The answer to every 'Can it be done?' and 'I've lost my way' post.

Like clockwork, the new posts arrive almost every day: "Do you think it's possible?" ... "How do I make money?" ... and, "I'm stuck without progress - what now?" From a distance, Unity is a shining beacon of opportunity bringing thousands of developers and artists to her shores. And, here is the answer to their questions:

One day, I was working on my prototype, when my wife said to me, "You've been messing around with that thing for too long." I argued that I had made really great progress and had a lot of neat features to show off. Though, in my heart, I knew I was far from finished.

My wife replied, "Build something in 6 weeks. Anything at all, so long as you finish it." And after she threw down the gauntlet, she said, in a softer voice, "You need this." Of course, I knew there was no way I could finish anything in 6 weeks, so I countered, "Gimme 8 weeks!" And, in the end, it took me 9.

I finished my first product, shipped it to Apple, and sent it out into the world! It was a crappy product, and yet, there it was, in the real world, for all to see. It flipped a switch in my head that changed my outlook. And now, 18 months later, I have 5 products, with 2 more in the works. I'm earning real money, and my products have touched 70,000+. I needed that boost from the first product to prove I could do this. As she loves to hear me say, 'My wife was right.'

Here's your challenge! Build something and release it, 12 weeks from right now. To accept, simply reply, 'I accept - ' and when you finish, simply reply "It took ## weeks" with a link! It your choice - accept Gigi's Challenge to find yourself on the right path!

(PS - Update. It's now been four years since I began, and I've released nine products, on three platforms. I have over 200,000 customers and a steady income from my spare time, Indie endeavor. In addition, my skills have improved so dramatically that I've gotten 2 promotions at work, won several national awards, and am now leading new initiatives in the medical field.)

So, what do you build? Try this quote from Ted Brown:

Or these from Mike Bithell's Develop Conference rant:

Wisdom from Joel on Software

Shortcuts to Notable Replies:

• Derkoi - Success Story
• Marius - Success Story
• Gigi - Indie Quotes and Successes
• Chippy - 12 week cycle
• Impossible - 10 years, still no game

Gigi.

 

Thanks Gigi Master, for bestowing your excellent wisdom upon us all. *worship*

Moral of the story, be okay with making something tiny and totally crap, but at least it gets finished.

 

My addition to this: don't reinvent the wheel but use what ever you can find. (in the assetstore!)
I see so many people building things like a gui which takes days or even weeks. Just spend that $65 so you can move on and finish something

 

No one makes a perfect omelet right off the bat. The first time you crack an egg, there is a possibility that everything will go perfectly. You could crack it just right, and empty it into the bowel without getting any shell in the way. But it's far more likely that you will flub it, at least a little, and end up with egg all over everything. It can help considerably to watch someone else break those eggs first, but that is still no guarantee of success. At the end of the day, there is no substitute for rolling up your sleeves and breaking some eggs yourself.

Making something small and not very good is how you experiment. It's the game development equivalent of learning to break eggs. There are a lot of other steps that you will learn later. But there's always a baseline of where you have to start, whether it be a functional version of pong, or even just a basic "Hello World" program. Personally, I always start my larger projects out as tech demos. I always want to prove to myself that I can get the core gameplay and functionality running before I start working on the "trim."

 

Well that was a long way of saying "Yes."

 

Great thread idea, Gigi. It'd be awesome if it got stickied, actually.

This is some advice that I've been giving so often that I keep the link handy to paste into threads about once a week:

 

This one's recent, but I think also worth re-posting. It's a response to someone essentially telling us not to be pessimistic and discouraging by telling people to do small projects instead of large ones, and telling people starting out that they should go for the big stuff if that's what they want to do.

 

I like this a lot, great work guys and it's good to have the elders advice.

I'm going to throw in my own experience so everyone can face palm and those who are starting out can learn something. If anyone is thinking of that hard to reach and impossible giant project, I've been down that dark road, and this was my experience, a train wreck of mistakes.

I felt like I'd been there done that, developed in the big engines and I was a cocky little student, so when it came to my final project at university, I not only thought of developing in an environment that was completely alien to me, but making something completely outrageous and ambitious. Fabulous idea.

In the beginning I had to wait for the SDK of this engine to be released for free. Then while developing I had to come up with a number of work arounds for features I had intended to include in my game as well as waiting on the engine to release updates that would include those features, then when upgrading to the new version, having it break everything I had coded.

