When did you start making profit @ game making?

I know there’s some successful gamedevs around here!! So this question is directed at them!

When did you you realize you could do it full time? Was it when you sold your first game? Was it when you got into iStore game dev?
Why? well I was thinking I could do the same some day, but I want to hear real stories to know what’s ahead of me! So please share your experience!

I’ve been doing this game making thing for a “short period” of time, I still have a lot to learn, and many goals to accomplish (like finishing a full game for instance).

But this is all very fulfilling nevertheless, and I wish I could spend more time on this.

When I realized that the fastest way to start working in the industry full time and still put food on the table was to develop for someone else instead of for myself. Client work pays the bills, spare time pushes my own ideas forward. Luckily I’ve been working with a great developer since I started June 2010 (Joshua DeBonis of Sortasoft).

I am wondering why noone is sharing success story on this forums. I am pretty sure that some of them succed very good, and i wonder why not putting some short story how they started and what they did to success. Are people really so greedy to spare this storys just to keep concurent users out, or in case if most of Unity success users werent even using this forums? The thing is if i would succed i would put long story with all details for future developers what to do and what not to do to succeed.

Because its giving the competition a stick to beat you with, if you go too much in depth. There are groups and forums of successful indies that I’m part of where we can talk shop, but hugely picky about who joins. I imagine this is the case for a lot of indies. You have to be a bit smart about what you let go in the wild.

I’ll reveal some of mine though:

5 days work for barnyard (2 weeks in total because of apple accepting it) around 14k profits. Not bad for less than a week. This was pure ad revenue, so your milage may vary. The cost was whatever I paid myself at the time for that period, which isn’t much.

I don’t have actual sales data because it was ad revenue. The next title is sold though, so I’ll add the info to the existing thread here on the unity forums for ios sales patterns.

I like honesty! (I figured as much, but it’s better to actually hearing it).

I guess knowing people actually make it will have to do for newbs like me! In my country we have a saying, “we have to keep rowing”.

After an art package I put in the asset store a few weeks ago, I got a first experience on what’s like exposing your product and just how hard is to get any profit.

Even though I made far from enough to make a living, I’m happy that I actually got some sales to start evaluating.

My feeling is that if one desires to do this as a living, it’s going to require constant work. Your sales will be result of pushing the best you can do, as often as you can, there’s no rest!

That means getting work done effectively with results worthwhile people’s time. And that’s not an easy task.

Seems kind of obvious… “work hard and you’ll get sales”, but one thing is knowing something, and another is feeling it.

My hope is that learning how and where to focus your energy (kind of like burning leaves with a magnifying glass) eventually you’ll start getting results, in other words: enough money to pay the bills.

One thing that helps (and gives me hope), is that gamedev work “adds up”. Meaning everything you do adds to what already did.
Why? Well, a game gets sold in massive quantities, but it is a single product, that’s quite particular, it’s what every salesman wishes, that his product is able to be copies into infinite amount of times, so it’s never out of stock.
So when you work on your game, you’re always working on the same single product, adding up value to it. So this gives me hope that the profit curve will eventually turn on my side, as my game becomes valuable enough.

Just a hope!

Well that is what i am saying, you are just saying with more soft words. I know living as indie developer is hard, but honestly with putting some dirrection up you arent increasing competition for 100 times, barrely anyone who will follow your suggestions will succeed. It is known that not many indie developers succeed. You arent overall decreasing your own profit at all, its AAA studios who are your biggest competitior (maybe not on IOS sales but defenetly on every other platform), becouse indie games are usually making small ammount of sales.

Actually, there’s still new marketing ideas and tricks happening every day, but they are small windows of opportunity that can get flooded easily if even 2-3 people take your advice. My main competitors aren’t AAA studios on the appstore, but fellow indies preventing me hitting the top 100.

The AAA hit the top 25, its true, but what stops you getting there is wall to wall indie.

In any case this stuff isn’t as important (its more a subgame for jaded developers). The main thing is having a super product.

