7 ms·

Finances of a Bare Bones Developer

94 points by Impossible 12y ago

cdnsteve 12y ago
Good to have transparency for others interested in doing something similar. It would be interesting to see a total number of hours invested to release v 1.0 And any learnings that might have sped up the process?
- dognotdog 12y ago
  As nice it is to see some hard figures, the numbers are disheartening. They say it's possible to make some side money during college, but don't even think about trying 10 years later :/
csbrooks 12y ago
"This means that it’s very possible none of us are making anywhere near minimum wage on this project, but regardless we’re all making about the same hourly wage, a wage determined by the relative commercial success of the game." Game industry, I do not miss you.
- angersock 12y ago
  The saddest thing is that so many are so passionate about it. :(
  - exelius 12y ago
    Try to think of being a game developer as similar to being a musician or a painter. You can be plenty passionate about it, but it's a hard business and there are only so many dollars up for grabs. For every musician who is able to make a living off of music, there are probably 10 equally talented and passionate musicians who didn't. I think game development is turning out to be a similar business.
    - tr0picana 12y ago
      I completely agree. For every successful indie game developer there are at least 10 who have either quit part-way or failed to make any money.
  - morgante 12y ago
    > The saddest thing is that so many are so passionate about it. :( That's precisely why pay is so low.
    - Macsenour 12y ago
      If you love what you do, it's not work.
      - biafra 12y ago
        If you have to do something else, to pay your rent, you can not do what you love.
      - angersock 12y ago
        Doesn't mean I shouldn't be well-compensated for it. I'm creating value for others, right?
      - GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
        Spoken like management. there are four words you have to remember in this economy and they're either "show me the money" or "fuck you, pay me".
        eropple 12y ago
        I prefer "I am coin-operated."
  - cdwhite 12y ago
    Lars Doucet's http://www.fortressofdoors.com/follow-your-dreams-or-maybe-dont/ http://www.fortressofdoors.com/follow-your-dreams-or-maybe-d... seems relevant. His company made a reasonably successful indie game ("Defender's Quest"); this article talks through his ambivalence about following a passion for making games, in the context of that experience. Could work out but probably won't, and it's OK either to not try or to try, give up, and try again at something with better odds. Edit: missing verb, missing particle in infinitive
- exelius 12y ago
  I think that the reality that is reflected here is that most game development moved overseas a long time ago for a reason. The indie games market is too crowded, gamer willingness to pay is too low, and none of the skills required for developing an indie game are exceptionally hard to find. As such, indie game development rarely pays a living wage in the US. If you lived somewhere with a significantly lower cost of living, it might not be so bad.
  - benologist 12y ago
    I don't think that's accurate at all. Most games, and startups, are just bad ideas that can't pay for employees and stuff. The problem isn't living expenses, that's just one number you need to reach. Developers who can't make money can't afford to make games as their occupation.
    - exelius 12y ago
      It's not living expenses alone; I have worked for a company that does a significant amount of offshore hiring. The going rate for a competent developer in India is less than $20,000 per year. In India, $20k a year buys you a comfortable life. The equivalent salary in the US is probably $100k. The numbers in China are similar (though Chinese developers are harder to work with because their English tends to not be as good). Given this context, some of these "game dev fail" stories about making $20k from a year's worth of work suddenly turn into success stories. So imagine if you went and hired a hundred developers and started cranking out 10 games a month. Some would succeed, most would fail, but the failures can just be reskinned and sold again.
  - mjn 12y ago
