Maybe some of you will find this interesting. I’ve created a small blog to document my Unity successes (erm, failures), and I’m tracking my profits/losses which may be interesting, funny, or sad to you. You can read my latest post here
Quick note: though I write semi-sarcastically to make my blog somewhat fun to read, working with Unity is a total joy, and I’m sure most, if not all, of you are very successful in your ventures. Any sarcasm you hear from is a reflection of my mistakes, not Unity’s, or may just be added for fun.
Probably the same story for over half of the devs over here. I’m actually waiting to see how our first game fares. Something tells me there will be two sarcastic game dev . blogs in the near future. That doesn’t mean we won’t keep trying though.
You dont show the game anywhere on your site. At least I couldnt find it.
Maybe you should advertise your own game in the commercial slots, that way you save 5$ per ad. Make 100 ads and you saved/earned 500$!
What kind of game you made? how much time and effort you put into it? was it something special and new? was it aaa quality or just a simple copy from a tutorial of some basic puzzle game that we find on every game site and how did you advertise your game?
I think that 50 cents shows how much effort you put into your game project.
You made a short, buggy, FPS that offers no interesting new ideas. I could play the Sierra7 flash game on Kongregate if I wanted to play a decent FPS.
Saying that though, Kongregate is a difficult platform to make money from. You need a million plays to make around £300. Only the top 20% of games get above a million plays. The highest plays I’ve seen are around 8 million.
You’re going to need to release 1-2 successful games a month of kongregate to forge some sort of living from.
Funny how to develop a game is about 30k for an average iphone 2d game (this is from estimates i recieved for my game, so don’t write back crying if this is different from your pricing) but average money made is aboug 100 bucks.
Something is really wrong if it takes a billion percent more to make a game then you make from it.
PS please put how much money you spent on graphics, time learning programs and any other expenses. PSS you can at least write off your earnings if you have a business.
I can’t wait to do the same thing on mine…but i have a feeling due to our hundreds of thousands of fans think it might be a little diff…(i pray)
Just because you make something, doesn’t mean that people will want to buy it/play it/use it.
Also, more businesses start and fail every year than become successful, many of which invest millions of dollars.
“If you build it they will come” is a completely false statement in any business.
As said before, the funny thing is, you should be advertising your game here. You may find that after reading the blog post, many people would love to see the game you’re referring to. Instead, most of us casual readers will just move on to something else. I’m sure I could find it on my own, but I’m too lazy, and that’s how about 80% or more of your readers will be.
I agree with this: I watched around to find what kind of game you expected income from and didn’t find anything. That’s weird.
If you have a good quality game you SURELY earn some money. How much it depends on the people taste after all but basically if the game takes you one month to develop and it’s of good quality and professional and polished and funny you will definetly earn your money back.
A game that only requires one month of work (considering only one dev) is bound to fail (unless either the guy is a genius or he has a tremendous amount of luck). Otherwise, as was said in various other threads:
As a huge fan of sarcastic humor, I found your blog post to give me a little chuckle to brighten my day. I have some random thoughts about this subject which are of my own opinion and reflect my general attitude which encapsulates my goals.
My belief is that most of us are here [working with Unity] because we enjoy making our own games and frequently contemplate the “Holy Grail” game mechanic which can separate our intellectual property apart from the rest. Most of us find the idea of the John Carmack phenomenon (or now Notch this decade) quite alluring and very interesting as it embodies success upon success; everyone wins in the end and it all stems down to your little idea and a lot of effort to realize it in full.
On the flip side of this slippery coin lies motive, mission statement, and goals (among other things). As an ex-audio industry professional, I can tell you that the game industry has moved in much the same direction where the name of the game is to horde money and to toss aside innovation, creativity, and technology and trade it all in for stuffed bags full of cash and call it progress. I don’t even bother with most large corporate releases anymore because I know I’ve seen it all before and IndieLand just seems so much more appealing in the long haul. Torchlight for $5 anyone? But I digress…
I consider making games quite a bit similar to making music; you have to do it for the passion of doing it, not to dream you will end up like Notch someday nibbling on a $50 box of chocolates while embarking on expensive diving trips between game builds. The fact that you slipped out of the Deadly 80 Percentile is reason enough to celebrate because you finished your game and that is an accomplishment that should compel you to start afresh and best yourself with the next project. My outlook on the entire subject is to build the game for you, first and foremost, and just see where it goes after release.
Quite a few are in this field to make a quick buck, and we see them pop up in the Asset Store quite frequently, as well. If you decide to pump mass cash resources into your project in the hopes of at least recouping that back automatically upon release…well, only the corporates can gamble like that and it’s not entirely viable for the average person. Looking at all aspects reasonably with a healthy dose of self-evaluation, I would conclude that Indie game development is truly a hobby until proven otherwise.
