Ask HN: Why my game studio failed?

1 points by Nyozz 12y ago ↗ HN

URL: http://www.gamodo.eu

Hello, My name is Henry Keller from Germany. Two years ago I started a indie game studio called "Gamodo Games" by myself without any help and I thought I could make a living with game development. I developed some causal games nothing fancy and nothing innovative but with a better production value then some other Top Games in the Windows phone market. With my game "Furry Jump" I even beat Doodle Jump and was in the top 10 over 4 weeks. All other games didn't get very popular maybe because of no marketing at all. I've won some prices but never got the attention from users. I've earned like 2000 maybe less.

so why my start-up failed? I'm mean, I know my games are not that awesome, but I saw worse games making more money then my games together. After one year I had to quit my business. I'm working for a marketing agency right know making games. And they give me the job because of gamodo games so it kinda worked out for the best, but I would like to know what did I wrong?

If someone have some constructive critics it would help me a lot.

2 comments

[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 17.9 ms ] thread

jeffmould 12y ago ↗

Looked at your site and it looks nice and your games look good. Hard to say why you failed exactly. But what I can say is that just because you start a business does not necessarily mean it will be successful, even if you have a great product and proven team (see http://chrishateswriting.com/post/74083032842/today-my-start... as an example). You might have answered part of your problem in your own statement when you say you did not do any marketing.

My suggestion, is to keep working at it (it appears you have a good talent at developing games), and start working to get the word out via forums, blogging, Twitter, Facebook, etc... Start building a fan base around your individual products.

advertising 12y ago ↗

If you're making slightly better versions of games that are already popular, it's got to be hard to beat their inertia.

You know you can make games, I would work on coming up with something more original/different than what you did.

Being at an agency at least will help keep you in a creative mindset until something comes along.