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

got 9373 score before rsi ruined my hand.

i still think the reload text should be clickable too.

 

Started my own:
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/110358-Working-on-my-own-game-for-once-No-title.

No updates for a while tho, waiting for the coder to shoot me a build to test.

 

Thank you Hippocoder, it's on the list, would you like a machine gun as well, automatic would get rid of that rsi problem!?

@charlisamways good for you!

 

1. as stated in kong comments, new weapons will raise interest
2. you should have a minimap of different areas you can progress though, each harder than the last
3. all weapons should not be selectable, but like carmack's comment about rage: each weapon is still useful for its own ends, for example a shotgun doesn't work at half distance onwards but will kill the nearest 3, with a low reload time, a machine gun will burn through ammo, but be weaker and the pistol is precise and conservative. Make them all share the same ammo type.

if you then progress through zones on the minimap, by clearing a quota, you will have players choosing to avoid collecting a more powerful weapon due to the onslaught style.

You should have red hats rush you twice the speed, but make them rarer to spawn.

Different zones have a different % chance to spawn a certain kind, ie the backyard level could just have lots and lots of slow ones with a couple that rush you, and the field could have very few overall but lots that rush you, and another level could make them always spawn in 3s, so that the shotgun becomes the favorable pickup, provided you're blessed enough to see one drop.

This isn't much extra work:

* some new gun behaviours
* areas (yes one static backdrop per area)
* a minimap of progress so you can mantain interest and keep playing.

Mostly its a few more static graphics for potentially a player playing for a couple of days instead of just once. As it is there is no incentive to play it more than once.

 

Way to go Hippo! That's some very specific and helpful feedback. Kudos for being helpful.

Gigi.

 

hippocoder wow! OK let's see what I can do! b4n

 

Hi,

I, like many others, have been following this thread for a while and have found the information and advice offered here to be extremely helpful.
I am at the moment working on my first iOS game and I find it difficult to create an effective plan for the project. I have made several attempts at the game only to find myself getting lost half way due to poor planning.
I wondered if anyone has any advice on how they go about planning their game projects, especially for people who may not have finished a complete game before.

Thanks

 

It's definitely not easy! What I found worked for me on my current game was to write up an 8 page GDD which pretty much bullet pointed my ideas and laid out the game for me. Every screen that I want, the enemies, their behavoirs, the scenes, etc. Also a lot of sketches in a notepad of the game screens and how I want things to behave. Having something concrete to refer to seems to make it easier for me at least to implement the features within Unity. I'll probably write up a postmortem on my blog of what worked for me with pictures/etc once I release my first commercial game

I keep my GDD up on http://backpackit.com/ on one of their writeboards so I can modify/refer to it from any computer that I want. I also put up any relevant links/information on my backpackit. I also used http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...JYhGQbBj8T_ZBFrdQ&sig2=QZtC2z1GcJz8W297DPGSFw as a template for my GDD, obviously not everything will apply to your game, and you don't have to go into mind blowing detail with every item.

I actually postponed the last game I was working on which had a month's worth of work done because I realized it would take me a lot longer to finish than I thought. Right now I'm working on something much simpler for the casual game market on iOS/Android based on a single mechanic which should take me about a month tops(Fingers crossed) to finish. I work full time so it's definitely not easy to keep to schedule when you come back home from work exhausted.

 

I think it was S. Spielberg that said the best way to learn to make films was go to the gym.

Every day.

If you can do something every day, whether you were in the mood or not, you'd be closer to being able to make a film than someone who only did it when they felt like it.

Same goes for games.

Sounds like you've got the principle Vdek.

And yes, if you can't express it in a GDD, you probably won't be able to express it in the editor.

 

@DanMarionette

Few tips I guess I can give on completing a project:

Decide what you want to make. Make it short but strong. You can jump into details later. Example:

You play as a humble elf with a magic sword in a quest to save the princess who is kidnaped by a monster you cant fight without aquiring the 27 items of power.​

You may find yourself refining certain things, sometimes improving, sometimes cutting, sometimes adding, but you should try to stick as close as you can to the original design. For example, you realize 27 items of power are too many and you should go down to just 3.

As you go, review your list. Add sub items as needed. Don't just toss things at the game as you develop. You must justify your own time to yourself.

