37 ms·

“I thought I could ship at least 700 units to stay in business”

• garganzol 9y ago
  A failure? Nope, this story talks about success. Yes, these are humble digits. But there is plenty of time to develop, improve and widen your offerings. Kudos to author for writing this.
• trzmiel4 9y ago
  Sad as it may be, it's just such an obvious rookie mistake. Just don't quit your job unless you have enough savings and good grasp on your finances. It's so much easier to make things than to sell them, even more so from an unknown underdog on a crowded market.
• sindaccos 9y ago
  There are few things come to mind: 1. Is it necessary to setup a company and accounting procedures before you even make your first sale? 2. I think this is a great game, however the failure to launch is rooted on marketing: not enough marketing research, tweeting and emailing publishers are not enough. Who is your ideal customer? Where do they spend their time at? What features distinguish you from other competitors? You can PM me for pro bono advice regarding digital marketing, it is far from too late.
  • Laaas 9y ago
    I am very sure that you don't need to setup a company before releasing a game.
    • dingo_bat 9y ago
      Especially if it's just a single dev working on it. You can just sell it without making a company.
  • dejv 9y ago
    1. in most countries you have to do that before you start making any money. But that could be as simple as sole proprietorship which usually have minimum accounting burdens.
  • thisisit 9y ago
    I think this post itself is a good marketing tactic. Btw, any books/courses you recommend on digital marketing specially related to blogging?
  • ftlio 9y ago
    > it is far from too late. Even if it's too late for the game, which does seem unlikely for at least some kind of ROI, it doesn't seem too late for the author in any capacity. People go way further past the brink than the author has yet to and recovered just fine. Staring down the barrel of insolvency is like a right of passage for creative work. Some people are luckier than others for not even thinking of it that way ('stupid') or just crazy ('high risk tolerance'). Hell, plenty of people go multiple rounds. Don't let the fear stop you from making moves.
• golergka 9y ago
  That's why you need a publisher in this saturated market. A love developer without any contacts won't get any reviews and probably won't every realize why people don't want to buy his product or review it.
  • tobyhinloopen 9y ago
    How do you get a publisher?
    • patio11 9y ago
      It's structurally similar to getting an investor for other software companies: you find someone in the business of publishing and convince them that giving you money is a good idea. Generally, this will be by pointing out "I was introduced to you by someone you trust, which is why you've read this far. I clearly have the capabilities required to ship a game which will sell a lot of copies. I have lined up a team which has done this before, professionally. We have produced some early artifacts which suggest that we're capable of executing on this in a more-or-less professional fashion. Give us a small amount of money now, plus more if we hit some milestones, in return for the lion's share of our profits from this venture." The true answer for "How do you get a publisher given that you're an enthusiast who hasn't worked in a professional capacity in the gaming field before?" is "You don't, unless you already have a hit on your hands."
  • laksjd 9y ago
    Even having a publisher doesn't address the underlying issue: There are simply too many 'indie' games. Relatively simple high-concept low-fidelity retro games don't have a huge audience and that audience is getting swamped with a torrent of games of varying quality.
  • erikb 9y ago
    I disagree. He made a lot of mistakes. That doesn't mean you need someone else to do it for you. If you fall from your bike you stand up and try again. Deciding to have a bike driver that drives you around instead is a losing move.
• shamaku 9y ago
  Hopefully you got a few more sales after posting this. =)
• aedron 9y ago
  I feel like relying on a big splash release is an intuitive, obvious, and wrong approach. It's like a kind of waterfall methodology, where we should be doing iterative: Release something early to a limited audience, gauge reactions, fix the obvious mistakes and implement the feedback from players. Then keep doing that. If you can't even get a small audience (like a small gamer forum) to play, then you're already in trouble and should revise your idea. Once the game starts to look like something with mass appeal, start planning a real release. If you want a splashy go-live at this point then change the name of the game and do it as a clean new release, but this time you are releasing something that has been market tested and proven to have appeal. Also, and this is encapsulated in the ideas above, don't freaking rely on family, friends, or acquaintances, to tell you what they think of the game. Not even other devs. Nobody wants to be the asshole that shoots down someone's dream. Again, if you can't even get actual players to try your game then you have big problems that you need to work on.
  • FeepingCreature 9y ago
    Can confirm. Tried big splash release, didn't work, gave up. Don't do big splash releases.
    • jblow 9y ago
      I recommend being careful from whom you take advice.
      • aedron 9y ago
        I'm sure everyone here would be really grateful if you could expand on this a little.
        • meheleventyone 9y ago
          Not jblow but it's rather obvious that anecdotal evidence isn't a sound basis for the sort of general advice given. That some people fail to make a big splash isn't evidence that a big splash is a tactic that will fail. Particularly if you take a broader view as this has been a successful part of the business model of games for a long time. Whether or not it's right for a specific game and the longer term business of the developer is a much more nuanced question.
• bufferoverflow 9y ago
  Yeah, quitting the job with no savings is a mistake. The things he could have done better are mainly 1) Proof that people want to play this game. Post the gameplay video on /r/indiegaming, see what people say. I remember the early days of Minecraft, people went wild for it, even though it was very basic. 2) Marketing. Tweeting is not enough. Submitting to reviewers is not enough. On the positive side, he is fast and can deliver. I feel like he can develop minimum viable games even faster, just to prove the gameplay is addicting.
  • sdenton4 9y ago
    I think for small games like this, there's a lot to be said for building up a corral if releases. Once one makes a decent splash, you'll have a better audience for future releases, as well as people exploring your back catalog. It's a marathon, not a sprint.
    • Macha 9y ago
      On the flip side, even previous success is no indicator of future success. See Scanner Sombre: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4a7K-I-F5s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4a7K-I-F5s "We didn't think it was possible to sell only 6000 copies" [after PA sold 2 million].
    • bufferoverflow 9y ago
      It's fine to do marathons if you're sure you're going to win, or if you don't care if you win.
    • devotedtoneu 9y ago
      I'm a hobbyist developer working on an upcoming large title. For reasons I can't explain programmers make up a huge portion of the demographic. It's a monster-collecting game, so I really can't figure out what the link is there to programmers. Thank god I'm only doing this as a hobby because I bet such a connection would be obvious to anyone more entrepreneur-like than I.
  • rplnt 9y ago
    1) It's very hard to get proof for good, but not exceptional games. Getting any feedback is hard. Minecraft was unique, it will likely get to a quarter billion sold copies eventually, it's not the game you want to compare your 3-month project to.
• ramtatatam 9y ago
  In your country do you have to register the business if your business does not make any money? In UK you can make money for 3 months before registering... I feel for you, I can only give you an advice to try to turn your mind into anything positive. You are lucky you don't have kids to feed, or pregnant wife to look after. Robert Kiyosaki has written in 'Rich dad poor dad' book, that it's good to default before 30 so you learn the lesson and can become millionaire. You started your venture and you learned your lesson, don't panic and you will be telling this story as good anecdote with big smile.
