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Money aside indie games just take a ton of time to make. But it is incredibly fun if you have the right team ;)

this video actually made me not want to develop a game, fantastic, exactly what i needed.

this guy uses Vampire survivors as example... that thing is a asset flip, you can buy them 25 dollars if you want to

then a person come and said can you do me a prototype of Hearthstone for 50 bucks ....?

Such a great video, very unfortunate it hasn't had more traction!!

Thanks! This his a great video for all indie game newbies and a great pitch for your company at the same time. Nice one! 🎉

Do you want free accomodation on the Gold Coast in Australia for 6-12 months just to go balls deep on an original game? :D plus commission, food etc.

How much to hire you for a full Bullet hell game?

Lots of kids think it's cool to have made something creative and when they lack SKILL they think they can simply BUY it. They claim to have ideas for new games, but lack the knowledge of what has been done before and often it's only a small twist on an existing formula. Even they could buy everything, they would need the skill to manage all the people involved and organize it into a concrete vision. To make matters worse, I think these cost estimates are on the low end. It might be because the estimates apply to people who do it for the love, are generally young fresh out of school and living on pizza. In reality the salaries vary as senior people are payed more then juniors and programmers make more then artists. Although gamedev pays worse of all IT sectors, for instance programmers get 1/3 more with a bank, they still need a house, a car and have to support their kids. Like many creative ventures, when you invest in gamedev you are probably going to lose money. At least by the opportunity cost, because you can't work somewhere else getting payed more. Often also because the venture goes bust as the money runs out, seeing no return on investment and the last few salaries will never get payed. I think Scott Galloway's quote is apt here "Follow your passion is something rich people say. Unless you're in the 1% and you get many signals you are, it's better to follow your talent" Doing gamedev as a hobby is great. In that case money is less of an issue and you could still get a hit. It's smart too, because stressing out about money lowers your intelligence.

Years of one’s life

Eric Barone received funding from Chucklefish who were the publisher at the time, Eric eventually got publishing rights from them (maybe bought it off them or contract expired). But he did not spend 5 years on no money at all working on the game. Chucklefish tend to be one of the most generous of indie publishers when it comes to funding too.

6:07 I do recommend to do a unpaid development like Eric did bc people can see the passion in the work and they'll see something special about this project that you were working. There's a unique story why he/she development a game by himself/herself. Eric case was trying to get a job but overall, he made a good game. That's what you are trying to execute in the end of the development. Sometimes it's not a good idea to take people money like early investors. Money has a funny psychology on people mind. It's a comfortable feeling that you don't have to worried about it since you don't have to worried about money anymore. You can make a bad game and have a big kick starter campaign with a lot of money. Then you turned out to be a huge scammer that's something you don't want over your head. It's something most developers are afraid when they're released their product. It does happened in the industry. You do want to create stress but not too much bc you want to create a game early as possible so people will play it but with less bugs but you promised the people you will keep updating the game to make a better verison of it. That's why Eric is a multi millionaire and everyone should take a page from his development journey

Great and insightful video! Hope this channel gets the popularity it deserves.

To earn money I have to make a game, but to make a game I need money. No wonder why I still can't earn a cent after almost 10 years of game dev. I'm stuck in a loop 😅

Bull shit !!!!

nothing, its free, if truly independent. cant depend on money.

Truth is majority of games never finish and if you are able to finish a game you are already ahead of 99%. A better video would be, "how to know if you will ever finish your indie game?"

I like your style, very unique. You're going places.

1:59 don't think you can sneak that Dream Daddy past me!!!!

Am i the only one who does it for free?

Your explanation makes a lot of sense. Honestly, considering how price-sensitive consumers are, it's a miracle game development is profitable at all, considering how much human time cost it has.

I made an online multiplayer game in 6 hours. Well, it took another 6 hours to make the multiplayer server. And I spent 2 days fighting with the bloody AWS configuration. And the game got hacked in 15 minutes. But still. That's a bit less than a year! Some people played it for several days, which surprised me. I ran out of time during a game jam so I just made the simplest thing I could come up with. There's not a lot of multiplayer browser games (compared to other types of games) so there's much less competition there.

Does it cost anything if you make everything yourself? Like what do you spend money on?

Yooo turnip boy in 0:26 !!!

I'll stick to web development.

*Too Damn Big Worlds with half the content 👎 AC Mirage was mid but it had the perfect sized world and still not enough content 😂 I think every game should learn from Bully: Scholarship Edition* 👍

First vid of new years

Great breakdown well done 👏

💥 Promo_SM

At least one human soul...

a kidney and 10 piece nuggies

For me it`s free to make games(:

I am glad I contacted you before watching this. I would never have dared to contact you, had I seen this video. Amazing voice by the way.

I think it is misleading to talk about costs, it is more correct to talk about hours of work required (from which the costs can then be estimated). A good example is "mortal glory", which took 1,000 hours to make. A simple game but one that adequately repaid the time dedicated to it

This channel is so fresh damn I'm sure at the time that I announce my game this channel will probably have 50 video at most

Great video, I would love to see more content like this!

Thank you, this video was really well made and very informative! :)

Are you a former ted-ed animator or just inspired?

I smell future success in this video. Commenting to drive up engagement!

Hello there, I am also a solo Game dev. , working on my project for around 1.5 years, my plan is finish it at 2years, which means only half year is left. indie game making is hard but, is a dream as all of the indie dev know. cheer for both of us keep going

Cool video! Working with you guys sounds interesting :-)

Keep up the great work, and I can’t wait to see more of your content. 🖤

Crazy that you only havc 506 subs, can't wait for you to blow up

Animation is top notch

Amazing content, glad the youtube algorithm showed you to me :)

Its free

500th SUB!!!

it depends how much someone spends to assest flip.

I don't understand this video. 🤔 With free tools like Blender, Unreal, Unity, Gimp, and countless procedural plugins integrated into them, with, say 5 hours a week, making games has never been cheaper and easier. 🤔 As for publishing your game, there are indie platforms with no fee. 🤷‍♀️ Unless you are making a multiplayer where you have to pay for hosting servers. It's the culture of poor financial management. People will buy literally anything to make themselves feel important, like they are doing something big. All the modern games do not require that hyper-expensive industry-standard software to make. Look at numerous modern games being recreated on Unreal by single individuals on a daily basis. The perpetual hamster wheeling of money making instead of making a good paying game is what brought down Ubisoft, Blizzard, EA. Back in the 90s there was no budget or gamedev salary. Games were made by students with minimal equipment. Don't invest into Maya, ZBrush, Substance, Photoshop nonsense. Invest into learning coding or blueprints, some minimal art, animating, and level design. Pace yourself too because burn-out is very much real even for the most passionate of us.

excellent vid, ive just finished a switch game. Cost me about $1500 us for all assets but around 350k usd in my own time. which means basically its kind of high budget lol, of course i didnt pay anyone apart from the 1500. I also have another game ive done over 10 yrs on, i estimate ive spent $50k on assets and over a million in my own hours.