#anyway. i have a lot of thoughts about monetising my art but at the moment this is still a no. i'm sorry! | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

pebblysand · 4 years ago

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[writing rant - on the monetisation of fanfiction]

a couple of months ago, when i updated my long fic, one of the people on the comments wrote to me the nicest possible review (one of the ones that you keep in your feel-good 'saved' emails - you know the ones), which, amongst other things also said: 'If I could pay you for this...believe me, I would.'

in the moment, i kind of smiled and laughed, and thanked the person for their kind words before moving on with my life. yet, since then, i have to admit that this sentence has kind of been living rent-free in my head. i think it is also because since diving back into fandom a few months ago, i've noticed something that kind of shocked me at first: more and more fanfiction writers seem to be monetising (or attempting to monetise) their craft.

now, back when i started writing fanfic, we wrote fanfic on ffnet and livejournal. it was accepted that thou shalt never (ever) charge money for your writing or else the author and their mean, angry lawyers will come after you for damages and you will die a slow and painful death. we wrote disclaimers at the start of all of our posts and thanked the gods every day when we did not get sued.

i have seen this change gradually over the years. first, in the mid 2010s, the disclaimers went. then, i noticed that people were getting 'tipped' for fanart, sometimes even charging commission. from what i understand (though, don't quote me on this, i'm not an ip lawyer and this post is not intended as legal advice), this is because the way the concept of fair use is framed under us law makes it easier to monetise fanart than it does fanfiction. maybe this is why visual artists came first on this trend. later still (and more recently) i've noticed fanfic writers, doing the same thing.

to be fully honest, the first thought i had when i saw this trend, considering the fear of god (and his lawyers) that was instilled in me in the past, was: how on earth is this even possible? (i'll come back to that in a bit). the second, though, was: fuck, i wish i had the guts to do that, lol.

because, yeah, i will admit, the idea of getting paid for writing what i love to write does appeal, to a certain extent. i won't lie. dear fanfiction writers who've tried to do that recently: i one hundred per cent get it.

looking back at the last fifteen years, i would say that for me, writing fanfiction has been (in terms of time commitment and energy consumed) the equivalent of having an on-and-off part time job. a job that i have held for one or two years at a time, then quit for a while, before coming back to it when i needed (wanted) it again. i obviously can't realistically give you a number re:the actual total of hours i have spent at this since i started out, but i can give you an idea. recently, i started clocking my hours out of interest and calculated that a chapter of my current long fic takes roughly between one hundred to two hundred hours to produce (and they're around 10,000 words). at that rate, i'm probably working 20 hours a week-ish? sometimes more, sometimes less? something as small as a three-sentence fic (like this for instance), takes roughly two/three hours. i'll be honest, i have cancelled plans to write fic. when i'm working on a long project, i do tend to organise my life to give myself the time to write, so i opt for socialising after work during the week rather than on weekends, as i've found this is when i write best. i won't lie: it is - for me (i know some people write quicker, bless them) - a huge time suck.

so, yeah, i understand, in the capitalist society we live in, wanting to make that time count. our world has unfortunately, repeatedly taught us that time is money and getting more does seem like a nice bonus (as long as you have an audience for your art that's willing to pay, obviously). after all, year after year, i've seen a lot of my friends try and monetise their passions as side hustles, with varying success. at first, glance, i look at the time i spend on writing fanfiction and think: man, i wish i could get a bit back from that too. i couldn't even draw a stick figure to save my life but i assume that the time commitment and energy put into that kind of work is roughly similar for visual fanartists as well. i thus very much understand the sentiment, both with fanart and fanfiction.

additionally, though i appreciate this is a bit tangential, the fact that fanfiction is free, i would argue, hinders its potential to be as representative as it could be. it's a bit sad because on the one hand, the fact that it is free makes it completely accessible to the masses but on the other, it makes fanfiction quite exclusive to rich, privileged people who can afford to spend the time and energy putting content out for free. if i spend this much time writing fanfiction, just because i like it and it makes me happy, it's because my full time job pays me enough to cover my bills. if it didn't, i probably would have to forgo writing and get a proper side gig. if you look at my periods of inactivity on ao3, those also kind of coincide with the times in my life when i had to have more things going on to put food on the table.

so, now, assuming that monetisation is a thing that, as a fic writer, one might want to look at, the next question is: how do you go about monetising it? obviously, the law hasn't changed since the days where we were all terrified of getting sued (although enforcement has been quite lax over the years) so it's more about finding workarounds around the law as it is, rather than actively seeking payment for fanart.

