4 ms·
As someone who went from professional enthusiasts (web-game industry) to indie about a year ago and crowd funded my first game[1], I think I can say a few words
by ido 15y ago
As someone who went from professional enthusiasts (web-game industry) to indie about a year ago and crowd funded my first game[1], I think I can say a few words on the subject.
First of all, you correctly identified the biggest cost to making games: paying programmers. The solution to that is to be the programmer yourself (or have a programmer friend be your equal partner).
Past that tho, making 2d indie games is (or can be, if you're smart about it) very cheap - Cardinal Quest's entire art budget was around $3000 (music, graphics, etc). Since it also took about half a year of my time to make that's an almost negligibly small amount of money.
The game ended up making a bit over $30k from the desktop and flash versions (direct sales for the former, branding deals and ad revenue from the latter) and the android (done but not yet released) and ios (almost done) versions will hopefully make at least that much again.
It's less than a normal programmer's salary (I didn't get to keep all of it as there were some costs such as the aforementioned music & graphics) but it's enough to pay my living expenses and thus fund my next game.
[1] http://cardinalquest.com http://cardinalquest.com
- chamakits 15y ago100% Unrelated to the original topic. I clicked on your website's link in all honesty expecting (without justification) something that would be horrible. The website design and the game logo fully went along with my original (again unjustified) bias. But the game pictures intrigued me to click further, and I saw the youtube video. The youtube video was not only extremely well edited, but showed what was very interesting gameplay. I further went on to click on the Kongregate link, and had fun for a bit. The reason why I'm saying this is because you clearly dedicated enough love to this project, and to me, the product itself seems amazing. I know you are currently opperating with a very low margin, but if you are considering continuing with this or future games, consider spending a bit more time/money on marketting (I hadn't heard of this game before), and branding (consider investing some money on the website and game logo). All that aside, this game is amazing (though I won't be buying it for a recently selfimpossed spending freeze, but some time in the future! :D ), and I wish you all the best. Let the world (or at least HN) know of your future projects! All the best!
- ido 15y agoThanks for the tip & I'm glad you enjoyed it!