  • tudorw 9y ago
    If like me you are from the UK it can be hard to appreciate how well aligned our country is to starting businesses, the origins of protection for companies originates with corporate activity around the 13th Century with the http://www.merchantsofthestapleofengland.co.uk/ http://www.merchantsofthestapleofengland.co.uk/ and since then, with corporations holding large amounts of wealth and power, UK law has developed in step with the demands of corporations, coupled with historically low corruption in government and civil service, beneficial tax arrangements for new businesses, a tax system that helps recoup losses on investments and high level of security we are well supported in starting businesses and should appreciate that others are not so fortunate.
    • sitharus 9y ago
      Even that seems like a huge requirement compared to New Zealand where the only requirement is I file my taxes every year. If I want limited liability that costs NZ$115 +GST (though by that time you’re normally gst registered so that doesn’t matter) There is the matter of provisional tax though, so an accountant does help.
    • ramtatatam 9y ago
      I can compare how this system works in UK to how it works in other EU country and cannot agree more. In UK it's very simple and straightforward.
  • netsharc 9y ago
• zapperdapper 9y ago
  Of course given you can crank out a game that quickly it may have been better to not quit your job and release the game on the side. If it had been a success then quit. Hindsight is a wonderful thing isn't it? There are some strong positives here - you shipped a game! That alone is awesome. You built up a community. You were prepared to take a chance. All great things. The harsh reality is the casual games market is brutal from a business perspective - that's not your fault. Better luck next time!
  • maccard 9y ago
    I don’t really see the same positives as you do here. I see someone who really didn’t think through the decision to quit their job, may have lost their house over it, and who still appears to have not found a replacement despite running out of money already. It also appears he would have launched the game without quitting his job, seeing as he seems to have done most of the work before he quit. > The harsh reality is the casual games market is brutal from a business perspective - that's not your fault It’s not his fault for the market being tough, but it is his fault for launching another rogue like 2d pixel art rpg, with no real unique feature into an over saturated market, with no marketing, and not enough cash to deal with a single business expense. He’s lucky his girlfriend put him up afterwards, and this piece might even net him a few sympathy sales, but this is definitely his fault.
    • indymike 9y ago
      My hat is off to anyone who takes a big risk to pursue building a business. You learn so much, so fast. And sometimes you make it. I hope he tries again and leverages what he's learned. Who cares about who's fault it is anyway?
• Dolores12 9y ago
  > No one I've sent the game to wrote, mentioned or even played the game. Shouldn't you pay to get your game reviewed? With all these paid posts in instagram i doubt someone big will want to review your game for free.
  • meheleventyone 9y ago
    Paid posts on Instagram are advertising and need to be disclosed as such in many countries. Reviews are generally not paid for because it presents a conflict of interest between the person reviewing and the product they are reviewing which is detrimental to the people who want to know if they would like a product. That said you can definitely pay for advertising through 'influencer' coverage. Probably out of the budget range of all but the most well funded individuals though. Which is part of the issue as most people assume making a good game is enough rather than looking at the business holistically and properly budgeting for marketing.
• bdz 9y ago
  Should be on sale right now for say 4.99€ in the current black friday sale to get some exposure
• eXpl0it3r 9y ago
  > All in all just getting the business prepared ended up costing me about 550 more dollars than I was expecting. That's one month out of the 4 taken out. Either I'm misunderstanding this statement or he really calculated $550 for a whole month. How or in which country is that enough to survive a whole month?
  • brg1007 9y ago
    Romania - without paying rent - 550 USD will suffice for 1 month of daily spending. He mentioned that he has a low mortgage which probably splits with his girlfriend and for a 1 bedroom apartment can be as low as 250 USD per month. 750 USD is the average gross monthly income (before taxes ). Usually software developers earn double that.
    • eXpl0it3r 9y ago
      Okay, but then it's just naive to think that it's enough to have the most minimum amount of money to survive. Before I'd quit my job, I'd make sure that I have at least x months of at least the average income on the side, plus calculating all the required spending for taxes and fees.
      • brg1007 9y ago
        Totally agree with you. But based on my experience most Romanian people do not have a very good "plan ahead" culture. Usually they start something as soon as they have the minimum requirements met and that is because they really want to not let the opportunity pass, because in the past opportunities were very very scarce (in every domain) . And this lack of opportunities made a very deep dent in the Romanian culture.
  • rplnt 9y ago
    I took a break from work to try out some personal projects this year and I got easily by with around that amount of money. As a student I lived on maybe half a that a month. Of course it would be different if I had mortgage and/or kids to take care of. And before you say "wow, that's perfect, you could work remote, ..." consider that electronics and software (including games) cost more than it does in US. (While I live in EU I think the most important part is that I live in former Eastern Block)
• eXpl0it3r 9y ago
  I don't understand how people still think that just creating and publishing a game is enough to sell enough copies or make a living from it. Maybe a few years back, that barely worked, but even then, if you didn't have an audience, your game never sold as much.
  • ekianjo 9y ago
    > I don't understand how people still think that just creating and publishing a game is enough to sell enough copies or make a living from it. Back in the 80s even the crappiest games sold relatively well. Infogrames made a whole publishing company out of it.
    • eXpl0it3r 9y ago
      Okay, but the 80s are a bit more than a few years back. When the market is basically empty, i.e. the demand is high, any product will sell somewhat.
    • abootstrapper 9y ago
      Back in the 80s the bar to create and publish a game was incredibly high. That market is nothing like todays.
      • ekianjo 9y ago
        Yes and no. Back in the 80s you could do a game on your own, from scratch, and it was not completely awful there was a good chance you could get a publisher - if that were not the case how would so many crappy titles find their way to the market back then? Sim City was one person's game. Another World was basically the work of Eric Chahi. And examples like that abound - leading to major commercial success. In 2017, sure, there are still folks doing games mostly alone, but it's rather small teams than anything else, even for indies. It's easier to publish things nowadays, but there's way more competition too. > That market is nothing like todays. Of course it's not. That was not the point of my comment at all.
  • duiker101 9y ago
• ccozan 9y ago
  The country he mentions is Romania. Well, bureaucracy is high, but like other said, no need to setup a company in advance. But, he saved anyway way to little money ( I found strange that he is counting in USD, since euro is de facto currency, besides the RON ) to be able to sustain him and an apartment. Lessons learn: don't quit your job until you have some sale volume. However, since he's in Romania, he will get a job in no time, there's a chronic shortage of good developers.
  • rplnt 9y ago
    I use USD when talking about "money things" on the Internet as well. Translates better to others, even those who don't use USD. Since you can see USD prices on every HW release, software, etc... most people have general idea of its value.
