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Five Years of Being a Full-Time Indie Game Developer

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Re: Five Years of Being a Full-Time Indie Game Developer

#51

Post by geminiradio »

PythonicAlpha wrote: post #38
pandaman wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compensation in the games industry varies wildly. In my opinion, this is because there are many people who have <5 years experience and few people who have 10+ years. The veterans have high salaries and other forms of compensation (profit sharing, bonuses) while newbies are given less than in an average consulting/web shop.

I guess so. But it is a little difficult to get data from veteran people, since those figures are most often negotiated in silence. All I can see are the entry level offerings and they are in deed often below those for web-developers. I think, it is similar as in other areas -- when you manage to be seen as key-developer, you are in a much better negotiation position -- but for that, you must be either a star from th…

I've been out of the mainstream industry for 7 years now, but I made 6 figures when I was working with Steven Spielberg at Electronic Arts in Los Angeles. Before that, when I was at ION Storm in Austin, Texas, I wasn't that far from it. I'm usually in a lead designer / creative director position, but a really solid, senior programmer or producer earns about that much, too.

Gamasutra and GDC put together a salary survey every year. I think that's public? I would search for it.

Re: Five Years of Being a Full-Time Indie Game Developer

#52

Post by PythonicAlpha »

geminiradio wrote: post #48
PythonicAlpha wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ultima V is still my favorite ;)

OMG mine too. Since you're a fan, check out one of the best moments in my life: https://www.facebook.com/TigerStyleGames/photos/pb.232939450...

Wow, nice photo with Richard! Now I saw, you already have your own Wikipedia page ;)

I really want to have more time, to play U5 again ...

   But I have promises to keep,
   And miles to go before I sleep ...

Re: Five Years of Being a Full-Time Indie Game Developer

#53

Post by sliverstorm »

thearn4 wrote: post #6
hellofunk wrote: post #2

Admire anyone who can go full time into the game industry, which is one of the most competitive anywhere. And to do so as an independent is a high challenge. To pull that off for five years deserves great merit. Anyone who has published games to Apple's app store knows how hard it is to see any money from it.

Game development seems to be one of the most competitive and least forgiving corners of the larger software development industry. A long time ago, games are what originally motivated me to learn to program. But some point along the way, I came to believe (whether true or false) that game development was really not a very enticing career path, both in terms of compensation and technical & creative challenges open to s…

Game development seems to be one of the most competitive and least forgiving corners of the larger software development industry. A long time ago, games are what originally motivated me to learn to program

I suspect these two things are related.

It seems that games are one of the top reasons people learn to program, and it seems we have an oversupply of eager game devs because of it.

As for challenges in gaming, I wonder if it is like robotics. I got into electronics inspired by robotics. But it turns out robotics is not really about electronics. It's a lot of things, especially math (control theory), but the electronics part is one of the least important parts of the field, as car as I can tell. Similarly in gaming, it seems greatness has little to do with accomplishment in programming and a lot to do with story, art, music, and user experience.

Re: Five Years of Being a Full-Time Indie Game Developer

#54

Post by PythonicAlpha »

geminiradio wrote: post #51
PythonicAlpha wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess so. But it is a little difficult to get data from veteran people, since those figures are most often negotiated in silence. All I can see are the entry level offerings and they are in deed often below those for web-developers. I think, it is similar as in other areas -- when you manage to be seen as key-developer, you are in a much better negotiation position -- but for that, you must be either a star from th…

I've been out of the mainstream industry for 7 years now, but I made 6 figures when I was working with Steven Spielberg at Electronic Arts in Los Angeles. Before that, when I was at ION Storm in Austin, Texas, I wasn't that far from it. I'm usually in a lead designer / creative director position, but a really solid, senior programmer or producer earns about that much, too. Gamasutra and GDC put together a salary surv…

Thanks for the info! Currently, I never worked in the gaming industry and I believe not many big studies are located in Germany. There are some online game studies in Germany, though, but I think, they pay a lot less than the big AAA studios.

Re: Five Years of Being a Full-Time Indie Game Developer

#55

Post by geminiradio »

dfan wrote: post #46
thearn4 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Game development seems to be one of the most competitive and least forgiving corners of the larger software development industry. A long time ago, games are what originally motivated me to learn to program. But some point along the way, I came to believe (whether true or false) that game development was really not a very enticing career path, both in terms of compensation and technical & creative challenges open to s…

I was a game developer for 20+ years (Looking Glass Studios, Harmonix) and boy oh boy were there a lot of technical and creative challenges. I ended up leaving largely to reduce stress and because I wanted to try doing something else with my career, but if what you want are technical and creative challenges, it's a pretty good job.

