate (and very common) game dev trap. It's a recipe for never finishing anything as all your time and energy is eaten up trying to generalise your code to support infinite games.
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