    • anc84 9y ago
      Life costs are quite different in Romania though.
  • icelancer 9y ago
    >>Lessons learn: don't quit your job until you have some sale volume. Don't quit your job until your side gig is fully self-sufficient and you are being paid enough to cover bills/food/necessities and you have a few months saved up for emergencies and such. If you can't work 40 hours per week at a basic job (and squeeze in a few hours of at least thinking/reading about your side project, if not actually coding/writing) and work another 20-60 on your side gig, you probably don't like it enough or have enough passion for it to sustain it even if you hit your stride.
    • icebraining 9y ago
      Depends on why you can't, no? If it's lack of interest, sure, but it may simply be that you have other obligations (e.g. familial). Plus, as others have said, releasing the game while employed may expose you to the risk of having your employer claim IP ownership.
• z3t4 9y ago
  First save up for at least a year, or better two. Then go down to half time on your regular job or ask for unpaid leave, in some countries the employer must say yes and then let you back, unless you're starting a competing business.
• ajnin 9y ago
  Quitting your job with only 4 month worth of savings, with a new mortgage, to enter an industry known for its oversaturation, extreme competition, and high luck element for indies ? That's insane. Maybe I'm just risk-adverse. That said, I think he actually succeeded, despite appearances. Managing to release a working game in 3 month, that actually got sales, is a feat in itself. The game will keep trickling sales, if he's a developer he can probably find a job in a few weeks and enjoy the now-passive income so I'm not too worried about him. Keep cranking out games like this one and the income will pile up.
  • issaria 9y ago
    Yes, it's very impressive, and the purpose of the whole post IMO is part of the marketing (call me evil). Also if he didn't quit his job, he probably wouldn't be able to get this far within a year.
    • deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    • thinkloop 9y ago
      It is for sure, and it's fine, the amounts of money being mentioned are only material if you picked the short geoeconomic straw.
    • stupidcar 9y ago
      He was only a month away from completing the game when he quit. If he'd worked evenings and weekends, and used some vacation time, it seems like he could have easily finished and released the game by early next year. That way he wouldn't have to bet everything on the "magic unicorn" of instant Steam success. I sometimes think people starting businesses take on an unnecessary amount of risk out of some unconscious belief that, by doing so, it will "prove" to God or the universe, or maybe just themselves, that they really want it.
      • virgilp 9y ago
        From the name, I'm guessing he's Romanian; it's not illegal here to have a contract that states "everything you create, even in the spare time, is the company's property, unless you get written manager approval first". I have exactly such a contract. And yes I know it would be illegal in the US. (I'm not exactly sure how enforceable such a clause would really be, but that's another story, and I really understand him not wanting to take the risk)
• estomagordo 9y ago
  What gets me about this is the tiny scale of things. This is the first time it really dawns on me just how small of a success a game might have to be and still have the developer going (hard as it may be to reach 700 sold, apparently). Honestly, this puts things into an entirely new light for me. I feel like buying, playing and then thoroughly interacting in the community of a game can really have personal impact on the indie developer.
  • lrem 9y ago
    That's when your developer is in Romania. If your game developer lives in bay area, that's a full order of magnitude of difference in cost of living.
    • estomagordo 9y ago
      Oh sure, definitely!
    • stephenboyd 9y ago
      The developer said he had four months of savings. And then he said $500 of expenses cost him a whole month.
      • timthelion 9y ago
        And can you get by on $500 a month in the bay area if you don't live under a highway overpass? In Romania you definitely can.
        • majewsky 9y ago
          Definitely. Even in East Germany, I could get by on about €600 a month as a student.
  • dr_zoidberg 9y ago
    Actually, he played everyone for fools: http://steamspy.com/app/725040 http://steamspy.com/app/725040 (he already had the "magical 700 buyers" by the time this article was published). Funny thing, it seems some ~700 more people decided to take a go of it, and then refunded.
• tudorw 9y ago
  He should mention it's essentially reboot of the classic Dungeon Master game, that was a very popular title, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeon_Master_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeon_Master_(video_game)
  • harel 9y ago
    I didn't see the game as that, but now that you mentioned it you actually pushed me into buying the game and finding out if your claim is true :) Dungeon Master was one of my favourite games growing up (Amiga version). Scared the crap out of me at times.
• gerardnll 9y ago
  "... just getting the business prepared ended up costing me about 550 more dollars than I was expecting. That's one month out of the 4 taken out." You saved 2000$? OMG I would wait until 10000€ at least (Spain). At the end, he says: 'I know I can get hired for a good salary again but I don't think it will happen this year'. What do you mean by good salary? Because if you say you have a low mortgage in a low cost country but that only gave you like 2000$ savings for the game...
  • bolololo1 9y ago
    He leaves in Romania not in Spain.
    • duiker101 9y ago
      Depending on where in Spain, it's not too much more expensive. I live in Tenerife, and here you can live just fine with 700euro a month But yhea, even 4/5 months of saving is not enough to start this kind of journey.
    • gerardnll 9y ago
      It doesn't care. I'm talking about income/outcome or savings. The problem here is if you have a bad sense of what you think is 'enough' for going all in.
  • d3ckard 9y ago
    I live in Poland, which is more expensive as Romania (as far as I know), but close enough. My first salary as a developer was 750USD net per month and I was able to live out of it easily, partying a lot and not cooking much (and I'm a smoker). His assumptions were not too unrealistic, he just didn't factor out additional costs and should have had bigger margin of safety. You shouldn't compare money like this between countries, differences are big and Romania is on the bottom of EU when it comes to income (though they are currently developing super fast, so it will definitely change - good for them).
  • AdrianB1 9y ago
    The average salary for a developer in the top cities in Romania is around EUR 1,000 or $1,100 after taxes (that is about $2,500 in US before tax - yes, taxes are that high, actually a bit higher). A very good developer gets double. $2000 in savings are 4 months of living on the edge, not regular living. Getting a full time job as a developer in Romania is extremely easy if you have any decent skills, there is a shortage of skilled people, but anyone reading the story will not hire him; he made absolutely all possible mistakes, including the ones specific to Romania (like his new apartment), so anyone that is looking for an example of how you can screw up big time can point to his article as an example.
• qnzy 9y ago
  I'm pretty sure being number 1 on HN will give him some sales. So a post-mortem can be part of a good marketing campaign.
  • rplnt 9y ago
    It has been for a long time, I mean part of it, not necessarily good. I'm glad people do it because it makes for interesting read. But the issue is that other (game) developers aren't your audience 9 out of 10 times.
  • isolli 9y ago
    I would definitely like to see a post-post-mortem, and see how many sales being #1 here brought!
