At 9/13/15 03:11 PM, Glaiel-Gamer wrote: The difficult part just changed from "get steam to accept your game" to "get people to care about your game".

Neither is easier than the other. When steam was closed you had to travel a lot, enter contests, network, etc to even get the right contact at steam to pitch your game to, and then they could just say "no" for whatever reason they wanted.

Now steam accepts pretty much everyone so the difficulty now is getting people to care. So its still like, the same amount of difficulty, just in a completely different way.

A couple of years ago I was worried about how to get my first game accepted onto Steam and that fear has gone out the window. Like you said, it's not about getting people to care about. I don't think we're even fully sure how to do that, the best we've got until the game has more to show is to blog about it and share it on Twitter and honestly, that doesn't seem like much. We've got maybe 3 or 4 people we know about who stumbled upon it by accident and are keen to keep up with it.

At 9/13/15 03:23 PM, Glaiel-Gamer wrote:

At 9/13/15 01:23 PM, Rustygames wrote: Are you full time making games for a living?

Do you mind sharing how well you do (for example this year and last year) and how many hours you put in (I assume it's 9-6 5 days a week at least?).

Yeah I mean Closure+The Basement Collection did well enough to pay for themselves, Bombernauts, and probably 1 more game. Bombernauts hasn't even broken even yet.

On average I probably work about as much as a regular full time job, probably a bit more, but it comes and goes in waves, sometimes I'll get burnt out and spend a month doing pretty much nothing, sometimes I'll work 10 hours a day every day no breaks (right now I'm in a 10 hours a day phase, 5 hours on bombernauts then switch over 5 hours on... a secret thing, but less on weekends)

By break even I assume you mean costs for stuff you bought for it (software and assets etc) as well as paying for your time, but that's what I get stuck on, how much do you value your time at?

I guess my question is, how much do you make annually working on just making indie games? I know it's a slightly rude / personal question, but I figure there are few enough visitors to this forum that it's not exactly shouting it from the rooftops.

For openness and for the sake of comparison, my last programming full time job I was making £50k a year (with all the perks that come with permanent work, holidays, sick days etc).

At 9/15/15 07:08 AM, Rustygames wrote: By break even I assume you mean costs for stuff you bought for it (software and assets etc) as well as paying for your time, but that's what I get stuck on, how much do you value your time at?

I guess my question is, how much do you make annually working on just making indie games? I know it's a slightly rude / personal question, but I figure there are few enough visitors to this forum that it's not exactly shouting it from the rooftops.

For openness and for the sake of comparison, my last programming full time job I was making £50k a year (with all the perks that come with permanent work, holidays, sick days etc).

break even is weird, there's like 3 different ways to interpret it / tiers / stages / whatever

1. pay for just costs you wouldn't have incurred if you didn't make the game (software, salaries, contract work, etc).
2. pay for living expenses for the time spent working on the game
3. pay for the opportunity cost too (meaning, what you "would have earned" working at a real company instead, $80k/yr or so for programmers)

closure hit all 3 eventually (basically took until the humble bundle we were in to do so, so a year after release)

bombernauts took almost the same time to make as closure but has only earned $8k so far, though its super hard to tell how much it will sell overall since it hasn't had a steam sale yet and is still in early access. I'm guessing the minimum it could make (over time) would be somewhere around 30k (just from steam sales and the shittier humble bundles), but it could do a lot better depending on if it eventually picks up or not. Who knows its a gamble every game really.

basically, I'm fairly sure I could be earning a lot more money if I just took what closure earned, shoved it in a savings account and went to work for someone else instead. but that's not as fun

closure still sells $100 a week though and I can boost it up a lot whenever I put it on sale, basement too, bombernauts is doing better than that but its also recent. So the idea is if I can get like, 5-10 games on sale eventually their tails will be something that can support me fully, plus with each one there's the small chance it could be an actual hit.

btw I hate sharing actual $ amounts because people will find it in a google search, and nobody actually knows how to use context for it. When we won a $100k grand prize for closure in some competition, some dude used it against us as justification for giving us $0 in our humble bundle, because "they have enough already" :/ ignoring that 100k isn't really that much when split and taxed, and closure cost more than 100k to make....

(mostly teenagers who think $1k is a lot of money not understanding how much things actually cost for adults I think)

At 9/15/15 02:27 PM, Glaiel-Gamer wrote: (mostly teenagers who think $1k is a lot of money not understanding how much things actually cost for adults I think)

That's exactly it because I was one. When you don't pay for rent and food and taxes, money earned/given goes a longer way, which inflates what you think of other people's money.

At 9/15/15 03:46 PM, MSGhero wrote: That's exactly it because I was one. When you don't pay for rent and food and taxes, money earned/given goes a longer way, which inflates what you think of other people's money.

