Should You Sell Your First Game? 

Tim, thanks for your contribution to the indie game dev space 😀👍

Tim Ruswick whats up player ✌️

Make the price reflect your game/experience/etc. Even selling at $1 will give you valuable insights. Great video Tim!

I've been making my first real game for 4 years (with breaks) so would be weird not getting paid rent by it.

Awesome video! So much energy, positivity, honesty and actionable information. Great job, Tim!

My goal was to recoup the cost of Construct 3 for the 3 months ($48) that the game took to make by putting my first game out free and then just hoped people would do the 'support the dev' thing on Itch. Lol, and that definitely didn't work... but what Tim and others have taught me is that actually finishing the the game is the important part. Tim you got me over that hump and I am forever grateful!

Pro Tip, they are critiquing the product, not you. Always remember that. Take that shitty feedback and put yourself in their shoes. You might be like "Yea, this does suck and I can definitely do better" and then go execute.

I'm going to sell my game just because I want the experience of selling a game. I have so much to learn and my first game is my test dummy. So basically I'm selling my game mostly for exactly what you said.

Sometimes I find a video that feels like it was made just for me. This feels like that. Thanks Tim!

Hey, Tim thanks for this great video. Ya released it at a good time. I just had my first official Ludum Dare experience this year and had a blast. Now that I got motivated from it, I'm determined to finish it and someday release it. thanks for the motivation. :)

Great video! We just released our first game on Steam Last friday (April 30) and we got a grand total of 6 sales so far! It wasn't our intent to make a lot of money, we needed to prove to ourselves that we could go the extra mile and complete a game and go through the process of releasing it. It was a very long development period but we finally did it! Having said that, we've emailed many news sources and contacting 80+ curators to review our game but haven't heard anything back. I'm not sure how long it usually takes before you get any responses but we're hoping to get some feedback at least!

My main reasons are so I can say, "Hey, I have a game on Steam!" and I've been working on this for years lol

This is such a great and informative video, especially for someone working on their first game. Honestly better information than what they teach in college.

I had asked myself a similar question when I considered launching my Patreon. I felt like my stuff wasn't good enough to sell. Ofc I still don't make a lot of money, because my quality is only worth what it's worth. However I think the most important point for me is having this baseline. Knowing "my first game made me $50", now this gives you something to beat for your future games! You just collected your first data point. Doing this, knowing that people are willing to spend money on your stuff, even if it's just a few, will make you far more self confident. And of course, experience trumps everything. For your next game launch you no longer feel nervous before hitting the publish button. You know whether you can change the price later on, you know how things like discounts work and how to plan them, you'll have a better idea what to charge and what paying customers expect. And how to communicate your stuff so people won't be disappointed. Again, it will make you more self confident.

Great video! Totally agree with #4, "The Things You Will Learn". I launched my first "proper" game on Steam last week, and while it didn't go as well as I hoped, I don't regret it because: 1. It helped me learn about the whole process of getting it on the store in the first place (which was a little daunting). 2. Growing a thicker skin when dealing with negative feedback. I've admittedly never been great at handling criticism, but this is helping me/forcing me to get over it and turning it into something constructive. 3. Being better prepared for a bigger, better launch in the future. Releasing this first game allowed me to identify a few areas where I went wrong and I feel far more confident for next time. And 4., although I've barely made any money so far, I hope to eventually at least make back what I put into my first game, and I'll re-invest it into the next one.

IME nothing brings out the weird like “free”. When you purchase something, one of the first things most people do is judge the value they feel they’ve received against the price they paid to determine whether they got a good or bad deal, and the quality of that deal then colors their perception of the product. You’ll usually feel at least okay about a crap product if you got a good deal on it, and you’ll probably always be at least a little unhappy with a good product that you got a bad deal on. Now, this isn’t real math, it’s a hand-waving analogy, but we could loosely boil that dynamic down to a pretty simple equation: *(value / price) x satisfaction.* But when you get something for free, you’re *dividing by zero,* and that breaks a lot of people’s brains. In theory, people should only have one of two reactions to free stuff: indifference (because it cost them nothing) or gratitude (because it cost them nothing). And sure, _sometimes_ that’s how people react… but sometimes they’ll totally devalue the product, no matter how good it is-if it’s free it must be crap, right? Sometimes they’ll feel entitled, almost like they already own it and you’ve just been babysitting it for them, getting furious at you over any perceived flaw, no matter how small. Sometimes they’ll act like they’re doing _you_ a favor by accepting it. On the other end of the scale, sometimes they’ll get insanely attached and make it part of their identity (coughlinuxcough). Don’t believe me? Try selling something on Craigslist, and then try giving something away. You’ll see WILDLY different reactions. Point is, “free” isn’t just another point along the price spectrum, it’s Bizarroland. Someone’s reaction to a free product can be _completely_ different than if it cost just a dollar, and that reaction is significantly more likely to be unhinged.