from what i've seen: two main solutions seem to exist.

first, there's the tipping/buy-me-coffee technique. as i understand it, this involves either setting up a page on one of the dedicated websites or just putting up your paypal account link on your tumblr posts. with these links, people can then send you however much money they want (however much money they can afford/think you deserve?) on a one-off basis. they're not actually paying for fanfic because there is no actual exchange of services, it's basically like them giving money to charity, except that charity is a fanfic writer/ fan artist whose work they enjoy.

there are two main issues i see with this: one, legally, i'm not sure how much ground this actually holds. assuming you're quite prolific/successful, if every time you're producing new content, you receive dozens of tips, although you're not actively charging for your fanart, making the argument that your content isn't what these people are actively paying for seems hard. imo, the fact that this method sort of holds is that realistically, you're going to make very little out of this. even if you're really good, you might make what? a couple hundred dollars. now, sure, that's a lot of money for a lot of people but in the grand scheme of things, no one sues anyone for such a low amount. as long as you're not making 'proper' money from it, it is highly unlikely that anyone would come after you.

this being said, the second issue, from my perspective, is that this is not in any way, shape or form, a reliable income. it also does not represent, at all, the cost of the time and investment actually put into said fanfiction (or fanart, i assume). for example: if you're going to tip someone who's worked on something for, say, fifty hours, ten dollars, that's very good of you, but that isn't going to be 'worth' their time. it is only worth their time if tipping is done at as scale, which imo is quite unlikely considering you're putting your content out for free anyway. there are kind souls who will tip you, but not that many, meaning that ultimately, you're not working for free anymore, but you're still working at a huge loss.

additionally, because this income is not even reliable on a monthly/weekly basis, it isn't something that anyone can actually rely on, even if only to fund their coffee habit. it's nice to have, don't get me wrong, but from my perspective, is the legal risk outlined above worth the trouble for the $20/30 tips i'd get every once in a while - not really. such low amounts also don't help diminish the class issue that i talked about earlier. again, if you're going to spend fifty hours on something, you might as well work a minimum wage job - even that will pay you more and will be dependable.

second, there's patreon (and patreon-like sites). here, the income is monthly, people pledge on a subscription basis, which does solve the last point above. it might not be much, but at least it's regular.

the main issue i see with patreon is that it is contingent on the author providing more services on top of what they already provide. in most cases, the author will keep putting their usual content out for free + provide their patreons (depending on tiers) with more content, specifically for them. this, to me, makes this scheme even less appealing than the previous one because a) if i can't provide fanfic to potential patreons (again, you can't sell fanfic), i'm not sure what on earth i could give them (original content? that's not really the same market) and b) that's even more work on my plate. honestly, considering the amount of time i already spend writing fanfic, i have neither the energy nor the willpower to provide extra content for an amount that, regardless, will probably pay me less than a part-time job would. again, you'd have to scale this (i.e. have enough patreons) to make it all worth your while, and even in very big fandoms, even for someone waaaaay more successful than me, i doubt it would be likely.

lastly, as a side note, both of these "methods" are solely accepted if they occur on tumblr/writer's own website, rather than on the writer's ao3 page/fic. there was a post going around explaining why that is (nutshell: it endangers ao3's status as a non-profit archive) but as with all things, i seem to have lost it. [if you do have the link to that post/know what i'm talking about, hit me up and i'll rectify this]. this, regardless, supposes driving traffic from wherever you post your fics towards tumblr/your own website which, again, decreases your chances of scaling this.

so, in the end, where does that leave us?

i think, at this point, we've kind of reached a crossroad. ultimately, i see two ways to look at this:

option one: if you believe that fanfiction writers should be paid for their art, you also probably agree that the methods outlined above, while they do offer some sort of solution, are less than ideal. the ideal solution (for this option) would obviously be to allow fanfiction authors to be properly paid for the publication of their work through 'normal' publishing/self-publishing deals, without the need for a licence from the author (bar - perhaps - the payment of royalties). that would create a proper 'market' for fanfiction, treating it as any other form of writing/art form. it would mean a complete overhaul of the laws currently in place, but why not? ultimately, in a democracy, laws are meant to be changeable.

