the easiest way that involves work would probably be freelancing; use elance.com or freelancer.com or similar sites and look for jobs which match your skills. those can be language specific (e.g. 'i want someone to code a flash game for me) though. and it's not always specific to games, if you can code, it's easier to find jobs like 'code my site'

if you have skills besides coding (e.g. art, music, writing) you can also apply to jobs in those fields

This. If you want to live longer off it, move to Indonesia or some other country with low living costs and cheap internet. Malaysia's pretty damn good for freelancing jobs too. People with degrees can't actually program (so no competition), and there's tons of money going around the system looking for the right web or app designer. No shortage of people who would fork out thousands for a logo or design or a quick website which you could build off a template.

Downside is that people who hire freelancers tend to be assholes. The bigger they are, the bigger the asshole.

If you have money for two years, shouldn't be too bad. Good programmers get jobs easily, so not too hard to turn back if needed. Freelance jobs are also easy to find, but depends on your living costs. In the future, you're more likely to look back and regret the things you didn't do than regret the things you did do.

However, do you have a good enough skillset to leave your job? IMO, learning when going indie is really slow... you don't have colleagues or bosses who keep you up to date with the latest development trends and techniques.

Work is awesome for the 'wax in, wax out' grind in improving your skills and work rate, without having to worry about how you're going to make money.

Normally I do the refactoring thing in pauses between projects, like after a major version release and not being in the mood to add other features. Yeah, you shouldn't let it break your stride. But it should be done in between strides, so that you're not forced to refactor later while you're getting good momentum going along.

Apply as a tester first if you want a foot in. Sometimes it's easier to get promoted. If you don't get promoted, at least you know how the system works.

IMO, game making is something you do late in life, like when you're at least 30. Especially if you live in a first world country. I can live comfortably off $8 an hour, and lavishly on $20 an hour. In first world countries, you'd be under immense pressure to live on that.

Games are one of the hardest things anyone could make. And yet there's too much competition. Before games, do software. Go for a small company or a big company that guarantees a lot of training (ask them about training during the interview). Be the underpaid, overworked guy. That way, you get trusted and you get access to industry secrets and know how.

Universities don't really teach you how to program as an indie. They teach you to write code together with huge groups. A lot of practices don't apply to solo programming. A lot of that optimization, compiler stuff is useless in most workplaces.

What most companies care about is releasing products on time, bringing time/costs down and profits up. That's a very important skill to learn, and you won't get that as an indie programmer who doesn't have to worry about time or budget.

You'll fail a lot before you can make a game that works. I'd estimate around 3-8 failed games before you can make one that makes enough money to pay for your failed ones. So try to get someone else to pay for your failures, or train you not to fail.

Games as vehicles to sell t-shirts? Sounds awful.

Yeah, I wrote this post about 3 hours before daylight after two weeks straight of overtime

Regardless, I think something in there could work. Angry Birds actually sells their brand more than their game, but they're too big to be a good example.

I guess one final note--don't take investment advice from anyone on any online forum. :-D

Yeah.

Actually, thinking about it a bit, stocks on any reliable game company is going to be priced way higher than it's worth. It's that way with any major brand name.

The best game company to invest in is probably EA right now, because of the controversies surrounding it lately would make people dump it, yet it doesn't affect the fact that they make money. But while you're at it, you might as well sell electronic cigarettes to children.

Or I guess you could look for a 'trend' like Guitar Hero.

1) Who cares if something is perceived as "hardcore" or not?

1) If you are putting thought in to who is going to play your game, then you should care. Thinking about your target audience is an incredibly important step in producing games, or any product for that matter.

"Hardcore" is just a fancy term for "niche". Of course F2P doesn't work with niche markets.

F2P works best in appealing to a mass market, and then getting money by either selling premium products. Or by people who sometimes have money willing to spend on it. There's also things like selling 'luxury' products in a game (gold membership, VIP boards, privileges), and having a strong community is a requirement for luxury products to work.