Time till deadline, about 3 months, I decided to stick with it and stay with my ambitious project, I was determined to finish it. So to cut this short because it is a long story, about 2 weeks before the deadline, the whole game was stripped of everything and left with a variation on design with it's current mechanics and placeholder art. What was going to be an ambitious FPS project, turned into a wave based FPS horde game. That's all I managed to finish, I still got great grades and graduated, but that was something I never wanted to do again and project I'm not particularly proud of.

So moral of the story, whatever you have in your head to begin with, cut it down about 90%, make that remaining 10% awesome. Have a mechanic or feature you're not sure will work? Make something small based around that one mechanic or feature you're not sure how to make, you'll gain experience and knowledge and maybe change your mind on it in the long run. By all means, reach for the stars but you need to build the spaceship first.

 

This is a fun thread. Love it.

@Angry - I loved your ideas so much, I condensed them to their essence. If this thread continues to be useful, might be worth sticky-ing.

Gigi

 

very nice, also very emotive, made me think and realise that, I happen to have choosen the left path, and all I reached was a dead end, with only fails, but now that I am starting that right path I refused to take, I can finally see and realise that I have talent, all I need is to awaken it! Find what best suites me, and work on it, improve it, thanks for the motivation mate!

 

That actually sounds a lot like the first experience my (now professional day job) team had, as well. It was a huge learning experience and didn't really go to plan at all, but I've never considered it to be a "train wreck of mistakes".

We wanted to make a small but open RPG demo. On area, half a dozen NPCs, half a dozen fights, a shop with 3 items. If we were to do it now we could easily do it in the time we had allotted, but back then... not even close. We ended up with a linear string of 3 "quests" ending in a single fight, and a kickass windmill script.

Actually, the biggest thing we learned from that is that although we only saw what we hadn't finished, everyone who played it on demo day loved it. Nobody cared about what wasn't there, they just thought it was a cool 10 minute game where you walked around a bit and had a fight.

That's actually a lesson I refer to almost every day that I design stuff: Players don't see what's not there.

Yes, absolutely!

Based on trade show reception, as we've no sales data yet, the game I just recently had published (in my sig) is a really solid example of this. It was originally made in 7 days, around a full time job, because I'd signed up for a trade show but had nothing to take. So I restricted myself to 1 night for getting the gameplay working, and spent the rest of the week on dressing up the presentation. It's of course had a lot of work and rework since then, but the positive reception that it garnered with so little effort compared to everything else I'd made before changed my focus on all of the hobby projects I've done since.

 

Cool story!

So, what qualifies as short? In the past 2 years, I've released 5 products on the app store - usually requiring between 8-16 weeks to develop. Enough time to give it meat, without it turning into a career. In order, they took: 9 weeks, 16 weeks (Gratitude Habit), 9 weeks (Good Sex, Great Marriage), 2 weeks (Xmas), and 14 weeks (Compliment Habit).

My skills have improved, so now, I can start new projects to re-vamp the two most popular: Gratitude and Sex. That'll take ~8 weeks each and it'll not only add to the 300-400 downloads/day, it will also have a one-time 'Update' bump out to 60,000+ users.

Even when things don't go as planned, I'm still filled with the warm feeling of pride from accomplishing something real. I'm taking the slow and steady approach by developing small, frequent projects as I travel down the right path toward success.

Gigi

 

Have to admit; I went left. Not as far left as an MMORPG but making an RPG. However, I didn't just jump in blindly. I had some idea what I was getting into having taken multiple programming courses in the late 80s and early 90s. Even wrote a text based DnD dungeon crawl with some classmates back when BASIC was pretty much the only language people were using. I also watched and did every single free tutorial I could find; even paid for a couple of them and I have spent a lot of money on starter kits, models and pretty much everything else one person needs to make an RPG game. Got a few prototypes out - even have a playable demo on the Play store. But it's been a long, long haul to get where I am. And I've learned so much about Unity, programming and everything that goes into making an RPG with Unity. At this point I can write a fairly complex code without looking at the reference and getting no errors. I am actually surprised now when I get an error and not the other way around where I was surprised when my code actually worked. I've stopped doing the happy-chair dance every time I get a script to work. Now I reserve it for when I accomplish really, really difficult tasks.

 

Whatever your dreams are, consider them crushed and trampled under the weight and magnitude of your competition; a roaring and raging tsunami of AAA sweeps over you as you cling to a small slippery rock at the abyss of certain failure.

As your grip slips and you look into the abyss, you feel your dreams being washed over the side, cascading into the gloom.

If you've got this far and still hung on, you've already won.

