Advice on making money (New Dev) (774866)

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(skip ahead to “My Point” if there is too much reading involved)

i’m new to unity and a new game developer. i’ll cut to the chase. i don’t know how much longer i can continue to live in my mom’s home before i start thinking about desperate measures to get out of here. it’s time to make some moonah.

i’m confident that i have the interest, motivation, passion, and capability for game development in general. unfortunately, certain aspects of game development are not my strong suit. graphic design and music, just to name two, but it goes beyond that.
the core of my passion for game development is storytelling and designing systems for games (like designing how the game should feel and the game play mechanics). even more unfortunately is that i struggle with coding, but i’m slowly improving on the things that i’m not good at.

i really want to start out as a solo dev, making money and living the life style that i want for myself, dedicating MY time to MY projects. i already wasted so much of my life being held back. more than that, i am simply incapable of handling full time work.
the only exception is if i’m super interested in the work that i’m doing. one time i spent over 12 hours a day for what felt like more than a week building a minecraft server. THAT kind of game dev work is completely up my ally. the only coding i did was altering the values in text documents and all of the art was pre-made. aside from dealing with the insane learning curve at the time, i was free to unleash my creative and imaginative freedom.
that project never left the ground, but whatever.
anyway, after i make a lot of money, enjoy the new lifestyle, make up for all of the time that i lost as a teenager and in my early 20s, and finally embrace adulthood, and then make even more money, i will move on to bigger things in the world of game dev.
i am feeling very ambitious about it.

just to make my intentions clear… i only want to be a solo dev to start out and get my life started. i have ideas for projects that are small enough to be handled with minimal extra help after i get some skills.
later on when i move onto bigger projects, i will need a lot of help. i fully understand the necessity of cooperation and intend to get the appropriate extra help when that time comes.

My Point:
is there any advice for how someone like me should get started in unity to start making money ASAP? i know a lot of the basics of C# and i’ve been through the editor tutorials and scripting tutorials for unity. i am ready to make my first, simple unity game and i have a great idea for it too. it might not be good enough to go anywhere aside from newgrounds, but it’s a start.

I've been thinking about freelancing 3D and 2D game dev. What skills do I need to have?
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Realistically you won’t make enough money to live off and you should probably get that idea out of your head because there are a lot of people that ask the same thing and the replys are usually, a) don’t forgo a real day job in pursuit of game development income and b) make games for fun before trying to make money.
Why not get a real job and then transition into game development? That way there is no risk of failure. Ask anyone here if they have got rich of solo game development and 99.99999% of them will say they haven’t. Every man women and some intelligent babies are building games and the vast vast majority of them get lost in a sea of endless crap. Unless you have a very good marketing strategy your game will most likely go the same way.
Good luck with the game dev but set your expectations incredible low. It’s a tough industry to break even in.

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If you need to make money asap, then you get a day job. Part time or full time. And not in gamedev.

If you know “a lot of basics”, and “have been through a lot of tutorials”, then you are not employable. It will be more than a year or at least several till you maybe become employable, and even when you become employable, the source of income will be from contracts… meaning you’ll be working for other people, on THEIR projects.

There’s also a matter of “lifestyle”. If you expect to make a lot of money from your games, then it is highly likely that it won’t happen. As a solo gamedev the closest you can expect to be is spiderweb software, which is mostly one dude making games since 1994 (geneforge, avernum…). Games like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwnYfNLHo0U

Additionally, working on minecraft server is not really gamedev.

Basically, you don’t walk path of “solo gamedev” to get rich. You do that to do what you like. If you need money, that’s not the right way to get it.

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The chances of making a day job income in the first few of years of game dev are slim to nil. What many people don’t realize is that game development is about a dozen quite different vocations put together, and frankly it seems like you’ve hardly dipped your toe in one so far.

