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0 pointsinvalidusernam37y ago0 comments

Game development is hard, it seems like it's completely hit or miss, there is no middle ground. I've released 5 games, but I have to say, spending 2,600+ hours on something without doing market research or at least starting small seems crazy.

My most successful game was an app for iOS which made me a grand total of around $30. The difference is I only spent around 80 hours working on it (40 or so for the game, 20 or so on the level editor, and 20 or so making levels). I had no money for marketing, had done no research beforehand, so I pretty much knew it was going to fail but did it as a fun side project to learn some new stuff and for my CV.

Compare that to the various website side projects I've worked on over the years which have made me hundreds of thousands of dollars (over 10 years). Game dev sounds fun, but if you're looking to make money, I would definitely stay away from it.

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bemmu7y ago

Instead of making a game for some category on Steam and hoping it sells enough in the first month before sales drop off, I wonder if it could work to make a super-super niche game where the goal would be to rank for a Google search term instead.

You'd try to be very long-lived, steadily selling for years, say just a few copies a week. All traffic would come from people who have some incredibly niche interest they are searching for, say baptism planners discovering your "baptism planner simulator 2000".

If you continued to make games like these say one per month or two, it might be possible to gradually build up a liveable income from them.

reificator7y ago

> "baptism planner simulator 2000"

I guarantee that if you drop the "planner" that game would sell like hotcakes as soon as a medium sized YouTuber/Twitch streamer notices it.

There is no way a game about dunking babies doesn't get enough shock value to get a decent return on investment, especially if it has wonky physics, "bad" controls or other emergent gameplay.

For a deeper game, maybe bring back the "planner" aspect to add a simulation layer on top. Make a tycoon game where you manage a church and the baptisms are just one of a few minigames.

kahoon7y ago

> Compare that to the various website side projects I've worked on over the years which have made me hundreds of thousands of dollars (over 10 years).

Was this orders from clients or did you create some SaaS?

invalidusernam3OP7y ago

Most of it (more than 90%) ad revenue, some SaaS.

yitchelle7y ago

Would you say that the difference between the games side projects vs the website side projects are the mindset in which you have executed those projects?

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