i'll be there for at least part of the time. i'm going to prototype AN EXPERIMENTAL NEW GAME … maybe even USING PIXIE

Gorgeous screenshots. Feel like a bump is appropriate on the eve of the 3DS launch etc.

I would like to see what would happen if we took 1-2 millions and give them to a prolific indie, someone who has a good record of releasing good games all by himself (someone like derek or cactus or whoever), and make sure that the money is used solely on game production assets (not cocaine or stuff).
The result would probably be awesome.

Hmmm. The only way for a one-person indie team to usefully spend that money would be to get more people involved, by hiring, subcontracting, or outsourcing extra work. At that point, the whole thing starts to look fairly indistinguishable from a team which is about a quarter of the size of Double Fine.

Or were you thinking of seeing how many one-man games you could get for $1m? Just pay for Derek or Cactus to live comfortably for the rest of their natural lives, and get 40 or so games of out Derek, or a couple of million from Cactus? That'd be pretty cool.

GTA IV was rumoured to cost $100 million. For that money, I reckon you could cobble together a rudimentary cloning facility for indie developers, and have them make more games than the whole of humanity could ever play.

Because clearly Derek or Cactus et al are going to want to live 'comfortably' (which would take in excess of $3 mil, fyi) while generating several times that value for someone else :/

It was made by my friend Broco who is relatively shy online. I will pass the thanks to him.

I like Double Fine's new approach because they weight narrative/atmosphere/art direction over uh making fun games, so I enjoy their work better as high-density charm.

Let's not forget that Playdead pursued about 3 mil dollars of funding for Limbo.

I am going to make a pc/mac/linux version, and maybe an android tablet version as well. It's … significantly less compelling with a mouse, unfortunately.

This isn't a game so much, but it was made at a TIGJam by some people who make games, and some other people who like games said it's ok, so I'll share it here.

It's a meditative experience in drawing a Sri Yantra Mandala with sand while an ambient soundtrack by Rich Vreeland plays in the background. Nothing lasts forever.



Get the game in the App Store (free).

I SAW THIS LAST WEEKEND. It has colors and a puzzle-battle mode. This game is going to rule pretty hard.

Thanks for sharing your numbers. It's really cool that you were able to get huge people to fork out $15 which is relatively huge for a microtransaction.

Hi,

I am a game designer and programmer with indie and AAA experience. I've done work for the web, the desktop, and on mobile devices. Check out my portfolio and my resume. If you're a nice person working on a cool project, I probably want to help out!

EDIT: Primarily looking for paid work at the moment; I'm trying to make money to continue working on some personal free games and a collaboration. But if you want to propose something unpaid I'll gladly consider it.

Best,
Jon

Can I vote for Jesus vs Dinosaurs three times?

(Congrats to all the entrants - many neat entries this year. I saw some 0space at a game jam last saturday.)

Whether a site is database driven or has an RSS feed is not mutually exclusive. You can dynamically create an RSS/atom feed from a database. Also, you can use an RSS feed as an easy way to pipe information between sites. And ~20% of my website traffic is via RSS.

EDIT: fixed tone of message which was originally more sarcastic

A friend who is a crack programmer at Google released the source code for his iPad game Steel Mill. Get the game, then scope the source.

Personally, I learned got some good tricks for creating clean code from this project. Plus there are not many code examples for cocos2d that involve complete, high-quality games.

MY STORY

In 2007, I entered the AAA industry with a job at Harmonix. I started in QA and worked my way up to spec-writing and jr. design. After appx four months I burned out and did other things for the proceeding three years, including consulting for educational non-profits, starting a research group, and freelance writing.

In 2010, I re-entered the games scene almost by accident. I was tired of making shit pay writing dumb articles for stupid magazines, and my roommate/best friend was looking to take his hobby making board games for iOS to a full-time job. We applied to Y Combinator, got in, and started a proper company. Due to various reasons, we pivoted from making a platform for developing turn-based games with a social elements to making multi-touch games for shared devices. To be perfectly honest, my heart was not yet in to making games – I'd fallen out of touch with the indie community and had become bored by the commercial games scene. We were also beholden to investors to build a Real Company and make money and try to hire people and so forth. During the following months, we tried a few different tactics – freemium releases, IAP for both levels and for aesthetic modifications, cross-promotion, etc – and experienced modest returns.

Our numbers:
Finances raised: X
Free game downloads (board): > 500k
Free game downloads ('action'): X
Paid game downloads (board): X
Paid game downloads ('action'): ~4k
In-app purchase conversion rate for new boards for boardgame: X%
IAP conversion rate for full 'action' game: ~1% (f*ck*)

* A loophole whereby in app purchases could be made without re-entering the password for 15 minutes (meaning kids could buy things without their parents knowing for 15 minutes after their parents installed the app for them) was recently closed; I imagine everyone's IAP conversion rates are going to drop significantly.

(Xs will be filled with numbers in a few months)

In 2011, my company dissolved as the other founder decided to move to other (more boring =P) pastures. That was fine with me. TIGJam last year inspired me to make games for the sake of making games, and I appreciate the freedom I now have to, say, make socially critical noncommercial games and to take responsibility for drawing juvenile pictures of crappy game journalists (you may have seen the trenchbloat v daphaknee fallout). I'm currently trying to stay afloat via contract development while working on a few noncommercial games. As a backup, I'm searching for part-time jobs since that would leave me with lots of free time as well as stability.

