23 ms·

Did I just waste 3 years?

• BatFastard 8y ago
  Yes, but that is only if you didn't learn anything. Problem is not many people appreciate the skills that go into writing your own engine and game.
• zeroname 8y ago
  The game looks bad. You will not get a foot in the door with a game that looks like this in 2018. It looks like amateur/programmer art. There are some people that aren't bothered by that, but when it comes to media the looks are paramount. If this game had an appealing art style, it might stand a chance in the already saturated market of Metroidvanias.
  • Jugglerofworlds 8y ago
    I completely agree. Every time I see one of these posts bemoaning their sales stats, the game inevitably looks bad. The genre that this game is in is completely saturated, so nobody is going to spend their money on crap when something that looks 10x better is available. While the indie scene is is definitely now over-saturated, the real problem here is the lack of honest feedback to the developer.
  • rwallace 8y ago
    Looking at the trailer, personally I think it looks awesome. Nice subtle shading and detail on the environment and enemies that doesn't detract from the overall simplicity, and then you get to light up the whole screen with massive firepower when you start shooting with one of the big weapons. What do you think looks bad about it? (Not a rhetorical question. I'm not a graphic artist. I'm curious if I am missing something that a professional would spot.)
    • zeroname 8y ago
      > What do you think looks bad about it? If it's not immediately obvious to you, then I can't explain it either, or at least I can't be bothered to try. Some people don't see it. It has nothing to do with being a graphic artist. It's not about technicals, it's not something that comes off a checklist.
  • nostrademons 8y ago
    That's not really true - take a look at the graphics from Factorio 0.1, released in 2012: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_a8_zxYLik https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_a8_zxYLik They've since sold about 20M copies at $20 (now $30) apiece. I started playing in 2017 with Factorio 0.14, when the graphics were better but still decidedly retro and they'd sold maybe 4M copies. The difference is that Factorio has a unique gameplay concept that is both extremely addictive and not really found in any other games. People will overlook shitty graphics if the game has a compelling concept that they can't get elsewhere.
    • zeroname 8y ago
      > That's not really true - take a look at the graphics from Factorio 0.1, released in 2012 Yes, that was in 2012, well before the indie explosion. If you saw this game today, you would assume it is one of the hundreds of crappy 2D Minecraft clones.
      • nostrademons 8y ago
        I mean, here's Factorio 0.14, which was 2017: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulIqPXiM0X0#t=1200 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulIqPXiM0X0#t=1200 It's better, but it's not that better, and probably something that still looks like a "crappy 2D Minecraft clone".
        • njwi332 8y ago
          I think his point is that it was already well known by 2017 and didn't have to struggle to distinguish itself in the current market, because it had built momentum and interest.
• Kenji 8y ago
  Hey, I liked the game. It's really nice looking and I got hooked for 5 rounds just now =)
• MentallyRetired 8y ago
  Yes, probably. But at least you're not still building websites in the era of apps, like I am.
• aphextron 8y ago
  You made the mistake of thinking that anyone would care how many hours you spent optimizing some C++ function that does something already solved a hundred times in a hundred different game engines. It's a natural tendency for all programmers. But making a game in 2018 is far more of a creative endeavor than anything to do with programming really. You need a massive amount of top notch artwork, music, 3D modelling, shader effects, SFX, etc. to have a polished nice looking game. That takes either superhuman talent or a large team of specialized people beyond yourself.
  • giancarlostoro 8y ago
    Seeing the forest for the trees as they say. This is why indie games are focused on the simpler style of video games in some cases like Stardew Valley. It still took the developer 8 years (give or take) and you can tell he worked his tail on it.
    • scrollaway 8y ago
      Stardew Valley is insane. The developer did everything. Art, music, sound effects, engine, gameplay, design, writing... everything.
      • derefr 8y ago
        Stardew Valley is an interesting case in that the developer didn't really need to invent anything. They took a formula (the Harvest Moon series), produced a clone, and then polished the hell out of it in response to community demands until it was hardly recognizable. None of that really required an act of genius creative talent, though. Learning enough about audio production to create the set of SFX and music you already know you need from the top-down design of the clone-game you already know you're aiming for is effectively "just" grunt work. Sort of like how an actor learning the exact set of martial-arts moves they need to know to look like they know martial arts in one particular shot, which is intensely choreographed, is "just" grunt work. Stardew Valley's creator didn't need to develop the skills to be an amazing artist or musician, they just needed—like the actor—to develop the skills to create a particular pastiche of existing pieces of art and music. The creator of Stardew Valley is, however, a natural talent at the particular meta-skill of "finding out what people want and tweaking things in response to those wants, never settling for doing 'merely' what they know how to do with the skills they already have, rather pushing themselves to the skill-level required to make people even more happy."
• markfer 8y ago
  I went through a similar situation when I created an Indie game studio with friends. We worked for a year and made a cool $5,000 but it was a "failure" by all sense of the word. We learned a lot and had a ton of fun. Some feedback: Your website is god awful. Seriously. The copy doesn't excite anyone to play the game You make the user jump through hoops to play - if you already are writing it off, make it free to play in-browser without Steam (you want traction at all costs right?) What did you learn? Did you have friends or a community playing it as you worked on it? If you didn't, then you really need to look at the Lean Methodology
• ponytech 8y ago
  As I was reading this post I thought I could be writing it myself... Although I am in the mobile gaming industry (maybe even harder than steam) and I "only" spent 2 years on my project the outcome was similar. Conclusion: don't spend that long on a project with such an unpredictable fate. Shameless plug: https://www.dinorush.com https://www.dinorush.com
• masukomi 8y ago
  having worked in the ad business... a conversion rate of 1 in 1,000 of in-market people is fairly standard. having zero sales with just over one thousand visitors is not surprising at all _especially_ if you consider that a good percentage of those people probably aren't in-market for your particular game anyway. You need _way_ more visitors to have any clue if your efforts are resonating with your potential market or not.
• Nokinside 8y ago
  Game industry is the economics of superstars. The Macroeconomics of Superstars[1] >Abstract >Recent technological changes have transformed an increasing number of sectors of the economy into so-called superstars sectors, in which a small number of entrepreneurs or professionals distribute their output widely to the rest of the economy. Examples include the high-tech sector, sports, the music industry, management, fnance, etc. As a result, these superstars reap enormous rewards, whereas the rest of the workforce lags behind. We describe superstars as arising from digital innovations, whicih replace a fraction of the tasks in production with information technology that requires a fxed cost but can be reproduced at zero marginal cost. This generates a form of increasing returns to scale. To the extent that the digital innovations are excludable, it also provides the innovator with market power. Our paper studies the implications of superstar technologies for factor shares, for inequality and for the effciency properties of the superstar economy. [1] The Macroeconomics of Superstars, Anton Korinek Johns Hopkins and NBER, Ding Xuan Ng Johns Hopkins, November 2017 https://www.imf.org/~/media/Files/Conferences/2017-stats-forum/session-3-korinek.ashx https://www.imf.org/~/media/Files/Conferences/2017-stats-for... [2] The Economics of Superstars The American Economic Review , Vol. 71, No. 5. (Dec., 1981), pp. 845-858. http://www.uvm.edu/pdodds/files/papers/others/1981/rosen1981a.pdf http://www.uvm.edu/pdodds/files/papers/others/1981/rosen1981...
  • chongli 8y ago
    Yes. At this point, recommending that a 9-5 programmer quit their job to work on an indie game is equivalent to suggesting a PR writer quit their job to write the next Great American Novel.
    • hessenwolf 8y ago
      I might use that as my title for my partner case. Automating (super dull financial industry department) is the industry of superstars
    • adamnemecek 8y ago
      It’s not actually because even if you fail, you’ll be in a better position skillwise.
• epx 8y ago
  Games are a lot like movies industry. #metoo's, low median pay, too many hours put into flops. This kind of effort is best financed by deep pockets that can eat the loss. One area you might reuse your talents and efforts, is gambling industry. It is another toxic environment, I take antidepressants since 2003 since I worked once with a client of this industry, but the payout is at least certain.
• DrNuke 8y ago
  Having mastered C++ is not a bad outcome for the OP’s future in the software trade, though.
• markbnj 8y ago
  >> Does the world need any more games at this point? It's like asking if the world needs another pop song or pizza joint. There's always room for the next great game and another good place to get a pie.
• everyone 8y ago
  Making games is an incredibly risky business. Akin to starting a restaurant. I personally dont think of it like a business at all. I think of it as a vocation. By choosing to make games, I consider myself to have chosen the life of an artist.. My goal right now is to make great games that I want to make, thats it. I'm living off the savings from my last real job, and being extremely frugal. I moved out to the country, where everything is cheaper (rent massively so). If / when I run out of money I'll do some contracts, worst case scenario is get a fulltime job as an employee again.. But I am extremely happy with my life right now.
• fullstackchris 8y ago
  Ugh. This is the depressing side of the huge wave of indie dev / maker / game creators that has been on the rise in the past few years. The creativity from everyone is great on the building side, but on the marketing and traction side, there can always be bad luck, like this example. I think a lot of consumers are just fatigued from too many options - think about how much of instagram and facebook is ads vs what it used to be, even back in like 2010.
• DelightOne 8y ago
  That‘s why its usually recommended to fail fast. To not sink in too much without knowing whether there is any product-market fit.
• pytyper2 8y ago
  You should go through your code and try to extract generic abstractions that you can release as resume building projects or as assets that other developers can license and include in their projects.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• kachurovskiy 8y ago
  I wonder what is the outcome distribution for an indie developer spending this much time building an utility desktop Mac/Windows app. Somehow this seem to have fallen out of fashion.
