I haven't had much luck selling my games online. I opened up a small arcade at my local mall and built my own cabs for the games I've made. I have been fortunate
Being a solo dev is tough! But ya, there is a few benefits. One is a tiny budget, and no loans or advances or staff to have to cover my costs. If my game doesn't make much money, that's just money I could have made working for someone else lost. Second benefit: with the AI tooling these days, it's never been a better time to be a solo dev. I could totally see why teams of 1 - 4 people or so are the way to go these days and in this crap economic times.
all true except the barrier to entry has never been lower so your execution has to not only be great but exceptional. good for gamers, bad for devs. also marketing is even more of a bitch with the increases # of releases
They already are. The only reason to expand beyond 2 or so people is the need for 3D assets, everything else can be generated and all programming (for indies) can be done using blueprints.
@@idiberug but did you try generating? You can't iterate, the time waste to generate what you need is huge. I can't imagine how can someone build art for entire game using only AI. You can only do auxiliary art, e.g. for marketing.
Been looking at the freelance market for Unreal Engine recently. Because I have plans for doing that more the next few years. Most of the freelancer jobs boards are full of people underbidding each other to the point where the only ones left are living in india. So that idea of freelancing for a bit of extra cash is kind of a bust right now. I'd rather work on tech or my own indie games too. Weird how metrics change over time. It WILL recover though.
Re: mobile - I'm actually giving a talk this weekend for PC indies looking to explore mobile, might go up on YT later this year. Mobile is such a large market that there's actually a lot of room for indies to do "real games", and make good money. You don't need multimillion-dollar budgets if you aren't paying 100s of salaries. But it's like PC vs console - you have to understand how that market works, what the players expect in terms of input, session length, etc, and whether your idea/game is actually "mobile-friendly". Ubisoft dropped AC: Mirage for USD$50, only on the newest, fanciest iPhones, and it sold about 80-100k units. They didn't redo the UI for phones, they didn't do region-pricing, and they didn't even optimize it - ran so hot, one comment said "molten slab of glass" 😮 Make a good mobile port, market it appropriately, and keep your costs reasonable. Don't pull a Ubisoft 😂
As an artist with almost no programming experience I would really struggle to make the game I am currently making without the aid of ai, in my case chatgpt. Don't get me wrong I cant ask it to make my game for me, it doesnt understand the exact mechanics I need (physics based skateboarding game). But I know what I need to do, just not how to write the code, so with a lot of back and fourth with ChatGPT I am able to do the things I want
Honestly, you'd be better off just doing game-dev meetups (or virtual!) and find a partner. Plenty of "I can code, but can't do art" folks who would be happy to share your vision for the project, so long as they get creative input too. ChatGPT & such can't tell you what you don't ask - and if you have little knowledge in that area, you don't know what you don't know 😢
Great video! Individual people are smart, mobs/companies are dumb. The gaming industry is so screwed up that they are throwing s#it against the wall to try to see what sticks, because they are so out of touch with their fan base. They are also trying to over saturate the market to force single and small teams out of business. Publishers are never your friend and they only care about fast cash so they will do whatever it takes to make a buck, no matter who gets hurt. The industry is crashing, especially AAA and AA publishers so their starting to get desperate, but instead of listening to their customers they'll just keep double downing on b.s. over marketing crap, that's why their crashing. Indies and modders are where it is and they are the only ones who will survive Game Crash 2.0, as long as they don't loose the faith and keep focusing on good innovated gameplay, and unique games!
Mobile is wild. I paid $200 to google so that it could market my game and I ended up with like over a thousand players. But according to them all my players were in India and SEA so the money I made off of my own ads was literally nothing. edit. to clarify I made all the marketing materials myself, google adsense just plays it on other platforms that use google ads. Banner ads are useless unless you load like 20 of them.
I think mobile has a ton of untapped potential. I use Unreal Engine and create physics-based experiences and these newer phones can handle it. We as developers can flood the mobile market with higher quality experiences... monetize with IAP or a reasonable amount of ads.
a game where you have the basic starting city/village created by devs, story quests in that area created by humans, and once you go outside that area, the ai will generate the story for you based on your interactions, including the graphs/ animations/ events. Only part of dev will be fine tunned to AI, also downside would be everyone that plays the game will need to have AI cores in their computer, either in cpu or gpu or both. Since normal versions wont cut it and you would get huge fps spikes. Luckily now new cpus and gpus contain ai cores.
If what you're saying is true then EPIC's "Unreal For Fornite Editor" has been a 200 IQ move, because if most players don't care about production value they will play "flash-type" games in Fornite on all platforms.