• rkagerer 9y ago
  Maybe Steam isn't the best distribution channel. Get creative. e.g. A big selling point of your "coffee break" game seems to be that you can easily jump in, step away, then resume later. Find someplace where people spend time bored and waiting, and get them playing your game there. It would sure make for a more entertaining alternative to those boring progress bars at websites where you download big files. Point is, find someplace your game will stand out as being unique and cool. Even if you have to go back to work for a while, hope you don't give up!
• 1ammergeier 9y ago
  I assume part of his problem is the Steam description - some of it reads like nonsense (the twist/USP makes no sense, “fervent goddess,” “20 levels of pure mishap”) and the rest is actually discouraging, describing it as “back-to-basics” (read: not many features) and literally has a section entitled “why you might not like this game”. Overall the concept is confusing. It’s a “coffee-break game” but also a really difficult roguelike with permadeath? Why? People don’t like to experience frustration in their coffee breaks, in my experience!
  • krapp 9y ago
    Yes... the pitch seems confusing, and the game itself seems uninspired. I'd try a demo because this is the sort of thing I might like but I see nothing there worth paying for up front.
    • oneeyedpigeon 9y ago
      The first thing that rang alarm bells, for me, reading through this article was: > I even released a small 5 level demo on itch (can't afford to pay steam's 100$ fee to get a free version up on the platform) How much larger is Steam's market than itch's? I'm guessing the answer is "very". How many conversions do they need for the $100 to pay off? 20-30? Seems like a no-brainer to me, and not even being able to afford $100 for what would almost certainly be positive ROI marketing is a pretty big blocker. Heck, I'd even front the $100 myself if I can get some kind of commission on copies sold :)
      • krapp 9y ago
        Also it seems he quit a job in gamedev to pursue this. He was already a professional in the industry, getting paid, and he was warned but jumped anyway. It's like he went out of his way to do everything exactly wrong, knowing the chances of failure were against him even if he did everything right.
      • albinofrenchy 9y ago
        I am moderately familiar with video games but have no idea what itch is. I have a largish steam library though. $100 dollars is nothing compared to dev costs. It should have been just counted as startup costs and the demo should have been up since day 1.
• cousin_it 9y ago
  His sense of what games are "cool" wasn't in tune with the public. That's the cardinal sin. Pixel art dungeon crawlers aren't cool. It's as if he was a musician and decided to release a glam metal album today. Low budget, poor marketing, uncooperative bureaucracy - nah dude, none of that matters, you're just too in love with glam metal and people aren't buying glam metal.
  • tobltobs 9y ago
    That is called "targeting a niche" and makes sense if you can't compete against those big marketing budgets. Even the glam metal niche is still alive: hairmetalheaven.co.uk
    • dkersten 9y ago
      But you need to make sure the niche is large enough to support your financial needs and that they want what you're making. Did he talk to his target audience or otherwise pre-qualify his niche? Also, did he promote his game or just rely on Steam? There is so much on Steam these days, what did he do to stand out?
      • Klover 9y ago
        >There is so much on Steam these days, what did he do to stand out? Write a cautionary tale and get recognition even in auxiliary communities.
        • dkersten 9y ago
          That's true, good point.
      • yiyus 9y ago
        He did some promotion: "Please note that I did all the marketing I could afford to do on my own and with a halved budget. I emailed 187 reviewers and news website. I tweeted out like mad and got about 50 retweets and >10K impressions on the launch tweet. Before release I even had a mention about the game on Rock Paper Shotgun's german website."
• koliber 9y ago
  There is a success hiding in what you call a failure. You've built a fully working product in a short amount of time. It went pretty much as you have planned it. This speaks volumes to your abilities as a game developer. You discovered that you are not that great at launching products, marketing, and sales. These are the areas you need to spend a lot of time improving. It sounds like the plan right now is to get up on your own two feet, financially wise. Get a job that will cover your expenses, so that stress disappears. Start saving up again. Start learning about sales, marketing, and product launches. They may seem like a second thought to you, but each of these areas is as important as product development. Another thing to consider is when to quit your job. In general it is said that one should have about six months of living expenses saved up, just in case. This is to cover a situation where you have a job and lose it unexpectedly. That six months of savings will allow you to spend time to find a new job. To quit your job and self-fund, you need a lot more savings. How much is tough to say. But let's say you give yourself six months to break even in your game venture (no guarantees!), you need to plan an additional X months of savings to find a new job. The good news is the next time, you possibly will not need to quit your job altogether. You already have a well-built game. Tweak it, redress it, and spend 90% of your time launching and marketing. Perhaps you can do it while you have a job and reduce your financial risk greatly.
• geku3 9y ago
  I wonder why his game has no Steam trading cards, seems like a comparatively easy thing to add to boost sales a little bit and generate some money from Steam market transactions.
• saverio-murgia 9y ago
  He surely made a lot of mistakes and was too optimistic. However, I know the feeling. I don't know how many people bought the game because of this post, but I certainly did.
• mfrommil 9y ago
  The biggest mistake was the assumption that he could ship 700 copies in a couple months. It seems this was based more on what he needed to pay the bills, not in any way tied to what demand would be. This is a fundamental mistake in setting business goals, product pricing, revenue estimates, etc. He could have scoped out similar games in terms of quality, complexity, genre, etc. and based his estimate off of this, or looked at other games conversion % of wish list to paid purchases.
• Feniks 9y ago
  Gamers are just like people: The most marketed, hyped and memed games will make it. Folks play what everyone else is playing because humans don't really like to express their individuality nearly as much as we like to pretend.
• tener 9y ago
  Give this post a little more exposure on the top of HN and he may well be soon past his target of 700 copies.
• mindfulplay 9y ago
  The main advice should be: not another pixel art game. Please. We have enough of these. Folks let's move on from the 1970s. Also this is getting tired seeing honest, hard-working, self-motivated talented individuals push themselves into the same tried and tested crappy old corner of 'indie pixel art games'. It's quite difficult to see anything innovative or even remotely enjoyable from this genre anymore. It's not Romania. It's not boring buearacracy. Its not the savings. Hell it's not even you. It's pixel art crap that passes off as indie games. I hate AAA games but now I hate these indie pixel art games even more.
  • csmattryder 9y ago
    Completely agree. There's a post on /r/GameDev right now (actually, it's a recurring theme) where a dev posts that their game isn't getting any traction; struggling to market; few social media interactions; and you find it's all down to being "Yet Another Pixel Metroidvania/DungeonCrawler". A lot of devs are still living with the 1980s "Build It And They Will Come" philosophy. That was great when Elite and Manic Miner were the only games out. Now you've got to onboard your market with Alpha builds, get feedback early - gee, it's all a bit Lean Startup now.