• barbecue_sauce 8y ago
  To be a successful indie dev, you need to take an auteur approach: have a singular vision, create a unique aesthetic, and possess a fundamental understanding of the medium (gameplay). You also need to be able to balance all of these qualities with the resources you have at your disposal. If you have a great story, but no gameplay, you shouldn't be making a game. If you have an aesthetic, but can't implement it correctly, you're going to need to pay for assets one way or another. If your gameplay is merely a rehash of something old, you better have some twist to the other elements that makes it stand out. And all of this doesn't guarantee success, merely gets you to the baseline where you can be successful. Being good at programming is probably the least important skill in game development unless your idea is so innovative that you will need complex systems without precedence. You need marketable differentiation. Also make sure your game appeals to furries. That's where the real money is in indie game dev.
  • gimmeThaBeet 8y ago
    woah, that certainly took a turn. not that i think it's wrong , just a humorously abrupt shift.
    • MrMember 8y ago
      It's kind of funny how true it is. I think development shut down but there was an erotic furry Pokemon-like game in development that was pulling in like $35k a month on Patreon. There is definitely a market there.
      • seventhtiger 8y ago
        There's a lesson to be learned too. Stop making games for the general public. There are too many people trying to reach everyone. You won't be Minecraft, but you won't waste 3 years for $30 either.
• maxander 8y ago
  Poking around the guy’s website [0], I’m not surprised his sales are so dismal- it’s a very earnest description of a project its developer obviously likes, but which he describes in terms of other, pre-existing games and game-styles (e.g., metroidvania, roguelike, procedurally generated, crafting, etc)... which reads as “a mashup of other games you’ve already played.” The one differentiating bit, that it’s a metroidvanian roguelike that can be played in the browser is buried a ways down the page (after a paragraph about how skillfully it’s coded- good on you, but players don’t care.) If he really wants a commercial success, my guess is that he would be well advised to make a concerted, well-advertised run at the in-browser gaming market, and try to find ways to monetize that (likely by scummy micro-transactions.) His chances still wouldn’t be good, but perhaps better. (Getting on the front page of HN is a pretty good tactic too, though. : ) ) [0] Well, I spent about ten seconds reading the site’s front page, but that’s probably more than most of his hits did.
  • bazooka2th 8y ago
    The play-in-the-browser bit should absolutely be his selling point, maybe pay-what-you-want. I've always got an eye out for browser shooters where, idk if there's a gaming term for it, you can walk into a corner and then step away from the keyboard and not get killed.
• TangoTrotFox 8y ago
  There's something I see as a mistake that people do over and over. There are fundamentally two markets you can target: niche or popular. The niche market is small but under-served and so it's much easier to stand out, but your potential market is limited. The popular market is huge, but it also tends to be over-served. You need to really stand out. It's going to require much more to be able to compete, but if you do manage to compete then your potential market is enormous. Metroidvania and roguelike are two of the most crowded markets. And they're full of very good games that can be had for a few bucks. Competing here means you need something that really stands out. This, by contrast, seems very genetic and lacks the production values that can help mask an otherwise generic product. For instance this [1] is a metroidvania roguelike that can be had for about $4 on a sale (and is a great game as an aside). That's what you're competing against. I think it makes more sense to aim for niche. And there's also the nice outlier that occasionally proves that niche wasn't really niche at all. [1] - https://store.steampowered.com/app/252030/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/252030/
• damnmachine 8y ago
  This also looks a bit like a less polished version of "The Swapper": http://facepalmgames.com/the-swapper/ http://facepalmgames.com/the-swapper/
• Applejinx 8y ago
  You sort of did. Depends on what you expect. You got half decent at a whole bunch of skills, which you can reapply. I'd say it was equal to going to a school for this, but not an exceptional school. It's a start, and it's a toolset. Me and my brother make games. I do a brainstormy intuitive thing, and he builds stuff brick by brick. He has a tendency to decide things like 'I will build an Asteroids', build the skeleton of such a thing (with all the effort going into code elegance) and not have anywhere to go from there. I have a tendency to have wild exciting-sounding ideas, implement about a quarter of them, and end up with something that's certainly not like anything else, but isn't necessarily FUN or even a game. I think I have a slightly higher chance of breaking through into the realm of 'making an actual game', but it hasn't really happened yet and may never happen. Even if it did, there wouldn't be money in it. I'm just not that good a designer, though I AM a sort of nascent designer. Plus, I'm too devoted to open source these days and that would likely be a handicap to market adoption; if nobody else can get rich off it either then it ain't gonna be a hit. To make a hit thing you have to be able to see how exploitative third parties can get rich off you, and then let them do it and hope you get a cut (or some publicity). I think the future isn't creative (insofar as popular hit products). It's basically focus-grouped artificial blandness and knock-offs consuming the market, and will not go back (occasional fluke successes will doubtless happen) The future is learning how to manage these creative exploits as communication, perhaps to a very small audience for whom they're specially crafted. You'll be a craft beer or a hand made cheese. You have nothing to do with the market as we know it, it's all about what manner of distribution you can function under at the scale you will forever remain. So who did you get to know in that three years? Did you form a community, perhaps of other game makers?
• eterm 8y ago
  If you look at most of the recent smash hit indie games\* they really don't innovate graphically at all, instead they bring something new to the table in terms of gameplay. Most are "rogue-lite" which is a hot genre right now but all have something that make them stand out. Rogue like games have the potential to become indie hits because they are very good for twitch/youtube audiences, because in general, up until the moment the player loses, they are winning. This is great for streamers, no long-drawn out sequences where they know they've probably lost, no ability for audiences to get bored watching the player struggle in a losing fight. Instead the player gets to live out their power fantasy up until the moment that fantasy is betrayed and they lose. And then it's a quick or instant reset and they're back to the pit / whale / plane and off they go again. But a rogue-lite platformer? Ok that can work, Risk of Rain did an OK job with really poor graphics. But the gameplay was top-notch to compensate, and that was released before the big indie-deluge, that might not do so well if it were released today and had to go up against competetion from the likes of gungeon or dungreed. With regards to this game, the graphics are too low to look good but haven't masked that by making the choice of going pixel-art, instead it just looks like it's from a PC gamer cover CD circa 1999. Compare that to Slay the Spire, which has very basic art but has an engine that is well made, so it's limited art is still delivered very nicely. In the case of slay the spire they compensate with a good soundtrack which doesn't get irritating even on repeat playthroughs and some really solid gameplay. Those are the smash-hits and a hits-based industry follows a power-law, so there's a vast quantity of mediocre games below there. What hope does a game which appears to mostly replicate previous gameplay with weak graphics stand? That's not to say it was a waste of time, only the author can judge that. \* Far too many to list, but I'm thinking along the lines of Slay the Spire, Enter the Gungeon, They are Billions. Even Playerunknown's battlegrounds or fortnite in some way fits the 'rogue-lite' formula of facing ever more difficult challenges up until a sudden and final death and complete reset.
  • projektir 8y ago
    > Compare that to Slay the Spire, which has very basic art Basic is not what I would call this. But I think we shouldn't confuse graphics fidelity with quality. You can have an ugly pixel art game or a pretty pixel art game.
• nuguy 8y ago
  Sorry but the reason that your game and others have not sold is because they aren’t new and they don’t offer anything that consumers want. It’s so simple. The graph of steam sales, as you mentioned, is poisoned with shovel-ware. But it’s also inflated by another kind of game that nobody wants: games that are just remakes of the same old tropes and mechanics — nobody is interested in playing them even though they are implemented with care. It’s a problem that is huge in the programming world: lack of high level thought and consideration. The super meat boy guy who you linked to should have asked himself if anyone really is excited about platformers before sinking all that time into it. There is no indie game problem. It’s a bad ideas problem. Look at the witness. It did good. It’s because it’s a good game with freshness and insight. Messages are passed from developer to player through every aspect of the game. It is something to sit down and consider for hours. Something to be inspired by. There has to be actual value in the game. This torrent of let’s players and people who use video games and v.g. Culture as some kind of crutch or something to give them identity — endlessly grinding away at meaningless and stupid achievements and 100% completions — all of that is nonsense and it is your own fault for diving into it.
  • brink 8y ago
    I agree. I'm sorry for being blunt OP; but watching the trailer for this game, it looks boring as hell. It's a basic sci-fi platformer. Why should I play this, let alone pay for it? OP is right that there are a million games out there. But I still have a hard time finding games I want to play due to the sheer lack of fun-focused concepts out there.
  • sinker 8y ago
    While it could have been said with more consideration, I think this comment tells the core of why the game isn't a success. From my eyes the game does not appear interesting to play. At some point not too long ago, the idea of a remake with a twist would have been interesting (eg, Geometry Wars). But people have come to expect different things from indie games and games in general. It's not enough to rehash old ideas. The idea of revamping a much beloved gsme or genre has lost its novelty as so many developers have done that already. The games that we love from the past exist. And spiritual remakes of those games exist. It's not enough for a game to succeed based largely on nostalgia. I don't mean to discredit the creator's hard work. This is what I understand from a glance at seeing the preview video.
• Roritharr 8y ago
  I just bought the early access. Interesting what thoughts go through your head after you read such a blogpost. I had to ask myself ten times if I'm not buying it to give parallel-universe-me a leg up...
• cubano 8y ago
  reduce addictive qualities of the game... Not sure if applying this strategy to a game that has sold only 4 copies in 3 years would really help the situation.
• shmerl 8y ago
  That's why addressing a smaller market can be useful. Release your game for Linux and engage with Linux gaming community. You are more likely to be noticed. Here is an interesting article about it: http://cheesetalks.net/proton-linux-gaming-history.php http://cheesetalks.net/proton-linux-gaming-history.php
• golemiprague 8y ago
  Some people invest 3 years and massive debt in studying in uni but we don't think it is something weird even though I will probably hire you as a developer over someone who just finished uni with no experience. So look at it as something like that, you invested in yourself in some way and you are ready now to reap the rewards.
