How I Made $100k On My First Indie Game

this is someone telling me my game will be a complete and utter failure even if free or just a dollar he will be insulted on steam and no one will buy it but game collectors when it's on sale for 50 cent steam's bare minimal price also steam doesn't pay out until 200 grows which won't be hit unless he prices the game at 200 and a very desperate game collector comes along and this is my steam revenue page two hundred dollars grows which won't be hit interesting anyway just two weeks ago my steam revenue page for my game roll crossed over from a measly ninety nine thousand dollars in gross revenue to one hundred thousand which means it's finally time i made this video now the reason i'm making this video is not just because the number one hundred thousand is so clickable i mean look at it doesn't it make you just wanna click on the video but actually i've been wanting to make this video for a long time [Music] over the last seven months i have made 19 126 dollars by developing and selling my first commercial video game on steam in this video i'll quickly tell you how i did it what i learned along the way and break down some of the sales figures so that you can get a better idea of everything that goes into a project like this unfortunately i never got around to actually finishing that video because i just keep getting so busy working on the game itself but this time around it's gonna be different because i finally have some free time and well you know it's convenient anyway this nice big beautiful clickbaity number is a lie i've actually only made fifty nine thousand two hundred and twenty three dollars because the big number doesn't count sales tax chargebacks or steam's massive 30 cut and i think i still have to pay income tax on this 59 000 so i better take the ferrari back to the dealership in all honesty i still live in a friend's basement with my newlywed wife so i just don't want it to seem like i'm flexing on anyone in this video but now with all of that out of the way we can finally get into how this actually happened in the first place after a short three months of development i published role to steam on may 13th 2021 and unleashed my beautiful relaxing masterpiece onto the world letting the masses of eager fans roll in okay well not exactly but i did manage to convince a lot of my friends and family members to buy the game however not much happened after that so i decided to beg for clout wait no that that can't be right well okay listen i wanted to get some feedback on the game from some experienced eyes so i sent the game over to some of my favorite youtube content creators and okay yeah i basically begged for clout but one day i'm just binge watching youtube videos as usual and i see my own game show up in my subscription feed what freaking wonderbots made a video on my game hey everyone wonderbot here and welcome to roll and just like that the sales started to take off i went from selling about 25 units per day to 225 units in a single day and a few days later alexa made a video on my game and right after that retromation i couldn't believe some of my favorite channels to watch were playing my game it felt like having a tv show about me or something and i'm honestly so lucky that such talented creators showcased my game because at that point the game was still ridden with bugs now what is actually going on here it's just frozen despite this people seemed to really enjoy watching and more people watching meant more people buying sales were doing great but with all these new players came an overwhelming wave of feedback criticism and pressure on my game that was held together by band-aids i mean i made the whole thing in three months and now thousands of people were playing it so i went to work tirelessly trying to improve the game sales dipped off for a long time while i continued to fix bugs and add additional features and content then out of nowhere boom another youtube video pops up in my subscription feed this time by the youtuber aliens rock and on my birthday no less sales absolutely skyrocketed due mostly to tyler's incredible videos and fanbase but i also felt people were really responding to a lot of the improvements i had made this singular event drove a good chunk of my sales but it brought an even bigger wave of feedback and attention to the game so back to work i went and i've been hard at work on improving role ever since then not necessarily waiting for another big jump in sales but really just trying to make the game better every day i've made over 84 updates and patches to the game over its lifetime but i still hardly feel like my game is worth all the success it has gotten and i don't know if i'll ever feel that way but i'm gonna continue to work on it until i do and that's pretty much how i've done it up to this point i made a hundred thousand dollars on my first indie game by just making the game better every day and showing it to as many people as possible it was a process of continual updates engaging with the community luck hard work and help from so many wonderful individuals shout out to gothic lord uk who has made over a hundred videos on the game these are the things that define the project and what i think you should take away from this video i would also like to take this opportunity to thank my patreon supporters specifically nathaniel james kintner dayfrank521 and waifu as well as anyone who has bought and played role you guys are really the ones who have made this whole thing possible and if you haven't tried roll yet consider checking it out it's a relaxingly deep strategy game with a developer who really cares about the game you can find it on steam or get a free copy through my patreon with that said thank you so much for your time i won't take any more of it and i'll see you in the next one

Channel: XraiDev

Views: 203,169

Keywords: dev log, devlog, game dev, game developer, game development, gamedev, how to make a video game, how to make games, indie dev, indie devlog, indie game, indie game devlog, making a game, satisfying game, I made a game, I made a steam game, indie game dev, indie game developer, how i made $100k on my first indie game, how much money i made on my first game, how to make $100k, how i made $100000 on my first indie game, how to make money on your first game, making money on games

Id: XOhVt2SN2rw

Length: 7min 9sec (429 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 20 2022