191–200 of 346 posts
Why so many famous actors and musicians come from wealthy families? Because they can afford to travel from auditioning to auditioning and promote themselves non-stop.
Why do so many prestigious companies hire young only from wealthy families? Because they have non paid internships. Poor can't afford to get in.
When you can't afford to lose, risk taking requires real courage.
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When I started my company like 10 years ago, I also had savings for only like 4 months. However my plan was not to do games specifically but anything that pays the bills. Though I made one game as well but more like for fun and training, not for money. My various products did little money, though I had to look for gigs quite often to support the development. After 1-2 years I made enough money from the products so th…
I'm curious what kind of work you found and where you found it? If you don't mind telling.
During that time app stores were a relatively new thing, so the products I was developing were apps. They started making a decent revenue after 2 years if I remember right. The first year I didn't make about any money. I had very low-cost lifestyle, and cheap rent in a tiny apartment, which helped a lot. If I would have kids or some expensive hobbies it would have been much, much more difficult.
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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 .
Quitting your job with only 4 month worth of savings, with a new mortgage, to enter an industry known for its oversaturation, extreme competition, and high luck element for indies ? That's insane. Maybe I'm just risk-adverse. That said, I think he actually succeeded, despite appearances. Managing to release a working game in 3 month, that actually got sales, is a feat in itself. The game will keep trickling sales, if…
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…
A million things can happen that delay payment and sales coming in. A year to keep personal and businesses cost running is a good and sane minimum that also keeps your mind from the worries you get when suddenly alteady 2,5 of these 4 months are gone and another expected positive sales/payment event didn’t happen for whatever, maybe accidental, reason.
(Says a 10 year running freelancer who started with 12 months savings and currently runs on only 5 for some events in the past 2 years - but luckily with good project and customer base)
Reading this post saddens me, I think if he linked to a profile of his skillset and provided a way to contact him in the article he could easily land a few consulting gigs until he can stand on his feet again. We have a group of strong developers here and many of us are looking for personal, i.e. I need people both to hire permanently but could also use a consultant with matching skillset for shorter term to back me…
You should be careful with that -- you can get nastier IP agreements through consulting firms than you might at full-time employment.
Similarly, even if it's not in the contract, you probably want your contracting work to be fairly orthogonal to your side projects, so you don't get sued for something by a client. It never looks good if you work on say, a networking project, and then a month later, your networking related product appears on the market.
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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.
Quitting your job with only 4 month worth of savings, with a new mortgage, to enter an industry known for its oversaturation, extreme competition, and high luck element for indies ? That's insane. Maybe I'm just risk-adverse. That said, I think he actually succeeded, despite appearances. Managing to release a working game in 3 month, that actually got sales, is a feat in itself. The game will keep trickling sales, if…
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…
> But if having 6 or 12 months worth of savings is a requirement, then you can rule out just about everyone except rich kids and upper middle class teenagers.
If you’re a good Software developer and have no idea how to save some 20-30k bucks in 2-3 years for your plan of your own business you’re doing something wrong.
Like you are bad at contract negotiations, no good contact network in the industry to find someone willing to pay for good people, have too high expenses, too low saving potential, or, you’re just not as good of a dev as you think.
Any of those should be reason enough for you to think again about your plans.
And don’t hate me for being honest, better be honest to yourself...
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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...
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GDC: How to Survive in Gamedev for Eleven Years Without a Hit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmwbYl6f11c TL;DR: prepare for this to happen, and build a long tail of games/sales. I don't want to sound mean but I don't think anyone should buy the game because they feel sorry and he is begging. I can't condone it. It has become trendy for people to make GoFundMe campaigns or write articles begging people to help. Assum…
It doesn't seem like a business story really, it seems like an artist / craftsman wanted to practice his craft and ran into commercial realities. It's a starving artist situation. There wasn't any market analysis, financial analysis, etc upfront. He wanted to make a game, and he did, so he should be commended for that. It wasn't really a business venture.
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…
>>Lessons learn: don't quit your job until you have some sale volume. Don't quit your job until your side gig is fully self-sufficient and you are being paid enough to cover bills/food/necessities and you have a few months saved up for emergencies and such. If you can't work 40 hours per week at a basic job (and squeeze in a few hours of at least thinking/reading about your side project, if not actually coding/writin…
60 hours per week is far more feasible (if you have few obligations outside of work), but I think that once that number starts increasing the number of people physically capable of working that long is going to drop very sharply.