AuroDev | How to MAKE GAMES BY YOURSELF: 5 solo game developer tips @AuroDev | Uploaded December 2020 | Updated October 2024, 3 hours ago.
How to make games by yourself as a one person development team?
⚔️ Mortal Glory 2: store.steampowered.com/app/2216660?utm_source=yt
⚔️ Chambers of Devious Design: store.steampowered.com/app/1650860?utm_source=yt
⚔️ Mortal Glory: store.steampowered.com/app/1097530?utm_source=yt
🧙 Chat on Discord: discord.gg/uhyB8VzcB2
⭐ Follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/RedbeakGames
💎 Patreon - Support to gain perks: patreon.com/redbeakgames
Making games alone can be intimidating as there are many skills you need to learn in order to become a successful game developer. In this video I will share a few solo game developer tips that will help you on your quest for indie game success.
Game Development with Full Time Job: youtube.com/watch?v=OgLM1ZTVVEY
0:00 - Intro
0:25 - Think long-term
Financial success with your first indie game is possible, but based on data analysis by Karl Kontus (ind13.com/how-much-money-do-steam-games-make/) & Sergio Garces (sgarces.com/?p=56) it's not that likely as the average indie game only makes somewhere between $1400 and $4000 during it's lifetime. That is why you should take a long-term view for your gamedev journey. Even if your first game makes no money, you will gain skills and experience you need on your game development career. You will also gain fans for both your game and you as a developer. These fans will make it easier for your next game to succeed as you now already have an existing audience. With the help of cross-marketing, success with a future game can also be shared with an earlier not-so-successful game. The more games you have, the likelier you are to be successful.
2:43 - Visuals-first development style
Your game's graphics is what attracts the attention of potential customer and your gameplay is what hooks them. Because of this you should first focus on the visual look of your game. This will enable you to market your game early on and make it easier to gain a following for your game.
4:56 - Actively scope down
As you keep developing your game, it's very easy to get tons of ideas for cool features. Maybe they are even easy to add so why not? Well, every added feature increases the complexity of your game and pushes back your release date. As the complexity of your project increases, so does the risk of there being a game-breaking bug or you never actually finishing the game. That's why you should be very critical what you add to the game. Prefer having a tight & fun gameplay loop to make your game fun instead of adding tons of features on top of the loop in order to try and make it fun. Also remember that you can still update your game after release. This way you will get feedback from actual customers and will have a better idea what they would like to see in your game.
5:53 - Don't aim for perfect
"Perfect is the enemy of good."
It is easy to tunnel vision on something and spend weeks to try and make it perfect. But this can easily lead you to wasting precious time. You can spend weeks perfecting something, but the player might not even notice any different. By aiming for perfection you hit diminishing returns fast; The more time you spend perfecting something, the lower the additional value you actually gain by doing that. That is why you should go with the principle of "good enough". Constantly evaluate if something is good enough. If so, move on to doing something more valuable.
Remember: "Done is better than perfect.
8:12 - Embrace learning
As an indie developer, you will constantly need to learn new things. There's no way around this. Unless you got deep pockets, you will need to assume many roles: designer, coder, tester, producer, artist, marketer, pr person, entrepreneur, community manager, publisher, etc... But the good news is that you don't actually need to be good at all of these. In fact, in the beginning you can suck at each of these and still succeed. You just need to embrace the mentality of constant learning. Keep doing, keep learning and keep improving!
How to make games by yourself as a one person development team?
⚔️ Mortal Glory 2: store.steampowered.com/app/2216660?utm_source=yt
⚔️ Chambers of Devious Design: store.steampowered.com/app/1650860?utm_source=yt
⚔️ Mortal Glory: store.steampowered.com/app/1097530?utm_source=yt
🧙 Chat on Discord: discord.gg/uhyB8VzcB2
⭐ Follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/RedbeakGames
💎 Patreon - Support to gain perks: patreon.com/redbeakgames
Making games alone can be intimidating as there are many skills you need to learn in order to become a successful game developer. In this video I will share a few solo game developer tips that will help you on your quest for indie game success.
Game Development with Full Time Job: youtube.com/watch?v=OgLM1ZTVVEY
0:00 - Intro
0:25 - Think long-term
Financial success with your first indie game is possible, but based on data analysis by Karl Kontus (ind13.com/how-much-money-do-steam-games-make/) & Sergio Garces (sgarces.com/?p=56) it's not that likely as the average indie game only makes somewhere between $1400 and $4000 during it's lifetime. That is why you should take a long-term view for your gamedev journey. Even if your first game makes no money, you will gain skills and experience you need on your game development career. You will also gain fans for both your game and you as a developer. These fans will make it easier for your next game to succeed as you now already have an existing audience. With the help of cross-marketing, success with a future game can also be shared with an earlier not-so-successful game. The more games you have, the likelier you are to be successful.
2:43 - Visuals-first development style
Your game's graphics is what attracts the attention of potential customer and your gameplay is what hooks them. Because of this you should first focus on the visual look of your game. This will enable you to market your game early on and make it easier to gain a following for your game.
4:56 - Actively scope down
As you keep developing your game, it's very easy to get tons of ideas for cool features. Maybe they are even easy to add so why not? Well, every added feature increases the complexity of your game and pushes back your release date. As the complexity of your project increases, so does the risk of there being a game-breaking bug or you never actually finishing the game. That's why you should be very critical what you add to the game. Prefer having a tight & fun gameplay loop to make your game fun instead of adding tons of features on top of the loop in order to try and make it fun. Also remember that you can still update your game after release. This way you will get feedback from actual customers and will have a better idea what they would like to see in your game.
5:53 - Don't aim for perfect
"Perfect is the enemy of good."
It is easy to tunnel vision on something and spend weeks to try and make it perfect. But this can easily lead you to wasting precious time. You can spend weeks perfecting something, but the player might not even notice any different. By aiming for perfection you hit diminishing returns fast; The more time you spend perfecting something, the lower the additional value you actually gain by doing that. That is why you should go with the principle of "good enough". Constantly evaluate if something is good enough. If so, move on to doing something more valuable.
Remember: "Done is better than perfect.
8:12 - Embrace learning
As an indie developer, you will constantly need to learn new things. There's no way around this. Unless you got deep pockets, you will need to assume many roles: designer, coder, tester, producer, artist, marketer, pr person, entrepreneur, community manager, publisher, etc... But the good news is that you don't actually need to be good at all of these. In fact, in the beginning you can suck at each of these and still succeed. You just need to embrace the mentality of constant learning. Keep doing, keep learning and keep improving!
