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[Eiswuxe]

Hi guys,

I hope this is the right forum to post my stuff.

I published a rather big blog-post yesterday that tells about my recent nine months as an indie developer. I am currently at the point where everything starts to look really promising and I make enough money to keep going with what I do now.

The post contains information on how I funded my work, what strategies I tried, which of them worked and which of them didn't. At the end of the post I released my current income for the month of december. I will try to continue blogging about my income for the coming months.

Please spread the word about this post to give other developers some insights / tipps / motivation!

http://www.eiswuxe.de/looking-back-my-recent-nine-months-as-an-indie-developer/

I am looking forward to a vivid discussion!

[Claw]

Thanks for sharing this, it's good to read that creating mobile games and apps is still a possible way of generating some decent income, and really useful to see revenue and sales figures. Congrats on the success! Do you think free downloads with in-app purchases are generally more profitable/viable than straight $ downloads?

[Eiswuxe]

With my first game "Bloo Kid" I took the approach of a free Lite-Version and a paid full version in the appstore. The conversion rate was nearly the same as with my current "freemium"-approach. (10% - 15%). So from what I can say is that it does not matter that much.

You might consider other stuff like the 20MB 3G download barrier. If your full version takes more than 20mb it might be better to have a lite version with <= 20 mb (if its possible). That way people might tend to try out the lite version on the go.

I chose the freemium model because I dont want to waste time on updating two versions of the same app

[Moczan]

Nice to hear another success story! My plan for 2012 is to start making living out of indie games too. I didn't consider creating mobile games yet, mainly because I lack Android/iOS phone right now.

[Chris Pavia]

Great write-up, thanks for posting it!

[eigenbom]

Hey @Eiswuxe, I'm reminded of a similar post that said: In order to make games, you have to make games. Which argued that an indie dev should make popular/casual/family games in order to financially support the development of his more "indie" games. Looks like you've been successful in this vein.

My current contract ends in April, and with my work on moonman increasing, I'm planning on going full-time indie dev and finish it in 6 months or so.  I've never really earned much money, the most was during my phd stipend days, but I'll be living off the little bit I've got saved ... it's scary times, but I only get one life, so ... (and besides, my wife has an income which makes things a little easier.)

[Moczan]

Hey @Eiswuxe, I'm reminded of a similar post that said: In order to make games, you have to make games. Which argued that an indie dev should make popular/casual/family games in order to financially support the development of his more "indie" games. Looks like you've been successful in this vein.

I found that true on my part too. Most money last year came from contract work on other (more or less indie) games. It let me focus on developing my first game (which wasn't financial success) and will let me experiment with different platforms for some time now.

[stevesan]

Thanks a ton for posting this! I wanna ask: How did you get that initial business grant?

[Eiswuxe]

Hey @Eiswuxe, I'm reminded of a similar post that said: In order to make games, you have to make games. Which argued that an indie dev should make popular/casual/family games in order to financially support the development of his more "indie" games. Looks like you've been successful in this vein.

Even though I am looking forward to the time where my popular/casual/family games generate enough steady income for me to focus on a "real indie" game fulltime, it's still fun to create apps like the ones I do know. Mainly because I can develop some vector-art skills and its fun to have my 5 year old nephew playtest all my new stuff. But the best part is still that I make money with something I myself came up with and created.

@stevesan
Here in germany, this is a common grant offered by the employment office (the so-called "Gründerzuschuss" ). It normally helps unemployed people to get into self-employment. Since I asked my boss to dismiss me, I could apply for that kind of grant. All I needed was a business plan that contained a three-year perspective. I am pretty sure there are similar grants available in other countries, too.

The grant is as high as the unemployment pay I would receive plus some 300 bucks for insurances. So it was nearly the same as if I was unemployed, only that I was not bothered by the employment-office to get a job =)

[306designs]

Great writeup. It is very hard to get attention as an indie developer, but the success is all yours and you don't get that working for a company

[Chromanoid]

thank you for sharing your encouraging experiences

[Pemanent]

In order to make games, you have to make games.

I love that. Somehow very inspiring for me. In that one short sentence it says I understand that art does not always pay the bills, but that doesn't make art worth any less. To me at least.

[C.D Buckmaster]

It's good to see success stories like that, I hope your good fortunes continue in the future.

[PompiPompi]

For me it's mixed emotions. Of course it's great you had success, but your success came from things that are less game like.

[Eiswuxe]

For me it's mixed emotions. Of course it's great you had success, but your success came from things that are less game like.

