[HN Gopher] Show HN: I got laid off from Meta and created a mino...
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Show HN: I got laid off from Meta and created a minor hit on Steam
I was at FB/Meta from late 2013 to early 2023, mostly working in
the compiler/runtime spaces. I got hit in the spring 2023 layoff
wave. I immediately started making games in my newfound free time
(a lifelong interest, and I even worked in AA(A?) back ca. ~2000),
and in October 2023 I stumbled upon the idea of a roguelike
pachinko/plinko game inspired by Luck Be A Landlord. Things
snowballed quickly, I started talking to publishers, then worked
like crazy through all of 2024, almost the hardest I've ever worked
in my career, and launched the game in December 2024. It's sold
~200,000 units in its first 10 weeks on Steam. So it's no Balatro,
but I'd still say it did very well :) AMA? (my game is
Ballionaire:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2667120/view/5264614...)
Author : newobj
Score : 1488 points
Date : 2025-02-26 18:19 UTC (1 days ago)
| billconan wrote:
| Congratulations! The game looks amazing--its quality is truly
| impressive.
|
| I'm currently feeling burned out. I have an app idea and a
| prototype that I believe could turn into a viable project to
| support myself. However, I don't have the courage to quit my job
| --I'm afraid of the anxiety that comes with paying rent and
| insurance without a steady paycheck. I do have some savings to
| sustain me for a while, but I'm unsure if taking a break to
| recharge, learn new things, and build something I'm passionate
| about (which could potentially become profitable) is a good idea?
| I'm also worried about how a long gap on my resume might be
| perceived when I look for a job in the future.
|
| I'm also interested in making video games, but I often get
| discouraged by the sheer amount of artwork required--something I
| struggle to handle and afford. How did you manage the artwork
| side of your project?
| newobj wrote:
| Thanks Bill :)
|
| I can relate to the first thing you mentioned, and I never
| really took action. Layoff was thrust upon me, with the
| privilege of a severance, and I had been working for decades,
| so I figured "why not try now?" I'm not sure if I ever would
| have been brave enough to proactively try, but that's just me.
| Video games in particular are brutal, economically, and not
| something I would ever recommend someone take a risk on in
| hopes of a payday.
|
| Regarding art: don't get distracted by art. The original
| prototype of Ballionaire was made using Twemoji -- you can see
| a video of it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwIwcGewZME
| Later I switched from Twemoji to images sourced from
| https://www.flaticon.com/ When I signed a publisher, I was
| lucky enough for them to hook me up with an in-house artist. I
| knew the style I wanted (the style you see in the game) and
| luckily the artist Hanja absolutely nailed it.
|
| I would recommend avoiding art as long as possible if it's not
| your strength. You will go much further on making something
| _feel_ really _fun_ then making art that 's one click above
| terrible. If you get traction, the art can come later. For
| future prototypes I am working on straight up text mode (or
| near to it, in like stock Godot UI) right now.
| billconan wrote:
| Thank you for the helpful tips! How do you gain traction or
| test an early prototype? Is finding a publisher more like job
| hunting (where there is a standard application process) or
| pitching to a VC (where you need to be social and build up
| connections)?
| newobj wrote:
| btw this was the moodboard I put together for the artist --
| https://www.canva.com/design/DAF1ZIStuTY/j66Hl6xPyMNU6cfRsw2...
|
| imho even if you can't make art, it's good to have inspirations
| for a coherent vision that hopefully you'll be able to
| articulate to someone!
| billconan wrote:
| Adventure Time! No wonder the art style feels familiar and
| lovable.
| ziddoap wrote:
| Thanks for sharing this!
| momojo wrote:
| I haven't played the game haha but I was curious whats going
| on in that last moodboard slide.
| famahar wrote:
| Have you considered switching careers rather than quiting. I
| took a two year break from tech and did English teaching. The
| pay was low but it sustained me with my savings and I had tons
| of mental energy to work on my side projects. Any job that's
| easy to clock in and clock out, where the work gets done on the
| same day, no deadlines. Can do wonders for your mental energy.
|
| When I returned to tech I had a pretty impressive portfolio of
| projects. Turns out unsurprisingly that not coding all day for
| work makes me want to code more for fun.
| billconan wrote:
| Thank you so much for the suggestion. I've thought about it,
| but I don't feel like I have any strong skills outside of
| coding. I can draw decently as an amateur, but not at a
| professional level.
|
| I genuinely love coding and often do it in my spare time. My
| burnout isn't caused by coding itself but rather by poor
| management and working on assignments that feel meaningless.
| famahar wrote:
| I get that. Honestly I never thought I was skilled enough
| to teach until I tried it. There are a lot of jobs out
| there that are easy to learn and adapt to.
|
| Before teaching I did a cleaning job which was satisfying.
| Headphones in and end my day with the satisfaction of a
| clean office for the workers tomorrow. City gardening jobs
| were also lovely. Being out in the sun does wonders for
| mood. Impossible to get stressed doing the job.
|
| But yeah, it's always scary that bad management can ruin a
| good thing.
| ascorbic wrote:
| In that case, switching employers may be what's needed,
| rather than switching careers (I know, easier said than
| done but easier if you already have a job). But if you do
| switch careers or have a career break, you can still code!