I thought I was a paid passenger on the Starship Unity though! How disappointing to actually be required to don a spacesuit and patch up the hull :S

 

That was the most depressingly beautiful thing that I've ever read.

 

that was the most rpg way of saying it, it was awesome hahahaha

 

yeah, that sounds pretty much my first years interested in game development, A LOT of stupid mistakes, still making a lot of mistakes but trying to learn from them as best as i can

 

This post should be made sticky!

 

Perhaps some of us could share the huge AAA projects we took on and never finished, or are currently developing. I've been building a game for about 1 1/2 years and I get the feeling its one of those big game ideas being talked about here. Givin the current development, What do you think my chances of success are or how long it will take to finish? If other people could share their massive projects that never took off, I could compare it to mine.

Videos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ucPhFuWgXA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF3q3yQ7BIg

game description and WIP thread
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/154536-Steampunk-FPS-game

 

To answer your question, I added an additional story to the original post. When you've re-read it, take a few moments to decide whether you accept Gigi's Challenge. 12 weeks starts right now ... tick, tock, tick tock.

Gigi

 

I added this story to the original post. And, though it's odd, I'm here to say...

I accept Gigi's Challenge. Began on 2013/06/08
Gigi

 

Well I dont have any time for more projects. I was just curious if people could share the huge projects they never finished. Since people seem to talk about them but never really show them.

 

The forums are littered with carcasses of ambitious projects. Sometimes, devs report of the despair the feel, upon realizing there are thousands and thousands of things still to do. Your project shows the tremendous learning you've enjoyed in the past year and a half, and based on your progress, I'd estimate another year to nail the basic game mechanics, and 1.5 additional years to finish an actual game, assuming you narrow your scope. You might could cut it in half by working full time and have an artist.

Do you know which metric is tied to success when you release an app? Surprisingly, it's not how much schooling, prior experience, or number of years invested in your product. The most important metric is: the number of previously released titles. At 3+ years per project, it takes you years to get across the muddy river, only to realize there were brambles waiting for you on the other side. After that comes fog, and sinkholes, and darkness, as the sun sets.

Try this. Write the components of your tech down on a sheet of paper. It's an awesome list, so pat yourself on the back! Now, turn the sheet of paper around on the table - look at from different directions. Then, set the list to the side, knowing it will always be there waiting for you and realizing that this list is both your friend and your enemy.

Now, give your brain one constraint - 12 weeks to build something, start to finish. Try the right path. For a change.

Gigi

 

My roots in Project Entropia learned me that a game is never finished. MMO's that are constantly updated as the years pass by give no time pressure on a final release date. Also the continues participation from the developers event-wise gives a lot of value to the game-play.

Project Ion, developed by someone who had not wrote a single line of code in his life before 2011 is doing a great job on exactly that i describe above. I believe that this project is and will be a success. Along with the development of some neat assets he creates for his project and at the same time for the asset store gives this project a solid foundation for sure.

No matter how big your journey will be, it always begins with a single step, funny thing is when you finish your journey it also ends with a single step. Think about it.

 

A gem I heard the other night:

 

True, but there are still time pressures for first release dates, right?

When we set a release date for Master Thief there was a bit of a push to get things as good as they could be prior to that release. But of course there's more that we want to do and add, and we intend to do so over a number of significant updates, and those don't have pressure. The "pressure" was in getting ourselves a solid foundation from release day upon which we can build moving forward. I expect that MMOs are a lot like that.

Which brings up another potential piece of advice: Make version 1.0 as small as possible. If it works out you can always add more later, release a version 2.0, make add-ons / DLC, and so on. Plus, releasing early gives you an opportunity to get feedback from players, which could influence your future development for the better.

 

This is exactly how Project Ion works. Present day we on version 0.5.4
Version 0.5.5 to be expected around next week.

MMO's should never be finished if you ask me. Just as space we should constantly expand the 3D universe with content and features.

 

I went right, I made small prototypes with game maker for years. I finished a 1942 ripoff and I made a tower builder and defense game. I am still in the prototyping phase with Unity, but I hope to begin a Unity project I'll actually finish soon. I have many years of practice and the left path is tempting. What will I choose? I don't know, I need to have a long hard talk with myself.

 

OMG you are so right! I seriously have been playing with game engines for YEARS!!!!! I have watched game engines rise to the top and fall completely off the internet and all this time I have not published a thing. Came close, but for some reason just unplugged the computer and stuck it under the bed. My Wife is so tired of me wasting time (lots of it) and money (ummm lots of it) and not making anything out of it. So.... 12 weeks? Really? Well, your post was very inspiring and very true!

