I am an experienced software engineer and I 've been developing software for the last 15 years. I work for a big consultancy with a very good package and really most people would not understand why I am considering to become an indie game developer. I am very passionate about games but never been involved in the games industry. I tried the corporate world, managed to succeed in all the targets I set and now I want to try myself in something new. I also want to simply work for myself and utilise all my creativity.
Anyway I have some new ideas which use heavily AI, however I would like to hear people’s views on the different platforms out there. Thousands of new games come out for iOS and Android. There is also the desktop, steam, web, consoles. For a new indie developer what in your opinion is a good place to start?
I do think the games world is too crowded however there is always space for new ideas.
Im not sure there is a best platform, however, I will make the following observations…
The best platform for making money (if successful), would be iOS. Being successful is like winning lotto though… low odds (unless your game is amazing and gets noticed - every developer assumes their game is amazing and will get noticed…)
The best platform for getting downloads without making any money would be Android. Not sure what paid app downloads are like, but IAP don’t seem to be high on Android users agenda’s.
The best platform for potentially getting featured is Windows Phone.
The best platform for making a game you’re passionate about, would be steam, but then you’ll have to get a community of people passionate about it to get greenlit.
Seems to me PC stuff would be the fastest easiest way to get started.
You have a huge advantage over (including my lost self)a lot of people in already being a software engineer also.
Well… selling pizza is very local area business and books usually are regional too and often also partly funded/supported from government art budget (in Euro countries at least).
With games you are nearly always competing against the whole world.
Even with a fresh or unique ideas it’s highly likely that it will get buried and forgotten fast in the game markets if you are not prepared to market it enough.
Well, a lot of people with zero experience selling games will be quite optimistic that they’ll change the world and they’re really right but the reality is they’re wrong and its very hard to make money in game development. It’s massive hubris and pretty typical of armchair heroes.
This is one of the reasons Unity works hard with services - as Unity understands that making money is the biggest challenge in this respect. So you get services for video, for analytics and so forth.
If you want to make money in a reliable form, and don’t choose to have odds like winning the lottery, then you need to stack all the odds you can in your favour with choice of market, analytics, clever marketing and more.
It’s not enough to have a great game. Simply because the market really is flooded with great games.
It doesn’t matter where, it doesn’t even truly matter what type of game you make.
The key is passion.
niche games, extremely hard games, shit freemium games, games made in 48 hrs… They have all seen success.
If you are truly passionate about your game, and you take the time and effort to polish it up while still caring for it post-release, then there is a good chance you will find success. Though success really is any effort put towards attaining a goal.
Don’t go into gamedev just for attaining society’s “success” approval, (AKA money!). Go into it knowing that you are creating something that YOU want to play and that you want to share with the world.
If you are truly passionate, the materialistic success (AKA money!) will come.
I’m guessing you’ve not tried selling much? I don’t want to come across as a pig but it sounds very idealistic and not at all grounded in reality.
What you’re missing is nearly every dev making a top quality indie title has passion by the bucket load. One single thing in isolation is never enough, period.
Indies don’t compete with just indies. They compete with EA, Ubi, Insomniac and every other great development shop large and small. Yes, you compete with GTA 5. You compete with Destiny.
You’re really vying not for shelf space on a store, but for gamer time. Gamer time is a currency spent on actually playing games. If a gamer spends 4 hours on Uncharted 4, he doesn’t have time to play your game, and so you can have all the passion in the universe but it won’t help. For another gamer, he may not like Far Cry 4, but never sees your passionate title because your marketing sucks.
And so on, you can’t actually do any shortcuts or rely on any single thing to succeed. It’s no longer enough to have passion and a good game.
What I took away from @Mikenseer 's post is not so much the “passion” being the most important point, but instead the “don’t do it just for the money”.
I’ve been successfully making and releasing my own games since 2001 and the only time I ever had a genuine flop is when I tried to do something based on a niche I wasn’t interested in or passionate about but I knew there was money in. What I made came out super cool, but because I had no idea about the market for that niche, I realized I was lost. So that one bit the dust. And I never again targeted a niche only because it made money. I make damn sure I have passion for the niche (not for the game alone) before diving in. Without that all is lost.
I bet there’s even a hint within this very post about where I think the money is. At least it has been for me. But then again I’ve almost always followed the road less traveled, so take that as you will.
I agree with what hippo is saying here about needing to compete with all games for a gamer’s time. I would even take it a step farther and say that you need to compete with all media. Gamers play games. They also watch TV, watch movies, listen to music, etc. Each gamer has 24 hours per day to spend, and a decent chunk of that time is spent on sleeping and eating. The remaining time is up for grabs, and all media sources compete to grab that time. It can be tough for an unknown indie title to grab any time at all when so many well marketed media items are competing.
And I will also agree with hippo here that its not just about passion.
I would like to explore some new avenues and build something that I want to play with. If no one else is interested to play the game I want to play fair enough, at least I tried. I see a lot of repetition in games in the way they are designed, their back stories, their gameplay, their everything. What I would love to see is more intelligence and interactivity. My background in AI pushes me that way and can bring some interesting new ideas on the table.
For me the games industry is not dissimilar to the film industry. Back in the late 90s a little film called Blair Witch came out with a minimal budget and competing with all the major films at that point. They succeeded because they had a vision and they were passionate. I have numerous examples of excellent, successful films with small budgets and others with tons of money who couldn’t even break even. In my head I understand that marketing is key but for me that is 50% of the game. The other 50% has to be a great product that excites people and keeps them glued on their seats. The games market is overcrowded but it is also what the majority of people want. And no not everyone spends 4 hours a day playing one single game. There are loads of people who play a few games at a time and want to change.
I understand that there have been 1000s of people talking about the same things I talk about. Potentially I might not be able to produce anything worthwhile but I always believed in trying really hard to do my best because I will regret the alternative.
Thanks for all the comments, they have been extremely useful.
Ony drives the point home. Hippo twisted my words quite well, but his point still stands.
While the business mindset and the competition for time is all very real and should not be ignored, I would be very interested to meet a game developer who focuses solely on these factors and lives a happy life.
I’m not twisting anyone’s words. The fact is, passion is not enough. If Ony thinks it is, she is probably one of the luckier ones.
But in general you should aim for everything: analytics, marketing, passion, graphics, sound, playability, something people like and a good dose of luck. The problem starts when people rely only on a couple of those elements. Naturally, and logically that’s a lot less chance of success.
If by passion you mean drive to do all that, then sure