this being said, though, while my personal knee jerk reaction would be to shout 'hurray!' at this solution, i do not actually think i want this. or, maybe, only part of me does. the part of me who has been writing fanfiction for free for fifteen years is like 'hey, yay, maybe i could get paid!'. but then, there is another part of me that would like, maybe, one day, to write more original fiction (i already do a bit, but not much). that part of me is feels frankly a bit icky about giving up her ip rights.

would i be comfortable with people writing fanfiction of my original work? hell yes. that would be the dream. imagine having your own ao3 fandom, omg. however, would i be comfortable with people profiting from writing fanfiction of my work? honestly, i'm not sure. to me, the answer to that is: it depends (how much time investment was put in? how original the concept is? etc.) which, in fact, kind of brings us back to the current concept of licensing. and yes, maybe the current frame imposed by copyright law has also shaped the way i view the concept of property, and maybe i should be more of a communist, free-for-all kind of person, but unfortunately, i'm not that revolutionary.

also, and slightly tangentially, i find it interesting how profiting from fanficition/fanart is seen as more acceptable i certain fandoms rather than in others. taking the hp fandom for instance, even prior to jkr expressing her views on transgender rights, i often read things like: 'ah, she's so rich anyway, she doesn't need the money.' now, that argument has not only gained traction but is also reinforced by: 'ah, she's the devil and i don't want to fund her. it'd rather give my money to fanfic authors/buy things on etsy.'

while i completely understand the sentiment and do not, in any way, shape or form, support jkr's views, i do find that argument quite problematic. if you set the precedent that because someone is too rich, or because they've expressed views you disagree with, you don't believe that they should be entitled to their own intellectual property rights, i do wonder: where does this stop? this being justified for jkr could lead to all sorts of small artists seeing other people stealing/profiting from their original work without authorisation. 'i don't pay you 'cause i disagree with you,' would then act as a justification, with i find highly unfair. the fact of the matter is: jkr created hp. knowing that, the choice of buying hp products, regardless of her opinions is completely and entirely yours, but buying the same stuff unlicensed, from people who are infringing on her copyrights seems, to me, very problematic as this could potentially be scaled to all artists. either we overhaul the entire copyright system or we don't, but making special cases is dangerous, in my humble opinion.

option two: we choose to preserve copyright law as it is, for the reasons outlined above. this means that most people will not get paid for the content they put out and that the few that do will operate on a very tight, legal rope, and work for tips that are a 'nice bonus' but not a proper pay. this sort of perpetuates the idea that fanfiction is 'less than' other art forms, because in our capitalist society, things that don't generate money (things often made by women, may i add) are not seen as being as valuable as things that do.

for me, personally, while getting paid to write fanfiction sounds lovely (and makes my bank account purr) in theory, i think i side to preserve the current system. as an artist, i think that intellectual property protects us and our concepts from being ripped off by others, including by big companies who might find it handy to steal a design, a quote, anything, without proper remuneration. this is even more important for smaller artists who wouldn't necessarily have the means to defend their craft otherwise.

this being said, i do appreciate that it depends on why you're writing fanfiction. i think that topic probably deserves a whole different post in its own right but ultimately, most people write fanfic because it's fun. we know it's for fun, and not for profit. and if that's the case, then we're okay to receive compliments, reblogs and sometimes, for some people a little bit of an awkward tip for our work. for me, fanfic has been a space to make friends, to get feedback, to learn and to experiment without the pressure of money being involved. that's why i don't particularly mind doing it for free, and wouldn't even bother setting up a patreon or tip-me jar. i love being able to do it just for the enjoyment of myself and my five followers (lol), without worrying about scaling it, or making it profitable. not every part of our lives, not every passion has to be profitable. as we say in ireland, you do it 'for the craic' and nothing else.

this, though, as i already said, also depends on your means and level of privilege. to me, writing for free is fantastic and a bloody relief - it means being able to do exactly what i want. original fiction writing is full of rules, and editors, and publishers. in fanfic, i can write whatever i feel like, and i'm willing to forgo a salary in exchange of that freedom. again, i have a full time job that covers my bills. this does mean, though, that i don't have as much time to dedicate to writing as i would like to.

and also, the thing is: i'm a small author. i happily write in my own little niche. bar that one comment, it is highly unlikely that anyone would actually want to pay me (or even tip me) for my content. but when you look at very successful people, like the author of all the young dudes, i could see how they'd want to get paid for their art, and why they'd feel differently.

bottom line for me is: the flaws of the current systems of remuneration combined with my strong belief in copyright law as a means to protect small, original creators, means that i don't really think it would be right for me to get paid for fanfic, even if i was the kind of person who had the market for it. whilst it would be nice, this very long rant has, hopefully, explained why.