@@hiperfx892 I dont think so its fail but more of an early stage strategy. Everything is shifting to UGC slowly. There are people making some really good maps in fortnite and earning a lot. When time comes and if industry do shift to online multiplayer games with low production value game then the next big thing is UEFN. As it is in beta already and working quite really good
And ask those 30 streamers about the map "The Pit by greezy" if they are fortnite streamer they would have played it and that map is made in uefn by a solo dev. Who earned millions from it. Streamers having nothing to do with UEFN, its game developers who should know about UEFN.
I'll just focus on my dream and make do without AI. I feels like it's not that hard to work on stuffs I need by myself. Maybe I failed enough for long enough, so I have all those experiences. If anything in my 10 years experiences, never ever follow the trend. Use something if you need them.
@@anon3118 Eh, s/he's absolutely right about the state of mobile. Especially among smaller companies that relied exclusively on ads & hypercasual. That's why you're seeing more analytics companies offering user-tracking internal to their client sites. And more devs/pubs exploring midcore games and hybrid IAP+IAA (ads) monetization.
Thank you for sharing your experience on this conference. Quite unfortunately that we need to rely on making low-quality clickbaity or as you named it streamerbaity games if we want to make money. Lets hope that this situation is temporary and it will improve in the future.
We just came out of the largest 2-3yr spike games has seen since the NES - it was bound to come back to reality, unfortunately. Combine that with less disposable income for most folks, and ppl going for sales, favorite/predictable games, etc, and it's gonna be a rough couple yrs.
Looks like Marnix fought a rival gamedev gang
The bench presses have proven very effective
I haven't had much luck selling my games online. I opened up a small arcade at my local mall and built my own cabs for the games I've made. I have been fortunate
wait what? thats awesome. what country?
@@xkoan-yy7lg United States
That's awesome. You just figured out how to bypass steam
@@marktaro it's not much but it's honest work ($10-30/week)
Nice, the only arcade where you can complain about a game and the owner can fix it 😀
Really useful video, I'm liking these develop Brighton videos a lot!
Being a solo dev is tough! But ya, there is a few benefits. One is a tiny budget, and no loans or advances or staff to have to cover my costs. If my game doesn't make much money, that's just money I could have made working for someone else lost. Second benefit: with the AI tooling these days, it's never been a better time to be a solo dev. I could totally see why teams of 1 - 4 people or so are the way to go these days and in this crap economic times.
all true except the barrier to entry has never been lower so your execution has to not only be great but exceptional. good for gamers, bad for devs.
also marketing is even more of a bitch with the increases # of releases
They already are. The only reason to expand beyond 2 or so people is the need for 3D assets, everything else can be generated and all programming (for indies) can be done using blueprints.
@@idiberug but did you try generating? You can't iterate, the time waste to generate what you need is huge. I can't imagine how can someone build art for entire game using only AI. You can only do auxiliary art, e.g. for marketing.
Thank you for sharing the industry perspective! Massively helpful.
THis is such a comfy channel
Been looking at the freelance market for Unreal Engine recently. Because I have plans for doing that more the next few years. Most of the freelancer jobs boards are full of people underbidding each other to the point where the only ones left are living in india. So that idea of freelancing for a bit of extra cash is kind of a bust right now. I'd rather work on tech or my own indie games too. Weird how metrics change over time. It WILL recover though.
Re: mobile - I'm actually giving a talk this weekend for PC indies looking to explore mobile, might go up on YT later this year. Mobile is such a large market that there's actually a lot of room for indies to do "real games", and make good money. You don't need multimillion-dollar budgets if you aren't paying 100s of salaries.
But it's like PC vs console - you have to understand how that market works, what the players expect in terms of input, session length, etc, and whether your idea/game is actually "mobile-friendly".
Ubisoft dropped AC: Mirage for USD$50, only on the newest, fanciest iPhones, and it sold about 80-100k units. They didn't redo the UI for phones, they didn't do region-pricing, and they didn't even optimize it - ran so hot, one comment said "molten slab of glass" 😮
Make a good mobile port, market it appropriately, and keep your costs reasonable. Don't pull a Ubisoft 😂
Damn man, I think I need to find another dream.
Seems like someone really brought some heavy feedback on Forge Industry.
Great video, thanks!
As an artist with almost no programming experience I would really struggle to make the game I am currently making without the aid of ai, in my case chatgpt. Don't get me wrong I cant ask it to make my game for me, it doesnt understand the exact mechanics I need (physics based skateboarding game). But I know what I need to do, just not how to write the code, so with a lot of back and fourth with ChatGPT I am able to do the things I want
Honestly, you'd be better off just doing game-dev meetups (or virtual!) and find a partner. Plenty of "I can code, but can't do art" folks who would be happy to share your vision for the project, so long as they get creative input too. ChatGPT & such can't tell you what you don't ask - and if you have little knowledge in that area, you don't know what you don't know 😢
Great video! Individual people are smart, mobs/companies are dumb. The gaming industry is so screwed up that they are throwing s#it against the wall to try to see what sticks, because they are so out of touch with their fan base. They are also trying to over saturate the market to force single and small teams out of business. Publishers are never your friend and they only care about fast cash so they will do whatever it takes to make a buck, no matter who gets hurt. The industry is crashing, especially AAA and AA publishers so their starting to get desperate, but instead of listening to their customers they'll just keep double downing on b.s. over marketing crap, that's why their crashing. Indies and modders are where it is and they are the only ones who will survive Game Crash 2.0, as long as they don't loose the faith and keep focusing on good innovated gameplay, and unique games!
