How much money do you earn from your games?

This is a question that everyone tends not answer, but many of us would like to know the answer.
Do you have the guts to answer it?

How much money do you earn from your games?

Just the number per game, in a year, month, and the game genre and if you like, the name and link.

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Check my blog, there are my numbers. :wink: Iā€™m one of those very small fishes with very small app income.

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I would like to disclose all of my sales figures but my conscience restricts me from doing so.

But I will give you a clue. It starts with the letter ā€˜Zā€™ and ends with a ā€˜oā€™.

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Asking an indie game dev for their sales figures is a lot like asking a lady for her weight.

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the answer is always less than what you thought it would be?

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Actually good point. I just meant in general that itā€™s ā€œrudeā€ :slight_smile:

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Hmmā€¦ Zoo?

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I donā€™t understand what would be rude about it. Even if the numbers were embarrassing, he just gave a general request rather than singling anyone out.

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I agree with SteveJ, it is ā€œRudeā€.

However it is a question many of us would love to know the answer to. I have searched for many hours trying to find out what the potential earnings of a game are. I came across many facts, eg: several thousand new games hit itunes each month. average developer makes < $500 per month, 1/3 of developers < $100 per month. 80% of revenue goes to apps in top 20%. Soul crushing statistics.

Frankly, I donā€™t do this to get rich. I do it because I love it and it is better than watching TV in my free time :slight_smile:

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The issue is that most people make no money from there first games, but you shouldnā€™t expect it! If you became a doctor you donā€™t make the money while you are at university, the same is with indie dev donā€™t expect to make money while you are learning. Usually we are just some crazy kid, some dreamy old person who loves games and decided to make them themselves or a person who is fed up with the studio sceneā€¦

Developers need to know design, production, PR and marketing and that is were 99% fail, as every one talks so much about programming and art in indie games but in reality thatā€™s just part of the whole picture.

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I believe I am around -$2000 right now.

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How to respond? Part of me wants to point at you and laugh. And yet, a better part of me wants to help. I suppose, since this is the first time this has been asked in the month of October, Iā€™ll share some ACTUAL numbers.

3.5 years ago, I founded Gigi Games. I set out on a 5 year mission, that has involved 1000s of hours, in addition to my full-time day job (developing training games), raising 2 kids, and maintaining a strong and healthy marriage. Iā€™ve mentored students, teachers, and young engineers. Iā€™ve written blogs, spoke at conferences, and read thousands of articles. Iā€™ve tried, failed, and improved my way through everything it takes to run a business, until now, I have six Unity mobile apps, and one solo game, Tap Happy.

The answer to the question you are NOT asking is in the paragraph above. However, you donā€™t have enough experience to realize youā€™re asking the wrong question. So, Iā€™ll answer the one you did ask.

Num Products: 7 (links in sig)
Months Since Starting: 42 (answer to life!)
Total Downloads: ~190,000
Total Reviews: ~1500 (4.6 average rating)
Total Investment: ~$13,000 (i.e. money spent by me, before Gigi Games was paying for itself)
Current Income: ~$15-20/day
August Income: $726

The answer to the more important question lies in a simple truth. I shared deep secrets about my business - answering everything you wanted to know, and despite that, itā€™s extremely unlikely that you will take the time to click the link to Tap Happy, to download a FREE iOS/Android game, and then follow-up with a review, as a way of saying thanks. And if thatā€™s hard, imagine how hard it is to get people to actually PAY for your games.

Gigi

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this guyā€™s channel is interesting,.

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Gigi, nobody is obliged to answer the question. Each person will answer if they really want.
Thanks for sharing!

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Iā€™m happy to share some ballpark info on earnings. These are approximate figures to date (so some of them are over a long period). My latest release was via a publisher so I canā€™t share specifics. It was a LOT more successful than any previous stuff though.

Loon (dev time 1 month): approx. $100
Descend RPG (dev time 18 months): approx. $10000
Voids (dev time 2 months): approx. $200
Requiem Z (dev time 4 months): approx. $1000
Coldfire Keep (dev time 18 months)

The lesson Iā€™ve learnt - if you have a niche that youā€™re passionate about (e.g. for me itā€™s first-person dungeon crawlers), then maybe stick to that niche and build a fan base. Unless you happen to have some brilliant, out-of-the-box idea that takes you off on a tangent.

I do this in my spare time by the way. I have a full-time job.

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Millions (weekly).

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For The Heroā€™s Journey? A steady $0.01USD weekly. For Zombies vs. Knights, if Iā€™m lucky 0.01 Euros weekly (if I have a day that has > 30 plays of the game. It used to be a much lower threshold to get one eurocent, but something changed somewhere, somehow.)

