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[Arowx]

The Challenge:
  I have a 365 day runway (until 9 Sep 2012) to earn £20k (about $32k) from games development.

The earnings value is based on a UK minimum wage calculation of about £6 per hour 9-5 job, and factoring in that I will have to pay money to make them, buying in music ect, and overheads for payment providers?

Resources:
  Me, Unity, PC, Mac, iPod, Android.

Currently I manage to produce game 'Prototypes' like these http://www.kongregate.com/accounts/Arowx/favorites

Hurdles:
  Art, 3D Animation, Procrastination, Funds, Motivation, Experience, Marketing

Forfeit:
  If I have not hit or exceeded this target by the deadline and proved I can make a living from games I have to dust off my CV and get a job!

So what advice would you give or better still how do you do it?

[Golds]

Sponsored Flash games through portals like Newgrounds, Kongregate, and Adult Swim could help you meet your goal, although it's tougher today than a year or two ago.  With the ensuing launch of Flash 11 and Stage3d/Molehill, there may be demand for people tha can make web games of higher fidelity, so that might be a niche you could try to get to before the rest of the pack.

There's also the iPhone market, except it is risky and requires the investment of (at the minimum) a Mac Mini, $99 subscription to Apple's iPhone Developer program, and a ~ $200 iPod Touch.  There is a lso a lot of work to become fluent with the tools and languages to develop for the platform. 

Again, if you become adept at making iPhone projects, there is the option of doing a sponsored game or work for hire and the platform.  The demand is high and it's less risky than releasing your own title.

XNA and XBLIG is another option, though to make $12,000 on the service seems like an even more herculean effort than iOS.  This may be changing.

Finally, there is the more traditional route of working on PC projects.  Once you have something going, you have lots of options to try and make money.  Kickstarter, Pre-release sales, Pay what you want, Steam, etc etc.

The most important thing is to work on something you think is cool and keep your momentum up.  Once you have something that you're excited about, show it around...

Good luck.   

[mirosurabu]

Go for it!

[Arowx]

Hi Cheers thanks for the feedback,

I'm using Unity which has a webplayer and they are planning on bringing out a 3D Flash exporter, it also allows me to port my games to PC, Mac, Android and iPhone.

What kind of money can you get from Sponsored games on Newground ect?

I think XNA and XBLIG are out of the picture at the moment, it would take me too long to get up to speed on them.  Unity is going to provide an Xbox development path but you need to be a full on licensed Microsoft developer, pity as there is an indie scene on Xbox.

Can't go with Kickstarter I'm not a US citizen I did try Crowd funding for my Cure Em Up game but didn't make a cent from it so not sure that would work as well as people think, there are a lot of unfunded crowd source projects about.

Currently I'm releasing early beta versions on Kongregate (most of them Ludum Dare projects) and I hope to bring them up to speed and launch them.  PC/Mac would be the easiest as I wouldn't be to restricted on polygon count/textures and performance.

Has anyone managed to get Pre-Orders to work for lesser know indie games (this does not include you Notch ;o) ).

[moi]

There is no guarantee that you'll earn anything, though, so prepare fallback plans.
You could work like a monk and create a great game and still get nothing. That happens a lot on FGL for example.

It's better if you have some cash to spend in advance so that you could hire artists or things like that.
And take a good time to decide what will be the best way to distribute your game.

[ink.inc]

Get a day job. Once you've seen that you can support yourself with game development, go full time. But do try to have a safety net. Aside from going to college for civil engineering, I also have a job (for my dad) fixing folks' computers, making about $30 an hour, and I average about $800 a month (27 hours of labor). Not exactly big bucks, but not small potatoes either (especially for an 18 year old). It's nice to have around.

[Arowx]

@moi The CV re-write is the fallback plan, got a 12 months food and lodgings runway!

@John no time for that got a runway just need to go for lifoff!

Well I've put up a blog post highlighting the challenge the forums I've put the question out on and I'm also e-mailing a few of the indies I know about!

http://blog.arowx.com////blog1.php/2011/09/10/the-challenge-day-1

[Golds]

I forgot to mention, there's the Mac App Store market.  I haven't looked into it too much, but there may be opportunities for polished Unity titles sold through that platform as well, and you don't have to jump through a certification process to get on board as you would with Steam, etc.