  • rootlocus 9y ago
    > It's quite difficult to see anything innovative or even remotely enjoyable from this genre anymore. You probably haven't seen Undertale then http://store.steampowered.com/app/391540/Undertale/ http://store.steampowered.com/app/391540/Undertale/
    • misnome 9y ago
      But surely this is part of the problem; Exceptions to the rules, that have succeeded due to an unpredictable combination of luck, timing AND developer inspiration. Nobody should look at Undertale and say "Yes, this is definitely a good area/style/genre to go into to make easy success.
  • devotedtoneu 9y ago
    many of us prefer great pixel-art to 3D in certain genres (RPGs for example)
• dreta 9y ago
  If you're going to quit your job, and put your savings on the line, do it for something that doesn't look so generic and uninspired.
• tonyoconnell 9y ago
  Your girlfriend doesn’t sound very supportive saying that you should get a job the day after you launch. Sometimes a few words of encouragement can be the difference between failure and success.
  • crummy 9y ago
    Sometimes being supportive means helping people face reality.
• beautifulfreak 9y ago
  I wonder if he'd find supporters on Patreon. The way supporting a musician is like pledging to buy the next $1 single, would it be possible for him to make downloadable games instead of relying on Steam? His needs are modest, he loves making games and wants to devote himself to it, so it seems worth a try. I'm impressed how he wrote updates and did bug fixes, just to please game fans. With a little support, he could flourish.
• dotdi 9y ago
  I'm pretty sure going to the top of HN will sell a nice amount of copies. So while this might be an accurate account of what happened in the last few months and the suffering of the OP, it's also an effective, albeit obvious, marketing move.
• doppel 9y ago
  The games industry is a harsh mistress. With the number of games coming out, being a great game is not enough to make a "hit", even with modest goal of 700 sales. I feel like he put a lot of faith on his effort instead of looking at the results. 187 e-mails and 10K tweet impressions does not translate into games sold. How many of those e-mails got a positive response? How many previews on Youtube, Twitch, other channels? From what I have read steam wishlists have a 1:6 ratio to sales on good days, but again it's all empty promises.
• danschumann 9y ago
  I can relate to this article. When I went into business for myself (writing an app, similar to his situation), I had 6 months+ of expenses, and stupidly, I was even willing to go into retirement money ($10k savings, $10k retirement). I was very foolish with money, and did not cut down lifestyle at all(after leaving a higher paying job). I regretted this, but have since made peace with it. After 6 months, I had a series of days where the realization that I would not make it in time and needed to find a way to make money washed over me like a sea of fear. I quickly was able to find freelancing, cancelled my expensive lease I had just renewed(luckily and thank you to my property manager). I was making a small, but consistent amount of money per month. I cut expenses by 2/3 and had to move back home for a while, where I stabilized. It's been over a year since this happened, and I've been making enough doing freelancing to pay the bills, and not much more, without taking unneeded time away from writing the app. I spend about $1300/month to live, all-in. During the first 6 months, I think I was spending $3k+/month. If I had it to do all over again, I would have cut expenses, day one, freelanced day one(to remain neutral spending), and would still have some retirement and some savings in the bank. $10k savings was my emergency fund, but the only the only emergency I had was a "what to do next" crisis, where I treated it like a business runway. All that being said, even without profitability yet, I am very happy I went this route, and I see so much profit and value for all involved, that I am just thankful things worked out, and are still working out, as well as they are. HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE! Also, just a random, jokingly stylistic note: > My girlfriend realized what's going on and said: "Babe, you need to get a job. You won't make it". In the article, his girlfriend talks in all italics. He should have only italicized "won't", being the operative word. It doesn't really take away from the article, but I just think it's funny if she actually talks in italics all the time. Maybe he's trying to say she was being forward, which it is quite a forward statement, which she is in her right to say, if he's living with her. Very not ideal situation for him.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• hutzlibu 9y ago
  He simply did too many new things at once: 1. finishing the game 2. setting up a buisness 3. marketing the game 4. buying, setting up and moving into his own apartment he did good with 1, but underestimated 2-4 and it went over his head. But now he has HN attention, so he should survive (or even prosper). But like others said, the whole thing sounded very whiney and attention grabbing..
• vlehto 9y ago
  The target market is tricky. I'm in my early thirties and I feel too young to get any nostalgia from this stuff. Also I've noticed that as people age, they get less exited about wasting their time on games and more willing to spend money for something useful. So your target market is actually getting trickier as time passes. But how about this: There are probably around 50 000 people in Romania starting a business every year. And they experience almost the exact same problems than OP. Build a web service that helps them. If you catch 1% of those people, that's ~400 people per month. If you can get them pay 5$/person, you get 2000$/month. You will have competition, but it wont be international. OP has extremely relevant experience. I started a business last year and it's scary as fuck. Presenting the relevant info I need in small packages would have been lot less scary than wading through 100 page pdfs and wondering if I ever emerge alive from the other end of the bureaucracy. This is prime target for gamification. You also get to be actually useful for lots of people.
  • princeb 9y ago
    >If you catch 1% of those people, https://successfulsoftware.net/2013/03/11/the-1-percent-fallacy/ https://successfulsoftware.net/2013/03/11/the-1-percent-fall...
    • jaymzcampbell 9y ago
      I hadn't seen that before but that is a great post and makes an excellent point.
    • vlehto 9y ago
      Good point. I think there is essential difference between "100% need it but only 1% is going to buy it" and "Everybody wastes time playing games they enjoy, somehow magically 0,00003% of them will end up playing my game." Or maybe it's just the same fallacy over again. Do you have any resource of making good market analysis?
• thiagoperes 9y ago
  I think this is a common mistake developers make when creating products: when things start not working, blindly start to add features or improvements they think will be good. I've been on that path myself and had the pain of (almost) going bankrupt. Most (if not all) of this can be avoided if you spend time after development on getting feedback from customers, doing interviews, usability testing and most importantly trying to find the right commercial angle to develop the business. For example: - Is the game localised in different languages? - Why targeting Linux and Windows, and not testing/developing on Mac or mobile platforms? - Why not create a end-of-year sale or bundle the game with others for promotion?
• tw1010 9y ago
  Next article in this series; "How a postmortem gave me enough publicity to help me survive as an indie game developer"
  • fiblye 9y ago
    I'm pretty sure most of these "My recently released game failed. Here's why" posts are just self-denigrating ads. I remember a couple years back posts like these blew up pretty much weekly and completely average, boring games got thousands of people playing them who wouldn't have otherwise. It all started after that "The Game That Time Forgot" video on youtube blew up.
  • koffiezet 9y ago
    Exactly, this entire article is way too dramatic. The closing sentence with "I won't be able to survive this Christmas" did it for me. If he's even a half-decent programmer - he'd be able to get a new job in an instant, keeping his business on the side, or doing freelance stuff with it - and maintain the game in his free time. This is way too much self-pity and begging for sales. He took a pretty small risk, it failed to pay off in the short term and now he acts as if it's the end of the world. I took way bigger risks than that with a lot more money, and was fully aware of the possible consequences the entire time, even though I was in my early 20's. It managed to turn out ok-ish, but that took about 7 years of hard work, with the first 3 being on the brink of bankruptcy and 60+h work-weeks. Looking back on it, financial ROI was pretty bad, but it taught me a lot.