    Significantly lower cost of living, or better sources of early-stage funding. Some countries have started including games in their arts or film funding, which can be a viable source of initial funds (especially in countries where the arts funding is fairly large, relative to population). A lot of our students (I teach in a game program in Denmark) pay for the first 3-12 months of their indie studios that way. Those are typically $15k initial grants, and a possibility of around $100k-$200k follow-on funding towards production, if they're convinced it's worth funding at more than the seed level. Obviously that's not going to pay for an AAA game, but it gives indie developers some runway. The early funding for Playdead's Limbo [1] was through that route, for example, and then they sought commercial investors later. Here are this year's recipients: http://www.dfi.dk/Branche_og_stoette/Spilordningen/stoettede-spil-foraar-2014.aspx http://www.dfi.dk/Branche_og_stoette/Spilordningen/stoettede... [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limbo_(video_game) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limbo_(video_game)
- benologist 12y ago
  Startups and businesses are identical to this? It's not like you get to pay yourself a fair salary out of nothing just because you feel you worked hard.
  - potatolicious 12y ago
    Startups are a gamble with a high upside. If you win you'll be fabulously wealthy and probably never have to work again. "Winning" in the game industry simply means you get to survive to work on the next project. Even high-profile studios with great track records are financially stumbling from one project into the next, and a single failure will sink them. Nobody is getting rich here - best case scenario you make a market wage, worst case scenario you make little to nothing.
    - benologist 12y ago
      Categorically wrong. Winning in games is worth billions of dollars - King, SuperCell, Rovio, EA, Zynga etc. Almost nobody reaches this level however there's many levels of success between bankrupt and billions where the good enough can survive to try again. Exactly like startups and businesses in general.
      - eloisant 12y ago
        Well, there are proportionally less successes in games because it's crowded. And you're in competition with people happy to make less than minimum wage, so good luck with that. It's pretty much a rule in business: if you go to the shiny/fun/popular market, you'll have a hundreds of competitors and it will be very hard. If you go to a more "boring" market that competitors ignore, you have a higher chance to get the jackpot.
        benologist 12y ago
        Your thoughts are pretty closely tied to the number of massively successful games being dwarfed by massively successful startups but they're both extremely rare and they both fight their way through tons of competition to get to the top of their fields. Plus the bit where game developers are happy to make minimum wage while everyone else is more expensive sounds imaginary. YC has funded a ton of companies, very few of which have/will generate huge rewards, one of which was a game company.
- ulisesrmzroche 12y ago
  I think it's more about the pains of being independent, rather than just game development.
josephschmoe 12y ago
I don't really understand why programmers go into game development? Is it predominately the ultra low-end of programmers or something? It seems crazy to me that someone would take something like half the pay and way worse treatment/hours just to be in a specific industry.
- Macsenour 12y ago
  Having made games for 30 years, I can tell you that a big part of it is a love of making something fun. I get to make something, and then play. Joy comes from playing and I am very joyful.
  - oafitupa 12y ago
    Can't you do the same without programming it though? I don't think I could have fun playing a game I programmed for someone else.
- ronyeh 12y ago
  I think it is like why people become artists or musicians. Poor pay & very little recognition (except for the 0.1%) but it's fun to create something with your own two hands and see your vision slowly become reality.
- benologist 12y ago
  Some people like making web applications. Some people like making game applications.
- eloisant 12y ago
  Not necessarily low-end, but some people want to work so badly on video games that they accept these conditions. Because enough programmers accepts them, there's no need to pay them more/give them decent conditions.
- SolarNet 12y ago
  For me it's challenge, there arn't many other programming jobs which involve such complex realtime systems, and touch on just about every field of software engineering and computer science. And you have to deal with that as a single programmer or on a team of programmers. To build a game requires realtime (i.e. do all these things in 16.7 ms, non-stop) graphics, input, deterministic simulation, and networking. It also touches on AI, UI, databases, algorithms (match making), systems programming, file formats (compression, fast loading, etc), procedural generation, SIMD programming (shaders), programming languages, tools development, distributed systems, assembly (in optimizing), etc. And then architecting all of those different parts to fit together. Programming websites (full stack), enterprise software, and desktop applications all bores the shit out of me, by the time my internships were done with each of those I couldn't wait to stop doing it, even though I was offered cushy high paying salaries to stay on, I wouldn't be able to bare doing that shit day in and day out.
