computer games

the newbie indie first steps

Ok I want to have a bit of fun so I decided to write the:

typical average newbie indie developer first steps into the business!

Note: the following text is probably exaggerated a bit, but is based on real facts! I’ll call the developer Joe Smith.

1. Joe looking for porn sites finds by accident one of those new blogs/sites that claim online business is the new golden age and starts to read it. Obviously he finds a reference to the famed Pavlina articles and goes to that site to read them.
2. Joe starts to get interested by the sales figures. 100k/year here, another 50k prepay there and then he thinks “wow a tetris clone can make me 25k$ / year? pfui is a joke”
3. he obviously joins indiegamer community and announces he is going to change the world with his first game
4. he ignores any advice given there
5. he realize that even making a simple tetris clone isn’t so easy, and his initial “short 2 weeks game project” takes in the end 6 months
6. he announces his game to the world, expecting 100 sales overnight
7. after 3 months and 3 sales (of which 1 refund because “the game made my kid cry for 1 week”) he starts to wonder what’s going on
8. he is very angry and posts on indiegamer, “oh wtf, why my great exceptional original game doesn’t sell?! any suggestions?”
9. after wasting money in PR servies or adwords without any sales improvement, he realizes that yes, there are people earning 100k, but like in any other industry,the remaining 99,9% earns less than a street-sweeper
10. after 1 year of no-sex, his wife leaves him to go living with a famous black pornstar in a caribbean island

Ok hope you had a good laugh. That’s what happened to myself too, except for point 10 luckily!