What works for me is having a part-time job and drastically cutting expenses. Take the one that pays most for the least amount of time. You don’t necessarily have to like it, it serves the only purpose of paying your bills and buying you precious TIME.
Yeah, honestly _this_ is what should be recommended. Carry the risk of development yourself, keep your dayjob and develop the game on the side. Start from there and have financial stability. Because really most games, especially a developer's first game, are likely to fail pretty hard. No publisher, no government awarding grants and no target audience will be all that interested in a super low experience dev's first game. Ironically, the BiteMe games guys should have invested some money in hiring an artist to increase their chances. Because their game also _looks_ like a first-ever game. No judgement on how good the game is though. I'm just saying what impression it makes. Will it stop all customers from buying? No, but you're missing out on those will to give it a chance had it looked ever so slightly better.
@@MA-xb2yz I work as a software developer 3 days a week for a company. Not many ones eagerly hire people on such contracts, but smaller companies with more flexible management and processes may consider it.
@@MA-xb2yz I've been attempting this method recently and need to say, cutting expenses can be very different depending on the cost of living where you are located, but for me it has meant REALLY drastic cutting. Any and every activity or expense needs to be weighed in how much it impacts your income. Where I live, income tax increases drastically each time you move up a bracket, so sometimes people hit bumps when they get a promotion or pay raise and they end up making less money then before. Also, working a minimum wage, part-time, job for under 30-ish hours a week can allow you to not have to pay any tax at all. Naturally, this is a state of absolute poverty, so I'm aiming to spend no more than 2-3 years testing this out. Some ways I've been able to bring down my price of living is by limiting, or cutting out, the activities I participate in that include a cost, or make it "too easy" to spend money: 1. Reduce or cut out smoking, drinking, gambling or other such addictive activities. Obviously the most difficult one to pull off, but because it's an impulsive drive to spend, the degree to which this impacts your funds is significant and should not be underestimated. After all, why not use the opportunity to improve your overall bodily health. 2. Cancel all subscription services. This includes mobile packages/data and switching to pay-as-you-go, this will make you very aware how much you are spending on calls/texts/data, and your usage should naturally decrease, thus passively saving money (internet is often a necessity when debugging though, so I'd advise you at least have that). 3. Make spending money inconvenient. Don't save your card details while shopping online and delete any existing ones. If you really want to go hard on this, try only using cash whenever you can and have your bank send you confirmation requests whenever you use your card. 4. If you don't already own a house, try to only rent from people you know personally and have a good reputation with. This ideal because you can often get a much lower rent than normal. Naturally, this requires you to have at least some contacts and friends you trust so for some it might just be impossible. Regardless, stay polite and never overstay your welcome. 5. Learn to cook. While cooking can cut into your work/dev time, it can be one of the best ways of saving money. Additionally, learning how to use things like a slow cooker can even alleviate the time restriction. 6. Budget like your life depends on it, because it obviously does. Every payday you should allocate a percentage of your earnings to each vital expense you will face before the next. Also, if you are not absolutely penniless, try to set aside at least 10-12% of your income as an emergency fund. The last thing you need is to end up in hospital with nothing to cover medical bills. 7. If driving is expensive where you live, whether it's due to fuel prices or taxes, try to limit it as much as possible. Personally, I've been able to stop driving altogether, which has saved me quite a lot already. 8. Don't do stupid things that result in: Getting seriously ill, physical injury, getting scammed or losing your wallet/money. For incredibly obvious reasons. 9. Get along with friends and family. Some may be willing to help if you run out of funds, but please, don't abuse this. 10. Study local laws and taxation. Bureaucracy is painful and inefficient, but it is also full of holes that might allow you to (LEGALLY) save money. I'll leave on a warning. This is supposed to be a temporary state of living, and most people I know wouldn't be willing to even try it. I cannot recommend living like this for any longer than 1-2 years unless you already somewhat do. The end goal is to have enough of an income that you could get away with ignoring all of these restrictions, but I can give you no guarantees you'll get there.
This is what I want to do, to make my savings stretch further at least. I really want to do something physical to counterbalance sitting at the computer so much. Had to take a break from applying due to health and living problems, but I am looking again.
Jsyk, I don’t think you guys need to stress about hurrying up, if it’s for our sake. I could watch this kind of stuff for like 4 hours straight. It’s fascinating and extremely helpful!!
This though. As much information as you have to share, I have the will to listen. Simple as. Also, longform content does really well on TH-cam in general.
Been thinking more and more about selling assets for residual income. It makes sense, as there are a LOT of gaps in the asset store for certain kinds of assets still.
I’d just like to add, from my own observation and experience, Kickstarter done right is a full time job creating the campaign in and of itself in addition to creating your game for the period of the campaign (and leading up to it). Following that it’d be about the same amount of work as a Patreon. Patreon is spread out and its work should just be updating people about the game dev work you were doing anyway. = Ks is a lot more work than Patreon. Really appreciated this video. Very informed info. Thanks greatly.
Actually best strategy for indie funding is consume less and make it yourself. Learning how to cook your food significantly decrease your cost, Leaving car-centric place and using biking and public transportation also significantly decrease your cost too.
Ok, let's rephrase it: crowdfunding isn't the best option if you don't care about doing marketing. Now here is some stats: - 48% of all games (including board games since they belong to the same cathegory) achieves funding goal on kickstarter. For succesfully funded video games the amount of money they receive is: - 20th percentile: $3000 - 50th percentile: $15000 - 80th percentile: $60000 I will link the source below in case youtube decides to remove the comment becaus of the link.
The spreadsheet I made few months ago. Description is in polish but it should be quite obvious what each part means: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15WN1AEcuNGGJv1soLh4qj3i8R7K6_zSyq_BqUCTC1Vs/edit?usp=sharing
The other very real issue with coasting on your personal savings is that your essentially burning through your retirement savings. Long term investments of that sort benefit a lot from starting early, because of their compounding nature, and by working for 5-10 years and then burning through those savings your basically sacrificing those years that could start your retirement portfolio off right. I also don't see it being very realistic in todays economy, because the cost of living is so high (at least here in Canada) that you really can't save much unless youre living at home rent free or you have insanely cheap rent somehow.
In some countries also cheesing during university studies, but only if the study itself is free of course so not the USA, the UK etc....eg. I live in a 250€ a month apartment in Helsinki, including electricity, internet, water etc. and eat uni lunch plus some extra for about 200€ a month. I get to sit in one of the european cradles of game innovation for way too cheap. I have strategically extended my studies by several years to keep living costs low.
I was confused by the personal savings placement. When directly compared to Kickstarter, I would argue it is technically better to spend other peoples' savings than your own. That said, thank you so much for the detailed insights on how the funding bodies operate :)
Technically yes, however by relying on other people's money you are giving them a quid-pro-quo. Yes you want to release your game and yes you want it to be successful, however we've seen a lot in the past years that gamers can be quite terrible, even outright dangerous, when they have expectations even when its ones you never promised to them. There's an underlying psychology behind Kickstarter campaigns that people who pledge will often view the thing as "theirs" because they (even if only a tiny part) funded it. If you have the means to fund it yourself then that's better for your mental wellbeing because your players are more likely to accept it as your creation and the roadmap, even if you take suggestions from the community, is still yours to control.
In the long run having an engaged community beats everything. I mean, EVERYTHING. So if you have a career and you can pay your bills, don't quit your job. Focus on growing your own community, and at the same time grow your experience. Think about the long run... That's all I can say. Awesome video by the way. You got a new subscriber.
Thank You for the video, I wasn't aware of that many options before. Personally I have worked for one year as a game developer, saved some money and started freelancing, which is not going well to say the least. In the free time when I don't have the freelance work, I try building my own games. But the sense that the money is slowly melting away is always there, then the freelance jobs are not so easy to come by as You mentioned. If there is a decent job, there is a lot of competition, over 50 people apply to the same one. The time it takes to find one doesn't seem to be worth it at all. Then You don't know what kind of job it can become, it might be really awful. My friend likes to say: it's better to not have a job at all, rather than have an awful one. There are a lot of burnouts on the freelancer route, I wouldn't recommend it personally.
Great breakdown, guys! I’m an aspiring developer trying to learn coding and landing on the right engine to use. Thinking of letting my YT channel fund initially until the game can get on its feet. Still in the initial phases and trying to learn, but your videos are super helpful!
I’m funding my game with a day job. After 7+ years Unity I finally switched to Unreal. The Nanite over LOD stuff is game changing. The UI is also so much better and Unreal has so much already built in. It makes Unity look arcane.