One reason my earnings are so low to this point, is because in the triangle of ā€œBetter, Cheaper, Faster: Pick Twoā€, I went with Cheaper and ā€˜Fasterā€™ā€¦which doesnā€™t lead to anything good per se. In the case of The Heroā€™s Journey it wasnā€™t good or fast; THJ was my longest project at 10 months, and some of the feedback was actually, ā€œā€¦It took you 10 months to create this!?ā€ TL;DR - The quality isnā€™t there so far. Thatā€™s something Iā€™m correcting.

As much as I enjoy @Gigiwoo 's advice of a 12-week dev cycle, with 2 weeks of ā€˜coreā€™ development and 10 weeks of pure polish, that advice only works for the sorts of small projects you see on iOS and Android, which is good if thatā€™s your target.

After much deliberation on my partā€¦thatā€™s really not. I own an Android phone, but Iā€™m not gung-ho about writing for it. I donā€™t own an iOS device at all. It may be that Iā€™m passing up money, but I donā€™t think itā€™s as bad as some would interpret that - I know from my brief attempts at LPing that itā€™s much better to do something genuinely than try to fake it for money. That never works.

However, the advice I was given - to sell my works and not rely on webplayers, especially with the sorts of projects I favor - was good. Iā€™m building a prototype of Sara the Shieldmage in a webplayer for feedback purposes. Iā€™m going to sell the game on itch.io, and if possible GOG, Steam, indiegamestand, and wherever else I can. The desktop gaming market is not yet dead, rumors of mobileā€™s overarching defeat of desktops is grossly exaggerated.

Back to Gigiā€™s advice, Iā€™m trying a modified version of it where I develop a set of core features in a two week span, take a week to retrospect and determine what polish is needed, then apply said polish over another two weeks. Ideally, I would only want to do four iterations such that I write a game in six months. Hard deadlines actually help you; I wrote Zombies vs. Knights in one month and itā€™s the game that has earned me the most money of any of my Unity works thus far. But, if it takes more than six months, thatā€™s OK too. I want the quality to be there. ā€˜Goodā€™ and ā€˜Cheapā€™ require sacrificing speed.

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Most of my games are old so almost nothing. I made like 750 net in august month in the asset store and bought unity5 pro and ios pro so i guess -750 (since i already had unity 3 pro and ios pro).

Iā€™d like to buy a vowel.

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I honestly donā€™t think itā€™s a rude question, itā€™s a very good question as we can all learn from one another through our success and failuresā€¦ with that in mind I will share my story and my results and hope that other can do the same as even though I have somewhat of a success story to share, there is still much for me to learn from othersā€¦

Apocalypse City

Apocalypse City is a Browser Based Multiplayer FPS built in Adobe Shockwave, Released in Mar 2012. I invested somewhere between $5,000 - $7,000 on this Game (as my first game ever), Published to Various Web Portal Sites, earned over $100,000 Gross Revenue from Google Adsense in 2013.

I did not (code) this game, rather I outsourced a developer who also did the artā€¦ I provided the design ideas, and he completed the game in maybe 6 months. He also had an FPS Engine in Adobe Shockwave Pre-Built so that made development much easier.

At the time Adobe Shockwave was still a good Browser Plugin for playing games, but in 2013 Chrome as most of us should know began Blocking Plugins, then later that year Googleā€™s Adsense Program Split between Adsense and AdMob, so there was a drastic sudden change in Advertisers Budget where more advertising funds were being pushed towards AdMob to reach users on the Mobile Platform. So somehow I was lucky enough to earn massive revenue last year from Google Adsense, but at the same time Suffered lose in Revenue probably due to both Adobe Shockwave being Blocked by Chrome as 80-90% of my users were coming from Chrome Browser, and while I still maintained good Traffic for sometime that year, the earning went lower because of the Adsense, AdMob Budget Split from Advertisers. So I got paid much less per click, or impressionsā€¦ I went from earning maybe up $1,000 per day down to $100-$200 per day which was still pretty good, but in the end the high revenue earnings came to an end after my game fell off the front page from many of the Game Portal Sites Apocalypse City was hosted at.

There is tons of money to be made on the Browser Platform, but just like the app store, youā€™ll need to keep your game on the top of the charts to earn the most revenue. Apocalypse City had different gameplay modes, login system leaderboard, and had 2 Maps, but also had very low graphics being made in Adobe Shockwave, and probably suffered from lack of interest due to the Popularity of other Browser FPS Games made in Unity such as BeGone, CSPortable, Warmerise, Contract Wars and othersā€¦

Today I earn about $300-$400 Gross Revenue Monthly from Apocalypse City and few other Browser Games. I am currently working on Apocalypse City 2 and Heroes of Rune, a MOBA style gameā€¦ both Built in Unity and also targeting the Browser Platform.

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