Ok 12 weeks.

OMG 12 weeks really?

Ok....... here I go....

Started on 6/16/2013

 

This has been the most inspiring thread I've ever read. I had always been planning big and never finished anything, but this discussion gave me more than enough motives to make a new start and change the way I work. So here it is,

I accept Gigi's challenge and will finish a game 12 weeks from now. - Started on 6/16/2013

 

Last weekend I decided to make something really small. I made a list of the features, which was like 20 things. Then I looked at it and looked at the first item on the list, and said to myself, what if I just make that one feature? So I did. 2-3 days of development, 2-3 days to get it ready for the asset store, now released and available for purchase. 1 week all-round, project finished. Only about the 4th or so project I've finished. What did all the other projects have in common? They were all going to take longer than a couple of weeks.

With such a short timespan I'm finding it makes the project much more spontaneous, much more interesting, feasible, progress is quick and feedback comes fast, it's always easy to see the finish line, and finishing becomes easy and welcome. For me this seems to mean I have to work on something that has a visual component (because I want to see results quickly), it has to be something comprising multiple tiny/small parts so that I can finish those tiny parts very early in the project and not loading it all up waiting for the end, it needs to be something that has elements of what I haven't done before, and it needs to be genuinely interesting. Wrap this all up in a 1-2 week sandwich and project completion is so much easier.

 

Ok, something I'd like to point out...

There's nothing actually wrong with never releasing anything if you're just in it for the fun!

It's not all I want out of the hobby, but plenty of people might be happy tinkering and not worrying about making it public. I mean, plenty of other hobbies never involve releasing things to the public, and that's totally cool. If you love crafting for the sake of the craft, don't let us dissuade you. And if anyone tells you that you're wasting your time just ask them how much they produced last time they sat down and watched telly.

What I'm saying is, if you're doing this for fun then don't let releasing things get in the way of having fun.

 

You are absolutely correct and I have learned massive amounts from people in the forums that are here (or in other communities) just for fun. I will admit there is just as much fun in creating a game, sometimes more, as there is in managing a released title. They are completely different experiences (sounds like you already know that angrypenguin). You are much more free during the creating process. During the managing released title process you have business decisions that have to be made and constraints about what you do with updates and new features. Even if I wrap up a game and launch it, I will most likely always be in the creation process of something that is just all for me.

I could absolutely see those that have business type stresses in their day job just playing around with game development and never wanting to release a title. There should be no shame in that at all.

 

Look forward to it!

See you in September!

Ah... Inspiring-Mr-Imaginary! What 'cha release?

Gigi

 

very inspiring thread, as someone said, it s better to release one average app than having 10 awesome apps in a word document.
but again we all want to shine with an awesome app!!!!

 

So you've reached the point where there is a fork in the road.


Take the rightward path, do small things, learn how do it well. Learn how to do the hard things one at a time. Take time to learn from your mistakes. Practice and practice. After some time, you would have made your first project. A bit more enhancements, your first game. Some more tweaks, your first game.


The leftward path is full of broken dreams, false hopes, supposed roads paved with gold. But trekking there, there seems to be no rest for travellers. Only mirages in a desert of emptiness. People who join your project to fleece you. After some time, the loft goals you set become impossible to achieve and without supplies (money, food) you start to run low on morale and hope. Eventually you keep going around in circles.

There is the thunderous crowd wanting to make an MMO-FPS game, Mobile AAA game, MMO-RPG style game with newbie team MMO-Sims games with hundreds of players on on-line servers. Let them do it, watch them crash and burn, you might learn something from their mistakes.


Start when you have 20+ years of experience. That is when you have the money to finance, the management skills to lead your staff, the right connections for marketing, the skills to take the leftward path.

 

Well this thread is honestly a must see for anyone planning to or currently creating a game,

after reading this I was able to sit down and honestly say to myself, "CAN I realistically make the game I have always wanted to with no experience?"
My answer was a firm no, I am starting small and creating my first basic game, I can honestly say that I cannot wait to post a link to it and show everyone how badly I screwed up, but how much fun I had doing it and the invaluable experience I gained.

Thank you for this thread,

CHALLENGE ACCEPTED 6/18/2013

 

See you in September .
Gigi.

 

We need a thumbs up smilie!

I'll make do with .

