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From throwaway side project to Switch in 2 years: my indie gamedev story

kellsgame.com

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Re: From throwaway side project to Switch in 2 years: my indie gamedev story

#11

Post by japhib »

habibur wrote: post #8

This article doesn't touch it as it's a new game they are developing, but I used to wonder a lot how much are indie game devs making? Is it worth it? Can one expect to earn like a full time job working on it?

Generally very, very little. You can generally take the number of Steam reviews on a game and multiply by 50 to get a rough, ballpark idea of how many sales the game has made. Considering this game has 3 reviews on Steam and costs $6, it’s unlikely the game has made over $1000 on that platform.

That doesn’t mean it’s not worth making games, though! I’ve released two mobile games, still updating the second one, and although they’re a far cry from being profitable vs. the amount of time I’ve put into them, I still find the process and result very fulfilling.

Re: From throwaway side project to Switch in 2 years: my indie gamedev story

#12

Post by japhib »

Congrats on the release OP!

For anyone reading, if you’re a programmer by training, I’d recommend literally any game engine other than Game Maker Studio for creating your game. Unity is a great choice for beginners that lets you program in C#.

Game Maker Studio is specifically designed for people who are NOT programmers.

Re: From throwaway side project to Switch in 2 years: my indie gamedev story

#13

Post by ZiiS »

Rexxar wrote: post #7

It seems the game use some assets from "liberated pixel cup" ( https://lpc.opengameart.org/ ) which are in GPLv3 / CC BY-SA 3.0. Does any one know how viral are this licenses with other assets and the game itself ? I would have avoided to use them for a commercial game personally but I'm maybe mistaken.

GPLv3 is a very strange license to apply to artwork. It is specific to software. However I dont belive the is any intent for it to cover the game using the assets.

Re: From throwaway side project to Switch in 2 years: my indie gamedev story

#14

Post by rtpg »

japhib wrote: post #12

Congrats on the release OP! For anyone reading, if you’re a programmer by training, I’d recommend literally any game engine other than Game Maker Studio for creating your game. Unity is a great choice for beginners that lets you program in C#. Game Maker Studio is specifically designed for people who are NOT programmers.

Unity suffers from being 3d by default (so you're kind of defaulted into "physics-activated 3d world" stuff), having very low discoverability of features, and a lot of googling to land on the Unity forums.

If you're a programmer, there are a couple ways you can experience happiness:

- Try one of the many "2d game library" things. They tend to be limited to playing sound, displaying gfx, and handling input. But if you're a programmer that will at least give you an idea of what is implemented and what isn't.

- Use Unreal with Blueprints. "But I'm a programmer, let me write code!" Trust me, when you are using blueprints you both get a much more discoverable API, and can actually get all the fancy built-in 3d stuff to work. Also if you're not working on something by yourself, suddenly other people can help out a lot.

- Use Game Maker Studio! Being a programmer means you might have some more systems thinking, but ultimately having stuff like tile editors easily means you're not going to spend a month building out your own little tools.

Programming everything from scratch is overrated if you actually want to make something that works. But Unity has a lot of half-baked features and is actually pretty hard to get working nicely for so many things that it can easily end up being a massive source of incidental complexity.

Re: From throwaway side project to Switch in 2 years: my indie gamedev story

#15

Post by privacyking »

japhib wrote: post #11
habibur wrote: post #8

This article doesn't touch it as it's a new game they are developing, but I used to wonder a lot how much are indie game devs making? Is it worth it? Can one expect to earn like a full time job working on it?

Generally very, very little. You can generally take the number of Steam reviews on a game and multiply by 50 to get a rough, ballpark idea of how many sales the game has made. Considering this game has 3 reviews on Steam and costs $6, it’s unlikely the game has made over $1000 on that platform. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth making games, though! I’ve released two mobile games, still updating the second one, and al…

How did you determine that 50x estimate rule?

Re: From throwaway side project to Switch in 2 years: my indie gamedev story

#16

Post by lwilli »

Congrats on completing your game Paul! It was fun reading about your adventure building it, especially how you involved your son. I missed something though: how did it go when you first showed Ben the game? What was his reaction? I think it’d be nice to hear more about that. :)

Re: From throwaway side project to Switch in 2 years: my indie gamedev story

#17

Post by washbrain »

ZiiS wrote: post #13
Rexxar wrote: post #7

It seems the game use some assets from "liberated pixel cup" ( https://lpc.opengameart.org/ ) which are in GPLv3 / CC BY-SA 3.0. Does any one know how viral are this licenses with other assets and the game itself ? I would have avoided to use them for a commercial game personally but I'm maybe mistaken.

GPLv3 is a very strange license to apply to artwork. It is specific to software. However I dont belive the is any intent for it to cover the game using the assets.

Sure. But CC-BY-SA 3.0 is a very standard license to apply to art, and has similar expectations for sharing your game with CC-BY-SA.

Re: From throwaway side project to Switch in 2 years: my indie gamedev story

#18

Post by shinymark »

privacyking wrote: post #15
japhib wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally very, very little. You can generally take the number of Steam reviews on a game and multiply by 50 to get a rough, ballpark idea of how many sales the game has made. Considering this game has 3 reviews on Steam and costs $6, it’s unlikely the game has made over $1000 on that platform. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth making games, though! I’ve released two mobile games, still updating the second one, and al…

How did you determine that 50x estimate rule?

I’m not the prior poster but it’s a median benchmark based on real-world surveys of game developers who are willing to share their data.

(Source: I’ve participated in one such survey.)

Re: From throwaway side project to Switch in 2 years: my indie gamedev story

#19

Post by Gracana »

privacyking wrote: post #15
japhib wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally very, very little. You can generally take the number of Steam reviews on a game and multiply by 50 to get a rough, ballpark idea of how many sales the game has made. Considering this game has 3 reviews on Steam and costs $6, it’s unlikely the game has made over $1000 on that platform. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth making games, though! I’ve released two mobile games, still updating the second one, and al…

How did you determine that 50x estimate rule?

I was curious, searched a bit and found this: https://vginsights.com/insights/article/how-to-estimate-stea...

Looks like 50x is on the high side, 30x would be a more reasonable guess now.

Re: From throwaway side project to Switch in 2 years: my indie gamedev story

#20

Post by mh- »

prawn wrote: post #10
habibur wrote: post #8

This article doesn't touch it as it's a new game they are developing, but I used to wonder a lot how much are indie game devs making? Is it worth it? Can one expect to earn like a full time job working on it?

Back in 2014 we made an iOS game* that got several million plays and some local press but never made enough money to motivate further work. I still like it and play it when killing time on flights. If you were solo and/or had very low living costs or expectations, or got a feature to kickstart things more, maybe you could make a modest living. Doing it over, I think we'd probably put more time into making it a daily…

I played your game a good amount back when it came out. Don't remember how I discovered it. Lots of fun!
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