My current funding plan is to keep working my normal job and self fund some smaller games that I can get on Steam and hopefully start making some money on. Once I get a few games behind me, I feel like it would be easier to get a publisher after I can show what I have been able to do on my own. I don't necessarily want to go the publisher route, but I do have a house and family I have to provide for. So for me to go full-time, someone would have to foot the bill. Ideally, one of those self published games would take off amazingly, but realistically, that isn't going to happen. So I just want to make games with the intention of selling them and start collecting residuals to start pushing forward. I think once I have a game or two on the market, it would then make sense to start looking at doing a TH-cam channel to supplement things through other crowd sourcing means like Ko-fi or patreon, then to work up to a kickstarter. I think if you have more to show and you fund your early development, you could reduce the risk for kickstarter backers, and make it more likely to succeed.
Work your 9 to 5. Gamedev in the evenings. Maintain a secure cashflow. Quitting a job before you know you can support yourself is idiotic. It puts you at risk, it puts your family at risk if you have one. Take a realistic approach to money because you don't deserve a business if you don't. If your product takes off and you end up hiring people to make more titles, you're responsible for more peoples wellbeing than your own. You owe it to them. Even if you hate your job and it's temping as f**k, keep working until you absolutely know that you can transition. Work in the evenings and if you have to get there at a slower pace as a result, tough. If nothing else it'll teach you to value the time that you have spare and learn how to prioritise tasks. If you want to argue burnout, I'd say if you can't handle that you can't handle running a business postlaunch.
I’m really considering the savings route right now, while I’m still young (26) I’m right now in a position that in the next 6 months I will probably have enough money saved up that if I really tighten my spending I could live of them comfortably for about 2 years and this isn’t even counting the normal social benefits I could use to extend that to another 6-12 months.
I've been working freelance for a year already and only recently started to work on my own game while doing so... It drained my energy like crazy and it's very hard to get time for both things. I wouldn't suggest it unless it's something easy that makes you passive income
People often underestimate how exhausting this kind of work can be. Especially when your plan is to go home and work even MORE on game dev. Reminds me of what I've heard every old guy mechanic tell teenagers who want to be car mechanics for a living: "Yeah, you like working on cars. But do you like working on cars all day, every day, no matter what?" Game dev is a whole lot like this.
@@RogerTheil Actually what's draining my energy is my work, not Game Dev, it's just that working on a job that you don't like is so much more draining than working on something you love doing. In my case that's game dev, I've had days working 14h on my game and yes it is tiring, but not as much as my job. So I guess it depends on the kind of job you have and how much you like game dev
@@xwyvernx8399 ah, I guess I assumed you were freelancing the same kind of dev work. I know what you mean, though. Hours of game dev can be intense, but I hardly ever feel as worn down compared to a day job that I don't enjoy quite as much.
Very important and interesting ideas.. Making games has always been a dream and I try to get my foot in the door with game music. We'll see how it goes in a few years.. :DD Thank you for these informational takes! Greetings from Finland!!!!1
Great video! Personally, my plan was to go the personal savings route, and I am a year and a half into it. However, in practice, I spent a lot more of my time working on mental health issues than working on my game. I also came to realize that I am held back more by the lack of financial security (for when I run out of funds) than I thought I would be. That being said, I don't regret making the decision. I'm going to have to pivot and try a different approach, but the time off was very valuable in rerouting my life and planning how I'll make the game dev dream real.
Respect guys. It's a tough road and I respect your commitment. Stay strong. I'm doing a solo go...I've no cash... but I've had time the last while, Film has been on strike. Can't do both. But ... That doesn't mean I won't try. And I have a game plan , so we'll see how it goes. Thanks for the great vid.
I've just retired from a career as a software engineer and UX/UI designer. I'm funding my game development from my retirement income and savings - which I'd be spending anyway if I wasn't writing a game. I'm also relying on my kids, who are all devs and robotic engineers or data scientists, to supply some free labour as required. So, on balance, I suggest just waiting until you hit your mid 60's before starting your project. Glad to help.
I know it’s kind of a touchy subject for some, but I’m surprised you didn’t mention funding via Early Access at all. Thoughts on this as an option? Where would you place it on the tier list?
EA could fit with Patreon/Kickstarter. At the end of the day, you already need to have quite a bit of playable game before you can relese it in Early Access. You can't bash out something in a month, and then already have something marketable enough to sustain yourself through the EA period. -M
What im doing is working full time, sacrificing all my spare time between after dinner and bedtime, as well as a lot of time during the day on weekends. Gives me a bit of spare money to get some artwork made where i cant make it myself
Another classic tier list guys👌 ❤ personally I've taken the extremely unadvisable step of having a crappy evening/night job which means nothing to me and pays quite bad, BUT it allows me to watch awesome things like this and plan my game(s) whilst doihg the menial tasks and then work for the rest of the night when I get home and whatever part of the day I can before work 😅 It's kind of going okay but I haven't actually released a game yet, so thanks for the inspiration cos since I've followed you guys, I've found the confidence to actually try it 😊❤👍
In my experience, having a crappy night job is one of the HARDEST ways to do development on your off time, but because so many of them allow you to educate yourself like this, they can actually be an invaluable boon when taken advantage of. Good on ya, keep going and learn all you can. Just don't forget to make sure the rubber meets the road and start working on projects with whatever spare time you might get. That's when all the education starts to pay off.
As PheMoX said, its everyone. In fact, it was easier to find grants in Africa vs America with a quick lookup. Makes me wonder how much Africa has vs Europe, cuz they were looking neck and neck with europe having slightly more with less prerequisites for eligibility.
S: Governmental Grants A: [your released game on x, y, z] B: Incubator, Publisher C: Venture Capitalist, Part-time job D: Kickstarters, Bank (If you have a company) E: Community Funding F: Savings, Bank (Absolutely worst option if you don't have a company) I would put the list like this (I have no idea about other grants)... For me using savings is what you in general want to avoid, sure you have flexibility, but it is in the end of the day it is your money (that could go to apartment, vacation, retirement and so on), you also put yourself in a isolated situation, having external dependencies tend to be a good thing for most people, even though it seem like work. People shouldn't be afraid to share, most people think they only share the "gains", but you are sharing the risk too (and there is more risk than gains). with VC, Incubators and Publishers... in the end of the day, it's all up to the deal you get, but Publishers and Incubators seems to be more helpful to reach the goal.
you clearly put a lot of thought into this tierlist, except freelance doesn't have to be game dev related. E.g., shovelling snow during christmas, pet sitting, etc. though I guess you can also argue this makes it similar to a regular job and won't count. also if you could make a monetization tierlist too that would be great(unless there's not much too say)
This is quite lengthy and only the first paragraph is related to the video, sorry :D It's just some of my (a nobody's) thoughts on gamedev in general eg. Money, Motive, Community. As much as I would love to work gamedev full-time, im a very cautious person so i refuse to fall into any kind of debt, including mortgages. With enough income, you can power save for a house and fully own it in a fraction of the time, the downside is if you take too long to buy the house, the rent costs can easily zoom past the mortgage's interest costs so you loose a lot more in the end. Anyway, I'd much rather rely on my own income from an actual job outside of gamedev and just develop my game for fun and as a hobby, forever hoping it will grant me the financial stress free life i dream of but knowing that will never happen and being okay with that reality. My main reason for making games is I wanted a way to express myself so money is not what's on my mind, I'm always thinking about how I can turn my struggles and my emotions into this form of art. It becomes quite difficult when creating a game with no story but I still like to think about how I could. That brings me to implications without context, this is how to i primarily aim to express myself, I could probably do it by adding subtle themes into the art and wording. Something as simple as changing the "Respawn" button to say "Rebirth" i believe can add some character. The meaning of it become quite open ended, maybe it symbolises something religious, perhaps it makes the act of respawning more meaningful, instead of simply telling you that you suck and you failed, the game presents you with an opportunity of resilience and growth, through your determination you can overcome your stuggle, or perhaps it is a sign that you are alive, you're not just sitting there staring at a screen, your immersed into this world that ive created so you can experience it, so you can live it and become one with the character. Game Development is my form of self-expression, I can't express myself irl so I need to find other means, it's not like I haven't tried but people just don't understand me when i try to put it into words so I'd rather be able to show them. Part of the reason I love gaming is because I understand the developers, I live the experiences they provide for me and some of them are truly wonderful. Though money isn't my priority, it's still very nice and so is a community, helps me feel like im part of something. I might make devlogs, I might try tiktok again, i managed 64K followers from inconsistently posting gaming content over 2 years... before I dropped the account to concentrate on graduating, haven't used it since. Point is, I know how to build an audience off of short attention span media platforms which ironically is better at quickly spreading word of you than your die hard actual fans of who are better at creating more die hard fans through talking about you or your content/product in-depth, they get to bond over your creations. I doubt id manage even a tiny fraction of my old follower count though, game dev is generally harder when it comes to entertaining people short term, i could do it in gaming because they already have an already established interest in said game but i still believe it would be easier than using longer content at least for the beginning. Out of the gamedevs ive seen blow up on other platforms, they seem to prioritise community feedback and incorporating the community's ideas into their games, so basically it's short community focused content vs long "you" focused content aka youtube devlogs. Not to say youtube devlogs are bad for building a community, but the majority of people interested in YOUR progress are other gamedevs. The players want to see what makes your game great, not what you had to go through just to fix one bug or implement a customer shader, best way to demonstrate what makes your game great is with involving the community into the process rather than showcasing your process. Who knows though, I studied social media algorithms and somewhat still do continuously as I am quite observant but it's always evolving and extremely complex. If anyone reading this thinks I'm making any sense with this approach to building a community, feel free to test it out yourself, I have no projects currently so I won't be able to test my theories for a long while. I am also just a silly goofball and don't really know what I'm talking about so I'd be interested in what you (whoever is reading this) thinks is the best course of action to take for building a community.
