Churn and Value. Is your churn higher than new player count? Is the game providing value to the player? Are the players referring the game to their friends? Or is the value too low? Does it need constant updates? I am working on a community to help indie devs be more productive, reduce costs and improve value. I worked as lead developer for Monkey Doo VR and now Cactus Jam. Good luck. I still need to get stuff prep for videos to help other devs. We have to help eachother.
As a hobby game dev or better part-timer who still has and needs a job to pay the bills, these are important and valuable insights, thanks for the video. Great content.
Now that it's clear that it wasn't as successful as you hoped, can we get a "What went wrong" video? I'm guessing aside from the "no gameplay loop" problem people also probably didn't find the graphics appealing but the real problem I see is actually about the pieces of your game. Bridges & Docks might be in the same genre as Townscaper or Tiny Glade but they are offering Lego bricks to build houses, castles and cool cities. Your "toy" doesn't offer that. If people could build something cool like that, the gameplay loop wouldn't even matter. I see that you're adding more features to it now and I hope you all the best, from one newbie developer to another.
The question is not whether it’s possible to make enough money making small games, because it is. The question is whether this is a good strategy or not. I personally think it isn’t, and your experience seems to be aligning to that conclusion. Because small games have by definition almost no chance to go viral, whereas medium size game do
You gotta just keep going, and keep pumping stuff out sometimes you get bumps out the blue if you're ever interested in collaborating on a game project or need a VO for cheap feel free to each out Good luck, Thomas!
Look at concord. Game cost 400 million and was shut down after 8(?) days. It is not about tiime or money they spent. The game was shit. An overwatch clone for 40 bucks. Other are free and better. Look at vampire survivor. It costs 4.99 and is one of the best game ever made. That is the most important thing.
I dont remember exact the title, but i remember GDC youtube channel had a video called something like "surviving in the gaming industry without a hit" . pretty intresting stuff, that might be relevant for what you are trying to do.
Not a game developer so take my comment with a sea of salt. Usually as developers we focus a lot on development and what gives us enjoyment. However try to put some efforts in your games distribution: study your target audience, promote it on events, forums, discord chats, product hunt, gift some copies out, whatever it takes so more people get eyeballs on your game. Hope this helps, thanks for sharing your experience
Maybe you don’t see this but it would be cool to- -make your island -press battle button or something -ships of enemies or from land, come to attack your village -you have soldiers you can move around and defend /attack while this is happening
you make boring, unappealing looking games - one look at either of your games and i'm bored there are lots of feel good comments here, but that won't help you make more money, reflecting on why you're not making any money will your games look BORING, i don't want to play BORING games, i don't spend money to be BORED
there is the third option for game type (smol or lerg) being Extensible... Extensibility can satisfy both criteria over time and gives feedback along the way. I appreciate the candid nature of this. You are doing great. The hard part is time. Time is the component needed and unfortunately we cannot manufacture that. So keep it up and obviously focus on your security first. Side note, new game devs need to make sure that if they want to take the dive into a full time (anything) they should first make sure they have a good FINANCIAL EDUCATION, read, absorb, take small steps, look 5 years into the future, not 6 months/1 year. Protecting yourself financially in the short term can prepare you for the long term. And always remember Murphys law. You need 12k to survive 6-12 months... Plan for 16k etc. P.S. Subbed. Keep it up
I saw someone talking about how they created seasonal games, and every time that season rolled around, there would be a spike in downloads. Year after year, though it may not be a hit game, it brought in a tick of revenue around that season or holiday. May be something to research more for you!
Likewise here , I believe youtube is very important for us solo devs , from feedback to support to what it allows us to do , Once i finish the demo for my current game I am planning on focusing more on my channel and try to build it up! Good luck to you my friend it has been awesome watching you all this time!
I live in a country with a low value currency, and those 6000 Dollars would actually be a year and a half's salary for me, so I think I have a higher chance of being able to live off of games, assuming I can pull through and make decent ones. So for everyone else here, your local economy is a factor to keep in mind when embarking on this path.
Would you share your amount of selled copies? Steamdb has always some estimates, but it would be really interesting how accurate it is on an entry level indi developer.
I am just starting dev on my new game (just one month in). I am going for a bigger game (which might be a mistake). The reason for the bigger game is the logic that everyone can make a simple game. But a question to you, did you negotiate with Xbox and Game Pass. Usually, when negotiating at the right point you can get a high fixed payment (for being included for 6-12 months) for being part of game pass. Not only gives something to cover costs early but also gives free marketing.
Game development is hard and you should have known this as you have stepped into it and its better to get a job to feel safe financially. I am not against your decision but its extremely risky unless the company will allow you back to work whenever you need a job
Honestly, I don't understand quitting your job, even if one saved up some money. When you wanna be a full-time trader, you should consider switching only when your trading income is at least equal to your salary if not bigger (since variance is the name of the game) and you have enough cushion to last 2 years flat (at the very least). And in trading everything is in your hands, with game dev not so much - that's why most "game devs" pivot to being youtuber and never ship anything. If you're into multiplatform, just learn Swift and milk iPhone userbase.
Hey Thomas! I really like to watch your content and I'm subscribed to your channel for some time now. I am also a game developer and I've started to create youtube content myself. So I would really like to get an inside info about youtube earnings of a gamedev channel, especially a channel like yours. If you could make a video about it or maybe share your rpm interval, I would really appreciate it. And also keep it up, I really believe in you.
Too much toxic positivity in the comments. Me and friends only care about big AAA games. If we have to check a small indie game like yours it have to played by some popular streamers and has to be a hit.
I tried making a simple mobile game and it failed. Well, it was my fault since it was nothing special. But at least I finished something and learned a lot of things in the process and I'll try again maybe for PC this time. After all that's all we can do.
This all honestly seems sooo risky! It seems so much more financially responsible to work a "real full time job" and do game dev in your free time. THEN after something blows up (if it ever does) then you can pivot your life.
Tell me about it, working on Open Source software is even more difficult as there aren't really sales which you can earn from except for compiled versions of your software ^^"
Hey, a video talking about your business strategy would be cool! Right now I'm working full time on a remote software dev job, and I've been studying ways of becoming a full time dev
Thomas, have you seen the GDC talk on making a live able wage as an indie game dev? There’s some really good nuggets of insight to take away that may help give you perspective on your own approach to making 50-100k a year with indie games.
Thanks for sharing your experience. I have been considering making the leap (but just for building apps.) What you are trying to do is impressive and admirable even if it hasn't panned out financially yet. If you haven't seen this video with Chris Zukowski on "The Game Dev Success Ladder", you might find it helpful. It's super interesting: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-WezMZrk32M4.html
With anything, starting small is going to give you the tools you need for bigger projects. Like doing a few short films in a certain style or genre give you the experience, connections, community, and gear/props to possibly work with in feature films. If it were me, I would get an idea together for a big project, then work on a bunch of small games that would help you enhance the aspects for your bigger project that would be bits and pieces of it. You would be able to reuse code, gain more experience, and build more revenue for bigger ideas for the bigger game. This is something I’m currently implementing for both the comic books I’m working on, and a feature film divided up by 3 short films (which is something that has been done and is a common method for film makers to get their bigger projects finished).