I didn't have a job until I moved out and had a place to pay for, so maybe I missed that boat, but I always gave whatever I could even as a teenager (which, to be fair, really wasn't and still isn't much)
While, yes, I considered $1,000 an absolute truckload of money, I also understood the relative viewpoint from which I was judging the world of finance - on top of that, I expect to need to pay for my entertainment anywhere else; why would that be any different than online? Just because I have to option to take things for free doesn't mean I should.

I feel like these are simply excuses for terrible judgements.

Excuses are like assholes. We all got 'em and they all stink.

Alright, they got me. I suppose it's time.

Please nothing break, please nothing break, please nothing break..

At 9/16/15 05:35 PM, egg82 wrote: Alright, they got me. I suppose it's time.

Please nothing break, please nothing break, please nothing break..

I've heard nothing but bad things from people who upgraded to Windows 10 rather than doing a fresh install; something probably will break.

At 9/16/15 05:35 PM, egg82 wrote: Alright, they got me. I suppose it's time.

Please nothing break, please nothing break, please nothing break..

Ok so if your computer just all of a sudden stops responding to keyboard input, do this. Open recycle bin, hit the up "go up a folder" button, go to control panel, accessibility or keyboard, onscreen keyboard on, win+r, type msconfig with admin privileges, boot tab, safe boot enabled, restart. Then do the same to turn off safe mode boot, restart again. Then you're good. This has happened on my tablet and pc, other than that I love win10, especially Edge.

Haha, thanks guys.
I did the upgrade last night (along with a little spring/winter-cleaning, I figured it was a good time) and so far nothing's broken. At least if it is, it's not noticeable.

The only thing that really "broke" was my microphone wasn't picked up and my input was set to my output which caused an echo. I quickly installed MS's default "USB mono input" drivers and everything worked fine again.
(Honestly I've had this issue a lot anyway, where for whatever reason the drivers get lost or uninstalled randomly and the mic stops working)

So, yeah. So far so good. I remember NVIDIA updated their drivers for 10 a while back so that wasn't an issue, and that was really the important thing anyway.

Mm, delicious 10

Also, I realized it's easier to see bottlenecks using 10's task manager. I realized I need an SSD or I'm just going to suffer.

At 9/17/15 10:47 AM, egg82 wrote: I realized I need an SSD or I'm just going to suffer.

How do you even live?

At 9/17/15 10:47 AM, egg82 wrote: Mm, delicious 10

Also, just incase you weren't aware: http://www.theverge.com/2015/5/29/8685251/hola-vpn-botnet-selling-users-bandwidth

At 9/15/15 02:27 PM, Glaiel-Gamer wrote: btw I hate sharing actual $ amounts because people will find it in a google search

Blah money is weird. I would feel equally weird about sharing that stuff. In fact, honestly I wouldn't have even shared as much you as you did. Not sure why people would be anything but stoked for an independent developer doing well, but then again - money is a weird thing. I hope your game does well. I'm sure things will pick up.

I started tinkering around building a multiplayer dungeon crawler. I'm using this language called Go to build the server. It's pretty pleasant to work with. I haven't gotten very far with it yet. But I hacked out a little front-end so I could visualize what was going on. Graphics all done in maya.

At 9/17/15 08:44 PM, PrettyMuchBryce wrote: In fact, honestly I wouldn't have even shared as much you as you did.

I've been a little bit more open about it lately because of steamspy (http://steamspy.com/) which makes "owners" public, is basically completely accurate, but also completely misleading, and I don't want people to think I'm a multi-millionaire just from multiplying "owners" x "price"

because 1. 90% of closure's owners came from humble bundle and
2. closure has been on sale <2$ a bunch of times

http://enkiangames.tumblr.com/post/129397559488/before-you-ask

Feedback appreciated. Except for changing "Twitter" to the bird icon, I know already.

At 9/17/15 10:20 PM, Glaiel-Gamer wrote:

At 9/17/15 08:44 PM, PrettyMuchBryce wrote: In fact, honestly I wouldn't have even shared as much you as you did.

I've been a little bit more open about it lately because of steamspy (http://steamspy.com/) which makes "owners" public, is basically completely accurate, but also completely misleading, and I don't want people to think I'm a multi-millionaire just from multiplying "owners" x "price"

because 1. 90% of closure's owners came from humble bundle and
2. closure has been on sale <2$ a bunch of times

Lies! Indie developers hide their riches to keep out the competition.

Seriously though, I essentially took the polar opposite career direction to yourself. Working at EA developing FIFA.

Never had a huge interest in developing games on small teams with 1 or 2 people. I enjoy working with others a little too much. Could see myself wanting to work for myself in the later stages of my life, after learning as much as I can from people better than me.

At 9/15/15 02:27 PM, Glaiel-Gamer wrote: btw I hate sharing actual $ amounts because people will find it in a google search, and nobody actually knows how to use context for it. When we won a $100k grand prize for closure in some competition, some dude used it against us as justification for giving us $0 in our humble bundle, because "they have enough already" :/ ignoring that 100k isn't really that much when split and taxed, and closure cost more than 100k to make....