Imagine if you are asked to stand up in front of a crowd and give a speech. Anyone in their right mind will write bullet points in a card and go over them. Without those bullet points, they may find themselves rambling for half an hour, waste their time, and never get to cover important points of the topic they were meant to talk about.

The same goes with game development. You need those bullet points to make sure you stay on track. The bigger the dev team, the more detailed the list has to be. On a one-man shop, you can have a luxury of adding things constantly, but keep in mind each feature costs you time and time means money. Weight the impact of anything you ad and ask yourself "does the game NEED this?"

I recommend you keep your first game as simple as you can. You want to finish a project as quick as possible so you can look back and learn how decisions affected the result.

Listen to feedback. And here is the hardest part: learn when to stick to your guns and when to accept its better to change a point. That can be hard, but you will learn over time.

Things to keep in mind:

• You will make mistakes. Don’t get angry over them, learn from them.
• You will make at least one gameplay decision that will make the game frustrating or boring. It's vital you get someone to test the game so you can find them and purge them out like a tumor.
• Everything, absolutely everything, will take longer than you first though. As you gain experience, you may also become better at predicting how long things will take.
• Good gamers are bad beta testers.
• Good beta testers are HARD to find.
• If you are creative enough to do this, you WILL have creative itches. Idea for another game will come up. Stay focused in your current project, just write a one or two line version of that idea in a notepad and go back to your current project. By the end of your game (depending on how long it takes you) you may have anywhere between 3 to 50 ideas to pick from for your next game.

And a special highlight: Define a work schedule. You can work outside it if you want, but you MUST stick to work inside that schedule.

Some one posted during this thread something I want to repeat here:

A profession is what you love to do and do it when you dont feel like doing it.

There will be days you will not want to do this, and will want to go play something or forget about it. Stick to a schedule, and work.

• Playing games can wait to your defined time off.
• TV can wait to your defined time off.
• Hanging out with friends can wait to your defined time off.

You are about to become your own boss, and you better be the worst boss you ever had, because if you go too easy on yourself, you are very likely to fail.

 

Everybody's system is different, and what works for one, may not work for you. That said, what doesn't work for you will be the details of the process, not the process itself. When someone tells you "state a goal, make a plan, write it out and then do it every day" that is the process. It works, it works for everyone, you are not special, unique or a dangerous rebel because you have decided that that particular process won't work for you and you need to do it differently than everyone else. That's just bloody mindedness on your part. The process works, follow the process, you will be a success.

Now, when someone says "you must state a goal by writing it out clearly using Microsoft Word on a Windows PC in as much detail as you can, visualizing yourself at the end, having reached your goal, and once you have done that, you take your laptop, go to a Starbucks, put on some loud, 500 beats per minute music, get amped up on coffee and write out the plan step by step, detailing every thought that comes in to your head including how you are feeling at the time, and just let your mind wander as much as you can, and once you have that, you get up at 6AM every day and find a quiet corner of the house before you do anything else, and sit down and take precisely one step from the plan and work on that to the exclusion of all other comforts and needs until the step is done and only then may you actually breathe."

And you're all like "WTF dude! that's too much! That'll never work for me! I have needs! I like to use a pencil! I like my coffee before I sit down! I shall reject everything that you say because it obviously doesn't work for me" what you, and the person telling you how to do something are foncusing**, is the details, rather than the process. People get hung up on the details rather than the process every single time and then dither and procrastinate and find reasons not to do it quite easily then.

**Not a spelling mistake.

The process is:
"Go here, stand with your hand in the air for an hour, don't do anything else except that, when you're done, go on with your life, come back tomorrow and do the exact same thing."

The details are:
"Find a nice corner, put on your special holding hand in the air clothes, make sure to wear a short sleeved shirt so you can lift your arm faster, visit the gym for 12 weeks at first to really bulk up those muscles so all the girls can see how great your arm looks whilst you hold it in the air, feel free to talk to people that pass by and explain what you're doing and would they care to buy your book "The Suckit! Or how I held my hand in the air for 7 minutes a day and became a success and how you can too just by thinking about it."

Don't ever mistake one for the other.

"8 page GDD? Pfft! Please! That's not a GDD that's a brochure. 200 page GDD? Pfft! TL;DR."

