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Life is incredibly easy for indie game devs today. There are markets; it's reasonably transparent; and you have insanely good tools available for free or cheap

Life is incredibly easy for indie game devs today. There are markets; it's reasonably transparent; and you have insanely good tools available for free or cheap (Unity 3D for goodness' sake -- in 1997 we paid $5k to rent a rudimentary 3d game engine to build an alpha demo, and it was C++ or go f--k yourself. Serious engines cost six figures plus a significant percentage of back end. Something not nearly as good as Blender cost $5000/seat in 2005.) Because of this, competition is fierce. But competition is fierce for web developers too, and we all seem to be doing OK. Suck it up, build a playable alpha, and then look for funding.

eropple 13y ago
One: this post is insanely douchey. Chill. Two: it's much harder for a game developer than a web developer. (I do both.) Game development is much, much more like doing a soup-to-nuts startup than it is "a web developer", the demand is in aggregate much lower than the supply, and with entire segments of the market you can't even seriously playtest something for viability until you've basically built the damn thing. (So if you don't care much about the social space or something easily done with a tool like Unity, I hope you like sunk costs.) I'm going to have spent over a full year building out a vertical slice of this game and I can do so because I both enjoy the genre and have that kind of time and money to throw around. There is no good way to compare "a web developer" and an indie game developer and you should kind of be embarrassed for trying to light up the guy you replied to when you haven't the foggiest.
- fredsanford 13y ago
  How long have you worked as A) a game developer and B) a web developer? Purely curiosity.
- Tloewald 13y ago
  "Life is already too hard" Indie game development is like starting your own rock band. It's a hit-driven business. If you aren't doing it for fun then do something else. And it's easier to make games and make money from them today than at any time in the past. If you fail, it's because your game sucked or you were insufficiently lucky. The odds are against you, but hey, you can always make a living as a web developer. I say this as someone who has developed and released multiple games soup-to-nuts and works as a web developer.

eropple 13y ago

One: this post is insanely douchey. Chill. Two: it's much harder for a game developer than a web developer. (I do both.) Game development is much, much more like doing a soup-to-nuts startup than it is "a web developer", the demand is in aggregate much lower than the supply, and with entire segments of the market you can't even seriously playtest something for viability until you've basically built the damn thing. (So if you don't care much about the social space or something easily done with a tool like Unity, I hope you like sunk costs.) I'm going to have spent over a full year building out a vertical slice of this game and I can do so because I both enjoy the genre and have that kind of time and money to throw around. There is no good way to compare "a web developer" and an indie game developer and you should kind of be embarrassed for trying to light up the guy you replied to when you haven't the foggiest.

fredsanford 13y ago
How long have you worked as A) a game developer and B) a web developer? Purely curiosity.
Tloewald 13y ago
"Life is already too hard" Indie game development is like starting your own rock band. It's a hit-driven business. If you aren't doing it for fun then do something else. And it's easier to make games and make money from them today than at any time in the past. If you fail, it's because your game sucked or you were insufficiently lucky. The odds are against you, but hey, you can always make a living as a web developer. I say this as someone who has developed and released multiple games soup-to-nuts and works as a web developer.