| If you're not maintaining a big project, working on your
| own side-projects is more like a hobby than work for most
| coders I know, so it wouldn't necessarily be incompatible
| with a break from the industry.
| switz wrote:
| 200,000 units is a far cry from just a 'minor hit' -
| congratulations!
|
| During the project, what was the biggest instinct you had that
| was ultimately validated by its success, but still surprised you?
| What was a lesson you learned that you didn't expect? How was
| working with a publisher? What did they do right and what did
| they do wrong?
| newobj wrote:
| Honest answer? Dancing stick figure guy on the title screen. I
| did it very early in the project, in a fugue state at 3am. It
| lingered and lingered there, with ppl wondering "Is this real?
| Is this the actual title screen?" and luckily by the end I
| think everyone had drank enough psychedelic koolaid to agree -
| stick figure man stays. The artist made some better art for his
| hands/feet, and that was that. He's divisive, but everybody at
| least remembers him :)
|
| Lesson learned that I didn't expect - hmm. Ah, one good one: I
| spent a _LOT_ of time worrying about stuff being "OP" or
| degenerately good. Well, turns out, people like OP stuff, or
| degenerately good stuff, at least in single player score attack
| games. My biggest lesson learned on the project: people
| experience your game individually. If they find something
| broken, in their head, _they_ are the one to have found
| something broken, and it feels good. You don 't have to design
| for the entire community at once. Don't over-balance your game.
| Embrace the jank.
| redeux wrote:
| > Embrace the jank
|
| Love this! I wish you would be been involved with the release
| team for Helldivers II.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| The minute I read "dancing stick figure" I knew exactly what
| game we're talking about.
|
| I'm not a stoner and am not really into stoner culture but
| I've watched that figure dance for like 10 mins once,
| entranced by it. I dunno what exactly it is, but it's just an
| absolute home run.
|
| I'm not joking, I'd pay for an app that's literally just that
| guy dancing to some music.
| _ache_ wrote:
| Did the dancing stick is Meta AI applied to some stick like
| this research paper ?
|
| https://ai.meta.com/blog/ai-dataset-animation-drawings/
| newobj wrote:
| It's a stock animation from mixamo :P
| chefandy wrote:
| Stock assets: the first "AI". Honestly still a better
| option than AI for most anything in game dev with a few
| workflow-oriented exceptions.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Stock assets were still made by humans, even if the
| effects of a poopular stock asset remain similar.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Stock assets are nothing to do with AI?
| immibis wrote:
| They both let you have assets in your game without making
| them.
| malfist wrote:
| That classification would mark things like libraries and
| packages as AI. Hell, that'd make my house AI.
| chefandy wrote:
| It's a _metaphor_.
| immibis wrote:
| Code libraries and your house do not fall in the category
| of "things that give you game assets without you having
| to make them" because they do not give you game assets
| without you having to make them. (Code is not considered
| a game asset.)
|
| Asset packages are in the category of "things that give
| you game assets without you having to make them", because
| they give you game assets without you having to make
| them. The assets in the package are, by definition, stock
| assets.
| chefandy wrote:
| Sure they do: stock assets are the most obvious market
| that AI is taking direct aim at in games development, and
| the AI tools on the game dev market were largely trained
| on stock assets. If you need anything from a sound
| library to a 3D model to an animation to an icon set to
| background music to network gameplay code... sure you can
| get it through stock asset marketplaces... but AI tool
| vendors have ingested many of these stock assets and hope
| game developers will buy their tools to generate assets
| rather than buying the stock assets they built their
| tools with.
| usrusr wrote:
| Balanced games feel like a chore: you just sit through them,
| trying to avoid those mistakes that aren't balanced away and
| there's never any hope for some positive discovery. Decisions
| do not matter and the pro-balancing crowd even thinks that
| this is a feature, not a bug.
|
| Yes, discovering the city-per-tile problem in Civ would ruin
| the game for you (I never did). That clearly is the bad kind
| of overpowered. But sending that single chariot to the edge
| of the known universe before it gets constrained by
| phalanxes? Awesome.
| paol wrote:
| Agree. Over-balancing everything in single player games
| sucks out the fun.
|
| "Single-player" here is key - minutely perfect balancing is
| often a necessity in multiplayer games, and I suspect
| sometimes that mentality is carried over to single-player
| experiences without stopping to question it.
| pjc50 wrote:
| The trouble with the internet is that it's hard to stop
| competitive mentality leaking in; the game may be single
| player, but there are lots of people playing it, and they
| can watch each other and show off.
|
| (this basically killed puzzle / mystery box games, which
| survive only in a weird corner for not-very-online people
| playing on mobile)
| pjc50 wrote:
| I think that's a great lesson about art: trying to polish
| things into "objectively good" doesn't work, while human
| connection and weirdness and jank stay in the memory.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| > Ah, one good one: I spent a LOT of time worrying about
| stuff being "OP" or degenerately good. Well, turns out,
| people like OP stuff, or degenerately good stuff, at least in
| single player score attack games.
|
| One of the greatest joys in score-attack games like
| Ballionaire is discovering certain combos that feel brokenly
| good.