• projektir 8y ago
  It's difficult for me to be excited by indie games. Sometimes they can be really great and unique, but a very large amount of indie games are some variation of platformer or roguelike or both. That is great and all, but that area just seems extremely saturated, and maybe there's just no room anymore? There are plenty of types of games I'd still love to see made or have ideas for, but they require 3D, money, great art teams. Indie games generally cannot pull this, so they tend to be limited to rather rigid subgenres, and there are only so many variations of Metroid you can make before people mostly find what they're looking for.
• freyr 8y ago
  The graphics are not great. They’re not bad, but they’re also not on par with most successful indie games. My suggestion, if you don’t insist on going solo, is to team up with an excellent designer.
• egypturnash 8y ago
  If anyone wants to try this without making a login: justchecking/justchecking Personally I played about two rooms and then got bored. It sure is a tribute to Metroid. With weird, floaty jumping (did Metroid have that? I never played that one very much.). And tiny, dark graphics. Plus I was playing it on the keyboard and not fullscreened which never helps.
• jokoon 8y ago
  People should build the game they want to play. That's really how I view things. I just play nice games, find flaws and things to be perfected, and gather up all those things in a game that could be enjoyed.
• lgeorget 8y ago
  > I have a backlog of dozens of purchased-but-never-played Steam games picked up at ridiculously low prices from Humble Bundles, Steam sales, etc. Does the world need any more games at this point? When I started to find myself with half a dozen of such games, I remembered the year we spent saving money with my brothers to buy a hard copy of Caesar 3. I was just a child. It costed us what would now be 15€. Considering the inflation since then, games were quite expensive. So, I've decided to stop buying games in those promotions and having games in my library that I will never play. I prefer paying the full price for a game I really want to play, like before. I think it's more honest to the developers. Whether that will mean more money to them in average I don't know. Does someone know if the developers/editors really benefit from the sales on HumbleBundle and the like (the prices really look pretty low)?
• Mortiffer 8y ago
  Whats the equivalent of testing your business idea before building a business in the gaming world ?
  • Vekz 8y ago
    A public dev log, or a discourse channel where potential players can participate early in the development. Stardew Valley primarily gathered early adopters through regular blog updates about dev progress.
    • appleiigs 8y ago
      "Papers, Please" indie game wikipedia: Pope publicly shared details of the game's development from its onset, leading to high interest in the title and encouraging him to put more effort into it; though he initially planned to only spend a few weeks, Pope ended up spending about nine months on the game.
  • cousin_it 8y ago
    Don't start by trying to test your idea. That's already getting ahead of yourself. Instead, start by identifying and checking the assumptions behind your idea. For example, let's say you want to make a retro platformer. The assumption is that many people would be interested in a new retro platformer. That's easy to check: browse through Steam's new releases, find the 10 newest retro platformers, and see how much interest they get. Heck, even imagining that exercise could be enough to make you change course.
    • clarry 8y ago
      And yet Shovel Knight is doing so so great. Cuphead too. Turns out retro platformers can do great. But way too many indie retro platformers are just trash with nothing to save them. I don't think you can gauge success by looking at existing titles. It's like asking if there's a market for scifi novels. What do you find? People like scifi novels, and there are lots of scifi novels that suck and nobody reads them. Do people like metal music? There's tons of successful metal bands, and there's an ocean of trash. Every work is unique.
• adamnemecek 8y ago
  > I’m not a dumb guy—I got good SAT scores. Lol ok.
  • lixtra 8y ago
    > Not only the total number of games, but the rate of their release seems to be geometrically increasing! To a mathematician this is a funny quote. But then I consider myself dumb most of he time.
  • rococode 8y ago
    Bad SAT scores may not be a good indicator that you are a dumb guy, but good SAT scores are definitely an indicator that you aren't a dumb guy.
    • paulcole 8y ago
      I think the point is that it doesn’t matter what SAT scores the author got. If you’re older than about 18, a 1500 on your SATs and $4 will get you a cup of coffee at Philz. Additionally, high SAT scores don’t prevent you from making dumb decisions, like say, spending 2,600 hours developing an indie game and thinking you’ll make money on it.
  • asdfasgasdgasdg 8y ago
    I read that as a joke, personally.
• ioddly 8y ago
  Not sure what OP's background is, but if he's not in the tech industry and wrote a complex C++ game engine, plus a website with Flask+SQL on his own, I'd say he has a potential career as a software developer there.
  • lostgame 8y ago
    Sure. But why did he do that to start? Seems like focusing time on the content instead of the engine would’ve made him feel like he ‘wasted’ less time.
• rfugger 8y ago
  Regardless of sales, this game demonstrates all sorts of wonderful qualities that successful studios are looking for in an employee, and its development was undoubtedly much more educational than any computer science program. It is never wasted time to do what one is passionate about.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • randombrea 8y ago
    I am kind of in the same boat doing something different. I do agree you learn a ton more than working for someone else or completing any computer science degree. But whether companies look for this type of employee, I am unsure that is true. The truth is, most companies look for employees without gaps in their resume. They are looking for signals such as having worked Google or Facebook. They care much less about your startup than most people think. If you don't hit those checkboxes, you are going to have a hard time looking for a job.
    • gambiting 8y ago
      I work at a AAA games studio and if this guy came to us with nothing else on his resume but this game he would definitely get a chance. I mean, in terms of chances in the industry - I got in by completing a 4 year CS degree. If he gets in by spending 3 years building his own game then I'd say it was worth it.
      • randombrea 8y ago
        That's great, but would you say its industry wide? Because I have also heard (non-gaming) the exact opposite. Also, would he get through HR? They are more often than not, the real gatekeepers. It would require someone to vouch for him personally to go through, and that isn't very scalable when applying for jobs.
        • mypalmike 8y ago
• jtchang 8y ago
  What is the target market for the game? I played Metroid when I was a kid on NES and the original gameboy. Games these days are a lot about marketing and huge budgets. The indie ones that do well need to be targeted as well as refreshing. Some hard thoughts just watching the video and reading a bit about the game: 1. I don't really like the graphics as much as I liked the original Metroid. This is probably just a personal preference. 2. It mostly screams low quality "Metroid clone" and not something cool I'd tell my friends about. 3. Procedurally generated levels doesn't sell me. I don't really care. That said totally not a waste of time. It shows you have the wits to bring something to market and the ability to ship. You coded the whole damn thing which is insanely involved. This is no small feat. However the market is generally the hardest critic and it doesn't matter how many hours you spent or how many lines and bugs you solved.
  • icelancer 8y ago
    Axiom Verge is a Metroid-type clone and it did extremely well. There's a market for it without a doubt, but the hurdles to clear are enormous.
  • nikkwong 8y ago
    I don't know if I'd agree about your dislike of the graphics being because of your own personal preference. The human brain has evolved to find certain harmonies of shapes/colors attractive while others are not. The author undoubtedly has a lot of grit—but, he's not an artist, and his game suffers because of that. Metroid has superior graphics because they had dedicated artists, and surely put a lot of time/thought into the look and feel of the game. Also, the design scheme between different 'blocks' which make up the platforms in the game is not uniform, which makes the design feel much more disjointed.
  • Retra 8y ago
    Super Metroid is literally my favorite game, and I don't really have a strong urge to play this. Metroid is an exploration-based game. The game rewards you for finding secrets and for knowing how to get places. It teases you to find a way to break sequence, and much of the replay-ability of that game is based on the possibility to do that and to bask in what you've already learned about the world. Procedural generation takes a big dump on any sense of familiarity, which is a big part of the reward for exploration. In fact, the _only_ games I've played where procedural generation were good for the game are story-building games, such as Rogue-likes and Dwarf Fortress. They reward you for building a story, not for traversing obstacles. In every other game, they are just a weak thematic obscuration of the underlying mechanical goals. The Dryad's name in Terraria doesn't matter. Dig deep enough and you'll find diamonds in Minecraft. Kill a boss enough times in Borderlands, and you'll get a good gun. There's no story about achieving these goals. Procedural generation doesn't participate in making the goals more interesting to achieve, it's a forgettable and incidental fact about something almost wholly unrelated. Game developers need to stop trying to lean on it as a substitute for content. A game is what people can expect from it each time they play it, and if all it is is a bundle of mechanics and throw-backs, then there's not going to be much appeal.
• EngineerBetter 8y ago
  I have some sympathy, having made an indie game that gave a return of about £0.07/hour. Sold a few thousand copies, learnt a lot, made a lot of friends and had a lot of fun, but it certainly wasn't a great financial decision. And that was 10 years ago when it was a lot easier! Games industry is like the music industry - if you do it for anything other than the love, you're likely to be disappointed. Your chances of 'making it' are astronomically small.
• acangiano 8y ago
  He doesn't mention how many hours he spent marketing it. I suspect not that many. I fully sympathize with his struggle, but this is a trap most programmers fall into so easily. Market need/fit > Marketing > Design > Programming when it comes to software products. You can't just build it and expect that they will come, unfortunately.
  • EngineerBetter 8y ago
    That hierarchy of importance is quite apt. If the game concept doesn't sell itself as an elevator pitch, then it doesn't matter how good the implementation is. I once met an indie dev who was surprised that their Space Invaders mobile clone didn't sell on Windows Mobile, "despite its amazing particle effects."
  • randombrea 8y ago
    It's hard to context switch between marketing and programming. You can spent many hours marketing with little return, especially without a product. Programming by itself is slow, but there is a definitely return in terms of progress. So many people choose programming first before marketing. But I get what you mean. Its though.