gavanwoolery 12y ago
"I estimate that my living expenses over the 20 months of development were around $13k" $650 a month? My utilities, insurance, and food budget easily exceed that, nevermind rent. My first job paid $35k/year, which was comfortable enough (in San Diego), but I was living paycheck to paycheck. The problem with budgets like this is that they work for some people, not everybody, and set up artificial expectations (i.e. in terms of crowd funding or other capital). I am definitely an advocate of frugal budgets, but there is a line. I don't see $650 month working when you have a wife, kid(s), dog(s), mortgages, and/or car payments - but then again many independent developers are wise enough to not take on those things. I have all but the mortgage, and I consider my burn rate of $3k/month pretty frugal.
- ulfw 12y ago
  Yea that was a shocker for me too. Maybe that works if you are staying in your parent's house basement, but I just can't see anyone anyone in the US pay $650 for living expenses.
  - adventured 12y ago
    Also very much depends on where you're at. There are a lot of small towns in America where you can rent for $350 or $400 per month. I lived on a $50 per month grocery budget when I was 21 (maybe $75 today). Worked a part-time job that paid for my apartment, and worked as an entrepreneur the rest of the time. I think it's pretty amazing how low your bills can be when you're really young, have no family, and little to no concern about health issues (I had no health insurance for a decade, never had a single health issue either, which is purely luck / genetics).
    - gavanwoolery 12y ago
      Yep, I can see it working in some situations. I'm glad I had health insurance though - I had appendicitis in my late 20s and the surgery cost $20k-$25k, most of which was covered. Its easy to think that nothing will happen when you are young, but it can and often does. :)
  - 12y ago
socialist_coder 12y ago
These guys are making the classic indie game dev mistake- making a funky indie game that doesnt monetize well, has no virality, isn't freemium, etc. Game developers like these aren't professionals, they're hobbyists. They're making games like its a hobby, not a professional job. They do no market research, experiments, etc. If you run a normal business or a normal startup like that, you will have similarly terrible results. Be a professional. Look at the market. What monetizes well? What works? Hint: it's not the linked game. Go look at the top grossing charts in the various app stores for an idea of what type of game you should be making. I co-founded a small game company 2 years ago. We took 10 months to make our first game and have been releasing updates for it ever since. We're all working remotely. And, we're making enough money to pay ourselves a Bay Area salary. I love video games. I love the game industry. I started as a QA tester and worked my way up from there. I will never do anything different. You can make money making games, but you can't be an indie game developer / hobbyist. Be a professional.
- ivanca 12y ago
  You made some really good points, but the game that you developed is... a casino game (slots vacation, from your profile). No game can show all that's wrong with the game industry more than a free-to-play mobile casino game. If that's being a professional, I don't wanna be one.
- zeckalpha 12y ago
  Very capitalist for a socialist_coder.
  - socialist_coder 12y ago
    I want to pay taxes and receive good benefits =) For me, living in Germany instead of the US while founding my startup was a dream come true. I got very affordable health care, health insurance, and child care when we weren't making any money. I never had to stress out about how to pay for those things while we worked for a year without getting paid. Now that we are making money, I'm happy to pay more for those things. And, it's nice to know that if we went bankrupt tomorrow, I could continue to get those social services at a price I can always afford.
johnjacob721 12y ago
Good day everyone, I am selling US Facebook VOTES and Worldwide Facebook VOTES. All votes come from different account with different IP address. Also available social media marketing service:- * Facebook page likes * Facebook photo/post likes/votes * Instagram likes/followers * Twitter followers/Retweets/Favorites * YouTube views/likes/ DisLikes * Soundcloud Plays/Followers/Downloads * Pinterest Followers/Likes/Pin/Re-Pin If you need any service then contact with me. This is a guaranteed service. https://www.facebook.com/SellSMMserviceBd https://www.facebook.com/SellSMMserviceBd Skype: rasel.miah55 Email: louiseblack761@gmail.com