I don't know if any portals are doing sponsored Unity games, but Flash game sponsorships can run anywhere from $1000 to $50,000 or more, but obviously the big ones are hard to get, especially without a track record of experience.

[tametick]

I'm in your shoes, 6 month down the road.

Currently made about ~$20k altogether (revenue, not profit) from my game.

It's not impossible to make a living from indie games, but it's not easy & far from a sure bet - be prepared for a lot of uncertainty, stress & hard work.

Additionally, even tho I'm well within the goals I set for myself, when everything is accounted for I'm still earning significantly less per hour than I used to when I worked in the industry.

[justinfic]

Good luck to you sir    I've given myself a similar goal.

I can speak for the iOS app store-- it's not the gold rush it once was but you can still make a healthy living on it. An app that sticks anywhere on the top 200 list consistently will do you very well. It's a very crowded, competitive market, and that top-200-list positive feedback loop isn't as strong and broad as it was, but a combination of typical app store tactics and more traditional marketing could do the trick.

The Mac App Store is a much smaller market, both in terms of numbers and competition. But, Mac gamers historically have been starved for games and will positively eat up and champion a quality game that comes their way. Also, the race to the bottom that has hit the iOS store hasn't materialized yet on the Mac App store. Out of the 10 top games right now, 6 are $9.99 or above, and there's no title below $4.99. 99 cent games are the exception there, not the norm.

I'd love to hear more people's experiences with XBLIG. It looks like a rough market from the outside, and having to port existing code over to C#/XNA is a huge barrier for me personally. But it seems like there are some efforts to establish a standard of quality (indie uprising) and it seems like solid marketing would benefit a good XBLIG game greatly. Not to mention it is still the easiest way to get a game onto a major home console.

[MadSage]

Forfeit:
  If I have not hit or exceeded this target by the deadline and proved I can make a living from games I have to dust off my CV and get a job!

I have no idea what your circumstances are, but I felt like I would have to quit the games industry when I was made redundant from the last studio I worked at. I actually worked in retail briefly...

Have you thought about freelancing?  I've been a freelance games programmer since 2004 and earn £26000-46000 (41000-73000USD) a year before tax. It varies depending on what contracts I can find. The last couple of years have been tough, but I've still earned enough to pay my bills and take a huge chunk off my mortgage. I also found some time to work on my own game, but its still a long way from finished.

[Arowx]

What about the new trend in freemium games, could I make money with a freemium game on ios, android, PC or Mac?

[Alistair Aitcheson]

Regarding freelancing I'd say to put it as a possiblity for after you've tried your year as a full-time indie. I've found since I had one commercially released title under my belt, getting interest from companies seeking freelancers was much easier.

May I ask what your background is? I went full-time indie straight after graduating from university (in maths), which meant I didn't have a big portfolio piece to hand when I started, and finding freelance work was a lot more difficult. That said, I've had many indies advise me not to get sucked into too much freelance work. Ultimately it's your own IP that's going to allow you to grow as a business.

I've just passed a year in my full-time indie experience, and have so far made very little, much less than your projected £12,000! But a business needs to grow, and I'm about to release my second title which I hope should fare better. For me, however, this process has taken more than a year.

On the subject of freemium and other pricing models, I'd recommend reading GamesBrief which has lots of good articles on the money side of games. And you're going to want to be adventurous with your project - in such a competitive market, neither polish nor tried-and-tested formulas is the key to success.

@tametik
I'm very impressed with your revenue after just 6 months! Well done! How much of that 6 months was taken developing the game, and how long's it been out? How did you generate so much interest in such a short space of time? Or did the project or your games already have a following before you went full-time indie?

[superflat]

I know this is gonna sound idiotic, but my advice would be just to make the best game you can... 

There are a bunch of markets with a bunch of different risks and rewards, at the end of the day it's a lottery to an extent, but you can go some way by firmly believing your game is good enough to risk putting a decent amount of time into it (check with others to see you're not the only one who thinks this, though!)