 

That is my tale of this journey. Many years ago, when I had no knowledge of programming, I set upon the left path. Many times. Afterwards, over time, I would often set out upon the right path. Then, I focused my collegiate studies upon programming and got a job as a Software Developer. Now, having honed my programming and art skills, I understand my limitations and can set out upon the path that is neither the short projects nor the unattainable city. My campsites not finished games, but finished features.

I do not suggest that third trail lightly. Many years have I been on my walkabout before I set off down it.

 

I'd like to share a few fallen projects of my own. I've gathered pretty large fan bases, and the fear of dissapointment coupled with the stress of being a one man developer almost drove me to insanity! I've recently taken a step back and looked at my options; this thread is exactly the conclusion I've come to.

Here are a few links:
Arx Catalyst: http://arxcatalyst.weebly.com/videos.html
(slow progress due to complicated NPC interaction, dynamic environments, and heavy work on full body awareness)
Depths of Marlayo: http://dragoshi.weebly.com/depths-of-marlayovideo-game.html
(slow progress due to complicated combat systems, lack of familiarity with the Ouya Development Kit, and complex failsafes and conditions for randomly generated levels)

I won't mention the other projects I've started and never published.
With the evidence in this thread supporting my internal resolution to dev problems, there is only one thing left to do.
CHALLENGE ACCEPTED! 6/18/2013 I'll be developing a fantasy side scroller. Best of luck to my fellow devs!

 

A cross-post for the collection:

 

I have some unexplained urge to write something here

12 weeks is a lot of time. I have made my game Ball 3D (www.ball3d.com) in about one month from scratch and the budget of the game was 0$ (I have used free assets and made some in Blender). This is the first multiplayer game I have made (it tells a lot about how easy it was with the built-in Unity networking).

Now one year later I have made about 50 updates, I have about 3500 unique users per day and I can live from this one game (and it's free and I don't even have a shop in the game (yet) ). On top of that my game doesn't have any client side prediction, so it's basically unplayable on 100ms+ pings. But it's unique and fun, most of the players are spending hours playing every day.

On the other hand I could spend the whole year making these 50 updates before releasing the game and I would probably still have to wait another year to have the player base I have. So maybe for an Indie developer it's better to just release "something" and see what will happen. If there will be no interest you can go to other project. Notch did something similar with Minecraft as far as I know.

I have started working on a new game, this time it will be a fast paced arena shooter like Quake. I have started it 2 weeks ago or so. I hope I will finish the first version in two months or maybe sooner. I am not taking the challenge though

I wish you all good luck with your 12 weeks

 

If it's free and has no IAP, how are you making a living off it?

 

If you go to the website he linked...

 

Are ads really enough to make any kind of living off, though?

 

NO

 

In my case it's enough. I can't tell you any numbers because of the terms of use.

Looks like I am not the only one: http://www.nplay.com/BeGone/

 

Unless you have high numbers of players per day and a high eCPM, then usually not.

Of course that depends on what you classify as "enough" money to make a living.

He has 3 ads on his game page and he says he has about 3500 unique visitors a day. So, at a $1 eCPM he would be getting around $10/day if every one of his unique visitors only went to the page once. His ads don't seem to rotate so they require a complete page reload to retrieve another ad. This amount of money would not be classified as enough to live off by the majority of people.

He does say that most of his visitors play for multiple hours a day so maybe they close the browser tab after playing and then come back to play later in a new tab (with new ads). If on average a user does this 2 or 3 times a day, that brings his earnings up to $20-30/day. Still not enough to live off for most people.

Maybe he's lucky enough to be getting a higher eCPM, maybe $2-3 eCPM. This could potentially bring his earnings up to $90/day or more. This may start getting into the realms of being able to live off.

Of course this is all guess work. I like to muse on these thoughts so maybe others will find it interesting as well. Only MariuszKowalczyk could tell us real numbers to think about/discuss.

EDIT: Whoops, didn't see MariuszKowalczyk's new post before writing my post. Well done on being able to earn a living making games, you're already doing a lot better than most people on these forums. Thank you for sharing your story.

 

3500 unique visitors, but the number of actual visits is much higher and the number of actual page views is even higher.
I am from Poland and I am living in a small city, so I don't need as much money to live

Also I have this other game Ball 2D and it earns me some money too.

Like I say I would like to tell you the numbers, but I can't.

I am going to implement some in game purchases in the next 6 months or so, we will see what will happen then.

I am thinking about using playspan.com to do this. Do you have any experience with it? I am afraid that after having the shop in the game, I will have to spend most of my time answering to emails from people who bought something and didn't get it. Any suggestions?

I hope the author of this topic will forgive me this off topic question