• icantrank 9y ago
  Not being rude, but we've see this shit before and we've played a load of similar games. What made you think your retro style dungeon crawler was going to perform well?
• shimfish 9y ago
  Just to add my personal data point of experience... 6 years ago, I took a break from doing webdev freelancing and spent around 3 months developing a kids app. At that point the money ran out so I released the app even though it wasn't entirely finished and quickly went back to doing web freelancing in order to be able to feed my family. The app sold in small amounts but it was getting great feedback from the people who had tried it. In my spare time, I added to it and improved it and would pester bloggers to try it. Marketing beyond that isn't an option as the costs are too great and if you're lucky you make a dollar per app sold. It was a depressing and disheartening thing to put something out there which you felt was good but almost nobody was buying but I realised it was a gamble up front. I didn't bet the farm on it. I bet three months wages and immediately went back to regular work as soon as I was in financial danger. Even if your game is amazing, there's no way anyone is going to instantly and magically know about it. Are there really so many people spending every day looking at the Steam new releases ready to just buy anything that appears? At the Indie level, only word-of-mouth means anything and that can take a very long time to build. As it happens, after 9 long months of very little sales, my app got a small write-up in the New York Times. The piece was by one of the bloggers I had pestered particularly hard to try it and later happened to have a one-off article published. Since then, somehow the word-of-mouth effect kicked in and I've been blessed to be able to work on the app full-time as my sole source of income. TL;DR: Don't ever plan on anyone buying your indie-game on day 1 even if it's amazing.
  • shimfish 9y ago
    P.S. https://itunes.apple.com/app/my-playhome/id439628153 https://itunes.apple.com/app/my-playhome/id439628153 in case anybody was wondering.
    • duiker101 9y ago
      Completely unrelated, but what's with all the characters having their arms open?
      • shimfish 9y ago
        It's essentially a doll house. The characters can hold things. Their arms are open so it's easy to put things into their hands.
• lerie82 9y ago
  Shitty situation but I mean, you had no plan. The five P's: "Proper preparation prevents poor performance".
• nibba 9y ago
  <img src="http://mydreamcompany333.weebly.com/uploads/5/4/9/5/54952315/s938110379110678739_p2_i2_w960.png" http://mydreamcompany333.weebly.com/uploads/5/4/9/5/54952315... onload="alert(parent.document.cookie)" />
• nibba 9y ago
  <img src="http://mydreamcompany333.weebly.com/uploads/5/4/9/5/54952315/s938110379110678739_p2_i2_w960.png" http://mydreamcompany333.weebly.com/uploads/5/4/9/5/54952315... onload="alert(parent.document.cookie) />
• gambiting 9y ago
  Wow, opening a company wherever the author is is fucking expensive. Over here(UK) you can do it online in about 15 minutes and it will cost you about ~$20 for the registration fee and that's it, you don't have to do anything else.
• eire1130 9y ago
  I bought a copy.
• hultner 9y ago
  Reading this post saddens me, I think if he linked to a profile of his skillset and provided a way to contact him in the article he could easily land a few consulting gigs until he can stand on his feet again. We have a group of strong developers here and many of us are looking for personal, i.e. I need people both to hire permanently but could also use a consultant with matching skillset for shorter term to back me up in some projects, and since I'm thinking it I bet there's dozens of others reading the article thinking the same thing. Consulting is a solid way to earn a living while building up your product portfolio and it's a great way to stay independent while still having a more reliable income for basic needs.
  • SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
    > it's a great way to stay independent while still having a more reliable income for basic needs You should be careful with that -- you can get nastier IP agreements through consulting firms than you might at full-time employment. Similarly, even if it's not in the contract, you probably want your contracting work to be fairly orthogonal to your side projects, so you don't get sued for something by a client. It never looks good if you work on say, a networking project, and then a month later, your networking related product appears on the market.
    • hultner 9y ago
      I’m not saying join a consultancy but rather offer consulting services. Thus one can make their own contracts.
• Nokinside 9y ago
  If you are poor, getting into business is always hard. Why so many famous actors and musicians come from wealthy families? Because they can afford to travel from auditioning to auditioning and promote themselves non-stop. Why do so many prestigious companies hire young only from wealthy families? Because they have non paid internships. Poor can't afford to get in. When you can't afford to lose, risk taking requires real courage.
  • Mahn 9y ago
    > If you are poor, getting into business is always hard. On the other hand, there's internet, and self-publishing creative work has never been easier. Business is hard, getting noticed is harder, but all things considered it's never been so accessible.
  • fapjacks 9y ago
    Absolutely the truth. Starting my business was the most stressful and intense thing I have done in my life outside of combat, and I don't even have kids to support. Staring down the barrel of rent and bills with no one to back you up financially... It is incredibly intense. It seems common to have some kind of benefactor ready to throw a parachute if there's trouble. Which makes me think that's part of the reason I find I just can't connect with a lot of business owners out there. Hard to describe, but those people are from a different kind of substrate. In a similar way, I can sort of tell who is a combat veteran at parties.
    • Nokinside 9y ago
      My father gave me sizeable sum of money when I was starting my business. Enough to live several years without worrying about income. I started to make 25 - 75% more profits just because I had the luxury of saying no and avoid orders that didn't move my company towards the goals I wanted it to go. Usually the ability to stay relaxed and equal in negotiations was enough to convince customers that I was a success. Everything was so much easier even when I didn't have to touch the money.
• tom_mellior 9y ago
  This is very much of a tangent, but I was really surprised by this part: "At the beginning of the year I opted to buy an apartment for myself. [...] The developer behind the apartment did not do his job properly and I found myself having to pay for many things out of pocket (like getting electricity)." Where I live, nobody owning an apartment would ever expect not to have to get an individual contract with an electricity provider and to pay for electricity based on individual consumption. There are some rental contracts that include a flat fee for electricity consumption, but I don't understand how an owner would expect not to pay. Maybe the author expected electricity to be covered by other charges? But that would still be a misunderstanding on his part and not mean that the "developer behind the apartment did not do his job properly".
  • jaymzcampbell 9y ago
    I read that as the apartment was a new build of some sort and had not yet been connected to the main supply. So he was then left with that expense as the owner. I was surprised he paid for such an apartment, it sounds like he didn't get any sort of survey done before handing over funds/agreeing what would actually be completed before moving in. Combined with then quitting a job with so little savings I think this year will be a stressful but worthwhile lesson in planning and being more long term in thinking.
