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[Nugsy]

How does an indie developer usually fund their first project? By a current job? By savings? I understand it is probably different for everyone, but i'm talking about in general.
I'd love to be an indie dev but it's making the commitment that i'm most worried about.

[Rob Lach]

By a current job?

Yes.

By savings?

Yes.

I understand it is probably different for everyone[...]

Yes.

but i'm talking about in general

I suppose the typical track is that early on you support yourself with a side job while slaving away on your own projects. Hopefully you create something that you think you can sell and hopefully you aren't deluding yourself.

[Christian Knudsen]

Some indies also fund their projects by selling pre-orders.

[fraxcell]

You could try starting a kickstarter page, but since it's a beta you need an invite or something.

[Kren]

you can always try the non funding method(the hard one), consist of making games for free with not so good quality and wait until a good programmer/graphic etc, decide to help you for free.

[bateleur]

If you mean literally first project: by working on it in your spare time alongside paid employment or education.

[weasello]

Yep, very first projects are usually done in the evenings/weekends while you work a day job (or attend school or some such).

If you are asking "how can I get a million dollars for my first ever game which will be on XBLA," well, erm, 

[oahda]

We are working on our first project right now, and for me, it's being funded by still having a year left of education that gives me the right to money every month (and by still living with my mother).

[WhiskyBiscuit]

Just whatever comes your way I'd say.  It's safest to do it in your spare time while working, although obviously you sacrifice social life and it might take a bit longer to complete.  You also sometimes have local grants for new businesses, or universities often have schemes that help you get off your feet in the first few months.

The university I went to has just announced a massive fund for game concept prototypes (Abertay University Dundee) so that sort of stuff is an option too.

I'm just starting into this scene, have been working on a game for a while in my spare time, and then I got made redundant as part of massive downsizing at my company so I'm using my redundancy money and a bit of savings to fund me for a while ( and moving back in with my parents - joy of being still young ).  I decided that for me, going for it direct means I can put all my time/effort/energy into the game and see it how goes, if it goes well I'm laughing, if it goes bad I will have a good portfolio piece for more games jobs and at least I can say I tried.

There's no real standard answer on how funding works, or if you really need it ( past paying for life ).  Just look at your options and go for what feels best for you I guess.

[supershigi]

I think quite a few people have a day job in order to pay the bills.  In my case, I'm a freelance video game musician by day, so for the first 1.5 years of my game's development I saved up money from my vgm contracts until I could afford to spend about 6 months working on my game full-time.  I also recently started selling the first part of my game's soundtrack on bandcamp, which probably won't help all that much, but it's nice to have a little extra help with something directly related to the game.

[shig]

I would love to fund someone ELSE's game, but I'm not sure how that could work.

[slembcke]

We started out by working normal software engineering jobs for a while until we had a lot of money saved up. I saved up enough that I felt it was a comfortable amount to live off of for two years. Since then, our main source of income has been from various part time contracting opportunities.

We aren't exactly getting rich this way, but we are still able to pay rent while still affording time to work on our own projects.

[KM]

The best way I found to fund an indie project is passive income or nearly passive income mixed with marketing and joint venturing.

What I did to fund my first project was first, set up a situation where I could start a business and hit the ground running when I quit my job, quit my job, put all my credit on the line and get a lot of borrowed cash to give myself more time to run my business before going bankrupt, started a computer store, made a lot of mistakes about business, basically was running the shop like an employee not an entrepreneur, ran myself to the brink of bankruptcy, closed down my store front, decided that either I change what I was doing or declare bankruptcy, decided to change what I was doing, ran the business from my house, start making business deals and delegating my work load to others for a cut of the pay, started selling a lot of computers and getting people to build them for me, barely lifted a finger to do any work involving computers anymore and just let the money flow in, paid off all my debt within six months and built a large savings within that 6 months.

This is the part where I now had enough money to fund an indie game. In total it took about 1.5 years, could of done it in 9 months. Hit a snag with the fact I was not very good at actually making games or running a team (oops). Then I moved and made one of the worst mistakes I ever made, I got another job instead of continuing my own business. This basically put me back at square 1.

So in retrospect, the best way to make money is to be creative and work on making money come to you instead of just waiting for it to show up on your door step.


I probably just made everyone go 'WTF?'.