What would it take for you to become an indie developer?

DKLond

On a serious level, what would it take for you to drop whatever you're doing now - and just go for it?

Cleffy

Money, around $100k.

Vrika

Skill, knowledge, experience, motivation and money.

SpottyGekko

DKLond said:

On a serious level, what would it take for you to drop whatever you're doing now - and just go for it?

A gun to the head ?

I've been a software developer all my life, but in business applications, not games. At least in business apps, you never get death threats from users...  

DKLond

DMKano said:

There is nothing in the world that would make me want to be a developer of any sort. I am happy being a locust. 

If someone wants to be an indie developer all they need is desire and skill obviously  - because you can develop a game alone, many indies have done so.

Another option is rpgmaker.

If skill and desire was enough, I'd be making games all day long.

Ambition and energy, sadly, are needed too

But I'm not asking what it takes - but what would make others do it.

Just curious.

Sovrath

DKLond said:

DMKano said:

There is nothing in the world that would make me want to be a developer of any sort. I am happy being a locust. 

If someone wants to be an indie developer all they need is desire and skill obviously  - because you can develop a game alone, many indies have done so.

Another option is rpgmaker.

If skill and desire was enough, I'd be making games all day long.

Ambition and energy, sadly, are needed too

But I'm not asking what it takes - but what would make others do it.

Just curious.

It comes down to a money thing. I would want all the money that is required for every year of development, figuring in delays including an extra year or two as a buffer assuming I had figured out about how many people could feasibly buy the game and whether or not, once those sales happened, I would be in the black and would be able to continue with another game.

Righteous_Rock

Reliable income, benefits, skills. I would have a great time bringing games to life. I'm very creative and when I make things I'm passionate about them and can't wait to show them off. I work like a man possessed when it comes to projects. Game development would be an ultimate canvass for bringing my ideas to life.

CrazKanuk

More children! I currently have 4 boys and I've been teaching them about software development, using game development as a means to capture their attention. Things are coming along, but they tend to have the collective attention span of a poodle at the best of times "squirrel !!!". So I figure if I had another 10 or 20, we might be able to have a releasable game in the next decade  

It would probably take a collective interest and a glimmer of hope. Oh! And a can of unicorn farts. 

SEANMCAD

SpottyGekko said:

DKLond said:

On a serious level, what would it take for you to drop whatever you're doing now - and just go for it?

A gun to the head ?

I've been a software developer all my life, but in business applications, not games. At least in business apps, you never get death threats from users...  

and then there is the other thing.

I am a few years from early retirement, I have been behind a computer working for 24 years (10 years of which coding), do i want to spend my freedom coding or would I rather learn archery and travel the country.

sunandshadow

I am a hobbyist game designer, so the step from there to indie game designer would only be finding a teammate who wanted to lead development of a game that I had designed, or who wanted me to collaborate with someone on a new design.  I can do that from home in my free time, so I don't charge for that.  Concept art and script writing take a bit more work but I'd be happy to supply them in support of one of my own designs.  Buuuut, the question asked is about being a developer.  What, precisely, does that mean I'd have to do?  I'm not a programmer, aside from doing some basic scripting of quests and combat AI.  I'm not a professional quality artist either, though I could probably improve my 3D art to something usable for a game if I had 20k to throw at software and tools.  I don't have the personal drive and motivational and organizational skills, or the knowledge about engines and other development topics, to be a competent lead developer; no amount of money would fix that.  So finding such a person to work with would be the main requirement besides a pile of money.

SEANMCAD

sunandshadow said:

I am a hobbyist game designer, so the step from there to indie game designer would only be finding a teammate who wanted to lead development of a game that I had designed, or who wanted me to collaborate with someone on a new design.  I can do that from home in my free time, so I don't charge for that.  Concept art and script writing take a bit more work but I'd be happy to supply them in support of one of my own designs.  Buuuut, the question asked is about being a developer.  What, precisely, does that mean I'd have to do?  I'm not a programmer, aside from doing some basic scripting of quests and combat AI.  I'm not a professional quality artist either, though I could probably improve my 3D art to something usable for a game if I had 20k to throw at software and tools.  I don't have the personal drive and motivational and organizational skills, or the knowledge about engines and other development topics, to be a competent lead developer; no amount of money would fix that.  So finding such a person to work with would be the main requirement besides a pile of money.

to add to your question.

What if  person created a rule set (as you have), organized it (as I assume you have) and put it in a book form as a D20 game. would one then be a indie game developer? I say yes

Thus given that it sounds to me like you have about 80% of above then it sounds like indie developer to me.

anyway, more of a question on my part given the example.

sunandshadow

SEANMCAD said:

sunandshadow said:

Buuuut, the question asked is about being a developer.  What, precisely, does that mean I'd have to do?

to add to your question.

