One-Man Goal: A Game That Makes $40 A Day. Realistic?

The GDP of the world is not infinity and the universe will shrink before infinity time so you may want to revise those upper limits.

The limits in my 'success' model would be based off Tetris, so 0-50 years and $0-10,000,000.00.
50 years being when royalty expires, and $10m being the most an individual has made out of a game. (I just made that up)

I would describe the growth of the function as a normal cumulative distribution.

 

Not sure what this is talking about. But Notch made much more then $10m off Minecraft.

 

Yah, it's rather daft saying $40 a day...either a game hits it big or it doesn't. $40 a day is a goal if you're free lancing.

 

*GROANS LOUDLY*

 

I honestly don't really understand the reply, since my figures were meant to set an example of the wide range of success or failure one can have in game development, as opposed to a literal meaning of "you can make INFINITE money!"

But yes, you CAN make infinite money. What feels like infinite, anyway. Tech innovators are known to flow in so much money that they cannot give it away fast enough. There gets a point where a single individual has so much money, that it literally feels infinite for them.

World of Warcraft and Minecraft are two great examples. They don't just make money off of box sales. They have made millions off of toys, card games, t-shirts, stuffed animals, microtransactions, subscriptions. WoW alone banks in the billions, and it is still banking more every year than most games ever will.

The GDP of the world in the foreseeable future is infinite, because the future is infinite. If you want to argue that millions of years into the future is no longer infinity, then....okay.

Your creation could still make you money long after you are dead, making your family millions. You just never know. Disney & Tolkien are examples of this.

If you want to be "literal" about infinity, then simply don't try further communications with other people. However, infinity is a great term for the latter end of success.

I heard they're releasing Fallout 4 soon. A game series that was originally created 17 years ago, which is almost as long as games have been around. I also heard Ultima Online & Everquest, two of the original MMO's created 17 and 15 years ago, are still alive and pumping tons of money into the pockets of their owners.

Let us also not forget that books written thousands of years ago are made into video games today. Romance of the Three Kingdoms anyone? Entertainment can certainly take multiple forms across time. A game created today, may be the basis for a virtual reality experience a hundred years from now.

I'd say that "infinite" profit is the proper word for the top end of video game success.
Otherwise, there is little use for the term. If we can't use it here to describe an idea, then honestly the word is meaningless and should be stripped from the dictionary.

 

40$/day?
Enlarge your ideas, focus to android. This is billion dollar pasta mate..

 

What does that even mean?

I honestly don't even understand if $40/day is too high or too low.

Granted, it is extremely low amounts of pay, but it's also equal to minimum wage $7.00/hour, 40 hours a week. Depending on your needs, your wants, your bills, your region, your life- it can or cannot be enough to continue chasing your dream.

Some devs would love $40/day for a year with their game they released, especially if it took them less than a year to release (or supplement their primary income as it was a part time gig).

Game dev is scary, risking your entire livelihood if you go fun time into it. With every game that fails, your savings dry up. Of course, if you have no savings when you start game dev full time, that is even scarier unless you have support.
Anyone who is young or is able to live with loved ones, well, that is a great opportunity for game dev. One which I actually encourage for single folk who have not a family yet. If your cost of living is $0, and you can devote full time to game dev, then $40/day is enough to continue chasing your dream until you do better and finally make a game which can allow you to live off game dev.

Hell, some people could pay off their student loans while attending college while living at home, just by chasing the dream of game development and making $40/day. Honing skills, gaining experience, making money, the possibility of hitting it big, all while chasing your other dream in college. It would be a perfect opportunity, before adult life hits you too hard and you're stuck with a mortgage raising several kids, unable to chase your dream anymore without risking the livelihood of your loved ones.

 

I agree with you I would say $40 is the magic number where you can live off your profits. Or, maybe go live in Thailand and you could probably get by on $5 a day! But if you are exactly on $40 it is very dangerous because any drop in profits could be devastating so either you'd need double or tripple that or get a part time job or backup job! (Or like I say move somewhere cheap!)