Who is this!? I worked at Looking Glass too. (This is Randy Smith.)

Re: Five Years of Being a Full-Time Indie Game Developer

#56

Post by dfan »

geminiradio wrote: post #55
dfan wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a game developer for 20+ years (Looking Glass Studios, Harmonix) and boy oh boy were there a lot of technical and creative challenges. I ended up leaving largely to reduce stress and because I wanted to try doing something else with my career, but if what you want are technical and creative challenges, it's a pretty good job.

Who is this!? I worked at Looking Glass too. (This is Randy Smith.)

You don't know who dfan is?? This is Dan Schmidt. Congrats on Rite of the Shrouded Moon!

Re: Five Years of Being a Full-Time Indie Game Developer

#57

Post by respondwelljobs »

ahmedbaracat wrote: post #10
thearn4 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Game development seems to be one of the most competitive and least forgiving corners of the larger software development industry. A long time ago, games are what originally motivated me to learn to program. But some point along the way, I came to believe (whether true or false) that game development was really not a very enticing career path, both in terms of compensation and technical & creative challenges open to s…

I also started with game development for Windows phone using XNA, switched to marmalade then Unity. Stopped creating games a few months ago thinking mostly like you plus wondering how/if my games are solving real user problems or whether they are only providing distractions. However, searching for companies looking for developers with game development background and familiarity with Unity, I found a few startups who…

I work for a company just like this. We use Unity (and lots of other game tech) to make games for health, mostly for physical therapy and rehab. There are interesting problems to solve in this space and we're putting good energy into the world with our work. And, we're hiring! If you (or anyone else reading this) is looking for a great job and know a good amount of Unity/C#, drop us a line at jobs@respondwell.com. Remote work is fine, too.

Re: Five Years of Being a Full-Time Indie Game Developer

#58

Post by clessg »

dfan wrote: post #46
thearn4 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Game development seems to be one of the most competitive and least forgiving corners of the larger software development industry. A long time ago, games are what originally motivated me to learn to program. But some point along the way, I came to believe (whether true or false) that game development was really not a very enticing career path, both in terms of compensation and technical & creative challenges open to s…

I was a game developer for 20+ years (Looking Glass Studios, Harmonix) and boy oh boy were there a lot of technical and creative challenges. I ended up leaving largely to reduce stress and because I wanted to try doing something else with my career, but if what you want are technical and creative challenges, it's a pretty good job.

For my own sanity, I would much rather continue writing JavaScript and Golang apps than do full-fledged game development. It's incredible that some people are able to deal with it, and not have their spouse leave them.

By the way, if a mod is here: I think I accidentally downvoted the above comment. (More precisely, my cat and Vimium did.) I tried to reverse it but I doubt it worked. Please remove the downvote if it's still there.

Re: Five Years of Being a Full-Time Indie Game Developer

#59

Post by wineisfine »

philbarr wrote: post #33
Toine wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. The mistake many developers make is that they'll just make a fun game, upload it on the App Store/Play Store with a naive hope that it will get viral, and they'll get money. The reality is that mobile gaming is extremely competitive right now and you mainly have to work on getting your game known, understand how to monetize it, analyze the behavior of your users to optimize every important metric. Sadly,…

> So it's not that it's really hard, it's just not something we like to do. I think it's hard. I think it's REALLY hard - but I'm more than happy to learn, I just don't know what to do. And that's after reading Tim Ferris, signing up to various blog sites and reading as much as possible. There seams to be plenty of books on marketing theory out there; but very little in the way of practical, actionable advice.

The greatest achievement from Ferris was actually selling the book to us, suckers. It creates vague hope, but that's about it.

Re: Five Years of Being a Full-Time Indie Game Developer

#60

Post by Frqy3 »

geminiradio wrote: post #21

Can a great game fail? I guess I'm finding out right now. It's early, it's currently scary, and it could still go either way. Pure drama! Our game was released 2 days ago (Spider: Rite of the Shrouded Moon - ShroudedMoon.com). It's metacritic'ing at 94, which is stellar. It's got almost exclusively very very positive reviews on Steam and the App Store. It's the sequel to the Game of the Year in 2009, per TouchArcade,…

One issue might be your landing page for the game in the App Store.

The static images and their text descriptions do not convey what the game is about. e.g. Platform action, puzzle solving. The description section helps, but I'm not sure how many potential customers go past the images as a first filter.

As someone not familiar with your previous games, it wasn't until I went and looked at the video on your website that I thought that yes, this is something I would find fun to play.

I think the reviews coming out should help to attract customers for you. That is, it will be the review that sells them, and then they'll go and buy your game, rather than making an impulsive choice while browsing the App Store.

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