I'm happy I tried selling my first game!(I worried about everything you said in the beginning hehe) I learned so much and a feel more prepared for my 2nd game :D

To give me two cents as somebody who has done some commercial games in the past and who also progressed drastically in the quality of the games I make, I can tell you that you pretty much always will think that you haven't put enough effort into your game. Still, I think there is a point where you can be confident about your product, but it's really hard to reach and is a combination of your mindset AND the actual quality of your game. I have days where I think my game is great and on some days I think it's shit, that shows how inconsistent this is, but yeah in the end. SELL YOUR SHIT. That's the only way you will learn from it. I mean I still have this bad feeling in my guts, for selling one of my first games (it's still available on Steam), because I think it's not very good, but hey you have to deal with that if you want to get serious.

Standing position gives more energy to presentation. One of the best video. Thx.

I love this energy!!! Tim Ruswick is back

That was awesome dude!! thanks for the advices, it means a lot!!

Thanks Tim!

Exactly! We have to start somewhere after all.

I think to sell something developer needs to feel great about it. If the product is bad it needs more work or it needs to be abandoned. I don't see a reason to release bad game waste 100$ and disappoint any following or audience you had to just get selling experience. This topic isn't so binary there are a lot of variables to it.

Your videos motivated me to think more about the process of selling my game.

I think another good reason is to build an audience. Even on itch.io you might get a few people to follow your content and that can be vital for your motivation and next game.

Great Video Tim, I like the video, and the points you are teaching. Cheers!

Keep up the good work bud! For me, I feel like you need to get into selling the game, so you can learn about the market. You know, you're not really in the same market if you're doing free games. it's a different animal. You need to actually setup your business and take care of things like tax and accounting. What about return games? what do you do? All this is good to learn about from experience ^.^

Yup needed this video today..

Thanks Tim for the advices!

Great advice!

Hello Tim, nice to see you again. One of reasons I want to sell my first game is because I want to stop feel like I'm pretentious when talking about game development. But my first barrier is obviously to finish a proper game, not just some tech demo or toolbox like I usually did. Tho most of the time I spent working on worldbuilding and I'm better off just write some novels which I actually wrote the novel to clear my mind from game development stuffs. I'm also struggling on what kind of things I want to show to people so they know that I'm working on the game. Probably do more devlog soon to update my progress tho the progress also not much improve because I was sick for like a month Sadge.

So will my skin glow under the lime light after switching from video to card games too? Lol looking good Tim!

Miss you buddy

Hola Tim!

Hi Tim... Well done video as usual. Lemme know if you do ur card game with pixel art as I suggested u :) I think it would look awesome...... greeting grom Italy.

"Should You Sell Your First Game?" Good question. I was thinking to sell my first game for $4 or less. Just to learn the process of selling, taxes, fees, etc. Seems Itch.Io has a weird way to collect sale taxes. Each country has its own rules and Itch.io doesn't handle it, leaving the dev to deal with this. Yeah! First itch.io. Steam later. Epic Store... Only when they want. GOG? I don't know if I'm ready to bow to China. When you run a Kickstarter campaign for your bunny cards, you'll be rich! All card games are massively funded there o__o (Or have you contacted companies like Dee Water Board Games? They're always looking for cool board/card games).

Awesome video

Sell your game, sell your film, sell your art!

no

1k views = 1k flappy birds games selling for 20$ :D

If it's good why not ?

NEVER GONNA-

It's not really selling if you are making the game free.

Yes. But nobody will buy it =)