|
| During one of my early playthroughs, I got some combo that
| would spawn a crazy number of balls on every drop. The game
| would seriously lag for about half a second while the playing
| field absolutely exploded with balls. It was incredibly
| entertaining!
|
| https://youtu.be/blHxSe9I9WQ
|
| Some developers see this happen and will nerf things into the
| ground to prevent them, but that's an absolute fun-destroying
| choice. In a PVP game, yeah, absolutely you should prevent
| broken builds like that. But a single-player score attack?
| Nah. Leave that in.
| kflgkans wrote:
| Was it your intention that the dancing stick figure gives
| people nightmares?
| codetrotter wrote:
| I suppose that when your previous employer has over 3B users
| (FB alone, not even counting IG and WA and whatever else they
| have going on), 200k might seem like a small number of people
| :P
|
| But I agree. OP, 200k is a hugely respectable number for a game
| or any piece of software for that matter. I'd be happy if 200
| people used any of mine, never mind the k :p Congrats! :)
| kbenson wrote:
| Hey, Meta has something like 67k employees for those 3.35
| billion users (for simple stats I could find), and thats.
| That's 50k users to an employee. I think this dev is doing
| quite well by those standards. :)
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| even with a publisher, 200k copies at launch for a very small
| indie team is easily on pace for the 1%.
|
| https://intoindiegames.com/features/how-much-money-do-
| steam-...
|
| TBH I forgot the 1% was so high, even for an indie. But
| network effects are crazy, so getting to 700k will eventually
| be a thing.
| Danieru wrote:
| That article is 5 years old. Sadly the article lacks a
| date, but you can tell because it claims Steam is 15 years
| old, when it had its 22 anniversary last year.
|
| Next that 7M number is for self-published games. Aka, games
| where the dev is listed as the publisher. OP has Raw Fury
| as his publisher. Next Raw Fury posted their contract
| publically a while ago: it is a pretty harsh contract.
| 50/50 split, but there is a profit ratio baked into the
| recoup which is super odd. If OP had held off, did his own
| marketing for a bit, then negotiated with publishers once
| he had traction, he might have gotten a better deal.
|
| The challenge for Indie devs with publishers is how the
| good publishers ask a pretty high take. Meanwhile the good
| deals come from new publishers with poor or no track
| record. Personally we signed with Hooded Horse which
| publically offers better deals and is highly effective. The
| trade off being Hooded Horse is famously quite selective.
|
| Thus honestly: self publishing is the default-best choice.
| We did that for our last game and effectively replaced a
| publisher by just spending a bunch on marketing.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Yeah I failed to find a date but figured it wouldn't be
| severely out of date. If anything, that would mean the
| thresholds would get lower and Steam games more games
| being submitted. It's a
|
| >Next that 7M number is for self-published games. Aka,
| games where the dev is listed as the publisher.
|
| That's fair, I can conflate "indie" in the colloquial
| sense with "indie" in the traditional one. I suppose 1%
| would be a sttretch if competing with any game with a
| publisher (indie label or AAA).
|
| >it is a pretty harsh contract. 50/50 split, but there is
| a profit ratio baked into the recoup which is super odd.
| If OP had held off, did his own marketing for a bit, then
| negotiated with publishers once he had traction, he might
| have gotten a better deal.
|
| Yeah, I figured the article was referring to gross
| revenue after steam's cut. Itd be nearly impossible to
| truly guess at all the other cuts taken out from
| publishers, tools, and labor. Money made =/= money in
| your pocket.
|
| >Thus honestly: self publishing is the default-best
| choice. We did that for our last game and effectively
| replaced a publisher by just spending a bunch on
| marketing.
|
| It's still a tough choice, and really comes down to the
| person. There's a lot of technical and artistic people
| out there that can make a high quality game but can't
| sell water in a desert. If money is your primary goal, it
| may still be worth giving up 50,70+% just so people know
| your game exists to begin with. From there, the momentum
| should either encourage to self-publish next time or lets
| you seek a better deal. MArketing also tends to be one of
| those areas where many people feel they can do it
| themselves and then completely corner themselves in the
| end (as a certain YC startup recently learned).
|
| I think the true best choice is self-publish, but partner
| up with someone who knows how to sell (assuming you're
| getting great feedback on your game. Can't polish a
| turd). A singular media marketer shouldn't ask anything
| close to what a "good" publisher will offer.
| WA wrote:
| You are correct:
| "datePublished":"2020-08-06T07:12:56+00:00"
|
| If an article has no visible date, I often just check the
| source of the document, because most of these blogs use a
| generic CMS that puts the date in the code anyways.
| lubesGordi wrote:
| He mentioned the publisher got him the artist, which is a
| very big component in the games success.
| bobsmooth wrote:
| You do the art yourself or did you hire someone? How did that go?
| newobj wrote:
| I wish I could draw like that! The artist is Hanja Grgicevic
| and she works for a sister dev company of the publisher Raw
| Fury. I gave Hanja my mood board (https://www.canva.com/design/
| DAF1ZIStuTY/j66Hl6xPyMNU6cfRsw2...) and we iterated from there.
| I'm so happy with her work :)
| fdlaks wrote:
| Looks awesome, congrats on your success 200k sales is a huge
| achievement!
