I’ve been working to build my own business making racing games for almost 4 years while being a full-time software engineer. Last week I left the world of comfy paying jobs and am now a full-time independent game developer.Risk MitigationThis is the hardest and scariest thing I’ve tackled in my life, and that comes after being circled and bluff charged by a bear while hiking 2,178 miles. Success is not certain, but failing to try is worse.Degree in Game Design & Development.15+ years of experience building games, 5 in industry.3 to 4 year runway (living costs) in savings.Money for business expenses, accountant, lawyer, new PC etc.A supportive community of developer friends.I live-stream my business efforts sharing the good and the bad of running a game development business. This has provided some financial benefits as well and will help keep the runway from disappearing so quickly.The Last 4 YearsI woke up at 6:00 am almost every morning to do 3 hours of game development before my day job as a software-engineer. Many evenings and weekends were also added to this effort totaling more than 5600 hours!Released my first “game” in 2018 and made my first sale! The objective was to get something out into the world to make $1. Second project was to be released “as-is” after 4 months of development however after 8 months the scope blew out of control and instead I put it on hold/canceled.I pitched a game to publishers and got a few nibbles, though didn’t continue fishing long enough to reel one in. While experimenting a prototype game found a goldmine of fun so I pivoted plans and polished that prototype further. After 3 months I released my first product and took the release cycle far more seriously than the first. While it hasn’t recouped development costs, it did better than my expectations.I’ve been learning all the business stuff as I go. Please leave any advice you have for someone jumping out the window! see hubwealthy.com/wealthy
0 comments:
Post a Comment