Please - Need Immediate Advice!!!! Want to Escape 9-5 into indie game developer

[virtualpsycho]

Am currently working as a telesales person in the corporate world. Good enough money, alot of stress and takes up alot of time leaving no time for anything outside of it. I have the skills (art,design,programming,testing) and enough knowledge and experience to make it work. I feel like if I dont escape it now I will be caught in the 9-5 world forever.... A mindless corporate drone, always wishing that I had transferred when I had the chance. I am trying to make this decision before I take on anymore financial/family responsibilty. I know what it takes and believe me I have what it takes but I just have to hear someone else's side of it from their own experience to make sure that I am not living in fairyland.

Any opinions are greatly appreciated.... This is the dream, my interest and intention since day one, this is everything to me. 

Thank you.

[Andail]

Naturally, you should always try to pursue your dreams, especially now that you're young and with no financial committments. However, it's probably prudent to start trying this while you still have a steady income, even if this means double work and literally no spare time at all.
Making a name as an independent game developer is very hard, and even if you're successful it'll take years before you'll be able to survive on it.
So, just start doing games, network a lot, get experience and connections. Don't quit your daily job until you're beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel...
and good luck!

[virtualpsycho]

Wil do. Your suggestion speaks more truth than my heart does at present.

Thank you.

[Nikolas]

Your subject post speaks on its own... indie. Indie means little money. I know very few people who've made it and kept themselves as part of the indie community. There simply isn't enough money to go around. The natural evolvement is to start from indie, in hopes of getting published and fully commercial.

So you need to rethink if a life in the computer games industry will be THAT much different than a 9-5 job (ok NOT telesales, but still...

Other than that, what Andail said seems to be just about right. Following our dream doesn't necessarily mean to be reckless with our lives.

[GarageGothic]

Coincidentally I just came across this article about actually "Finishing a game" - lots of good advice. I'd also recommend you to check out whatever postmortems of indie games you can find, Gamasutra has tons of them, but Dave's Blackwell Convergence write-up and the recently posted AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! -- A Reckless Disregard for Gravity postmortem are good starting points.

Also, and this is totally not related to games, one of my personal sources of motivation and a great inspiration in terms of how to approach a project, is Robert Rodriguez' book Rebel Without a Crew, about the making of the $7,000 indie film El Mariachi. Brilliant reading - for a small taste of Rodriguez' micro-budget creativity, check out his Ten Minute Film School. I think the main lesson to take away from it is to trust your instincts and use common sense to work with the resources and time you have available instead of trying to mimic how it's usually done in the industry.

I wish you the best of luck with your project. It's nice to see that I'm not the only person crazy enough to ditch the 9 to 5 world for an uncertain future in indie game development (and if that doesn't work out, I'll just be a mighty pirate instead).

[virtualpsycho]

Thank you for all contributions....

@Nikolas, Thanks for laying out the truth for me. I would love the 9-5 of the games industry but any other 9-5 to me is hell.... telesales is close enough on its own.

@Garagegothic, thanks for advice and article references. Will definitely check them out.

Eh GARAGEGOTHIC.... Have you already taken the leap of leaving your day job? It sounds like it by the way you expressed your last sentence.

Cheers to all.

[Wonkyth]

Escape 9-5 would be a great group name...

[InCreator]

...
Also, and this is totally not related to games, one of my personal sources of motivation and a great inspiration in terms of how to approach a project, is Robert Rodriguez' book Rebel Without a Crew, about the making of the $7,000 indie film El Mariachi
...

Somewhat unrelated to this thread, I'm halfway through this (ebook) and totally loving it!
Thanks for tip!

[Disco]

It seems like you are in a rather good spot to make the leap, assuming you are without spouse and child, etc and not stuck in any kind of lease.

Working on this while you have a steady income is the best advice you have already been given, but I would also suggest for you to begin chipping away at your other 9-5 life in order to expand in your desired areas. To do this would require making any cuts in your life overhead that you can, adopting a sort of minimalist existence that will allow you to live better on less income. Some popular ideas are going out less, cooking at home more, getting out of the daily latte habit, ditching a landline if you have a mobile... the places where you can make cuts are almost limitless.

