Admire anyone who can go full time into the game industry, which is one of the most competitive anywhere. And to do so as an independent is a high challenge. To pull that off for five years deserves great merit. Anyone who has published games to Apple's app store knows how hard it is to see any money from it.
Game development seems to be one of the most competitive and least forgiving corners of the larger software development industry.
A long time ago, games are what originally motivated me to learn to program. But some point along the way, I came to believe (whether true or false) that game development was really not a very enticing career path, both in terms of compensation and technical & creative challenges open to solve.
I wonder how many others came into software along the same path.
I was a game developer for 20+ years (Looking Glass Studios, Harmonix) and boy oh boy were there a lot of technical and creative challenges. I ended up leaving largely to reduce stress and because I wanted to try doing something else with my career, but if what you want are technical and creative challenges, it's a pretty good job.
For my own sanity, I would much rather continue writing JavaScript and Golang apps than do full-fledged game development. It's incredible that some people are able to deal with it, and not have their spouse leave them.
By the way, if a mod is here: I think I accidentally downvoted the above comment. (More precisely, my cat and Vimium did.) I tried to reverse it but I doubt it worked. Please remove the downvote if it's still there.
[...] but if what you want are technical and creative challenges [...]
This is so true. I developed a space shooter for iOS, and it was quite a challenge. This was my first game, and what I found to be quite interesting is just how much is involved in simply finishing a game. For example, every little detail that it takes to make something commercial-quality, like graphics [1], compelling music, game-play, rock-solid frame-rate, user interface, all of the timers that need to be managed, transitions between levels, and in my case, some interesting mathematics (I implemented a Catmull-Rom algorithm to generate flight paths for the enemy drones on one level)... the list goes on.
[1] Incidentally, the article quoted Daniel Cook. For my game, I used Tyrian graphics that he created. He made them available under a Creative Commons license.
I also started with game development for Windows phone using XNA, switched to marmalade then Unity. Stopped creating games a few months ago thinking mostly like you plus wondering how/if my games are solving real user problems or whether they are only providing distractions.
However, searching for companies looking for developers with game development background and familiarity with Unity, I found a few startups who are either using games to fund and solve real user needs or using Unity to create educational/informative visualizations for museums and businesses. This led me to change my mind and return to creating games and hopefully start working with one of these startups
>wondering how/if my games are solving real user problems or whether they are only providing distractions.
Keeping ourselves entertained on this planet is a very real user problem. It has been a core part of all human cultures for millennia. As we become more productive at producing all the essentials for survival, entertainment will take an ever growing share of our economies.
Entertainment is the one industry that I'm sure will still exist in a 100 years and employing people. I would be very surprised if it were not at least 50% of our economies at that point.
I would make the opposite prediction. Entertainment is becoming cheaper and more abundant all the time due to computerization, and this is happening faster than in industries like energy and health care. So I wouldn't be surprised if we end up with a lot more and better entertainment, but it seems unlikely that we'll pay a larger percentage of income for it. More likely, people will be paying less and getting more.
I work for a company just like this. We use Unity (and lots of other game tech) to make games for health, mostly for physical therapy and rehab. There are interesting problems to solve in this space and we're putting good energy into the world with our work. And, we're hiring! If you (or anyone else reading this) is looking for a great job and know a good amount of Unity/C#, drop us a line at jobs@respondwell.com. Remote work is fine, too.
> I found a few startups who are either using games to fund and solve real user needs or using Unity to create educational/informative visualizations for museums and businesses. This led me to change my mind and return to creating games and hopefully start working with one of these startups
That sounds amazing, I think there is a lot of opportunity in repurposing Game UI for non-game environments. A lot of gameplay UI is optimized for common actions & being intuitive to use
An interesting project leveraging games for "real work" is Verigames. It's a DARPA-funded project that creates casual games that drive a crowd-source formal verification system for software.
> both in terms of compensation and technical & creative challenges open to solve
Can you name other "career paths" where are more technical & creative challenges open to solve?
I am working on an indie game project right now and worked for a big corporation in a total different sector before and I must say, that when you talk about compensation, you might be right (at least, when you are working in a company), ...
... but when thinking about technical & creative challenges, game development always wins for me hands-down in my personal experience.
> Can you name other "career paths" where are more technical & creative challenges open to solve?
Fair question. Once I was in graduate school (math program), I went down the scientific/large-scale computing path. It isn't a very large field of course, compared to consumer-facing software. It was more of a personal drive.
