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http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=56115.0

He made more in April than I make in a year :o

That is over nin

Yes, but he made much less in February. Also I'm guessing you're a student :)

He made more in April than I've made in the past 2 years :facepalm: and I'm not even a student.

Tarn Adams' and not Tarn Adams's!

That's a lot of money there, he really deserves it!

::)
Also, both spellings are correct as far as I know.

Anyway, Tarn is one of the few people who successfully went "full-time indie" it seems.

I actually just learned that the second one is wrong. EDIT: I Have been proved wrong, Shame on me.
But enough grammar nazi-ism.

And this guy is making a LOT money  :o

Sorry about that abrupt interruption in my earlier post, I was gagged before I could finish the meme.   :-\

Anyway. Tarn Adams has put a LOT of work and time into Dwarf Fortress - just browse the devlog to get an idea of how much time he spents on the project. Damn better he be gettin' something for that inhuman effort.

NINE THOUSA*gag*

The average game programmer's salary in the US is $80000 (Gamasutra (http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2010/04/2009_game_developer_salary_sur.php)).

Yeah, but Tarn's fun-to-money ratio is much higher.  :lol:

I mean, at least I imagine developing Dorf Fortress is more fun than being a code monkey for EA or something.

yeah but they get that by selling their soul and becoming a zombie and suchlike overused but true cliches -- so the money has to be taken in contest of 'a lot of money for making whatever game you want whenever you want and giving it away for free' vs 'a lot of money for working 10 hours a day making someone else's game for them'

Wait, WHAAAAT? That means $8k/year? That is a CRAZY low burn rate!! How is that possible? Where do you live?! Rent even in a cheap apartment is going to be around $8k/year.. I feel like I'm in the wrong city  :wtf:

i make about 8k$ a year too -- us indie devs are poor, you know. i live in nj.

hey hey, I'm super happy for Tarn (I would've donated but he didn't release the mac version yet).  Obviously every other month he's only made a third or less of that, I just thought this was kinda crazy/cool.


In some cities you can find (dingy) apartments for 260 a month.


People working 40 hours a week for every single week of the year on minimum wage in the US will only make about 15,000 a year.  There are a ton of people who make less in a year than what Tarn made last month.


and "Adams's" is correct, read your Strunk and White goddamn it (which is even a little too prescriptive for my tastes)

yeah, there are a lot of cities in the US where the average income is only about 15k-20k. it's not uncommon. you just have to get roommates and have 6 people living in one apartment and such.

a senior lead programmer or chief technical officer can make up to 300,000$ a year in the industry.

Damn, that would be a significantly above-average salary for a programmer here (Vienna), even outside of the games industry (in games you'd be taking another 20-30% pay cut).

It's a fuckin shedload o money, but it makes sense if he spent a damn long time on it.
How long did he spend on it anyway?
I made a game in about a year n sold it for 10k.

He started working on it in October 2002, which just goes to show how much commitment it takes to get that kind of money from donations (which you likely won't get anyway!).

EDIT: I just found this (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=2525.0) thread from 2004 over at the bay12games forums where he announces going back to working on the "dwarf game":


He probably had no idea what he was getting himself into! ;D

EDIT 2: Sorry about the many edits, but this is gold:

The 'problem' (which may not be a problem at all) is that he keeps thinkin of more and more complex and insane systems to make his simulation ever closer to godly status.

And the community wouldn't have it any other way.

It's also awesome because one man handling such a complex project lends itself to plenty of bugs that range from odd to holy-fuck-hilarious.

I can imagine Tarn never finishing his magnum-opus in his lifetime, the source code of the by-then mind-boggling simulation passed on to some skilled and passionate member(s) of the community, that will continue his work, but they too will never finish, passing it on to someone else, then they pass onto another, then another, then another, until their projects gains sentience and kills us all.

And it will be awesome.

On the one hand, when he's shown as much commitment as he already has, I wouldn't be suprised if he actually finishes it. On the other hand, like the old saying goes, the last 10% takes 90% of the development time. It may take a long time to program all the features he wants in the game, but I can't imagine how long it'll take to iron out all the bugs, balance the game and general polishing of such an immense game.

I wonder how long it will take for him to make an interface that is actually usable. I hope he doesn't die before then, or else I'll never be able to play this so called amazing game everyone talks about constantly (and believe me, I've tried).

And I thought we'd see a DF thread without any interface complaint posts for once. Wishful thinking I guess.

Sorry. :\

I think it's a good idea for me to say that those who post on this thread should refrain from speaking of the game's interface. We've gone there several times, and I think there's another still posteable thread where that can be discussed.

Tarn Adams = Michelangelo
Dorf Fort = Sistine Chapel ceiling

Should've been done twice by now.

So he made 27k? I'd probably starve to death if I'd only make 27k annually.

I don't think donation systems really work - you get some enthusiasts that donate and a shit ton of people that just play the game without even thinking about giving something back to the developer (assjerks).

@tametick: I lived in Vienna for 20 years. You gotta remember that that's 80k before tax - so you still have to pay taxes and living in the US (or in the UK) is way more expensive than living in places like Germany or Austria.

I'm paying 1.5k USD rent here (and that's without gas, water, etc.) - back in Austria I paid 450 EUR for a much bigger apartment with everything included. Granted, it didn't have a pool, but I can't even get a non-pool apartment for less here in Irvine.