The best scenario you can get into is one where you only need to work part time in order to survive. I have lived this way for the last ten years and it has allowed me to only work part-time AND have about 8 weeks of holiday each year. I am able to work only 15 hours a week on average and still afford going to the UK and Europe for almost two months every year, which is something no one else I know in my same age and income bracket can do who has fallen for all the traps of modern life. Of course it is a sacrifice in this day and age to live without certain things (I have never in my life owned a mobile or a car or other such money-draining device and  I have chosen to live in an inherited house) but if you want something bad enough you won't mind it much if at all.

While not being exactly what you are after the idea can be extrapolated to some degree!

[Dave Gilbert]

Going indie is always an exciting prospect.  I was doing the 9-5 thing for several years (working in the garment center, of all places) before making the plunge myself.  First off, let me say that it is *never* too late.  I don't know how old you are, but I was 30 years old when I wrote my first AGS commercial game.  I am 34 now, with 6 more commercial games to my credit (5 in AGS) and more on the way.  I can't say it's easy, and there are many times when I long for the security of the 9-5 world (especially in this economy) but it is definitely a satisfying way to live.  

Some bits of advice...

1 - Start freeware.  Have you ever made a game before?  Do a couple of small ones and release them to get your chops before even thinking of going commercial.  The feedback you get will be invaluable.

2 - Have a cushion.  When I started, I had about ten months worth of savings in my bank account.  Be prepared to live like Ghandi to get by, at least for a year or two.

3 - Keep it tight and simple.  If you want to go full time indie, you will have to accept that you'll never be able to make that 30+ hour gorgeous epic you have in your head.  That takes lots of time and lots of money, a luxury most don't have unless you are independently wealthy.  You don't want to spend 3 years making a game.  You want to spend a maximum of 6 months.  If the game totally flops it will be much easier to bounce back from it.

4 - Hang around other game designers!  I can't stress this enough.  When I went to my first game industry event, it was like coming home.  Nothing is more inspiring than talking to other people who feel just as passionate about making games as you.

5 - Accept that your first game will probably flop.  You always hear the success stories, but 90% of us aren't that lucky.  Don't let it discourage you.  Take the experience, learn from it, and keep making games.  My first game (The Shivah) sold practically nothing, but I learned a ton from the process.

Anyway, that's all I can think of at the top of my head.  If you ever plan on making the leap, feel free to give me a shout.

-Dave

[Andail]

pah, what does Dave know

[m0ds]

If you like flowery happy answers - don't read this post. Being someone who's wanted to be in game making since 96, my advice would be keep your job and work on something in the meantime to release, and only consider quitting when you're able to sell or have your product out there. I haven't worked a 9-5 for a long while, trying to live off film & game making...but I'm the other end of success stories. A part time job keeps me eating (occasionally :p) and I keep trying to make a name for myself but haven't done very well at that in all 10 years I've been trying... I get close, I got close to a good "indie" film maker state in 2007, and almost a good indie game maker state this year, but both fucked up for me, and now I'm bitter & twisted! It's easy to go from success to success but trust me it's not easy to go from failure to failure, and to still keep trying. By that point most people would go back to their 9-5. You should also remember that for every success around these parts, there are a good five failures. Failure is a strong word I guess, so I should say, "less sucessful outcomes". DG is one of the only successful developers here in terms of commercial viability. Lots of developers have quit trying after their games didn't sell too well, so it's not necessarily a walk in the park.

So I wouldn't want to discourage you, but I would say - don't drop everything you have until you have the cushion Dave mentions, and that shouldn't just be money, that should be game products - which are proven to be popular or sell

Good luck

[Radiant]

Well...

I was actually selling indie games back when I was a student. My first "real" game (SubTerra) had the fortune of attracting interest of an established shareware publisher, and it sold reasonably well. Mind you, students get a government grant, and many of them have a part-time job to the side; so my part time job was indie game design. Also, this was in no way a big hit or a bestseller, just some nice money on the side.

