Commercial game development is expensive.
Author went from indie dev to a company, just for a single game and risked all his savings for phantom success.
He could of avoided all of this, just stay indie.
“I thought I could ship at least 700 units to stay in business”
271–280 of 346 posts
Re: “I thought I could ship at least 700 units to stay in business”
#272"Every small little detail that the buyers wanted I took a look at it and did my best to serve their needs."
"The buyers" are mostly "one buyer", if he even bought the game at all, right?
That's devastating. You need to prioritize features, you cannot do every little thing probably not even the reporter really cares about.
And "DO NOT GO FULL TIME UNLESS YOU CAN AFFORD A HUGE HUGE FAILURE! MAKE SURE YOU CAN SURVIVE SELLING CLOSE TO 0 COPIES."
That's not a "huge failure". That's expected. Many more than zero would be a huge success. Not the other way around.
Re: “I thought I could ship at least 700 units to stay in business”
#273The target market is tricky. I'm in my early thirties and I feel too young to get any nostalgia from this stuff. Also I've noticed that as people age, they get less exited about wasting their time on games and more willing to spend money for something useful. So your target market is actually getting trickier as time passes. But how about this: There are probably around 50 000 people in Romania starting a business ev…
>If you catch 1% of those people, https://successfulsoftware.net/2013/03/11/the-1-percent-fall...
Good point.
I think there is essential difference between "100% need it but only 1% is going to buy it" and "Everybody wastes time playing games they enjoy, somehow magically 0,00003% of them will end up playing my game." Or maybe it's just the same fallacy over again.
Do you have any resource of making good market analysis?
Re: “I thought I could ship at least 700 units to stay in business”
#274The main advice should be: not another pixel art game. Please. We have enough of these. Folks let's move on from the 1970s. Also this is getting tired seeing honest, hard-working, self-motivated talented individuals push themselves into the same tried and tested crappy old corner of 'indie pixel art games'. It's quite difficult to see anything innovative or even remotely enjoyable from this genre anymore. It's not Ro…
this is a silly argument, no matter the medium there is room for original creativity, people didn't stop painting because they ran out of colours...
Re: “I thought I could ship at least 700 units to stay in business”
#275If you are poor, getting into business is always hard. Why so many famous actors and musicians come from wealthy families? Because they can afford to travel from auditioning to auditioning and promote themselves non-stop. Why do so many prestigious companies hire young only from wealthy families? Because they have non paid internships. Poor can't afford to get in. When you can't afford to lose, risk taking requires r…
Absolutely the truth. Starting my business was the most stressful and intense thing I have done in my life outside of combat, and I don't even have kids to support. Staring down the barrel of rent and bills with no one to back you up financially... It is incredibly intense. It seems common to have some kind of benefactor ready to throw a parachute if there's trouble. Which makes me think that's part of the reason I f…
My father gave me sizeable sum of money when I was starting my business. Enough to live several years without worrying about income.
I started to make 25 - 75% more profits just because I had the luxury of saying no and avoid orders that didn't move my company towards the goals I wanted it to go. Usually the ability to stay relaxed and equal in negotiations was enough to convince customers that I was a success. Everything was so much easier even when I didn't have to touch the money.
Re: “I thought I could ship at least 700 units to stay in business”
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
I quit my job a few years back with around $150k in the bank to fund my startup. A few months later, still nervous about leaving full time employment, I took a job interview with a big four. I received an offer with a base salary of $600k. I turned that down and committed to the startup. A few months on, I receive a letter from the tax department advising that my previous employer provided corrected earnings informat…
600k base salary? What type of position is that? Developer salaries in the big four (I assume you mean Google/Facebook/Amazon/Apple) are high but that is still twice what I normally hear (and have gotten offers for), and that's assuming you're talking about total comp. I'm not doubting you, i'm just curious what type of experience you need to get that.
> I assume you mean Google/Facebook/Amazon/Apple
He meant "the other big four", i.e. consulting companies.
Re: “I thought I could ship at least 700 units to stay in business”
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
The post says the guy lives in Eastern Europe.
That'a big deal. EE = most likely no property tax, which makes a vast difference in financial planning compared to the west. Basically if you're lucky to have a house or apt. you're set for good.
Where did you get the info that there is no property tax in Eastern Europe?
Most EE countries do have a property tax, in fact it can be quite sizable if your 50k Soviet era apartment gets appraised for the same tax base price that the luxury 500k condominium next door.
The property tax bill can be a huge problem for retirees who live on Soviet era pensions in old houses next to new developments.
Incidentally this is the problem that Prop. 13 in California set to solve initially.
Re: “I thought I could ship at least 700 units to stay in business”
#278Reading this post saddens me, I think if he linked to a profile of his skillset and provided a way to contact him in the article he could easily land a few consulting gigs until he can stand on his feet again. We have a group of strong developers here and many of us are looking for personal, i.e. I need people both to hire permanently but could also use a consultant with matching skillset for shorter term to back me…
> it's a great way to stay independent while still having a more reliable income for basic needs You should be careful with that -- you can get nastier IP agreements through consulting firms than you might at full-time employment. Similarly, even if it's not in the contract, you probably want your contracting work to be fairly orthogonal to your side projects, so you don't get sued for something by a client. It never…
I’m not saying join a consultancy but rather offer consulting services. Thus one can make their own contracts.
Re: “I thought I could ship at least 700 units to stay in business”
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
And about that: > But if having 6 or 12 months worth of savings is a requirement, then you can rule out just about everyone except rich kids and upper middle class teenagers. If you’re a good Software developer and have no idea how to save some 20-30k bucks in 2-3 years for your plan of your own business you’re doing something wrong. Like you are bad at contract negotiations, no good contact network in the industry t…
I don't think life is that simple. Being a skilled developer/engineer has very little to do with the ability to save money.
Aehm yes these are independent qualities. And i didn’t state they are connected.
But both (and other business stuff as mentioned that doesn’t come automatically just by being a great dev)are helpful if you wanna bootstrap a small company / freelance business without external funding. You can be lucky and be so well paid for being a so great dev that you never need to save, but it’s good to be able to save when anything doesn’t work out as good as dreamed.
I state you need more that tech skills to be successful. If you don’t have these other skills, better keep in a “safe” employment. But also then i recommend to work on some of these, like at least the negotiation stuff. It will help you.
Re: “I thought I could ship at least 700 units to stay in business”
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
examples?
It's an old link, but here's Apple enforcing that against a developer who developed an app in their spare time, and Apple wanting to take ownership of the app & source code: https://web.archive.org/web/20060316084454/http://www.thinks...
That app is competing with Apple's iTunes, so that seems more like a non-compete issue. I'd like to see an example of an employee developing something completely unrelated to his employer's business.