Not being rude, but we've see this shit before and we've played a load of similar games. What made you think your retro style dungeon crawler was going to perform well?
“I thought I could ship at least 700 units to stay in business”
161–170 of 346 posts
Re: “I thought I could ship at least 700 units to stay in business”
#162The main advice should be: not another pixel art game. Please. We have enough of these. Folks let's move on from the 1970s. Also this is getting tired seeing honest, hard-working, self-motivated talented individuals push themselves into the same tried and tested crappy old corner of 'indie pixel art games'. It's quite difficult to see anything innovative or even remotely enjoyable from this genre anymore. It's not Ro…
many of us prefer great pixel-art to 3D in certain genres (RPGs for example)
Re: “I thought I could ship at least 700 units to stay in business”
#163Just to add my personal data point of experience...
6 years ago, I took a break from doing webdev freelancing and spent around 3 months developing a kids app. At that point the money ran out so I released the app even though it wasn't entirely finished and quickly went back to doing web freelancing in order to be able to feed my family.
The app sold in small amounts but it was getting great feedback from the people who had tried it. In my spare time, I added to it and improved it and would pester bloggers to try it. Marketing beyond that isn't an option as the costs are too great and if you're lucky you make a dollar per app sold.
It was a depressing and disheartening thing to put something out there which you felt was good but almost nobody was buying but I realised it was a gamble up front. I didn't bet the farm on it. I bet three months wages and immediately went back to regular work as soon as I was in financial danger.
Even if your game is amazing, there's no way anyone is going to instantly and magically know about it. Are there really so many people spending every day looking at the Steam new releases ready to just buy anything that appears? At the Indie level, only word-of-mouth means anything and that can take a very long time to build.
As it happens, after 9 long months of very little sales, my app got a small write-up in the New York Times. The piece was by one of the bloggers I had pestered particularly hard to try it and later happened to have a one-off article published. Since then, somehow the word-of-mouth effect kicked in and I've been blessed to be able to work on the app full-time as my sole source of income.
TL;DR: Don't ever plan on anyone buying your indie-game on day 1 even if it's amazing.
Re: “I thought I could ship at least 700 units to stay in business”
#164The main advice should be: not another pixel art game. Please. We have enough of these. Folks let's move on from the 1970s. Also this is getting tired seeing honest, hard-working, self-motivated talented individuals push themselves into the same tried and tested crappy old corner of 'indie pixel art games'. It's quite difficult to see anything innovative or even remotely enjoyable from this genre anymore. It's not Ro…
Your advice really just boils down to "mindfulplay hates pixel art, so everyone who likes it should stop."
I personally don't get the appeal of pixel art, the blocky look of much of it seems purposely lower res then the actual sprites they purport to imitate, but it's just an aesthetic choice that has no direct relation to the quality of a game and it doesn't ruin the experience for me.
And, I've seen enough badly done 3D that I refuse to buy the premise that sprites are objectively inferior. The problem isn't the pixel art, it's that most indie developers (myself included, eventually) likely don't have the talent or staff to create a product that stands out, or they might, but want to focus on recreating nostalgia rather than iterating on the ideas and genres they like and creating something new.
Chances are that's exactly what the games they like were doing back in the day, and that's why they became classics.
Re: “I thought I could ship at least 700 units to stay in business”
#165"... 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 average salary for a developer in the top cities in Romania is around EUR 1,000 or $1,100 after taxes (that is about $2,500 in US before tax - yes, taxes are that high, actually a bit higher). A very good developer gets double. $2000 in savings are 4 months of living on the edge, not regular living. Getting a full time job as a developer in Romania is extremely easy if you have any decent skills, there is a short…
> The average salary for a developer in the top cities in Romania is around EUR 1,000 or $1,100 after taxes (that is about $2,500 in US before tax - yes, taxes are that high, actually a bit higher).
Can you explain that ratio? €1000--€1100 is roughly equal to $1200--$1300, and some quick searches tell me income tax in Romania is a flat 16%. That ends up very far from $2500.
Re: “I thought I could ship at least 700 units to stay in business”
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not that I disagree, especially with the opinion that the gaming industry is over-saturated and that a lot depends on luck in that industry. But I'd say that 4 months worth of savings is in the better end when starting a new business. Most people who do startups or who otherwise become entrepreneurs have much less than that. And I think having too much of a cushion can lull you into a false sense of "doing somet…
Maybe I'm just way too risk-averse, but 3-4 months of expenses in savings is what I'd consider a minimum while in a stable full-time job .
Yes, our mortgage advisor recommended a certain buffer amount in savings, and it was quite a lot. Either one year or 18 months, and I think that was combined income. That was just to ensure the mortgage could still be paid for a while if we both lost our jobs.
I'm personally planning for an exit strategy which will see me working for myself in about 6 months time. I have roughly one year's take-home pay and will ideally have 18-24 months by the time I quit.
Re: “I thought I could ship at least 700 units to stay in business”
#167Earlier 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…
I was in Cluj last year and was surprised to see an ad in the street saying "Are you a coder? Living in Floresti (a neigbothood)? Come send us a resume!". Salaries are low compared to the rest of Europe (and the US). But it sounds easy to get a tech job there.
Afaik Romania's IT is doing very well thanks to outsourcing. Oracle moved a big chunk of stuff there. Education is alright, salaries are low, timezone is European and authorities are accommodating; if you can get over the language barrier somehow, you get a good bang for your buck, probably better than in more expensive Czech or Poland. The country is hungry, so to speak; it's the new frontier of labour-cost arbitrage. Their only challenges are political stability and corruption.
Re: “I thought I could ship at least 700 units to stay in business”
#168The target market is tricky. I'm in my early thirties and I feel too young to get any nostalgia from this stuff. Also I've noticed that as people age, they get less exited about wasting their time on games and more willing to spend money for something useful. So your target market is actually getting trickier as time passes. But how about this: There are probably around 50 000 people in Romania starting a business ev…
>If you catch 1% of those people,
https://successfulsoftware.net/2013/03/11/the-1-percent-fall...
Re: “I thought I could ship at least 700 units to stay in business”
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure that it is. 600k total I might believe someone got in the bay area for total comp, but for base salary? You'd have to be on the 1% of the 1% of devs to get that salary. It is by no means a common salary in even the US, much less the world
80% base, 20% bonus. Cyber security practice leadership (not software development).
Previous post said 600k base?
Re: “I thought I could ship at least 700 units to stay in business”
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is called "targeting a niche" and makes sense if you can't compete against those big marketing budgets. Even the glam metal niche is still alive: hairmetalheaven.co.uk
Nothing wrong with targeting a niche, IF the niche is willing to pay a hefty sum for their needs. In this case he sold 90 copies on Steam, I think that every pixel art dungeon crawler fanatic on Steam has a copy now.
It's not a hefty sum at all, though. £5 (or the dollar equivalent) is nothing for a game aimed at a niche. If it's good enough, those 90 people would probably have paid a lot more, maybe 2 or even 4 times as much. The real issue though, I think, is that niche markets require recurring payments. So, as others have said, you either release a lot of games (or sequels) targeting that niche, or you move to some kind of subscription model, but that's very difficult with an indie game.