  • wainstead 8y ago
    In "Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer's Guide to Launching a Startup," Rob Walling states three wrong reasons to launch something: 1. Having a product idea 2. To get rich 3. Because it sounds like fun This and other books on launching your own thing stress that you first have to find a market, then fill that market's needs. In the world of indie games I can't even imagine what that would be.
    • Negitivefrags 8y ago
      There are even now niches in gaming that are under served, and games in these niches are much easier to market. You can engineer a relatively high chance of success but it requires two things: 1) Actually picking an under served market. Meteriodvania style games are not one of these, there are a ton of game out there fulfilling that need. 2) Really really understanding the audience. You have to know what details of the previous games in the genre were actually important, and what were not which you can innovate in. Even the tiniest details can be super important.
• benologist 8y ago
  If I'm reading it correctly you're considering: - call the game finished and walk away now you finished the dev work - call the game a hobby to excuse the sales now you finished the dev work - code some arbitrary addition to be ethical just to be coding something cause dev work is probably the only work that exists - keep iterating cause you can always invent more dev work to do - get a different project going for another type of dev work All of these will successfully waste those 3 years and more if you don't focus on converting your nascent product into income.
  • avianlyric 8y ago
    Don’t fall for the sunk cost fallacy. Walking away now might mean throwing away 3 years, but that’s still better than working for another 3 years, still not succeeding, and wasting 6 years.
    • benologist 8y ago
      If someone has spent 1000 days building their MVP and 0 days establishing market fit it's a terrible time to quit.
      • airstrike 8y ago
        Realistically they've spent 1,000 days building a pet programming project with little regard to market fit.
        • marcosdumay 8y ago
          Yet it would be wise to try to stablish market fit of the toy he has first, before throwing it away and getting another toy to test for fitness.
          • chii 8y ago
            > throwing it away and getting another toy to test for fitness. how do you know what the opportunity cost of continuing is? It's hard to know either way.
• rocky1138 8y ago
  If you are interested in making an indie game, do it only because you want to not because you think you'll make money. You will lose money. That's it. There's no magic message here. Source: an indie dev. I keep my passion for my project because it's something I truly want to do.
  • stupidcar 8y ago
    That's clearly not entirely true though, because there are hits. They're just extremely rare, but extremely visible. You can read interviews with the Stardew Valley guy all over where he talks about spending 4 years working solo on his game, refusing to give up on realising his artistic vision. Then he releases and it's a mega-hit. That's a very seductive story. This isn't a problem unique to indie games. Every creative field has an overabundance of hopefuls, all chasing a tiny chance of turning it into a success. The problem, as Daniel Clowes observed back in 1991[1] is that everyone thinks that they'll be one of the lucky ones. [1] https://artinfiction.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/asc-3.jpg https://artinfiction.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/asc-3.jpg
    • solipsism 8y ago
      You may have missed the nuance in the comment you're replying to. Everyone knows that it's possible to win the lottery. But the best advice you can give is to tell people they're never going to win the lottery. People who are super passionate about making indie games I'm going to do it regardless, so this is good advice.
      • stupidcar 8y ago
        "Best advice" why? Accurate, perhaps. But do you really find going around telling people that they're not going to win the lottery makes them stop playing? Even after they read an article about someone who won $100m and has quit their job to sail around the world? I think such advice misunderstands the psychology of why people gamble on very long odds. The primary drive is emotional, not rational. The rational brain only has to be convinced that a theoretical possibility exists. After that, it's a matter of emotional appeal, and culture is very good at presenting seductive narratives based on rare occurrences.
• wildfire 8y ago
  Yes. You are only asking to have people point out possibilities that you didn't. But in your heart of hearts, you know you did. That doesn't mean you didn't have fun. I suspect you need to revisit what 'waste' really is for you though.
• HissingMachine 8y ago
  Couple of things came to mind from reading this. First if your latest game doesn't sell despite past successes, you might have bungled your marketing, namely company branding. Most AAA game developers heavily invest in this, because if gamers like their current game, they might be interested for the next one, but only if they know who you are, not just your games. Consumers in games industry work just the same as they do in every other industry, indies just seem to think that because core gamers know who they are and engage with them, that the average consumer does too, but they don't. Second one was that quote about lack of interest from games media. They do work as gate keepers, and most of them are heavily advertising driven, so the problem here is the same as above, indies suffer because they don't have marketing budgets. When the industry grows so large that it has to start attracting casuals, that always means spending marketing dollars, and indie industry has grown and saturated the core gamer group through, and casual interest just isn't there without marketing.
• 5minbreak 8y ago
  Game development always scared me as one of those studies that you hope your kids don't get interested in. Another one is manual drawing, especially when it is Anime (what are the chances that someone from a small European country is going to excel at such a job?). > Abandoning the game completely doesn’t seem like a sane option, after all the time I put in. Addictive games use the above cognitive bias to make you keep coming back, trying to level up by grinding boring quests. "You are not done yet, but the end is in sight!". As a good game dev, in 3 years, you can: Learn TensorFlow. Publish an AI paper. Beat state of the art on a few datasets.
  • povertyworld 8y ago
    >in 3 years, you can: Learn TensorFlow. Publish an AI paper. Beat state of the art on a few datasets. As a low income indie dev without the academic credentials to get past HR gatekeepers for stable full time work, I can't help but feel studying ML is about as wishful as creating a hit game. I have started studying ML this summer, and although I find the NLP applications really interesting since I have a social science background that exposed me to some literary theory and linguistic ideas that overlap with NLP at times, I think making a living wage doing it is just as much of an unrealistic dream as writing some killer app. The jobs all require PhDs, and the data science competitions have literary thousands of people with PhDs and industry experience competing for five figure prizes. When one is poor with no prospects these kind of pipe dreams feel so good to get caught up in as that sweet haze of hope numbs the critical thinking, but in a clear moment it looks like the ML gold rush is exactly the same as every other tech hype. That's not going to stop me from geeking out on PyTorch and trying to wring sentiment out of blocks of text or whatever, but I won't be able to honestly write a blog post about it in a few years asking if I wasted my time. I already know the answer.
    • 5minbreak 8y ago
      Likely influenced in part by survivor bias. I don't have a PhD either. You can say I have a more practical than theoretical understanding of dropout. The way to get past HR gatekeepers is to bypass HR. If you ask an employee: "Hey, I'd really like to work at your company for a while now. Can you share some resources/tips that would help me prepare for function x?" and you don't get useful feedback, you don't want to work there. If you send a data science lead a notebook where you solve a problem that is relevant to their business and you don't get a job interview, you don't want to work there (or need to brush up on your presentation and analytics skills). Do the fast.ai courses. I promise you there are more profitable jobs available in ML than in indie game dev. Become good at using ML tools and data science (Python) and/or data engineering and data infra (Scala, AWS, Docker).
• gavanwoolery 8y ago
  I wrote this controversial tweet on the matter a while back (embedded here for convenience [1], controversial because it uses averages!) Which might make things seem more or less bleak depending on your perspective, but an important note from this data is that the 2017 median sales were about 2000 units per game (yikes). [1] https://twitter.com/gavanw/status/967249172804943872 https://twitter.com/gavanw/status/967249172804943872 Average number of units sold per game on steam by year (note many games have long tails) 2004 - 11.6m 2005 - 569k 2006 - 581k 2007 - 833k 2008 - 279k 2009 - 322k 2010 - 391k 2011 - 512k 2012 - 535k 2013 - 601k 2014 - 157k 2015 - 111k 2016 - 73k 2017 - 49k
  • mkagenius 8y ago
    Whats the average numbers if only top 20% are taken. To basically reject newbies in 2017 and recent years.
    • throwaway2048 8y ago
      Problem with that is everyone thinks they are in the top 20%, by definition they likely aren't.
      • CamelCaseName 8y ago
        I think if you're spending 1+ year developing something, even if you start as a complete beginner, you're going to be in the 20% of games on Steam. There is simply so much shovelware/copy and paste games.
    • gavanwoolery 8y ago
      Good question, I dont have the data on me anymore (I extrapolated it from Steamspy, and I don't subscribe to it anymore). To get a (potentially) more accurate picture, I would instead look at all games that sold more than X units. I think if a game sells about 20k units, its probably a more serious contender (not that some good games have not had extremely poor sales).
  • 8y ago
• iameli 8y ago
  7672 games released in a year still seems so, so low to me. How many books are published in a year? How many albums? I don't say this to minimize the pain of indie devs that find themselves suddenly deluged with competition... but that's where things are headed, yeah?
  • pasiaj 8y ago
    There’s a net addition of ~300.000 games per year in the iOs app store.
  • kartan 8y ago
    Around 2,256,508 books (data is not up to date https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_published_per_country_per_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_published_per_country_pe...) But I guess it will be fair to compare also with Movies. As some games have budgets on that scale. That is around 730 movies per year for USA and Canada. https://www.statista.com/statistics/187122/movie-releases-in-north-america-since-2001/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/187122/movie-releases-in... > I don't say this to minimize the pain of indie devs that find themselves suddenly deluged with competition... but that's where things are headed, yeah? Yes. In the 90s there were not so many people with the skills and equipment to create games. Nowadays is a global market where everyone can give it a try. From cheap computers to Unity3D it is easier and cheaper than ever to create games.
    • forapurpose 8y ago
      > 730 movies per year Is that apples to apples? A 'movie' release could be anything from a quick short on YouTube to a $x00 million blockbuster, and everything in between. The same goes for games.