Look at sports teams now. They make most of their revenue from tickets, TV, and sponsorship. There's a bit from 'merchandising' (jerseys, clothes, banners) from hardcore fans who want to show their support. But those hardcore fans make up maybe about 10-20% of their total fans.

Look at music. A while back, their business model was albums. Today, thanks to piracy, it's not. A lot of money comes from concerts, or selling ads on TV. Musicians make a little money from their hardcore fans buying their album. Most people will tell you they just want a single song from the album, not to buy the whole thing. Their album is just merchandise, much like posters of a band.


IMO, games are about the same. The people actually buying games are hardcore fans who want to support the game. Everyone else will pirate it. You do get revenue, but they're from a select few 5-20% of your fans.

So why not try to sell the physical game as merchandise to the hardcore few and make revenue from other sources? About 90% of game players won't pay for the game.

Kickstarter campaigns have proved that merchandising does pay very well... things like game t-shirts, hint books, or special privileges are appreciated. Perhaps we should be moving more towards selling Kickstarter-style goods without having to do an actual Kickstarter.

(This is cutting out the mass market who don't know how to pirate games. But you guys are indie developers and unless you're advertising your game in stores, billboards, or TV, they won't find your game anyway.)

They have prices for RPG sprite characters at 100+ dollars. This seems fairly high to me, though.

How is that high? $100 is about a day's salary.

You might say, hey, I can draw a sprite in an hour. But they have to discuss with the client to settle on the requirements (how big is the sprite, what palette, what's the feel of the game, hair color, bra size, etc). This takes hours, even when rushed. And they have clients who are cheap and retarded and complain that they want at least 10 frames for each animation...

Well that does seem high to me they specifically state 4 directions 3 frames per animation.  The quality also doesn't seem there to me, the website looks tacky etc...  Also if you aren't paying someone you can expect them not to stay very long.

Ah, right, I just looked there and saw the quality. But I suppose $100 is about right for a cheap, mass produced sprite.

Another approach might be just to go to a school art club and pay them & train them to do sprites. Maybe check your country's laws on child labor, lol. But I would've loved it if an indie developer came to me and offered $100 just to do a four directional sprite.

- Remove constants from code, i.e. never have a 'int attack = 20 + dice()'. Store it as 'BASE_ATTACK = 20; int attack = BASE_ATTACK + dice()'. Just in case you tweak values later.

I've seen this overdone. If the constant is only ever used on that one line, it's perfectly clear as-is, and defining it separately is just going to muddy your code. If it's used more than once though, definitely #define it to avoid accidental bugs from changing one instance and not another.

Yeah, depends on the situation. I've overdone the whole (i + 1) -> (i + INDEX_NUMBER_FOR_THIS_THING) thing before, wasn't smart. Better to put a comment saying this is a 0 or 1 index.

But if you're sharing code, you should use constants. int attack = BASE_ATTACK + dice() is just a lot easier to understand at a glance than 20 + dice(); You can even declare the constant in the line before it, instead of up in the #define or whatever. It will act as a comment, and the compiler will optimize it anyway.

Never:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html

Sometimes a total rewrite makes sense, but yeah its certainly something to avoid.

If you're going to rewrite it, treat it as a different game (e.g. Spiderweb Software's Avernum vs Exile). If you're going to make a sequel, use the same engine as far as you can. Once it becomes so outdated that you can't make money or whatever, then you do a full rewrite. You're also strongly cutting down costs by reusing a 'weak' engine. Most broken engines are much easier to fix than rebuild.

And quite often by the time the engine is so cluttered up and archaic that it needs to be changed, there's a better open source alternative.

