Should I try to go full-time game dev?

ilan

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Thanks for making it so clear. I'll make sure not to respond to future posts where you ask for advice.
i can understand why you are upset but I have known Andy for a very long time in this forum. we both started to be active at about the same time and i can tell you that he is a really great guy. I also was surprised by his response because I know him and he is normally very nice.
he had released many sources for free. he is actually the main reason I started making games.
so when I saw his post I was surprised but then I said to myself he maybe had a bad day so let's take it in good spirits.

do not judge a person by a single post ;)

your opinion and many others are very appreciated! keep give us your 2 cents maybe 1 day with all those cents in the forum @Erel will be a millionaire 😂
 

Sandman

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i can understand why you are upset but I have known Andy for a very long time in this forum. we both started to be active at about the same time and i can tell you that he is a really great guy. I also was surprised by his response because I know him and he is normally very nice.
I'm actually not upset - I honestly meant that now it's clear for me that I don't have anything to provide when he's asking for advice.

Regarding him being nice or not, I always found him to be nice in our private messaging way back. So there's that. I'll give him benefit of a doubt and chalk it up to "frustration and stress can make most people say and do things that are out-of-character".

your opinion and many others are very appreciated!
Thanks, appreciated. Really.
 

OliverA

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andymc

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Sorry for my grumpiness in this thread. I honestly think could take making games with B4X fulltime, so it's frustrating when responders tell me it won't work. I like to try to focus on how to get things to work, rather than talking about why they won't work. I guess I just try to stay positive. I'm frustrated at myself really for not doing this years ago. My main successful game probably has done well mainly from luck as it's so close to the original, and at the time, the official game was selling for 4.99, so it's clear why players chose to try my game instead. Now when you search "Space Invaders" on the store, my game is the first to show. My belief is that since I have a good numbers of daily players and active installs, I could use this as a lever to release new games. So I release a game, then link to it from my Space Invaders game. There's a good number of old arcade games that could easily be re-written in B4A, then I'd release "deluxe" versions as I did with Space Invaders. This gives a list of over 20 games to work on, and if just 1 in 5 did well, then I've have another 4 games bringing in a good income and enough then to think about quitting my day job. But only after saving up plenty of living expenses and being fully qualified to re-enter the workplace if required.

I'm guilty of not taking criticism well, I get over sensitive about things and can come across rude or grumpy, sorry about that. And it's not that I don't want advice, I just find I listen more to advice from those who's achieved something I can see. One point made was that there are NBA coaches who were never good players, this is true, but they still had to work their way up to NBA coach level, they started out small on some small town team, then worked their way up, so they have a track record to show why they're good enough to coach at NBA level.

@Sandman sorry if I came across as rude.
 

LucaMs

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Sorry for my grumpiness in this thread. I honestly think could take making games with B4X fulltime, so it's frustrating when responders tell me it won't work. I like to try to focus on how to get things to work, rather than talking about why they won't work. I guess I just try to stay positive. I'm frustrated at myself really for not doing this years ago. My main successful game probably has done well mainly from luck as it's so close to the original, and at the time, the official game was selling for 4.99, so it's clear why players chose to try my game instead. Now when you search "Space Invaders" on the store, my game is the first to show. My belief is that since I have a good numbers of daily players and active installs, I could use this as a lever to release new games. So I release a game, then link to it from my Space Invaders game. There's a good number of old arcade games that could easily be re-written in B4A, then I'd release "deluxe" versions as I did with Space Invaders. This gives a list of over 20 games to work on, and if just 1 in 5 did well, then I've have another 4 games bringing in a good income and enough then to think about quitting my day job. But only after saving up plenty of living expenses and being fully qualified to re-enter the workplace if required.

I'm guilty of not taking criticism well, I get over sensitive about things and can come across rude or grumpy, sorry about that. And it's not that I don't want advice, I just find I listen more to advice from those who's achieved something I can see. One point made was that there are NBA coaches who were never good players, this is true, but they still had to work their way up to NBA coach level, they started out small on some small town team, then worked their way up, so they have a track record to show why they're good enough to coach at NBA level.