|
| What factors led you to seeking out a publisher, was it mostly
| getting art for the game or did the publisher bring more to the
| table that made you decide it was worth it?
|
| What advice would you have given yourself just starting out
| knowing what you do now?
|
| What did you get stuck on the most when making the game? I know a
| lot of people who have great ideas for games but a lot of the
| ideas don't translate well into being able to realistically do
| them in the game because of complexity. Did you ever have ideas
| that you thought would be really cool to do but it ended up being
| too hard / time consuming to do?
|
| How close was the functionality of the game when you released it
| to what you had envisioned at the start? Did you go through any
| major design changes while developing it?
| monideas wrote:
| You should make a youtube series or a long series of blog posts
| explaining your journey from a personal perspective, the
| emotional ups and downs on working on this instead of getting a
| new job, from a technical perspective, and from a business
| perspective. What types of skills did you have to learn, what
| were the technical challenges, what pieces of code are you
| particularly proud of. What was your marketing strategy?
| KaiserPro wrote:
| That might be challenging as large companies tend to hit people
| with strong NDAs which means that any reference to time at
| $company would need to be approved by $company. IF you don't do
| this then you might be rinsed by the court.
| sarchertech wrote:
| That's not a thing. I'm not sure where you heard that. Large
| companies definitely don't try to prohibit you from telling
| people you worked there.
| devsda wrote:
| > Large companies definitely don't try to prohibit you from
| telling people you worked there.
|
| They don't. But they do sometimes prohibit talking/writing
| about their work, the nature of it or anything remotely
| connected to it.
|
| My current employer explicitly prohibits us from blogging
| about technical topics, creating learning material or even
| teaching anyone on technical subjects(e.g. on weekends at
| nearby school) outside the job for free/money.
| sarchertech wrote:
| That's not very common either. I've never signed anything
| like that in 20 years in the industry (worked everywhere
| from tiny startups to very large tech companies).
|
| In the case where your company does have a policy that
| that prohibits you from discussing the nature of your
| work, it's likely completely unenforceable beyond them
| firing firing you.
|
| The prohibition from teaching or blogging is definitely
| unenforceable.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| That starts to sound like a non-compete, and those were
| recently ruled illegal unless you know some trade secrets
| or something (very few people do)
|
| https://www.whitecase.com/insight-tool/white-case-global-
| non...
|
| Of course, that was the FTC in 2024. Who knows what the
| administration will change this year?
|
| Sure, I can't talk much about company games I worked on
| outside of "I worked on this", even after release. But
| they sure as heck can't prevent me from making a tutorial
| on C++ in my free time.
| echoangle wrote:
| Is that enforceable?
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| That's the only thing they tend t answer when background
| calls come in. They will answer if you worked there and no
| what dates unless it's your working under clearance. Even
| then I thiink you can mention most companies in a vague
| matter.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| > Large companies definitely don't try to prohibit you from
| telling people you worked there.
|
| no, thats not what I said.
|
| Large companies that pay generous severance generally want
| a non disparagement agreement in return. This means that
| yes you can say you worked there, you might even be able to
| say what department you worked in.
|
| What you can't say is that you worked on x,y or z, your
| opinion on the company direction or anything else that
| might be related to the company or is actions.
|
| If you even speak of this NDA/non disparagement agreement
| to anyone other than the listed highly limited number of
| people, you'll have to pay back all the severance, plus
| legal costs.
|
| So OP might want to tell you about their time, but they
| don't want to because it'll cost them a house worth of
| cash.
| pjc50 wrote:
| If I'm understanding this correctly, the game was nothing to
| do with Meta, and done as a solo dev effort? So no NDA
| applies.
|
| A certain amount of talk about previous projects is routine
| in interviews. As long as it doesn't get too detailed or
| makes the previous employer look bad in public nobody will
| complain.
| newobj wrote:
| Appreciate the thought but that's a full time job. I have to
| conserve whatever energy I have to actually work on the game.
|
| (Seriously, I think a lot of devs distract themselves with this
| stuff. Just make your damn game.)
| monideas wrote:
| That type of content is extremely useful for younger
| developers and the publicity probably has other benefits, but
| it's not for everyone.
| gessha wrote:
| If you're looking for this type of content, have you heard
| of the making of Prince of Persia [1]?
|
| [1] https://press.stripe.com/the-making-of-prince-of-persia
| makerdiety wrote:
| [flagged]
| titanomachy wrote:
| [flagged]
| shermantanktop wrote:
| That's how you know wasn't an LLM.
| makerdiety wrote:
| Sarcasm?