Mobile is wild. I paid $200 to google so that it could market my game and I ended up with like over a thousand players. But according to them all my players were in India and SEA so the money I made off of my own ads was literally nothing.
edit. to clarify I made all the marketing materials myself, google adsense just plays it on other platforms that use google ads.
Banner ads are useless unless you load like 20 of them.
Cant expect to earn big with only thousand players
India is among top countries where people prefer watching ads than buying stuffs
I think mobile has a ton of untapped potential. I use Unreal Engine and create physics-based experiences and these newer phones can handle it.
We as developers can flood the mobile market with higher quality experiences... monetize with IAP or a reasonable amount of ads.
True
a game where you have the basic starting city/village created by devs, story quests in that area created by humans, and once you go outside that area, the ai will generate the story for you based on your interactions, including the graphs/ animations/ events. Only part of dev will be fine tunned to AI, also downside would be everyone that plays the game will need to have AI cores in their computer, either in cpu or gpu or both. Since normal versions wont cut it and you would get huge fps spikes. Luckily now new cpus and gpus contain ai cores.
oh my god i can feel the AC in that room and I really wanna just be there rn lol
If what you're saying is true then EPIC's "Unreal For Fornite Editor" has been a 200 IQ move, because if most players don't care about production value they will play "flash-type" games in Fornite on all platforms.
I asked at least 30 Fortnite Twitch Streamer, none of them never heared of UEFN 😂😂. UEFN and Unreal Fab is another Epic fail like Core Games 😅
@@hiperfx892 I dont think so its fail but more of an early stage strategy. Everything is shifting to UGC slowly. There are people making some really good maps in fortnite and earning a lot. When time comes and if industry do shift to online multiplayer games with low production value game then the next big thing is UEFN. As it is in beta already and working quite really good
And ask those 30 streamers about the map "The Pit by greezy" if they are fortnite streamer they would have played it and that map is made in uefn by a solo dev. Who earned millions from it. Streamers having nothing to do with UEFN, its game developers who should know about UEFN.
good info
I'll just focus on my dream and make do without AI. I feels like it's not that hard to work on stuffs I need by myself. Maybe I failed enough for long enough, so I have all those experiences.
If anything in my 10 years experiences, never ever follow the trend. Use something if you need them.
Mobile industry isn't doing great either because of the high interest rates & Apple's privacy updates that make it much harder to target users
You dont really understand what you're saying. Like a child repeating what their mom said
@@anon3118 Eh, s/he's absolutely right about the state of mobile. Especially among smaller companies that relied exclusively on ads & hypercasual. That's why you're seeing more analytics companies offering user-tracking internal to their client sites. And more devs/pubs exploring midcore games and hybrid IAP+IAA (ads) monetization.
I hope Wiliam can survive on 1400 €
They need to move to thailand or something.
Thank you for sharing your experience on this conference.
Quite unfortunately that we need to rely on making low-quality clickbaity or as you named it streamerbaity games if we want to make money.
Lets hope that this situation is temporary and it will improve in the future.
Dating Sims. Mostly about Japanese Fountain Girls. You're welcome.
Funny, I just today watched a video about underperforming great games (with very high ratings) and the biggest category was anime stuff...
@@tymondabrowski12What's the title of the video?
I think publishing its still working, but only for the real good projects
Yeah, last year I made 250k on games, this year (6 months actually) only 40k. So yeah, gamedev this days not a best choice.
wdym I thought successful devs would know more about how to replicate success than new devs
We just came out of the largest 2-3yr spike games has seen since the NES - it was bound to come back to reality, unfortunately. Combine that with less disposable income for most folks, and ppl going for sales, favorite/predictable games, etc, and it's gonna be a rough couple yrs.
What kind of games do you make ?
all money going to ai instead of diversifying
Goldman Sachs has just publicly burst the AI bubble. Pretty much stating it's not worth it for what you actually get.
Doubt it^^ Big AI will be literally everywhere, how else are you gonna setup the robot work force
@BanXxX69 notice how you're talking about the future of the tech instead of what it has to offer right now.
Day 9 of asking for Melon-Pan tier list.