• LaGrange 8y ago
  Here's what a publisher is for: to shoulder the risk. They have (presumably) umpteen different games (or whatever they're publishing) going, not only they can (if they do they job right) shoulder a few flops, and can hire marketing staff that wouldn't make sense for a single project. They can, finally, hire PR that would shield the developers from the public angry over the framerate or presence of women or something. And yes, they haven't been doing their job right, they had too much power, they played it too safe and mistreated the developers. But instead of supporting game developers who wanted to unionise, instead of supporting social projects (like basic income!) that would reduce the risk an independent takes, we asked people to go indie, and just shoulder that entire risk themselves. Good job, everyone!
• mooreds 8y ago
  > I’ve had a lot of fun building and sharing the game. But I did have some hope of creating something that a lot of people would check out and enjoy, and making some return on my time investment, perhaps enough to keep doing this as an independent career. I wrote a video course on Amazon Machine Learning [0]. I spent about 80 hours researching, writing the outline, putting together the material, recording and re-recording the 105 minute course. I think I've made about $200 from it, directly. But, I've done several talks on it (which were non paying, but sharpened my presentation skills), wrote half a book on it, and got one consulting opportunity around it. I also got a bit of schwag from AWS because someone noticed my forum contributions, which was cool. If everything you do is a hit, you aren't taking enough risks. However, I will say that 2600 hours without market validation is far more commitment than I would make. 0: http://www.mooreds.com/wordpress/amazon-machine-learning http://www.mooreds.com/wordpress/amazon-machine-learning
• lasagnaphil 8y ago
  'Infinitroid is a roguelike (or rogue-lite) sci-fi platformer with procedurally generated levels and deeply customizable weapons" The problem is that the "roguelike" "metrovania" "platformer" genre is oversaturated with so many indie games, so if you're going to grab some money with it it's better gotta be absolutely perfect. From my first impression I don't know if the mechanics are solid, but the art and sound seems too... generic? Maybe if the game had some unique style in it (and some marketing too) it shouldn't have bombed this much...
  • themodelplumber 8y ago
    Also for some of us, combinations like "roguelike" and "platformer" require special mental gymnastics just to imagine :-)
    • RodgerTheGreat 8y ago
      The most popular/successful combination of those two buzzwords is probably Spelunky.
  • Nition 8y ago
    This is a problem, but it's not the problem honestly. Every game that fails, there's something about it that people can point to as obviously why it failed. And just about every game that succeeds, also has something about that they could have pointed out as why it failed, had it failed. Some games are so unpolished or uninspired that they were never going to succeed, but always picking apart "why it failed" makes people think that "if I just do x and y and z, my game will succeed!" Which right now honestly just isn't true; there's too much luck and random chance involved (plus of course other concrete factors like marketing effort etc). The next argument is usually "well, then why don't I see really good games that aren't successful?" A few years ago that was a sort of reasonable argument, but there are plenty of great and unsuccessful games on Steam now. They just don't show up anywhere.
    • savanaly 8y ago
      On the other hand, sometimes it's very much not chance. Take stardew valley. It's not like Barone hit some sort of jackpot with his game. It really is head and shoulders above the competition, and that appears to be entirely due to his hard work on it. My evidence for this is that after I played Stardew Valley I was thirsty for more similar farming games, so I played or looked at every single one on steam (there's only about a dozen or so that qualify) and none of them are half the game that stardew valley is. If there were some diamond in the rough, stardew valley-quality game out there that through happenstance never went viral I would have hoped to find it, but no, there really isn't.
• virtualized 8y ago
  Apparently you can try that game in the browser for free, but you have to create an account first. And they wonder why they don't sell any licenses! If someone manages to shoot themselves in the foot in such an epic way I am not surprised they never sold anything.
• andrewstuart 8y ago
  I'd have started this blog post with links to the game, the game title plus cool screenshots.
  • lostgame 8y ago
    I completely agree - the lack of screenshots in the article was almost as strange as hearing the author wrote their own engine. Furthermore, a simple Google of the game reveals very, very few results. As others have stated, nothing markets itself.
• jmcgough 8y ago
  I don't mean to poopoo how hard it is to succeed as an indie game maker now, but I can barely find /any/ press or information about the game when I search for it. It's rarely enough to just build something and cross your fingers, especially in a saturated market. Coding heads down without any marketing or validation (like selling early release steam copies) and hoping it'll see viral growth is a mistake, for both startups and indie games.
  • snissn 8y ago
    Also from this page it simultaneously says the game is free and asks me for money https://infinitroid.com/new_account https://infinitroid.com/new_account Also doesn't have any screen shots, info about the game, etc It's actually hostile to someone coming across the page trying to check out the game Edit it's possible the note about "You can skip the payment section below" was literally just added
  • megaremote 8y ago
    I know, why isn't this on the front page of PC Gamer?
• dahart 8y ago
  > I’m kinda floundering right now and not really sure what to do release it focus on marketing for a while Treat it as a purely hobby project Make it into an ethical game experiment pour a lot more time in, improve graphics and music, add more levels and variety As someone who's gone through this, put years into a software startup, nearly had it fail completely after spending a lot of my own money to keep the family afloat while I goofed around thinking I was building something great... I feel like there is only one right answer here, and it's just glaringly obvious. Marketing is the thing that needed doing before starting, during the project, and after it's done. Regardless of the trends on Steam, in fact even more so because of the trends on Steam. None of the other options will solve the problem. Releasing it won't help, and making an ethical experiment won't get anywhere without an audience. Pouring more time into graphics will result in greater loss without first gaining an audience.
  • exit 8y ago
    these projects evolve during their production. it's difficult to market what you haven't finished imagining.
    • dahart 8y ago
      Indeed, that's very true. I've experienced first hand trying to market something that I haven't finished imagining. But that's the whole point, you have to start before you've finished, even though it is hard. It's difficult to market in general, at any stage of doneness. Marketing can be hard, boring, frustrating, and not fun. It's especially tempting as a dev to think that if you just make the product better, people will see it, and recognize its amazingness, and it'll go viral and market itself. It's tempting to keep adding features and making the product better. But that strategy doesn't work, it's important to buckle down and do the marketing, otherwise nobody will ever know about your game or product, no matter how good, and no matter how done it is.
  • alain94040 8y ago
    Find someone who is good at marketing and believes in your game enough to get 30% of all revenue in exchange for marketing it. In other words, find a business partner with a clue.
• meritt 8y ago
  The indie game marketplace has a massive discovery problem that is not whatsoever met by current tools. Humble Bundle tried to solve this for a while but I just checked their site and it's filled with AAA titles to include Overwatch, Assassin's Creed, and COD: Black Ops.
• z3t4 8y ago
  Don't write a single LOC until you have at least one user.
  • chvid 8y ago
    How exactly would you do that for a platform game like we are talking about here?
    • z3t4 8y ago
      Assuming you have a tight budget (no budget for marketing or user testing) pick someone, yourself, a friend, or relative, then make some concept arts, and show it to them, if they like it, continue iterating, if they are not interested you have to pivot. Note that the user can also be yourself. It's unlikely that you would make a game that you yourself love to play but no other one does. It's however likely that you love developing it much more then playing it, then you are not the user! And you have to find an actual user. Test the game/product on your target user(s) throughout the development process to see what works and what doesn't. If the "users" are engaged they will have suggestions, actually you will get flooded with suggestions, so it helps if you also is a user yourself so you can prioritize features according to your vision and not just the most popular.
    • shoo 8y ago
      Website with preorder/newsletter sign up (maybe stretching it a bit to interpret "user" as "interested potential customer"? but even if the answer is "for this kind of product it's impossible to get a user before writing code" it's not necessarily a bad heuristic -- maybe the conclusion could be "don't build this kind of product, pick something else"
  • zeroname 8y ago
    What does that even mean? You can't have a "user" without a program. You can have backers, but even then you probably want hundreds of them before embarking on a three year development journey.
• village-idiot 8y ago
  I love gaming. I’m glad that people make the video games that I buy and play. I would never ever consider actually becoming involved in the space as a programmer, not in a million years. I advise any potential programmers to stay way the hell away from it too.
• rrssh 8y ago
  It’s the fonts. They look like you’re reading something.
  • barbecue_sauce 8y ago
    Yeah, it's like the equivalent of using the default in iMovie. Very little thought given to art direction. Has the effect of making this seem like a Unity game, even though he built the engine from scratch. Seems like he played Axiom Verge, said "I could do that!" and then put his nose to the grindstone for three years without asking anybody else for input.
• woolvalley 8y ago
  I learned this painful lesson 8 years ago indirectly, working a mobile app studio. The app store, like games and music are superstar markets and the vast majority will fail, even if you've spent 3000 hours on it. That what makes stardew valley so crazy, because the %99 outcome of someone who works like him is failure and wasting 3-4 years of your life. At this point, I would do the 'test if there is demand method' before seriously making a game. You make a MVP of a game, as a hobby, promote it a bit and then commence with marketing it with a kickstarter or patreon. If it gains enough traction, then you commence working on it seriously, otherwise stop or keep it as a pure hobby. Once your done release the full version for free or a nominal price. Add time release tiers for early access and so on to incentivize subscribing and supporting. This probably means for games you need to do a whole bunch of art first more than programming.
  • echan00 8y ago
    Obviously, you've never made a game before. 'test if there is demand method' does not work for games.
    • woolvalley 8y ago
      Isn't that pretty much the early access model? I've seen indie games started that were mostly incomplete, started getting patreon / kickstarter traction and then fully developed over a few years. There are enough counterexamples out there to prove that it does work. No traction? Then abandon the project.
    • marcosdumay 8y ago
      It fails to work for many things. What makes me wonder when the niches it works will become saturated?
