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What I Learned About Failing from My 5 Year Indie Game Dev Project

dylanwilson.net

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Re: What I Learned About Failing from My 5 Year Indie Game Dev Project

#41

Post by gfodor »

baxtr wrote: post #14
temporama1 wrote: post #5

> the downside of adding more features is that it becomes increasingly time intensive to fix bugs, update demos, deal with pull requests and respond to questions. Thibaut Duplessis, creator of Lichess, talks about this in a talk he gave (YouTube somewhere). He says that he's very reluctant to add new features due to the huge cost. The feature must be something very special to overcome the cost.

People totally forget that new features add maintenance costs later. And I’m not only talking about business folks here but also devs. Regarding adding features, I like the approach here: https://www.defmacro.org/2013/09/26/products.html

This is a solid post - I would say tho that sometimes the right way to view product development is through the lens of media. The bucketing approach in the article breaks down somewhat if you are not directly targeting solving a problem, but creating a medium for people to solve problems using their own creativity. So the question of features reduces down to how far the feature enhances the reach of the medium, not if they are (together or in aggregate) game changers wrt solving problems, because you as the product designer are not in then business of solving the problem, the customer is.

Re: What I Learned About Failing from My 5 Year Indie Game Dev Project

#42

Post by hhas01 »

tomxor wrote: post #39
hhas01 wrote: post #32

Earlier 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…

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…

For small personal projects, I think a fair rule of thumb is: is anyone else using it? Once that answer turns to yes, you need to get your exit plan in place.

And +1 for failing fast. It is failing slow that’s the disaster.

Re: What I Learned About Failing from My 5 Year Indie Game Dev Project

#43

Post by gfodor »

hhas01 wrote: post #40
gfodor wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You said technology is the least important part - not that it’s less important than sales or marketing.

Re: What I Learned About Failing from My 5 Year Indie Game Dev Project

#44

Post by bcrosby95 »

baxtr wrote: post #14
temporama1 wrote: post #5

> the downside of adding more features is that it becomes increasingly time intensive to fix bugs, update demos, deal with pull requests and respond to questions. Thibaut Duplessis, creator of Lichess, talks about this in a talk he gave (YouTube somewhere). He says that he's very reluctant to add new features due to the huge cost. The feature must be something very special to overcome the cost.

People totally forget that new features add maintenance costs later. And I’m not only talking about business folks here but also devs. Regarding adding features, I like the approach here: https://www.defmacro.org/2013/09/26/products.html

Yes, it's because people tend to think of features linearly. Eg "let's add one more feature". But since they tend to interact the complexity of the project grows multiplicatively.

Re: What I Learned About Failing from My 5 Year Indie Game Dev Project

#45

Post by didibus »

mrlala wrote: post #28
fourseventy wrote: post #25

Game engines is a really tough market to compete in given Unity and Unreal are now basically free. When I built the game that I launched on Steam I made my own game engine with the idea that I would open source it. The engine is now open source but when people ask about it I recommend they just use Unity instead.

Also Godot being 100% free, and while I haven't used it crazy extensively the 2d portion I have used it for was amazing.

Yup, and now also Defold engine and Amazon Lumberyard as well.

Re: What I Learned About Failing from My 5 Year Indie Game Dev Project

#46

Post by cortesoft »

tomxor wrote: post #39
hhas01 wrote: post #32

Earlier 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…

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…

If you are expecting your side project to support you, it isn't a side project

Re: What I Learned About Failing from My 5 Year Indie Game Dev Project

#47

Post by didibus »

I'm wondering if he'd still feel like quitting had it been making ton of money.

One thing I've noticed is any passion project that becomes too much like work starts to feel like a chore and the passion for it disappears. I don't think making money off of it would change that.

I've learned that when I do side projects, I need to think of it as having fun and playing. And with that, you accept to stop something and move on to something else as soon as the enjoyment is gone, and maybe come back to it later if the interest shows up again. It's hard, because you can let this feeling of "failure" creep in, like you haven't finished anything, or accomplished any of the projects you were excited about. But if you accept that your goal isn't to actually get anything accomplished, but only to entertain yourself and have fun doing things you're interested in, it helps with that, and makes the whole thing much more healthy.

Re: What I Learned About Failing from My 5 Year Indie Game Dev Project

#48

Post by tomxor »

cortesoft wrote: post #46
tomxor wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If you are expecting your side project to support you, it isn't a side project

Yes that's my point, but also that I can see how in the transition that distinction can be lost on the originator.

Re: What I Learned About Failing from My 5 Year Indie Game Dev Project

#49

Post by nonbirithm »

hhas01 wrote: post #32
skizm wrote: post #23

Does 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…

I mean, I'm also working on a pseudo-game engine, which isn't general purpose but specialized for the primary goal of being able to mod this already existing game, but monetization of it beyond the level of "donate if you want to" would be impractical, in my opinion. The original game is freeware so charging for usage to unlock features upfront leaves a bad taste for me. I primarily work on it because I enjoy putting things together and can see tangible progress towards my goal of being feature-compatible with the original. At the point that working on it starts feeling like a job, I'd quit immediately.

If I'm trying to make money off such a side project "quit whenever you want" isn't sustainable. But that isn't one of my goals. I just want to enjoy building things and give the project back to the community, and I'm lucky to have a separate source of income to accomplish that. If nobody cares, then that's fine. The time I spent puzzling over the problems I was facing was a more interesting use of my time for me than sitting around all day watching YouTube, anyway. Also, I at least believe I'm getting somewhere with my project still, so I still have motivation to keep working on it.

Maybe there's some confusion over the term "side project" which could mean "a thing someone developed in off hours that they're intending to bootstrap into a sustainable business," but it could also mean "some person's hobby."

But the fact that I currently have no way of monetizing this means I'll have to work on it in my spare time, meaning it will take that much longer to get to a point where I can declare it's shipped. Maybe I'll lose interest before that point. But to me that's perfectly fine and nothing to become gloomy over if it doesn't work out. Though, to be honest I might not be saying this if my project had users who would be frustrated with me for stepping away from working on it, but the reality is that it's so much work for one person to accomplish and at times it's draining to push forward on it every day, despite what I get out of working on it.

Re: What I Learned About Failing from My 5 Year Indie Game Dev Project

#50

Post by nonbirithm »

slfnflctd wrote: post #21
komali2 wrote: post #9

It's only a failure if you judge success by monthly income. I'm not saying that's not a good way to measure success, just pointing out that it doesn't have to be the only measure. A therapist told me this recently when I was struggling to find meaning in life. Success can be tons of stars on GitHub - I would feel very good if I had positively benefited that many people. I think a major downside of capitalism is how i…

Backyard gardening is riddled with inefficiencies in every imaginable way, and is not for everyone. The only tangible benefits I see are for people who receive positive benefits from the actual experience of doing the hard work and somehow use it to benefit others (directly or indirectly). If you're not sure that applies to you, stay away. Same goes for a lot of other things. Sometimes you have no choice but to do st…

Maybe the stuff doesn't universally suck, but would be soul-crushingly boring for one person yet completely engrossing for another. It might not change the fact that doesn't help anyone, but I would say there's no need to say it's always the goal to be productive in working towards something or have it be helpful to others in the end. Sometimes I just enjoy building things in itself.
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