I currently pay $100/mo for Anthem Blue Cross health insurance with a $5k deductible. I bid $40-$60/hr on most contract work; there are always exceptions.

[Try selling your games.]

OK, I think it's time that we all have a talk. It's going to be uncomfortable but it's about something important: paying the rent. For some reason, there seems to be a distaste for discussing finances in the indie scene and I think this distaste needs to be cured. The independent games movement is about the accessibility of expression via the creation games without publisher or, in some cases, monetary restrictions. What I don't want to see the independent games scene turn into is a mirror of the independent movie world, where, in the past decade, 'independent films' have received larger amounts of financing and studio support to the point where the big indie films nearly mirror big studio films, albeit with less known actors. This 'pro-indie' culture has yet to take hold here, and I hope that it never does. To that end, I think we should talk more about money, so we can have an idea of how we can have food and shelter while practicing our art and craft, as well as to establish an idea of how much our time is worth when we're selling our time (read: skills) or games.

We need to talk more about how to be a part- or full-time indie game developer if we want to change an industry as opposed to remain a 'scene'. We can encourage many more people to quit crappy day jobs programming Madden 12 or moving buttons around webpages and make indie games instead. These games are not all going to be good, and that's fine, but I'd like to see a world where there are as many Limbos and Super Meat Boys and Osmoses as there are CODs and Halos and Bulletstorms. Acting like monetary considerations compromises art means that people need some combination of privilege, PR talent, and luck to have an opportunity to make a larger-scale indie project.

After my company dissolved, talking shop with other developers at GDC made up my mind to try to continue making independent games on non-weekend-days (that is, as more than a Sunday hobby) . I realized that there were, in fact, flash portals that pay more than 2k for a game, that even some of the biggest names out there only have a six month buffer of income, and so on. Suddenly, staying indie seemed much more attainable if I worked hard and continued to level up.

Rant said, I'm going to outline strategies and sources of income I've either done myself or talked to others about.

Try selling your games. The nice part is that you're making your own games and honing your craft. You can still make noncommercial games in between commercial projects if finances allow. One downside is that the income stream can be hugely unpredictable for very arbitrary reasons. The biggest downsides, in my opinion, are that you're going to reach a smaller audience than with a free game and that you may have an idea for a game that you really want to make which you know won't sell, and financial pressures will prevent you from making that game.

Take financing. This seems fun because, in many cases, it seems like free money. The part that sucks is that, Indie Fund excepted, you're probably going to wind up spending a lot of time doing investor updates, getting pressured into raising more money so you can hire and expand etc, listening to tips on 'monetization' and 'user acquisition', and you'll probably have to field multiple requests to make your games social. I'd actually recommend against this unless your financiers are attuned to your needs, and, as far as I know, the Indie Fund is the only real option. Feel free to clue me in to other investors who are amenable to creative indie games.

Do contract work. If you're selling games and you're short, you can do some contract work on the side. You can also rely on contract work to stay afloat and keep your games noncommercial. I'm doing this right now, and it seems alright, aside from the time overhead of managing contracts. mcgrue points out that available contract work "varies wildly from person to person, mainly due to different social networks" and warns that "Contractors in the programing world have a high turnover rate because it's hard and the nub contractor trends to screw himself out of pay and get pushed around a lot."

Kickstart. I know at least one person planning a kickstarter to finance a game that will be released free or charge with source code available upon completion. There are, unfortunately, few examples of this, so I don't know how it will work out. Seems to work well for films so far, no? mcgrue: "Zeboyd Games just raised 6k for an attempt to go full time making games … I consider this to be a relatively good [data point] if you already have a fanbase."

One last consideration is whether you want to start a proper company or just work as yourself / in a casual arrangement with your friends. Starting a proper company results in more tax overhead, but you have the chance of getting acquired, which means trading a few years of your life for a few million dollars*.

*(I wouldn't recommend chasing that unless you /want/ to get acquired, like in the case that you're making games that are tributes to a certain genre of game and you'd like to obtain a leadership-type role at a larger company to produce larger-scale versions of your older games. This is a different kind of 'indie', IMO, and I'll avoid passing judgment.)

What are some other things we should know? I'm thinking it would be good to know:
- the $ difference between the different flash portals
- typical contractor rates to help people make better bids on projects
- the best way to get health insurance for yourself

Anything else? Thoughts/comments?

I'll share my story, including numbers, in the next post, and I'll write a follow-up article summarizing new info. Please share your stories as well, at least as much of your stories as you feel comfortable sharing.

I'M SO THERE

The Indie Game Summit was the best part of GDC. So good seeing old friends and meeting new ones. High-fives all around.

daphaknee.livejournal.com has some nidhogg party pics, particularly of Greg Fox.

Getting money from angel investors is weird and I wouldn't necessarily recommend it, unless the angels are well aware of what it means to fund a game studio (FWIW most angels will balk at funding a game studio anyhow).