Making Games for a Living?

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From the Asset Store
Full game Construct 2 and Construct 3 to post on Google Play
  • Nice info. I believe they're all native games ?

    Yep most are native.

  • The Reality of HTML5 Game Development and making money from it:

    LINK

  • I'm trying to sell the game I just made in C2. Feel free to buy it and give me a 5 star rating. It's the lowest price point on the Chrome store, just $1.99. It would be nice to make games for a living, and maybe if some of you wonderful C2 users would show me and other C2 users some support(buying and rating C2 games) we could all make a living doing this. Anyone selling a C2 game on chrome feel free to message me I will buy it.

    Search for "Maze Manor" on the google chrome store or Direct Link:

    chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mjjcfjkkmchjkolljhofkbgkdookokgk

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  • "pocket god":

    99 cents

    18000 downloads during the best one day

    circa 300000 android downloads

    circa 300000 appstore downloads

    dunno how much revenue from facebook version

    since august 2011

    gives about $600000 in one year

    does that answer the topic's question? ;)

    idea is everything. not beautiful graphics, nor gameplay experience (well, maybe a little) but the idea!

  • Thanks everyone for the updates. Very inspiring stuff.

    The path becomes more and more clear <img src="smileys/smiley17.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

    Cheers!

  • idea is everything. not beautiful graphics, nor gameplay experience (well, maybe a little) but the idea!

    Graphical polish is very, very important. It makes you go from an amateur status to a "professional quality" status. And gameplay, for a video game, well... how to explain... <img src="smileys/smiley9.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

    Everyone can have good ideas, but what really makes the different is how these ideas are translated (consistently and accurately) into a game. You can start from a good idea and end with something not enjoyable for the player.

    On mobile, 90% of the successful games are simple but very well polished (graphically and in term of gameplay).

  • We worked for three game development companies in Hungary. The economic crash shut them down.

    My colleague made and is making a game using Blender Game Engine. He says his fans donated approx. 1 month of his former salary as professional game developer.

    He was a veteran, I was a newbie in 2007. That's why, seeing him and our senior graphics artist, who is working for Crytek now, but we three worked together in 2007-2008, seeing these two professionals how incredibly fast they work (routine, practice, heaps of experience, with giant bag of learned workflow-speed-up tricks) that's why I am making comments here and thinking with a hammer how the heck I can make money with Construct 2.

    First goal is $5000, then nearing that limit the life & financial situation will enable some serious strategic repositioning on the market.

    I had the opportunity in 2010-2011 to observe very closely a Turkish contractor how he works and why he always seemed to have a lot of energy, fire inside to go on and work like crazy. What was his motivation?

    Well:

    1. He knew to a certain extent, that what he was doing is bringing him profit for sure (monthly multiple million net earnings were guaranteed)

    2. He had workers who were able to do an efficient job making a lot of money for him.

    3. He had the financial support of his wealthy family (foreign machinery trade)

    4. His ambitions and energy, surprising inner fire that he displayed almost every day came I think from the sense of power over his employees and the knowing that every day earnings from sales were put on the office table.

    Opposing his situation diametrically is the status of the poor, indie game developer, who must work to pay rent, does not have much energy and inner fire at the end of the day, has no surety in most cases that he will have a job in the coming months, there is nothing guaranteed in the indie developers life, he can build his hopes on sand, no financial support in most cases. There can be no assurance because the would-be indie game developer is not making money from the planned or not finished or recently started game.

    Accomplishment, sense of absolutely no doubt is missing. If these would be present along with heaps of professional experience, there would be earnings and high salary present. Until somebody is not able to get at least three or four good paying jobs, because of changing world-economic or changed company work environment "circumstances" in a row, he is not good enough, not competent enough to realize his goals, which in this case is making a totally independent game. Until the would-be indie cannot accomplish this, he is impotent and frequently viewed as a clown/fool/idiot by average or above-average working people.

    I think

    My colleague's mentioned game is:

    Subscribe to Construct videos now

    Official website design was made by a web-designer, all other work, including all graphics, programming or rather Blender GameEngine scripting was done by him:

    Official Game Site

  • I agree that polishing is necessary, and the idea isn't worth much. Average ideas with great implementations can be very successful, while great ideas implemented poorly won't.

    mercy thanks for sharing the very inspiring story. Great thing your colleagues are doing, it's nice that they have the skills and resources to pull that through.