What you really want is a hit that makes loads of money for a short while before tailing off. Giving you money in the bank to live off.

 

@CarterG81

Thanks for reply. Of course I did not underestimate 40$/day. It's three times minimum wage in my country in montly.

But dont underestimate yourself too.

 

My dream

 

I just thought 0-Infinity was slightly unrealistic. Also WoW is a huge commercial entity not a single person. And even WoW turnover doesn't come close to infinity. I would have preferred to see something like $0-10 million. Also time doesn't go from 0-Infinity. I wasn't sure if you were being literal or figurative because you said something like "research has shown".

 

I think $100 a day would be more of a minimum to go `full time` as a developer and life off it, especially if you are supporting another person.

 

I agree, $40 wouldn't be a good bet for full-time developer. If you could keep those numbers up all year long you'd be making roughly $14,000 dollars in a year. The mean yearly income of minimum wage workers in America is somewhere around $15,000.

 

Thats america... where I live the minimum wage is 350 euros a month (475 usd) and the average wage is around 900 eur (1200 usd)

 

In that case, $40 dollars a day is a pretty good goal.

 

yeah, I guess its all a matter of perspective

 

Yup, the cost of living is a huge factor.

 

I wouldn't even work for $40 an hour. It would be just above the borderline survival wage here anyway.

 

Yep. That's the other option. You could probably get by on $40 a day in Estonia! Estonia is like the Thailand of Europe I've heard. Very cheap living. Because its an ex-soviet country.

Or the Ukraine is VERY cheap at the moment! You could sleep in a hostel there for about 3 euros a night! But of course there's other issues there to think about.

You got to ask yourself though. Do I WANT to live like that? Or do I want to work hard and live somewhere nice. (No offence Estonia).

BTW At the moment I'm averaging about $25-$30 a day from my app sales but my aim is to quadruple that. I would consider success if I achieved $100 a day and if I hit $500 a day (unlikely) that would be like winning the lottery! (But I have several apps not just relying on one)

 

Even in America, the cost of living can vary widely from place to place. The rent you'd pay on a three bedroom house in the city where I live wouldn't get you a studio apartment in the city of New York.


As for the original question of, "One-Man Goal: A Game That Makes $40 A Day. Realistic?", I think it's perfectly realistic... if you're willing to work for it. Just like staring any small business, being willing to work for it is a huge part of your chance at success. Other important factors will be being smart and doing research. How you monetize, what types of games you make, what marketing you use, and where you sell/distribute those games can and will make a huge difference in your income.

Just like in any other start-up business.

Yes, luck can play a factor, but never count on luck in business. Counting on luck in business is like counting on a lottery ticket: It's a nice way to pass some idle thought, but it won't get you any closer to your goals.

Forget Notch. Forget Blizzard. Look at what the small companies and one-man bands have come up with. Gamasutra regularly has postmortems on the site, including some with full sales numbers and income information. Research those and ones from other places. Learn from other people's successes and failures. Then go out and work hard for your own thing.

 

Well I just released my first app for android on November 27th, and it has about 1100 total downloads today. I have made about $120 in about half a month from ads. To get $40 every day you would have to have a pretty popular app with plenty of ads or a great deal of users buying IAPs. Possibly, you could make about $40 a day if you had several apps out at once, but to retain that income, you would either need to keep making apps of the same/better quality, or have great user retention / an endless stream of new users.

 

Well of course. You don't expect to make one app and then retire in luxury? You have to keep going. Treat it like a job. If you're getting $120 a month then you just need to make 9 more apps! One a month for a year. If it was easy everyone would be doing it!

Also it helps to have a backup job or do freelancing.

The difference between this and a salaried job is that you are creating assets which continually earn you money whereas a job when you stop working you don't earn money.

BTW 1000 downloads a day is amazing. That's like 1/3 million in a year!

 

Necro post! I don't know how this thread got dug up, though I'm glad I re-read this earlier post. It was a good story, if I do say so myself .

