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A Dark Room: From Sabbatical Year to $800k

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Re: A Dark Room: From Sabbatical Year to $800k

#231

Post by purplethinking »

sumedh wrote: post #180
purplethinking wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think more people would regret it if they knew what they were giving up, but most would probably not make that calculation. If he had kept his corporate job and spent the initial $30k a year he could have retired early only 10 years later. Maybe less if he'd be willing to live very frugally. Then he would be free to build as many apps and games as he wanted, giving him many chances at getting a big hit. I'm in this…

> he could have retired early only 10 years later. That is a flawed argument. 10 years later you might not have the same drive/ambition which you have right now.

Maybe, but sounds a bit like future discounting to me. I'm just presenting my dilemma, and I don't think the solution is to be idle for 10 years and then switch to entrepeneurship overnight. More like work a normal job and try to get stuff going on the side, but don't risk your life savings for a lottery ticket.

Re: A Dark Room: From Sabbatical Year to $800k

#232

Post by wsc981 »

pinchharmonic wrote: post #145
k__ wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To the library. Lived in a shared flat. lol

So basically you just studied/worked on projects for a year, lived very cheaply in a shared flat, cooked your own food? Worth it do you think?

For that kind of money, I would rather go to a different country as well. Like Thailand. Find a nice place in a city with a co-working space. If you'd be ok eating asian food, life can be very cheap (1,5 USD a meal depending on where you buy the food). A nice apartment + gym + swimming pool can be rented pretty cheap as well, maybe starting around 300 USD a month and more expensive depending on the size of the apartment.

Re: A Dark Room: From Sabbatical Year to $800k

#233

Post by purplethinking »

cvaidya1986 wrote: post #18
purplethinking wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think more people would regret it if they knew what they were giving up, but most would probably not make that calculation. If he had kept his corporate job and spent the initial $30k a year he could have retired early only 10 years later. Maybe less if he'd be willing to live very frugally. Then he would be free to build as many apps and games as he wanted, giving him many chances at getting a big hit. I'm in this…

Moonlight unless your co owns your IP? Post traction go independent?

Seems the only reasonable option to have the cake and eat it too.

Re: A Dark Room: From Sabbatical Year to $800k

#234

Post by no_wave »

throwawayyy9876 wrote: post #181

I am curious as to why some people think being paid $140,000 a year is 'disgusting'? I live in Australia so the comparison is a bit different, but here electricians and carpenters will very frequently make over $130,000 a year. Traffic controllers can make up to $180,000 a year, which is an unskilled job with only two days training [1]. In the prime of their careers, dentists, lawyers and doctors can commonly make ov…

Many programmers hit their peak salary very fast. Making $140k a year for 35-40 hours of work a week Continuing to make that $140k 20 years later is also insane, but in the opposite direction, but that's not the situation the post was describing. As a programmer you're fantastically highly paid at the beginning of your career but often not at the middle and end.

Re: A Dark Room: From Sabbatical Year to $800k

#235

Post by tootie »

Rapzid wrote: post #149
sremani wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this every day, people take the gross income number to the bank. In software world, the operational costs are less compared to other domains, but there are still costs and taxes. Apple taking 30% cut is insane.

YESSS.. By itself it's just business right? The price of doing business. Don't like it? Go somewhere else. But that somewhere else is Android and Google ALSO charges 30%? Hmmm.. This duopoly situation isn't really good developers. Apple taking 30% cut and tossing it on their pile of 250b in cash; that's a depressing image.

It's interesting because Android is decidedly not locked in to Google's Play Store, yet it's entirely dominant in the Android app market regardless. Amazon's App Store is still kicking and side-loading is easy enough, but seems like very few users take advantage.

Re: A Dark Room: From Sabbatical Year to $800k

#236

Post by ajkjk »

baby wrote: post #214
ajkjk wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those numbers are ridiculous. I saved up about $100k in 3 years at a tech job and I haven't worked in the last two years on that, no problem (living in a not-inexpensive US city with a car, also).

What do you do with 100k of savings? What's next?

Spend it on rent. Work again when it's dwindling.

Re: A Dark Room: From Sabbatical Year to $800k

#237

Post by krutzger »

crummy wrote: post #229
krutzger wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it looks like a half-loaded web page on a nexus (which is the reference device for the platform) then something is wrong. Please don't take offence, I'm just trying to explain why it did so bad on android. edit: you don't need to test your app on 1500 devices. They are all the same, if you plan for it only two devices (big/small screen) should suffice. Source: former app developer.

Are you sure that's not just what the game is supposed to look like?

Nope, the iOS version looks different (e.g. buttons on main page are not off center)

Re: A Dark Room: From Sabbatical Year to $800k

#238

Post by tootie »

matt_wulfeck wrote: post #131

> So here I am with a disgusting $140,000 in total compensation. A sea of cubicals, souless sheep that want nothing more than to do their time and go home. We need to learn the art and skill of finding joy in any circumstance. This detached, negative view of your coworkers does nothing but signal your inability or unwillingness to become something apart from your selfish, personal desires. This entire generation is l…

I'd you'd have to back up that statement implying that this is somehow unique to this generation.

Re: A Dark Room: From Sabbatical Year to $800k

#239

Post by krutzger »

briandear wrote: post #220
amirrajan wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’d be surprised at how many variations exist out there. Source: app developer who has had 300k downloads of his Android port and has dealt with death threats from people trying to run his game on a device that has the processing power of a toaster.

I can feel your pain. I get aggressive complaints from my users when their 5 year old Android can’t use modern video codecs because they can’t upgrade the OS. Somehow that’s my fault. (This is for secure video chat FWIW.) With iOS, it’s a simple as ensuring their OS is current. Far, far less pain dealing with iOS and Mac users than anything with Android. That isn’t a complaint against Android per se — just a business…

I think ADR with its simplistic graphics should run on any android (even a "toaster").

But your app seems more demanding, can't you limit it to newer versions of android? Many banking apps for example require users to be on 6.0 or better.

Re: A Dark Room: From Sabbatical Year to $800k

#240

Post by banderman »

cableshaft wrote: post #209
amirrajan wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mad props to you. Email me and we’ll exchange war stories.

Thanks for writing this. I got out of the game industry myself after working as a developer on 8 games in a row that failed to make hardly any money at all, for three different companies (two startups, one small business). I've been working on corporate software for 3 years now, and while my finances are back on track, it's gotten harder and harder to stay motivated and I've been really tempted to take another stab a…

With board games a lot of the margin goes to the publisher. It's hard to be independent as just a designer. Massively successful games companies like Cards Against Humanity vertically integrate and are even handling their shipping logistics at this point: https://www.blackbox.cool/
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