If you were desperate to make money and game dev was your only option, I would say use the asset store and crank out clones as fast as you can. By the sheer volume of productivity, you might make a few peanuts but it would be nothing next to a normal job, and you would be selling your soul in the process.

Without going into gory details, I can relate to your situation from experience, and I have only one thing to tell you: get the hell out of the situation you are in right now, and get any job that comes your way. I have worked as a trolley collector at a supermarket, setting up exhibition booths etc, any drudging job I could get just to be able to go through life with a clear mind and a good conscience. No possible reward is worth staying in the same spot and risking that it continues to grind away at your soul. The only time when you can make a course correction this big is when you are willing to do anything at all to make it happen, so don’t sit around waiting for a golden opportunity. Take responsibility and do whatever it takes right now.

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Just guessing but I think the quickest way to make money would be with sex. That’s my plan B if A doesn’t make a profit.

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go to a vocational school or become a truck driver.

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Don’t discount entry level QA jobs at a game studio. You won’t make as much as a non-gamedev job, but you’ll get experience working in the games industry and may be able to move up. There’s a lot of turnover in QA. If you’re in a place with a decent number of game companies, your odds of getting an entry level QA job aren’t too bad.

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This is really good advice. As unglamorous a QA job is, you get “integrated” into the system. You form friendships, contacts, you get to know people and people get to know you, familiarize yourself with the process, and get paid for it. After getting my Bachelor’s in Computer Engineering, I couldn’t get any entry level game programmer jobs, mainly because of the dot com bust. I decided to start at QA at a major AAA company and worked my way up to SE III.

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You also get paid about as much as you do working in a standard data entry job for a significantly higher workload and far less job security.

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Not happening.

Not even close.

In bold, I outlined the things that utterly wreck any chance of making money in game development.

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It is actually quite challenging for experienced game developers to make enough money to survive being a solo game dev. It is nearly impossible for a person just starting out to do it. The best thing you can do is find a stable job to pay your bills while continuing to invest time into pursing your dreams. There is no path for inexperienced people to learn as they go and make money ASAP.

You need to think of game dev as being similar to being a rock star, and think of tools like Unity as being a guitar in that rock star analogy. Musicians get a guitar, spend many years practicing, and then a super tiny few get to make living being a rock star. The only way anybody can spend enough time practicing to even have a chance to chase their dream is if they find a way to make enough money to feed themselves during those many years of practice.

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My money making advice is to first get any job. Then do your game dev in your spare time. That will give you the freedom to design the games how you want, instead of feeling pressure to rush unfinished games out the door for an attempt at fast cash because your rent is due next week.

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Exactly the same title as an earlier thread by the same person, and with the same post content, but in a different sub-forum. Advice on making money (New Dev)

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Definitely, as I did have my low points as well working QA at the time. That’s part of the “unglamorous” that I spoke of. But compared to OP’s “plan” of doing solo indie dev to make a quick buck, it’s still far more stable.

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Honestly, if you want stability and you want to make games, get a desk job and make them in your off time.

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Well, the OP needs to take that advice, because that’s exactly what I’m doing right now.

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All good points in @neginfinity 's post. However, I did want to point out that successful “solo” game developers hardly ever do ALL the work on their own. In the case of Spiderweb, Jeff Vogel has spent plenty of money on contract artwork, and I believe his wife is the accountant and/or business manager.

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.I don’t consider those issues actually, quite minor roadblocks. The game design, programming, levels, story, all of that easily is 90% of the work. Outsourcing is normal. Unity is an outsourced engine.

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Yeah, I know that they hired Phil Foglio and (I think) his wife to do avernus artworks, for example. Those artists were responsible for Girl Genius, Buck Godot. However, like hippo said, outsourcing is normal.

The reason why I brought up Vogel/Spiderweb is because those guys are an example of long-term successful ultra-small teams. So, basically, if you lone wolf your way to success, that’s what you’ll be. Another Spiderweb.

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Just seeing this thread’s title here triggers me every time.

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