How much $$ an indei makes a year?

[Shah]

Ok, Just for curiousity. I am new to (upper level) of game development so I don't know many aspects of game development. I found this forums will be perfect so I asked.

There will be many guys here who released there commercial games. If you are one of those then please share how much $$ you made!

[CuteAlien]

Depends entirely on how much you sell and how much you invest in your games. The full range from losing money, to making a living, to actually earning something. I haven't been on sales-portals for a few years, but if you seel on your own homepage (where you have to figure out how to get people to notice it) you can get payment service like plimus where you keep 90% of the money people pay. Other larger portals you might get 30%-60%. If you manage to get your game into shops somehow then you're maybe at 10%-15% of the sales price. Stuff like taxes then depends on your country.

[Shah]

I generally like to write stories. So Can I sell these (Action, Suspence and FUNNY) stories to game developers etc?

To tell you truth, I actually find game development to give my words a world.


(and by the way, AMAZINGLY friendly forums)

[eye776]

Many make at most a few hundred $/year for the first 2-3 years (if not longer).
Some hit it big (2D Boy, rovio), but a lot also end up losing money.

I'm pretty sure almost nobody wants to buy a game story, maybe a game design
document but even that's a stretch. Most devs already have a full drawer (or more) of
ideas and stories they never get to put in practice (like me, for example) because of a lack
of time (funds, etc.).

It's best to learn some basic algorithms, start with Tetrominoes, Snake or Pong.
After that go for a 2d platformer.
If you can get the hang of it (when projects no longer take forever to finish), THEN start
thinking about tower defense, 3d platformers, etc.

[CuteAlien]

No you can't just sell stories or game-designs (at least I've never heard of any team buying a design). You have to work your way up until teams let you design their games. And you also need some experience in game development anyway to learn what game-design is about, you don't learn that from playing games :-) But if you like writing stories maybe you should rather consider writing books. Or trying to get into movie-script writing (I've also met one game-designer who worked as writer for tv-series before).

[ACE247]

I always can't help but wonder about how much time we are actually using making games, and what else could achieved instead.

[Granyte]

or you could ty to join a team wich need a side quest designer?

my team and i already have basic scenario for our 3 first game the details are not yet finalised but we didn't really need and "writer" to get there.

and ont he money side as wehave not yet released anything i have no idea how much we can make what i know is that i made 5 bucks from the ads on my blog and on my video this month hoefully trafic on both of these will continue to increase and ill make even more

[Cube_]

Well it depends, a lot of indie game-devs never get a single sale, and then we have Marcus 'notch' Persson, who made a game that sold over 4 million copies while still in BETA, now I don't know how much he advertised it, but I know I hear of it through word of mouth (the best advertisement btw).

[Shah]

What about a team of 3 working on Michael Jackson's 3D game? or Own Super Hero game?

Will it be a great Idea?

[Cube_]

It will be great if you can make it great, ANY idea can be made into a fun game, no matter how silly it sounds. but since you don't know if it will be a good idea, I'd say no, and here's my reasons for why:
a) Game design requires experience and skill, I doubt that you have this since you have to ask
b) No matter how good the designer is you still need to code it/have someone code it, I don't know what coding skills you have, but I assume that they aren't that great.
c) It requires a good sense of imagination, I don't doubt that you have this though

Oh, and inb4 anyone calls me a hypocrite for not releasing anything and still giving advise I will give my status on the different points:
a) I never said I am a good designer, still trying to get the hang of making good game elements
b) I am a mediocre programmer, but I grow in skill at a daily basis
c) I have this one!

[Shah]

You guessed 75% right!
I admit I don't have much expereince and have unused skills that I KNOW are "ridiculous" and useless without experience.
Programming, In VB6 I have done (easy) things like MAME frontend, Windows Optimizer, Screen Recorder, Bat & VBS IDE, simple TV3d Apps etc.
Design, do you mean to write like when to start what,what will happen when some things is done? who is in game? If user press X then what character will do?
For C++ I am learning it. So you are half right again.

c is full right

[CuteAlien]

Design is a lot about learning about all the restrictions and how to still make a good game knowing those. You need to have a good idea of what is technically possible and how long stuff will take to implement. A common error for new designer is for example thinking they can put all kind of stuff in games, not knowing that good design is rather about what to remove than about what to add.

Concrete designs are rather different from company to company. Although today a lot of companies have rather standardized formulas. Some will have every detail written down, including each animation, each sound-sample, each text and a sketch for each map. Others will start with rather rough designs and add more in stages while working on the game (which gives more flexibility, but also adds a lot of risk to the project failing completely). So I've seen designs which were 2 pages long and I've seen designs which were over 100 pages long. One exceptional designer I've met did even go as far as implementing the core game mechanics in excel and trying out new ideas and calculations in excel all the time.

There are ways to learn all this, for example today we have a lot of game design schools. Although the best way to learn is still by doing. Meaning you start with small games (Pacman, Snake, Space Invaders, ...) and try to do them really well and complete (sound, graphics, input, menus, highscores - maybe even an intro, extro and if you're adventurous you might even try to modify the principle in small ways, for example giving pacman an energy bar for faster running or the ability to kick down or build some walls or stuff like that).