How to MAKE GAMES BY YOURSELF: 5 solo game developer tips

hi all my name is auro i'm an indie game developer and i'm the creator of a game called mortal glory today i want to share a few solo game developer tips with you that i think will improve your chances of becoming a successful game developer this can easily be applied to bigger development tips also but i think they are especially important if you are making games by yourself as a one person development team okay let's start with the first one the first tip is to take a long term view of your game dev journey i want you to already think further than your first game it is possible to succeed with your first game and make decent money but unfortunately the odds are not on your side according to recent studies your average india game only makes around 1400 to 40 hundred dollars over its lifetime so let's say your game's lifespan is five years so that would make something like 45 each month and i mean that is money but it's not very encouraging considering all the work that goes into making games but it's not all gloomy either because this data also includes free games and games that are very low effort like asset flip games but of course nothing is preventing you from making decent money with your first game many devs have done that my game also was a financial success your take from this should be that yes it's possible to make good money with your first game but you should not rely on it instead i encourage you to look at it how i did and how i still do and that is by taking the long term view you need to think further than your next game your first game might only make a few hundred dollars or maybe even zero dollars but it's still not a waste in the process of making the game you will gain experience and skills that you need to succeed as a game developer and when you release the game you will gain recognition as a game developer and also fast for both your game and you as a developer you have a higher chance of making it big with your next game if you continue making games and one of your future games is a hit this success will also bleed into your other games organically and you can also enhance it by doing cross marketing for example this could be including in your game a short message like hey if you like this game maybe you will like this other game from me also so if one of your future games is successful that game from 10 years ago that made zero dollars could now be making thousands of dollars the more games you have the higher your chance is for success my plan from the start was to create many games so i will have many sources of income that organically boost each other i think this is a sensible way to approach game development instead of hoping to just hit it big with the first game the second tip is to adopt a visual's first development style the idea of this is that the visual outlook of your game is the first thing a potential customer notices so that should also be the first thing that you focus on your graphics is what gets the attention and your gameplay is what hooks them this doesn't mean that you need state-of-the-art 3d graphics it's more about having a consistent and eye-catching art style this is what will get players to try out your game and it also helps a lot when you're doing marketing this is something that i am also still learning but i did this early on with mortal glory's steam page it was two months into mordecai glorious development when i opened the steam page for the game now at this point the game wasn't even half finished most of the features were not working properly but i still had the basic graphics in place so what i did was i took screenshots of the things that were working already and for the rest i just made up concept art so now my steam page was basically half actual game and have concept art but it gave a somewhat accurate picture of what the actual game would be like having the steam page up already at this point was really great because now when i did marketing i could also include a link to the steam page so they could go wishlist the game and my page also got some organic traffic from steam so at this point my game wasn't even half finished but i was already creating potential value through wist lists this provided me with a great motivation boost to keep working on my game it also gave encouragement that the game would at least sell a few copies after all each wishlist is a potential buyer one common figure that is thrown around is that around half of the people that have visualized the game will actually end up buying it and that is over the whole lifetime of the game so let's say you have a 10 game that's already 5 dollars per wishlist if you manage to keep your wishlist conversion on a good level i have even heard of some publishers making steam bits for games that are not even being worked yet just so they can see if there's any interest for that type of game now i don't know how common it is or if i would recommend it but overall maybe that hundred dollars that is needed for steam page is not that bad for that knowledge the third tip is to actively scope down your project and by that i mean actively evaluating with every feature if it's actually needed for a game or not as you work on your game it's natural to get all of these cool ideas that would be fun to have in the game and they might not even seem so hard or time consuming to add to your game but with every added feature your release date gets pushed further back as the complexity of your project increases so does the risk of there being a game-breaking bug in your game and the risk of you never finishing the game so that is why i advise you to be careful what you add to the game of course you still want the game to be fun but you should aim to do that by having a fun and tight gameplay loop instead of trying to make it fun by adding dozens of features on top of it and remember you can always update your game after it has been released so i think it's better to aim for a fast release then get the customer feedback and then improve your game based on that then we get to the fourth tip don't aim for perfect there's a saying that goes perfect is the enemy of good and the idea with that is that when you're reaching for perfect you hit diminishing returns quite fast so as you keep spending more time the actual value you gain goes down instead of perfecting something you should focus on what provides most value to your game at that point you can spend weeks improving something and your players might not even notice the difference in practice this is wasted time yes you might have learned a lot but you also learn by doing more valuable things as an india dev time is your most precious asset this is also a big risk with coding your game when changing the code whatever cannot see by the player or doesn't change the functionality of the code in essence is wasted time now that is an overstatement but the idea behind it is still true you can spend a long time refactoring a goat and feel good about it but if the player doesn't notice that the player doesn't care remember the game is meant for the players not for you sometimes you hear developers talking of their game as their baby but you should not treat your game like it's your baby most players will see your game as a product for entertainment and you should too yes a game can be many other things a piece of art maybe a tool for education you name it and i am not against that but if you treat your game like it's overly special you will come up with unrealistic expectations of how it will be received by your players treating your game like it's a product also doesn't mean you need to try to take every penny from your players it's just a healthy mindset to have so your sense of self-worth is not tied to just this one thing so my advice is to go with good enough constantly evaluate if something is good enough if it is move on focus on what is the most essential for your game and you will need to constantly remind yourself i know this can be tough i know this from experience in me there also leaves a detail-oriented perfectionist who could go into a mood today analysis parasys coma just to decide what shade of blue he wants his youtube picture to be i will end this tip with another saying done is better than perfect okay my fifth tip is to embrace learning as a solo indie developer learning is very important you will need to take on many roles designer coder writer artist tester producer publisher marketer community manager pr person entrepreneur you name it sure you can get help for those but unless you got deep pockets there are many skills you will need to learn but don't get discouraged you don't actually need to be good at all of them especially when you start you can suck at each every one of them and still succeed by constantly learning as an indie developer this is just a fact of life you will constantly need to learn new things it's also not a first you learn then you do kind of thing it's more like you keep doing and due to that you keep learning so keep doing keep learning and keep improving okay but that's all i have for this video let me know in the comments if you think these tips were helpful to you i got plenty of tips left but i'm trying to keep these videos short and sweet so they don't become too boring also if you think these were helpful please leave a like i have heard that it helps with the youtube algorithm okay see you on the next one

Channel: AuroDev

Views: 4,818

Keywords: how to make games by yourself, solo game developer tips, become a successful game developer, one person development, one person developer, one man development team, indie game developer tips, indie game success, one man developer, single person developer, single person development, AuroDev, Mortal Glory, learn game development, making games alone, making games by yourself

Id: HdbgI-T4uvY

Length: 9min 28sec (568 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 02 2020