Can gamedev be my future?

edited in General
Hey guys. I've been lurking the forums since mid-2012. My high school career will be coming to an end relatively soon and I have no idea what I want to do after school. I have the grades to study anything except for courses like medicine. I first started with Unity/C# back in 2012. I've seen and heard of all these struggle stories of indie devs struggling to even live from cheque to cheque but I've also seen those one in a million devs that end up making millions so I'm really confused as to whether it is possible to make a living off of being an indie dev. So is it possible to make a decent living off of being an indie dev?
My current plan is to maybe take a gap year after high school and pursue this from now then see how far I've gotten at the end of my gap year and, depending on how far I've gotten, see if I should either:
  • Continue pursuing this and do it full time and not go to university. (I'd have to have gotten very far to choose this option because I guess it's important to get an education and I don't want to miss out on my uni days :P)
  • Go to university and do this during university if/when I have free time.
  • Go to university and do this after I have my degree.
I'd want to start my own company but is there any money in Unity C# freelancing?

Thanks for your input :)

Comments

  • edited
    Hi Charly,

    This is difficult question many of us (myself included) are still trying to answer. The short answer is that yes, it is possible to make a living from indie dev. There are several members here who are already doing that successfully. The slightly longer answer is that doing so is incredibly difficult and requires a wealth of skills cultivated over several years of trial and error and hard graft. These include completely unsexy things such as marketing, business development, project management, self-promotion, networking, public relations, negotiation, self motivation and whole host of other things.

    Whilst I can't comment on your current skill levels or what the right choice might be for you, I can say that the right time to go indie is as late as possible. What I mean by this is that ideally you'll have a game idea so compelling and with so much positive user feedback that you really have no choice but to work on it full time. It's very seductive to think that once you are dedicating yourself full time to games you'll find "that great idea". But in my experience and experience of many others that's the exact opposite of what happens. In fact you run the danger of striking out and not finding any decent ideas which puts more pressure on yourself to succeed and can lead to negative cycle of unproductivity and even depression.

    I think the great thing about university is that it gives you safe environment to fail. Even though there is the danger you might find uni boring or it might absorb all of your game dev time, the opportunity to iterate ideas without the added pressure of trying to make a successful business out of it will be crucial to your game development skills. Through avenues like game jams you have a totally risk free way of exploring ideas and putting in the hours needed to become a skilled game maker. ;)

    Edit: On the unity freelancer note. Being a successful freelancer is different equation to being a successful indie dev. But it's still about running a business and many of those unsexy things still apply. Yes, there is freelance work, but gaining access to it can be incredibly difficult if you don't have a network to draw on. Also, bear in mind you are competing for that work with more established devs who have several years head start on you. If you want to go down this route I recommend you build up your network over the course of several years doing something that is not freelancing. This might be working for a company or taking on freelance work whilst still in university and impressing people with the quality of your work. Also bear in mind it's very difficult to transition from a freelance career into a career making your own games and ideas.
  • edited
    @charly: It sounds like you have lots of options. You're lucky to be able to make decisions like this, so don't fret about them too much, provided you learn from whatever you do, you'll be okay :)

    That said, if you're not sure what you want to do, take a gap year. If you have the resources and/or opportunity to travel during that gap year, do it. You'll learn a ton about yourself and what you can do independently if you're traveling and now is when you don't have anything tying you to a specific place.

    If you want to be a game developer, make games. It doesn't matter if you're making them in your spare time between classes at university, on a crappy laptop on a bus touring Bolivia, or when you should be asleep before waking up to go man the counter at KFC for another 12 hours straight. When you make those games, make sure they're terrible, so you can learn the most from them. Keep making things until someone loves a terrible thing you've made. Eventually people will offer to pay you to make games because they'll either believe you can do a job they need done, or they'll want to buy something you made. None of that happens without making lots and lots of games first.

    Along the way you can course correct should you need to move somewhere else in the world, fall in love, invent a better mousetrap, become addicted to cheese, decide that you enjoy full contact crochet more... Flexibility is your gift right now, don't squander it!
  • If you only take one thing away let it be this:
    Eventually people will offer to pay you to make games because they'll either believe you can do a job they need done, or they'll want to buy something you made. None of that happens without making lots and lots of games first.
  • Hi charly , it doesnt matter what field you going choose if want to run your business, and be an independent anything its going take dedication, there are no guarantees, I guess the fact that you are already interested making games , is a good indication of what direction you should go.
  • edited
    Successful indie / Freelancer = jack of all trades. I've freelanced in Europe for several years and it is the definite truth if you want to work as a freelancer in games. It's often necessary to take software development work that isn't games, just to take things forward. That means expanding your skills outside of what gamedev traditionally expects. But that's a reasonable price to pay for the ultimate freedom of pursuing your dreams. And it makes you a better developer, all round.

