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Confessions of a failed indie developer

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Re: Confessions of a failed indie developer

#51

Post by JanneVee »

tieTYT wrote: post #40

"When I say I started building a game, this isn’t strictly true – what I actually built was a graphics engine." This is really surprising to me. If you google for how to make your own game, the first thing you see is usually something telling you NOT to do this. I don't understand how someone in the gaming industry for 13 years could miss this advice.

From the paragraph preceding about the graphics engine: "My fellow indie friends advised me I should start small, perhaps making a puzzle game for iOS/Android using Unity and building the company from there. Arrogant as I was, I completely ignored this advice..."

Re: Confessions of a failed indie developer

#52

Post by usea »

pjungwir wrote: post #38

I really enjoyed and appreciated this article. So many harsh comments! Yes, what he did was foolish, but thank god for foolishness. And these things are easier to see from outside and after the fact than when you're following a dream. I've had a lifelong dream of building my own game, and I'll be sad if I die without trying. I'm way less prepared than the author. I've done web dev for 15 years. My last game was an AS…

I've also read Game Engine Architecture, and I've written a (much less sophisticated) engine on a small team in school. Unless your goal is to make a game engine rather than a game, it would be the height of foolishness to build a game engine.

The main takeaways of the article are "have a business model" and "don't build your own engine." It adds years to the process, it's extremely difficult to get right, and the end result will be worse than using existing tools.

If your goal was to make a web app, would your first step be to write a garbage collector and a database management system? Would you invent a templating language, and build a parsing engine for it in C? Would you think it responsible to pay a web developer a salary to do those things if their goal is to just make a website? If not, then it'd pretty foolish to pay yourself to make a game engine.

Re: Confessions of a failed indie developer

#53

Post by matthew-wegner »

tieTYT wrote: post #42
marijn wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you should probably not think in terms of the release that ends the project Yes. I want to stress this some more. I know several people who are/were working on big ambitious projects in a kind of stealth mode, citing concerns that their idea will be stolen, or emphasizing that it isn't "ready yet". I suspect this is usually rationalizing a fear of criticism. A single-person personal project shouldn't be worked on i…

Do you have any advice on how to put it in front of users to get feedback? Friends are good for a while, but they're biased. Just go on IRC and ask a few folks?

Coffeeshop, Craigslist posting, take it to local game events (IGDA meetings/etc), contact local game schools and bring it there for testing (game schools are everywhere)...

Re: Confessions of a failed indie developer

#54

Post by eropple »

unz wrote: post #10

Doesn't this guy realize that asking for money they way he did with flex funding defies logic. If you only raise some of the money, how were expecting to finish the project, and what about the people who gave you money - you just scammed them. He still hasn't paid them back yet, instead saying he owes them a game! Trying not to be harsh, but this guy is obviously clueless - built his own game engine - maybe he should…

> Can you not open your eyes to the multitude of problems that exist out there, in the REAL WORLD, and fix those?

I am minimizing my risks in ways the OP is not, but I fully intend to transition to game development full time because building things that make people happy is of value to me. A paucity of art that communicates what I want to communicate, that entertains in the way I wish to entertain and be entertained, is a problem.

As for you: trivializing art is a sign of a deeper misunderstanding of the world than anything this guy has managed. So be less of a douchebag. You might even be a happier person for it.

Re: Confessions of a failed indie developer

#55

Post by pjungwir »

usea wrote: post #52
pjungwir wrote: post #38

I really enjoyed and appreciated this article. So many harsh comments! Yes, what he did was foolish, but thank god for foolishness. And these things are easier to see from outside and after the fact than when you're following a dream. I've had a lifelong dream of building my own game, and I'll be sad if I die without trying. I'm way less prepared than the author. I've done web dev for 15 years. My last game was an AS…

I've also read Game Engine Architecture, and I've written a (much less sophisticated) engine on a small team in school. Unless your goal is to make a game engine rather than a game, it would be the height of foolishness to build a game engine. The main takeaways of the article are "have a business model" and "don't build your own engine." It adds years to the process, it's extremely difficult to get right, and the en…

You and tieTYT have convinced me. :-) But when I worked at a dev shop around 2000-2005 we did have our own app server (begun in the 90s), with its own templating language (two actually), its own "NoSQL" database, and its own scripting language (all operators and function calls in Reverse Polish Notation). And it was written in C. It was pretty fun to work on it, actually. But there's no way I'd build something like that today. And I think my desire to make games is stronger than my desire to make a game engine.

Re: Confessions of a failed indie developer

#56

Post by tinco »

primaryobjects wrote: post #39
pseudometa wrote: post #20

Are there any more stories like this of failed indie devleoper retrospectives?

