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“I thought I could ship at least 700 units to stay in business”

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Re: “I thought I could ship at least 700 units to stay in business”

#121

Post by coldtea »

ccozan wrote: post #25

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…

>I found strange that he is counting in USD, since euro is de facto currency, besides the RON

The majority of his sales would be in USD (with EUR second, except if he especially marketed to European customers).

And $ gives a standard reference across the world. For EUR many people around the world need to do the conversion first, but even someone in rural Nigeria or Polynesia would have a good grasp of the value of the $ compared to their local currency.

Re: “I thought I could ship at least 700 units to stay in business”

#122

Post by crummy »

tonyoconnell wrote: post #114

Your girlfriend doesn’t sound very supportive saying that you should get a job the day after you launch. Sometimes a few words of encouragement can be the difference between failure and success.

Sometimes being supportive means helping people face reality.

Re: “I thought I could ship at least 700 units to stay in business”

#123

Post by mdpopescu »

virgilp wrote: post #75
stupidcar wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was only a month away from completing the game when he quit. If he'd worked evenings and weekends, and used some vacation time, it seems like he could have easily finished and released the game by early next year. That way he wouldn't have to bet everything on the "magic unicorn" of instant Steam success. I sometimes think people starting businesses take on an unnecessary amount of risk out of some unconscious bel…

From the name, I'm guessing he's Romanian; it's not illegal here to have a contract that states "everything you create, even in the spare time, is the company's property, unless you get written manager approval first". I have exactly such a contract. And yes I know it would be illegal in the US. (I'm not exactly sure how enforceable such a clause would really be, but that's another story, and I really understand him…

Actually, I'm pretty sure it's the other way around. That is the default for the US (see [1]) but I believe it's unenforceable in the EU.

[1] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/developers-side-pr...

Re: “I thought I could ship at least 700 units to stay in business”

#125

Post by photonios »

teniutza wrote: post #90
photonios wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That highly depends on which city you are in Romania. If you're in one of the bigger cities (Bucharest, Cluj, Iasi or Oradea) then it's going to be ok. If not, then you're screwed, unless you can work remote. At least, that has been my experience. There's also the thing that the average developer salaries are surprisingly low. They are well above the national average, but it's only the top 1-5% who really pulls in th…

Do you have any (online) references available for the average salaries? I'm quite interested in this but can't seem to find decent sources...

I work for a start-up and when we started we bought research on this. Let me see if I can share the report we got. I'll report back in a couple of hours.

Re: “I thought I could ship at least 700 units to stay in business”

#126

Post by bshimmin »

_s wrote: post #113
worldsayshi wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious what kind of work you found and where you found it? If you don't mind telling.

I find digital consultancies / agencies always have spikes of work and they need folks to join in for a couple of weeks or months. Just make connections there - send in your cv, ask about part time positions etc. Agencies usually have one or two recruiters they trust so go and make friends with them too, chances are that recruiter is connected to a few other agencies and so forth. It’s all about networking though, an…

Bear in mind, to address the point about making money "quickly", that if you go direct to a digital agency, they will expect you to do a month's work, and then for you to send them an invoice with 28 day terms, and then they will pay when it pleases them to do so. So that might well be two months between sitting down at a desk and money actually appearing in your bank account - or it might be longer. (Speaking from experience in London.)

(If you go through a recruiter, you might be in a better position, because sometimes recruiters want you to invoice weekly and sometimes they pay more or less on receipt of the invoice. And sometimes they don't, of course.)

Re: “I thought I could ship at least 700 units to stay in business”

#127

Post by ryanlol »

virgilp wrote: post #75
stupidcar wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was only a month away from completing the game when he quit. If he'd worked evenings and weekends, and used some vacation time, it seems like he could have easily finished and released the game by early next year. That way he wouldn't have to bet everything on the "magic unicorn" of instant Steam success. I sometimes think people starting businesses take on an unnecessary amount of risk out of some unconscious bel…

From the name, I'm guessing he's Romanian; it's not illegal here to have a contract that states "everything you create, even in the spare time, is the company's property, unless you get written manager approval first". I have exactly such a contract. And yes I know it would be illegal in the US. (I'm not exactly sure how enforceable such a clause would really be, but that's another story, and I really understand him…

This is normal, and unenforceable, almost everywhere.

Re: “I thought I could ship at least 700 units to stay in business”

#128

Post by indymike »

maccard wrote: post #33
zapperdapper wrote: post #14

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…

I don’t really see the same positives as you do here. I see someone who really didn’t think through the decision to quit their job, may have lost their house over it, and who still appears to have not found a replacement despite running out of money already. 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…

My hat is off to anyone who takes a big risk to pursue building a business. You learn so much, so fast. And sometimes you make it. I hope he tries again and leverages what he's learned.

Who cares about who's fault it is anyway?

Re: “I thought I could ship at least 700 units to stay in business”

#129

Post by muzani »

cousin_it wrote: post #49

His sense of what games are "cool" wasn't in tune with the public. That's the cardinal sin. Pixel art dungeon crawlers aren't cool. It's as if he was a musician and decided to release a glam metal album today. Low budget, poor marketing, uncooperative bureaucracy - nah dude, none of that matters, you're just too in love with glam metal and people aren't buying glam metal.

I love pixel art dungeon crawlers, but the competition is completely insane. I can't build something along the lines of Terraria or Starbound given a lifetime.

Glam metal isn't really a good analogy. I'd say it's more like building cathedrals. The market isn't what it used to be. They're still admirable and today's tools are better for them. But they're monumental work, even for the experienced, and you'd be insane to tackle that with 4 months of savings.

I want to make a game eventually, and I'm a risk taker, but even I would save up at least 3 years before I go indie.

Re: “I thought I could ship at least 700 units to stay in business”

#130

Post by discordianfish »

virgilp wrote: post #75
stupidcar wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was only a month away from completing the game when he quit. If he'd worked evenings and weekends, and used some vacation time, it seems like he could have easily finished and released the game by early next year. That way he wouldn't have to bet everything on the "magic unicorn" of instant Steam success. I sometimes think people starting businesses take on an unnecessary amount of risk out of some unconscious bel…

From the name, I'm guessing he's Romanian; it's not illegal here to have a contract that states "everything you create, even in the spare time, is the company's property, unless you get written manager approval first". I have exactly such a contract. And yes I know it would be illegal in the US. (I'm not exactly sure how enforceable such a clause would really be, but that's another story, and I really understand him…

This similar in in Germany: It's not "everything is company property" but you need to ask permission to do "work" outside your employement, need to disclose if you create/"invent" something and allow the company to aquire your invention. Frankly, no idea how/if that will be enforced but something along these lines were in most contracted I had and it always made me feel uncomfortable.
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