In the end, you always have to consider location (living costs) when thinking about someones income. 100k USD in CA has a different value than 100k USD in most places in Europe.

off topic, but you really wouldn't starve to death on 27k; that's what my parents made for most of their lives, together, and they had five kids. you just need to not buy as many things; use clothes given to you rather than bought, not have a phone, etc. -- but 27k can easily cover food and rent, especially for a single person. the US poverty level is 10k for one person, 22k for a family of four; about 15% of the people in the US earn less than that, and they're not starving to death.

In Canada this would be $20k/year; I guess our minimum wage is higher? I was able to live off of about $12-16k/year for many years so I know this is possible, $8k just seemed crazy low, but I suppose it depends on cost of living and location.

This assumes an "unskilled" job though -- if you can make a game then you DEFINITELY have sufficient skills and experience to find employment in a better-than-minimum-wage job.

For example, $10k/man-month seems to be a standard rate for experienced contract game developers. We did contract work for a few years and charged *lot* less than that, usually about $2k/man-month; being cheaper definitely helped to get our foot in the door, but was still enough to live on and it was better than our entry-level office jobs.

I don't know much about webgame licensing, but I thought that selling a single game can generate $5k (as a very rough average, I know that some make a lot more and some less).

Anyway, I think Tarn's income is reasonable. For a programming job it is definitely on the low end of the scale; one of our friends does Java enterprise/database programming and it seems to be quite lucrative. Basically if you can program then you should absolutely be making more than minimum wage because you have a marketable skill.

Well, I couldn't live in California with 27k annually, that's for sure. So 27k is what that dude made in 5 months, it'd be interesting to see how long people will keep up donating and how much he made in 12 months.

I'd love to make 27k USD annually, even before tax. I could live comfortably here in the UK on that money. And getting paid that much for doing something that he enjoys, I say more power to him.

hm? why do you say that? are you saying that there no people who live in california who make less than 27k a year? i'd expect there's tons. what about all the illegal immigrants there -- they seldom make more than 27k a year. they often aren't even paid minimum wage.

Yes. I'm saying that it'd be extremely hard to live off of a single below 30k income in most places in CA without being in debt (which I suspect most people who make below 30k annually are).

I make a lot more than 30k, don't spend a lot and can't really save all that much, just because living here is so freaking expensive.

30k for an industry professional is really way below the entry point. I think testers are in that area, but I'd be very surprised if anyone else makes as little as 30k annually.

I worked in LA as an entry level game programmer making $53K a year and was able to save like almost half of that... And I still lived rich compared to my roommates.

I live in San Francisco and I definitely spend less than $30K a year.  If I sum up just my rent, utilities, food, and phone service, it comes out to around $12K. I live more cheaply than my friends, though. I live in the Tenderloin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenderloin,_San_Francisco#Attractions_.26_Characteristics). I may or may not be badass.  :noir:

also I want to make clear that I don't think Tarn's income is impressive from the standpoint of him being a programmer, just from the standpoint of him being an independent game developer

Okay, I've gotta chime in here. California (especially southern) is a whole different beast than much of the rest of the country. This isn't exactly relevant to all you single developers, but I have a family and live in Santa Clarita (just north of LA) and if we pay rent and live on $700/month for food, clothing, insurance, gas, repairs, and other stuff we meet the $27,000/year requirement. When we lived in Wisconsin this would have afforded us a nice five-bedroom house with plenty of fun money. Now we have a dinky townhome we rent and no fun money. Heck, even just going to pick up Tide at the store costs $1 more than in the midwest...for no apparent reason.

The thing is, to maintain a standard of living equal to much of the rest of the country a southern california resident needs to make significantly more than commonly seen elsewhere.

You can actually support your family with 700$ a month? Pay rent, buy food, clothing, etc.?

How in the world would that be possible? Even my rent alone is more than twice that and I live in a 1 bedroom apt right now.

A normal shopping trip for a week always sets me back 150-200 bucks - They have fruit in small plastic boxes here that costs 15 dollars. 15 fucking dollars for 2 sliced peaches in a plastic box. And no, there are no cheap alternatives. There are more expensive organic stores though. Ever payed 12 dollars for a loaf of bread? o_O

I guess what I'm saying is: If you're an indie developer: Get the fuck out of SoCal :D (or make your money elsewhere).

you do realize there's like 10k+ bonus for Tarn finally finishing a playable DF after like two years? one year and a half?

yeah still he's one of the very few indies makin' it.... makin' it indie

he works incredibly hard though so he deserves it

Jason Rohrer sustains his whole family with $15k/year. I assume the man survives by absorbing moisture from the air or something, but it's possible.

That's $700 after our $1550 monthly rent is paid. I'm lucky enough to have a ridiculously thrifty wife when it comes to grocery shopping so we do pretty well there. It's difficult. My passion is music and SoCal is the place to be for that but it's also a horrible place to be. You understand I'm sure.

As far as I can recall. A standard month during the long break between releases was around $US2k. Good to see him get some more reward for an excellent game (just donated $US100 myself.)

Personally I can see Toady post-DF pulling a salary well into six figures* somewhere. Put to use correctly, his skills could make some smart employer/investor very rich indeed.

*In today's money

programming skill and creativity appealing to investors? hahahaha