(mostly teenagers who think $1k is a lot of money not understanding how much things actually cost for adults I think)

Cool man thanks for sharing. It's potentially a labour of love but sounds like you're doing almost as well (if not as well / better) than working for someone else. More freedom working for yourself though!

And agree on the $100k point, a lot of people don't include tax and the fact you have to split it etc etc. It's naive to think these days that $100k of sales means the developers are now rich.

At 9/19/15 12:59 AM, MSGhero wrote: Feedback appreciated. Except for changing "Twitter" to the bird icon, I know already.

You should change "Twitter" to the bird icon.

I'm so clever!

In all seriousness, it looks good. That's the kind of direction I wanted to go with my website, anyway.
Also, I'll probably end up switching my site over to an actual WordPress site since that's what my day job is anyway.

But yeah, I'm really excited for new coding projects from you guys since I want to compare and contrast experience and style.

At 9/19/15 01:06 PM, Rustygames wrote: Cool man thanks for sharing. It's potentially a labour of love but sounds like you're doing almost as well (if not as well / better) than working for someone else. More freedom working for yourself though!

Yeah I'm doing about as well as getting an average (but not great) job, but you know... each game has a chance of being a giant hit... and its slightly better odds than winning the lottery.... so....

At 9/19/15 05:14 PM, Glaiel-Gamer wrote: Yeah I'm doing about as well as getting an average (but not great) job, but you know... each game has a chance of being a giant hit... and its slightly better odds than winning the lottery.... so....

Not to mention the creative freedom you won't always get with a 9 to 5. And you're the boss!

At 9/20/15 01:34 PM, Rustygames wrote:

At 9/19/15 05:14 PM, Glaiel-Gamer wrote: Yeah I'm doing about as well as getting an average (but not great) job, but you know... each game has a chance of being a giant hit... and its slightly better odds than winning the lottery.... so....

Not to mention the creative freedom you won't always get with a 9 to 5. And you're the boss!

Yeah. At this point I don't think I'd be fit at all for a "regular job", but I have enough friends in the industry I could get contract work from if it came down to it now.

At 9/20/15 02:02 PM, Glaiel-Gamer wrote:

At 9/20/15 01:34 PM, Rustygames wrote:

At 9/19/15 05:14 PM, Glaiel-Gamer wrote: Yeah I'm doing about as well as getting an average (but not great) job, but you know... each game has a chance of being a giant hit... and its slightly better odds than winning the lottery.... so....

Not to mention the creative freedom you won't always get with a 9 to 5. And you're the boss!

Yeah. At this point I don't think I'd be fit at all for a "regular job", but I have enough friends in the industry I could get contract work from if it came down to it now.

I'm curious as to why you feel this way.

Maybe I'm wrong, but the dream is to work for yourself and take risks when you're young as you do now. Once you're old and tired you can take a more stable position at a company (or start your own stable company?) that will see you off into family and retirement some day.

This makes it look like it's viable to create a game purely in AIR that supports server functionality.

At 9/21/15 12:37 AM, 23450 wrote:

Yeah. At this point I don't think I'd be fit at all for a "regular job", but I have enough friends in the industry I could get contract work from if it came down to it now.

I'm curious as to why you feel this way.

Maybe I'm wrong, but the dream is to work for yourself and take risks when you're young as you do now. Once you're old and tired you can take a more stable position at a company (or start your own stable company?) that will see you off into family and retirement some day.

Eh I just like having my own schedule. I know what times of days I work best at, and how forcing myself to work when I don't feel like it ends up just making me less productive overall, and I don't think a regular company would be okay with me working 11am-2pm, 4 hour break, and then 6pm to midnight, or sometimes 9am to 2am, or sometimes just taking a week off for whatever reason.

Anybody wanna quit their jobs and make a game about the indiepocalypse with me ? I think it would be a good marketing ploy, and we could sell a lot of games until this whole thing blows over. LMK

At 9/21/15 04:11 PM, PrettyMuchBryce wrote: Anybody wanna quit their jobs and make a game about the indiepocalypse with me ? I think it would be a good marketing ploy, and we could sell a lot of games until this whole thing blows over. LMK

I'm making a mediocre game atm, decided to lose all the bells and whistles of component entity systems, networking etc. and to go with the good old static design choices that end up being hell afterwards when you want to extend new features. Mediocre games call for mediocre code right?

I think I might have enough RAM now.

I know it's overkill, but I wanted overkill.
I also kinda want another 980 and an SSD for my entire OS

Also, holy shit, the company I work for created the ".ski" TLD

At 9/23/15 12:27 AM, egg82 wrote: Also, holy shit, the company I work for created the ".ski" TLD

What, that costs like $200k to do.

At 9/23/15 12:34 AM, MSGhero wrote: What, that costs like $200k to do.

Yeah, I'm actually pretty sure we have that much to spend on something like that.