/agdg/ - Amateur Game Development General

Just like you OP, I was on my quest to make something "epic" meaning that it's something that wasn't intended to be a generic flash/mobile game, and thought it will surely make money so I can exist and make a sequel to it. But it's not even gonna make money for a first game in the first place, obviously it's a long way till it's finished but I think interesting games get attention early on even if they are not finished.

So I decided to kinda say fuck it for the moment and just accept that the game that I want is not going to be popular, so I am developing it with no money in mind, and the fact that I'll gain some experience from it and that I am making something I love.

I don't want to tell you how sad I am that I see other very bad games getting support to get finished while mine will have to wait half a decade because I don't have much time, it just hurts you. But I that's the way it is, life isn't fair, and we have to keep trying.

Just remember... game deving is basically competing with every single game developer in the world right now, and everyone has access to the most basic engines meaning that to stand out you have to produce something amazing. It's not easy at all, especially if you are alone.

I suggest just working some random job and keep developing your game as a hobby, if you love games and deving. Or become a programmer and make lots of corporate dosh, and make your game.

Your project will most likely fail, and so will mine, and I am putting a lot of hard work into it, we just need to remind ourselves that we are not going to be popular, rich, or that anyone will care about it. And then it will be easier.

But to answer your question... risk of rain, that copy of risk of rain, even catmouth island, also yandere simulator is making mad dosh, and I'm sure there are some others that I forgot

Also apparently Uncanny Valley which is kinda weird to me, I remember gifs being posted here and that the game got finished pretty fast. I shrugged it off and thought that's a nice looking game but no one is going to bother. I have no idea how it got this popular but well... it's really popular now.

Greenlight takes next to no votes to get a game accepted, but that doesn't count for sales.

Make the game you want to make, not what's currently popular. Provided you know what makes a game good (I hope so since you're a dev) then it will sell. If you chase trends then your game has no chance of sticking out from the rest.

>>25277

Catmouth Island was a horrible failure from what the dev said.

>>25280

It made $2500 on indiegogo and some moe money on steam (60 sales?), which is really not much I know, but it's at least 'something' for the effort invested in it. I wouldn't call it a complete and utter failure, unless he invested money in it and made absolutely nothing in return.

>>25300

His words, not mine. I recall a post he made years ago when he said he's cancelling it. He did work on it for quite a while, so if he was depending on it to turn a profit it was a pretty big loss.

I'm glad to see Vagante is doing well, though. The game is very polished and seems to have sold an ok number so far.

On a sidenote, it's both kinda funny and sad a lot of the devs don't post around AGDG anymore, most were scared off when the halfchan threads turned shitty. You guys don't post enough progress but at least you try.

>>25301

It's probably just that 4chan is still way more popular so this is why we don't see many posts here, but don't quote me on that, haven't visited that in more than a year.

>>25302

I went there a few times to see what they're up to, it's 90% shitposting about tfw nodev and tfw nogf.

Not me, just working towards it, but I know people who have made money.

$3000 is about what I expect for one of my regular efforts. A few years ago a publisher took a look at one of my freewares and quoted me something to that amount in terms of wanting to license it to publish on someplace like the App store.

I know people who came out charging the full $20 for their game but they're in the Otome crowd so they tend to throw money on anything catering to girls and not made by the Patriarchy.

Then again, the days of $20 casual RPG maker games are over, thanks to Apple totally destroying the PC casual market.

It's really interesting to note that the people who find success on Kickstarter raising $20-50K are already supposed to be the cream of the crop of /agdg/ types. Larger campaign amounts are usually by full-time indie devs or small LLCs.

I know where I fit in the food chain that's why my first release is 99 cents (actually, I'll try being a bit greedy and gunning for 1.99 instead).

I have some long-term RPG projects (not RPG maker, they're either 2D or cheap 3D and designed to last 10 hours) which I estimate would be a ballpark $7,000 effort and which I plan to sell for $5.99 - $7.99. If I manage to finish those, then that's when I consider myself a success. Obviously I still have my day job.

gamemaking is a hobby, and a hobby is something you invest time and money into for personal pleasure or whatever.

gamedev ties in a lot of my other hobbies, like painting, modelling and making music, so i use it as a motivation to get better in all these aspects.

if you do it purely for profits, you're not really any better than bobby kotick.

>>25275

Digital homicides games have a fan base

just remember that and you'll be ok

>>25315

>I know people who came out charging the full $20 for their game but they're in the Otome crowd so they tend to throw money on anything catering to girls and not made by the Patriarchy.