• zer00eyz 8y ago
  Market, marketing and basic UED on the site are all issues here. 1. why would I pay 7 bucks for this, when something like PUBG is ostensibly free? There is no easy "trial" download (Do I even down load this?) Does it work on my phone (a lot of the low end game market went there. 2. Selling things is hard when your up against free. I dont like the freemium model but free stuff with ad's makes money - give it away and monetize on the back end. 3. Every one pays for customers. Marketing matters and especially in a competitive market. Your going to need to spend money to make money in todays age.
  • stordoff 8y ago
    PUBG is $30: https://store.steampowered.com/app/578080/PLAYERUNKNOWNS_BATTLEGROUNDS/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/578080/PLAYERUNKNOWNS_BAT...
    • cjbprime 8y ago
      OP probably thinking of Fortnite.
    • zer00eyz 8y ago
      I was thinking of the current mobile version! https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tencent.ig&hl=en_US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tencent.ig...
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• notjustanymike 8y ago
  The end user doesn't care you hand built your engine out of C and other beautiful technologies. They care if it's fun. Period. It's looks like way too much time was spent on an engine when off the shelf would have done better.
  • lostgame 8y ago
    I couldn’t agree more. When I read the engine was built in C++ it absolutely knocked me flat. Why? With perfectly awesome and free technologies like Unity, you’re setting yourself up for failure by spending hundred hours putting together something that has already been created for you. It would allow you to focus on making the best game possible, instead of wasting countless hours re-inventing the wheel. IMHO, that’s the first, and largest, mistake this project made. Furthermore I agree with others that it simply feels ‘uninspired.’ Maybe less hours spent on the engine and more spent on the content would’ve made the game more notable.
    • jcl 8y ago
      For what it's worth, it looks like his initial focus was on making a 2D web game. Unity had only just started supporting HTML5 as a target around the time he began, with plenty of rough edges, so it may not have been an obvious good choice then.
    • gspetr 8y ago
      Unity is anything BUT awesome if we are talking big RPGs. (Think Pillars of Eternity 1) The loading times even on SSD are atrocious.
• Agathos 8y ago
  That's from back in February but more recently others have been saying similar things: https://www.polygon.com/2018/9/28/17911372/there-are-too-many-video-games-what-now-indiepocalypse https://www.polygon.com/2018/9/28/17911372/there-are-too-man...
• j_coder 8y ago
  You need to find as soon as possible trusted people that can tell you how bad is your idea/game play/sound/narrative so you can fix it or do something else. Most will just be polite to you or be trolls.
• kolderman 8y ago
  We are heading for a new Great Games Collapse...and saturation of indie titles combined with the scourge of political correctness will be the cause.
• salembeats 8y ago
  If you released a game with no market research and under the naive expectation that "if you build it, they will come", you likely learned a very painful lesson. There needs to be a market for what you're writing, you need to find and reach out to this market, and you need to entice them by providing more value than the spare $X they have in their pocket (plus, you need to communicate this so that they realize this). You also need to realize that small differences in quality can lead to huge differences in interest, ESPECIALLY given how "copycat" your game seems appears from the homepage. If your game is only 1% worse than the other game I'm interested in, I'll probably give the other game 100% of my free gaming time (others may not be so extreme, but you get the idea). Marketing/sales folks exist for a reason. You just figured out why.
• outside1234 8y ago
  Its probably hard to see this right now but any code you wrote was not a waste of time. You learned something that will become invaluable two years down the line in another role and probably will boost your salary more than the opportunity cost of washing dishes and thus repay itself every year. Everyone who tackles a project like this should keep this in mind. Its almost certainly not going to make you immediate money, but you'll learn a lot doing it, and that will repay itself down the line. I've done this twice to myself and it was hard at the time to watch them fail but I now make $500k+/yr at one of the FAANGs and a lot of that salary I attribute to trying build these things, end to end, myself. I just have a much broader context on the industry, on technical stacks, and on software development than if I hadn't. So, congrats. :)
• decentrality 8y ago
  From a marketing standpoint, the game "feels" amateur in the way it's presented ( very insecure narrative, etc ) But when you watch the demo the game itself "seems cool" but in a way that realizes immediately this is Super Mario Bros reinvented. Also this blog post was from February 2018 and has sat on the Dev Blog "above the fold" for most of this year. It seems like the game has a dark cloud over it. If something isn't a labor of love, you should end it. But then there's that quote "you cannot excel at something you do not love" ... which seems like the real thing here. It seems excellent in its own ways, just not entirely original or well marketed. So ask why are you doing it and measure by some other metric than sales and usage.
• WalterBright 8y ago
  In the gold rush days, it wasn't the miners who made money (other than a very few early miners). It was the people who supplied the miners. It isn't surprising the internet has been called a gold rush.
• IvanK_net 8y ago
  Hi, my name is Ivan and I made https://www.Photopea.com https://www.Photopea.com . After the first 7 000 hours of work, I made $0. Now (after about 10 000 hours of work), Photopea is used by one million of people every month, and I have a decent income just from ads, even without working on it.
  • echan00 8y ago
    Great stuff, sometimes it takes to continue when everybody else decides to quit
    • tonyedgecombe 8y ago
      It is very difficult to know when to quit, I've had projects (not gaming) that I pursued for far too long.
• CosmicBagel 8y ago
  Market is EXTEMELY saturated for many genres. Metroidvania games are one of the most saturated right now. Feel bad for the guy, but I think he should take his existing tech and experiment with different game modes, or game mutators and see if he can discover some cool experiences that will make his game stand out from the crowd. I'm not saying this will guarantee success, but staying the course on such a saturated genre and not doing something radically different seems like a bad strategy.
• ransom1538 8y ago
  My rant on games: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10955276 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10955276
• plasma 8y ago
  Is this a marketing problem? You mentioned ~1000 visitors to your store page, I'm not surprised there are no sales yet. Good luck and don't be too disheartened, you've already put in the large amount of work needed, now just spend some time trying to market in order to get some return.
• eikenberry 8y ago
  Ep
• blunte 8y ago
  If you look at successful entrepreneurs (or basically anyone who has gone the less ordinary path and reached some level of success), you'll usually see a list of failure or at least non-successes prior to the success you see them enjoying today. Same goes for artists and entertainers who become "overnight successes". It wasn't overnight for them! So you've done good work and gotten not the return you expected... it might take one more game or 10 more games. Or this game might lead you to meeting people that can help you be more successful in the future. It's ok to "give up" and move on too. You can stay the course and probably eventually become successful, but if you have other interesting things to do and less interest in continuing gamedev, then go try something new.
• arisAlexis 8y ago
  take your game to decentraland . virgin playing field, it's the future
• bloaf 8y ago
  Are you making this to sell as a fun game, or as something you'd put into a portfolio to advertise yourself to employers? If you're trying to sell games, your site focuses on all the wrong things. 1) I need a reason to want to play. Some games present themselves as a challenge to overcome (e.g. Volgarr the Viking, Dustforce), while others have some kind of interesting narrative or world to explore (e.g. Metroid/Binding of Isaac.) Some games promise comedy (e.g. Enter the Gungeon.) I can't tell what your hook is. Weapon customization and survival are fine game mechanics, but they're not a reason for me to want to play all by themselves. 2) Artistic theme. Games that age well have a cohesive look-and-feel. My initial impression of your game's theme is "asset store default." Maybe you didn't use an asset store, but that certainly is my first impression 3) When I hear "procedurally generated exploration" I have a negative reaction. It is incredibly difficult to do well, and when done any way other than well, it becomes boring and repetitive almost immediately. On your site, I am given no reason to believe it was done well. These three things, taken together, mean that I probably wouldn't play your game even if it were offered to me for free with no strings attached.
• mikekchar 8y ago
  Games are a great example of how "if you build it, they will come" just doesn't work in crowded market place. You need 2 other things: a way to build a community and a way to convert that community into incoming cash. It's important to understand that indie game devs usually don't have a huge runway of capital, so both of these things are necessary right from the start. I don't exactly know how you do this because I haven't done it before, but my naive feeling is that it's a huge risk to sit down for 3-4 years and just write code. You have to find a way to engage your potential future audience while you are developing the game. Many of the most successful indy games have the same development ethos of open source software: release early and release often. Second, I think it's important to ask for money very early on in the process, if that's your ultimate goal. I think the article is good to point out the economics. Users have played 1000 hours (roughly 1 hour per user) and the dev has made less than $30. That's 3 cents per hour. There are plenty of games that cost $4-$5 that have no demo at all. Even at 1/10th of the engagement, you're still talking about $400-$500 rather than $30. Finally, as others have said, I think the idea that you are going to strike it rich with your first game out of the gate is naive. Indy game development is about the long tail. Don't throw 2K hours into a game. Throw 200 hours 10 times and try to build up a revenue stream. At the very least, it allows you to pivot a lot earlier if you find that your are getting absolutely no engagement. But at the end of it (and I haven't played the author's game, so I'm making no judgement here), a game has to be fun. You don't need a finished game to demonstrate the fun. That first proof of concept needs to be distilled down to pure fun. Once you've got that sorted, you can start working on the rest. I think it's temping to build a whole infrastructure of code (or write a game engine ;-) ) and then once you are hundreds or thousands of hours in discover, "Wait a minute... this game is actually kind of boring". Only now you have a legacy code base and it's really slow to start trying to morph it into something that is fun. I was just looking at Kenta Cho's blog the other day and earlier this year he was doing a 256 byte JS Browser game challenge [1]. What interested me about his blog post is that he concentrated entirely on game mechanics. He tried a couple of game mechanics and then tried to mix and match them to find interesting variations. I think this is the kind of thing you need to do very early on in game development. Then once you have a core game mechanic that is really fun, you can start building a game around it. [1] - http://aba.hatenablog.com/entry/2018/03/07/174528 http://aba.hatenablog.com/entry/2018/03/07/174528 (Sorry, Japanese only -- but has some interesting gifs)
• iliketosleep 8y ago
  Releasing a game is as much of a marketing exercise as it is a technical one. It appears that the author focused on the technical aspects and somewhat neglected the business/marketing side.