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >why should young developers matter at all?
|
| Well you clearly don't care for society's survival, so
| Let's put it selfishly: I want more good games. I'm not
| going to make the next katamari or Baba is you or Papers
| Please or Orba Dinn. I accepted I do not have that kind
| of auteur mindset when I approach art.
|
| But I do have technical skills and a lot of tech
| discourages a lot of would be artists. If I can make
| those parts easier, less buggy, and more performant while
| bringing in more people to make games, that's a win-win.
| makerdiety wrote:
| Is apathy toward society--which is, really, only your
| local community you're trying to defend and not something
| that is universally significant or even objectively
| capable of growth and sustainability--a dire crime I've
| committed? Because I do not in fact care about the
| "society" thing.
|
| And claiming to have technical skill while also claiming
| that technology is stopping you from creating is a
| contradiction. An artist would have the technical skill
| to make something, by definition of the concept of an
| artist. If within your epistemology you're separating
| technical skill from an artist's creativity, then you
| have a perception of art and engineering that is tainted
| by something unrefined and harmful like liberal
| democratic society's lowest common denominator
| preference. In other words, there should not be a
| difference between an artist and a technical engineer.
|
| Furthermore, it's strange that, with all the current
| software out there, you said you are at an impasse when
| it comes to game creation or game development. Everything
| already is easy, not error prone, and performance
| acceptable. What are you waiting for, exactly? An
| artificial intelligence aid that will do all the work for
| you?
|
| And, lastly, an increase of the development population
| does not necessarily mean a good thing. Because, why
| should a bunch of people always be a good thing? Why not
| cull away those that are unfit for some task too? Unless
| realizing the philosophy of globalist liberal democracy
| is what you're aiming for? In which case I can see why
| you're repulsed at the idea of reality encroaching in on
| your fantastic ideals. Ethno-genetic Malthusian filters
| and reality should now be recognized as being synonymous
| with each other, or two faces of the same coin.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >Is apathy toward society--which is, really, only your
| local community you're trying to defend and not something
| that is universally significant or even objectively
| capable of growth and sustainability--a dire crime I've
| committed?
|
| Not particularly. You're free to interpret and navigate
| as you see fit.
|
| >And claiming to have technical skill while also claiming
| that technology is stopping you from creating is a
| contradiction
|
| You misread my comment. I'm not held back by tech, I'm
| held back by artistic creativity. It's a lot easier to
| make tech more accessible to the creative than to figure
| out how to expand my creativity to comjour novel ideas.
| I'm helping the other with my knowledge.
|
| >Everything already is easy, not error prone, and
| performance acceptable.
|
| You have not seen modern games if that's your
| perspective. AAA games are buggier than ever (whom I'm
| not interested in assisting), and there are still some
| surprisingly unoptimal games. We're far from post-
| scarcity performance.
|
| >Because, why should a bunch of people always be a good
| thing?
|
| If you stagnate, you lose developers. If you lose
| developers, the odds of good games decrease. I like good
| games.
|
| I'm not even convinced I'm making "more developers" so
| much as trying to slow down the decrease of developers.
| The youth of today are shifting from old media production
| to being self-made content creators. Playing video games
| is much more enjoyable than making them, after all. I've
| long given up on the western AAA development, so I still
| want to inspire future indies to potentially make more
| Hollow Knights or subnauticas or even Balartro.
|
| >In which case I can see why you're repulsed at the idea
| of reality encroaching in on your fantastic ideals
|
| Once again, you clearly misinterpreted something. I'm
| still working on games and planning on making my own mid-
| scale game. But making my own games is not my end goal,
| and I highly doubt I'm going to make anything close to
| profitable.
|
| But making games is not the only way to succeed as a game
| developer. Just ask Valve, Epic Games, or the Blender
| Foundation.
| markdown wrote:
| Or even better, he should just come over to your place, crash
| in your garage and spend his days teaching you how to make a
| game, right?
| MrLeap wrote:
| Damn nice. Love seeing indies make it! I hope for a small
| fraction of your level of success when I finally ship Tentacle
| Typer.
| newobj wrote:
| Wishlisted! I love the premise and the look of your game! Good
| luck!!
| MrLeap wrote:
| Thank you!
| rustyspacecadet wrote:
| what engine did you use? anything you would you have done
| differently in hindsight?
| newobj wrote:
| Godot 4.2 with C#. Done differently? Hmm. It was an intense
| duration of work and I set a firm deadline for myself of EOY
| 2024 to avoid it dragging out into a longer-than-it-should-be
| project. Gaining design skills along the way, I could make
| better use of the same amount of time now, just by being a
| better designer. But that's not hindsight. There were trade-
| offs in that aggressive schedule, and a lot of triaging. One of
| the things that probably could have used a little more time in
| the oven, perhaps trading off against content, was the meta
| progression. I wasn't in love with what shipped, and it seems
| to be the main criticism of the game, besides RNG. It's
| something I may still potentially address in a patch though.
| posnet wrote:
| I realise you can make games in any language/engine. But could
| you explain the language/system/engine you used?
|
| How did you go about validating the game is fun? Did you end up
| having an intuitive sense for it, or did you need external
| feedback to refine the mechanics?
|
| My steam deck might as well be a billionaire/balatro machine.
| newobj wrote:
| Godot 4.2 / C#. Godot is an amazing engine and I highly
| recommend it for indie devs. The iteration cycle is a few
| seconds. IMHO, using Unity will absolutely slow you down, as a
| designer/programmer. I can't comment on the reality of a 3d
| game with a complicated art pipeline, however. But for a game
| like Ballionaire, Unity or Unreal would have been a mistake.
|
| Ballionaire was fun by day 3, the first time a ball dropped and
| hit a trigger that caused an effect. It was luck a bolt of
| lightning to me. I am a VERY pessimistic person. So the fact
| that it felt compelling that early, and like, anyone who saw it
| could understand it and felt the fun, was a huge sign to me.