>the Patriarchy

It's not about muh fehmeneesm. It's that otomes outside of Japan are rare as fuck. As in, so rare they are extremely hard to pirate.

Otome fans are out of luck in the west. You can count quality otomes published in English with your fingers, and there aren't enough fans to get a cracking team interested in making free torrents for them. However, those fans will pay generous quantities for any new otome because they are starving.

It's what happens when you target a niche (in this case, a niche of a niche) market: you will have very few customers, but they will be very loyal. You won't get as much net money as mass marketed games like Cawodoody, but you can still make some money if you adjust your production budget.

bump for interest

I've made money from developing code for games with other people, that's about it.

The elusive killer hit has yet to be realized, though thankfully I still make money.

>>25320

Please tell me you're taking the piss mate

The key is to spend money on advertisements I think. Well your game has to be really good in the first place, but I think the formula is something like spending 3/4th on ads to make any cash.

>>26568

If your game is good it will sell regardless of marketing. You won't get big pre-order numbers but rather gradual sales once people talk about it and it goes on sale once or twice.

You don't have the kind of money to shill a game large scale. It's just gonna be trash nobody wants because only 1/4th of your budget went into the actual game and you're trying to peddle it to people before they know how shit it is. It honestly seems like a less reliable way to make money in the long run.

>>26568

Paying money for advertising as an indie dev a terrible idea. Unless you can plaster your product everywhere (and I do mean everywhere, sides of buses and all), the only thing paid advertisements will do is make people want to is ignore your game (at best, at worst they'll hate your game for being in their faces). What you want as an indie dev is word of mouth, and while that is just as difficult to cultivate, it's far more cost effective and has less of a negative impact on your game.

>>26581

>It's just gonna be trash nobody wants because only 1/4th of your budget went into the actual game and you're trying to peddle it to people before they know how shit it is. It honestly seems like a less reliable way to make money in the long run.

Have you ever heard of a little company called Bethesda?

I really want to believe you, but I can't.

>>26586

They had earlier successes when they were still a small studio and now they invest millions into marketing. My point stands.

Every big name studio started small and climbed up. You don't have the money to compete with them because you're not an established name.

i earn alot of money doing hacks to one MMO game, idk if that can be considered game dev.

Years ago, I spent like 2 days learning Unity to prep for my third Ludum Dare (previously just did 2D stuff), and in those 2 days, I made a casual android game, which I later stuck ads on and over 2 years it made like 5k just from 15,000 random people trying it out more than once, some people even continually using it. Probably kids being babysat by the tablet or something.

So in my opinion, you might as well put it out there so long as it feels complete enough. You can add onto it later as you get feedback.

Prior to this I tried releasing a $1 game and barely got 6 people to buy it, though a thousand pirated it. I know what really bothered me was that no one was playing my games, so doing Ludum Dare and other jams really opened the door to more players and more feedback, Lets Plays popping up on YT. Jams also bringing out the improv dev in me to make weird and quirky games.

If you keep doing projects, you might eventually find the niche or create something great and get more people playing and asking you to keep making games like that. Heck when I had 2 decent YTers LP my game in the same week, that was millions of views. It didn't translate into plays, but it still felt great.

So I would definitely reiterate that you shouldn't let the fear of not reaching people get in the way since you kind of need to be rejected in all kinds of horrible and obvious ways to see where the door to success is. On top of that, building games is really like building tools and blueprints to make better games (if you mindfully approach it that way).

>>26654

That's incredibly interesting to me, would you mind elaborating?

>>25275

>>25315

I find a lot of people on agdg or on the generals recommend selling your games at extremely low prices, without taking anything about the game into account

feel free to call me out if you think otherwise but this is how I see it and have observed in myself and friends.

Charging to little for a game is just as detrimental to sales as charging too much is. Selling your project for a price really anything under 5$ (and ESPECIALLY on steam) will tell the consumer two things, unwillingly or otherwise;

1. You as the developer aren't confident enough in your work, which to any consumer is grounds for suspicion of quality, and or

2. The game is small or even possibly incomplete in some way, missing vital mechanics that would have fleshed it out or some other pile of bullshit.

basically what im saying is your average fuckwit who browses steam is going to be a bit biased towards cheap games, unless its something that looks either ground breaking or it appeals to some niche market (like a 2D pixely anime game, if i saw some better looking shantae ripoff for under 5$ I'd be all over that shit) .