A following helps, so this is something to consider.  I'd say, if you're planning to make 'indie' rather than 'casual' games (loose labels here), a following is pretty important.  So, though it may seem odd, spending the first few months making a bunch of freeware games may be the way to go (one may turn into the big idea that's worth taking further, and by then you have your following too...  Freeware gets downloaded a lot more than non-freeware, after all!)

If financial security and to be making games full-time is enough, and you don't have a desperate urge to make something that's entirely yours, then the money is good and a lot more stable for freelancing.  If you simply have to make something that's yours, and have ideas that you feel are worth putting time, money and effort into, I say go for it, put all your love into it, and see if it pays off!

[Golds]

I'd love to hear more people's experiences with XBLIG. It looks like a rough market from the outside, and having to port existing code over to C#/XNA is a huge barrier for me personally. But it seems like there are some efforts to establish a standard of quality (indie uprising) and it seems like solid marketing would benefit a good XBLIG game greatly. Not to mention it is still the easiest way to get a game onto a major home console.

You should check out the Radiangames blog.  He put out something like 6 XBLIG games out in a year, and as far as I remember, made about $18,000 off them?  I haven't checked up on him lately, but XBLIG seems pretty brutal, though, again, this may be changing.

[tametick]

I'm very impressed with your revenue after just 6 months! Well done! How much of that 6 months was taken developing the game, and how long's it been out? How did you generate so much interest in such a short space of time? Or did the project or your games already have a following before you went full-time indie?

I've worked on it full time since March 1st & released 1.0 at August 11th, I'd say most of the time was spent developing.

The money came partially from a successful crowd funding campaign, some from desktop sales & a large chunk from some licensing deals I can't talk about yet.

WRT generating interest, I've already had a small but loyal fan base before I started (I've made several small free games along the years & am very active in the roguelike community) and they started the ball rolling.

[Alistair Aitcheson]

Thanks, tametik, for letting me know. I'm very impressed with what you've achieved!

[Arowx]

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?

[tametick]

It's not so straightforward - e.g. if you hit it big you can make millions on puzzle games since these have the widest appeal, but it's really hard to make an original puzzle these days (since so many people are trying to do the same) and as a lone indie making his first game you are unlikely to hit it big with yet another match 3 game.

Cardinal Quest will never bring in really big money because the market for commercial roguelikes is kinda small. Then again the niche status means I don't have as much competition (there are many roguelikes out there but very few with decent aesthetics and easy to learn/decent UI/UX - I can think of maybe 4 outside of my own game).

I would suggest that unless you have really uncommon taste try to make a game you would enjoy playing and hope there are enough other people like you out there that will buy it.

Also I would advise on smaller games, but not because they'd give you a better ROI than bigger games, but because you are more likely to actually finish something sellable at all.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

There is no guarantee that you'll earn anything, though, so prepare fallback plans.
You could work like a monk and create a great game and still get nothing. That happens a lot on FGL for example.

It's better if you have some cash to spend in advance so that you could hire artists or things like that.
And take a good time to decide what will be the best way to distribute your game.

i agree with moi

also: i tried to play one of your games on kongregate but it crashed by browser when loading (not a good first impression) -- probably not your fault as flash tends to crash my browser sometimes, but a lot of kongregate games i have no problems with

anyway in general it's not a good idea to set a "target goal" for money, because you'll just give up indie games as a business if you fail to meet it. you should be happy getting any money at all for doing what you love. you should be even happier if it's enough to barely scrape by on. there's no need to try to make much more than that

but as for general advice, i feel that flash games are a fad and not a stable way to make money. the only stable way to make money is releasing downloadable games that people can buy. that way you build up a player base of fans, and each game you make has an audience waiting for it of people who bought your previous games

with flash games -- let's say you make a game that has a million people playing it. great, good ad money, good reputation for future games, but...... all those million people will likely never hear of your next game, because you don't have any way to contact them, and they don't know who you are, they think some guy who bought your game for a few thousand dollars is the guy who made your game, not you. they also only know that your game was on "some flash games website", they never went to your website, and don't know what it is. so i see flash games as being further away from one's fans as downloadable games are, in terms of "psychological distance" and that's why i wouldn't want to focus on making them