    Regarding the fire however, I think it can come from many places, and the existing wealth and power aren't necessarily a requirement. Hell, even the frustration (caused by the circumstances you describe) can be turned to light the fire. It just takes some persistence, practice, and observation

  • [...] eyeliner: I think it's quite ambitious. My goal is to make $1 <img src="smileys/smiley4.gif" border="0" align="middle"> then I'll see where I take it from there.

    [...]

    I'm hoping people will start sharing their success stories (however little) at monetizing games, inspiring others to do the same. I for one will <img src="smileys/smiley17.gif" border="0" align="middle">

    [...]

    Cheers!

    Hey guys, bumping this thread to share my success story <img src="smileys/smiley17.gif" border="0" align="middle">, officially I reached my first goal to make $1 from games.

    <img src="http://img341.imageshack.us/img341/2706/onerd.png" border="0">

    Just made it from Kongregate ads from the two games I published there:

    Chessnut Episode 1

    Chess Logic Puzzles

    This is a great achievement! <img src="smileys/smiley17.gif" border="0" align="middle"> and I hope it will inspire others to start taking this seriously. In some circumstances, $1 is worth more than $1000. This is one of those circumstances.

    Good luck everyone! As for me, moving on to the next target: $10.

    Cheers!

  • Geo, that great story <img src="smileys/smiley4.gif" border="0" align="middle" />, good luck for your next target!

  • Geo

    Good to read, man! I'm fully engrossed on my app and am at the point where gathering resources is tricky (images and sounds).

    I've developed my 'barebones' system for rapid expansion, so I just need to copy a few functions here and there.

    I'm just adding images and making a few buttons. My artistic skills are lacking, though. :p

  • Hey Geo, could you share the information of how much accesses your games had on Kongregate? And in what period of time?

  • I have had very little success on kongregate, unfortunately. Your game simple gets swept up in the hundreds uploaded...

  • It's not so different for the majority of iOS AppStore games, actually, unless they get favourably reviewed or go viral, which means they are either extremely original (or really dumb, but that is occasionally the same thing <img src="smileys/smiley17.gif" border="0" align="middle">) or outstandingly polished. Following some blogs and posts by hobbyist iOS devs (not companies like Playtrix, Gameloft, etc.), it seems many get an average of 1-2 sales a day, at .99, and sometimes not even that, even if they achieve hundreds or more downloads a day.

    But I think it's nevertheless worthwhile sticking with it, even if you have so far only made a dollar. You gain experience and skill, and even if you may not end up making a living with your own games, you may at some point get to do contract work. HTML5 is going to be huge, after all. (Might want look a little into Javascript or the SDK, too, or the BrowserQuest source.)

  • Thanks guys for the feedback and everything.

    eyeliner: good luck, and keep us posted. I like to release "early and often", meaning that at some point I draw a line on the todo list and say "this is for this version, the rest is for the next" - and I just publish one version. I find this strategy works better for me than waiting to have the entire project "finished finished", all polished, everything in place etc. Most likely I'd never publish anything if I did it just the way I want it, because I don't have enough time and energy to spend on games (yet).

    Animmaniac: The stats are on the Kongregate game pages <img src="smileys/smiley1.gif" border="0" align="middle" /> approx. 1000 "plays" for both of them combined, one released on Feb 13 (1.5 months ago) and the other Mar 15 (2 weeks ago).

    sqiddster, Mivo: I agree with Mivo that it's the same as with all stores, portals etc. You get most "plays" (views, downloads etc) while the game is on the "new" page, then it just stalls. There are ways though (there must be <img src="smileys/smiley4.gif" border="0" align="middle" />) to get past this too (social stuff comes to mind, like facebook sharing of achievements etc). Will have to look into that.

    It's definitely worthwhile sticking with it, it's a learning process and there's so much to learn. I think it is possible to make a living, and even a fortune <img src="smileys/smiley4.gif" border="0" align="middle" />, I'm just a few orders of magnitude away, I need to find a way to scale this a few times. This game making craft is no different than any other craft, business, or area of life for that matter.

    BrowserQuest looks great, I see it for the first time, I'll have to finish it some day. It reminds me of World of Warcraft. Thanks for the link.

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