Ask HN: I'm quitting my job, will create a game – any advice?
I am going to create a mobile game. I already have friend who is a graphic designer (and a gamer). We are pretty excited about some ideas and mechanics we've been exploring. I don't want to create "yet another RPG" that no one will play, but a "simple", entertaining game with a well defined business model and a well defined market target that hopefully will have enough traction to generate income. HN readers. I ask for advice! Some info you may find useful
- Country: Spain - Runaway $: (Just for me, for living) 12 - 18 months - Skills: Software engineer, programming mainly for Android and iOS, with a little of JS (Vue and friends) and a little of Spring + Big Data DBs.
Please share similar experiences, any advice regarding the project (still have not decided if Unity or Unreal Engine for instance) or just some encouraging words because I will need them.
Thanks!
121 comments
[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 195 ms ] threadGood luck! You have a great runway if you’re able to avoid common pitfalls. And even if you never make enough money you (probably) can get another software job easily.
I've worked on eight titles professionally working for game companies that never made the money spent developing them. It's a hit driven industry and there's no guarantees, unless you hit on an untapped market with a lot of pent up demand for something (like Natsume had been dropping the ball and releasing garbage Harvest Moon sequels for over a decade at that point, Stardew Valley came along and showed them what the fans actually wanted). Even then it's still not a guarantee.
I'm out of the video game industry now, but still work on my own games, but it's only a few hours a week here and there. I've had some success over the years, but not enough to justify asking my wife to let me quit my job and do it full time.
But I wasn't suggesting that it's a "good" way to make it. I just said it's something to do to help.
Games ending .io are generally fun, simple, multiplayer, and browser-based
The framework might actually turn out to be more popular than the game.
If you can create a low code framework, with a nice UI for would be developers, that is a much less crowded space than yet another (sorry) mobile game with 30% off the top just to be put into the IOS or Google Play stores.
It's not as sexy to non developers, but from a problem solvers standpoint, it sounds hard and from a UI developer stand point, it sounds difficult.
My point is, if you want to make a game, make a game. Making an engine is the ultimate distraction. You should only be considering an engine after you have a few similar games under your belt and know there's a market for it.
I have this old idea around a turn based RPG game that simulates the political scenario of a developing country in an elections year. Main individual goal: to be elected for either a city, state or federal mandate. The more turns you play, the more your chances increase of climbing the political ladder up to the presidency. Corruption, ethics and media layers add the complexity to the game.
Hey, congrats for your decision to leave the startup and starting your own thing. That's the most important aspect here.
i wasted 18 months on creating a game. it was an awful time with millions of boring-but-necessary tasks and sales on mac+linux+windows were basically zero.
if i had a time-machine, this would be the one decision i'd reverse.
At some point you’re just draining yourself of every spare hour, you’re underperforming at your day job, and you’re not really moving forward.
It’s ok to do for a month or so as a litmus test, but after that I fully support diving in full time (in full knowledge that there’s a 95% chance you’ll fail).
You can always get another job.
As for games on mobile platforms, be prepared if you will create something new and unique - it will have dozen of clones on day three after launch.
Even if you do succeed, expect growth to take 1000x more energy/focus/time than you realize. How will you get your game to stand out? Organic growth is like planting a seed. It grows slowly. But within a couple of years you'll have a tree.
When I launched my side project I had this dream of hundreds of people signing up within the first days/weeks. In reality, 1 person did. Who cancelled a few days later. However I'm now 3+ years into it and it provides for me and my loved ones.
Also... be prepared for a lot of mental games. Thoughts like "what am I doing?", "you're going to fail", etc. Being on your own takes a mental toughness I never imagined.
I put my time working on my game on my resume, and it did help me get good jobs in gaming and VR, that I probably wouldn’t have landed otherwise.
Cash is king. Nothing is more important than cash flow. A runway is not a development budget -- it is a loan in the form of opportunity cost. Always look for income at all times. And never, ever borrow money for the project.
Regarding people, keep active contacts with other people. Do not shelter behind closed doors. The world moves quickly, and if your team withdraws into its own bubble for 12 months, when you emerge you will find the world to be very different.
Regarding tech, Unity will work better than Unreal because a small team needs to reduce technical overhead as much as possible.
Regarding gameplay, favor simplicity over complexity.
Regarding art, maintain a cohesive and unique style across all elements of design.
Regarding players, start looking for them from day 1. It takes a long time and a lot of work to build a following. And remember, the players are not your customers -- they are your new boss.
It's quite hard to pick each color from color picker wheel and ending up with something decent. Much better approach is to use pre-assembled palettes like ones on lospec.com/palette-list collection. My favorite versatile palette is edg32, but others will work better for certain moods. Working with more than 30-is colors requires experience and patience.
These guidelines can help to build something that catches attention, and assets tend to be simpler and easier to iterate on.
Regarding your profile, when I read it I feel like I am already in the middle of a game.
Building a mobile game that is profitable is a bit like the lottery. You need to build something great to have a chance of winning, but building something great is not a guarantee that you will win. I realize that goes for most business ventures, but I think it is more true for mobile games than most.
What captures the imagination of an audience is in large part a guessing game and a matter of luck. You can look at past successes as a demonstration of that. Flappy Bird was a hit for a bit but it wasn't exactly clear what was so different about it than so many before. Angry Birds started an insane franchise, but I'm not sure if the same game were launched today whether it would capture the same share of the market. It is just really really ephemeral.
But making games is fun, like really fun! I had more fun in those years than I have at any other point in my career. We were banging out a game a month and having a blast doing it. This was very early so we knew there was audience enough for each of those to pay the bills, but I wouldn't count on that these days.
So all of that to say, do it! But don't expect to pay the bills doing it. Maybe you will, maybe you won't, but it is very much either rags or riches with very little predictability on where you arrive.
If I can offer any advice it is to focus on simple mechanics and keep production costs way down. Don't spend more than three months on launching your first title.
Big studios solve this by publishing games by the hundreds.
You can be successful building mobile games, just like you can win the lottery. :)
I'm wondering if indie teams should more or less do the same if they are not eyeing big hits, which few managed to pull off. Two months might be too stingy, but with the engine and tools built it might not be impossible to pull off a by quarter subscription?
The main creator of the 10mg collection was on the Eggplant Show recently and talked about releasing games quarterly and how unsustainable that is.
Every one game is quirky, vibrant and fun. For few of them I was disappointed that devs moved on instead of continuing working to bring out the potential, but after a while they would return to same concept and release a sequel.
If you target a specific group people initially, and make something 'for them'. As one of them. You place yourself in a much greater position to succeed than if you had simply made a game in the abstract in the terms of who it is for.
A great example of this is the FIFA franchise. And most of the football related franchises for that matter. It seems like if you meet the criteria of making a great game, as the OP has stated, failing within these categories is in some ways, harder than succeeding.
- Do not gamble money that you are not prepared to lose.
- Do not gamble all your money at once.
- Know when to cut your loses and quit.
- Luck does not last forever.
Don't plan to do any work in the first month.
I ended up doing a ton of cleaning / organizing my apartment. Straightened out finances. Started journaling. Tried things like taking freakishly long walks.
After a month I not only felt ready to work, but also that I had prepped a lot of useful habits!