How to earn £12,000 in one year from game development?

Not quite. I hang out with some of these developers. They are like me. They are aggressive, understand split testing, understand it's business and understand how not to waste time on futile things. They are businessmen, and proven ones at that. Thinking they're the same as 99% of this forum is just 100% wrong.

Yes they are just one guy or a small team, but they're still running the show like a business. You can get annoyed at my comments, and dream notch and so on are just the little guy, but the moment they started paying bills full time and living off their earnings, is the moment they learned the hard way how to think differently.

A professional indie won't act or think like the majority of this forum does, but like a business. That does not mean they aren't approchable or all-round nice guys, they are some great guys, but it's a mistake to think or assume they are like most of the forum in the way they think.

The way they think is why they're successful, not because they're magically selling a game thats cool. Some of them have S***ty games but succeed rather well.

 

Some people learn a lot from books though and although you may not pick up from books too well it's not to say that it's not worth buying books to learn from as I have learnt a lot from books but I also learn a lot more from visuals, seeing and doing like you have mentioned.

If the book(s) are good and the author knows what he or she is talking about and knows how to teach then you will learn from that book...

 

I never said or though that they are like 99% of people from this forums. 99% people from this forums are starters in game industry, more or less with less than 2 years experiance on their fields, IHB developers are afcourse more experianced.
I just meant that they are indie developers, not developers from huge companies who dont give a S*** about indies.
And while you are speaking about bussines, they know its a bussines to pay their bills, thats why they will take oportunitiy to those who have decent games, put the game on IHB and cut some profit from sales. This cut is nothing close to Steam or any publisher cut.

 

I think that the only company that cares about indies is croteam.

 

I think caring is a strong word. I personally care a great deal about indies and plan to put my earlier promise into practise when there's enough spare funds - an indie nurturing project, where I fund unity ios or android for them, and provide guidance plus any small funds. When the game sells, I will get back exactly what I invested, no more, no less - and repeat the process with the next selected indie.

It's a private project and I just think some people need that small hand up to get started plus a bit of advice. I wish I had that, but I didn't so I think it would be a "cool" thing to do.

 

That sounds amazing Hippo. Would really help out the community and rep for us Indies.

 

So does size matter, should I spend my 364 days making lots of small games or a few larger deeper ones?

Could anyone share stats or ratios between the development time / expense and revenue of larger and smaller projects they have done?

Is there a sweet spot between depth and features and revenue?

What types of games earn more, shooter, rpg, strategy, platform, puzzle ect?

 

I think (and its what I want to do once I find a coder partner) its best to do incredibly small games you can play whilst on the bus, perfect examples are things like 'Doodle Jump' 'Pong' 'Space Invaders' 'Coin Drop' and then just re-vamp the skin, you dont need to be that innovate. as for Genre, Id just say 'Mini-game' if you can class that.

 

OK my point is we can all talk about what we think will work but what we need to know is what does work, and why?

Have you tried tried Eric5h5's 2d tutotial game, it's what I used to build up to my cancer wars game.

 

I dont think you can classify what DOES work, at the end of the day its from experience and personally opinion on what works. everything works, just depends what audience you are going for. if one certain thing DID work 100% everyone would do that and be rich

 

Well we will have to disagree, I think you can classify what does work and the people who make it work for them and earn a living from it have either picked up on what the successful people are doing and have tried and failed quite a few times before they have made it. Then they have improved what they do and it's the constant improving that keeps them ahead of the competition.

On average the people who have Mastered a skill or are top in their field have been doing it for about 10 years, we see the instant successes on TV but behind that is a lot of practice, training and failures!

Game development is great fun and I really enjoy it but I'm not making a living from it and others are, I need to know what I'm doing wrong and their doing right and start adjusting my course accordingly!

 

Charlie's right. It not how big it is, its what you do with it.

Big = same sales as small.

Case Study: Zombieville.

3k downloads a day, 1.99 price point. Do the maths.
Tiny, tiny game. Quality artwork.

The key is presentation is high. Don't go for deep value for money experiences, by the time they get halfway through your game they'll be playing something else. Aim for short and sweet. A repetitive game is fine too...

