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>>> Don’t spend any money: Do as much as you can yourself. If you can’t afford it, don’t pay someone to make assets that you could do yourself. What’s more, do

>>> Don’t spend any money: Do as much as you can yourself. If you can’t afford it, don’t pay someone to make assets that you could do yourself. What’s more, do you really need to hire a full time coder? Or can you just hire a freelancer for a month? If you don’t have money, make the sound effects yourself. Nah. As a solo dev you need to spend your time efficiently. You can go to Fiverr and pay literally $5 for stuff like that. Sure, what you get won't be amazing, but it will be passable and it is pretty much guaranteed to be better than what you can create as a pure beginner. That is far more preferable to spending hours or days (or maybe even weeks) learning to do it yourself.

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Alex3917 10y ago
> That is far more preferable to spending hours or days (or maybe even weeks) learning to do it yourself. It depends whether you're trying to maximize your income over the next year or over the lifespan of your career. Investing in yourself by taking the time to learn technical skills and also develop your aesthetic taste in different areas of design is usually going to pay dividends in the longterm far beyond whatever immediate benefit you'd get by outsourcing this. Once you know how to do it yourself, then by all means find a consultant to do it for you, but until then it's just a risky shortcut that's not likely to work out.
- fencepost 10y ago
  By all means enrich yourself and learn new things, but don't delay your game for 5 years so you can teach yourself how to draw, use proper proportions on figures, color, etc. (on your own because why pay a teacher?). Remember that you're in business, and even if you're a solo dev it's not all about you and your personal growth, it's about whether your business can deliver. The good advice from a conference this past weekend: "if I was hiring, would I hire myself to do this job?"
jharger 10y ago
> That is far more preferable to spending hours or days (or maybe even weeks) learning to do it yourself. Unless you are interested in learning that stuff, then it is not only cheaper (in terms of cash, but not time) but you are doing something you'll enjoy as well as learning new skills.
LoSboccacc 10y ago
if he comes from a decade experience, he's probably not gonna have started at a time where services like those where in existence.
- badloginagain 10y ago
  It also depends on the point of the assets. If you need a proof of concept, it doesn't need to be good at all, just enough to prove that the image/sound/whatever is showing up when it's supposed to. You should be good enough at photoshop/paint.net/whatever to push out some WIP assets. If you want production quality assets, then you'll likely have to pay more. I think what the author is saying is build shit you can build. If you can't build shiny spaceships, then choose a different direction.
pjc50 10y ago
Quality matters - the usual question of outsourcing stuff is whether you can describe what you want accurately enough.

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Alex3917 10y ago

> That is far more preferable to spending hours or days (or maybe even weeks) learning to do it yourself. It depends whether you're trying to maximize your income over the next year or over the lifespan of your career. Investing in yourself by taking the time to learn technical skills and also develop your aesthetic taste in different areas of design is usually going to pay dividends in the longterm far beyond whatever immediate benefit you'd get by outsourcing this. Once you know how to do it yourself, then by all means find a consultant to do it for you, but until then it's just a risky shortcut that's not likely to work out.

fencepost 10y ago
By all means enrich yourself and learn new things, but don't delay your game for 5 years so you can teach yourself how to draw, use proper proportions on figures, color, etc. (on your own because why pay a teacher?). Remember that you're in business, and even if you're a solo dev it's not all about you and your personal growth, it's about whether your business can deliver. The good advice from a conference this past weekend: "if I was hiring, would I hire myself to do this job?"

jharger 10y ago

> That is far more preferable to spending hours or days (or maybe even weeks) learning to do it yourself. Unless you are interested in learning that stuff, then it is not only cheaper (in terms of cash, but not time) but you are doing something you'll enjoy as well as learning new skills.

LoSboccacc 10y ago

if he comes from a decade experience, he's probably not gonna have started at a time where services like those where in existence.

badloginagain 10y ago
It also depends on the point of the assets. If you need a proof of concept, it doesn't need to be good at all, just enough to prove that the image/sound/whatever is showing up when it's supposed to. You should be good enough at photoshop/paint.net/whatever to push out some WIP assets. If you want production quality assets, then you'll likely have to pay more. I think what the author is saying is build shit you can build. If you can't build shiny spaceships, then choose a different direction.

pjc50 10y ago

Quality matters - the usual question of outsourcing stuff is whether you can describe what you want accurately enough.