    I've just posted an ad on this site today for someone to come and work with me in PE, and that ad displays the epitome of my business model -- I need multiskilled developers to keep the revenue stream going. I need swiss army knife developers. One core technology (like Unity) is not going to cut it... excuse the pun.

    Remember anyhow that the gap year you take *must* count. And so you should aim at very limited spec projects, say 1-3 months each, all inclusive, in order to create a portfolio in that time.
    Thanked by 1konman
  • edited
    @charly I just want to add on to what other people have said.

    My career path was through game development employment (developing games in teams for clients).

    I started off making a lot of games (like @Dislekcia suggested). After a lot of terrible games, some of them showed promise (but I still wasn't making any money off of them).

    At that point people wanted to employ me to work on games for them, and so I did a couple jobs and finished a couple games like that.

    Then, with that experience (and a little bit of money), I pursued my own games and started hiring people.


    I think this was a fairly conservative path. It took me about four years to get to the point of employing myself (and I'd had some work experience in other fields and some tertiary education before that).

    I think this can be a pretty safe path. There is plenty of game development work out there, and gaining skills in game development while being employed as a game dev is a pretty sweet deal. But it will only be easy to get that work if you can already prove that you can make appealing games/apps on your own.

    This isn't a chicken and egg scenario though, there's plenty of opportunity to build a portfolio that demonstrates your skills. Like any creative field this means a couple years of hard studying (at a games course or on your own).

    My opinion is that if you have an aptitude for game development, game development isn't necessarily a risky career path at all, rather it's a question of how much risk you want to take.

    A lot of devs answer that question with "ALL OF THE RISK RIGHT NOW!". And sometimes they succeed gloriously, and sometimes they get burned.

    But you don't have to take those risks until you want to. A lot of devs put themselves in positions where they HAVE to take a big risk, but that isn't because game development is inherently very risky, it's because they chose to put themselves in that position.

    And I'd suggest always seeking advice like you have done now before taking a risk you don't understand.

    That said: I think a gap year spent making games will be an awesome experience. But I don't expect that it will be enough to make you employable or able to pursue your own games. I obviously don't know your aptitude or skill set, but I think in general a person needs more time than that. I think taking a gap year, and figuring out if you really do have an aptitude for game development, and then doing some formal studying (at the Wits game design course for instance) should give you a good start. Obviously a degree in game development means nothing by itself, it's the games you make while studying that will give you the qualification.
  • edited
    I was chatting a bit more to a colleague about this question. In particular I was trying to figure out whether it's fair to say that game development is a risky career, or not.

    The conclusion that I came to was that game development is a difficult career, and one where coasting-by won't work. In contrast there's far more room for coasting-by in enterprise software development, and a little more room for coasting-by (than in game development) in art for advertising.

    Added to that: The game development industry is particularly small in South Africa, though it's growing, and so there isn't a big safety net of safe jobs to fall into.

    But having said that, if you have an aptitude for game development, and you don't pursue high-risk high-reward opportunities, I don't think game development is risky at all.

    It is risky if you don't know whether you have an aptitude for game development or not. So figuring that out (in the way @Dislekcia suggested) should be your first priority (if you don't already know).

  • @charly. I'm working full time as a freelance game developer for 2 years now. Before this I was a senior C# software developer for Tracker, started doing freelance work about 4 years ago, mostly on www.Freelancer.com, now have several fixed income contracts with companies in US, Canada, NZ and Aus, and still working on www.Freelancer.com, there are a few more sites like freelancer out there. Check you my profile on freelancer:
    http://www.freelancer.com/u/JACLEMGO.html

    My advice:
    Bid on projects as much as possible, if you dont get them, still make the game/project, which you can later use on your portfolio.
    Start cheap, I did a few projects for $1 just to get ratings/reviews
    Study study study!!! The more skills you have, the more projects you can do.

  • JACLEMGO said:
    Start cheap, I did a few projects for $1 just to get ratings/reviews
    What's the difference between this and working for exposure? Work for free/for exposure is regarded as one of the worst things you can do as a freelancer.
  • If you are new on a freelancer sites, its quite a mission to land bids without some ratings/reviews. Worked for me ;)
  • Thanks everyone for their input. I really appreciate it.
    dislekcia said:

    If you want to be a game developer, make games. It doesn't matter if you're making them in your spare time between classes at university, on a crappy laptop on a bus touring Bolivia, or when you should be asleep before waking up to go man the counter at KFC for another 12 hours straight. When you make those games, make sure they're terrible, so you can learn the most from them.
    Yeah, I suppose that's one of key differences between us and the AAA industry.
    dislekcia said:
    JACLEMGO said:
    Start cheap, I did a few projects for $1 just to get ratings/reviews
    What's the difference between this and working for exposure? Work for free/for exposure is regarded as one of the worst things you can do as a freelancer.
    Why is that? Surely if you can afford to do a couple of small projects for free to get your name out there then there's no problem? I suppose the problem comes when you need money to eat.
    JACLEMGO said:
    If you are new on a freelancer sites, its quite a mission to land bids without some ratings/reviews. Worked for me ;)
    Wow, was looking through your stuff. Nice stuff and it seems like you landed some big projects.