At the end of the day you can charge whatever you want for your game, but I wouldn't just go pulling that number out of your ass. Do some research on games similar in anything from size mechanically or geographically, genre, graphics and appearance and ect.

and last but not least, make sure you're proud of your work, if you're not proud of your accomplishment then chances are what you made doesn't reflect the quality/what you actually wanted to do. and of course have fun

Being greenlit is the least of worries, considering the amount of crap you see on the store's main page on a daily basis.

>>26826

As a rule of thumb, indie games tend to have the most success around the $10-15 price range. Obviously do your research, but using that price range as a baseline for your estimates isn't a bad idea.

>>26826

>>26844

Obviously this is for work-for-hire so they need to add a lot of cost on top, but the indie budgets make sense:

http://teamcooper.co.uk/blog/how-much-does-a-mobile-game-cost-to-develop/

The most successful indie games quoted -- i.e. the household names -- have all been made above the 100 grand mark.

As an /agdg/ 10K is already the absolute upper limit of what I'm willing to waste on my game, and it's only enough to make a big but low-fidelity game, or a very small but impressive vertical slice. I prefer the latter but the downside is that they tend to be short experiences, and I cannot honestly charge more than a reasonable $/ per hour.

Sure, working for professional studios. But, unless you're a manager or at least a lead, it's all underpaid gruntwork and the work/life balance is shit.

Crunch time is particularly fucking grueling tbh.

Don't make games for profit make games because you want to make games.

>>27216

Good advice, but sadly food needs to be on the table in this life anon. One thing I can say is that its relationships as much as talent that will land you your first gig, so work on building those.

After that, it's not too difficult if you're good. Studios value previous successful work experience pretty highly.

>>27218

Ahh, the age old dilemma: how creative can you be while still making money to survive? The basement game dev is this generation's starving artist, where it becomes a challenge to balance creativity and the need for money. It's funny that for the first time in my life I actually understand what the "starving artist" ideal actually entails from a real-world perspective.

>>27219

>The basement game dev is this generation's starving artist

At the least, one of the class of them heh. What's kind of different is the basic need for relatively immediate cooperation. The idea of a lonely savant toiling away at his opus--while possible--is hardly an accurate picture of the demands of modern vidya development.

Teams are essential to any decent product idea today. So, to my mind, the successful starving artist in this class will be part of at least a small cadre of starving artists banded together.

I think the biggest barrier to successful small teams is a basic lack of organization and leadership. The autistic talent pool is to be had readily by the 10's of thousands of social refugee men today. But very, very few can become a leader for what can reasonably be described as a herd of cats as the saying goes.

Fortunately, the potential for organization is greater than ever before, and I hope to take advantage of that fact at some point soon. What is needed is an effective leader to step up tbh.

If you want to make indie games for a living, you'd better relocate to Eastern Europe or Podunk.

>>25275

>too much money

Only idiots spend any more than $5000 on a mid-scale project. Use free software, learn a few tricks about each field yourself, and get some low/mid poly art rolling off your free time, then hire people using Blender to work on the bigger stuff for cheap (about maybe $100 a mesh)

So while you're making yourself barrels, crates, and guns, they'll be making people, animals, and cool autistic machinery.

I sincerly don't mind making any money out of it. I don't play any vidya-game or anything. I just try to make it for fun, it's the only fun thing I'm able to do alone. I, to this day, never finished anything and I kinda feel bad about it. Though it is not a requirement to recognized for my work, I just wish for someone to appreciate my work. All I want is a "that's nice" from a none-programmer. I envy this feeling. All I do is only able to give me recognition among other classmate that look to my screen and sometime a teacher or two because they rarely seem anyone really enjoying programming in this decade.

Put the hearth you got during your childhood in your game. Don't do something simple, nor to complicated, express yourself. Isn't it an art in the end? Just keep on programming games, opportunnity will be more abundant in front of your eyes if you're getting better.

english isn't my main language, t.frenchSpeaking

>>25279

>Uncanny Valley

trash like undercancer and risk of brain damage got popular, so why not a shitty two-bit jewtube bait game?

Yes, all of my games have generated over $100k in revenue OP.

I have fans who call me on my cell phone. People send me emails telling me how my games have changed their lives.

I don't really do social media. I sell my games as products, and I treat what I do as a business. I do not need game sites to feature or review my games in order to sell them.

>>27763

It seems like to me that the only way you can get anywhere in game development anymore is if you use your game as a soapbox for liberal propaganda (see: sjwtale, starjew valley, diary of a spaceport tranny).

How do you sell your games if they don't pander to the liberal propaganda machine and as you say, don't need to get featured or reviewed?