If you're driving in mud, you're constantly losing momentum

Always:
- Move repetitive things into functions
- Rename retarded variables like $buffer['dataset3'][1]['data'] into something legible like $totalItems

Occasionally:
- Delete old commented out code (after committing it)
- Remove constants from code, i.e. never have a 'int attack = 20 + dice()'. Store it as 'BASE_ATTACK = 20; int attack = BASE_ATTACK + dice()'. Just in case you tweak values later.

Don't bother:
- Rewriting code into 'better code' (without finishing the game first)
- Adding in comments if it's intuitive (e.g. java code and intuitively named functions and variables)

Never:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html


Anyway, my rule of thumb is that you shouldn't keep more than 3-4 things on your brain while coding. If you're going to switch through multiple files, or scroll to different parts of the page, you should probably refactor. A variable name like $buffer['dataset3'][1]['data'] is horrible, because every time you look at it, you wonder what dataset3 is, what dataset2 is, what else is in the buffer, what the buffer is used to store... and so on.

Yeah, it's basically just about how narrow your target market is and what kind of competition you have. If there are plenty of other similar quality games, then price it lower. If it's a rare niche game, price it higher.

They have prices for RPG sprite characters at 100+ dollars. This seems fairly high to me, though.

How is that high? $100 is about a day's salary.

You might say, hey, I can draw a sprite in an hour. But they have to discuss with the client to settle on the requirements (how big is the sprite, what palette, what's the feel of the game, hair color, bra size, etc). This takes hours, even when rushed. And they have clients who are cheap and retarded and complain that they want at least 10 frames for each animation. This takes more time. Then some clients will decide something else completely and change requirements every week. This takes months if the client is not fired.


Personally, I find that outright paying people for individual art (or code or whatever) doesn't work. Incentive kills creativity, they'll just blaze through their job and hand it to you as long as it meets your "requirements". Pay them for their time and give them creative space.

Discuss the game concept with artists. Do this with people in a community, like TIGS or DA or whatever. Find someone who thinks "OMG that's a great idea, I'll even work for free if I had free time". Find out what they're paid, put them on a weekly/monthly salary, slightly higher than what they expect. Sit with them (or skype), give them regular feedback about what you really like or dislike, until both of you are thinking the same thing.

Freelancers don't work because you're often expecting the freelancer to read your mind. They can't. Both will waste time. Both of you have to do concept art & design together, and that's not something you can easily pull off with most (cheap) freelancers.

I love the concept - having a fake cracked version of your game with minor tweaks. I love that they're catching people red handed with it. I love the clever stat collection.

But the implementation was a little naggy. Nagging as in trying to force someone to feel bad about something they already know is bad.

Yeah, where I live, not all debit cards do online transactions. There's only one in my country that does it from a cheap debit card and it's pretty recent. Even the largest bank in the country doesn't do online transactions unless you have a credit card (which are annoying for a whole range of reasons).

I guess one reason why Americans seem to make a lot of purchases is because they have good access to payment

Lol, this varies so much. Are you sending a resume to HR or to the technical team?

HR are often plain stupid. They can't open PDF files. They value certification over skill. HR appreciates getting a picture and expected salary.

With the technical team, you want to sell your skills. I find that the higher up the management level, the shorter they expect your resume to be. Don't emphasize so much on certifications, but on what skills those certifications give. Extracurricular stuff is good too... but first mention what makes you a good programmer/artist/leader, then support this with extracurricular stuff.

Don't just dump info out when sending to intelligent people; they might take it as you taking a cheerleader position in a big project. You have to convince them otherwise, with only a few words.

IMO, 1-2 page resumes are good for top level management and owners of startup companies. Do thicker, all-encompassing resumes for applications to HR.

Very few HR are intelligent, but in all my job applications, they're only found in multibillion dollar companies like Accenture, IBM, and a certain satellite company. Even Samsung, Microsoft, and Shell have dumb HR (in some countries, not all). Honestly don't see a lot of big game companies being at that level.

Also if you're trying to learn something new, you should probably apply to startups and small studios. Big ones will have you dealing with hierarchy and specialization for a couple of years before you do anything useful. Unless they specifically mention having good training.