This was awesome. And yeah, lol as the video was ending I was going to say you didnt really mention game dev on the side. Im a pro game dev (engineer) but you could be anything and work on your off time. But, I agree with what you said that it's a bit outside the scope of the video.
I like how you guys end up your videos in the line of "yeah, that's it, there is this one option, it's gonna make you most money, but that's not what we talk about", or when you did game genre tier lists it ended up with "yeah, you don't want to sell out and make adult only games, there is tons of money in it, but you don't want that". I honestly mean this is as a joke, not as criticism, I just always find those endings hilarious and they crack me up. That being said, making it as a side gig is probably the safest way for many people (myself included), if you're younger it's even better and you still have energy for it after the grind for the day is over. Also, I don't know if you need to have a company to apply for Epic Megagrant or is it available to individuals as well, if so, getting some extra funds while making a game as a side gig isn't that bad of an idea especially if you have something to show like a video or a working demo. On a personal level, I admire people who sell their house to pursue their dreams, I'm not sure how much faith it would require for me to do something like that and just go all in. Kudos to the people who do, but then again every one of them said they would never recommend that to anyone.
I would feel sorry for those people selling their houses, because really only the rare exception will be successful. Most of them end up losing everything. Especially those with zero experience.
i maintained and added new features to a report writer add on tool that the rest of teh company abandoned. it was all me all the time. no one did anything. sooo... i just took made my own report writer add-on tool and took the customers with me when i left. the new tool was different enough that the company i left could not touch me.
As a developer and co-founder of my own Belgian game studio I fully agree with this tier list. We ourselves rely on our savings at the moment and we recently got gov. funding which is a great help to continue the development of our game. Funding is very hard and it's quite the challenge to manage it all.
It is quite possible, we were at Unwrap and FACTS. Our studio is called Boxsun and the game we're working on is called Crystalis Descendant. @@bitemegames
Ya'll don't need to be so far on yourselves. Really, that is what the internet is for! 😆 Also, I just wanted to say that I have enjoyed every video ya'll have put up and I'm sure I'm in the majority, so relax and keep having fun with it. Nothing, kills drive more than being down on yourselves, so don't do it! Keep fighting the good fight, because your doing great!
also with patreon vs kickstarter (or alternatives of those sorts) is getting all the money up front requires a lot of planning and money skills, while with a patreon, it’s month by month, you don’t need to manage it for any longer than a month at a time. and you could adjust your game’s expenses over time to keep a stable budget without needing to plan it out over 2 years in advance.
Actually, you're wrong. Development always takes a very good financial plan. It doesn't matter if you get all money upfront or not. Even worse, with crowdfunding where you get the money upfront, you are also guaranteed to get pretty much that money. With Patreon there's no guarantee your followers will continue to back you the next 5 years or so, assuming that's what the game needs. Just like with any campaign that depends on supporters, you will have to attract your audience to make it a success. There's no point in having Patreon or wanting to use it for game development, when you have only 4 backers each month.
@@PHeMoX i didn’t mean that you don’t need any plan. if you got paid for your job as one big lump sum at the beginning of the year, do you think that would be more or less difficult to manage expenses than getting paid every other week? most people are going to not spend money as wisely when it’s a lump sum. your comments here seem to be very dismissive
how do you guys know how to measure your price rates when you applied for government grants? was that just estimated hourly pay? and was it standard pay ? did you take in consideration what they would consider standard pay?
Would crowdfunding into community funding work? I still feel like Kickstarter is the best option for me right now. I work for a part-time entry job that pays pretty low. This is how I'm funding my game. The good news is that I don't have to worry about food and housing thanks to my parents. However, I'm currently making a game with two of my friends right now. we already have an almost-ready prototype and wanted to do an animation for a trailer for YT(other social media), Steam, And Kickstarter with some recorded gameplay. We have a discord and want to start a community. How would you guys go about this?
It works, although I think the opposite is more common, starting with community funding, and then building up to a large kickstarter. It's also about optics, if you just collected 25k from a successful campaign let's say, coming back to that same community the next month and asking for more monthly, can give you a bit of a bad rep. Starting with community funding, and building it up over half a year, getting to know your community, how the management works, how to expand,... but also be an extremely valuable lesson in how to do crowdfunding well. You can play around with changing the way community funding works, but you only get one (real) shot at doing a kickstarter campaign. -M
Yeah, they have no clue how difficult or easy some of these funding options are. And I wouldn't say 'personal savings' is a real funding option. Neither is venture capital for a game.
It's probably also worth pointing out that the 20% from kickstarter probably won't even be 20% if you don't bring enough of an audience for the project to be seen as promotable by kickstarter in the first place.
I basically have been making my game part time while working a different career full time. I'll get the game done probably by 2050 or something at this rate
I think a thing you missed is funding by selling assets. As in code snippets, sound effects, art pieces that don't have to be unique to your game or take a week a month for creating an asset pack that consists of only meant for sell items.
If you're an artist, it's great. If you're trying to sell code snippits, it's often a bit more meh is the feeling we have, as you are responsible for a lot more support. This is however something that we have a (long-term) video planned about however, how does it work to sell these kinds of assets, and if it can be a good way to get some extra funding. -M
Indeed, if you're a 4-8 people studio, with some budget to launch, kickstarter can be great. Unfortunately that's not what our average viewers are, so we need to keep our audience is mind as well. Making a kickstarter campaign as a solo dev isn't impossible, but it can be very challenging to do well. -M
@@bitemegames Thanks. This video dropped in my feed just as my studio was starting to look into funding options! We are probably going to go for a kickstarter.
For funding in Be, there are actually a lot of very competent companies that help you on a no-cure, no-pay basis. Writing those proposals alone... great work! But as you figured out you always be waiting for the funding, so make sure you have enough room (budget/time wise). The best funded project was ESA. (not a game unfortunately)
I'm funding my game through fasting. Snake Juice Diet!!! I might have to do a week of dev logging to show the before and after photos of me flexing. I really need to get a digital scale with 20 different metrics when I stand on it. Then there's I guess neurogenesis (this is impossible according to modern science)! So that translates into awesome story telling based on every Religious figure every recorded doing fasting and having benefits out of this world!
My team did two applications for the epic megagrants for our game made in UE4. I did the first one before Gatedelvers was in early access and was denied. Told our programmer to make the second one (in case the tone of my writing was the reason) a while into early access when we had a decent amount of great reviews, just not enough income. Still a no. :(
18:43 is like: me: I need a job Recruiter: get experience then i can give u a job me: but I need a job to get experience Recruiter: once you have experience.....
It was a solid 3min unhinged rant in the end, but yeah, it's stupid. Meanwhile they keep giving the grants to larger studios, that have had multiple failed launches using government funding... Oh well, more fuel to the fire -M
Like everything, there are good publishers and bad publishers and the bad ones, ready to exploit you, are generally the easier to find and strike a deal with. So be careful and lawyer up, dont EVER sign a contract with a publisher without having it reviewed by a lawyer. You can't afford a lawyer ? Well don't get a publisher, a crappy exploitative publishing deal with cost you a lot more than a lawyer.
