What I Learned About Failing from My 5 Year Indie Game Dev Project • Hacker News Board

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

#111

Post by timavr » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 4:21 AM UTC

It depends on the mindset. From my point of view, it is a huge success, because now when you apply for normal game jobs, you will massively stand out for creating something that people used and supported it over time. Basically you will have job for life. Most developers can only dream of that outcome.

From business side, I don't think it has anything to do with you. Quite often it is down to luck, ability to predict where market is going next and execution.

It is tough for Monogame C# framework to compete with Unity. Your tool is basically build on top of their Monogame funnel, so if their funnel is tiny, then you screwed. But at the time it is hard to see how it was going to go, because Unity has so many problems and closed source didn't really help.

Number of problems increased exponentially on the Unity side, but it became industry standard, so today if you making games and not using Unity/Unreal and not AAA studio, it is super risky to get funded.

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

#112

Post by zarfius » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 4:53 AM UTC

timavr wrote: post #111

It depends on the mindset. From my point of view, it is a huge success, because now when you apply for normal game jobs, you will massively stand out for creating something that people used and supported it over time. Basically you will have job for life. Most developers can only dream of that outcome. From business side, I don't think it has anything to do with you. Quite often it is down to luck, ability to predict…

Thanks for reading and thanks for the kind comments.

It's true, having this project under my belt has already helped my career in many ways. I'm pretty sure it was a big factor in landing my last job. Not to mention the many hours of practice I put into coding outside my day job.

I never really wanted to compete with Unity but in hindsight I may have been better off piggybacking my library on Unity rather than MonoGame.

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

#113

Post by zarfius » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 5:03 AM UTC

gameswithgo wrote: post #31

thank you for the monogame contributions dylan!

You're welcome. Thanks for reading!

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

#114

Post by zarfius » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 5:14 AM UTC

kabacha wrote: post #33

I'm so perplexed by people like this. You start something with no goal and... Act surprised you hadn't reached some goal?

I had goals. Some of those goals I did reach but having goals and knowing how to reach them are very different things.

Thanks for reading.

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

#115

Post by zarfius » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 5:25 AM UTC

daodedickinson wrote: post #2

How did you get married and afford rent?

I actually have a pretty good day job. I just have a lot of spare time. I'd rather be working on a side project instead of watching Netflix.

Thanks for reading!

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

#116

Post by ido » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 7:11 AM UTC

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #66

dstick wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for sharing! That’s the downside of mediocre success. Too little money to outsource tasks, too much to abandon and allocate your time resources elsewhere. Glad you made the right call and I hope you find another passion project soon!

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."

$100k in revenue is a lot less than $100k in gross salary (let alone net) - probably more like $65k/year which is less than you can earn as a developer as an employee or freelancer (depending on where you are of course, but even here in Berlin you'd earn more than that and in US tech hubs you could earn 3x what you'd earn for the same job in Berlin).

If they are really senior & in a US tech hubs total comp from a FAANG could be almost 10x that.

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

#117

Post by looping__lui » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 8:51 AM UTC

dpcan wrote: post #102

looping__lui wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for sharing! Regarding 1): I can recommend the combination “Fastspring” for order processing and taxes (nothing to worry about and super easy setup) and LimeLM for software protection; dynamic license key generation is super easy in conjunction w/ Fastspring :-)

I’m looking at Fastspring because of the tax remittances they do. I don’t think a lot of developers know their actual tax requirements when selling software. A good accountant will surprise a lot of devs :/

Oh. Accountants surprise regular businessmen plenty as well...

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

#118

Post by citizenpaul » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 2:02 PM UTC

makeee wrote: post #18

citizenpaul wrote: post #8

My 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…

My experience has shown me that tools that help others build faster can be quite profitable. Currently make my living from one such tool and most of my customers are indie hackers ( https://divjoy.com ).

No offense the product looks cool but this is basically just WIX for for hackers. Basically its a market share shaver from another successful product. Rather than a builder assistance tool. Either way I'm glad you have success with it. (I might use it one day)

I'm not saying you can never make money but as someone else put it, there are a lot more corpses than success stories in this field.

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

#119

Post by kabacha » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 2:03 PM UTC

zarfius wrote: post #114

kabacha wrote: post #33

I'm so perplexed by people like this. You start something with no goal and... Act surprised you hadn't reached some goal?

I had goals. Some of those goals I did reach but having goals and knowing how to reach them are very different things. Thanks for reading.

Sorry didn't mean to offend you. However I'd urge you to stay optimistic — you made a great thing that inspired and taught a lot of people and probably had a lot of fun while making it! Not everything needs to be measured in shekels.

The only mistake you seem to have made is that you didn't quit soon enough which is a story as old as the idea of collaborative project itself and I think people will continue making it.

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

#120

Post by makeee » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 4:15 PM UTC

citizenpaul wrote: post #118

makeee wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience has shown me that tools that help others build faster can be quite profitable. Currently make my living from one such tool and most of my customers are indie hackers ( https://divjoy.com ).

No offense the product looks cool but this is basically just WIX for for hackers. Basically its a market share shaver from another successful product. Rather than a builder assistance tool. Either way I'm glad you have success with it. (I might use it one day) I'm not saying you can never make money but as someone else put it, there are a lot more corpses than success stories in this field.

I'll happily take "WIX for hackers" :)