This is said in jest. The details of 8 pages or 200 pages, it doesn't matter. The exact number of pages is irrelevant.

It doesn't matter, because when people usually talk of a GDD they are confusing many, many documents and lumping it in to one big pile of information. Does the marketing pitch belong in the GDD?
Yes? No?

What about the marketing plan?
Yes? No?

What about the marketing measure metrics?
Yes? No?

Advertising?

Audio design?

Art bible?

Finances?

Who are you making the GDD for?

You?

Or a team that you need to educate on your vision?

Or an investor/publisher that will back your game?

The document you make needs to be targeted to your audience. You don't need a full blown game design document or general design document or pitch document or art bible or rule bible or statistics bible of many, many, many hundreds of pages. Your publisher doesn't want that either, they want a generic game design document that will list platforms, expected budget, art style, core game play, back story, major characters, some, but not all, of the different areas and play styles and enemies within the game.

Your character art team needs a stripped down GDD that contains a description of characters and enemies. Your environment art team needs a description of each area, and possibly some of the primary enemies that inhabit the area. Both art teams need to have those descriptions turned in to concepts which are turned in to final art.

Your level designers need access to completely different documentation.

Your programmers need to know features.

Each area of development needs some information from the other areas, but they don't need all of the information.

But wait!

You don't have a separate environment art team and a separate character art team, you just have a guy who is still in college that has agreed to work on the iOS game with you, and your programmer is you, and you're kind of hazy on the marketing side of things but you figure you will just work that out when the game is ready to launch and learn as you go. So do you really need lots of really big separate documents for each functional area of a team when there are just two of you? Not really. You need something that works for your team, and picking a solution that's too big will kill your project.

That said, the documentation is important, but in a small independent team of one or two people, you don't need hundreds of pages of text and drawings.

Here's how I approach a game when I am making it for myself, and these are the details, and I'll let you figure out the process first whilst you read, and then I will explain the process afterwards.

1. Think about a neat idea that is half-baked and not fully realised. "I have this thing, where I stand in the middle of an open area, and I can shoot things as they move towards me."
2. Open up Unity.
3. Start writing code.
4. Thrash around for a few days writing prototype code and snagging place holder art assets from wherever I can until I think I have something fun with a few elements of the essential core game play actually working.
5. Open up my notebook and expound on as many of the areas as I can. Words, sketches, bad puns, half-baked ideas.
6. Do I have something that might work? Move on to the next step, otherwise, go back to step 4 and implement some more of those ideas, still prototyping.
7. Go to step 3 of the next section, exchanging the word "publisher" for the phrase "me, throwing a hissy fit, because I cannot have what I want."

Here's how I approach a game when I am making it for a publisher, and these are the details, and I'll let you figure out the process first whilst you read, and then I will explain the process afterwards.

1. Think about a neat idea that is half-baked and not fully realised but has been, for the most part, done before. "I have this thing, where I stand in the middle of an open area, and I can shoot things as they move towards me."
2. Write out a classic publisher pitch GDD and get it accepted and financed.
3. Go and write the real GDD with all the actual details in it that the team will need to be able to implement the game.
4. Have dedicated team of grizzled, veteran developers create the game in record time.
5. Realise that about a quarter of the ideas in the GDD are unworkable and completely crap thought up by someone off their meds and scrap them after a lengthy negotiation with the publisher.
6. Realise that we don't have time or the budget to implement about a quarter of the ideas thought up by someone off their meds that was completely out of touch with reality when they specced that they were going to make the next Call of Duty game with just a thirty person team of grizzled, veteran developers in record time and scrap those ideas after a lengthy negotiation with the publisher.
7. If game is not a AAA title, when the game gets to about 90% complete, engage the marketing plan. If game is a AAA title but is the first in a franchise, when the game gets to about 50% complete, engage the marketing plan. If the game is a AAA title in an already established franchise, before you even decide what the game will be about, engage the marketing plan.
8. Release game to end-users.
9. Market. Support. Market. Market. Support. Market. Market. Market. Support. Market. Market. Market. Market. Support. Market. Market. Market. Market. Market.
10. Release the next game in the franchise. Go back to step 1 as though you were making the game for yourself.

Did you figure out what the process was?