94 points by Impossible 12y ago

Good to have transparency for others interested in doing something similar. It would be interesting to see a total number of hours invested to release v 1.0 And any learnings that might have sped up the process?

dognotdog 12y ago
As nice it is to see some hard figures, the numbers are disheartening. They say it's possible to make some side money during college, but don't even think about trying 10 years later :/

csbrooks 12y ago

"This means that it’s very possible none of us are making anywhere near minimum wage on this project, but regardless we’re all making about the same hourly wage, a wage determined by the relative commercial success of the game." Game industry, I do not miss you.

angersock 12y ago
The saddest thing is that so many are so passionate about it. :(
- exelius 12y ago
  Try to think of being a game developer as similar to being a musician or a painter. You can be plenty passionate about it, but it's a hard business and there are only so many dollars up for grabs. For every musician who is able to make a living off of music, there are probably 10 equally talented and passionate musicians who didn't. I think game development is turning out to be a similar business.
  - tr0picana 12y ago
    I completely agree. For every successful indie game developer there are at least 10 who have either quit part-way or failed to make any money.
- morgante 12y ago
  > The saddest thing is that so many are so passionate about it. :( That's precisely why pay is so low.
  - Macsenour 12y ago
    If you love what you do, it's not work.
    - biafra 12y ago
      If you have to do something else, to pay your rent, you can not do what you love.
    - angersock 12y ago
      Doesn't mean I shouldn't be well-compensated for it. I'm creating value for others, right?
    - GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
      Spoken like management. there are four words you have to remember in this economy and they're either "show me the money" or "fuck you, pay me".
      - eropple 12y ago
        I prefer "I am coin-operated."
- cdwhite 12y ago
  Lars Doucet's http://www.fortressofdoors.com/follow-your-dreams-or-maybe-dont/ http://www.fortressofdoors.com/follow-your-dreams-or-maybe-d... seems relevant. His company made a reasonably successful indie game ("Defender's Quest"); this article talks through his ambivalence about following a passion for making games, in the context of that experience. Could work out but probably won't, and it's OK either to not try or to try, give up, and try again at something with better odds. Edit: missing verb, missing particle in infinitive
exelius 12y ago
I think that the reality that is reflected here is that most game development moved overseas a long time ago for a reason. The indie games market is too crowded, gamer willingness to pay is too low, and none of the skills required for developing an indie game are exceptionally hard to find. As such, indie game development rarely pays a living wage in the US. If you lived somewhere with a significantly lower cost of living, it might not be so bad.
- benologist 12y ago
  I don't think that's accurate at all. Most games, and startups, are just bad ideas that can't pay for employees and stuff. The problem isn't living expenses, that's just one number you need to reach. Developers who can't make money can't afford to make games as their occupation.
  - exelius 12y ago
    It's not living expenses alone; I have worked for a company that does a significant amount of offshore hiring. The going rate for a competent developer in India is less than $20,000 per year. In India, $20k a year buys you a comfortable life. The equivalent salary in the US is probably $100k. The numbers in China are similar (though Chinese developers are harder to work with because their English tends to not be as good). Given this context, some of these "game dev fail" stories about making $20k from a year's worth of work suddenly turn into success stories. So imagine if you went and hired a hundred developers and started cranking out 10 games a month. Some would succeed, most would fail, but the failures can just be reskinned and sold again.
- mjn 12y ago
  Significantly lower cost of living, or better sources of early-stage funding. Some countries have started including games in their arts or film funding, which can be a viable source of initial funds (especially in countries where the arts funding is fairly large, relative to population). A lot of our students (I teach in a game program in Denmark) pay for the first 3-12 months of their indie studios that way. Those are typically $15k initial grants, and a possibility of around $100k-$200k follow-on funding towards production, if they're convinced it's worth funding at more than the seed level. Obviously that's not going to pay for an AAA game, but it gives indie developers some runway. The early funding for Playdead's Limbo [1] was through that route, for example, and then they sought commercial investors later. Here are this year's recipients: http://www.dfi.dk/Branche_og_stoette/Spilordningen/stoettede-spil-foraar-2014.aspx http://www.dfi.dk/Branche_og_stoette/Spilordningen/stoettede... [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limbo_(video_game) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limbo_(video_game)
benologist 12y ago
Startups and businesses are identical to this? It's not like you get to pay yourself a fair salary out of nothing just because you feel you worked hard.
- potatolicious 12y ago
  Startups are a gamble with a high upside. If you win you'll be fabulously wealthy and probably never have to work again. "Winning" in the game industry simply means you get to survive to work on the next project. Even high-profile studios with great track records are financially stumbling from one project into the next, and a single failure will sink them. Nobody is getting rich here - best case scenario you make a market wage, worst case scenario you make little to nothing.
  - benologist 12y ago
    Categorically wrong. Winning in games is worth billions of dollars - King, SuperCell, Rovio, EA, Zynga etc. Almost nobody reaches this level however there's many levels of success between bankrupt and billions where the good enough can survive to try again. Exactly like startups and businesses in general.
    - eloisant 12y ago
      Well, there are proportionally less successes in games because it's crowded. And you're in competition with people happy to make less than minimum wage, so good luck with that. It's pretty much a rule in business: if you go to the shiny/fun/popular market, you'll have a hundreds of competitors and it will be very hard. If you go to a more "boring" market that competitors ignore, you have a higher chance to get the jackpot.
      - benologist 12y ago
        Your thoughts are pretty closely tied to the number of massively successful games being dwarfed by massively successful startups but they're both extremely rare and they both fight their way through tons of competition to get to the top of their fields. Plus the bit where game developers are happy to make minimum wage while everyone else is more expensive sounds imaginary. YC has funded a ton of companies, very few of which have/will generate huge rewards, one of which was a game company.
ulisesrmzroche 12y ago
I think it's more about the pains of being independent, rather than just game development.