 

Arowx looking at some of the games you have already released I think a couple of them would be great on the iPhone such as 'Cure 'Em up!'. I would say that I may start to focus onto the mobile side of things as on the PC you have to create something big to get anywhere, but like hippocoder said on the iPhone Zombieville is a pretty simple and small game yet it is very popular.

 

Man I'd love it if I could make it in the iOS biz, I feel like I could totally come up with a nice mobile game with unity in a 3 months lapse... I just need to get the hardware and unity ios license, I'm considering making a little investment o___o

 

In that case: Build the game, when it's done get a mac and the ios license and do it. It's dhouldn't be that hard to build the basic game. If you keep the ios limits (low drawcalls,polys, every other performance point) in mind, the resolutions as well and of course the input stuff that have to adjust later on, it should be working. Though it would help of course, to test it from time to time on ios.

 

Is selling on PC really that bad of an option? I don't really have a mac or iPhone nor any money to invest. I have time to invest, but the idea of dedicating a lot of months to something and it not paying back worries me.

 

For the first game I could just guess how much an iphone can handle by looking at other games and keeping drawcalls low and all, so I can work on the game while I save up some bux to buy everything I need.

How can I handle the iphone touchscreen input? Is it as simple as replacing Input.GetMouseButton with iphone touch input code?

 

Sorry can't say anything on that. Guess somobody more skilled at iphone dev like hippo could comment on that But as far as i know, it's not as simple but still simple.

 

Noone said that making PC game is bad option or either that it is not paying bad. You just have to put much more dedication, work, and quallity into game comparing to IOS. It is more long term development, where you have to know that money will start to flow in in about year or more while in IOS development for quallity game that is in three months usually.

 

Yeah, it worries me too. But I think the appstore is giving a much bigger chance of making profit than pc games. You can make games quicker and they'll sell better than pc games, for the looks of it.

My logic tells me there's truth in that. When making an iphone game, I feel you can get away with Sweet and short content, sure it must be very polished, but hey, it's a smaller screen, and you're allowed to keep it low specs, because you're enforced to (because of the small iphone cpu capacity compared to a desktop pc).
While PC games, short and nice comes for free, and there's not an appstore for pc. Yes, there are stores for pc games all over the internet, many of them, that's exaclty the problem! How are you going to get noticed in the whole internet? With the iOS, you have to get noticed in only one place, the appstore.
^That's me thinking out loud, trying to make some sense, heh.

If risking a little money improves your chances of success, then it's money well spent.

Plus, I've been wanting an iphone for some time!

 

@janpec

I think you're a little off base.

First, programming on iOS is more difficult than PC. You have to use much stricter practices, do a lot of shader rejiggering, and lots of thoughtful optimization.

Second, most of your posts make it sound like you're operating under the assumption that to make a PC game it has to be a 3d fps, rts or rpg with AAA artwork. Let's see some of the most successfuly indie PC games of recent memory:

 

PC games have just the same position as IOS games. Pretty much more or less only one place to sell (if you want to sell good) and that is Steam. The difference is that in PC market you just have more secondary options (Desura, selling on website, pre-order, whatnot) but this are secondary options which taken on avarage dont make nearly as much as Steam sales.
My advice would be, if you cant make good enough PC game to be accepted on Steam, you really should think twice about making PC game today if you want to make some good profit from it and make a living of it. Relying only on website sales and praying that thousands of people will spot your website by accident is more likely recipe to start living under the bridge very soon.

I completly dissagre with programming for IOS being harder than PC. What you said is true there are differences in some areas with IOS programming, but please dont tell me that some avarage IOS game takes longer to make or has much harder tasks than AA indie game .
I could state some major features that IOS even do not have, and are crutial today in PC industry.

I was talking about ensuring recipe for PC game that will bring you good sales for sure. This is rather something in quallity Overgrowth, Mount and blade, Warm gun. So basically indie games that are as you stated fps or rpg games. But as i also said before platformers are great way, but with some thought on how will you sell them, becouse very low ammount of platformers sales well, even if they are made good.

Also two (if not three) of the games that you showed as example are being part of Indie humble bundle, which cannot be taken as avarage sale over website, Steam or any other distributor.