#fanfiction #writing #archive of our own #monetisation of fanfiction #fanfiction theory #this post is waaaay too long and the author regrets everything #pebblysand rants

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awonderfulkindofimpossible · 4 years ago

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The Art of Giving Away

AKA, Gathering an audience when money doesn’t matter

I love street art and think that graffiti writers tell us an awful lot about the inner workings of any artist’s mind.

Creating a large piece of graffiti is not cheap. A writer could easily drop 30 to 50 quid on art supplies for a night’s work, painting public property, for free. So what drives them? Could it be just the desire to be seen?

We’ve all seen that meme about pub musicians. This one:

Why do so many musicians do this? Could it be that for most artists getting rich just isn’t that important.

Getting seen or heard in this world is hard. The internet is full of articles about getting paid to do what you love but… what if money doesn’t really matter that much?

And if money doesn’t matter, what does matter?

[As a side note, I realise there are people that make their living from their art. For them money may be the most important thing. That’s amazing and I’m not knocking it. I just think that for many, many artists, money isn’t that important.]

For years now I’ve been giving my music away for free. And any artist with their music on Spotify or Apple Music might as well not bother with the pittance of royalties they pay. We do it for fun. We do it because we need to get what is inside us, out there. It’s not egomania, it’s a normal human phenomenon.

We just want an audience, but we find that giving stuff away is just as hard as making money with art.

Most artists can find a small number of people that will buy CDs, tee shirts or prints. Perhaps, like me, you’ll find that skills you’ve gained in your art creation can be sold and you’ll make some money freelancing creating videos, taking photos, or mixing and mastering other people’s work.

I feel like if I really worked hard at finding more paid opportunities, I could probably grow the revenue I get from my art with a decent plan and some motivation.

Growing my audience, though? That’s a harder nut to crack.

Over the past couple of years I’ve given away a few things online, not just music and videos, but a video game, a print and play card game and sample packs for other artists to use. I’m now gearing myself up to give away the second version of that print and play card game, so I’ve been thinking about how and why to do it, and what might work.

So here are 3 thoughts that have been running through my head.

The corporate world wants to monetise your art, even if you’re not getting paid for it.

Spotify and YouTube are only free to use because they stuff your free content full of paid-for adverts. They get paid. You get an audience and the promise of maybe one day getting some cash. That’s why they care about your art.

As an artist, there’s nothing wrong with acknowledging this, and using it to your advantage. I’ve seen people advocating using video streaming services other than YouTube because they profit from your hard work. But at the moment if you want people to watch your videos, YouTube will likely get you the biggest audience.

It’s okay to understand this, disagree with the practice, and use their services anyway. Remember, the money isn’t important, whoever is getting it. The audience is important.

There’s another thing I’ve seen advocated online that I’m not so sure about. I’ve not got anything against it but I’m just not sure it works. And that is selling something in order for it to be valued.

I’ve seen people kneecap their audience numbers by attempting to set an entry price so that people REALLY value their art.

Hell, I’ve done it myself.

One Day Everything Is Going To Be Better For You by Kinetic Monkey

The Kinetic Monkey album “One Day Everything Is Going To Be Better For You” was originally not available on streaming services, and only available to download for a set price. Very few people bought it, and I don’t think any of them valued it any more than if Bex and I had given it to them for free via Spotify or via a Bandcamp “Name Your Price” model.

I think the reason that this whole “set a price to determine value” thing doesn’t work, is that your initial reach doesn’t change. No one new is hearing your work if you sell it at a premium; only your fans. And they already love your art.

2. There are places that love free stuff.

I’ve already mentioned Bandcamp. If you want to give away music without a corporation making money on the back of your hard work, Bandcamp works well. They offer you an ad-free site for your music, and actually promote free music on their weekly shows, blogs and podcasts.

As companies go, they are turbodope.

But they’re only available to the music community, and most people don’t use their services. Everyone has a Spotify or Apple Music Account. Not everyone has a Bandcamp account.

In the gaming world, I’ve had an amazing response from content on Itch.io.

In the few months since I uploaded my first ever videogame, There’s Nothing To Do In This Town, 4,000 people have played it online, and over 350 have downloaded it to play offline. It’s a very similar model to Bandcamp with an ad-free page for your project and Name Your Price structure. Sure, the video game market isn’t as crowded as the music market. Especially not the market for games for a 30-year-old console. If I had those numbers for my music, I’d be over the moon.