What if  person created a rule set (as you have), organized it (as I assume you have) and put it in a book form as a D20 game. would one then be a indie game developer? I say yes

Thus given that it sounds to me like you have about 80% of above then it sounds like indie developer to me.

anyway, more of a question on my part given the example.

That's true; if I wanted to spend about 3 months worth of my free time putting together a roleplaying handbook I'd be able to self-publish it as an ebook.  No money needed unless I wanted to try to promote it.  If I wanted to spend 6 months on it I could have actual illustrations.  Would anyone buy this book, well, with no promotional campaign it wouldn't sell much.  If I gave it away for free, does it then not count as an indie game?  There are a lot of interesting facets to this question.  But my guess is that the functional answer is going to be: "We're talking about video game development here, (maybe MMO development specifically?) and an indie roleplaying system developer just isn't the same as an indie game developer."

SEANMCAD

sunandshadow said:

SEANMCAD said:

sunandshadow said:

Buuuut, the question asked is about being a developer.  What, precisely, does that mean I'd have to do?

to add to your question.

What if  person created a rule set (as you have), organized it (as I assume you have) and put it in a book form as a D20 game. would one then be a indie game developer? I say yes

Thus given that it sounds to me like you have about 80% of above then it sounds like indie developer to me.

anyway, more of a question on my part given the example.

That's true; if I wanted to spend about 3 months worth of my free time putting together a roleplaying handbook I'd be able to self-publish it as an ebook.  No money needed unless I wanted to try to promote it.  If I wanted to spend 6 months on it I could have actual illustrations.  Would anyone buy this book, well, with no promotional campaign it wouldn't sell much.  If I gave it away for free, does it then not count as an indie game?  There are a lot of interesting facets to this question.  But my guess is that the functional answer is going to be: "We're talking about video game development here, (maybe MMO development specifically?) and an indie roleplaying system developer just isn't the same as an indie game developer."

yeah and the question came up for me because its exactly what I am thinking about doing. 

Going the PnP route with an idea I have. I am a programmer by trade but I dont want to go the full video game route becaues I dont want to code all night after coding all day. Now given my skill set I could make a online resource of the PnP which would kinda make it more of a webbased version of a PnP game? anyway been thinking about doing that

GrayPhilosopher

Financial stability and the skills required

Agnhar

In my case a totally brand new brain.

ArChWind

I worked on one for like 9 years before realizing it is just a waste of my time. Moved on to other stuff that ACTUALLY pays me to do it. Current project is financing the next project but it is NOT MMO.

SEANMCAD

ArChWind said:

I worked on one for like 9 years before realizing it is just a waste of my time. Moved on to other stuff that ACTUALLY pays me to do it. Current project is financing the next project but it is NOT MMO.

My next project which I hope to start in 2 more years is driving my RV all over american where ever I want to or not if I dont want to. My dream of doing going where I want, when I want...oh yeaha

sunandshadow

SEANMCAD said:

Going the PnP route with an idea I have. I am a programmer by trade but I dont want to go the full video game route becaues I dont want to code all night after coding all day. Now given my skill set I could make a online resource of the PnP which would kinda make it more of a webbased version of a PnP game? anyway been thinking about doing that

The main reason I haven't done a book (which would be for an email/forum friendly system with dice used only by the GM) is that I don't play non-computer RPGs so I don't really know how many people still use book-based systems at all, or what they are looking for in a new system, or if they would prefer not to have to learn a new system.  Nor do I have any friends who have asked me to write up my system because they want to play with it.   Meanwhile I am really in the mood for a FF-style PS1/2 era RPG with the satisfying kind of grinding and some ancient ruins containing the clues to some giant mystery...

waynejr2

DKLond said:

On a serious level, what would it take for you to drop whatever you're doing now - and just go for it?

97.8 million dollars.

GeezerGamer

A real job offer

cameltosis

I already work in IT as a technical development manager (managing a team of programmers) and I've been a programmer most of my adult life. 

There is literally nothing you could do to get me to be a programmer again (except if it was the only job I could get - I'd rather be a programmer than homeless!). 

However, if I had a bunch of friends who wanted to make games and at least one of them was a talented programmer then I'd be up for it. I'd willingly learn modelling skills and I'd love to do the design work / plan out mechanics / project management / marketing / finance. I'd also need the game idea to be something I genuinely believed in. 

DKLond

cameltosis said:

I already work in IT as a technical development manager (managing a team of programmers) and I've been a programmer most of my adult life. 

There is literally nothing you could do to get me to be a programmer again (except if it was the only job I could get - I'd rather be a programmer than homeless!). 