    I'm going to have to sit down sometime soon and make my final decision. You guys have really helped me by telling me everything I need to know to make an informed decision.
    Thanked by 1MichaelDeon
  • charly said:
    Why is that? Surely if you can afford to do a couple of small projects for free to get your name out there then there's no problem? I suppose the problem comes when you need money to eat.
    I think the difference is where the power lies in a working relationship... If someone is offering you work and they want you to do it for free/exposure, then they're trying to exploit your lack of experience and should thus not be someone you should want to work for. Ever.

    If you're trying to make a name for yourself somewhere, it helps to have visible projects. @JACLEMGO made the call to bid low, there's no coercion to be cheaper. So it's more of a marketing/visibility decision for a known product (@JACLEMGO's time and experience) instead of undervaluing an inexperienced resource. Does that make sense?
    charly said:
    I'm going to have to sit down sometime soon and make my final decision. You guys have really helped me by telling me everything I need to know to make an informed decision.
    Well, I'd probably argue that you may not be able to make an informed decision without having made a few games yet, but I assume that's what you're deciding to do or not ;)
  • Thanks for everything. @JACLEMGO (hoping it will send you a notification) I'm interested in doing a few small jobs. Should I do 2 or 3 projects that really test my abilities and show what I am capable of, put them together in a portfolio on a website then start looking for projects on a site like Freelancer? Would you suggest Freelancer is the best (I know it's not the easiest) place to start getting some jobs? I don't know much about LinkedIn but is it a good place to put a portfolio or should I go all out and get one of those fancy squarespace websites?
  • @CHARLEY
    IMO and what worked for me:

    1. Create a portfolio page/website, update it regularly with your work
    I use:
    http://www.webafrica.co.za
    Carbon made is nice for some images
    http://carbonmade.com/

    Most of the freelance sites don't allow you to post links to LinkedIn, employers can contact you directly then. So also make a PDF with resume with links to your work and images.

    2. Look for a few high quality employers (ratings) on the freelance sites, follow them, look at their previous projects, do them. There was an employer on VWorker (Freelancer bought them), which always posted nice projects, more than $1000 each, I couldn't win a bid for this employer, so I did one of each previous project, just to check if I can do it, and used it in my next bid to him, this landed me a project with him. This employer ended up being Nestle.

    3. Don't think any site is the "best", each has its own advantages, etc... I have profiles on all of them, haven't been able to land a bid on odesk, elance, but still trying, bid at least once a week.

    Once you land your first project, treat the client like gold, you never know, one of them might hire you permanently. I have been working full time for a company in New York, for almost 2 years now, they used to be one of my freelance clients.

    Lastly, study study study! Do tutorials/course daily, gaming is a never ending technology, continuously changing, don't just focus on one area (IMO), Im a programmer, but Im always doing tutorials in Photoshop, Blender, etc. Also dont just focus on one game engine, play around with Construct2, GameMaker, UDK, UE4, etc. I jump between Construct2 and Unity a few times a day.

    All above is want worked for me, making a living by making games full time from home
  • edited
    EDIT: Wow, didn't see this was a necro! It popped up on my front page...

    If you have the grades, I would recommend you go study either IS or ComSci. You can learn how to build games whilst getting a degree from it (some unis like UCT offer game dev courses, too). Rather come out of the next several years of learning (which you will be doing anyway, regardless of your intelligence. Game dev isn't a fast track) with a degree that makes you marketable.

    Seriously - the market is looking for IT graduates. Say you strike it lucky during your studies and you suddenly earn a ton of cash - great. However, it's far better to have a solid fallback just in case.

    Source: my personal life! Been game dev'ing since I was 13. I'm finally going to study now at the age of 24. I can say that it took me all those years to truly learn about the fundamentals of game design and my art form. You won't become a master in a year, which is why I recommend against going full time game dev, if I'm perfectly honest.
    Thanked by 1MichaelDeon
  • @jackshiels

    I have been reading game programming books since 2006 so yes it takes forever to learn. But very addictive .
    Thanked by 1MichaelDeon
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