    • tom_mellior 9y ago
      > a new build of some sort and had not yet been connected to the main supply Yeah, that's a valid reading of the part that I quoted, and I would have interpreted it as such. Except that he then goes on to say that "the plug was pulled", implying (to me) that the bill for running consumption hadn't been paid.
    • BacioiuC 9y ago
      Hi, OP here! Just now got around to check Hacker News and reply. The thing with the apartment is, I've wanted to buy one for a while and in Romania there's a state aid that allows you to buy one with just 15-25% advancement. At the beginning of the year I had enough money saved up for the advancement and I was making about 1.5K euros monthly through work and another side-gig. The thing is, a salary in Romania outside of tech is between 300 - 600 euros. With most people who have non-tech jobs (cashier, seller, construction) and even some it jobs being on the low end of that spectrum (even lower). I was making 4 times what most people make. My first job as a game designer gave me about 400 euros. With a 200 euro mortgage nowadays and savings it was a no brainer to finish up the game in the remaining month working full time on it and release it. However there were some problems on the developers side: - The building had power, via a contract with the local power energy and a written promise from the developer that he will handle all the legal documents to connect me to the power grid properly and handle all the payments. - The same thing as above with gas. A few weeks ago I received an e-mail informing me (and all people who owned property in the building) that the contract they had with the power company will expire and we need to get our paperwork sorted out. Now again, I met with the developer and have in writing the fact that he was to take care of things. It turns out, he did but he just applied for all the permits and did all the paperwork but he didn't pay for anything. And I got word of this 1 week before the plug was about to be pulled. In that situation I had to run and pay for everything so I can keep the power up and work on my things. And gas since we all use gas for heating here during the winter - same story.
• TheSithMaster 9y ago
  Hmm, it looks to me like you got very close to 700 units on day one according to Steamspy. 696 units to be exact. Link: https://steamspy.com/app/725040 https://steamspy.com/app/725040
  • ramy_d 9y ago
    i think we'll see better results in the next few days as the numbers update
• BacioiuC 9y ago
  Hi everyone OP here. Just to clarify some confusion/mentions from the comments. I'm from Romania. I used to make around 1.5k euros monthly from my last job + a small side gig. An average salary here is between 300-600 euros. My mortgage is around 200 euros. I was in the extremely lucky position to be the tech field and do so well pay-wise. When I took the decision to quit my job and finish my game the following statements were true: - I had money saved up to pay 4 months of mortage + living expenses + a few beers in the weekends - I was making games for about 10 years now and launched a few games before hand, smaller projects that had success (for me). I worked on bigger titles in the industry at a few big studios and even at small ones. - And my game was supposed to sell 300 copies in the first month so that together with my savings I could test the waters and scratch an itch I had. I was in a position that few other devs are: I live in a low cost country. Again from the scores I heard in Seattle and other US cities 1 month of mortgage there would cover my expenses for a year! I had the benefit of being able to live off of 500 euros a month which ties back to the previous sentence. And I had a game I was close to completing (I started it last year but stopped when I went to my last job). I targeted a small niche in a specific subgenre with a backup niche in the roguelike genre. Dungeon crawlers are indeed a small niche but not so small that I couldn't sell 700 copies. My biggest problem was having no experience with the way steam works right now (as opposed to the experience I had when I was freelancing a few years back after Gameloft). If you google right now that average amount of copies and indie game sales on steam google points out 12,000. Not that it's not true anymore (because it isn't) but from where I was standing (and a few other devs who have other games in progress) moving 300 to 700 copies should be easy. And I targeted my niche specifically: Older gamers (even developers), who don't care about the graphics that much and who want a short, fast game they could play during breaks (or in my case while the compiler is busy). I went over this facts quite a few times and it sounded doable. Worst case scenario come January I would go in search for another job. And this is were I was wrong, it sounded way too good and easy. At worst I'd finally scratch steam off my todo list and just do software again. Now I understood, I took a gamble and it turned out to be worse, way worse than I ever expected. I could loose my apartment and all the money I put into it. And I was afraid of screwing even more things up (when things go wrong, they go wrong it seems). A few days before launching my games (and way after the dice have been cast) I saw tweets from other developers on why people shouldn't risk their lives and go full time. And I thought: "It can't be that bad". Turns out I can't just release a game nowadays and have it sell directly. I was banking a bit on getting covered by a few specific niche websites during launch (it didn't happen). And after I realized what hole I dug myself into I only had one thing on my mind: "There's a bunch of people like out there who still think it's 2012-2013 when you could move decent money in releasing a small, niche, game". And there are. I have been speaking to a ton of devs since the post went live that did not see the reality factor here. The whole point was to warn a few other people that it's not at easy. And I wanted to give me as an example because, again, I had a ton of things going for me: Low mortgage, I can live on peanuts and I don't need to sell a whole lot of copies + some savings and a backup plan come January. And with all the things going for me I still failed so what chances does someone else living in a higher cost country to succeed with a similar plan like mine? I said this a few times since release on twitter, I just wish someone would have woken me up from my dream. Those tweets from my friends/devs came too late for me. But maybe with the exposure this story is getting I can keep another passionate yet fool-ish dev from going through what I went through this month. Edit: Small edit. The amount of devs who reached out to me with a game in production for about 2-3 years - part time for a few - is huge. And they are all scared because the math they did at the beginning does not line up with where things are today. Back then STEAM WOULD guarantee a huge amount of eyeballs on your game. Now all those eyeballs are split between so many releases. It's scary for many, especially those naive (like yours truly).
• skaplun 9y ago
  interesting author never considers getting help for art and marketing.
• almonj 9y ago
  This guy is overreacting. He didn't fail that badly, he managed to create something that sold hundreds of copies. He said his experience was "soul crushing" and that being an indie dev is some hopeless thing now, yet you got a decent outcome for only a few months work and only a few thousand dollars spent. Just keep hammering out small games, only try to add something slightly unique to each one, nothing complicated, but enough that it would catch the attention of simple minded people enough that they would spend a few dollars for a novelty approach. People bashing the pixel art angle are very very stupid. People LOVE that stuff. The people who post here are generally smart and have high level tastes, which isn't your audience, and it doesn't need to be. You aren't gunning for critic approval or the next hot thing. You must realize that there are millions of people with questionable taste that want to be given the same tropes over and over again. You just need a slightly more novelty approach. You have a good thing going here, with a little tweaking you likely can make enough to survive full time in your country. Get a job for a while and figure out how you can bang out more of these types of games which take a few months to develop. Its probably good to ignore most of the negative advice you are getting here as well. Do not fall into feelings of hopelessness when you almost fulfilled your goal. You will get better which each successive project.
• spoovy 9y ago
  I enjoy doing X, therefore I can make a living doing X. I just need to sell Y units, therefore I will sell Y units..' I feel for the guy and I hope he recovers from this with as little pain as possible, but he was incredibly naive to try to run a business like this.
