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[ldmn]

Somewhere read, about 5% of indie games are successful (~return 5-10x of investment costs) in an extremely flooded, frequently shovel-ware game market.

Not to pick only "indie quality", as even AAA market has (had) quite fluctuating results (for long decades, or only nowadays ?).

facts:  
-never been so easy to code & release games (of different qualities)
-Demand < Supply
-thus hard to be discovered


Experienced ones and newbie devs, entrepreneurs & managers,
how do you see these things?


----
articles thoughts derived from, eg:
http://makeitbigingames.com/2017/03/throwing-in-the-towel-on-a-lifetime-career-of-game-development/

https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/DanielCook/20150415/241145/Minimum_Sustainable_Success.php

[droqen]

I like this talk:



I don't remember a lot of it, but my big takeaway was a focus on long-term sustainability, and not just of finances, but of personal sanity. It's less important to fret about how hard it is to get "discovered" than it is to do things in a way that you'll be able to continue for years or decades.

I think Daniel Cook's article is good, but I've found it easy to forget along the way that I'm a person with needs and desires, too. You won't do your best work if you're forcing yourself to do shit you hate. You can do it for a while, but you can't do it for your entire life. (And even if you can: do you really want to? You're choosing this life. (Most) people don't get into games because of the money )

[ldmn]

Many thanx for this video, showing a quite unique developer.
His blog is also gr8, and his wife is from my country - I guess after her name.

Really must be tough to remain active & make both ends meet as an indie for decades,
but methinks it is equally bad & more soul-draining to endure a hated job - eg. in biz. line.

Yeah, GDC videos seem to be a good source!  thanx!!

[droqen]

The thing that still shocks me about enduring a hated job is it's apparently super common and easy to just do the absolute bare minimum at an office job and just have nobody notice. Nobody. For years. Or ever.

So I guess there's the weird trade-off. Do a steady job that drains your soul but doesn't mind if you're soulless, or a job that demands your soul always be on, and even then delivers very inconsistent rewards?

[ldmn]

Common thing to do a hated office job with minimum efforts? Where, in a capitalist country? Even our semi-capitalistic/democratic cannot tolerate such employees. But, really, sometimes I witnessed others: with corruption & non-fair ways, especially in state-bureaucracy they somehow survived. Not so common in private sector, but depends on size of company, too.

I did only hated jobs (CRUD analysis & coding, SAP related thingies, some clerking). Soul-full or soul-less work, cash flow must be somehow guaranteed, I am afraid, if not living like Robinson.

Basic / biz. IT is impersonal, intolerable, etc, but then what to do? Making the 60k-th indie game just to gamble with it...  Difficult questions.

[jsjohnsonfilm]

Great question! I really like what droqen said:

but my big takeaway was a focus on long-term sustainability, and not just of finances, but of personal sanity. It's less important to fret about how hard it is to get "discovered" than it is to do things in a way that you'll be able to continue for years or decades.

I've never worked in game development, but before I got a job as a project manager for a startup ebiz platform I was very inspired - I went to school for film-making and before this "adult" job I was ALWAYS creating, making movies and painting! Now I'm consistently busy and drained, I'm never inspired to do anything creative for myself.

Talking with my friends we often say that it'd maybe be better to have a crap job that we don't care about, and pour all of our energy into our own work! If this were the case the unfavorable market wouldn't be a problem because I'd making ends-meet through my brain-dead day-job. I'm lucky that I've payed off all my school debt, I never bought a house, no credit card debt.. I don't really need to make that much money.

That being said, I know that I've won the lottery in this scenario, very few people are debt (and child) free at 33, and this kinda relaxed attitude is not in the cards for a lot of people. I'm very lucky.