5:00 Uhm no. That's not how it works _at all_ . No publisher is just randomly going to give you 100k as 'a loan'. They will make a very careful profit and loss statement, do a full risk analysis and determine the max amount of advance they can give based on that. A completely unknown developer with zero following on social media platforms, zero released games and zero buzz for their game in development is never going to get 100k upfront. And no, you don't pay those advances back like a loan. The way most of these advances work is that there is the expectation of a game (or book or whatever else that gets published) to sell many times more the initial advance that was paid upfront. So basically they will never pay you 100k, unless your last 5 games or so all sold in the millions of copies... and even then it is _their_ risk losing all of your advance when the game flops. And if you ever do go for a publisher, make sure a lawyer reads the contract. Because the fineprint matters. In many cases your publisher will want to own what you have created. Not just 'help out with marketing'. And many publishers really do nothing. It's also funny how you basically claim it is easy to get a publisher, when actually that's not so easy at all. Especially good publishers that actually help selling the game. Good luck trying to find one for your first game. Even 'bad' ones, because no one likes to lose money.
If I do one day possess the ability to focus long enough and not get bored to do a full proper game and not a small simple thing, then my funding would be coming from my courses made in the past that help teach beginners how to start making games and start programming. So my game knowledge would create a mostly passive continuous funding while I could work and focus purely on what I am trying to create. Buuuut I tend to lose interest or get bored on longer projects and I don't see that changing anytime recently lol
I finance my game by simply working whenever I want and for as long as I want. The company has to deal with it. I just have too many degrees and am irreplaceable. But it's interesting to hear that there are so many possibilities. You probably forgot about TH-cam. I don't really want to create a game, but there's just not enough on the market that's fun. So, I'm expanding the world's horizons. How about a Parasite Simulator, where you have to survive inside a human.
I got my steam page paid for within 24 hours of setting up a kofi and its all because my game had a mini blow up on twitter, its not enough to live off of but its amazing to have, plus it gives me an excuse to show off stuff thats not ready for the public yet
Another approach: day-job. Being trying for 2 years. (no that I've just graduated for 2 years, but I've just being making games for 2 years). Pros: You actually get paid. Only at the cost of your time (instead of your house) Cons: It suck. Literally, it susk your energy and your time. Ranking: D I suppose. Same thing like a freelance job just with more money and less time. Me and my dev budy are about to quit and switch the situation to anything above C lol.
Main upside of kickstarter that you don't bring up is that it's an easy way to get media coverage on your game. Set a small goal that you know your community can exceed significantly and a lot of gaming journalists will pick it up.
There are options for taxpayer funding too, especially in europe. In the taxpayer funded model, you get yourself fired from your job, enroll in every single government benefit possible, develop your game and release it under something like a wyoming llc while still collecting benefits. If everything works out, you can start working remotely for a wyoming llc for a token salary.
Publishers actually give you the freedom to go full time if you currently work a normal job and do game making in your down time. That felt very undersold in the publisher funding section.
My prediction: the best way to fund your game is just get a solid job. I work 8~12 hours a day and then an additional 4~6 on a company that I recently founded for game development. It's extremely difficult and you feel a lot of burn-out, but the stability from having a full-time job is pretty huge and if you manage your finances well, you'll have plenty of excess for commissioning assets and work. Edit: Also, joining a community that does development is HUGE. One of my friends owns a web development company and they have a discord community with plenty of talented devs who are itching to help on projects. Join one of these communities and look for friends to help you. Just be weary of the legal/ownership issues, if you are planning on selling your game.
Maybe as well private funding (3th party), it goes inbetween community funding and venture capital. Basically the equivalent of pitching your awesome app to a friend (None ironically 😬)
Borrowing money from family/friend - C/D Tier, better than a bank or investor but can ruin your relationship if you fail and aren't able pay it back quick enough Creating Game Dev Course - F Tier, you're building two different audiences which means you're essentially building two different businesses. So you're draining time and energy.
How can you discourage people from going the kickstarter route of things, when you have no experience in doing it yourself though? I mean, there are a lot of successful kickstarter games out there. And whilst I personally don't like crowdfunding as a dev should carry the risk of development themselves, with the customer having a more fair choice in whether or not a game is worth their money, I really don't think it makes sense to make any kind of recommendations like this. If you had a successful kickstarter campaign for one of your games, you'd have a radically different opinion.
well, in germany the government won´t give you anything, sadly, they did cut the expense once more..but this is truly helpful for people considering their own game
This is really interesting. If people want to go more in depth on funding I’d recommend the Full Time Game Dev course by Thomas Brush. It isn’t cheap, but it’s pretty comprehensive for people who want to learn how to make games in unity and fund them
I actually think it’s a really good list. My company was started through an incubator, honestly for us it was an awful experience, mainly because the people running the incubator, but the idea could work for some. I do think residuals is the best idea, should put it at A+ or S. Curious though about including other stores outside of steam, particular mobile.
Subscription services currently aren't open to the public like releasing on steam is and for games, there is no spotify model of putting your games on a service and getting revenue split. It's between publishers and service provider and indies do have little access to that right now.
what worked for me is making a very simple game and sell it for hundreds to people who wanna show off their money :). (game got shut down but at least I didn't have to refund it-)
I'd argue a Kickstarter campaign is more like A tier. Yes you do need to build up a community first, but... that's good, right? You need one anyway. You don't *need* to offer physical merchandise, if you get creative enough with digital rewards, you can avoid physical goods all together. Honestly it's one of the best ways to get funded, because at the end of the day, after fees/taxes are handled, you just have money to develop your game, and you don't owe interest or revenue share to anyone. The only obligation you have is to finish the game and deliver the rewards to your backers... which if the rewards are all purely digital, shouldn't be much of an issue. The smart way to run a Kickstarter campaign is to set up a Pre-Launch page to build up a following prior to launch. There is some math to calculate how many followers you should gain before launching, but once you hit the target numbers, there's a very high chance of hitting your funding goal. Obviously if you just launch a Kickstarter out of nowhere with no community it's going to be C or D tier for funding, but if you learn how to do it right, it's A tier, and I'd even argue possibly S tier.
I get myself updated on whats happening on kickstarter from time to time and the sucess of kickstart heavily depends on genre, scope and the ability to sell a dream. So for an adult visual novel, kickstarter in S-tier. Luckily people learned that "3 people make an MMO for 50k" is not gonna happen so the funding of MMOs has gone down a bit, but "3 people make a cozy MMO for 50k" still seems to work. With my understanding on how software developement works, i feel like kickstarter requires you to lie to people about scope because lets be honest, a solid estimation of what money gets you is not a dream that people want to support.
![AI Agent Framework Final: CrewAI vs AutoGen vs LangGraph vs AgentZero Final Results Shock [5/5]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/d5l-oUWuZk0/mqdefault.jpg)
I am funding my game through bank robbery
Don't self-snitch
S-Tier.
@@Floky SSS Tier!
Make a game about bank robbery. Rob a bank. Get caught. Print money from the publicity.
You forgot: Deal with the devil, prostitution, dealing drugs, and selling of body parts(your own or not).
What works for me is having a part-time job and drastically cutting expenses. Take the one that pays most for the least amount of time. You don’t necessarily have to like it, it serves the only purpose of paying your bills and buying you precious TIME.
Yeah, honestly _this_ is what should be recommended. Carry the risk of development yourself, keep your dayjob and develop the game on the side. Start from there and have financial stability. Because really most games, especially a developer's first game, are likely to fail pretty hard. No publisher, no government awarding grants and no target audience will be all that interested in a super low experience dev's first game. Ironically, the BiteMe games guys should have invested some money in hiring an artist to increase their chances. Because their game also _looks_ like a first-ever game. No judgement on how good the game is though. I'm just saying what impression it makes. Will it stop all customers from buying? No, but you're missing out on those will to give it a chance had it looked ever so slightly better.
What’s your part time job? I’ve been working full time for several years now and barely have enough time to develop.
@@MA-xb2yz I work as a software developer 3 days a week for a company. Not many ones eagerly hire people on such contracts, but smaller companies with more flexible management and processes may consider it.
@@MA-xb2yz I've been attempting this method recently and need to say, cutting expenses can be very different depending on the cost of living where you are located, but for me it has meant REALLY drastic cutting. Any and every activity or expense needs to be weighed in how much it impacts your income.
Where I live, income tax increases drastically each time you move up a bracket, so sometimes people hit bumps when they get a promotion or pay raise and they end up making less money then before. Also, working a minimum wage, part-time, job for under 30-ish hours a week can allow you to not have to pay any tax at all. Naturally, this is a state of absolute poverty, so I'm aiming to spend no more than 2-3 years testing this out.