Itch.io is based on community, collaboration and innovation. It’s a great place.

The last places I want to talk about are online communities. Sites like Reddit, Discord or small interest-specific forums likes Lines or Board Game Geek are great places to share free stuff, because their model depends on conversation and interaction around content, not on the content itself.

This leads me to my last thought.

3. How we talk about free projects, is as important about where we talk about them.

“Free” is no longer a differentiator. Most things online are either free, or have a sales model that allows them to be freely accessed, with monetisation happening through ads, subscriptions or in-app purchases.

There are still far too many self-promoting posts online that highlight how free something is.

“MY NEW ALBUM – DOWNLOAD IT FOR FREE!” says nothing about the album itself. I don’t want to click on free stuff. I want to click on good stuff.

Talk about the themes your art is exploring. Talk about your frame of mind when you were creating. Talk about the artists who inspire you.

One way I try to attract an audience is asking for feedback. My print-and-play game has had 741 downloads in the 18 months it’s been live. I track where those clicks have come from and it’s not from self-promotion posts, but rather from posts asking for feedback on Board Game Geek. Not only does that feedback allow me to make better stuff the next time round, but it engages with new people.

I get my art seen and heard because my audience feels seen and heard through the feedback I ask them for.

#marketing #makersgonnamake #maker #makersmovement #music #gamedev #kickstarter

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symbianosgames · 8 years ago

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The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

Original posted on the Final Game Studio blog

Making a sustainable living off indie games is difficult.

Whether you believe in the indiepocalypse or not, please take that statement as fact. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of new games and apps being being released every week and even if you do manage to rise above the noise and have a hit, that is no guarantee you will manage to do the same again next time.

But that's probably not going to stop you making games - it's not stopping me. Not a single day has passed in the last decade when I haven't had an idea for a cool or interesting game I want to make and I am determined to make at least some of them. But personally, I want to make fun, polished, completed experiences for players to enjoy - not unfinished game jam prototypes. And I know this might come across as greedy, but I want to do it without quitting my day job, burning through all of my savings, living like a pauper and putting myself through a mental and physical endurance test.

So the question I asked myself last year was, can I make the kind of games I want to make in my spare time?

So, not only do I currently have a full time job - it's a game dev job. I have been working as a software engineer at StoryToys making kids apps for the last 5 and a half years or so. In that time, I have lead the development of over a dozen apps in a variety of engines, worked in multi-disciplined teams with some really talented people and generally learned a lot. The work I get to do is challenging and rewarding, and while it has its ups and downs, I enjoy it and I plan to keep doing it... So why am I writing a post about part time indie game development?

Well, because I'm doing that too and there are a couple of reasons for that;

The first is that as much a I like making kids apps (seriously, seeing a 4 year old jump up and cheer out loud over something you made is an awesome feeling), there are lots of other types of games I want to be making as well. If anything, there are too many other types of games I want to be making, and frankly it's hard to get management to greenlight a tactical rts or dark fantasy rpg when your company's core demographic is 2-10 years old.

The second reason is creative control. While I am very lucky to have a huge amount of creative input into everything I work on at the moment, there are always going to be things you would do differently if you got to call all the shots. It's a very different experience being in complete control of every facet of a game from Marketing to UI and Game Design to Programming.

The final reason I'm making my own indie games part time is the fact that I was doing it anyway - I just wasn't doing it very well. I have been making little game prototypes and thinking through game design ideas in my spare time for years, but I usually didn’t make a lot of progress with them. I'd have an idea, work on it for a few hours or days and then leave it unfinished when something else came up or I hit some part of it I didn't really want to do (looking at you networking code... ). I didn't have a clear goal or a lot of motivation to finish them, so I didn't - and over time that started to really bother me, so I decided to change it.

While I was certainly learning from researching and making all of these prototypes in my spare time, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was just wasting a load of my time and not getting any tangible benefit from it. I wanted to make finished, polished games and release them for people to play and as many of you know, there is a VERY long road from prototype to finished game.

I identified the main reasons I would stop working on something.

Not Fun:

I could discover the game idea just wasn't fun to play - that reason is fine and perfectly valid, and generally becomes obvious after a few hours at most.

Boring Details:

I would hit a part that was a pain in the ass to work on. This was more of a problem - I just don't enjoy coding up certain low level things like setting up a C++ rendering engine.

