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What I Learned About Failing from My 5 Year Indie Game Dev Project
31–40 of 128 posts
Re: What I Learned About Failing from My 5 Year Indie Game Dev Project
#32Does the article ever actually mention what he failed at? He developed an open source game engine and... what? Did he expect people to donate to him or something? What was the monetization plan?
“What was the monetization plan?”
From reading the article author’s failure was failing to ask that question of himself. With no clear objective or milestones, the project ate a huge amount of manpower for no material gain and left him thoroughly burnt out.
It doesn’t matter if your project is for-profit or Free. Identify your deliverables, identify your schedule, and never turn a blind-eye to your failures to meet both.
Oh, and never mistake makework for productivity either. If your product isn’t selling, what it doesn’t need is more features. What it does need is better marketing and sales skills. Quite frankly, building the technology part is the least important part of building a successful Product. Being geeks, it’s awfully easy to work on (i.e. fiddle with) the one bit that you’re naturally good at, when what you should be doing is working on all the parts that you’re not.
Re: What I Learned About Failing from My 5 Year Indie Game Dev Project
#33I'm so perplexed by people like this. You start something with no goal and... Act surprised you hadn't reached some goal?
Re: What I Learned About Failing from My 5 Year Indie Game Dev Project
#34My experience is that anything that spending significant amounts of your time on anything that assists others with building their thing is a total waste of time. Tech or otherwise. Those people are mainly doing it with the goal of making money for no one but themselves. The fact that they don't have money already proves that they likely are not good at making money. One of those primary early ways to make money is th…
I am not sure about that. There's this small company called Stripe whose entire business model is about making it easier to make your online store: They don't do anything you couldn't do yourself, but it sure mes it a lot easier. Similarly, in videogames, Epic makes quite a bit of money licensing engines, which, in practice, is all about helping other people build faster. We all built websites and ran companies before AWS, and yet they are also they might be Amazon's best division.
What is difficult in those kinds of businesses is to identify whether there's a real market there, and to convince enough people to try your product. For a new kind of product, you have to easily show large amounts of value, because people are used to get things done without your product.
So I'd not say that it's a waste of time, but it's just a difficult kind of business to enter.
Re: What I Learned About Failing from My 5 Year Indie Game Dev Project
#35[deleted]
Re: What I Learned About Failing from My 5 Year Indie Game Dev Project
#36My experience is that anything that spending significant amounts of your time on anything that assists others with building their thing is a total waste of time. Tech or otherwise. Those people are mainly doing it with the goal of making money for no one but themselves. The fact that they don't have money already proves that they likely are not good at making money. One of those primary early ways to make money is th…
I wouldn't say it's a waste a time, just that in tech industry people have a tendency to overrate "selling shovels in a gold rush" when they have about the same odds of success. ie. Making a successful game vs successful game engine
[deleted]
Re: What I Learned About Failing from My 5 Year Indie Game Dev Project
#37My experience is that anything that spending significant amounts of your time on anything that assists others with building their thing is a total waste of time. Tech or otherwise. Those people are mainly doing it with the goal of making money for no one but themselves. The fact that they don't have money already proves that they likely are not good at making money. One of those primary early ways to make money is th…
I am not sure about that. There's this small company called Stripe whose entire business model is about making it easier to make your online store: They don't do anything you couldn't do yourself, but it sure mes it a lot easier. Similarly, in videogames, Epic makes quite a bit of money licensing engines, which, in practice, is all about helping other people build faster. We all built websites and ran companies befor…
I'm not sure if this is what the parent comment meant, but it seems reasonable that it's not a lucrative path to focus on anyone who doesn't already have a functional business without you. Partnering with that existing coffeeshop can pay off a lot more easily than the dozens of weekend game devs that will probably never make a cent themselves.
Re: What I Learned About Failing from My 5 Year Indie Game Dev Project
#38Does the article ever actually mention what he failed at? He developed an open source game engine and... what? Did he expect people to donate to him or something? What was the monetization plan?
“What was the monetization plan?” From reading the article author’s failure was failing to ask that question of himself. With no clear objective or milestones, the project ate a huge amount of manpower for no material gain and left him thoroughly burnt out. It doesn’t matter if your project is for-profit or Free. Identify your deliverables, identify your schedule, and never turn a blind-eye to your failures to meet b…
Saying the least important part of building a successful product is building the product is nonsensical. The response to the tendency on tech isn’t to generate anti-tech dogma, it’s to recognize its role as one of several key things to focus on.
Re: What I Learned About Failing from My 5 Year Indie Game Dev Project
#39Does the article ever actually mention what he failed at? He developed an open source game engine and... what? Did he expect people to donate to him or something? What was the monetization plan?
“What was the monetization plan?” From reading the article author’s failure was failing to ask that question of himself. With no clear objective or milestones, the project ate a huge amount of manpower for no material gain and left him thoroughly burnt out. It doesn’t matter if your project is for-profit or Free. Identify your deliverables, identify your schedule, and never turn a blind-eye to your failures to meet b…
The thing is... the alluring thing about side projects _is_ not having that clear objective. Most of our jobs are directed by clear objectives, side projects are great for experimentation without clear potential for personal gain (fun, fame or fortune), often you will at least gain a unique experience and learn, which is a good trade for a little time.
Perhaps what happened here is a side project grew into something larger, it's now just a project, and he fell into putting more time and effort into it without making a conscious decision due to popularity - perhaps that's when it can bite you, when you realise you don't enjoy it anymore and it's become one sided.
I think side projects should stay as small as possible unless there looks to be a real potential for both yourself personally and the rest of the world - even then failing fast feels like the best idea.
Re: What I Learned About Failing from My 5 Year Indie Game Dev Project
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
“What was the monetization plan?” From reading the article author’s failure was failing to ask that question of himself. With no clear objective or milestones, the project ate a huge amount of manpower for no material gain and left him thoroughly burnt out. It doesn’t matter if your project is for-profit or Free. Identify your deliverables, identify your schedule, and never turn a blind-eye to your failures to meet b…
Saying the least important part of building a successful product is building the product is nonsensical. The response to the tendency on tech isn’t to generate anti-tech dogma, it’s to recognize its role as one of several key things to focus on.
It’s true though. I’d rather have so-so technology plus great market and marketing than the best technology in the world and sod all ability to sell it. You can always improve the technology later, once you’re generating the revenue to pay for that. But if you don’t have sales you don’t have squat.
Been there, done that, lost the shirt. Lessons learned.