wondermega said:
heleva, mrWalrus.. I dunno about sticking it out with the independent development, at least as far as recommending it to everyone.
Personally, I have really enjoyed being indie - After 13 yrs in the industry, working on big projects, making rich guys richer, but seeing scraps for it, of course it wears you down. But there's obviously a (relative) stability there, and it's nice having a whole other department that can handle things like marketing/promotion which we as indie devs are obviously very new to.
At the same time, as you all alluded to above, it's so much more fulfilling to have your own project that you control, and making that all-important connection with the end-user which just doesn't happen when you are onboard with a much larger entity.
To sum-up, I will say this - independent is wonderful, so long as you can afford to stick around for awhile (and have some serious stamina). For those who are willing to bet the farm on some short-term hopes, it's probably not very well-suited to them. This probably applies in many business situations.
wondermega - just to be clear, I'd NEVER recommend going indie to anyone, unless they had a stomach of steel.
This last year and some has been some of the most stressful time of my life. I ended up in the ER the other day because I'd had a stress headache that hadn't gone away for two weeks. Indie development is by no means a get rich quick scheme. Our first game, Taxiball, made enough money to basically buy us lunch. It got great reviews, and the people who've played it generally liked it a lot, but it didn't sell for crap.
And except for the fact that we have a very unusual arrangement, that would have been that. I'd have had to have given up and called it a day. Fortunately, we had some additional resources we could call upon that let us keep going, but every day, we either inch toward profitability, or my blood pressure rises another notch.
It's a rough business. If anyone's still naively thinking they can put out an app developed by them & a friend and retire off it, lemme smash that notion right away. Unless you're very, very, very lucky, it ain't gonna happen. The App Store is now like any other method of game distribution - it's jam-packed, extremely difficult to get noticed on, and unless you hit just the right factors, you're consigned to obscurity.
That said, I work with 7 awesome, awesome people, all of whom I consider friends. We're making something right now that we all really believe in and are excited about, we work really well as a team, and work... it's not work. It's a collaborative creative process that I love being a part of. Ok, sometimes it's work. And there are aspects of it that are ludicrously stressful. But the benefits make up for the pain, most of the time.
Would I recommend it to anyone else? Absolutely not. We happen to be very, very lucky in that we have a little breathing room. We could fail once or twice & still survive. Most people won't have that luxury.
seppo
