31–40 of 346 posts
Honestly, this puts things into an entirely new light for me. I feel like buying, playing and then thoroughly interacting in the community of a game can really have personal impact on the indie developer.
Of course given you can crank out a game that quickly it may have been better to not quit your job and release the game on the side. If it had been a success then quit. Hindsight is a wonderful thing isn't it? There are some strong positives here - you shipped a game! That alone is awesome. You built up a community. You were prepared to take a chance. All great things. The harsh reality is the casual games market is…
It also appears he would have launched the game without quitting his job, seeing as he seems to have done most of the work before he quit.
> The harsh reality is the casual games market is brutal from a business perspective - that's not your fault
It’s not his fault for the market being tough, but it is his fault for launching another rogue like 2d pixel art rpg, with no real unique feature into an over saturated market, with no marketing, and not enough cash to deal with a single business expense. He’s lucky his girlfriend put him up afterwards, and this piece might even net him a few sympathy sales, but this is definitely his fault.
In your country do you have to register the business if your business does not make any money? In UK you can make money for 3 months before registering... I feel for you, I can only give you an advice to try to turn your mind into anything positive. You are lucky you don't have kids to feed, or pregnant wife to look after. Robert Kiyosaki has written in 'Rich dad poor dad' book, that it's good to default before 30 so…
If like me you are from the UK it can be hard to appreciate how well aligned our country is to starting businesses, the origins of protection for companies originates with corporate activity around the 13th Century with the http://www.merchantsofthestapleofengland.co.uk/ and since then, with corporations holding large amounts of wealth and power, UK law has developed in step with the demands of corporations, coupled…
There is the matter of provisional tax though, so an accountant does help.
You saved 2000$? OMG I would wait until 10000€ at least (Spain).
At the end, he says: 'I know I can get hired for a good salary again but I don't think it will happen this year'.
What do you mean by good salary? Because if you say you have a low mortgage in a low cost country but that only gave you like 2000$ savings for the game...
I feel like relying on a big splash release is an intuitive, obvious, and wrong approach. It's like a kind of waterfall methodology, where we should be doing iterative: Release something early to a limited audience, gauge reactions, fix the obvious mistakes and implement the feedback from players. Then keep doing that. If you can't even get a small audience (like a small gamer forum) to play, then you're already in t…
Can confirm. Tried big splash release, didn't work, gave up. Don't do big splash releases.
In your country do you have to register the business if your business does not make any money? In UK you can make money for 3 months before registering... I feel for you, I can only give you an advice to try to turn your mind into anything positive. You are lucky you don't have kids to feed, or pregnant wife to look after. Robert Kiyosaki has written in 'Rich dad poor dad' book, that it's good to default before 30 so…
If like me you are from the UK it can be hard to appreciate how well aligned our country is to starting businesses, the origins of protection for companies originates with corporate activity around the 13th Century with the http://www.merchantsofthestapleofengland.co.uk/ and since then, with corporations holding large amounts of wealth and power, UK law has developed in step with the demands of corporations, coupled…
"... just getting the business prepared ended up costing me about 550 more dollars than I was expecting. That's one month out of the 4 taken out." You saved 2000$? OMG I would wait until 10000€ at least (Spain). At the end, he says: 'I know I can get hired for a good salary again but I don't think it will happen this year' . What do you mean by good salary? Because if you say you have a low mortgage in a low cost cou…
The country he mentions is Romania. Well, bureaucracy is high, but like other said, no need to setup a company in advance. But, he saved anyway way to little money ( I found strange that he is counting in USD, since euro is de facto currency, besides the RON ) to be able to sustain him and an apartment. Lessons learn: don't quit your job until you have some sale volume. However, since he's in Romania, he will get a j…