I'm a full time game developer fifteen months into creating my city builder game. It's a lonely journey so I put together a very small group of other solo game developers.
We meet up every week (currently Tuesday nights, EST) to relate to the struggle, hang out, and sometimes rotate one person who presents for the night (they can teach or talk about anything game dev related, including their game). It's been a success and motivating for all involved. There's also a second group that meets on Thursday's, but this group is currently full. There's about 10 total people on the Discord server.
I'm looking to add 2 people to the group who can commit to weekly meetups. You must be working on your game full time. Must be serious about finishing/releasing your game.
About the group:
We are late 20s - 30s and serious about releasing our respective games. We are pretty open and honest with each other, and will question each other/provide feedback freely.
About our games:
My game: Metropolis 1998
Person #2 Game: Basketball GM
Person #3 Games: 9001 and It Usually Ends In Nuclear War
Other people's game on the server who can publicly share:
Drift
Reisha Falls
Email is in profile
Perhaps there is another Discord someone could setup where part-time game creators could join. I am making a procedurally generated world simulation game that is a little bit too early in the process to showcase, and definitely not work full-time on, but it still has several tens of thousands of lines of code in it. That's just reality for making a game from zero. I would be interested in talking to other people about game creation.
I created a small community where everyone knows everyone's face/name. I am really restrictive with the number of people in the server not because I want exclusivity per se, but rather that I dont want to lose the deeper connections you develop with people in a small community. There's about 10 of us total right now.
It also helps that everyone is on the same page (serious about releasing their game) so we have a common goal to work towards together (and separately). It's great, I've been running the server for almost a year now. Everyone has said it's been really motivating.
So please, email me if anyone here wants that. Otherwise, the other discord links posted here are probably a better fit for you!
I've been working on and off on simulation games in my spare time for a few years. Written some small ones that model things like elections / voting, as well as economic systems of various flavours.
If you're interested email in my profile!
> I am making a procedurally generated world simulation game
That's so awesome. Procedurally generated worlds and systems are so powerful, and they'd only going to grow more so with AI advances.
Would you or someone in this thread be interested in part time contract work at my AI startup? We're doing a lot of procedural generation and AI animation in Unreal Engine and I'd like to have more hands on deck than just me.
https://storyteller.ai
https://twitch.tv/FakeYouLabs
He is using a psychological trick to make people feel insecure and inadequate, and thus create an imbalance of power within the group. However, his requirements may backfire because being a full-time solo game developer may only be possible if you have someone supporting you, or if you live in your mom’s basement or on social security. It excludes people who are serious about their endeavors but still have to pay the bills.
I'd potentially be interested, my email is in profile if you'd like to reach out. :)
Lots of work is the answer, though.
We actually got to Early Access release in ~11 months (~20 man-months). We had to learn a new programming language & learn a game engine during that time, too (and learn what a game engine really was/what it meant). Really though, I think the most difficult (and important) part was more about learning the nuances of game development, even just understanding the (understandably high) UX expectations that a player has from a game -- it took a while to really "get there" and I'm still learning, every day.
It's also worth mentioning that SimAirport was really not very good when we initially released it -- definitely rushed to release, far too early, and it was a mess at that point. After the EA release another ~3yr of full-time development went into it (and more dev resources), and it became a much better game/product in that time.
I wish I could work on SimAirport forever.
That's the downside with the games industry; it's ultra competitive and the amount of competition is increasing every day. Much of "the money" is heavily concentrated at the "top" of the pyramid, amongst a relatively small selection of titles. It's not the easy way, I can say that with confidence.
And 2) Rollercoaster Tycoon IS an aberration, since it was written in Assembly by one person!
Will Wright always wanted to make a game called "SimTapeworm", however he could never get the green light on that from Maxis or EA.
I hold out hope that some clever indie developer will figure out how to monetize the serious educational parasitic infection simulation genre.
Maybe you could make a plug-in to SimAirport, so parasites and contagious diseases could spread internationally via Vomit Waves like in Theme Hospital and Two Point Hospital and Oxygen Not Included.
https://two-point-hospital.fandom.com/wiki/Big_Kahuna:_How_t...
https://youtu.be/Z7XCXq8j4iA?t=1402
Or how about Toxocariasis Tycoon, where you try to take over the world by controlling your hosts' behavior to widely reproduce and spread out through enough people to swing the election and control the government?