EDIT: Just found this, which is good reading for people who are just out of college: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/

Kind of gets to the point - you're being hired to lower costs and raise revenues. There's a lot of nasty stuff that comes with that, including the fact that in a software company, you become one of the major expenses.

considering the humble indie bundle is 1 cent and is often pirated to an extreme degree, i don't think lowering price reduces piracy by all that much.

Being free drastically increases demand.

There's a lot of inconveniences to actually paying for a game. I made a paypal, but couldn't transfer money to it. I made a debit card, but after hours with dumbass call center people, found out that it doesn't transfer money to online accounts. So, I spent a few months of research finding out about which banks transfer money online without some BS monthly charge, before making a second bank account, a second debit card, transferring money to it, then transferring money from that account online. Plus all the driving here and there to get to those banks and fill in, photocopy forms and stuff.

This is an obscene amount of effort for a 26 year old to pay for a $1 game. Of course, it's the same amount of effort to pay for other $1 games. But this is why pirates can actually sell games at $5 in a shopping mall, but valid developers can't sell it online.

But yeah, past a certain point, price does matter. I'm not willing to pay more than $20 for a game, unless it's something in the top 3 like Fallout or Minecraft.

Ironically, my value for a lot of games is negative - I see a good game as a waste of time I should be using elsewhere. So I don't even bother to pirate most games or buy something for a cent.

This would be the cost for someone who is just looking for a torrent...
Pc = v + c + e
--------
Pc = Pirate cost
v = (P of contracting a virus at pirate website) * (Cost of damage done to potential pirate's computer)
c = (T of time seeking out a pirated version) * (Cost per unit of potential pirate's time)
e = (Value of a potential pirate's ethics)

This would be the cost for someone who is attempting a crack on a protected game...
Pc = h + e
--------
Pc = Pirate cost
h = (T of time to crack the software) * (Cost per unit of pirate's time)
e = (Value of a potential pirate's ethics)

A lot of false assumptions here.
There's little to no risk of getting a virus from a pirate site and often repairing the computer is cheaper than making an online account.
There's almost no time involved in finding a pirated version.. all the good games are easily available on TPB anyway. Or the dozens of other piracy sites.
People who download pirated stuff often develop some BS ethics where they think the moral thing to do is download and seed something. This is strengthened by the fact that DRM regularly screws over a lot of valid customers, so most people are actually morally encouraged to pirate.

Pirates/crackers see MORE value in cracking a game if it's difficult to crack. Many of them are highly paid software engineers who want a hobby... some are even security specialists who sit around doing nothing all day.

It's like a puzzle, there's more prestige involved if it's difficult. A pirate's ethics are similar to that of a graffiti artist; they're not immoral criminals per se, but they see it as a creative output to real world challenges.

God no, never buy stocks in game companies. They have a mismatch between making their customers happy and making money. Game investments are way too emotional... there's really little proving that they can make money.

You basically need to know your customers, what they want, and how to build the product as they want it. Games tend to fail all of these, especially because people just don't like clones. Original games are far too risky, even if you may like those games. Even major companies like Interplay and Atari failed.

Ironically, EA is probably one of the more reliable companies to buy stocks in, because they know how to repeat the same tried and tested model with their sports games and The Sims expansions.

Blizzard is not bad either because they have game making down to an exact science. But because they're a hit company, I expect the stocks to be priced way more than they should be.

Some of the others, like Nintendo/Square Enix might work on innovation, but that's because they have enough quantity to make sure that at least some of those products pass. And they have a reliable line of repeatable products like Mario, Zelda, FF which are guaranteed to make money.

Also don't buy gold because it's a bit of a bubble right now. If you have money, toss it into some other limited resource that doesn't devalue, like silver or land (but not houses, because it will be cheaper to get materials to build houses once inflation kicks in).

but california is so far away