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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

#61

Post by prawn »

Frqy3 wrote: post #60
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 th…

Yes, desperately needs to make an app preview video. The screenshots look dull, but a lot of the video looks a lot more interesting and dynamic.

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

#62

Post by ethread »

Toine wrote: post #30
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.

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,…

> Sadly, this is way less interesting and fun for us, the devs. Unfortunately this is how it works

I'm finishing up my first game now and I'm finding that monetizing and promoting it is going to be much less fun then building it was. This is a side project for me so interesting and fun is more important then money but I think I'm going to put in the effort to try to monetize and promote the game because I think it will be a good learning experience. And because my kids tell me my game is great!

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

#63

Post by geminiradio »

dfan wrote: post #56
geminiradio wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Thanks man! Yeah, I figured that must be Dan Schmidt. :)

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

#64

Post by geminiradio »

Frqy3 wrote: post #60
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 th…

Holy crap, you're not going to believe this, but we have a version of that video that was supposed to be on the App Store and you are the first person to point out that it's not there.

I'll go see what the heck happened.

Wow the time I spent hanging out on this thread totally just paid off. Thanks!

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

#65

Post by geminiradio »

Frqy3 wrote: post #60
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 th…

Okay, it turns out that App Store video previews only play on device. So you don't see it on the web or in the iTunes App Store. :/

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

#66

Post by Arjuna »

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.

[...] but if what you want are technical and creative challenges [...]

This is so true. I developed a space shooter for iOS, and it was quite a challenge. This was my first game, and what I found to be quite interesting is just how much is involved in simply finishing a game. For example, every little detail that it takes to make something commercial-quality, like graphics [1], compelling music, game-play, rock-solid frame-rate, user interface, all of the timers that need to be managed, transitions between levels, and in my case, some interesting mathematics (I implemented a Catmull-Rom algorithm to generate flight paths for the enemy drones on one level)... the list goes on.

[1] Incidentally, the article quoted Daniel Cook. For my game, I used Tyrian graphics that he created. He made them available under a Creative Commons license.

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

#67

Post by wisty »

emsy wrote: post #4
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.

Most games are generic crap. I've seen crap games make money, but I haven't seen a great game fail. People see Flappy Bird and want to imitate it because it's easy. Those who work hard don't rely on luck can still build a sustainable business. See also https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=45&v=1BCg31KVJok

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_failures_in...:

Battlecruiser 3000AD, Beyond Good & Evil, Brütal Legend, Grim Fandango, The Last Express, Psychonauts, and Shenmue are often said to be pretty good.

Also, 500 iOS games per day. Mostly, games fail because it's cut-throat. Yeah, a lot are generic, but some are probably pretty good.

What's the standard of "great"? Popular? Well reviewed? In your opinion? Because there's well-reviewed games that flopped, and there's games I've personally liked that didn't make much money. There's even reasonably popular games that are complete commercial failures.

Yes, if you have a AAA company, and a AAA marketing budget, it will drive some sales. But even then, they can flop.

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

#68

Post by rizky05 »

PythonicAlpha wrote: post #34
geminiradio wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool! I wish you luck on your career. What are you hoping to do in indie games? What field, what kind of games, what platforms, etc.?

Thanks! To make it short: I am currently building a strategy online game as a browser-game (only a current browser and JavaScript is needed). I think, that currently most online games lack strategic/tactical depth and rely on almost all the same mechanics (city-building and build up the biggest army), with only small differences (topic, graphics and some minor mechanics are different, the basics are mostly the same).…

Do you have work in progress or something ? How do I find your game ?

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

#69

Post by joesmo »

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…

I too got started programming games when I was around twelve. I agree it's probably the most competitive and least-forgiving areas, but it seems to have a lot more challenges, both technical and creative than any other area as well. I'm curious why you think it has less.

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

#70

Post by adnzzzzZ »

emsy wrote: post #4
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.

Most games are generic crap. I've seen crap games make money, but I haven't seen a great game fail. People see Flappy Bird and want to imitate it because it's easy. Those who work hard don't rely on luck can still build a sustainable business. See also https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=45&v=1BCg31KVJok

I agree with you but what you're saying still holds true only for PC gaming (Steam) but not for mobile.
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