Okay. Here it is:

1. State a goal
2. Make a plan.
3. Begin work
4. Revise your plan and pivot as much as you need to or can negotiate for to get the job done.
5. Finish what you start.
6. Go back to step 1.

 

I like that. I haven't even thought of a GDD and so far so good. as a matter of fact, so far so brilliant

 

Hi, thanks for all the great advices!

I finally managed to put my first game to the market. It is free and I included in game adds:
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.NoZombies.AtomicBrickBreaker3D&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwxLDEsImNvbS5Ob1pvbWJpZXMuQXRvbWljQnJpY2tCcmVha2VyM0QiXQ..

So, please let me know what you think about the game + any kind of suggestions.

For my next update I plan to include adding online scores and a couple of new levels.

Now I'm going back to the start of this forum thread and try to figure out marketing

 

andrej113:

Let us know how long it took you to make this game, what your ups and downs were and what advice you can give.

Also, let us know what you do for marketing and how well it does financially!

 

It took me about a 4 - 5 months, but I was working on it mostly after work. I spent most of the time figuring out how to make things out in Unity, because it was completely new for me. For example, I was losing time on problems like "OnTriggerEnter vs. OnCollisionEnter" . So I spent a lot of time reading forums, documentation and samples.

Programming was not a problem because I'm a software developer for about ten years now.

As for marketing I have no experience at all, so I will try to learn it now. I will post here when/if I find out something valuable.
I would also be thankful for any kind of good advices on marketing.

I hope I answered your question, if you have more detailed questions, just shoot

 

Andrej lep pozdrav, lepo da je še kakšen Slovenec na forumu

Igra zgleda precej dobro



Just one thing i was thinking...while this thread is very good and informative, what is really missing to it is some blog or some sort of day-by-day informational basis from users on this thread that are making games. It would be good just to see what approaches they used and what they earned. I am not asking for free plate offer since i am not actually IOS developer, but it would be interesting to see procedure and it would help others for sure.

 

Yay! Zombie Gnomes Attack got a review

@andrej113 nice one!

Read a great article about Software Design by a well respected Guru where he said that Software Design is the Code!

But if you think about traditional design you end up with a set of blueprints that you can follow exactly to make an item that fits together and will work.

And in software any design document above the code level that does not allow you to build (compile/run) the software is just a sketch, guide or conceptual design not a technical design, only the code can make the program run. ;o)

Mind you there are some tools that let you create class diagrams, interfaces and interaction diagrams that then create the code for you! ;o)

 

I'm updating my blog on a semi weekly basis I'll be putting up financials when I release my game. I kinda don't want to reveal too much about the game I'm working on right now(until I release), solely for the fact that it's a rather unique spin on a popular concept.

 

Thanks guys for the advice, it's been great help. I will keep you posted on my progress.

 

I love that! Some days are rougher than others and that one keeps me going sometimes. I wrote about it on my blog, but here's the full quote:

Guess what? Tharsman has wonderful advice, but he missed one thing. ALWAYS FOCUS ON FUNCTIONING CODE! You can design your heart out, but always maintain a functioning app. Start with your basic mechanic and work out. Give your basic mechanic prototype to others. I'm talking about the barest minimum, hardly passable anything. Harden that. Focus on FAST, not complete. Half a product, not a half-assed product.

Good luck,
Gigi.

 

I want to add one thing, something I have read before and my analtyics seems to show is magnified in the iOS:

Statistics (a few years back, for AAA titles) was that only 10% of players ever finish a game. If you are an avid gamer, its very likely you have a shelf full of unfinished games, and not because you hate them, just because there are so many others you also want to play!

The iOS seems to magnify that a thousand fold. I made a game with 90 levels. I killed myself doing those 90 levels varied enough. I designed boss fights every 15 levels and struggled making them unique yet similar.

After I go through my analytics, I find that a lot of players return and keep playing for a few days, but only 1% seem to actually finish the game. There may be design issues, there may be points of frustration and I have made adjustment over time to make the game smoother and more relaxing to play, but I think the big "problem" is player attetntion span in the App Store is very different from the attention span in more traditional game platforms. I added GameCenter support on the last update, perhaps that may encourage a few other players to finish but I dont hold my breath much.

It is very likely that killing yourself making hundreads of levels by launch will be overkill and result in just an overly expensive marketing bullet point.