Scope:

Another big problem was scope - not scope creep, just scope. I usually didn't have clear goals or limitation when I started prototyping something, so I often ended up in a situation where I would find something really fun and then realize my idea would take over a year full time dev work to actually complete ( examples include a multiplayer RTS game and several RPGs with a procedurally generated world and stories ).

Interruptions:

Finally, the biggest hurdle to finishing these prototypes, at least for me, was just leaving them for a while and not coming back to them - maybe a new game came out I wanted to play, or I wanted to work on something else for a while... basically, if I left a project unopened for over a week it was as good as dead.

Clear Goal:

I wanted to make and commercially ship finished games, and I wanted to make them in a (relatively) short amount of time to keep the finish line in sight and my motivation high. I decided I wanted to ship my first game within 6 months of starting on it ( Which meant picking something I thought I could get finished in about a month since I am experienced enough to know how estimation and scope creep work... ).

Plan for the future

I intend to continue making games in the future, so I was willing to front-load some of the work into the first game to start off on the right foot. I designed elements of code/UI/Design to be somewhat re-usable in future games I have planned. I also formed my own company to publish the games under and set up some other boringly-important things like a company website and email.

Work consistently

I knew I needed to work on one game consistently and for me, that meant 2 hours a day, every day, with an extra 8 hours spread over weekends. I have traditionally been very good at making excuses for myself, so to get into the habit, I didn't let myself skip a single day for the first 2 months of work. After that, I relaxed it a bit to allow for, well, a life... but I have been sticking to this schedule pretty well for the last 6 months. To some of you 2 hours might not seem like a lot, but it was the absolute max I was willing to commit to. My day job can be pretty draining at times and I also wanted to make sure I still have time in the evenings to relax, enjoy myself and spend time with my girlfriend.

Enjoy the work

This 2 hour timescale lead me to decide on another rule designed to keep my motivation up and generally make sure I was actually enjoying working on my own games: No feature goes in that I can't make in satisfying 2 hour chunks. At the end of each session, I wanted to commit a fully working/compiling version of my game and feel like I accomplished something useful, whether code art or sound. I have broken this rule a few times and regretted it every time.

Design a game to suit this approach

The short timeline, combined with broken up work schedule, led me to design a game that was not only much smaller in scope that most of my previous prototypes, but also much simpler. The only goal was to make a fun game and any features that weren't going to achieve that or were a pain to implement got cut. That meant no networking, no third party SDKs, no monolithic pieces of cool new tech. That's not to say my games won't have these in the future, I just intend to introduce anything like that over time - maybe one large piece of new tech per project?

So far, things are going great.

I submitted my company's first app ( AuroraBound ) last week to the Apple, GooglePlay and Amazon app stores - It will be released on May 9th. I am also preparing Tizen and Windows store builds this week. AuroraBound is simple, fun, polished and, most importantly to me, I really enjoyed making it - the last 6 months have probably been the most rewarding of my life. I don't expect it to be a large commercial hit (the monetisation model is simplistic and getting PR/featuring for a new app is pretty tough these days), but I don't need it to be.

I have some future updates planned, as well as some ideas for a deluxe desktop version, and after taking a few days off to finally play the new Zelda game I'll start work on my next title. Throughout the entire development of my own game, my work at my day job never slipped (quite the opposite actually, I was able to make use of a few things I had discovered during AuroraBound's development ).

I plan to keep making more and better games in my spare time, and maybe one day I will take the plunge and go Indie full time - but if I do, I'll be doing so with my eyes open, invaluable experience, an existing codebase, a catalog of existing apps and relationships with some the major platform holders.

#IFTTT #Blogger

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symbianosgames · 8 years ago

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Original posted on the Final Game Studio blog

Making a sustainable living off indie games is difficult.

So the question I asked myself last year was, can I make the kind of games I want to make in my spare time?

Well, because I'm doing that too and there are a couple of reasons for that;

I identified the main reasons I would stop working on something.

Not Fun:

I could discover the game idea just wasn't fun to play - that reason is fine and perfectly valid, and generally becomes obvious after a few hours at most.

Boring Details:

I would hit a part that was a pain in the ass to work on. This was more of a problem - I just don't enjoy coding up certain low level things like setting up a C++ rendering engine.

Scope:

Interruptions:

Clear Goal:

Plan for the future

Work consistently

Enjoy the work

Design a game to suit this approach

So far, things are going great.

#IFTTT #Blogger

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