Really appreciate the kind words, means a lot coming from you -- thank you!
I don't remember if we actually shipped it or not, maybe it was only on a beta branch (or maybe it's sitting on a git branch still), but I actually implemented an "infectious disease" concept at one point. I think the idea at the time was for it to be a holiday "easter egg" maybe, but I don't recall for sure. I do vividly recall testing it one morning, though, and I had the "contagion" values (way) too high. I'm pretty sure the concept was wholly taken from Theme Park, where I recall one post-coaster puking agent could yield a rapid mess. The day I was testing my copy, I ended up making a video of the hilarity that ensued when a single infected passenger deplaned and suddenly there were hundreds (maybe thousands) of agents (passengers) all "stumbling around" spreading the ultra-contagious disease like wildfire, making a disgusting sound & leaving the floors covered with ick. I'll have to search the repo history -- maybe it's worth revisiting!
A disease tycoon, eh? Like SimAnt, but on a wholly different scale? =D
Would love to connect if you're ever in Vegas! Thanks again for the kind words, makes my day & sincerely means a lot to me. :)
As someone that would like to create my own (basic) games, what would be the right tools and frameworks In your opinion to create art and game logic ?
The easier to learn the better haha
Congratulations and thank you for the good times!
I still firmly believe that making games -- especially under an "old-school" business model (ie no loot-boxes, no microTX, etc) -- has to rank extremely high on the "work gratification" scale.
I'm obviously super small -- but it's AWESOME to know >80k people have played SimAirport for >20 hours and ~20k have played >100hrs (!!) -- so damn rewarding!
About 5 years ago, the belief was that the ratio was in the realm of 1 : 50-100 -- based on my own data & data shared with me by other indies. Even then, there was substantial variance; genre, theme, price point, developer involvement, discounts, review score (proxy for player experience/overall game quality), etc -- were some of the key variables that I believed were having a significant impact on review-to-sales ratio variance between games.
Over time, changes to the UX have been made (by Valve/Steam) which appear to have increased the rate at which players leave reviews -- quite substantially, it seems.
On the whole, I think that a far higher percentage of players are leaving reviews now (ie a lower review-to-sale ratio), but I also believe that the variance is even higher now than it was before. It's still helpful for making estimates, but I don't think it's as highly-correlated as it once was (~5yr ago it was much more consistent & highly correlative).
On how it got where it is, including a fun back story, I wrote a blog post: https://willem.com/blog/2018-02-21_updating-snake-97/
It must be said: developing a game and have it enjoyed by millions is something very special. Things really went bananas when I was invited to an art gallery showcasing art inspired by my very game: https://willem.com/blog/2022-04-18_snake-97-high-scores/
It makes me feel humble and grateful.
Are you able to get meaningful income from it? (Google Play store mentioned it contains ads tho I haven't seen any)
Part of the game's (organic) growth is (kindly + infrequently) asking players to share their high scores with their friends. It saves me from having to advertise the game to reach new players. (If a player shares his or her highscore, ads are even less frequently shown, as an hidden reward)
Sounds like a great group! Making a game yourself can be very tough, but also rewarding. Having people to share your experience with is really important. If you ever want a guest who spent many long years working on a game and came out of if scared but a happier person, please reach out.
MobileUO is a Unity-port of ClassicUO, which is an open-source C# client for Ultima Online. My hope was to get support from community on Patreon to keep developing it but the financial support didn't really materialize. But it's ok because close to a thousand people seem to be using MobileUO daily to play UO on their mobile devices and are happy with it as it is.
Sandbox City is a really mini-tiny-not-even GTA style game for mobile where the player gets to run around in a city, driving cars, and running over pedestrians and zombies. I'm working on adding more content into the game but it already gives me decent passive income from ads and IAPs. I also have it published on CrazyGames (html5/webgl online game platform) and it is also played a lot there and bring in additional income.
I'd be interested in joining your Discord. My email is in my profile.
Here's some info (okay, a lot of info) on what I'm trying to create for anyone curious:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/17ACH1XLCn7hkKz2dhuL1c_nx...
And now I am currently working in a few other prototypes and tools. Would be interested in joining
Personally I wouldn’t recommend anyone rolling their own engine