<story><title>Indie games don&apos;t make money</title><url>http://positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2017/06/23/your-indie-game-will-flop-and-you-will-lose-money/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jharger</author><text>I always find it sad, and kind of ridiculous, when indie game developers quit everything and live on no money for years trying to make the next big thing.&lt;p&gt;Making indie games should be about doing something because you love it. Keep a day job (even part time), then design and build something cool in your spare time. Don&amp;#x27;t worry about making money, worry about making something people want to play, and it will be much more fulfilling.&lt;p&gt;The game industry, just like any industry, is all about making money. It&amp;#x27;s not fun. It&amp;#x27;s not about self-expression... but doing it as a hobby is often both! Sometimes people who do it as a hobby end up making money, and that&amp;#x27;s great, but don&amp;#x27;t go in expecting that, because as the article states, it&amp;#x27;s very unlikely to happen.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>DanHulton</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s super, super hard to work a day job and then come home and work on your game.  Not only the obvious mental difficulties that come from trying throw down 10-12 hours a day (8 at work, then 2-4 more on your game if your focus holds), but also just in opportunity cost.&lt;p&gt;Like, if you&amp;#x27;re an indie game dev you obviously enjoy games, but making your game leaves precious little time left for &lt;i&gt;playing&lt;/i&gt; games, and you can frequently feel like that time spent on games is a waste that could have been spent working - even if you &lt;i&gt;know&lt;/i&gt; you&amp;#x27;re feeling burnt out and just need a night relaxing.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m definitely not advocating bailing on your job and betting the farm and working through poverty while making Minecraft But With Cars or whatever, but I can totally see why it&amp;#x27;s attractive.&lt;p&gt;Source: I&amp;#x27;ve been working on an indie game for the last year and a bit (&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;chatandslash.com&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;chatandslash.com&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;) and I&amp;#x27;m currently trying to decide if picking up Nier: Automata on sale is worth it because I may not end up allocating time to play it before the next sale.</text></comment>
<story><title>Indie games don&apos;t make money</title><url>http://positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2017/06/23/your-indie-game-will-flop-and-you-will-lose-money/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jharger</author><text>I always find it sad, and kind of ridiculous, when indie game developers quit everything and live on no money for years trying to make the next big thing.&lt;p&gt;Making indie games should be about doing something because you love it. Keep a day job (even part time), then design and build something cool in your spare time. Don&amp;#x27;t worry about making money, worry about making something people want to play, and it will be much more fulfilling.&lt;p&gt;The game industry, just like any industry, is all about making money. It&amp;#x27;s not fun. It&amp;#x27;s not about self-expression... but doing it as a hobby is often both! Sometimes people who do it as a hobby end up making money, and that&amp;#x27;s great, but don&amp;#x27;t go in expecting that, because as the article states, it&amp;#x27;s very unlikely to happen.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>vvanders</author><text>The amount of work to even build the simplest game is monumental. Saying that you should build something in your spare time is like saying that you should just make the days 30 hours long instead of 24.&lt;p&gt;I know of &lt;i&gt;one&lt;/i&gt; person that&amp;#x27;s done this and it was a brutal affair for them.&lt;p&gt;(Source: I used to work in the industry and stay on top of the indie scene)</text></comment>