• vibrato 8y ago
  I just spent 9 months playing poker while my net worth dropped over 40%. Did I waste my time? Hell no.
• vagab0nd 8y ago
  I used to think that making money was extremely easy. You can make an App, a website, a YouTube channel, etc. How absolutely naive I was. Turns out it's very hard to convince people to pay you. I adopted a different strategy later on. I try to make things that I use myself. So if it turns out no one else uses it, at least my effort doesn't go to waste. My Android App is now sitting at 10+ downloads but I made peace with it fairly easily since I use the App myself twice a day.
  • choicenotchance 8y ago
    What's the app? I wanna try it just out of curiosity.
  • bmc7505 8y ago
    What is the app?
    • vagab0nd 8y ago
      It's a very simple App which helps you memorize and learn items using Spaced Repetition. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nerfsoftware.memrep&hl=en_US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nerfsoftwa...
      • wuyuzhe 8y ago
        Your app gets me figuring that it would be nice for a dictionary app to have a feature that, after you look up some word a second time (indicating it's not a rare one), adds it to the "to memorize" list and trigger the notification mechanism you wrote. Also wondering if support for memorizing equations would be straightforward.
        • vagab0nd 8y ago
          Thanks for your feedback. I would say that for the first use case, unless the "memorizing" feature is built in to the dictionary app, it's hard to do it automatically. You could use the OS's "Share" feature to manually add the word to the memory app. I'm actually looking into displaying math equations. There are libraries out there so should be pretty straightforward.
• yoz-y 8y ago
  I think that unless done for artistic or exploratory reasons, it is better to have a pre built audience for large projects like games. The fact that sales in the indie space are bleak is not news. Try a crowdfunding campaign and if it fails then think hard whether to continue to invest time into the project.
• kiostech 8y ago
  Dear all, I am the guy who shares this post on Hacker News. First and foremost, I wanna said that I am NOT the original author of the blog. Also, I am NOT advertising for the original author. As a software developer in Hong Kong, I am researching articles about game dev and find this interesting case. Therefore, I just wanna share on HN. The discussion about this blog is really overwhelming. I hope that everybody can learn a lesson from this article. In my personal opinion, from a business perspective, I think to develop a hyper-casual game will have a higher probability of getting commercial success. However, from a more personal perspective, it is very difficult for a game developer to avoid the temptation of spending years to develop a hardcore game. I just wanna say: Game is the modern art form of the 21st century. So if we consider game developer as an artist, you will understand why he struggles about his artwork. Anyway, I hope that everybody can earn something from this post. I read through all the comments and learn a lot. Thanks.
  • gnarbarian 8y ago
    Also there are about a jillion indie sidescrollers on steam. Standing out is important.
    • kiostech 8y ago
      Yes, marketing is very important!
      • chii 8y ago
        But is standing out _just_ marketing? Or is standing out something that requires originality in idea (as well as marketing to allow buyers to see the originality)?
        • erik 8y ago
          Promoting a game isn't enough on it's own. To succeed today a game needs to have quality, market fit, promotion, luck, and probably a number of other factors as well.
        • 8y ago
• ddtaylor 8y ago
  What was his target audience / market and what need did his game satisfy that an existing game couldn't? Essentially, did he have product market fit?
• KennyCason 8y ago
  In terms of wasting your time, I think it's only a waste of time if you perceive it to be a waste of time. If you had fun developing the game, then I wouldn't beat yourself up over it. Simply because, as you've noticed, releasing a successful game is in general very difficult! The odds are not in your favor. I'm also developing an Indie Game (Ninja Turdle), and will release it to steam but have pretty low expectations on any success. I'm just doing it for fun, with the extra hopes that it could make some extra cash, but if not, oh well, I will have accomplished one of my life goals of releasing a video game. If no one buys your game but you still want to get it out there, maybe just wait another half year or so, and release it as freeware, Then at least people still get to enjoy your game. That in itself is a very rewarding feeling. Great job on the game, the videos look very smooth and I will be sure to give it a play!
• russtrpkovski 8y ago
  Congrats on shipping a product!
• afpx 8y ago
  Niche markets may be the way to go. For instance, I would gladly spend $250 for a deep economic simulator game. I haven’t seen one of those in years.
  • lfowles 8y ago
    Out of curiosity what titles do you have in mind when you say "deep economic simulator"?
    • afpx 8y ago
      Well, the depth that I’d like has never been done :) But ... if a game could blend aspects of Railroad Tycoon 3, Patrician, Capitalism, Industry Giant, etc.
• z3phyr 8y ago
  Most of the modern games I have played have no replayibility, very limited in scope and on top of that archaic buisness models. I understand that it is very hard to make games and 100 times harder to make good games. There must be a sane method for decent compensation waiting to be thought out I hope
• Iwan-Zotow 8y ago
  Yes, you did
• kgwxd 8y ago
  > I got good SAT scores. I’m disciplined, I have a good work ethic, and I love what I do. I’m a lifelong learner, always evaluating my work and experimenting with new approaches. All that and you still believed hard work directly equates to a big pay out. Welcome to the school of hard knocks. Try some different metrics for defining success. It's not even possible you've entirely wasted 3 years. There's no way you learned nothing or have only created things that could just be used in this project. It's possible you could simply re-skin this thing and make it big the next day. But don't count on it.
• bschwindHN 8y ago
  You can market a 2D platformer all you want, it's still a 2D platformer in a market absolutely _saturated_ with them. If you're making one in 2018, it should either be a hobby project, or you should be prepared for very few sales.
• davidork 8y ago
  i just looked at the website, went to the main page and watched bits and pieces of the gameplay video. rogue-lite: check. metroidvania(gotta get that retro street cred) : check. Bland uninspired assets: check. post mortem blog post posted to some link aggregator about how you released the same thing that every other copypasta developer on greenlight has crapped out for the past 3 years and it isn't selling well?: check. yep. 3 years, down the crapper.
• nadim 8y ago
  I’m not a dumb guy—I got good SAT scores.
• john_moscow 8y ago
  I think the biggest problem with this game is the lack of atmosphere and story. In 201X it's not about the pixels and latencies, it's about the creative part. The nearest "success" example I can think of is Jets-and-Guns [1]. The guys that made the game partnered with an indie 8-bit rock band that wrote the soundtrack specifically for the game. The story is full of parodies on common cliches and silly jokes that made me replay the game several times. There's a bunch of other successful indie games in other markets and unless it offers a radically new addictive gameplay (say Minecraft), it has to be about the story. Stardew valley, Papers Please, you name it. Unfortunately, this title simply lacks both of them and is hence doomed to fail. P.S. It shouldn't take 3 years to find out the lack of product/market fit. There's a funny saying that if you are not ashamed of the v1.0 of your product, you have released it too late. This 100% applies here. Release it with just 1 level based on a commodity game engine, gather feedback, decide onward based on it. Anything more than a couple of months is just wrong if you are doing it for the first time as a 1-person project, IMHO. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEnHolPt8zw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEnHolPt8zw
• nearmuse 8y ago
  Well, looking at that youtube demo, although it might be a nice game a lot effort went into, it is nothing conceptually new. I could understand the despair of someone who had an original idea and artistic skill, pulled off a game with unprecedented gameplay and then it didn't float because people didn't get the hang of it. But this game? It is for people who like that kind of games (Metroid inspired games or whatever).
• zby 8y ago
  I don't play games - so maybe I have no idea - but why people try to compete solo with big companies?
• modernerd 8y ago
  Reading advice from successful game devs to “my game didn't sell well” -style posts on reddit can be instructive too: https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/9k8wsi/my_games_didnt_sell_well_heres_my_advice_for_you/ https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/9k8wsi/my_games_di... Jason Rohrer's advice there was essentially: - Games have to either make an instant emotive connection via their art style or gameplay concept (and be priced well enough for an impulse purchase), or prove that they are deep and long-lasting enough that they'll be worth the investment in time and money. - Single-player games that don't do the above are especially hard sells, because hit gameplay trends are veering toward multiplayer games: “If your game's initial impression gives people pause, it's already over.” The Infinitroid developer might learn something from that advice — I checked the trailer at https://infinitroid.com/ https://infinitroid.com/, and the game looks fun, but I don't feel that instant connection to the art style or gameplay concept in the same way I did with Minit or Monument Valley (both instant impulse purchases), and I don't get the impression that it offers weeks of gameplay like The Witness or Stephen's Sausage Roll do (purchased both later after consideration and persistent appearances in media and social feeds). It feels like most “my game's a commercial failure” posts I read could have been saved by spending more time on the initial concept and art style, and on testing the market before the three-to-ten year investment in building the full game was made. Reducing the time to market also seems like a sane strategy. It may have taken five years to build Stardew Valley and 10 years to make Owlboy, but that does not mean every successful game involves holing yourself up for half a decade or more. Developers also seem to underestimate just how much marketing a successful game needs even when the concept is great. Look at what the Boyfriend Dungeon team did to get traction for their game (5 years of marketing, 10 releases of other mini games on itch.io to build a following, website built 11 months before release, appearance on panels and in game press, months of Kickstarter planning), and check that you're prepared to do the same with your game if commercial success is important to you (it is fine for it not to be): https://medium.com/@kitfoxgames/years-in-the-making-how-kitfox-games-played-the-long-game-with-boyfriend-dungeon-hype-debd0338a0dc https://medium.com/@kitfoxgames/years-in-the-making-how-kitf... Rohrer also mentions that he made 13 games before he had a hit (also happened to be his first multiplayer game), so perseverance and learning from failures seems like a big factor too.