Keep your game small. Either make ranking games like ever-run ever-jump, twin stick shooters, etc, but avoid making epic long games. Keep the door open for expansion so you can toss more content if the game actually sells AND players crave more (and it makes sense to give more away for free as a way to bump in the charts.)

I heavily regret taking this long to publish my game with so much content.

Think of the iOS app store (if that is your target) as an Arcade. A place people walk in with a couple of bucks, and will toss quarters in a few games to be enteretained, then walk out and be very unlikely to play the games again.

There are exceptions to this, if you have the cash to push a big marketing campaign you may be able to aim at the same target market that companies like Gameloft catter to, but keep in mind even their games are not extensively long (compared to the equivalent that inspire them.)

But as a starting indie, think quarter tossing Arcade booth kind of game. Somethig that can be grabbed and played today, and again picked up a year from now for mindless fun. Even if you sell a lot of copies of an extremely long game, It's very likely a way too small market will get to experience most of it.

I really would love to know how many players finish a game with as large of a level selection as Angry Birds (after all the updates.)

 

Just to add to Tharsman's comment, with my game I have an ~8% completion rate (rough estimate, as can only see with people that have allowed openfeint) and considering the game is free I think thats pretty good . My game has different rewards for how well you do in each level though, so it is relatively (but not too) easy to complete the game, yet it gives keen players some extra challenge once they have completed it

 

I think the key there is Open Feint. Most casual players never make an account, it tends to be used by more dedicated gamers (perhaps why you are closer in those stats to the industry 10%)

Although my game may also be annoying and repetitive

Just curious: how long is your game?

 

I just shipped my first ever product where we are seeing an almost 100% completion rate on people that "play" it. But then it is a "serious game" for medical training purposes. They want their certificate at the end, they better "play" it all.

But yeah, too many games that are too long, and not enough hours in the day. Also, many get boring after ten or twelve hours. After thirty or forty, it's a slog to finish most games.

Wondering if there is a market on desktop for incredibly short episodic content or even entire games that are on the order of movie length that you could sell through Steam and Mac App Store for $1/piece.

 

sam max episodics or monkey island tales would up to a given degree qualify for 'very short episodes' compared to other games but then there are games like portal and portal 2 that are full games and shorter than 99% of the indie titles ...

 

Agreed. But I wonder about the market for shorter games than even the Sam Max or BTTF or Wallace Gromit episodes. Have we educated the paying gamer in to wanting 40 or 60 hours of same-old, same-old game play hour after hour after hour so that we can no longer offer the option of really short compressed content. Portal is a case in point, everyone universally acknowledged it was a great game and the major complaint leveled against it was the "too short" issue. Was it too short because it was a great game that was too short or was it too short because the hard-core gamers playing it want all of their games to be 40+ hours long but hardly ever finish them.

 

Last I heard, the makers of Sam Max are "episodic" in an odd way. They sell you seasons and you must buy it up front, receiving the episodes as they are released. I read somewhere they either work that way, or switched to this model recently...

I think the reason is precisely the number of people that buy the first episode and the cascading effect you get as episode 2 gets developed with just a sub-set of the market for episode 1.

 

I would say that consumer psychology plays a large part in how episodic content is consumed. In video games (sans Sam Max), episodic content is always** consumed via a conscious act; viz. you consume ep. 1, then must actively engage in obtaining ep. 2 via a transaction. Sam Max -- I was not aware of their business model and I seem to recall that episodes were sold one at a time but I could also be vastly incorrect on that point -- converts it to a passive act, c.v. television. Consumer psychology in this context falls in to the classic three categories of "consume because I have consumed before," "consume because there is much to consume now, where before I abstained," and "stop consuming because I am fulfilled or bored or distracted."

By adding friction to the consumption, i.e. you must consciously engage in the purchase of the next episode, it is quite foreseeable that even that small amount of friction could well reduce your episode N audience, i.e. "stop consuming," perhaps to a greater degree than the second case of "consume because there is much to consume."

If episodes were available once a week rather than weeks or months apart, would that be able to overcome the resistance? Would that be enough to keep the attention?

I feel an A/B split test coming on.

** for certain definitions of "always"

 

Zombie Gnomes Attack! added Shotgun and Submachine Gun, Play it online on Kongregate!

