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[Navy]

Hi,

I was hoping to ask some questions for my thesis research because no one in my country really makes games. my topic is effectiveness of using iterative game development and digital marketing for indie games. Any indie game developers wanna help dm me? wont take long will just dm questions(i haven't written the questions yet)

Thanks much appreciated

[Thaumaturge]

If you haven't already done so, I'd suggest additionally reaching out on social media (e.g. Twitter or Mastodon)--there are communities of indie-devs there who might be willing to assist you. (For one, I'd suggest reaching out to Rami Ismail, who may be able to put your request in front of a larger audience of devs.)

[michaelplzno]

One thing is that probably 90% of people who call themselves indie developers aren't really making anything that brings in a lot of money. It may even be 95%. People make games because they love doing it or because they aren't fit to do something else.

The typical story of an indie dev is that a dev or a group of devs saves up enough money to spend a year or two working on a project, some of them actually ship the project, and then it makes pennies for every dollar spent on dev. Then they get a "real" job.

I have about 15-20 different games that you could play right now, my own publishing platform, one of my games is on XBOX, and I've been featured by kotaku and others several times, but I wouldn't consider myself successful.

If you can get a job at an AAA studio you are making a decent salary then, but you have much less ability to affect the creative direction of the project unless you spend 10-20 years at the studio doing very difficult work and long hours going through the "meat grinder" and if you can handle that, you might get a lead job where you get to have creative expression assuming you are well liked by the political landscape of the company involved.

There are probably less than 100 people in games who are capable of having a vision for a game, executing it themselves or with a team, and then getting it to sell real well.

[michaelplzno]

Alas, I am not yet ready to die: 15-20 games? A pittance! I shall make thousands of games.