Some ways I've been able to bring down my price of living is by limiting, or cutting out, the activities I participate in that include a cost, or make it "too easy" to spend money:
1. Reduce or cut out smoking, drinking, gambling or other such addictive activities. Obviously the most difficult one to pull off, but because it's an impulsive drive to spend, the degree to which this impacts your funds is significant and should not be underestimated. After all, why not use the opportunity to improve your overall bodily health.
2. Cancel all subscription services. This includes mobile packages/data and switching to pay-as-you-go, this will make you very aware how much you are spending on calls/texts/data, and your usage should naturally decrease, thus passively saving money (internet is often a necessity when debugging though, so I'd advise you at least have that).
3. Make spending money inconvenient. Don't save your card details while shopping online and delete any existing ones. If you really want to go hard on this, try only using cash whenever you can and have your bank send you confirmation requests whenever you use your card.
4. If you don't already own a house, try to only rent from people you know personally and have a good reputation with. This ideal because you can often get a much lower rent than normal. Naturally, this requires you to have at least some contacts and friends you trust so for some it might just be impossible. Regardless, stay polite and never overstay your welcome.
5. Learn to cook. While cooking can cut into your work/dev time, it can be one of the best ways of saving money. Additionally, learning how to use things like a slow cooker can even alleviate the time restriction.
6. Budget like your life depends on it, because it obviously does. Every payday you should allocate a percentage of your earnings to each vital expense you will face before the next. Also, if you are not absolutely penniless, try to set aside at least 10-12% of your income as an emergency fund. The last thing you need is to end up in hospital with nothing to cover medical bills.
7. If driving is expensive where you live, whether it's due to fuel prices or taxes, try to limit it as much as possible. Personally, I've been able to stop driving altogether, which has saved me quite a lot already.
8. Don't do stupid things that result in: Getting seriously ill, physical injury, getting scammed or losing your wallet/money. For incredibly obvious reasons.
9. Get along with friends and family. Some may be willing to help if you run out of funds, but please, don't abuse this.
10. Study local laws and taxation. Bureaucracy is painful and inefficient, but it is also full of holes that might allow you to (LEGALLY) save money.
I'll leave on a warning. This is supposed to be a temporary state of living, and most people I know wouldn't be willing to even try it. I cannot recommend living like this for any longer than 1-2 years unless you already somewhat do. The end goal is to have enough of an income that you could get away with ignoring all of these restrictions, but I can give you no guarantees you'll get there.
This is what I want to do, to make my savings stretch further at least. I really want to do something physical to counterbalance sitting at the computer so much. Had to take a break from applying due to health and living problems, but I am looking again.
Jsyk, I don’t think you guys need to stress about hurrying up, if it’s for our sake. I could watch this kind of stuff for like 4 hours straight. It’s fascinating and extremely helpful!!
This though. As much information as you have to share, I have the will to listen. Simple as. Also, longform content does really well on TH-cam in general.
Yes! This is premium "2nd screen media" while working on my projects. Let it keep rolling.
What worked for me is rich parents. My game flopped tho
S tier!
Where can I get me some of those (asking for a friend) -M
So one of my projects, I coded a procedural generation module that I plan to put in the Unity Asset store.
So game asset sales could be additional.
Been thinking more and more about selling assets for residual income. It makes sense, as there are a LOT of gaps in the asset store for certain kinds of assets still.
I’d just like to add, from my own observation and experience, Kickstarter done right is a full time job creating the campaign in and of itself in addition to creating your game for the period of the campaign (and leading up to it). Following that it’d be about the same amount of work as a Patreon. Patreon is spread out and its work should just be updating people about the game dev work you were doing anyway. = Ks is a lot more work than Patreon.
Really appreciated this video. Very informed info. Thanks greatly.
Actually best strategy for indie funding is consume less and make it yourself. Learning how to cook your food significantly decrease your cost, Leaving car-centric place and using biking and public transportation also significantly decrease your cost too.
Ok, let's rephrase it: crowdfunding isn't the best option if you don't care about doing marketing. Now here is some stats:
- 48% of all games (including board games since they belong to the same cathegory) achieves funding goal on kickstarter.
For succesfully funded video games the amount of money they receive is:
- 20th percentile: $3000
- 50th percentile: $15000
- 80th percentile: $60000
I will link the source below in case youtube decides to remove the comment becaus of the link.
The spreadsheet I made few months ago. Description is in polish but it should be quite obvious what each part means: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15WN1AEcuNGGJv1soLh4qj3i8R7K6_zSyq_BqUCTC1Vs/edit?usp=sharing
The other very real issue with coasting on your personal savings is that your essentially burning through your retirement savings. Long term investments of that sort benefit a lot from starting early, because of their compounding nature, and by working for 5-10 years and then burning through those savings your basically sacrificing those years that could start your retirement portfolio off right.
I also don't see it being very realistic in todays economy, because the cost of living is so high (at least here in Canada) that you really can't save much unless youre living at home rent free or you have insanely cheap rent somehow.
14 and living with parents is the way
40*
In some countries also cheesing during university studies, but only if the study itself is free of course so not the USA, the UK etc....eg. I live in a 250€ a month apartment in Helsinki, including electricity, internet, water etc. and eat uni lunch plus some extra for about 200€ a month. I get to sit in one of the european cradles of game innovation for way too cheap. I have strategically extended my studies by several years to keep living costs low.
Heck I moved back to my parents at 26 lol
@@merileopardisaksassa7030 no way im from turku
I was confused by the personal savings placement. When directly compared to Kickstarter, I would argue it is technically better to spend other peoples' savings than your own. That said, thank you so much for the detailed insights on how the funding bodies operate :)
Technically yes, however by relying on other people's money you are giving them a quid-pro-quo. Yes you want to release your game and yes you want it to be successful, however we've seen a lot in the past years that gamers can be quite terrible, even outright dangerous, when they have expectations even when its ones you never promised to them. There's an underlying psychology behind Kickstarter campaigns that people who pledge will often view the thing as "theirs" because they (even if only a tiny part) funded it.
If you have the means to fund it yourself then that's better for your mental wellbeing because your players are more likely to accept it as your creation and the roadmap, even if you take suggestions from the community, is still yours to control.
where would u put having a day job?
In the long run having an engaged community beats everything. I mean, EVERYTHING. So if you have a career and you can pay your bills, don't quit your job. Focus on growing your own community, and at the same time grow your experience. Think about the long run... That's all I can say.
Awesome video by the way. You got a new subscriber.
Thank You for the video, I wasn't aware of that many options before. Personally I have worked for one year as a game developer, saved some money and started freelancing, which is not going well to say the least. In the free time when I don't have the freelance work, I try building my own games. But the sense that the money is slowly melting away is always there, then the freelance jobs are not so easy to come by as You mentioned. If there is a decent job, there is a lot of competition, over 50 people apply to the same one. The time it takes to find one doesn't seem to be worth it at all. Then You don't know what kind of job it can become, it might be really awful. My friend likes to say: it's better to not have a job at all, rather than have an awful one. There are a lot of burnouts on the freelancer route, I wouldn't recommend it personally.
Me I decided to go the itch route, it can help a litle bit and then when the game is more advanced, i put it on steam
Does anybody have a public link to the talk mentioned at 8:40?
Thank you in advance! ❤
The talk wasn't recorded as far as I know, it was during Unwrap 2023. -M
Thanks guys much appreciated! Good review of the options and some good insights. Good luck
Great breakdown, guys! I’m an aspiring developer trying to learn coding and landing on the right engine to use. Thinking of letting my YT channel fund initially until the game can get on its feet. Still in the initial phases and trying to learn, but your videos are super helpful!
I’m funding my game with a day job. After 7+ years Unity I finally switched to Unreal. The Nanite over LOD stuff is game changing. The UI is also so much better and Unreal has so much already built in. It makes Unity look arcane.
My current funding plan is to keep working my normal job and self fund some smaller games that I can get on Steam and hopefully start making some money on. Once I get a few games behind me, I feel like it would be easier to get a publisher after I can show what I have been able to do on my own. I don't necessarily want to go the publisher route, but I do have a house and family I have to provide for. So for me to go full-time, someone would have to foot the bill. Ideally, one of those self published games would take off amazingly, but realistically, that isn't going to happen. So I just want to make games with the intention of selling them and start collecting residuals to start pushing forward. I think once I have a game or two on the market, it would then make sense to start looking at doing a TH-cam channel to supplement things through other crowd sourcing means like Ko-fi or patreon, then to work up to a kickstarter. I think if you have more to show and you fund your early development, you could reduce the risk for kickstarter backers, and make it more likely to succeed.
Work your 9 to 5. Gamedev in the evenings. Maintain a secure cashflow.
