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!