Feedback on this thread

 

POH! Coding started, randomly generated levels with fading platforms and death implemented, working on adding spikes and other in game mechanics.

 

Looks pretty cool.

 

Hello people,

Just thought I would give you an update on my first games progress and a bit of exciting news!

Today my story was featured in the Daily Mirror (page 71 if you have a copy), a national newspaper in the UK for those that don't live here and MiBalls got mentioned.

MiBalls is Sundried Spacemonkeys first game and was designed and developed by my brother Ross Wakefield and myself.

The article covers my experiences as a dad working from a home office and features a gorgeous photo of my 7 month old son Finley and a rather dodgy (It doesn't look as bad in the actual paper because my belly blends into the sofa but on a backlit screen..... ) one of me.

Please follow the link to see an online version of the article:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/advice/jobs/2011/11/24/more-and-more-dads-give-up-the-9-to-5-and-work-from-home-115875-23583403/

It will be interesting to see if this effects sales in any way....

 

The game sounds fun, but you ought to add screenshots. I never buy an app without them on the store.

 

Thanks Rab.
Can you not see the screenshots on the app store? What device are you using?
I will need to look into that.

 

nawh, aint that a cute babbbby

 

I was on my iPhone and could only see the screenshot of the main menu:

 

Hi Rab236,

I think I fixed it.

I had uploaded the first screen at 960 by 640 and all others at 480 by 320.
It seems as though the 480 by 320 appeared fine for me on my crusty old 3g model but on my wife's 4 they didn't show up.

I have uploaded two new screenshots to the app store at the appropriate resolution. Thank you for spotting this. It could be losing me millions.

 

Thanks charliesamways!

I am a very proud dad.

He is actually a beautiful little wood elf that we stole from the mythical forest.

 

SundriedSpacemonkey: I'm primarily a work-from-home-dad as well. Great to see that you are getting some success in bizdev as well as family life!

 

Yo Little Angel when did you become Moderator? Seems like i missed something Congrats on new position

 

I am working for Unity Technologies, now. I'm in Education and Training and New User Advocacy.

Started on the 15th and am just getting my sea-legs under me.

 

Closed my POH! Thread because we are no longer using unity and are using Cocos2d, Unfortunatly that means I can post a finished product here, if anyone would like to see the final product when its done just PM me

 

Charlie: Out of curiosity (even tho' it's somewhat unrelated) why Cocos2D? Not wanting to belabour a point, but a few lines might be interesting.

 

Simply enough, its a 2d engine. and from the programmers ive worked with the best one so far is the one using cocos2d. I'd love to be using Unity but its just not giving me the outcome of quality id like, not saying it can't. My next game is going to be cocos2d which ive concepted and docced up. but after that im looking to go to unity.

 

First a little background on myself, I'm a designer working with tools like 3d Max, Zbrush, Photoshop, Fireworks and similars for quite some time, so creating art content never was the problem and recently (3months ago), I started my journey as a Indie game developer after reading this thread and I must admit it gave me the boost to go there and finish my game ASAP.

Now, the game is finished, is wainting approval form the applestore, also waiting AdSense to accept contract to publish on Android Market (yes, I know its not a money maker market, but well...I don't have nothing to lose). Game webpage almoust set up as well.

Is there anything else I can do ? All this waiting is killing me...

Need some hints, tips on marketing partners and stuff...not rly targeting web right now as u guys pointed out.

Best regards.

 

Getting close to completion! getting a build today to start testing it out for hours on end and change everything. stuff left to implement are: leaderboards.

Bonus implements to do:
new chracters/level design unlockables ( future reference)
Collectable points, (green leafs)

http://www.youtube.com/user/CJSgraphics?feature=mhee

 

Just as in movies, doing anything in business that is worthwhile is a case of "hurry up and wait." Rome was not built in a day, and neither was eBay. If you are expecting an overnight effect, forget it. Unless you have massive amounts of IPO or VC cash to throw around, you need to aim for the slow burn rather than the explosion.

 

Oh well, I guess I'll have to wait...Not rly expecting an overnight effect, just want to make sure I'm doing everything I can to make this work.

Any marketing tips?

 

Yes. Keep doing it.

 

QUOTE=hippocoder;684997]on the off chance you have a polished enough game that hive of pirates will even buy.
[/QUOTE]

lolz