Quitting a job before you know you can support yourself is idiotic. It puts you at risk, it puts your family at risk if you have one. Take a realistic approach to money because you don't deserve a business if you don't. If your product takes off and you end up hiring people to make more titles, you're responsible for more peoples wellbeing than your own. You owe it to them.
Even if you hate your job and it's temping as f**k, keep working until you absolutely know that you can transition.
Work in the evenings and if you have to get there at a slower pace as a result, tough. If nothing else it'll teach you to value the time that you have spare and learn how to prioritise tasks.
If you want to argue burnout, I'd say if you can't handle that you can't handle running a business postlaunch.
I’m really considering the savings route right now, while I’m still young (26) I’m right now in a position that in the next 6 months I will probably have enough money saved up that if I really tighten my spending I could live of them comfortably for about 2 years and this isn’t even counting the normal social benefits I could use to extend that to another 6-12 months.
I've been working freelance for a year already and only recently started to work on my own game while doing so... It drained my energy like crazy and it's very hard to get time for both things. I wouldn't suggest it unless it's something easy that makes you passive income
People often underestimate how exhausting this kind of work can be. Especially when your plan is to go home and work even MORE on game dev.
Reminds me of what I've heard every old guy mechanic tell teenagers who want to be car mechanics for a living: "Yeah, you like working on cars. But do you like working on cars all day, every day, no matter what?" Game dev is a whole lot like this.
@@RogerTheil Actually what's draining my energy is my work, not Game Dev, it's just that working on a job that you don't like is so much more draining than working on something you love doing. In my case that's game dev, I've had days working 14h on my game and yes it is tiring, but not as much as my job. So I guess it depends on the kind of job you have and how much you like game dev
@@xwyvernx8399 ah, I guess I assumed you were freelancing the same kind of dev work. I know what you mean, though. Hours of game dev can be intense, but I hardly ever feel as worn down compared to a day job that I don't enjoy quite as much.
Very important and interesting ideas.. Making games has always been a dream and I try to get my foot in the door with game music. We'll see how it goes in a few years.. :DD Thank you for these informational takes! Greetings from Finland!!!!1
Great video! Personally, my plan was to go the personal savings route, and I am a year and a half into it. However, in practice, I spent a lot more of my time working on mental health issues than working on my game. I also came to realize that I am held back more by the lack of financial security (for when I run out of funds) than I thought I would be. That being said, I don't regret making the decision. I'm going to have to pivot and try a different approach, but the time off was very valuable in rerouting my life and planning how I'll make the game dev dream real.
Wow I never thought my government would have a grant for game dev! I just checked and they do! Thanks guys!
Respect guys. It's a tough road and I respect your commitment. Stay strong. I'm doing a solo go...I've no cash... but I've had time the last while, Film has been on strike. Can't do both. But ...
That doesn't mean I won't try. And I have a game plan , so we'll see how it goes.
Thanks for the great vid.
I've just retired from a career as a software engineer and UX/UI designer. I'm funding my game development from my retirement income and savings - which I'd be spending anyway if I wasn't writing a game. I'm also relying on my kids, who are all devs and robotic engineers or data scientists, to supply some free labour as required.
So, on balance, I suggest just waiting until you hit your mid 60's before starting your project. Glad to help.
Just released a game with virtually no funding and no marketing budget. It flopped but I learned how to actually do it from that 🙂
I know it’s kind of a touchy subject for some, but I’m surprised you didn’t mention funding via Early Access at all. Thoughts on this as an option? Where would you place it on the tier list?
EA could fit with Patreon/Kickstarter. At the end of the day, you already need to have quite a bit of playable game before you can relese it in Early Access. You can't bash out something in a month, and then already have something marketable enough to sustain yourself through the EA period. -M
What im doing is working full time, sacrificing all my spare time between after dinner and bedtime, as well as a lot of time during the day on weekends. Gives me a bit of spare money to get some artwork made where i cant make it myself
Another classic tier list guys👌 ❤ personally I've taken the extremely unadvisable step of having a crappy evening/night job which means nothing to me and pays quite bad, BUT it allows me to watch awesome things like this and plan my game(s) whilst doihg the menial tasks and then work for the rest of the night when I get home and whatever part of the day I can before work 😅
It's kind of going okay but I haven't actually released a game yet, so thanks for the inspiration cos since I've followed you guys, I've found the confidence to actually try it 😊❤👍
In my experience, having a crappy night job is one of the HARDEST ways to do development on your off time, but because so many of them allow you to educate yourself like this, they can actually be an invaluable boon when taken advantage of. Good on ya, keep going and learn all you can. Just don't forget to make sure the rubber meets the road and start working on projects with whatever spare time you might get. That's when all the education starts to pay off.
Indie dev from South Africa, can attest that getting a grant here is a pipe dream 😭😂. Thanks for your videos!
It's a pipedream in pretty much any country. You'll have a better chance going with a kickstarter campaign.
As PheMoX said, its everyone. In fact, it was easier to find grants in Africa vs America with a quick lookup. Makes me wonder how much Africa has vs Europe, cuz they were looking neck and neck with europe having slightly more with less prerequisites for eligibility.
Also from SA the R350 is more than enough😂
Greetings from Brazil!
I´m always checking your amazing videos!
S: Governmental Grants
A: [your released game on x, y, z]
B: Incubator, Publisher
C: Venture Capitalist, Part-time job
D: Kickstarters, Bank (If you have a company)
E: Community Funding
F: Savings, Bank (Absolutely worst option if you don't have a company)
I would put the list like this (I have no idea about other grants)...
For me using savings is what you in general want to avoid, sure you have flexibility, but it is in the end of the day it is your money (that could go to apartment, vacation, retirement and so on), you also put yourself in a isolated situation, having external dependencies tend to be a good thing for most people, even though it seem like work.
People shouldn't be afraid to share, most people think they only share the "gains", but you are sharing the risk too (and there is more risk than gains). with VC, Incubators and Publishers... in the end of the day, it's all up to the deal you get, but Publishers and Incubators seems to be more helpful to reach the goal.
you clearly put a lot of thought into this tierlist, except freelance doesn't have to be game dev related. E.g., shovelling snow during christmas, pet sitting, etc. though I guess you can also argue this makes it similar to a regular job and won't count.
also if you could make a monetization tierlist too that would be great(unless there's not much too say)
This is quite lengthy and only the first paragraph is related to the video, sorry :D
It's just some of my (a nobody's) thoughts on gamedev in general eg. Money, Motive, Community.
As much as I would love to work gamedev full-time, im a very cautious person so i refuse to fall into any kind of debt, including mortgages. With enough income, you can power save for a house and fully own it in a fraction of the time, the downside is if you take too long to buy the house, the rent costs can easily zoom past the mortgage's interest costs so you loose a lot more in the end. Anyway, I'd much rather rely on my own income from an actual job outside of gamedev and just develop my game for fun and as a hobby, forever hoping it will grant me the financial stress free life i dream of but knowing that will never happen and being okay with that reality.
My main reason for making games is I wanted a way to express myself so money is not what's on my mind, I'm always thinking about how I can turn my struggles and my emotions into this form of art. It becomes quite difficult when creating a game with no story but I still like to think about how I could. That brings me to implications without context, this is how to i primarily aim to express myself, I could probably do it by adding subtle themes into the art and wording. Something as simple as changing the "Respawn" button to say "Rebirth" i believe can add some character. The meaning of it become quite open ended, maybe it symbolises something religious, perhaps it makes the act of respawning more meaningful, instead of simply telling you that you suck and you failed, the game presents you with an opportunity of resilience and growth, through your determination you can overcome your stuggle, or perhaps it is a sign that you are alive, you're not just sitting there staring at a screen, your immersed into this world that ive created so you can experience it, so you can live it and become one with the character. Game Development is my form of self-expression, I can't express myself irl so I need to find other means, it's not like I haven't tried but people just don't understand me when i try to put it into words so I'd rather be able to show them. Part of the reason I love gaming is because I understand the developers, I live the experiences they provide for me and some of them are truly wonderful.
