WOAH: I just quit my job to go full time indie!!!!! Yippie!

[theweirdn8]

Hey fellow Irrlichers

After seeing so many other posts similar to this I thought I should make my own thread about it.

Yesterday I quit my job to go full time indie. Currently, my 1st game is being finished and I'm quite excited.

{I wrote a blog post here: http://www.superlongname.com/posts/i-qu ... time-indie.}

Please read it and let me know what you think.

I look for your wisdom and support in this huge life endeavor.

[CuteAlien]

I'm pretty much in the same situation right now. I prepared for going Indy by working 4-week-days for a while (mainly learning to use Blender) and now my project is running out and I have no new project yet. So I'm starting with Android development and hoping I either sell something or find another project before I'm completely broke. Except I don't have a half-finished game already in the pipeline - that's certainly good to have :-)

I did that already once in the past (without success) - so my hints from last experiences would be:
- Reduce spending right from the start until money comes in. Stop all monthly costs which are not absolutely necessary. On the other hand there is also good spending - everything that saves time. So books and hardware which improve development speed can be worth it even when you are short on money. Example: I did delay spending the 100 bucks on a new HD once for months - which was plain stupid as it was slowing me down + demotivating.
- Don't think you can go easy in the first weeks - take your work-days serious from day 1 on.
- Be careful about the work-sparetime balance. You need days off or you will get slower and slower after a few weeks and nothing will get done. So 1-2 days off per week are always worth it (last 2-3 weeks before release you might break that... but be careful not to start the deathmarch too early). That's especially hard when you didn't get stuff done at all in a week and have the feeling you need to catch up. But those weeks are the ones where you need the weekends most.

Good luck!

[ent1ty]

...

Awesome post, thank you for your insights!

i wish the best of luck to both of you

[hendu]

It's very hard to make money on Android, with 80% of all mobile sales happening on iOS.

I would recommend getting some passive income going first, so that you can support yourself without any income from the work. But I'd recommend that for anyone, not just indies

[CuteAlien]

It's always hard. Just life as usual. But it's a chance - and I prefer taking that to not trying it at all.

[hendu]

Sure, just wondering why not go Apple, as the money's there. For me it's the high startup costs, having to buy a Mac and an iProduct is over 1k already, plus 99$ per year.

[ent1ty]

The upside is the hw fragmentation is much better on ios.. what i think is a good idea, have both platforms in mind from the start. Then, after releasing on android you can decide if you wanna do ios as well, the changes to code shouldn't be that many. Depends a lot on the lib you use though. Things like libGDX handle this for you entirely.
Plus, if you already figured out the framentation on android(screen resolution), it should also work on ios - but not the other way around.

[CuteAlien]

Yeah, cost + time (I never worked on a Mac so I would have to learn the platform first). Also I just like Android (slightly) more.

[ent1ty]

Also I just like Android (slightly) more.

OT: Soon, you will have no other choice, except to like it, anyway http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/14/techn ... ology&_r=0

[CuteAlien]

Only slightly scary when the company which knows most about everyone starts buying military robots ;-)

[theweirdn8]

LOL they are like, "There can be only way. We will ensure that one is us".

[theweirdn8]

I wrote a song about "The Struggle".

You can view the lyrics here:

[theweirdn8]

6 months in, such progress!