At least I am not creating "Lady Gaga Ringtone Emulators" or business apps. Those puzzle stuff for kids is still quite nice, especially when you can test it together with small children.

As I stated in the blog post I will be looking forward to work on a "real" game in the near future, since my income seems rather stable at the time. And considering the eight years I have worked for someone else in the past, those 9 months of "not so game-like coding" don't seem that long for achieving the freedom I have now.

[PompiPompi]

For me it's mixed emotions. Of course it's great you had success, but your success came from things that are less game like.

At least I am not creating "Lady Gaga Ringtone Emulators" or business apps. Those puzzle stuff for kids is still quite nice, especially when you can test it together with small children.

As I stated in the blog post I will be looking forward to work on a "real" game in the near future, since my income seems rather stable at the time. And considering the eight years I have worked for someone else in the past, those 9 months of "not so game-like coding" don't seem that long for achieving the freedom I have now.

True, I wish you to continue be succesful and make great games. I just said it's kind of a bit enlightening that you could work on a "real" game for one or two years and not make much profit. But instead you can work less on a more casual things and make a lot more money.

[Irock]

Interesting article. Thanks for writing and sharing.

What kind of marketing did you do for your games, if any? I can imagine marketing a simple game aimed at 0-6 year olds is different from marketing a platformer like Bloo Kid.

[bugninja]

I loved the post and congrats on your success with the apps for kids.

You left me wanting to know so much more with Bloo Kid

It's a solid game, and I would expect it to do better than 10 a day.  Do you think it's just marketing?  Is it the genre of game?  Maybe something to do with game-play?

[Eiswuxe]

Interesting article. Thanks for writing and sharing.

What kind of marketing did you do for your games, if any? I can imagine marketing a simple game aimed at 0-6 year olds is different from marketing a platformer like Bloo Kid.

For Bloo Kid I emailed every blog / review site I found and sent them a promocode along. Even tough I got quite a response and even some review on bigger sites like CrazyMikesApps or Indiegames.com, downloads never got to what I have hoped for.

For the kids apps, I don't do any marketing at all besides writing on my website / facebook / twitter. I tried some inmobi ads with Dino World, but downloads now after the campaign are still the same, so this did not have much of an effect. I guess that most people find the kids apps by really searching the appstore for "puzzle" or "animal" or "toddlers" or whatever. They don't read about the apps on a blogpost. It might be word of mouth, too, since many people with kids know other people with kids and share experiences.

I start to think that this kids stuff is a niche that is not overrun like other niches. Maybe it WAS overrun when the iDevices first came out, but nowadys, game categories like "kids" or "family" might not see as much new apps every day as "action" or "arcade".

[Eiswuxe]

I loved the post and congrats on your success with the apps for kids.

You left me wanting to know so much more with Bloo Kid

It's a solid game, and I would expect it to do better than 10 a day.  Do you think it's just marketing?  Is it the genre of game?  Maybe something to do with game-play?

I heard many people complain about the game being an "one-screen" platformer with no scrolling. Others complained about the controls being "buggy". I dont know if its really buggy or if they dont like the way I implemented the controls. So gameplay-wise there are quite some things that bothered some players.

Another point is that I think its harder to reach the core target-audience for bloo kid than it is for the kids apps. I believe parents tend to search the appstore much longer in hopes to find valuable apps for their kids than the average "mobile-gamer" spends on finding a new game. So for games, its really necessary to have the attention of the web. Your game must be hyped, so that people know about it.

This leads me to my third point: pre-release visibility.
I worked on Bloo Kid without the world knowing it. I then released the game and tried to get some attention. Minecraft sold millions of copies when it was still in alpha!

I think its good to have a dev-dairy online, on your blog or here on tigsource or anywhere. So that people have the chance to know your game way before its release. So when its done, you just need to tell people you might know now (from tigsource, indiegames.com, rock paper shotgun whatever) so they can spread the word.

A good example is super crate box. Even though the game concept was copied by muffin knight and gamers who dont know SCB might think hat SCB is a rip-off, just because super muffin knight was releaed earlier for the iOS, SCB performed quite good on iOS AFAIK. Its because pc gamers knew the game for over a year and instantly bought it on iOS like I did: For playing it mobile and for supporting the makers that offered the PC version for free.

So its good to make some noise during production. Like that 2D Archery-Platformer game I recently saw (and forgot the name). There is a dev-diary update every damn day!