I say this with humor, but this weekend, I took part in an indie 48-hour game-jam contest. I created the game, Fire Starter http://dummysoftware.com/games/firestarter Created it with HTML5, targeting the desktop, rather than mobile. Didn't win, but had a lot of fun. That's kinda like the op's story compressed into a time-span of a few hours, sort of. Btw, I recommend game-jams to anyone interested in indie game devel…

He participated in Ludum Dare (ludumdare.com), as did I, it's always a blast. I think you can't be thinking of going indie without having participated at least once sucessfully in a ludum dare (either in the jam or the compo, doesn't really matter)

Re: Confessions of a failed indie developer

#57

Post by usea »

pjungwir wrote: post #55
usea wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've also read Game Engine Architecture, and I've written a (much less sophisticated) engine on a small team in school. Unless your goal is to make a game engine rather than a game, it would be the height of foolishness to build a game engine. The main takeaways of the article are "have a business model" and "don't build your own engine." It adds years to the process, it's extremely difficult to get right, and the en…

You and tieTYT have convinced me. :-) But when I worked at a dev shop around 2000-2005 we did have our own app server (begun in the 90s), with its own templating language (two actually), its own "NoSQL" database, and its own scripting language (all operators and function calls in Reverse Polish Notation). And it was written in C. It was pretty fun to work on it, actually. But there's no way I'd build something like t…

I enjoy inventing things and completing challenges. I think this trait is common among engineers. Unfortunately it doesn't make much practical sense in a lot of situations. I have entered Ludum Dare multiple times and each time I failed to finish a game because I end up spending the whole weekend writing a cool particle system or whatever. When I'm left to my own devices without planning, who knows what kind of thing I'll end up making.

The decision to invent should be made intentionally, rather than impulsively. If your goal is to have fun, then have at it. But if your goal is to launch a product, it's not prudent.

Re: Confessions of a failed indie developer

#58

Post by marijn »

tieTYT wrote: post #42
marijn wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you should probably not think in terms of the release that ends the project Yes. I want to stress this some more. I know several people who are/were working on big ambitious projects in a kind of stealth mode, citing concerns that their idea will be stolen, or emphasizing that it isn't "ready yet". I suspect this is usually rationalizing a fear of criticism. A single-person personal project shouldn't be worked on i…

Do you have any advice on how to put it in front of users to get feedback? Friends are good for a while, but they're biased. Just go on IRC and ask a few folks?

Depends entirely on the project, of course. But putting up demos, preferably as web pages, if that's not possible as a binary, tends to be a great way to show the world what you're doing. Open-source of course makes it easier (just throw it on github). Subreddits, irc, HN, and forums make great channels to get people to look at something. Another good approach, but that only works if you're near a big population center, is to find a relevant user group and do a talk there.

Re: Confessions of a failed indie developer

#59

Post by ChuckMcM »

It is always interesting to see how individuals come at the process of creating something like this. When you combine this with the guy who created a game for his kid using paper and refrigerator magnets to cover up undiscovered parts you can really see the difference.

One of the coolest game developers I met was working at Maxis but also working on their own game, but hadn't written any code. They had a notebook with sketches of things and notes about mechanics and small essays on conflict and resolution, risk and reward. All of the parts that are essentially a game but not the six-sided die, the game board, the art assets, or the code. It struck me how important it was to design the core of something before designing the moving bits.

That said he also had about a zillion little hacks, one page programs that would do some thing he was imagining and trying to see what that would look like.

Re: Confessions of a failed indie developer

#60

Post by GBKS »

marijn wrote: post #6
sfjailbird wrote: post #4

A couple of observations. You probably shouldn't think that you can get your indie game done in a year, release, and ramp up revenue so fast that you'll soon be self-sustaining. Sounds obvious, but most guys starting out actually believe that there's a chance of it playing out like this. Starry-eyed optimism is probably a precondition for going anywhere near this business in the first place, but it must be tempered a…

> you should probably not think in terms of the release that ends the project Yes. I want to stress this some more. I know several people who are/were working on big ambitious projects in a kind of stealth mode, citing concerns that their idea will be stolen, or emphasizing that it isn't "ready yet". I suspect this is usually rationalizing a fear of criticism. A single-person personal project shouldn't be worked on i…

Reminds me of the story on how "Settlers of Catan" was created.

"Every once in a while, he would bring the new game upstairs to test it out on his family. They would play along, but Teuber could tell that the game wasn't working. Sometimes, in the middle of a match, he would notice his youngest son, Benny, reading a comic under the table. Other times his wife would suddenly remember a load of laundry that needed immediate attention. After each of these sessions, Teuber would haul the game back downstairs for further refinement. He repeated this process over the course of four years..."

http://www.wired.com/gaming/gamingreviews/magazine/17-04/mf_...

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