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[test84]

Hi,

I'm wondering how you choose your non hobby projects, projects that you aim to make money from. I've read a couple articles (If you are new to the topic, this is a good one) and watched some

s on the topic but they are all aimed at those high end indie games that I'm not gonna be anytime soon and hoping to get some advice from people similar to my situation on how they achieve[d] or learned to have a sustainable business of making games they like to make, of course.

As I was insinuating, I'm interested in both your success [and probably even more importantly] and hard-learned-lessons (sugar coated "failure").

Thanks.

[test84]

This article by Derek Yu has some points relevant to this topic.

It's a bit old and aged and I've read it's a whole new game now than then but better than nothing, I guess.

[Muz]

I usually have a huge list of ideas before I even start.

Now I go to those ideas and check out the closest thing to it. Is it really good? Personally I won't ever be able to best something like Clash of Clans or Terraria. So scrap that.

Find something that you think you can do better. Ideally something that has a huge fan base. Don't build an idea from scratch. Go for something with an existing market.

You can focus on some variation you think you can do better. Minecraft was just a variation of Infiniminer and Dwarf Fortress. Rimworld was a variant of DF. Terraria was a variation of Minecraft. Starbound is a variation of Terraria.

But you can't just make a voxel/pixel game and expect it to go well. Someone has to think something like "Minecraft would be great if it were just 2D and had more monsters."

I also aim for something that can make decent money right off the bat with no marketing. Go for something like $100/week on the first week of launch. Any less means that it's not clicking with people.