I have quit my job as a Wii and iPad programmer to become an indie. I haven’t made any profit yet and I’m now living on some money I saved. Currently I life with my dad because it’s cheaper. I know I might not make any money at all but I would never forgive myself if I didn’t try. Every day I am learning about my target audience, about marketing, programming, art design and all the other things I need to get better at. The best way of learning is by doing I think. So here I am a new indie how is boldly going where no indie has gone before. I could either end up broke begging for a job somewhere or I could be somewhat successful. I don’t expect to make a lot but I hope that I can make enough to support myself and have a decent living.

Ok so hippocoder just spill the beans! $$$ is at the appstore!
Forget any other sort of game programming and get unity iphone asap! X)

j/k

I think the main thing is advertising in the right manner and to the biggest amount of people, and the appstore does that for you (if you’re in the top list).

The biggest obstacle for an indie game is to become popular! It’s hard to get noticed among so many games!

Of course a game must be well done. Kind of like the javelin. The game is the javelin. It needs to be sharp and aerodynamic, but the arm is your marketing, how strong it gets thrown and how far it’ll fly depends on your advertising! hehe

Let me know when you’re about to sell your game (its all finished and you’re ready to submit) before you submit, by a PM and I’ll take a quick peek and give some advice. Right now all you can do is make the best game you’ve ever done. But don’t take too long making it. In this market anything over 3 months had better be AAA quality or it doesn’t make sense given the development time.

+1. Though I might have gone too far with that… But lots of mediocre titles still add (ad) up :wink:

Well it is well known how to proceed for IOS game sales, how to strike on market and so on. The problem i was refering to is everything else, basically main gaming platforms like PC, Xbox or PS3, but mainly PC, becouse usually indie developers can afford to go on xbox or ps after they earn profits from PC. There has been written a lot success stories about IOS sales, however it is still huge gamble even if you follow 100% their advice. What am i more interested is in someone with good sales on PC market with decent game. For now i know only 1 great deal for indie developers on PC platform which is Indie humble bundle, but what are other options?

Thats the plan :wink:

My guess is they are too busy rolling around in all the money they earned. I certainly would.

No, the point is that making games now at days is a very easy task when you have tools like Unity at your disposal.
But selling it is another story. Look at the size of iOS market today. There’s just too many people putting games up there.
The ones who have the keys to stay on top of sales won’t share that with people who they know will be their competitors tomorrow.

And about the big companies, they are major competitors for every indie because most popular indies always do have some kind of partnership with them.
But if you don’t have a completed game right now you should’t care about that stuff. First get the game done.

You might have missed a joke or two here.

Heh, I wish it was that easy. When thinking about making games to sell it’s impossible not to care about the market, especially before having making the game.

I didn’t missed the joke. But was worth it to mention anyway.

You worry about it first only when its a new and unproved market. iOS market is far far proven as successful.
On the other hand, your game has proven nothing if is not even a full game ready for sale. How will you think about marketing strategies for a product that does not exist? The game comes first.

Hmm… I’ve been working on something for about 3 months, and not expected to finish for another month. It was mostly for learning purposes so I can get better with Unity engine.

I don’t know as much about the iOS market as you think!

Put yourself in my position, don’t you think I should give myself and my game some direction before starting?

And if the iOS market is a proven market, isn’t that more of a reason to study it and follow the guides to be successful as well?

What type of game sells better and what are the current trends can also be part of the marketing strategy.

For example, say there’s this new trend about tetris type of games; so if you can whip up a fun and interesting tetris sort of game, guaranteeing myself some of sales, isn’t that worth knowing? I’m just thinking out loud here, but seems like the sort of things that one should research about before getting in to the warzone.
Also, say the big bux are in the appstore. Wouldn’t it be better knowing it beforehand? Maybe I should make my game for the iphone isntead of pc! Know where I’m heading at?

Why would I blindfold myself when I can do a little research on how to approach the market?..makes no sense to me.

I seriously think ignoring the market as a rule before making the game is a terrible advice.

Nevertheless the appstore is a little out of reach right now, I don’t feel ready to invest in unity iphone yet, and I’d also need to buy an iphone to test the games, and those are expensive around here, $500-1000 bux depending on the model.
My plan is make some money on the side in the asset store, and maybe in the near future I can purchase some unity iphone or something, after I’ve gained enough experience and all!