Gigi

 

What usually ends up happening is the game makes most of its money in the first week and then dies down -- unless you get it on the charts.

 

What about advertising? Im interested in ads bc AAA marketing campaigns, i imagine, are always successful?? Meanwhile, indie ad campaigns (if you can even call them a campaign) are usually iffy in results from what ive read.

At what point do ads let even crap win? Is it the money they pour in or mostly just the ad team's experience and knowledge (more efficient use of ad money)? Which one is more important? I mean obviously both are, but indies are limited resources, and could spend time learning instead of more money- but is it worth it. That kind of question.

 

Most of those are success stories.

http://www.pixelprospector.com/the-big-list-of-game-revenue-sales/

 

Sorry mate, but since you havent already, I doubt you could dwarf those numbers. I agree, $20 a month isnt much, but just saying 'yeh I could do that, but I wont' is easier said than done

 

I posted this a long time ago, we've made a hell of a lot more than $20.00 a day out of a closed alpha. Then again we have to make $750K to break even. So it swings in roundabouts, also were not a one man band either.

 

For IOS I find that to be the case. For Android the reverse - it seems to start low then build and find it's level. It must be the different ways search works in the app stores.

The thing I like about the app business is that it's not about how hard you work but how GOOD your app is. Therefore it forces you to be creative and clever. It's fun! It's also a gamble. So if you don't like gambling you're in the wrong business!

 

Nguyen wasn't a first-off success either. He released a crap ton of similarly tiny games both before and after Flappy Bird. In fact Flappy Bird had already been out for nearly a year before it reached inexplicable success overnight out of nowhere.

 

When I watch a good movie I feel enriched and inspired.
When I play flappy bird I feel like it's sucking time out of my life drawing me ever closer to my inevitable eternal death.
I'd just like people to think on that before they crank out the next flippy schnurd or drippy kwurd.

 

Its realistic, and also un-realistic. I know many cases one-man development, but they also input their own money for hire another man or buy asset, maybe you also should spent much money, it can over $10,000 easily.

Game development is not easy, specially for small numbers of team.

But time can make it happen (I know a case 3 men input 2 years to one project and finally earn more than $500,000).

Of course at most case, your game should compete with big studio's.

Gamer don't care about your or indie situation. Nor how hard you or me worked. Of course.

Market is very cold and unforgiving. Nobody care what you are.

Its hard to win especially one man.

2 men or 3 men become much different.

 

Actually, businessman should sacrifice himself first. I know a case some 3 men team loan money from bank by assuring his own house, finally succeeded. But that can't be done if himself didn't have some confidence at his own game.

If they failed, one man would lose house.

Business is like that. Life or death serious.

 

Some thoughts from past failures.
Crunching numbers and estimating product value on beforehand is something you can do if you aim to shake hands with a publisher or investor, as you would need to present a thorough business plan. There are many influencing variables determining what will be the true outcome, having a publisher or investor will consolidate some of the product's milestones and make it a bit easier to draw conclusions. Not having that, you rely plenty on your connections and company reputation where starting from scratch is an interesting journey, with a lot of hills and slopes!

In the end, the users will only look for value of their time spent into your product, where it's reaching out to them which is important if your plan is to ensure some liquidity. The stronger you can associate your public relations with your estimated target group and the true nature of your product, the better chances of your outcome reaching your part of the market.

The product's quality will be a multiplier to the success equation. I believe that content is king, and that your view on your users will saturate the entire experience. Ultimately, the level of success is in all your hard labor and rightful business choices. Connect early with your stakeholders, alpha and beta test with users and the PR sector (such as gaming magazines), to iron out a nice liftoff release day.

Here's a great talk on marketing: http://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/modules/beginner/marketing-and-pr/zero-budget-marketing
and another: http://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/modules/beginner/marketing-and-pr/indie-marketing-principles

Also, to maximize the revenue from your production, try to break the project apart in such way that you may sell parts of it as separate products. Check out this blog post: http://blogs.unity3d.com/2013/07/19/funding-indie-games-asset-store/