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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 game
by 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 agoI 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 agoOn 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 agoIt'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 agoI'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 ago1) 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.
- rootlocus 9y agoIt always saddens me when people claim Minecraft was unique, because it was actually a clone of Infiniminer [0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwM6OA9DkXI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwM6OA9DkXI
- imtringued 9y agoIf people want more infiniminer give them more infiniminer.
- fenomas 9y agoGP presumably means that its financial success was unique. They're not talking about gameplay.
- thelittleone 9y agoI quit my job a few years back with around $150k in the bank to fund my startup. A few months later, still nervous about leaving full time employment, I took a job interview with a big four. I received an offer with a base salary of $600k. I turned that down and committed to the startup. A few months on, I receive a letter from the tax department advising that my previous employer provided corrected earnings information and that I now owed them most of what was left in my savings account. Grim news. That big four job was already gone so I ended up in another interview process. Leaving that interview for the train station, I realised the coins in my pocket were not enough for the train ride home. I set out walking, it was about 5 kilometers, 30c degree heat and equatorial humidity and then it started raining. I was in a suit. Strangely enough I found myself smiling. I thought "is this all you've got?". I actually felt happy... with nothing. A riches to rags story by traditional measure.
- davedx 9y agoI think us IT'ers feel somewhat buffered in life just by the fact that it's quite possible to get job offers with $600k salaries...
- lovich 9y agoI'm not sure that it is. 600k total I might believe someone got in the bay area for total comp, but for base salary? You'd have to be on the 1% of the 1% of devs to get that salary. It is by no means a common salary in even the US, much less the world
- thelittleone 9y ago80% base, 20% bonus. Cyber security practice leadership (not software development).
- matt_the_bass 9y agoPrevious post said 600k base?