Oh, of course there are some areas. I also can name the one or other. But when you want max-out your chances, to get hired and are not a star-programmer in such an area, you will possibly find yourself in some dull and boring area, how I found myself one day (I must admit, that I had total different expectations about the job, but that is a long story by itself ...).
From my experience, I think compensation might be more prevalent when you are indie because you are less likely to have a stable income compared to working in a company. But I may be wrong :)
I did not want to touch that topic, since there are different things to consider and experiences can differ.
I mentioned only working in a company, since from that what I saw in my country, compensation for ordinary developers in a company are far less than when working in other sectors as software developer (in deed, I do not know any sector, where payment is less than in the Gaming industry). At least one plus is that the Gaming industry is more likely to take people without formal education (which might also be connected to the lower wages).
Of course, when working in a company, you are less likely to not be able to pay your rent any more.
Compensation in the games industry varies wildly. In my opinion, this is because there are many people who have <5 years experience and few people who have 10+ years. The veterans have high salaries and other forms of compensation (profit sharing, bonuses) while newbies are given less than in an average consulting/web shop.
I guess so. But it is a little difficult to get data from veteran people, since those figures are most often negotiated in silence. All I can see are the entry level offerings and they are in deed often below those for web-developers. I think, it is similar as in other areas -- when you manage to be seen as key-developer, you are in a much better negotiation position -- but for that, you must be either a star from the beginning or done some real great tasks in the company.
You don't need to be a star to make good six figures. You just need to be good enough to get into a top-tier studio.
While financial data is hard to obtain in general, luckily, the Activision lawsuit has made a lot of it available to the public, everything from project budgets to the salaries[1] is now a part of public record.
I've been out of the mainstream industry for 7 years now, but I made 6 figures when I was working with Steven Spielberg at Electronic Arts in Los Angeles. Before that, when I was at ION Storm in Austin, Texas, I wasn't that far from it. I'm usually in a lead designer / creative director position, but a really solid, senior programmer or producer earns about that much, too.
Gamasutra and GDC put together a salary survey every year. I think that's public? I would search for it.
Thanks for the info! Currently, I never worked in the gaming industry and I believe not many big studies are located in Germany. There are some online game studies in Germany, though, but I think, they pay a lot less than the big AAA studios.
There are loads of game studios in Germany, mostly smaller ones and not AAA. In general in the past few years there has been a massive shift away from AAA & huge teams.
Game development seems to be one of the most competitive and least forgiving corners of the larger software development industry.
A long time ago, games are what originally motivated me to learn to program
I suspect these two things are related.
It seems that games are one of the top reasons people learn to program, and it seems we have an oversupply of eager game devs because of it.
As for challenges in gaming, I wonder if it is like robotics. I got into electronics inspired by robotics. But it turns out robotics is not really about electronics. It's a lot of things, especially math (control theory), but the electronics part is one of the least important parts of the field, as car as I can tell. Similarly in gaming, it seems greatness has little to do with accomplishment in programming and a lot to do with story, art, music, and user experience.
I went into Waterloo Computer Engineering wanting to work in computer hardware. I quickly found out that hardware was not only insanely complex and difficult to learn, but also really, really boring (just my subjective opinion, I hope nobody takes this personally).
Thankfully, I had the option of specializing in either hardware or software in my program. I ended up choosing the latter and couldn't be happier with my choice.
Having gone through this experience has given me a new appreciation for all the incredibly smart people working on hardware. Without their hard work and innovations, our software industry wouldn't even exist.
Although if I could go back and choose a major again, I'd probably go with either Software Engineering or CompSci, because all the time I spent struggling on hardware courses could have been better spent on building up a better foundation in CompSci theory in a program with more focus.
I too got started programming games when I was around twelve. I agree it's probably the most competitive and least-forgiving areas, but it seems to have a lot more challenges, both technical and creative than any other area as well. I'm curious why you think it has less.
Most games are generic crap. I've seen crap games make money, but I haven't seen a great game fail. People see Flappy Bird and want to imitate it because it's easy. Those who work hard don't rely on luck can still build a sustainable business. See also https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=45&v=1BCg31KVJok
It is falsifiable though. All you'd need is for someone to notice that a game that has been lingering in obscurity for years is actually great and start bringing attention to it.
There many games that only achieved success years after release (for example Psychonauts). It's the same thing as with films (my favourite: Blade Runner).
This is logical nitpicking and I don't even think you're right. It just implies that of all the games I've seen no great one failed. A game can be great by an arbitrary measure and still fail comercially.
I agree for the most part, but great games do fail even on the AAA side. See Psychonauts, Beyond Good & Evil, Okami... Critically acclaimed and loved by gamers, but commercial failures.