 

OK lots of conflicting views appearing this is my plan complete the little game HMS Lightning, release it on Kongregate, port it to Andoid, IOS, Mac and PC and see how it does on each platform, reveal the sales stats on my blog.

So if you support a platform what can I do to maximise sales of HMS Lightning on that platform?

 

Making game on two different platforms in 1 year? Hm that is a bit hard. It can be doable but then it really either game is 2d platformer where conversion from IOS to PC version isnt that obvious, or you have some really short "advanced" PC game.

 

This is the beta just going to finish it and launch it it's not amazing but it's a start...

http://www.kongregate.com/games/Arowx/hms-lightning-beta2

 

Quickly finish it on mobile, I won't comment on sales tactics til you're ready to roll

 

Hippocoder i am just curious, would you be able to reveal some informations or numbers about your game sales? I am just curious what your numbers look like on IOS field. If your games are under NDA just ingore my post.

 

There's lots of useful advice in this thread and I really appreciate it, thanks especially Hippocoder. I'm thinking now to drop everything and work on a SMALL iOS game and when it comes time to release it, buy the Unity iPhone license and hope to make enough back to cover it.

Personally I am a chronic `pioneer` of new ideas and advanced concepts ahead of the curve but honestly, so far absolutely none of them have been practical to implement in a short time period. Even when I start off with a small idea like `just make a game exactly like xyz` (referring to a really simply old-school game) it ends up being `wow, I could do this and this and this` and before I know it, a big long list of ideas is in front of me but no game whatsoever.

 

Try a couple of competitions or game Jams they focus you on gameplay as you don't have time for anything else?

 

What do you specialize in? Im thinking of maybe getting a small group of 2-3 people and do something, if you're interested of course

 

Do you have Unity iOS? Are you even a programmer? What you deem "crutial" to the industry are crucial to you, not to the industry of PC gaming. All the games I listed have sold more than 100,000 copies on PC not including indie humble bundle sales, and none of them are using (graphical effects I'm assuming your speaking of) features "crutial" to pc gaming.

 

It is pretty much the same, except no mouse-over state as a finger is either touching the screen or not.

 

I wasnt speaking of graphical features but gameplay (code related) features.

 

I can only reveal sales info for barnyard bounce, everything else I can't. But I'm due to release my latest (for my company) game soon and will be doing detailed stats on that for people in the forum too. Actually thats two apps incoming but never mind, wait and see

 

I just wanted to say thank you hippo! I never knew the iOS market was so good for indie developers, I now plan on spending the $600-$700 it will take to get the iOS Basic extension for Unity3D and a nice iPhone, even if one can't make a living off of making games for iOS (be it due to poor marketing or anything else), extra cash is always nice hehe. and the sales info you're talking about will definitely be interesting to see as well.

 

Yeah thanks hippo, been really helpful in this thread learnt lots and i'm really eager to get something steamed out now haha.

 

You can definitely make a lot of money from freemium games. Most of the top grossing games on iOS now days are freemium. The trouble is that you are one developer and freemium games tend to have a simple mechanic with a crap tone of content!

Do some investigation into what games are out there that have been developed by 1 or 2 man teams and that'll give you an idea of the scope of project you can accomplish. Here's a few I know of off the top of my head,
World of goo - long development time and by a very experienced guy though
Feed me oil - one guy out of Russia I believe. But pushed big time by his publisher challingo
Tiny wings - nice game but I think he got lucky
Mighty fin - two guys I use to work with
Wooords - different two guys I use to work with
Chopper and Chopper 2 - one guy, simple concept, but he had the advantage of being on iPhone very early, and also released on the Mac OS store pretty much on day one.

From the numbers i've heard, all of these games made or will make over 30k USD in a year I believe.

 

The top one I heard of was tiny towers think it was a small team, very retro 8bit styling.

Updated video, any typos?

 

What seems to be in style right now is arcade type game with RPG elements and then have IAP to expediate the grinding of having to sit there and upgrde. Neither of these are fremium

Top game: Jetpack, Muffin Knight,

Jetpack joyride seems very simple game but it has alot of depth to it with upgrades and powerups. Everything is done very well.

 

Are you asking which would be easiest? Or are you asking which would be a success?