| Unfortunately, not every game has a premise that allows for
| that. I don't think you could hope for the same kind of feeling
| while making a 4X for example.
|
| But if you're making a game that ultimately should feel fun
| from moment to moment, like these kind of quick-play games are,
| well, I think you can get there quickly and with little work,
| if the idea is solid. And if you can't get it to feel fun, I
| would be wondering if the idea is solid, versus it needing more
| time/polish etc.
| protocolture wrote:
| >I can't comment on the reality of a 3d game with a
| complicated art pipeline, however. But for a game like
| Ballionaire, Unity or Unreal would have been a mistake.
|
| Going from Zero to Working 3d Game is very quick in Unity as
| long as you do everything the Unity way.
|
| Going from Zero to Working 3d Game if you need to create
| functionality from scratch in Unity is a heartbreaker.
|
| I am actually planning to take one of my old projects and
| rebuild it from scratch in Godot, for exactly this reason.
| havercosine wrote:
| A fellow Godot enthusiast here. Love to see Godot being used
| in commercially successful indie game like this. In 2021-22
| time, I tried (unsuccessfully!) building educational video
| games for maths using Godot and I have fond memories of being
| in the flow state while working with Godot. IMO Godot fits
| well with programmer's brain much better than Unity etc.
| japhib wrote:
| > I realise you can make games in any language/engine
|
| It's actually a bit more constrained than people realize ...
| Well, for desktop, you can literally use anything. But for
| mobile it's a bit harder because of specific platform quirks,
| i.e. on iOS you can't make a language that relies on a JIT
| compiler, so for a Java/libGDX game the best option is
| https://github.com/MobiVM/robovm which compiles the JVM
| bytecode to LLVM IR and then to native machine code.
|
| And then for consoles (switch/xbox/ps5) it's way worse because
| you're relying on commercial stuff, and the only support you
| get is from the engine makers themselves
| (Nintendo/Microsoft/Sony) so there's a lot less open source
| options. Basically you're stuck with C++ at that point (which
| Unity actually compiles your C# to under the hood for non-
| desktop platforms).
|
| Not what you asked, but I found out this stuff a while back and
| find it interesting, hopefully it's interesting to you too :)
| neonsunset wrote:
| Technically you can ship an FNA-based game with a commercial
| fork of .NET's NativeAOT that works on Nintendo Switch:
| https://viridiansoftware.com/blog/csharp-on-game-consoles Of
| course Xbox can just ship C#-written game normally AFAIK. So
| it's not like you're stuck with just C++ but yes, mobile
| platforms usually are highly constraining.
| knuppar wrote:
| Congrats on the game! Did you ever do game jams at all with the
| original idea or was this a larger project from the start?
|
| And a more realistic-adult question lol: how did you handle not
| having insurance from your workplace after severance?
| newobj wrote:
| Thank you! I absolutely suck at game jams. Like, really bad.
| Ballionaire is the one time a gamejam
| (https://itch.io/jam/eggjam-20) went right for me (good idea,
| microscopic scope) - you can see a video from about ~10 days
| into development here:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwIwcGewZME
|
| Normally I either scope way too big, or scope small and lose
| motivation because the idea is too itty bitty to maintain
| motivation. I have no idea how to hit the sweet spot more
| frequently. Some people are just really good at this, but not
| me.
|
| For insurance: private insurance via ACA/Obamacare. I had
| savings.
| rustyspacecadet wrote:
| what engine did you use? what's the best advice if someone wants
| to go down the same route?
| pier25 wrote:
| Godot
| vishalontheline wrote:
| Very cool!
|
| - What choices did you make to give yourself more time to work on
| this project?
|
| - At what point did you begin getting feedback of some sort?
|
| - Were there clearly things you wished to include in the game but
| had to cut out in the interest of time? How did you decide what
| would be "good enough"?
| newobj wrote:
| I very explicitly, with my family's support, set up the
| expectation that the game was my #1 priority in 2024. I only
| took one small vacation, during which I still worked. My wife
| and I would watch one 30 minute tv show at night, and do the
| crossword in the morning, and other than that, aside from meal
| time, the expectation was that I would be working on the game
| by default (not that I worked non-stop, just that the default
| was "the game"). It was fully 7 days a week for like 30% of the
| project. Involuntarily, I sacrificed exercise and diet too :( I
| just couldn't manage the discipline. I also absolutely
| annihilated the quality of my sleep.
|
| I got feedback from my wife within a few days, the first time
| she saw the game. Even she, a non-gamer, could tell that there
| was something compelling about the idea. And if you look at an
| above response, you'll see that I explained that the prototype,
| about a month into dev, go streamed to thousands of people. The
| feedback was VERY early and very positive. I wouldn't have been
| brave enough to keep at it otherwise, knowing myself.
|
| I wish meta progression was better, what shipped was a
| compromise with respect to time. "Good enough" was just purely
| just vibes and an editorial eye. No articulable criteria. Just
| a lot of vibes and trusting my intuition (a skill I gained
| verrrrrrry late in life)
| flunhat wrote:
| Congratulations! How did you get the process started for
| distributing your game? Were there any early channels for
| marketing you found particularly effective?