I'd guess it's more common in mobile and indie, but don't know for sure. I'd be really curious to see an in-depth analysis of it.
Also thanks for your comment, that's the reply I was hoping for. I think a lot of the reasons why and how games fail (commercially) have changed with things like social media and increased usage of stock game engines. Unfortunately most of the post mortems of failed (indie) games I've read are of rather bad games. This is what I've meant when I said I've never heard of a great failed game. The most vocal group are people with a bad game who feel like they're entitled to earn millions (rethoric hyperbole intended).
Okami was rereleased on a newer console at one point wasn't it? I think it probably did a little better.
But yeah, in general, I think that because AAA games cost so much to make and usually cost more to buy, they have to cater to the masses more in order to be successful, whereas indie game devs are more like startups.... lean and mean. So, they don't require the same level of sales to be a success, and they are also free to make more niche and obscure games.
Being "great" (whatever that means) has nothing whatsoever to do with success. There are plenty of "great" things, games included, that fail. The whole idea of "building a better mouse-trap and people will beat a path to your door" is a fantasy. And this is particularly true for any app --game or not-- in something like Apple's App Store.
You can take crap, add great marketing and turn it into solid cash-flow.
In an ecosystem like the app store any app without a solid and aggressive marketing program is almost guaranteed to fail.
Yes, "great" is better than "lame" but they don't succeed or fail on their own.
Agreed. This point comes up frequently, and nobody's able to point to more than the tiniest handful of genuinely great games that have failed commercially. I think we can at least say that 99.9% of failed games are not very good.
Regardless, if you're making something special, you're in a much better position to be able to promote it. In business terms, go for the niche that's not currently being served, and execute well.
Do that, and the marketing is easy. Games journalists want to know about unique games that they'll love. They definitely don't want to cover the ten thousandth mediocre clone of whatever's popular at the moment.
Battlecruiser 3000AD, Beyond Good & Evil, Brütal Legend, Grim Fandango, The Last Express, Psychonauts, and Shenmue are often said to be pretty good.
Also, 500 iOS games per day. Mostly, games fail because it's cut-throat. Yeah, a lot are generic, but some are probably pretty good.
What's the standard of "great"? Popular? Well reviewed? In your opinion? Because there's well-reviewed games that flopped, and there's games I've personally liked that didn't make much money. There's even reasonably popular games that are complete commercial failures.
Yes, if you have a AAA company, and a AAA marketing budget, it will drive some sales. But even then, they can flop.
The mistake many developers make is that they'll just make a fun game, upload it on the App Store/Play Store with a naive hope that it will get viral, and they'll get money.
The reality is that mobile gaming is extremely competitive right now and you mainly have to work on getting your game known, understand how to monetize it, analyze the behavior of your users to optimize every important metric.
Sadly, this is way less interesting and fun for us, the devs. Unfortunately this is how it works. Look at every big mobile gaming company.
So it's not that it's really hard, it's just not something we like to do.
> Sadly, this is way less interesting and fun for us, the devs. Unfortunately this is how it works
I'm finishing up my first game now and I'm finding that monetizing and promoting it is going to be much less fun then building it was. This is a side project for me so interesting and fun is more important then money but I think I'm going to put in the effort to try to monetize and promote the game because I think it will be a good learning experience. And because my kids tell me my game is great!
> So it's not that it's really hard, it's just not something we like to do.
I think it's hard. I think it's REALLY hard - but I'm more than happy to learn, I just don't know what to do. And that's after reading Tim Ferris, signing up to various blog sites and reading as much as possible.
There seams to be plenty of books on marketing theory out there; but very little in the way of practical, actionable advice.
Can a great game fail? I guess I'm finding out right now. It's early, it's currently scary, and it could still go either way. Pure drama! Our game was released 2 days ago (Spider: Rite of the Shrouded Moon - ShroudedMoon.com). It's metacritic'ing at 94, which is stellar. It's got almost exclusively very very positive reviews on Steam and the App Store. It's the sequel to the Game of the Year in 2009, per TouchArcade, the Indie Games Festival, and Apple themselves. Sounds like a guaranteed hit, right? So far it's doing 1/3 the business of any of our prior games, despite an App Store banner (not as good as ones we've had in the past but still - we're super spoiled, very few companies get one). This is definitely our best game, we truly poured our hearts and souls into it, we are a highly respected company (called Tiger Style), and players are responding super well to it.