The answer to all of the questions above is "either or." Seriously.

Always remember, no matter what endeavour you are pursuing, the money is insignificant to the effort involved. You can always get more money.

No, but you have to pick your style of game and genre just right. You can go after the hardcore gamer audience, which is incredibly fickle and critical, but you have to really get something unique in front of them, e.g. Minecraft or Torchlight or you can focus more on the casual market, fickle and critical but in subtly different ways. Mobile requires a different style of game play and the hardcore market is looking for a different experience than they are on the desktop. The casual market is too but again, in subtly different ways.

/facepalm

I call it the "Building eBay and Rome" effect, hence the reason to create a GDD, you keep focused, if it is not in the GDD you don't create it. Create a non-goals section. Create a future feature release section -- all of your "wow" ideas go in there. I understand your problem completely, we all suffer from it to a degree, the answer is to control that impulse and direct it rather than letting your "wow" factor override your need to deliver. You can do this easily enough by realising that you are not releasing your magnum opus for this particular genre but a series of controlled releases with new features in it, to make the game fresh and exciting on the appstore. Your customers will appreciate all the new features constantly being released, and you will get new customers with each feature release.

Take a look at eBay, what do you see? This huge, sprawling, feature-rich website with loads of moving parts all working in unison. People come to me several times a year and say "I want to create an eBay clone, how much?" (the other one is Facebook, before that it was MySpace). Take a look at Rome, or at least our modern interpretation of what Rome was, a huge, sprawling, feature-rich city. But it didn't just spring in to existence, it took time, lots of time. And many of the ideas and features in Rome, or eBay, could not be thought of until after it had existed for a long time. The ideas you have for your game today are not many, no matter what you think, because after six months, you'll be thinking "Wow, I could do this because I just did those two other things. Why didn't I think of doing this earlier?" You didn't know what you didn't know.

I have a game idea, I've referred to it earlier in this thread, that incorporates many different game play styles, but I am going to spread each style out over several games, and then, at the end, tell a really bad pun. I don't know all of the details that lay between here and the pun, I just know what I am going to do for the first and second games, three through seven, I have no clue, I just know they will exist in some form.

 

Just bang one out and suck it and see. Can't beat hands on experience.

 

/facepalm

P.S. My initial thought to the above statement is unprintable and unprofessional even by my standards.

 

Hm you might want to explain a bit why you find this statement so unbeliveable.

 

Interesting thread.

Some questions:
- Any ressources on the comparison of 2D vs 3D game successes on IOS?
- It seems that most successfull IOS games are very "level" heavy (same base content, just different situational arrangment)?
- Very stylized art, building a brand. Correct?
- Any ressources on (IOS) Game Project Planning? (Quick turnaround also means Quick Planning, any recommendations)?

Thank you all for the great information so far.

 

Overall there is definetly huger percentage of 2d games than 3d games. However in top 10 games usually there is arround 50% 3d games, but most of them are made by AAA companies and are conversion of AAA PC or Xbox titles.

 

I'm curious about this quote:

What's the big stiffie from BigFish?

hippocoder, JustinLloyd, et al, thanks for posting.

 

The stiffie they can change prices. But overall they are ok. I like Jake Birkett (did some work for him once) and he works there - he is a sharp guy.

Just you don't really get much of a good shot once your times up there. They don't do anything underhanded or anything. It's their market, just realise that when going in and it is fine. This is the case for a lot of portals, once you go in you get one good shot at it. iOS is slightly different in that apple can bump you pretty hardcore with their collections and hot picks if you have made a good title. Or you can update and have a comeback attempt.

 

Thanks guys (especially hippocoder), this is a really awesome thread.

Was originally planning on doing an Android only game, but maybe switching to iOS (or doing both) would be the better choice. Even so, the market does seem pretty fierce. I don't think you can release just any old crap on the mobile market and expect to be marking $30k right off the bat. But I sure hope I can...

 

It has been three days since your clock started ticking, have you started work on getting your games out yet?

 

Ive started talking with some people about starting one, My aim is by this time next year to make around 10k$ to move myself up a group haha, Sounds quite possible from what I make right now. Thanks again!