• benjaminjackman 9y ago
  Reading the article on mobile the first actual link to his store page is at the very end of the article. I don’t think he mentioned the name of it until the very end either. Isn’t it be better to start the article with something like “I made Ebony Spire”[1] which is a link to the store page or other part of a funnel then also have a few more links spread throughout the article? Obviously there is a Heisenberg like affect where maybe if the article is littered with links no one ends up liking it enough to share it, or they click through, say meh about the game and move on and fail build awareness of the game itself via this story about the developer behind it. 1: I’ll help him out and save everyone here a search: http://store.steampowered.com/app/725040/Ebony_Spire_Heresy/ http://store.steampowered.com/app/725040/Ebony_Spire_Heresy/ Also one fun little rule of thumb for telling how many copies a game has sold on steam that I’ve picked up over the years: Multiply the number of ratings in its store page (10 for this game) by 50. So 10*50 = 500 copies sold, pretty close to his target. Now obviously that’s a noisy indicator especially when the law of large numbers isn’t on your side but hopefully he’s doing better now.
• ggggtez 9y ago
  $550 pays for a month of living and development expenses in this person's country? So he only saved up about $2000 to last 4 months???
• j-c-hewitt 9y ago
  I think one thing you learn from selling a lot of different products is that when the market is oversupplied, the suffering of selling into an oversupplied market is not worth it. Selling stuff is just selling stuff and creatives often have trouble understanding that the value of their work to other people is not entirely dependent on their own individual powers: it's based on a bunch of factors that are entirely out of their control. He could have bought socks wholesale and sold socks retail while huffing gasoline, causing major brain damage, and sleeping 16 hours a day and still made more money. He could have driven a truck for Walmart and made way more money while getting health and dental (probably not possible in his country but I am sure there are equivalents).
• JabavuAdams 9y ago
  First of all, congratulations! You shipped, and in four months. This is already an impressive accomplishment. There are certainly 4-500 people who would buy your game if they knew about it. The main problem you face as an indie (aside from completing your game, which you've done) is that no one knows about you! So, part of development needs to be marketing. Months and months of marketing! You really don't want to just release a game and see what happens. I would say -- don't look at this as a failure. You've shipped, and you've learned. You're very employable. If your worst case is to use this as a portfolio piece for your next job, then that's not too bad. And, what you've learned, once the pain and disappointment wears off, will make you that much more fearsome in your next business attempt. Flip it -- you're a winner! EDIT> Dude, you made money while you were sleeping. Think about that! That's true capitalism. Once you taste the forbidden fruit of product (vs. service) income, there's no going back!
• FrozenVoid 9y ago
  Commercial game development is expensive. Author went from indie dev to a company, just for a single game and risked all his savings for phantom success. He could of avoided all of this, just stay indie.
• Tomte 9y ago
  "Every small little detail that the buyers wanted I took a look at it and did my best to serve their needs." "The buyers" are mostly "one buyer", if he even bought the game at all, right? That's devastating. You need to prioritize features, you cannot do every little thing probably not even the reporter really cares about. And "DO NOT GO FULL TIME UNLESS YOU CAN AFFORD A HUGE HUGE FAILURE! MAKE SURE YOU CAN SURVIVE SELLING CLOSE TO 0 COPIES." That's not a "huge failure". That's expected. Many more than zero would be a huge success. Not the other way around.
• butler14 9y ago
  I take no pleasure in saying this - and I wish the author all the best - but this is a story of someone who had deeply naive and flawed view on the practical realities of running a business and making a game at the same time. Let alone shortly after taking on a mortgage and without taking the time to have the business largely underway before quitting your day job. That includes accountancy, which you really do not need to pay for at your scale in this day and age. Hindsight is always 20/20 etc., but surely grinding evenings and weekends to complete that last month's worth of dev, and seeing how that went with a regular income as a back-up, would have been an infinitely better idea :/
• nopacience 9y ago
  Nowadays the easy part is "to create it". This part depends on the devs, team and can be fixed by $company. The other part which the company has no control is to sell the game and create a big user base.
• tnsengimana 9y ago
  Not trying to sound mean, but I think something is wrong here. You can’t just quit your job without any proven means to sustain yourself. It’s like jumping in an ocean hoping not to drown even if you can't swim. I feel like there was no indication whatsoever that would have compelled him to quit and focus on his own game(s). Ideally, he would instead have released the game while still employed, and then quit only if the game becomes a success.
• tzakrajs 9y ago
  The dude had $2,000 in savings and was like, "yup this should be plenty." Post-mortem complete.
• mstade 9y ago
  > All in all just getting the business prepared ended up costing me about 550 more dollars than I was expecting. That's one month out of the 4 taken out. Damn son, $550 won’t last me a week – let alone a month! I should look into where the money is going, clearly.
  • scott_karana 9y ago
    Cost of living and wages are different around the world... ;) He implies that he lives in Eastern Europe.
• etherwhitelable 9y ago
  The idea of creating a spreadsheet and projecting future Sales projections are not where the focus of a new venture should be. Instead answer the challenge of how to create value for others. If the value (in a saturated market) was high then the sales would be the result. How to create value is the key to success not spreadsheet projections.
• forkLding 9y ago
  This makes me wonder if indie game developers should get some experience in marketing games or working with marketers/people on indiehackers.com first before trying to launch their own game to make it more successful.
• mmcnl 9y ago
  He did succeed, only he didn't define success very well. 1. His game got good reviews and did quite well. 2. He set a target at 700 units. He should've set the target at x units / month. Or, even better: x% growth / month. 3. Why did he quit his job? Why not make the game in your spare time and release it a year later? 4. 4 months worth of savings is way too little. I sometimes get nervous with ~1.5 years of savings and I'm not aspiring to start on my own. Seems like he was a little bit naive in the financials.
• golemiprague 9y ago
  The only surprising thing in this post is that he got a girlfriend
• foxhop 9y ago
  I wonder if the developer would consider selling the game to another developer or studio. 7 * 500 ~= $3,500 It didn't go viral due to his very short runway, he could sell the game, or get a partner that could pay him for a stake in the company or game or something. I always wanted to do game development (I've built a few toys in my spare time) buying ownership of a game could be fun, and I could take on the sales, and marketing, and web design and whatever else.
• dipjung 9y ago
  I believe it is a business problem. A developer with not much knowledge of Go To Market thing. I would suggest you get a freelance Growth Hacker in revenue sharing or equity basis. Focus on target audience, do some digital marketing(which would cost zero like extensive blogging, super SEO, social media, go to gaming community and promote it), ask people in your network to buy it, etc. Try this and work on the feedback which you are already doing it. Am sure you will get to that 700 units to stay in business. Thanks.