Made a video talking about the 5 biggest mistakes making my first game, first video so I was a bit nervous, let me know what you guys think!
Text version for the luddites?
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Not having a lot of replay-ability.
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Not releasing all platforms at the same time.
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Not enough marketing and social media presence.
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Not having a consistent testing and bug-fixing schedule.
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Not thinking of the first video game as a business.
The reason behind each of those points is explained in the video as well.
Nice. I’l check out the rest tonight when I get home from work.
Good stuff. Looks like it points out the reasons most indies fail.
Numbers 3 and 5 especially. There is also great GDC videos on youtube covering these topics. But I’m at work right now.
Helpful info! Thank you!
Thank you guys, hopefully some can learn from my mistakes!
I’m really not convinced that this is a mistake for someone’s first game. Is it about the money or is it about making games?
“My aim is always to create a great video game that people want to buy so that I make money.”
Not my personal stance but there are people who feel that games for the sake of games is a bad move. There is a benefit to the business mindset. Dont be a stupid indie game dev:p
I want to do both, so it was mistake for me. It may not be a mistake for a hobbyist gamedev.
I recommend checking out the following article. Instead of trying to monetize your early games the article suggests you focus on acquiring a fan base for your games and once that has been established then you start working on monetizing.
Because with the sheer quantity of games that hit the various markets there is very little chance of your game being noticed, but a fan base will regularly check up on the titles you release and provide word of mouth advertising.
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/SasaStublic/20150401/240243/Dont_monetize_your_games.php
Like you said in your intro, here is one thing you did perfectly fine when releasing your first game.
1 - You released a game! 
I think it’s a great accomplishment to have released a project to the public, and something anyone should be proud of in itself. This is a hurdle that challenges a lot of users, and there is a massive amount of people who will never get to this point. Once you take a minute to get over how great of an accomplishment that is, take a step back and look at what you did well and what you could have done better.
Let’s pull out these two specifically.
I don’t think anyone creates their first game and has it turn into a business overnight. I do think that there are creative ways you can deliver a gameplay cycle that can supplement business model or monetization model.
What was your core loop? How can you develop a business model that supplements your specific core loop?
%100 agree with you, I need to work on this and really ties in with marketing/social media to build that fan base.
On the bright side … now that you have established yourself with a game, you are better positioned to begin building that fan base. 
Having a fan base too early can be a terrible thing if you can’t deliver fast enough. Those fans start to demand more and special features and you will end improving details over and over again instead of releasing. Your own expectations to the game will grow with the number of fans. And there are always one or two psychos when you have a few thousand fans.
Why do you want to do both? If you’ve not made a game before then how can you really know it’s something you want to do as a business?
I’m not trying to discourage you, by the way. I think it’s pretty awesome, and “think of games as a business” is advice I often give. But, I’ve also often repeated that metaphor about learning guitar vs. charging for concert tickets…
You should absolutely make games. And if/when you’re good at it, you should absolutely commercialise them and build a business around them. But the market is ultra competitive, there’s a heck of a lot to learn, and this is a creative pursuit as well as a professional one that needs to be driven by passion as much as finances. With all of that in mind, I don’t think that commercialisation is something I’d plan on for a first game.
Consider that if your game is free and unmonetized then it’s easier for you to finish it and has lower barriers to entry for people to play it. This means that you can get experience in the release cycle and get feedback sooner, which helps you make better games faster. Compare the value of the experience you can build to, and what that will add to future games, against the income your early (likely inexperienced games) might generate.
As I said, I haven’t seen your video, so I could easily be missing your point, and this is really intended as general thoughts rather than anything specific to you. In any case I wish you the best of luck!
Haha that’s something I want!
Well I want to be able to make more money then my full time job, you may think I am crazy but I believe I can do it. I do agree with you that I need to get “good” first, that’s the hardest part. Getting good at a trade, then showing the world your work. Thank you for the feedback.
Thanks! I highly appreciate your experience
@JakeOfSpades out of curiosity, what game did you release?
Maybe…I worked for a game with 100k fans on their forums. The fans wanted everything and then some. The feature creep was horrible mostly because the manager, a great guy, btw, was not experienced in this sort of stuff.
If we made changes, the fans complained. If we did not, they complained. I was very involved with the community, made some great friends, and loved every moment, even the unhappy ones. But…it was not a good way to develop a game.
Best to wait a little bit until you have your design down and can share something about your game with the fans. Also…one never knows where a game will go while in development. Things change. Start small with the community, a blog or youtube channel and then later open the forums.