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

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

#91

Post by zanny »

imtringued wrote: post #84
zanny wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Godot. You know, the 15 year old totally free engine of 30,000 commits 2.5 million LOCs that also does pretty much everything.

What I noticed is that it's actually much harder to use Godot than expected. Yes it does significantly reduce the amount of code you have to write for your game but it opens up questions of how to structure your project because the scene editor doesn't actually match how I would make my own games if all I had was SDL2. For example if you just straight up write code to add nodes to the scene graph it will create a dis…

It does happen in Unity and Unreal too when you strictly work in the visual editor without writing much code.

It also happens in Qt and similar WYSIWYG visual editors where they often cannot render full dynamic content in the editors. But in all those cases you can just write everything in code without using the visual tools, and you can do that with Godot as well.

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

#92

Post by zarfius »

didibus wrote: post #47

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 mov…

Thanks for reading!

I don't know if I'd still feel like quitting but I would have more money so that would be nice.

Joking aside, it's really hard to say how I'd feel. 5 years is a long time and if I'd been able to put more money back into the project the story would have been very different.

In any case, I've grown a lot since I started that project and I'm ready to spend the next 5 years on something new. Hopefully more financially sustainable.

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

#93

Post by cableshaft »

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…

We dabbled with container gardening for the first time this year (just growing some plants out of pots that are sitting on our patio table). Our broccoli, spinach, and cilantro plants were failures, but our red pepper and basil plants are doing pretty well.

We harvested a bit of our basil again today and put it on a pizza we made, and it tastes amazing. That has made all the effort worth it.

We might try expanding our gardening efforts next year, but I'm not entirely sure of that. We'll at least keep the basil going indefinitely, just bring it inside during the winter, and plant more peppers next year, but not sure if I want to graduate to making a full garden yet.

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

#94

Post by cableshaft »

dillonmckay wrote: post #7
macspoofing wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a side project. OP mentions he has a full-time job ... also, is marriage contingent on an income level?

I think more along the lines of having a partner in a healthy relationship requires some time put forth, which unless the partner is pair programming, time is not being spent on development efforts.

Find a partner that has creative hobbies. My wife knits and writes, and I also write and design/code games/apps. We both need time to work on things, so it works out well for the most part (less so when she was in a creative slump and only wanted to watch TV every night for several months).

I also can do routine coding while the TV is on (doesn't require a lot of thinking, just typing it up and testing for minor bugs), so I can still make some progress during that, but it's less.

Granted I do have to spend more time on the relationship/taking care of dogs than when I just lived by myself, so I'm less productive than I used to be, but I still get to work on things.

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

#95

Post by zarfius »

imtringued wrote: post #81

I'm really confused. The goal is making money yet there has not been a single attempt at monetization. Patreon is basically equivalent to donations. There is no obligation to pay you. Your highest tier is $5 a month. Even with hundreds of backers you're barely going to earn anything worth the effort. You could have easily added a much higher tier that charged at least something like $40 a month for support prioritiza…

Thanks for reading!

In hindsight I totally agree with you. Unfortunately when I started the project I wasn't in that mindset. It started as a passion project, mostly an experiment in building an audience around something I enjoyed creating.

More recently I've been getting some help to understand the things I did wrong and to start with the business strategy.

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

#96

Post by dpcan »

bdowling wrote: post #77
dpcan wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a game reach about $600 per day in revenue for a few months way back in 2010. Overall I think it made around $100K, and another game made about $30K. So, even though I was making money, I still wanted out. The reasons came down to those listed below: 1) Taxes. I wonder if it's easier now, but back then, I had to manually pay individual counties in my state, I had to pay individual states, and and then there wer…

> 1) Taxes. What taxes are you talking about? You mentioned that you were selling through app stores, which I assume handled sales taxes for you in the few cases when they may be required. Your business income taxes would be the same as any business in your city/county/state/country. What else is there?

Google Play is starting to remit taxes by state, but they haven’t always done this. It was/is up to the seller. And if you sell with PayPal or something on your own site, check all the laws of where your product is being downloaded, you’ll be surprised. My accountant ruined my year that year.

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

#97

Post by dpcan »

gentleman11 wrote: post #54
dpcan wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a game reach about $600 per day in revenue for a few months way back in 2010. Overall I think it made around $100K, and another game made about $30K. So, even though I was making money, I still wanted out. The reasons came down to those listed below: 1) Taxes. I wonder if it's easier now, but back then, I had to manually pay individual counties in my state, I had to pay individual states, and and then there wer…

What was the game? Could you elaborate on your release model for the $100k game? Any website or blog posts? - a solo indie dev several months in

I’m not sure if I want to share the titles, but the games were in the sports category. First of their kind on Android Market before it became Google Play. They were really feature heavy and bug-free. One of them sat at top 3 in Android Market and Google Play sports category for several months. Then about 10 of the top 50 games were all the exact same type of game.

My second game was more of a golf game, and I knew there was competition, but I put a “play my other games” link in the free version of my most popular game which had about 3 million free downloads and that propelled sales.

No blog or twitter. Just placement in the Google Play Store and having been first of their kind.

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

#98

Post by gcheong »

imtringued wrote: post #81

I'm really confused. The goal is making money yet there has not been a single attempt at monetization. Patreon is basically equivalent to donations. There is no obligation to pay you. Your highest tier is $5 a month. Even with hundreds of backers you're barely going to earn anything worth the effort. You could have easily added a much higher tier that charged at least something like $40 a month for support prioritiza…

Yeah, I wish my failures were nearly this successful :). That said it seems like a harder job to monetize an open source project that mainly works as an enhancement to a main open source project that itself does not appear to be heavily monetized and I wonder if that contributed to some extent in this case.

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

#99

Post by dpcan »

qes wrote: post #86
HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I live in a totally different universe, but it's really hard for me to consider a software product that grossed $100k to be a "mediocre success."

In my universe, I make that (net even, not gross) in half a year with essentially zero responsibility for marketing, taxes, customer support, etc. - nobody can realistically steal my work and cut into my wages with it - far less stress - and I keep making that over and over again every 6 months without having to do anything really that new or different. In comparison, a game that grossed $100k, which I have to pay se…

Do you have a game or other kind of app?

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

#100

Post by dpcan »

dstick wrote: post #82
HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I live in a totally different universe, but it's really hard for me to consider a software product that grossed $100k to be a "mediocre success."

Hehe same here but, the poster mentioned 2010 and total revenue. If it’s $100.000 in 1 year, then sure! That would probably have potential for growth as well. This didn’t read like that :) A revenue of 100.000 spread over 2 years wouldn’t be enough to support me and my family. Living in a Western Europe country. I’d prefer freelancing (or a job) for income in that scenario, over making ends meet with a software produ…

I think the first $70-80k were in the first year, then I made about 60 from games over the following 2 years.... if my memory is correct, and I think it is.
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