josephschmoe 12y ago

I don't really understand why programmers go into game development? Is it predominately the ultra low-end of programmers or something? It seems crazy to me that someone would take something like half the pay and way worse treatment/hours just to be in a specific industry.

Macsenour 12y ago
Having made games for 30 years, I can tell you that a big part of it is a love of making something fun. I get to make something, and then play. Joy comes from playing and I am very joyful.
- oafitupa 12y ago
  Can't you do the same without programming it though? I don't think I could have fun playing a game I programmed for someone else.
ronyeh 12y ago
I think it is like why people become artists or musicians. Poor pay & very little recognition (except for the 0.1%) but it's fun to create something with your own two hands and see your vision slowly become reality.
benologist 12y ago
Some people like making web applications. Some people like making game applications.
eloisant 12y ago
Not necessarily low-end, but some people want to work so badly on video games that they accept these conditions. Because enough programmers accepts them, there's no need to pay them more/give them decent conditions.
SolarNet 12y ago
For me it's challenge, there arn't many other programming jobs which involve such complex realtime systems, and touch on just about every field of software engineering and computer science. And you have to deal with that as a single programmer or on a team of programmers. To build a game requires realtime (i.e. do all these things in 16.7 ms, non-stop) graphics, input, deterministic simulation, and networking. It also touches on AI, UI, databases, algorithms (match making), systems programming, file formats (compression, fast loading, etc), procedural generation, SIMD programming (shaders), programming languages, tools development, distributed systems, assembly (in optimizing), etc. And then architecting all of those different parts to fit together. Programming websites (full stack), enterprise software, and desktop applications all bores the shit out of me, by the time my internships were done with each of those I couldn't wait to stop doing it, even though I was offered cushy high paying salaries to stay on, I wouldn't be able to bare doing that shit day in and day out.