• ninjakeyboard 8y ago
  congrats you made it to number 2 on hn - I'm sure your revenue just went up a lot. The game actually looks pretty cool. I echo the price and platform. It looks like it would appeal to a fairly casual gaming category with a lower price. I'd pay a couple bucks but 7 or 8 seems high but I don't do gaming off of my phone so this game would appeal to me but isn't targeted toward a platform that I use.
• beavisthegenius 8y ago
  Yes. Didn't have to read it.
• lazyjones 8y ago
  Sadly, the author apparently mostly wasted his time pursuing an idea he considered good, based mostly on his high opinion of his own experience. Had he tested the idea with neutral, honest people (kids are great), he might not have been so stubborn. As for the references to „Superstar economics“: as if modern superstars in the music or film industry weren‘t 100% reliant on test audiences... It‘s why we don’t get much original, experimental stuff these days.
• fileeditview 8y ago
  After being active in the indie game dev scene for many years I see this kind of story again and again. I see many people ask why didn't it work or others say he should have done better marketing. I think they all don't understand the real problem. You have to look at really successful indie games, such as Terraria, Factorio, Mini Metro, Stardew Valley, Darkest Dungeon, Papers Please.. and there are many more. If you look at these games do you really think there is an alternative reality where they would not sell many copies? I don't. And if you have a good look at them you should realize that they all are extremely polished and coherent. None of them has realistic AAA graphics but they still look good. None of them is just a "copy" of an existing game. They either bring something totally new or bring something known but with a greater overall quality. Then you have successful niche games such as Cogmind or the Zachtronics games. They still have the mentioned properties but also target only a subset of players where there are not many games. I think that makes them guaranteed sales. Now what's wrong with all the stories about failed games? They all are generic. They don't offer something special. And this is what doesn't work in a saturated games market. And I'm not saying the authors didn't work enough. They just don't see what's wrong with their games and continue on their path to demise. I guess what I'm saying is: to make a successful game you don't need to be the greatest coder or greatest artist. But you need to understand what makes a game great and enjoyable. Maybe the days (years) will come where I finally will make a (bigger) game of my own and maybe I will totally fail like many have. Maybe I will revoke everything I said here but today this is my opinion. :)
  • fiblye 8y ago
    >You have to look at really successful indie games, such as Terraria, Factorio, Mini Metro, Stardew Valley, Darkest Dungeon, Papers Please.. and there are many more. If you look at these games do you really think there is an alternative reality where they would not sell many copies? I don't. Very much yes. Most of their success is due to being fortunate enough to get a bunch of coverage. From screenshots, most aren't very spectacular. Stardew Valley takes the formula of an existing series (Harvest Moon). Papers Please is a truly unique game that was lucky enough to get youtuber coverage. Plenty of equally unique and just as fun games are ignored. I've never heard of Factorio, but looking it up, it's graphically very unappealing. Maybe my opinion would change if I watched a playthrough of it, but it doesn't stand out. Mini Metro might be fun. But so are many of the hundreds of other minimalistic puzzlers released monthly. There are loads of games that just don't sell but become classics decades later. Earthbound sold horribly in America until the main character appeared in a more popular series (Super Smash Bros). Almost nobody played Killer 7. Panzer Dragoon Saga is considered one of the best RPGs of all time. Nobody bought it. Its popularity mostly grew after people discovered it through emulation. The game in this article flopped because there are an abundance of games, it falls into an overcrowded genre, and it doesn't stand out, but most importantly, nobody important played it. If pewdiepie played this, it'd see 10000+ sales in a week and likely appear in a humble bundle. To make a successful anything, it's 90% marketing, 5% quality, and 5% luck. If the right person finds your product and endorses it, quality doesn't matter. You'll get guaranteed sales. It's then that it takes quality to sustain those sales.
• Clomez 8y ago
  Click the link to find information (screenshots, maybe video) Play now button, but im not on computer to play with, just hanging around in HN while eating at work. Soo i got lots of text and links but no pictures of game or video whatsoever. All the information i have is what i pieced around in comments, seems like rogue-like metrovania.. this dosent really sell me the game. Sure there is play now but that also lead to page full of text. Bad marketing
• Xenos_Ender 8y ago
  OP, Try contacting some streamers that love trying new games like CohhCarnage. If they play your game for 10+ hours it will be better than any other form of advertising. Also, make sure they pay for your product, don't offer it free.
• sago 8y ago
  Yes. You did. Sadly. And it is very little to do with luck or numbers or the state of the industry. Good indie games: 1. are almost never distinguished by programming (the days of Doom are gone and you are not John Carmack). Far too much time is spent coding. Use existing tools. Code only gameplay. 2. are much more about art. The trailer looks like programmer art: no coherent style, no direction, no class. If this is what you produce. You need a collaborator. 3. are even more about feel. Your character movement is janky. Jumping is floaty. Shooting feels flaccid. There is little sense of gravity, inertia or impact. If it isn't fun to move around a single screen, it's not fun. 4. need a hook. There is almost nothing original about this game. You've got about 10 seconds to hook me. (10 seconds into the trailer you cut to a mostly empty UI.) Find the wow. And zealously focus on it. 5. need to be polished. Ambient animation. Consistent sound effects. Screen shake. Lighting. Particles. UI. These are implemented. But none of them particularly well. And they don't tie together into a whole. 6. need to be marketed. Someone needs to be working on that. 7. needs to catch (or create) a zeitgeist. So many features of this game shout '2014' to me. 8. needs a bit of luck. But beware! The converse is very rarely true. If your game isn't successful, it is probably _not_ because you were unlucky. The game probably wasn't very good. Don't spend your time trying to find alternative explanations. Be brutal with yourself. In game terms, git gud. So this is harsh I know. I'm sorry. But frank. I've been in the industry for more than 20 years. 99.9% of games fail horribly. But 99.9% of them are not very good. This has absolutely always been the case. It's just that the 'fail point' used to be the publisher pitch. Now you don't need a publisher, you get to fail in public. So yes three years have been ...um... call it learning. I suggest you do more jams. Figure out what it takes to win. Find a game artist. Use tools. Build prototypes. And start to build a community.
  • bighi 8y ago
    About your number one: I see lots of programmers putting too much thought (and time) into code. As if the code was the important part of anything. I am a programmer, and I have this PSA for others: Your code is just a necessary evil, not something to be praised and cherished. No customer sees your code, no customer cares about the code.
    • 8y ago
• Wheaties466 8y ago
  I really hate when people try to justify them not being successful saying something along the lines of, i'm smart why am I not successful.
• BacioiuC 8y ago
  Probably late to the party but almost a year ago I had my gamasutra blog post about failing to sell 700 copies of my game, to stay in business, featured on HN. It's been almost a year since then. I kept updating the game, doing quality of life improvements and actively engaged with the people and reviewers playing it. I also kept people up to date with twitter and talked about the game every chance I had. Hacker News initial exposure helped me sell about 200 copies and by March I passed my 700 copies goal. Enough to stay in business but, by then, I already moved cross-county and got a few consulting gigs happening. Almost a year later I have over 4700 copies sold on steam with the total amount of copies sold being around 6000. The game was only recently added to a bundle that added ~1000 copies ("retail activations" are still happening). I'm at a point where I am so grateful for the luck I had after the initial HN exposure that now, one year later, I'm releasing the biggest update ever for the game and I finally got a professional artist to help me upgrade the graphics. What I want the dev to know is that there's still a chance, but in my case, I already managed to secure enough money from my consulting gigs so updating the game and working on it was done on the side and I could afford to do some more marketing and sink time in it. If you are not financially dependent on the game, keep working on it and slowly build up your fanbase and outreach. Take note of people's feedback and if a common theme occurs maybe do something about it. Hope you'll end up being happy with your project. If it reaches Steam I'll be your first buyer. On your site, I tried purchasing it via paypal and I cannot get pass the re-captcha. I'm trying to click on the "I'm not a robot" checkbox and nothing is happening. Might want to look into that.
• chaoticmass 8y ago
  >I’m not a dumb guy—I got good SAT scores. I’m disciplined, I have a good work ethic, and I love what I do. I’m a lifelong learner, always evaluating my work and experimenting with new approaches. Should I be failing this badly? This paragraph reads like the guy thinks all of this means he deserves success. I can't say I feel bad for this guy.
  • RestlessMind 8y ago
    Anyone who has studied hard, possessing a good work ethic, willing to learn lifelong and open to new approaches does indeed deserve success. What else would you have them do - walk over coals?
• jhanschoo 8y ago
  > Not only the total number of games, but the rate of their release seems to be geometrically increasing The derivative of an exponential is again an exponential :p
• krinchan 8y ago
  I mean, the author got three years to work on something they loved. It's unfortunate they didn't have what it takes to turn it into a career, but the game itself should be enough to get them into a studio or smaller indie shop. I don't think it was a waste, but maybe the author should be looking for alternative ways to parlay the game into a paycheck instead of ... ... whatever this is.
• mikeleeorg 8y ago
  Reading this makes me think of all the indie app developers building educational mobile apps. Most of them are parents with the best of intentions. Maybe they started off building an app for their kids. Maybe they saw a need at their local school and decided to fill it. Maybe they themselves always wished for their particular app and decided to build it. The vast majority of them eventually burn out and leave the field or take on a day job to supplant their income. A small number sell their apps to a larger publisher or get hired by a larger company. And very very very few break through that barrier to generate self-sufficient income, much less growing profits. They have many of the same business challenges of indie game developers too, it seems. Too many alternatives/competitors, distribution challenges, marketing challenges, lack of differentiation, etc. I suppose the same could be said for indie developers in many other verticals too.