@Sandman sorry if I came across as rude.
It is only the fault of old age 😄:(😭
 
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emexes

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My belief is

Sometimes the way to make a decision is to distil your subconscious reasoning: my experience is that coin tossing is an excellent way to do that - if the coin comes up "wrong" then my stomach lets me know. 🙃
 
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Peter Simpson

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andymc said:
I'm stuck. I'm making a nice side income from mobile games I've written with B4A, mostly from one game, my Space Invaders clone. It's about 1/6 of what I'd need to go full time and quit my day job.
I doubt that you'll answer this response to you as you never do respond to my replies, but really I don't give a ....

As you are well aware I'm 100% self employed and I also have extra passive income (so if I were in your position I would, but ONLY because I have good passive income), I've been self employed basically most of my life (I started at nineteen, na na na na nineteen ;)).

Right now NO you shouldn't try to go full-time as a game developer for Android and iOS, you have way too many responsibilities in your life to try that. Even though I don't know you at all, I personally believe that is just not you, to me you appear to be a safety net kind of person.

Over the years from what I've read about you you've got a a wife, children, mortgage etc etc etc, you have a good life and earn way above the nation average when it comes to wages, so you can't just throw that away as living in the UK is hard enough without giving yourself a voluntary pay cut.

If I were in your position, I would just keep your full time job and keep making games on the side but for both the Play and App stores using B4XPages and XUI2D (one code for two platforms). Family life is extremely important and your wife and kids are easily the most important parts of your life. Finding time to balance everything in your life WILL BE more difficult with a full time job and also creating games in your spare time, but you're a ridiculously intelligent and resourceful person and I'm personally more than sure that you can and will get your work and family life balance 100% correct, hopefully.

Please note: I DO NOT MAKE GAMES but I have been self employed for well over 50% of my life. I've owned not one but two computers shops (at the same time) and have also been a self employed network engineer, that was fun but too much travelling.

My advise to you would be (once again if I were in your position) to keep doing your day job and maybe try to get a new work contract to work four days a week. Four days a week could be an option for you to help with your game development and family life balance. Get more certifications for future job prospects if needed and also try to create and promote your games, promoting your games is the hardest part as you already know. Obviously you can promote your new games in your already successful older games, but that will not be enough. I can not and will not even try to advise you on promoting your games as I don't promote anything that I do, I just get work in and it's completely different for my situation. Anyway you've probably forgotten more about promoting apps than I've ever known so I'll shut up about that.

We are all aware that you enjoy creating games using B4X and that you would prefer creating games rather than working your day job, but in reality you would need to claw back at least 80% of your current annual wage through apps before you could seriously consider leaving the security of your day job.

@andymc as you are well aware, the more passive income you can generate from your old and future games the more likely you are to want to quit your day job and take Caffeine Induces Games to the next level.

If my memory serves me correctly (but I could easily be 100% incorrect as I've had a drink or ten over the years) I think that I remember watching a game creation video series of yours (I think it was yours) where you created an example game on train journeys to and from work. I believe that was you but I cold be wrong as I like my Wray and Nephew rum and black extremely strong ;)

I really do hope that everything works out for you and one day you end up doing your dream job which is obviously game development.

So I bid you farewell and good luck. I'll catch you on the forum at a later date, but for now I need to sort out my Sonicwall which is in my loft...
 
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Computersmith64

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Hey Andy - my 2c worth. I think you know most of this already, but I have been pretty quiet for a long time, so I'll say it again...

I've been a full time self employed app developer / publisher since late in 2014. At that time I moved back to NZ after spending the previous 6 years in Canada & the US & I was completely burned out from working for others for about 35 years, so getting a "real job" was the last thing I wanted to do. I was lucky that I already had an app that at the time was generating more revenue than my previous full time job had been paying, so I thought I might as well just keep making apps. Unfortunately in 2015, that app (which was generating about 95% of my revenue) was suspended from Play Store due to a trademark infringement. Luckily I was able to negotiate with the other party's lawyers & get them to ask Google to reinstate the app so I could change the name & not lose my user base (500,000+ at that time). The name change significantly negatively impacted the download rate, but that app is still by far my biggest earner. Since then, I have expanded my app listing to around 25 on Play Store & 10 on App Store, however most of them have performed poorly in terms of bringing in money. I do have one app that did nothing for about 6 months, went crazy for 3 months, did nothing for another year & then went nuts again for another few months before settling down again - the nett result being that so far it has earned me about $400 per hour for the time I put into it. 😁

Apart from games, I have also developed a couple of apps for friends businesses & although I got paid for them, I don't think that's something I'd want to do to try to make a living.

