General News - Stop Being an Indie Game Developer

Most of the Devs I met were quite normal people looked from afar. Some of them are even older than 25 and have to deal with dull life and boring reality stuff like sustaining a family or buying their own food.
I am pretty sure you can hope to make a bit of money and live of your work without sacrificing some passion in the process.

Caddy said:

I think we're arguing symantics here.

I think what Dart is saying is if the MAIN focus, the PRIORITY is to make money (and the developer doesn't even care about playing their own game) = BAD

But if an indie developer goes in instead with the mindset that making a great fun game, that they would enjoy playing themselves, will sell itself = GOOD

You can still have a focus on making money, for instance, if you've set aside say 25% of your capital budget for advertising, then promoting the game after it's been completed, why not?

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That is correct

But it really shouldn't be necessary to explain. Focus is a very simple concept.

It's your main priority or focal point.

Meaning, if money is your focus - then everything else will not be. It doesn't mean money can't be very important to you - or that you shouldn't consider how to best make a profit.

I know it's annoying sometimes, but words have meaning and if you don't know the meaning - you're going to struggle when using them.

Multiple priorities - virtually every business plan has them btw. Good game and successful business. The world is literally full of excellent products of all sorts developed and manufactured by profit making enterprises having plural goals (priorities, focuses) including making a profit and making an excellent product.

A focus on a successful, profitable business is fully compatible with a simultaneous focus on developing excellent products, including video game products.

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I think Jeff Vogel when I think of successful indie developers. Always developing within his means and courting a niche audience with a consistent product. Jeff knows his audience, knows what they want and how to pitch his product at them. He knows the importance of word of mouth and makes a modest living doing what he does. But even for Jeff the marketing has gotten harder with the flood of indie games.

Indies should set aside 20% of their budget for marketing. After all even good games are going undiscovered - you need to build an audience and have a pre-release cycle of engagement. Indies need to have a forum or somewhere for a community to gather. Kickstarter has been good for building a community and so has early access. Mainstream news sites are pretty hit and miss and you can't really rely on them to help create a community for you. Streamers seem to be the thing for indie discoverability these days but that is certainly a shame for some types of games that don't lend themselves well to streaming.

What people often do is masking the living breathing persons like you and me withz the ord "developer", and in this maskoing process make an anonymous glibbering mass of brain out of this living breathing person like you and me.

What I want to say with this is that I and anyone else would like to make some money, too.
For a living. To pay my food. To pay my rent. To have a tiny bit of luxury called "going on vacation".

People like you and are are developers, too. And they would like to be able to buy their food and perhaps a good book from the return of money off a game release as well.

With the only difference that I don't develop software.

Going into business for yourself, no matter what your product or skill is, is the way to go IMO. If you believe in yourself and are savvy and good at what you do, you'll figure out a way to profit from it.

Funnily enough, I've worked for some of the biggest organisations, some mid-sized ones, and some tiny projects, and I've actually enjoyed the larger environments more. I enjoyed the shenanigans, the politics, the birthdays, the leaving parties, and the sports leagues. The best of them were like high school, only better. I find myself going a bit loopy in a small environment.

I do think there is a fundamental difference in culture between a large corporate, and a smaller company. Quite often, a smaller company is dominated by a founder who lives to do the thing he does, and turning a profit is a necessity, but not his dominant driver. In corporates, there tends to be different characters at the top, who are often quite alien to the business at hand. The CEO knows that he lives or dies by fairly short term results, and this affects the thinking.

That said, there are exceptions. Someone like Steve Jobs was perhaps a bit closer to that smaller boss, who loves what he does, is obsessed by a vision, and ate his own dogfood. Also, some studios, like Naughty Dog, have talked about how they are given a budget and a remarkably free hand, because Sony have simply realised that, left to their own devices, they will deliver.

So, I think it's a bit of a false dichotomy, as no studio really occupies either extreme in terms of profit vs genuine enthusiasm.

News Article - Stop Trying To Be a Niche Gaming Journalist

Why do so many journalists dedicate so much of their time to niche little avenues like gaming when they could be out there aiming for the big money and the pulitzers.

Funny thing, If I remember right, Rockstar's motto they stated behind GTA went something along lines we're creating a game that we want to play.
Either way, it's not a black and white issue with indie devs only chasing creative aspect and publishers going after $.