So what's different? Well most notably, there are probably 20-30x more indie development studios in the market than there were when we started in 2008. I've heard hundreds of games come out on the App Store EVERY DAY. Angry Birds 2, one of the biggest properties ever, is free and it came out last week. This feels like a quiet time on Steam, but so far we have little traction there, and you need to demonstrate sales before Steam gives you main carousel promotion. Gaming press is overwhelmed with things to write about, so although they've been interested, we don't have many reviews from them yet. We've got lots of Lets Play and YouTubers, but how many sales does 500 views convert into?
Honestly, in the past we've been like "It's fine. We make great games that people love. We'll just release it, and the audience will find it." That was true in 2009 when we released Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor with literally no promotion whatsoever. It was less true in 2012 when we released Waking Mars (alongside Outwitters, if you're out there Alex!), but still the App Store sustained us and the Steam market eventually found and loved us and gave us a few dollars. But the worry is that in 2015, no matter how good your game is, the audience has way way way way too many amazing games to choose between.
We're currently far behind, as just one example, a game about programming in Assembly language. It's probably amazing, I can't wait to try it. And that's the problem. So many things to play, competing for your attention.
SO! What does the dramatic near future look like for us? Well, I think we have major piles of new press reviews coming in on Monday and Tuesday. That will definitely help with awareness. And we're pushing on some of our more unique features in hopes of being recognized as newsworthy (eg - it uses your local real world time and weather and mirrors them in the game, it's based on a real historical secret society that you have to research in real life to learn the deepest secrets, many many layers of mystery and gameplay). We're asking our tastemaker and other well respected developer friends to help spread the word. I believe with enough awareness we're back in business - it's happened for us before. But if that doesn't pay off by the end of the week, very few people will write about us after that. So our hope at that point would be to be a "long tail game" that wins awards and winds up on "best games you didn't play last year" lists. It might pay the bills, or not, and it certainly isn't what we hoped for.
Alex - if you're out there - I've been in indie 7 years, before the indie revolution really started. I was in mainstream for 11 years before that. It's been crazy watching the market as we worked on this game. It's hard to target a market this volatile when the game you make takes 2+ years to make. By the time you're done, everything is different. So, yeah, I relate to a lot of what you wrote, and thanks for sharing! -Randy
One issue might be your landing page for the game in the App Store.
The static images and their text descriptions do not convey what the game is about. e.g. Platform action, puzzle solving. The description section helps, but I'm not sure how many potential customers go past the images as a first filter.
As someone not familiar with your previous games, it wasn't until I went and looked at the video on your website that I thought that yes, this is something I would find fun to play.
I think the reviews coming out should help to attract customers for you. That is, it will be the review that sells them, and then they'll go and buy your game, rather than making an impulsive choice while browsing the App Store.
Holy crap, you're not going to believe this, but we have a version of that video that was supposed to be on the App Store and you are the first person to point out that it's not there.
I'll go see what the heck happened.
Wow the time I spent hanging out on this thread totally just paid off. Thanks!
I'm afraid I don't have any ready advice beyond recognizing the increased relevance of youtube/twitch personalities versus traditional games media, particularly for mobile, since the release of your last game. While people with smaller followings won't have any significant impact on awareness for your game, coverage from any of the bigger personalities could transform your sales trajectory over night; just look at Five Nights at Freddy's.
I hope things turn around for Spider. Tiger Style is a star in the Austin (indie) game development scene and I am rooting for your continued success.
> But the worry is that in 2015, no matter how good your game is, the audience has way way way way too many amazing games to choose between.
And it has also become way too easy to acquire games. Back in the 1980/90's, unless I wanted a specific game, I could easily spend an hour in a store trying to decide which one game I could afford to buy.
Meanwhile, it took less than a minute to purchase Spider: Rite of the Shrouded Moon on Steam, looks like fun, cheers.
Hi Paul! Sorry, there's no demo for our game. The first Spider game is a much smaller version of the one we're releasing now - you can buy it cheap on Google Play or the App Store. If it looks good to you, the new Spider game is currently on the front page of the App Store and on Steam. You'll get much more content, way higher production quality, crazy cool new features like real local weather and time of day, etc etc..
Yeah, that's the one I'm talking about! Obviously there are not TWO games about programming in Assembly. Wait another few years and there will be, though.
To make it short: I am currently building a strategy online game as a browser-game (only a current browser and JavaScript is needed). I think, that currently most online games lack strategic/tactical depth and rely on almost all the same mechanics (city-building and build up the biggest army), with only small differences (topic, graphics and some minor mechanics are different, the basics are mostly the same).
I hope, that I can convince enough grognards that online-gaming can have depth.