| tombert wrote:
| Out of curiosity, what kind of margins do you get when you sell a
| game on Steam? Like, what percentage of a sale ends up in your
| bank account (pre-taxes). Also, how do Steam sales affect that?
|
| Congrats on making a game to completion, and doubly so for making
| something that gets fairly popular. Making a real game has been
| on my bucket list for about as long as I've known how to program,
| and I haven't completely given up on it, but I would need to make
| friends with someone who knows how to do art and music.
| brianwawok wrote:
| Generic steam fee is 30%
| echoangle wrote:
| Steam takes 30% and the publisher (
| https://rawfury.com/developer-resources/ ) takes 50%, so the
| dev should end up with 35% of revenue (which then needs to be
| taxed etc.).
| stickfigure wrote:
| Maybe a dumb question but... in the age of Steam, what does
| the publisher do these days? Advance funding? What do those
| numbers look like?
| shakna wrote:
| Most of the marketing will come from the publisher. It's
| easy for a game not to be noticed, and to crater thanks to
| no audience. The publisher runs the early and mid ad
| campaigns.
| teamonkey wrote:
| Depends on the deal. Promotion and fronting of cash are the
| big ones (usually). They can usually also offer various
| development services (testing, translation, porting,
| getting special deals with platform holders). They can also
| act as a stakeholder for quality, advising on certain
| things that should be improved (as an editor would in book
| publishing).
| joseda-hg wrote:
| Really depends on the deal, but porting, marketing,
| localization and cash advances are common ones (Porting for
| the switch for example is known to be a big one, even for
| experienced solo/indie devs)
| sushidev wrote:
| Who is the publisher? Isn't it steam or the author itself?
| japhib wrote:
| If you look on the Steam page it's Raw Fury.
|
| Steam is just the storefront. A game publisher's role
| varies a lot - sometimes they're just financing the
| project, usually they handle stuff like PR and marketing,
| and sometimes they help quite a bit more with the
| development of the game (sounds like the case in this case
| based on his other answers) as in
| programming/art/sfx/whatever else.
| SXX wrote:
| You're right, but unfortunately you forgot that:
|
| 1 - Before Steam take it's cut there are taxes and refunds,
| 15-20% depend on geography of sales.
|
| 2 - Publisher need to recouperate spendings agreed in
| contract, but yeah then it's likely between 40 and 60%.
| echoangle wrote:
| For 1., I had the taxes afterwards and since every factor
| is just multiplied, it doesn't matter for the end result.
| And do refunds count into the final sales number?
|
| For 2., I linked the page where you can find the document
| where the publisher claims to take 50%, if I didn't miss
| something while skimming it.
| SXX wrote:
| Unfortunately when selling games on Steam you pay taxes
| twice. First of all Steam pay VAT all around the world.
| It's not included in their 30% cut. And then you pay
| corporate tax from your net profit after Steam or
| publisher sent royalties your way.
|
| Refunds on Steam can happen after a while so it's
| important to keep them in mind. If you sold 100 copies of
| your game 5-10% will be refunded.
|
| > I linked the page where you can find the document where
| the publisher claims to take 50%.
|
| I havent worked with Raw Fury and wouldn't be able to
| talk about it then anyway, but:
|
| 1 - If a publisher funded your game they will recuperate
| expenses by taking 70-100% of net profit. After that it
| can be 50%
|
| 2 - Some publishers also include localization, QA, LQA
| and even marketing budget into recoup amount.
| cornbread-mafia wrote:
| Game Maker's Toolkit did a breakdown of publishing a game on
| steam for a general view of the expenses.
|
| Starting around 6:35
|
| https://youtu.be/5ycSvC0ZM0k?si=DM1V06BZ1Zxbqrzh
| newobj wrote:
| Between returns, taxes, and other stuff, I think you can model
| at ~55% of gross Steam sales. Then, whatever your split w/ your
| publisher is, on top of that. So I think it's easy for ppl to
| severely overestimate how much a dev is actually earning by
| just multiplying units times price :)
|
| I think in general the uptick of sales volume more than offsets
| the discount during a Steam sale. There's a reason Steam sales
| have a cooldown, they generate marketing emails to your
| wishlists. So sales are always good, from what I can tell.
|
| Thanks for the congrats, and all I can say is: don't give up,
| I'm an old-ass man and made it happen. Don't get stuck on art
| or music either, IMHO. Total distraction. You can make a game
| fun without that stuff. At least, fun enough to be sure the
| investment into the next stage is wise.
| qq99 wrote:
| What factors made you choose to go with a publisher vs. self-
| publish?
| zamalek wrote:
| One major benefit of publishers is a salary while the game
| is being developed. The other major benefit is marketing,
| the linked Steam page is titled:
|
| > 200K Ballionaires!
|
| > Where do you all keep coming from?!
|
| A good portion of those came from the publisher's efforts.
| karaterobot wrote:
| Related to this: is there any kind of contractual language
| that keeps Steam creators from saying how much money they
| made on the platform? Please note that I'm _not_ asking how
| much you made on this game, that 's none of my business! Just
| wondering if there's an NDA or something like that. I've been
| curious about it for a while.