When I graduated, I decided that I could not reliably make enough money out of game making to support myself, so I ended up getting a fulltime job and doing game design as a hobby. This has worked out pretty well for me.

So my only real advice here is to always have a fallback. The vast majority of indie designers (or indeed any self-started business) are not succesful, so be sure you have money and/or an education to fall back on in case you fail.

[kconan]

  A good friend of mine worked as a "mainstream" developer for a number of years, mainly as a learning experience, before he started on side projects with the goal of striking out on his own.  Even working as a software tester can be good experience if you can't get in the door as a programmer or graphic artist.

[Grim]

 You don't want to spend 3 years making a game.  You want to spend a maximum of 6 months.

This is clearly a mistake I'm making... I'd listen to Dave on that . Just make sure you really push it and spend every waking second of your life doing stuff for your game. It will definitely pay off.

[SpacePirateCaine]

It depends entirely on what it is that you want to do. If you can set a specific career goal for yourself it will be much easier to end up in the job that you want to be doing.

You said 'Indie' developer. Does this mean that mainstream game development is out? If so, then it's a matter of continuing to build your skills (and your bank balance) until you have the resources necessary, both human and financial, to start a small, short-term project. I absolutely agree with Dave -- as he is a true sage of the indie industry -- that the most time you want to be spending on a project is 6 months, especially in indie. At my company, we've even done large-scale commercial packaged releases with comparably tight development schedules (Though it largely also depends on the scope of your project and how many people are involved).

If you want to get into corporate game development, you'll want to decide what your endgame is. I want to be a producer/director, so I got into the game industry in testing a few years back, and continued to develop small indie projects. I also found that the year of experience I had in sales/recruiting, actually, helped me as well in learning to manage and work with schedules on time-sensitive projects. Now I'm working as an assistant/associate producer at a gaming company here in Japan - Fun fact: My AGS game projects were one of the deciding factors in my hiring.

If you want to work in art, build a portfolio of art in varied styles, both digital and classical, if programming, get your hands on some of the available engines and get your feet wet - saying you have extensive experience with developing independent projects in the Unreal engine looks great on a resume, and the engine is now free to download and learn. Sure, you won't have access to proprietary dev kits, etc., but that's not expected of a freelancer at least right off the bat.

Just bear in mind, when you work on games full time, gaming is also a full time job. I know it's a stupid thing to say, but it's as much a 9-to-5 as any other business, and you don't have room for burnout or exhaustion. That said, it's one of the funnest industries to work in, and it's packed full of great, awesome and like-minded people. It's a job that people do because they're passionate about it.

And that's the last thing - never lose your passion for it. Be ready for grind, be ready for the un-fun stuff, and it will be all worth it when you get the chance to play your finished game, and every time you get a positive comment from someone else who has played it as well (Though on the internet, positivity can be a rare commodity, so learning to be a little thick-skinned helps, too).

[virtualpsycho]

Thank you for invaluable advice, I have alot of things to think about now. I will keep ye updated.

[Igor Hardy]

I think this long podcast/conversation between indie dev superstars Alec Holowka (Aquaria) and Edmund McMillen (SuperMeat Boy) has a lot of valuable info on how it is to be an indie developer.

Some highlights (as I remember them):

- financially those guys are still very much dependent on the fact if their newest title is a success
- there were times they have risked almost everything and killed themselves with work just to finish a particular game
- it's the obsessions and passions that drive them to make their games, while success sometimes has a demotivating effect

[virtualpsycho]

Thanks for the pod cast link. It woke me up a bit and also gave me alot to think about....

[BatWitch]

As someone who's been chewing away at trying to make the same game for the past 3 years with minimum success, this thread has been very helpful. This article in particular really made me think a lot about what I've been doing so far.. http://makegames.tumblr.com/post/1136623767/finishing-a-game

I think I am going to try to make a game within a half a year now, and really put night and day effort into it.

OP, hold on to your regular job until your games can sustain you!