Though money isn't my priority, it's still very nice and so is a community, helps me feel like im part of something. I might make devlogs, I might try tiktok again, i managed 64K followers from inconsistently posting gaming content over 2 years... before I dropped the account to concentrate on graduating, haven't used it since. Point is, I know how to build an audience off of short attention span media platforms which ironically is better at quickly spreading word of you than your die hard actual fans of who are better at creating more die hard fans through talking about you or your content/product in-depth, they get to bond over your creations. I doubt id manage even a tiny fraction of my old follower count though, game dev is generally harder when it comes to entertaining people short term, i could do it in gaming because they already have an already established interest in said game but i still believe it would be easier than using longer content at least for the beginning. Out of the gamedevs ive seen blow up on other platforms, they seem to prioritise community feedback and incorporating the community's ideas into their games, so basically it's short community focused content vs long "you" focused content aka youtube devlogs. Not to say youtube devlogs are bad for building a community, but the majority of people interested in YOUR progress are other gamedevs. The players want to see what makes your game great, not what you had to go through just to fix one bug or implement a customer shader, best way to demonstrate what makes your game great is with involving the community into the process rather than showcasing your process. Who knows though, I studied social media algorithms and somewhat still do continuously as I am quite observant but it's always evolving and extremely complex. If anyone reading this thinks I'm making any sense with this approach to building a community, feel free to test it out yourself, I have no projects currently so I won't be able to test my theories for a long while. I am also just a silly goofball and don't really know what I'm talking about so I'd be interested in what you (whoever is reading this) thinks is the best course of action to take for building a community.
20:20 Indie dev from Nigeria here and you're right. Hoping to get a grant here for game development is a fantasy. Hopefully it can be changed
This was awesome. And yeah, lol as the video was ending I was going to say you didnt really mention game dev on the side. Im a pro game dev (engineer) but you could be anything and work on your off time.
But, I agree with what you said that it's a bit outside the scope of the video.
I like how you guys end up your videos in the line of "yeah, that's it, there is this one option, it's gonna make you most money, but that's not what we talk about", or when you did game genre tier lists it ended up with "yeah, you don't want to sell out and make adult only games, there is tons of money in it, but you don't want that". I honestly mean this is as a joke, not as criticism, I just always find those endings hilarious and they crack me up.
That being said, making it as a side gig is probably the safest way for many people (myself included), if you're younger it's even better and you still have energy for it after the grind for the day is over. Also, I don't know if you need to have a company to apply for Epic Megagrant or is it available to individuals as well, if so, getting some extra funds while making a game as a side gig isn't that bad of an idea especially if you have something to show like a video or a working demo.
On a personal level, I admire people who sell their house to pursue their dreams, I'm not sure how much faith it would require for me to do something like that and just go all in. Kudos to the people who do, but then again every one of them said they would never recommend that to anyone.
I would feel sorry for those people selling their houses, because really only the rare exception will be successful. Most of them end up losing everything. Especially those with zero experience.
i maintained and added new features to a report writer add on tool that the rest of teh company abandoned. it was all me all the time. no one did anything. sooo... i just took made my own report writer add-on tool and took the customers with me when i left. the new tool was different enough that the company i left could not touch me.
im a solo dev creating a horror game from Latam(Brasil,but im from bolivia ) any adivice how to found my game?
As a developer and co-founder of my own Belgian game studio I fully agree with this tier list. We ourselves rely on our savings at the moment and we recently got gov. funding which is a great help to continue the development of our game. Funding is very hard and it's quite the challenge to manage it all.
Now I am curious, have we previously met in real life already... -M
It is quite possible, we were at Unwrap and FACTS. Our studio is called Boxsun and the game we're working on is called Crystalis Descendant. @@bitemegames
Ya'll don't need to be so far on yourselves. Really, that is what the internet is for! 😆 Also, I just wanted to say that I have enjoyed every video ya'll have put up and I'm sure I'm in the majority, so relax and keep having fun with it. Nothing, kills drive more than being down on yourselves, so don't do it! Keep fighting the good fight, because your doing great!
Nice. I'm not even a game developer I just follow the industry.
also with patreon vs kickstarter (or alternatives of those sorts) is getting all the money up front requires a lot of planning and money skills, while with a patreon, it’s month by month, you don’t need to manage it for any longer than a month at a time. and you could adjust your game’s expenses over time to keep a stable budget without needing to plan it out over 2 years in advance.
Actually, you're wrong. Development always takes a very good financial plan. It doesn't matter if you get all money upfront or not. Even worse, with crowdfunding where you get the money upfront, you are also guaranteed to get pretty much that money. With Patreon there's no guarantee your followers will continue to back you the next 5 years or so, assuming that's what the game needs. Just like with any campaign that depends on supporters, you will have to attract your audience to make it a success. There's no point in having Patreon or wanting to use it for game development, when you have only 4 backers each month.
@@PHeMoX i didn’t mean that you don’t need any plan. if you got paid for your job as one big lump sum at the beginning of the year, do you think that would be more or less difficult to manage expenses than getting paid every other week? most people are going to not spend money as wisely when it’s a lump sum. your comments here seem to be very dismissive
how do you guys know how to measure your price rates when you applied for government grants? was that just estimated hourly pay? and was it standard pay ?
did you take in consideration what they would consider standard pay?
They gave us the rate basically, we could ask between €25 and 40/hour at most. We just took 25 as that still was enough for our budget. -M
I actually agree with this tierlist (I have no experience really because I didn't even release a single game yet)
Technically I am not making a game, but a video editor with a game engine. Hopefully this video can also apply to my case. ^^"
Would crowdfunding into community funding work? I still feel like Kickstarter is the best option for me right now. I work for a part-time entry job that pays pretty low. This is how I'm funding my game. The good news is that I don't have to worry about food and housing thanks to my parents. However, I'm currently making a game with two of my friends right now. we already have an almost-ready prototype and wanted to do an animation for a trailer for YT(other social media), Steam, And Kickstarter with some recorded gameplay. We have a discord and want to start a community. How would you guys go about this?
It works, although I think the opposite is more common, starting with community funding, and then building up to a large kickstarter.
It's also about optics, if you just collected 25k from a successful campaign let's say, coming back to that same community the next month and asking for more monthly, can give you a bit of a bad rep.
Starting with community funding, and building it up over half a year, getting to know your community, how the management works, how to expand,... but also be an extremely valuable lesson in how to do crowdfunding well. You can play around with changing the way community funding works, but you only get one (real) shot at doing a kickstarter campaign. -M
What is the weighting for the high tier rank? Easiest? More likely?
Yeah, they have no clue how difficult or easy some of these funding options are. And I wouldn't say 'personal savings' is a real funding option. Neither is venture capital for a game.
Personal savings - you need money to make money. Classic.
You need money to burn money* -M
I worked at a game comapany turned publisher. I wouldn't do it unless you have mild success and can't keep up.
It's probably also worth pointing out that the 20% from kickstarter probably won't even be 20% if you don't bring enough of an audience for the project to be seen as promotable by kickstarter in the first place.
One thing I'm afraid of crowdfunding, if my game flopped, I dissapointed a lot of people and wasted their money.
I am myself seeking publishing deal for my game and currently i am on “come back later” phase 😅😅
I basically have been making my game part time while working a different career full time. I'll get the game done probably by 2050 or something at this rate
I think a thing you missed is funding by selling assets. As in code snippets, sound effects, art pieces that don't have to be unique to your game or take a week a month for creating an asset pack that consists of only meant for sell items.
If you're an artist, it's great. If you're trying to sell code snippits, it's often a bit more meh is the feeling we have, as you are responsible for a lot more support.
This is however something that we have a (long-term) video planned about however, how does it work to sell these kinds of assets, and if it can be a good way to get some extra funding. -M
Kickstarter is a better option if you have a full marketing team behind you i suppose
Indeed, if you're a 4-8 people studio, with some budget to launch, kickstarter can be great. Unfortunately that's not what our average viewers are, so we need to keep our audience is mind as well. Making a kickstarter campaign as a solo dev isn't impossible, but it can be very challenging to do well. -M
@@bitemegames Thanks. This video dropped in my feed just as my studio was starting to look into funding options! We are probably going to go for a kickstarter.
Thank you very much for the video and thank you very much for your work. A very informative video. I wish I had found you earlier :-).
Awesome video guys! Very informative and all said makes huge sense!
For funding in Be, there are actually a lot of very competent companies that help you on a no-cure, no-pay basis. Writing those proposals alone... great work! But as you figured out you always be waiting for the funding, so make sure you have enough room (budget/time wise). The best funded project was ESA. (not a game unfortunately)
I'm funding my game through fasting. Snake Juice Diet!!! I might have to do a week of dev logging to show the before and after photos of me flexing. I really need to get a digital scale with 20 different metrics when I stand on it. Then there's I guess neurogenesis (this is impossible according to modern science)! So that translates into awesome story telling based on every Religious figure every recorded doing fasting and having benefits out of this world!
micro/indie publishers seem to be pickng up lately, interesting stuff
My team did two applications for the epic megagrants for our game made in UE4. I did the first one before Gatedelvers was in early access and was denied. Told our programmer to make the second one (in case the tone of my writing was the reason) a while into early access when we had a decent amount of great reviews, just not enough income. Still a no. :(
18:43 is like:
me: I need a job
Recruiter: get experience then i can give u a job
me: but I need a job to get experience
Recruiter: once you have experience.....