As others have said, luck does seem to play a big part in whether or not an app does well - especially in the absence of massive advertising budgets. If you're lucky enough to have one or two apps that generate enough revenue for you to live off, you can start working on new projects - but being able to predict whether any of those will be successful or not is a mystery to me. I've developed apps that I thought were great & surely everyone would want, but alas, I've given up hope that doing what I do is going to make me a millionaire.

Most of my revenue comes from ads, but I also have one subscription based app that has about 150 subscribers across Android & iOS. The revenue I get from that & other store sales makes up less than 5% of my total income. One thing that seems to have a significant impact on ad revenue is where your user base is located. Fortunately for me, about 75% of mine is in the US so that helps keep the CPM rates up. I've had some apps where I've spent some $ on advertising, but specified very low CPC & ended up getting a heap of installs in places like India, Indonesia, etc... where the CPM rates for the ads in the app have been very low - so if you're going to spend money on advertising make sure you budget to get your ads shown in the markets where you'll earn more revenue. The cost to get the app out there will be higher, but so will the return.

In summary, I've been earning $ from apps since May 2014 (which is when I first started using AdMob) & it has been pretty steady. Some years have definitely been better than others but overall it has averaged out to a pretty reasonable living, with the added benefit that I can work (or not) when I want & I've had periods of months at a time (like when we moved back to AU earlier this year) where I've done virtually nothing & it has had zero impact on my revenue. On the flip side, I'm well aware that Google could decide to pull the rug out at any time & if I stop working for too long it will eventually catch up with me.

So the upshot is, yes you can make a living from going full-time but if you're in a position where you absolutely need to succeed in the short term, I think you'll be putting too much pressure on yourself. I was lucky that I already had a good earning app, no kids at home & no debt - but even then I felt pressure & when I had the trademark issue I thought I was screwed. If you had a way to keep working part time to cover your essential expenses until you start to see good returns, that would be ideal.

Feel free to PM me if you want to discuss it more.

- Colin.
 

andymc

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@Peter Simpson Hi Peter, thanks for the feedback. I've got to make it clear though, I would never consider going fulltime on this unless I had at least six months of my normal regular jobs income sitting in the bank, I also want to be able to take on contract jobs when required too, the cloud work certificates will help with that. You're right, I did do a video series on writing games, I covered simple games using Blitz Basic then a few videos using B4A. I'd still like to do more of these, but really, if I have spare time, I'd rather use this for writing games than making videos on them, making videos takes me a long time and helps some people, but I think getting some more games completed will really help with the quality and content of my videos.

@Computersmith64 Thanks for the feedback, that's really helpful, not just to myself but anyone else writing games for mobile. I just re-watched the video "How to survive in Gamedev for Eleven Years without a hit" - There's some good tips in there, like spreading your games as far as you can, put them on all app portals, lots of platforms and don't focus on one game, make lots of games, also, seasonal games are a good idea, so have games based on Christmas, or Easter.

I think advertising income is a really interesting area to discuss. I get approx 300 downloads a day and have 1250 active users per day (according to Google Play Services)., this nets me about £33 a day income, mainly from the US, UK, Japan and Australia. I've not regionalised my game at so it makes sense English speaking countries (and Japan since they invented the game), would make the most. But I see other games people release, with way more downloads getting hardly any income. Maybe they don't show ads often enough? (I show about 3-5per game session), but there must be a magic number, that players will allow without uninstalling and gets the best income.
 

Alejandro Moyano

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Hi @andymc , I quit my job to launch my own app, is a thought quest, I'm working on it but I single, I just back to my parents home and live from my saving until the big launch.

In my experience I think games don't worth you have to use too many energy to make new clients and retain it, you should find a problem for a niche (as they don't have too many offer you will get a loyal base), try to figure the digital solution for that problem and offers to customers (here figma and google forms can help u a lot), get 25-50 early adopters who wanna pay your solution and make a group to co-create the solution (using figma) and after that you can start to develop the app.

Finally better to get a team, I started alone but finally got a team of 4. Why? Develop takes too many time. We are 4 and launching the app 1 year and haft after start to code.

Once you have the app the niche model is easy, just have a subscription based system as you validated on the early adopters stage (you will start with 25-50 customers). Finally target your ads for that niche, seek on forums and places where are your customers and maintain a community loving your product.

