Five Years of Being a Full-Time Indie Game Developer • Hacker News Board

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

#71

Post by cpeterso » Sun, Aug 09, 2015, 6:28 AM UTC

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…

An interesting project leveraging games for "real work" is Verigames. It's a DARPA-funded project that creates casual games that drive a crowd-source formal verification system for software.

https://www.verigames.com/FAQ

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

#72

Post by SeanBoocock » Sun, Aug 09, 2015, 7:14 AM UTC

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,…

I'm afraid I don't have any ready advice beyond recognizing the increased relevance of youtube/twitch personalities versus traditional games media, particularly for mobile, since the release of your last game. While people with smaller followings won't have any significant impact on awareness for your game, coverage from any of the bigger personalities could transform your sales trajectory over night; just look at Five Nights at Freddy's.

I hope things turn around for Spider. Tiger Style is a star in the Austin (indie) game development scene and I am rooting for your continued success.

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

#73

Post by ido » Sun, Aug 09, 2015, 7:55 AM UTC

PythonicAlpha wrote: post #54

geminiradio wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are loads of game studios in Germany, mostly smaller ones and not AAA. In general in the past few years there has been a massive shift away from AAA & huge teams.

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

#74

Post by lewisl9029 » Sun, Aug 09, 2015, 9:31 AM UTC

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 have a somewhat analogous background.

I went into Waterloo Computer Engineering wanting to work in computer hardware. I quickly found out that hardware was not only insanely complex and difficult to learn, but also really, really boring (just my subjective opinion, I hope nobody takes this personally).

Thankfully, I had the option of specializing in either hardware or software in my program. I ended up choosing the latter and couldn't be happier with my choice.

Having gone through this experience has given me a new appreciation for all the incredibly smart people working on hardware. Without their hard work and innovations, our software industry wouldn't even exist.

Although if I could go back and choose a major again, I'd probably go with either Software Engineering or CompSci, because all the time I spent struggling on hardware courses could have been better spent on building up a better foundation in CompSci theory in a program with more focus.