The Catch-22 of Game Development

Over lunch last week, I was talking to a good friend of mine at the office. Being a seasoned game developer myself and my friend being an aspiring game developer, we often engage in discussions related to the gaming industry. This friend of mine is quite a bit younger than me, and I can see a lot of myself in him when I was his age, but I also see things in him that I wish I had seen in myself at that age. One of those things being a common sense approach to starting the long and difficult road towards a successful game development career.
He brought up an interesting point, that if he wanted to make games for a living that made oodles and oodles of money, he would need oodles and oodles of money to be able to afford to make these games in the first place. Despite being a catch-22 in every sense of the word, for most people, this is the stone cold truth. We’ve all heard the fairy tale story. Solitary person spends several years working on a game that becomes a mega hit with barely any marketing dollars, generating millions upon millions of dollars in profit for said person. It doesn’t happen very often at all, but it does happen. Some of these games are spectacular in their own right (I’m looking at you, Stardew Valley and World of Goo), and some of them…well…lets just say I play them, realize they were created in about three and a half literal days, and slap myself for not having come up with the idea myself. If you’ve ever played these games, you know what I’m talking about.
For the average game developer, though, achieving that kind of success will require an enormous amount of dedication and determination. Game development is not for the faint-hearted.
Anyone who has made a career of making games or even a hobby of it knows that before you go off making the next epic open world adventure, you need to have realistic expectations of what you can achieve right off the bat. Even after 12 years of game development experience, I am still chasing the dream of making my own labor of love project. Its not that I haven’t tried in the past, but the harsh reality is that often times when you want to create your dream project in the early stages of your career, you have all the time in the world but lack the experience. When you finally gain that experience, you have lost all that time you once seemingly had. This industry is full of gotchas such as these, but the important thing is that if you want to beat the odds and be the next Stardew Valley (or, dare I say, Flappy Bird), you need to be able to recognize these gotchas and be crafty about your approach. These days, it is difficult to make games for a living without having the resources to back yourself up, but here are some tips that might help give you a bit of focus as you take your first (or millionth) step in your game development journey:
Think Small and Simple
We all want to make the next great RPG (at least I do), but you have to be realistic in your goals and expectations, as mentioned above. Start with a small project that you know you can complete in 2 months or even a few weeks. It doesn’t have to be anything complex. Just get your feet wet. The toughest thing to achieve in game development is having a completed project in your portfolio, but it is the single most important thing you can do for yourself. Anyone can have 12 half-completed ideas and/or prototypes, but it is that one fully actualized and playable title that will put you well on the road to chasing your dreams. So put that design document for your amazing RPG aside (for now) and start with a simple, familiar idea with an addictive game play loop that you can build in a short amount of time. You’d be surprised at how something so little can go such a long way, and how much you can learn from the entire experience.
Phase 1: Build Game, Phase 2: ???, Phase 3: PROFIT!
Easier said than done, but make sure you have a solid monetization plan. What does this mean? Have a strategy in place for how your game will make money. Every monetization strategy has its strengths and weaknesses, and each one lends itself well to different genres of games. Viral games can potentially get lots of plays and can generate great ad revenue through sheer volume, however making a game that spreads like wildfire with little to no marketing is extremely challenging. Fixed price point games (for example, those that sell for a few bucks or more) don’t generate as many organic downloads, but each download is guaranteed revenue. Free to play games with in-app purchases are extremely difficult to monetize without major marketing dollars and solid metrics, but have a zero barrier to entry for organic players. Whatever model you go with, make sure you do your research, especially with regards to the genre you choose to develop, and always work within your means.
If at First You Don’t Succeed…
Don’t be disheartened if you try to build something and don’t complete it, or you build something and complete it, only to have it generate $16 a month in revenue. The first step towards success is failure, as the old saying goes. The most successful people are the ones who learn from their mistakes, so don’t be afraid to make mistakes! Surround yourself with good mentors, put yourself in positions to build experience, find the right tools to help you (don’t reinvent the wheel!) and always go in with realistic expectations. The creators of some of the world’s most successful games likely didn’t go into them thinking “this game is going to make me millions”. They probably thought the same thing we all do when we first start conceptualizing an idea. “I hope I’m making the right choice.”
I could go on and on with tips and suggestions, but the most important thing to remember is that you are the definition of your own success. Make sure you define your game career goals in a realistic and attainable way, have a solid plan in place, and execute. You’ll be swimming in oodles of cash in no time, or at least making a decent living doing what you love. And hey, isn’t that really what it’s all about?
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