gavanwoolery 12y ago

"I estimate that my living expenses over the 20 months of development were around $13k" $650 a month? My utilities, insurance, and food budget easily exceed that, nevermind rent. My first job paid $35k/year, which was comfortable enough (in San Diego), but I was living paycheck to paycheck. The problem with budgets like this is that they work for some people, not everybody, and set up artificial expectations (i.e. in terms of crowd funding or other capital). I am definitely an advocate of frugal budgets, but there is a line. I don't see $650 month working when you have a wife, kid(s), dog(s), mortgages, and/or car payments - but then again many independent developers are wise enough to not take on those things. I have all but the mortgage, and I consider my burn rate of $3k/month pretty frugal.

ulfw 12y ago
Yea that was a shocker for me too. Maybe that works if you are staying in your parent's house basement, but I just can't see anyone anyone in the US pay $650 for living expenses.
- adventured 12y ago
  Also very much depends on where you're at. There are a lot of small towns in America where you can rent for $350 or $400 per month. I lived on a $50 per month grocery budget when I was 21 (maybe $75 today). Worked a part-time job that paid for my apartment, and worked as an entrepreneur the rest of the time. I think it's pretty amazing how low your bills can be when you're really young, have no family, and little to no concern about health issues (I had no health insurance for a decade, never had a single health issue either, which is purely luck / genetics).
  - gavanwoolery 12y ago
    Yep, I can see it working in some situations. I'm glad I had health insurance though - I had appendicitis in my late 20s and the surgery cost $20k-$25k, most of which was covered. Its easy to think that nothing will happen when you are young, but it can and often does. :)
- 12y ago

socialist_coder 12y ago

These guys are making the classic indie game dev mistake- making a funky indie game that doesnt monetize well, has no virality, isn't freemium, etc. Game developers like these aren't professionals, they're hobbyists. They're making games like its a hobby, not a professional job. They do no market research, experiments, etc. If you run a normal business or a normal startup like that, you will have similarly terrible results. Be a professional. Look at the market. What monetizes well? What works? Hint: it's not the linked game. Go look at the top grossing charts in the various app stores for an idea of what type of game you should be making. I co-founded a small game company 2 years ago. We took 10 months to make our first game and have been releasing updates for it ever since. We're all working remotely. And, we're making enough money to pay ourselves a Bay Area salary. I love video games. I love the game industry. I started as a QA tester and worked my way up from there. I will never do anything different. You can make money making games, but you can't be an indie game developer / hobbyist. Be a professional.

ivanca 12y ago
You made some really good points, but the game that you developed is... a casino game (slots vacation, from your profile). No game can show all that's wrong with the game industry more than a free-to-play mobile casino game. If that's being a professional, I don't wanna be one.
zeckalpha 12y ago
Very capitalist for a socialist_coder.
- socialist_coder 12y ago
  I want to pay taxes and receive good benefits =) For me, living in Germany instead of the US while founding my startup was a dream come true. I got very affordable health care, health insurance, and child care when we weren't making any money. I never had to stress out about how to pay for those things while we worked for a year without getting paid. Now that we are making money, I'm happy to pay more for those things. And, it's nice to know that if we went bankrupt tomorrow, I could continue to get those social services at a price I can always afford.

johnjacob721 12y ago

Good day everyone, I am selling US Facebook VOTES and Worldwide Facebook VOTES. All votes come from different account with different IP address. Also available social media marketing service:- * Facebook page likes * Facebook photo/post likes/votes * Instagram likes/followers * Twitter followers/Retweets/Favorites * YouTube views/likes/ DisLikes * Soundcloud Plays/Followers/Downloads * Pinterest Followers/Likes/Pin/Re-Pin If you need any service then contact with me. This is a guaranteed service. https://www.facebook.com/SellSMMserviceBd https://www.facebook.com/SellSMMserviceBd Skype: rasel.miah55 Email: louiseblack761@gmail.com