Indie Developers Advice Thread
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Indie Developers Advice
What are your best tips and advice for anyone considering going independent?
From your experience could you tell us about any pitfalls, tools and pipelines, peaks and troughs, choice of style and anything else you can tell us what to look out for.
GENRE SPECIFIC ENGINES - http://www.pixelprospector.com/the-big-list-of-game-making-tools/
This is worth a watch for anyone interested in the subject.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhaT78i1x2M[/ame]
What are your best tips and advice for anyone considering going independent?
From your experience could you tell us about any pitfalls, tools and pipelines, peaks and troughs, choice of style and anything else you can tell us what to look out for.
GENRE SPECIFIC ENGINES - http://www.pixelprospector.com/the-big-list-of-game-making-tools/
This is worth a watch for anyone interested in the subject.
[ame]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhaT78i1x2M[/ame]
Replies
http://www.pixelprospector.com/
http://www.develop-online.net/analysis/72-tips-on-starting-your-own-game-studio/0200570
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At the same time it can also be a very supportive, positive global conversation--and help tell you what's important to know about--concrete, useful stuff you will miss out on if you don't have your ears open: Where should you submit your game for review? What press sites are closing down? When do MEGABOOTH submissions open up? Which conferences should you go to? How is youtube screwing things up now? How will the new steam/sony/microsoft/apple policy changes affect your launch? How do I get a Humble Widget? Are other devs giving steam-keys for bundled games? Are there promotional events you should be involved in? Which bundling sites are good (or not good) to work with? etc.
Other places may or may not report this stuff eventually..but even if you never once tweet a single thing (and there are good arguments for why you shouldn't), it is an amazing resource for very up-to-date information.
Eventually you as an indie-developer have to make contact with the consumers, be it support or talking with people about the game as you make it. People will be harsh on the internet, people will hate you for no reasons, and people will also love you.
Growing a thick skin is essential here, or hire someone to to be PR for you if you aren't able to, too many people explode on social networks or the internet while simultaneously trying to sell their product, this works against them.
Also: indie game the movie isn't terribly descriptive about the independent development scene or profession as a whole, it won't be like this documentary
My advice would be to take care of your health both physical and mental. It's so very easy to get into unhealthy work and living habits when you are on your own.
Also don't count on making any real money at all for a very very long time. Not to say don't make business plans and try to make money once you've got a decent product. Just don't count on the money to roll in to feed your family and pay your bills. Especially not if you sink 6-12 months (or more) on a mobile game without a business plan, marketing budget and A LOT of iterative playtesting along the way.
Oh yeah, speaking of mobile gamedev don't bother unless it's just for fun or learning.
DO NOT use Paypal for preorders, unless you can live without that income until your game ships.
But I'm nobody so take my advice with a huge grain of salt
There is a slight chance you will make OK money, especially if you are very smart about how you approach going Indie, but for going Indie to make sense, ideally you should have a reason to do it that doesn't involve making money.
Join a community of independent game developers, so that people other than your friends and family are playtesting it. Give your prototypes to people to play to test some of your hypotheses and see if things are fun to play. Try to get people to play in person, so that you can observe where they struggle, or where they get bored or frustrated. Use this data to refine your design.
The above I feel are hard rules. The below ones are more opinion, but I think they have valid reasons for being:
And with regard to marketing, if you've got a really solid game, the marketing part of it becomes a whole lot easier. You shouldn't ignore marketing completely, but I often see new developers trying to plan the legal stuff, getting a company set up, planning how to get on Steam or something, before they've even got a game that's worth anything. You definitely shouldn't ignore marketing, but until you've got enough of a product to get people excited, writing dev blogs and doing more organic forms of marketing aren't a very good time investment imo.
And unless you've got a really nice nest egg saved up, I'd recommend doing indie development part-time. I feel that the pressure of having to make games that make profit is a huge killer of creativity, and you don't want to be bleeding money every month and making rash decisions or taking silly risks as a result. Work part-time, just enough to cover a lean lifestyle, and go full time indie when you've done enough practising and made enough prototypes that you've got a really solid shot at making a game that'll turn a profit.
The Twitter argument is very true. Phil Fish is not a special case (sorta). It's invaluable resource but you need a thick skin and you need to be able to take a lot of bullshit from people without your emotions getting through to them. Be professional, be reasonable, provide support, feedback, and thank people and everything will be alright on Twitter. In the end your not just some kid modding a game. Your an adult, who has to be professional, and as much as what we do may be art, we are trying to sell a product. so if you want it to sell well use your resources wisely, carefully, and be professional.
Twitter is important for marketing and networking. It's just another tool in the box. It lets you show your stuff to a lot of others, and you'll get to see what they are up to. It can be very motivating. You'll also hear on Twitter first if $awesome_game is now on Kickstarter or Greenlight. The #gamedev and #indiedev streams are full of information and motivation.
As for making enemies, well, you'll always have some enemies if you decide to have an opinion and not be shy about it. It's also not so much the opinion, it's how you go about expressing it. The "ass" part plays a bigger role there than the "opinionated" one. It's quite self-explaining that you don't want to come off as an asshole if you want to sell something.
There are some topics where the fronts are very clear - if you say publicly that you are against sexism in games, some people will "strongly oppose" you and these people will hold a grudge against you for a long time.
The more passionate people are about the topic at hand, the quicker enemies will be made. And the more you insist and repeat your opinion, the more of a target you will become. It's easiest to keep your opinion to yourself if you want to sell things. The downside is, in a world where everyone wants to sell something, it's going to become damn quiet...
It is also a good idea to have at least two twitter accounts, a personal one and a professional one for your game.
Anyway, pipelines. You'll see everything in indie game development, especially things that don't cost a fortune. Say hello to Blender and indie licenses. Same goes for engines. Free stuff is good. The balance is between what you want to do and what you can afford, and also between what you want to do and your technical skills, your social skills, your motivation.
Indie game dev is different depending on what you're doing. Ludum Dare project, six-month game, three-year game, mobile game, PC game, pixel art, hipoly models... Know what it is you want to make. You have to be able to motivate yourself for quite a long time without receiving any paycheck for it. If your heart is not in it, you shouldn't do it. There are easier ways to make money. Make sure you know what it is you are after - money? Or other things?
A lot of people will tell you to start small, to make a lot of prototypes and keep your release cycle short. But this runs somewhat counter to the entire thing about being motivated and your heart being in it. If the thing you want to make, the thing that keeps motivating you, takes longer than six months to make, you should still go for it. What matters is that you're comfortable and confident. If a flappy bird clone is the way to money, but your heart is not in it, then you won't be committed enough and it will show. Balance again.
Oh yeah, and the point about health is a very good one. Get a timer clock and organize your work time somehow. And I recommend to get into cooking. Kitchen work is motion and relaxes your mind, and you get a healthy meal out of it. And don't fall into indie dev traps like alcohol and smoking.
By the way, my twitter is @tribal_spiker. I follow back. :thumbup:
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Does "Indie Game" Mean Anything Anymore?
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