However, if I had a bunch of friends who wanted to make games and at least one of them was a talented programmer then I'd be up for it. I'd willingly learn modelling skills and I'd love to do the design work / plan out mechanics / project management / marketing / finance. I'd also need the game idea to be something I genuinely believed in. 

Yeah, I know what you mean.

I can "borrow" code and merge it with bits and pieces of my own, but it'll never be my passion. I hate how coding something ends up being 95% detective work and 5% progress.

I can do decent UI art, I'm an ok writer - and I'm willing to challenge anyone in terms of creative game design - but coding is damned hard work.

cameltosis

DKLond said:

cameltosis said:

I already work in IT as a technical development manager (managing a team of programmers) and I've been a programmer most of my adult life. 

There is literally nothing you could do to get me to be a programmer again (except if it was the only job I could get - I'd rather be a programmer than homeless!). 

However, if I had a bunch of friends who wanted to make games and at least one of them was a talented programmer then I'd be up for it. I'd willingly learn modelling skills and I'd love to do the design work / plan out mechanics / project management / marketing / finance. I'd also need the game idea to be something I genuinely believed in. 

Yeah, I know what you mean.

I can "borrow" code and merge it with bits and pieces of my own, but it'll never be my passion. I hate how coding something ends up being 95% detective work and 5% progress.

I can do decent UI art, I'm an ok writer - and I'm willing to challenge anyone in terms of creative game design - but coding is damned hard work.

Lol, I agree about detective work!

I also seem to have an issue remembering languages. Even at school, I was usually top of my class in just about everything except languages, I could just never remember all the words!

But yeh, the detective side annoys me. Develop locally - takes a while but get everything working. Move to development server, nothing works. Spend hours / days / weeks searching for solution, internet comes close to having answers but never quite there. Error logs often point at the wrong thing. Create a duplicate of the project on the same development server but duplicate works, despite being 100% identical code. Then, deploy to live environment, something breaks again. Pull your hair out trying to fix. 

Usually turns out to be something that shouldn't break but somehow has, like PHP versions are 1 minor release apart between environments, or the process for cycling error logs is creating the new error logs with wrong permission level or something irritating like that. 


Boring, frustrating and never ending! 


When I was working in QA for a AAA games studio they actually offered me a development job for good money but I turned them down. Great team, nice enough company, but uggghhh, the thought of having to program underlying systems on a complex driving game just scared the shit out of me. You just know that someone out there would find an obscure bug that only occured on their particular hardware setup and I'd have to fix it. Screw that!

DKLond

cameltosis said:

DKLond said:

cameltosis said:

I already work in IT as a technical development manager (managing a team of programmers) and I've been a programmer most of my adult life. 

There is literally nothing you could do to get me to be a programmer again (except if it was the only job I could get - I'd rather be a programmer than homeless!). 

However, if I had a bunch of friends who wanted to make games and at least one of them was a talented programmer then I'd be up for it. I'd willingly learn modelling skills and I'd love to do the design work / plan out mechanics / project management / marketing / finance. I'd also need the game idea to be something I genuinely believed in. 

Yeah, I know what you mean.

I can "borrow" code and merge it with bits and pieces of my own, but it'll never be my passion. I hate how coding something ends up being 95% detective work and 5% progress.

I can do decent UI art, I'm an ok writer - and I'm willing to challenge anyone in terms of creative game design - but coding is damned hard work.

Lol, I agree about detective work!

I also seem to have an issue remembering languages. Even at school, I was usually top of my class in just about everything except languages, I could just never remember all the words!

But yeh, the detective side annoys me. Develop locally - takes a while but get everything working. Move to development server, nothing works. Spend hours / days / weeks searching for solution, internet comes close to having answers but never quite there. Error logs often point at the wrong thing. Create a duplicate of the project on the same development server but duplicate works, despite being 100% identical code. Then, deploy to live environment, something breaks again. Pull your hair out trying to fix. 

Usually turns out to be something that shouldn't break but somehow has, like PHP versions are 1 minor release apart between environments, or the process for cycling error logs is creating the new error logs with wrong permission level or something irritating like that. 


Boring, frustrating and never ending! 


When I was working in QA for a AAA games studio they actually offered me a development job for good money but I turned them down. Great team, nice enough company, but uggghhh, the thought of having to program underlying systems on a complex driving game just scared the shit out of me. You just know that someone out there would find an obscure bug that only occured on their particular hardware setup and I'd have to fix it. Screw that!

Hehe, yeah.

I think you really need to be in love with code to make a job out of it.

I quit Computer Science twice before I realised that would never be me

vveaver_online

Easy, money, give me enough money and I'll become a indie dev.

MrMelGibson

MisterZebub said:

GeezerGamer said:

A real job offer

Ah. Been getting those job offers where the office ends up looking like this eh?

Lol. I know that couch