But to be fair I quit to do the product, after the launch I will have to find a job until the app make enough money for my team, or get seed founding.. plus I moving to from Argentina to Italy next May, my savings are drooping faster.

I wish my experience could bring a light, read about the lean startup method it help me a lot. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_startup)
 

ilan

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@Peter Simpson Hi Peter, thanks for the feedback. I've got to make it clear though, I would never consider going fulltime on this unless I had at least six months of my normal regular jobs income sitting in the bank, I also want to be able to take on contract jobs when required too, the cloud work certificates will help with that. You're right, I did do a video series on writing games, I covered simple games using Blitz Basic then a few videos using B4A. I'd still like to do more of these, but really, if I have spare time, I'd rather use this for writing games than making videos on them, making videos takes me a long time and helps some people, but I think getting some more games completed will really help with the quality and content of my videos.

@Computersmith64 Thanks for the feedback, that's really helpful, not just to myself but anyone else writing games for mobile. I just re-watched the video "How to survive in Gamedev for Eleven Years without a hit" - There's some good tips in there, like spreading your games as far as you can, put them on all app portals, lots of platforms and don't focus on one game, make lots of games, also, seasonal games are a good idea, so have games based on Christmas, or Easter.

I think advertising income is a really interesting area to discuss. I get approx 300 downloads a day and have 1250 active users per day (according to Google Play Services)., this nets me about £33 a day income, mainly from the US, UK, Japan and Australia. I've not regionalised my game at so it makes sense English speaking countries (and Japan since they invented the game), would make the most. But I see other games people release, with way more downloads getting hardly any income. Maybe they don't show ads often enough? (I show about 3-5per game session), but there must be a magic number, that players will allow without uninstalling and gets the best income.

watching the video brought back motivation to me to make more games :(
is this good or bad?
 

Computersmith64

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I think advertising income is a really interesting area to discuss. I get approx 300 downloads a day and have 1250 active users per day (according to Google Play Services)., this nets me about £33 a day income, mainly from the US, UK, Japan and Australia. I've not regionalised my game at so it makes sense English speaking countries (and Japan since they invented the game), would make the most. But I see other games people release, with way more downloads getting hardly any income. Maybe they don't show ads often enough? (I show about 3-5per game session), but there must be a magic number, that players will allow without uninstalling and gets the best income.
Those numbers seem about on par with what I'm seeing. Five Dice has ~5.5k DAU & brings in around AU$280 per day on average. At its peak it was generating ~1,000 downloads per day (it's around 100 now) & close to US$500 per day. Since mid 2014 it has earned me almost AU$600k - but I have put a lot of time into it.

I started off putting an interstitial ad after each game, then I reduced it to one every second game. I did that because I had a tiny bit of feedback that there were too many ads in the app & that reducing the number would get me more installs - but in reality, all it did was reduce my revenue. I have recently (since I completely rewrote the app over the past couple of months) gone back to an ad after every game & yes, I get the occasional "there are too many ads" feedback, but my response to that is that if the ads are too annoying there's an in-app purchase to turn them off. Since the rewrite (which I released mid Oct), I haven't seen an increase in the number of complaints about ads or uninstalls, but the CPM has increased by about 25% & the revenue by about the same. So the lesson here for me is not to knee-jerk react to every bit of feedback you get.

I like the "how to survive..." video because I can relate to his story. I'd love to have a Flappy Bird (hence Poopy Sheep 😁) or one of those other apps that makes $600k per day, but I know I won't - which is ok, because I also know it's possible to make a decent living without having a hit. My biggest problem at the moment it trying to figure out what to do for my next app project...

- Colin.
 

yiankos1

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Before quiting your job, just think of my real life scenario, a nice morning AppStore deleted my two apps (Easy Pass Wallet and Green Pass Wallet) for a ridiculous reason and i could not do anything. Moreover, they warned me, if i do the same again, they will terminate my dev account.

You have to think that there are only two employers(google play and appstore), if for a ridiculous reason terminate your account what will be the next day?

I have my morning work and i try to code at my job or at house when my newborn fall asleep. I did a personal business in order to be legal for admob income and that's all.
 

yiankos1

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What was the reason? What did the apps do?

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Both apps are the same, but at green pass wallet it can store more loyalty cards. It is just a QR wallet app but.... AppStore do whatever wants and you can say NOTHING!
 
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