It was a solid 3min unhinged rant in the end, but yeah, it's stupid. Meanwhile they keep giving the grants to larger studios, that have had multiple failed launches using government funding...
Oh well, more fuel to the fire -M
Like everything, there are good publishers and bad publishers and the bad ones, ready to exploit you, are generally the easier to find and strike a deal with. So be careful and lawyer up, dont EVER sign a contract with a publisher without having it reviewed by a lawyer. You can't afford a lawyer ? Well don't get a publisher, a crappy exploitative publishing deal with cost you a lot more than a lawyer.
5:00 Uhm no. That's not how it works _at all_ . No publisher is just randomly going to give you 100k as 'a loan'. They will make a very careful profit and loss statement, do a full risk analysis and determine the max amount of advance they can give based on that. A completely unknown developer with zero following on social media platforms, zero released games and zero buzz for their game in development is never going to get 100k upfront. And no, you don't pay those advances back like a loan. The way most of these advances work is that there is the expectation of a game (or book or whatever else that gets published) to sell many times more the initial advance that was paid upfront. So basically they will never pay you 100k, unless your last 5 games or so all sold in the millions of copies... and even then it is _their_ risk losing all of your advance when the game flops. And if you ever do go for a publisher, make sure a lawyer reads the contract. Because the fineprint matters. In many cases your publisher will want to own what you have created. Not just 'help out with marketing'. And many publishers really do nothing. It's also funny how you basically claim it is easy to get a publisher, when actually that's not so easy at all. Especially good publishers that actually help selling the game. Good luck trying to find one for your first game. Even 'bad' ones, because no one likes to lose money.
If I do one day possess the ability to focus long enough and not get bored to do a full proper game and not a small simple thing, then my funding would be coming from my courses made in the past that help teach beginners how to start making games and start programming. So my game knowledge would create a mostly passive continuous funding while I could work and focus purely on what I am trying to create.
Buuuut I tend to lose interest or get bored on longer projects and I don't see that changing anytime recently lol
I finance my game by simply working whenever I want and for as long as I want. The company has to deal with it. I just have too many degrees and am irreplaceable. But it's interesting to hear that there are so many possibilities. You probably forgot about TH-cam. I don't really want to create a game, but there's just not enough on the market that's fun. So, I'm expanding the world's horizons. How about a Parasite Simulator, where you have to survive inside a human.
I got my steam page paid for within 24 hours of setting up a kofi and its all because my game had a mini blow up on twitter, its not enough to live off of but its amazing to have, plus it gives me an excuse to show off stuff thats not ready for the public yet
It's slowed down since because I haven't set up a second goal and haven't advertised it much
Another approach: day-job. Being trying for 2 years. (no that I've just graduated for 2 years, but I've just being making games for 2 years).
Pros: You actually get paid. Only at the cost of your time (instead of your house)
Cons: It suck. Literally, it susk your energy and your time.
Ranking: D I suppose. Same thing like a freelance job just with more money and less time.
Me and my dev budy are about to quit and switch the situation to anything above C lol.
Probably one of the best strategies imo, and also how we got our start (and are still doing it). Can't believe we missed this tbh. -M
Please share the code once you have figured out how to make humans photosynthesize. Thanks.
Why is everybody creating games for Steam instead of Mobile? What am I missing?
Main upside of kickstarter that you don't bring up is that it's an easy way to get media coverage on your game. Set a small goal that you know your community can exceed significantly and a lot of gaming journalists will pick it up.
There are options for taxpayer funding too, especially in europe. In the taxpayer funded model, you get yourself fired from your job, enroll in every single government benefit possible, develop your game and release it under something like a wyoming llc while still collecting benefits. If everything works out, you can start working remotely for a wyoming llc for a token salary.
Great video!! Thank you for sharing!
Publishers actually give you the freedom to go full time if you currently work a normal job and do game making in your down time. That felt very undersold in the publisher funding section.
My prediction: the best way to fund your game is just get a solid job.
I work 8~12 hours a day and then an additional 4~6 on a company that I recently founded for game development. It's extremely difficult and you feel a lot of burn-out, but the stability from having a full-time job is pretty huge and if you manage your finances well, you'll have plenty of excess for commissioning assets and work.
Edit: Also, joining a community that does development is HUGE. One of my friends owns a web development company and they have a discord community with plenty of talented devs who are itching to help on projects. Join one of these communities and look for friends to help you. Just be weary of the legal/ownership issues, if you are planning on selling your game.
I think you missed 2, co-productions and/or partnerships I would have them seperately.
Maybe as well private funding (3th party), it goes inbetween community funding and venture capital. Basically the equivalent of pitching your awesome app to a friend (None ironically 😬)
Game funds from governments do not exist in the US, btw. Maybe small local grants sponsored by private grants, though, but not like in Europe.
Borrowing money from family/friend - C/D Tier, better than a bank or investor but can ruin your relationship if you fail and aren't able pay it back quick enough
Creating Game Dev Course - F Tier, you're building two different audiences which means you're essentially building two different businesses. So you're draining time and energy.
The hardest part of being a game dev is to fight with dogs for last scrapes of food
How can you discourage people from going the kickstarter route of things, when you have no experience in doing it yourself though? I mean, there are a lot of successful kickstarter games out there. And whilst I personally don't like crowdfunding as a dev should carry the risk of development themselves, with the customer having a more fair choice in whether or not a game is worth their money, I really don't think it makes sense to make any kind of recommendations like this. If you had a successful kickstarter campaign for one of your games, you'd have a radically different opinion.
well, in germany the government won´t give you anything, sadly, they did cut the expense once more..but this is truly helpful for people considering their own game
I'm planning to fund my game through dowry
Guys, this was very helpful and insightful. Thanks. ❤👍
Mandatory watching. /subscribed
This is really interesting. If people want to go more in depth on funding I’d recommend the Full Time Game Dev course by Thomas Brush. It isn’t cheap, but it’s pretty comprehensive for people who want to learn how to make games in unity and fund them
I actually think it’s a really good list. My company was started through an incubator, honestly for us it was an awful experience, mainly because the people running the incubator, but the idea could work for some. I do think residuals is the best idea, should put it at A+ or S. Curious though about including other stores outside of steam, particular mobile.
I am a lead artist working for a game studio, I am building my game after work and my kids have went to bed.
OMG... May the force be with you.
💪 Don't give up
Oh god, anothere tierlist... *stocks up on popcorn*
**Update** BiteMe has signed an exclusive contract with The publisher 😅😂
11 min remained to start. :)
Gamepass should be its own category IMO
Subscription services currently aren't open to the public like releasing on steam is and for games, there is no spotify model of putting your games on a service and getting revenue split. It's between publishers and service provider and indies do have little access to that right now.
what worked for me is making a very simple game and sell it for hundreds to people who wanna show off their money :). (game got shut down but at least I didn't have to refund it-)
I'd argue a Kickstarter campaign is more like A tier. Yes you do need to build up a community first, but... that's good, right? You need one anyway. You don't *need* to offer physical merchandise, if you get creative enough with digital rewards, you can avoid physical goods all together. Honestly it's one of the best ways to get funded, because at the end of the day, after fees/taxes are handled, you just have money to develop your game, and you don't owe interest or revenue share to anyone. The only obligation you have is to finish the game and deliver the rewards to your backers... which if the rewards are all purely digital, shouldn't be much of an issue.
The smart way to run a Kickstarter campaign is to set up a Pre-Launch page to build up a following prior to launch. There is some math to calculate how many followers you should gain before launching, but once you hit the target numbers, there's a very high chance of hitting your funding goal. Obviously if you just launch a Kickstarter out of nowhere with no community it's going to be C or D tier for funding, but if you learn how to do it right, it's A tier, and I'd even argue possibly S tier.
I get myself updated on whats happening on kickstarter from time to time and the sucess of kickstart heavily depends on genre, scope and the ability to sell a dream. So for an adult visual novel, kickstarter in S-tier. Luckily people learned that "3 people make an MMO for 50k" is not gonna happen so the funding of MMOs has gone down a bit, but "3 people make a cozy MMO for 50k" still seems to work. With my understanding on how software developement works, i feel like kickstarter requires you to lie to people about scope because lets be honest, a solid estimation of what money gets you is not a dream that people want to support.
Intresting video
This is a good one
You missed making an only fans account yoooo