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[aeiowu]

So, I was laying in bed trying to sleep and I was going over the last few years of development for us and sort of picking out the stages and one thing that really interests me is how drastically my expectations have changed since we first started up. It's hard for me to put down explicitly what they were since it was so long ago and I'm not in the heat of the moment now, so I'm making this thread to see what everyone else's expectations for their development pursuits are.

Whether you're doing this in your spare time, just quit your job, or have been at it for years full-time, I'd like to see what you've set your sights on as a developer (past, present and future). It's a bit more specific than saying why you make games or that you want to have a game on XBLA someday. I'm talking about "the next big step". If you make flash games then perhaps you expect to leverage one of those games into a larger downloadable game on Steam or something. I feel like the big dreams are easy to predict but the small ones are often the most important.

hopefully this makes sense, i'm going to go back to sleep now.

[davidp]

i'm hoping on finishing the game i currently work on, finally learning some flash in the process and spark some interest for it when i finally do release it to public.

if i manage to get some plays and at least some feedback... that would be awesome and push me to work on more games.

[G-Factor]

I would love to get a game on Steam one day because in my mind that's hitting the big time (indie wise). My current and first game is definitely not polished enough for commercial release but that was never the goal. I'm trying to push myself as far as I can go then get some feedback from people. If the general consensus is that it's pretty good, I'll know that my next game will be even better (from hindsight, learning from mistakes...etc) and perhaps a few projects down the track I will have enough experience to achieve my goal.

[fraxcell]

Right now I just want to keep working on my current game projects. My main game is the sort of project I could easily spend five years on and still not have all the features in there that I would like. Eventually I would like to sell a game or two, but not as my main job. Mostly I make games for myself, so I doubt they would be appealing/marketable enough to sell very much. I also don't like working in teams very much, so it would be hard to create a game with the amount of polish a commercial game needs.

[compositeredfox]

Currently I want to finish the game I'm working on, get some money to live a few months and work on non commercial games.
Sure the big dream would be a game on steam, but working on something for a year scares the crap out of me.

[Melly]

Right now my main goal is to train myself to be more disciplined in general and less likely to lapse out of a good development schedule and start slacking. After that, I want to start making some money out of the games I'm working on.

My recently 'completed' Flash game didn't generate nearly as much interest as I first hoped it would, but I'm starting to see the reasons for it. They don't mean I'll grovel myself to try and get the attention of game portals, they just mean that now I have a better idea of where to take my development, and made me see more easily that different types of games require different approaches to marketting and monetizing, and I believe that any game, regardless of its concept or gameplay, can sell if it's marketted properly (and honestly, of course). Also made me see that I shouldn't just rush this stuff out and hope to make fortune, that's exactly against my ideology as far as development goes, but I guess we forget that stuff sometimes.

Of course, I have big dreams alongside these shorter-term goals. I want to make games full-time, to build a company around them, to realize a stupidly ambitious game idea I've been nurturing in my head for maybe the better part of 10 years, a time in which I still haven't seen anything remotely like what I envision, probably because what I envision is considered madness by any remotely big studio, to make enough money to be able to help promissing indie developers with interesting ideas to make their projects reality.

I guess in the end I wanna make my work be worth something. Big dreams, eh?

[Captain_404]

I want to move beyond my need for mass approval. I mistakenly dream of the day when I'll win some award for a beautiful, inventive, perfect game and everybody loves me for it. My game making suffers for this. I start trying to make this kind of game rather than just making a game that interests me. Whenever I release a game, no matter how many people play it or tell me they enjoyed it, I get depressed because I feel it should have been better.

I want to be free of that. I want to return to a time of my life when I just made games because I wanted to make games. I want to make games, big sprawling games, huge efforts of time and energy, and only pass them out to a few of my close friends.

I want to stop caring about Steam. I want to stop caring about the IGF. I want to stop caring about the internet. I just want to make the things I love again, and I want to start loving them again.

My 'next big step' is to stop looking at my steps as I walk.

[agj]

Since I enjoy making games, I'd like it if I could get some money from them (so that the hobby can finance itself), but it's not my ambition to do it for a living. My highest aims are, first, to develop abilities that will be useful to me in other contexts, and second, to hopefully break some ground for video games. And have fun while doing that, of course.

[G-Factor]

I want to move beyond my need for mass approval. I mistakenly dream of the day when I'll win some award for a beautiful, inventive, perfect game and everybody loves me for it. My game making suffers for this. I start trying to make this kind of game rather than just making a game that interests me. Whenever I release a game, no matter how many people play it or tell me they enjoyed it, I get depressed because I feel it should have been better.

I want to be free of that. I want to return to a time of my life when I just made games because I wanted to make games. I want to make games, big sprawling games, huge efforts of time and energy, and only pass them out to a few of my close friends.

I want to stop caring about Steam. I want to stop caring about the IGF. I want to stop caring about the internet. I just want to make the things I love again, and I want to start loving them again.

My 'next big step' is to stop looking at my steps as I walk.

That's interesting because I've got the exact oppisite mentality. When I'm working on a game all I can think about is whether the player will enjoy it. I go into game dev with the understanding that I will personally not enjoy playing my own game, since I've spent so much time working on it. The goal is to make something others like. It doesn't have to go on steam or whatever but ultimately if no-one wants to play it, my game is a failure.

[Ness Kain]

My goals (subject to change at any moment) are, in chronological order:

1. Make a game people will actually want to play.
2. Graduate next year and have more free time. Or at least... I'm assuming that's how it works. That may be a dumb (and even dangerous) assumption to make, but whatever.
3. Get a job. My standards are extremely low. If I live somewhere that isn't a cardboard box, I'll be happy.
4. Make money from games. Not a lot of money, and not necessarily through sales (donations are cool, too). Any countable level of money as a direct result of game development would be considered a fulfillment of this goal.
5. Have enough money to get a real (four year) degree. I'm actually not completely sure why this is so important, though, because my next goal is...
6. Quit my job. Make games on my own as full time employment.

[jrjellybeans]

Wow, it's good to hear some other people talk about lofty expectations.  I was beginning to think that I was crazy for doing so.

My next big goals are:
1. Make enough money on Flash games to pay my bills.  This goal is pretty simple to realize I think.  Essentially, it boils down to just FINISHING as many games as possible that are playable.  Might take some time, but it's fairly easy enough...
2. Find an artist and sound person to work with.  A lot of what is currently holding my game designs back is the fact that I'm now working along and can't draw or make sound.  As such, I'm stuck making simpler sort of games (which isn't that bad in retrospect...)

Of course, the long term goal is to make wonderfully great art that supports a company financially.

[Muz]

I simply make a game that I really, really want to play.
Second would be something nice to put on a resume, but it's not that big a deal.

Money, fans, etc.. they're all kinda "meh". Fame, fortune, and art don't go well together. They corrupt each other. Besides, money is really hard work to earn in indie entertainment, but much easier with a technical job. Role model would be Tarn Adams - get a nice degree, a nice job, work enough to live for a few years, quit the job, and finish the magnum opus.

Once I finish that big epic game, the next step would be to work up from it. Take some money and spend it on the polish. Move up from ASCII or whatever to a proper 3D world with motion captured animations, voice acting, and stuff.

My benchmark of success would not be how many fans my game gets, awards, IGF wins, money, etc. No, the benchmark would be how many people it inspires. If one popular Hollywood scriptwriter makes a (good!) movie, inspired by my game, that'd be bigger win than if that game sells a million copies. If it inspires a kid to pick up a history book or become an athlete, that's worth a lot more than any plastic award.

[Zecks]

My goal is not to just make games and a living with them, I just want to make these couple specific games I've had in my head for years (and of course I'll have made up a few more as time goes on). On the other hand, I really don't want to do the typical job stuff for all my life, so I'll have to see what I can do then.

[baconman]

1. Get my party started. As in running. (Years 1-2)
2. Get an audience, and get some AID (AI Drones) networked around, do some bug-fixing, polish the first project. (Years 2-3)
3. Use the framework/experience to expand project into a bigger, commercial-quality release. Or possibly a net-based application with "marketable space" within it. (Years 3-4)
4. Finally, use that income to put together a professional-level team, create a modern remake/re-expansion of it for console/PC markets, and "go pro." (5 Years)

[_Madk]

I enjoy programming and I love it when the finished product is a game I can play myself and entertain others with. The problem is that while I can write non-game programs easily and quickly, I stumble on things like graphics and audio. I'd love to be able to be a member of an indie game production team, or at least have some sort of a partnership where I don't have to be responsible for those things. When it comes to my coding, I'm a terrible perfectionist, and if anything is a single pixel or a single tone off, I feel the need to fix it. When it comes to code, perfection is functionality and typically doesn't require the same amount of time and tedious work to achieve. Unfortunately, lack of free time and lack of freedom thanks to a quite restrictive mother leads to being unable to take any real action.