| mkaic wrote:
| I don't think there is such a legal obligation, because
| videos like this one exist where devs do share the exact
| financials of their Steam releases:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPMfcaUulYU
| SXX wrote:
| Steam dont do anything like that, but 99% of contracts with
| game publishes will include NDA on financial information.
| pier25 wrote:
| Congrats! This game looks amazing.
| newobj wrote:
| Thank you! :)
| dylanz wrote:
| I haven't played your game but I've watched a ton of Real Civil
| Engineer's videos on it. It looks like a blast and I love
| watching his videos. How did you get into game development?
| Congratulations on the success!
| newobj wrote:
| I started trying to make games as soon as I got an Apple //c
| when I was like 9 years old. I went to MSFT out of college but
| quit to work on games like a year into it. My first games job
| was at Monolith (RIP as of yesterday) and was there for ~4
| years, then I helped S2 Games ship "Savage: Battle for Newerth,
| but then went into FAANG for like 20 years. I always wanted to
| come back to gamedev. Glad I got the chance :)
| leetrout wrote:
| Oh neat! I wishlisted it when it came out but was heavy into
| balatro, slay the spire and the diceomancer demo but I will pick
| it up soon.
|
| Curious if you would be up for recording a podcast about the
| project? I love to pick people's brains about stuff like this. I
| recorded one with Ange the Great about his creation of Engine
| Simulator, for example.
| newobj wrote:
| Yeah, I'm open to podcasts! I did one with openindie already:
| https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/openindie/episodes/33-...
| (dm me on bsky: https://bsky.app/profile/newobject.bsky.social)
| WCSTombs wrote:
| Congratulations! That's a huge accomplishment, and not something
| I'd call "minor."
|
| When I think about game development, these are the skills and
| types of work that come to mind:
|
| - software development
|
| - game design
|
| - graphical art
|
| - musical composition
|
| - writing
|
| - marketing and promotion
|
| and I'm sure there's more that I'm missing. I'd be very curious
| to know how you navigated through all of that...like did you
| start on one end, like with a game engine, and then fill in the
| rest, or was it more of a holistic iterative process? I hope
| that's not too broad of a question, but frankly I'd appreciate
| any insights you can share.
| compscistd wrote:
| I had to stop playing for a while because the music really got
| stuck in my head. What a fantastic game though, it really is so
| fun. The "Woooow" at some upgrades always make me chuckle. I'll
| definitely come back to it soon.
| newobj wrote:
| haha the "wooow" was very last second, and meant to kind of be
| ... "snide" ... watching streamers play it and saw "wooow"
| along with him every time absolutely delights me to no end.
| pineapple_sauce wrote:
| Why did you go with a publisher rather than publishing it
| yourself?
| isaacremuant wrote:
| Congratulations. Looks fun and one of those "omg, I've spent so
| much time on this" kind of game.
|
| Can you expand in the part of talking to publishers. How did you
| approach it, how much previous context did you have, how did you
| evaluate what was good vs not. I know what mobile game publishers
| ask for but not desktop/steam ones.
|
| Any advice? (Not that I'm making games but just curious what form
| it actually takes)
| SXX wrote:
| Not author, but fellow indie gamedev founder. Already answered
| one similar question in comments, but here is usual process of
| choosing publishers: 1 - You need to decide
| whatever you looking for a funding and how much you need. No
| matter where you're located majority of indie publishers
| operate with budgets under $300,000. AFAIK there is under 30-50
| companies that can even provide funding over $1,000,000.
| 2 - Even big publishers dont like to take risks. So if you're
| self-funded or have investor your chances to sign publishing
| agreement are much higher since then publisher risks almost
| nothing. 3 - You go and check what games each publisher
| release on Steam and check how much marketing there are for
| their titles. "Good" publishers usually only release 1 game a
| month or less since marketing is both time consuming and
| costly. So obviously it's much harder to get selected. 4
| - There are "spray and pray" publishers that can even give you
| some money easier than others, but they sometimes release 3-10
| titles a month and just look what sticks. They mostly dont do
| marketing before release whatsoever so it's not exactly an
| optimal choice unless you working on a games that can be built
| cheap and under 6 month. 5 - When you start any
| negotiations normal net revenue split after budget
| recouperation is around 50/50 (with 40 / 60 both ways also
| possible). So you can filter out those who try to pray on
| inexperienced people. 6 - Also unless you getting serious
| funding (not $300,000) publishers usually only get exclusive
| distribution license on your specific title for 3-5 years, but
| they dont get your IP. If some small publisher ask for full IP
| transfer it's not a good deal.
|
| And yeah to reach out you only need at playable and fun
| prototype for 5-15 minutes of gameplay, but if your game is
| closer to release it's will drastically increase your chances
| for a deal. Everyone loves to publish games with no funding
| needed and no one loves to fund development with risk it will
| never be completed.
|
| Getting published by likes of Raw Fury is a huge success
| though, very small percent or projects get such a chance.
|
| PS: If you wish feel free to reach me, will happily share my
| experience.
| Benjamin_Dobell wrote:
| Congratulations! Looks fantastic. I'm curious about marketing and
| your relationship with the publisher.
|
| There's a LOT of games launching on Steam all the time, some
| solid games go largely unnoticed. How did you get word out about
| your game? Did you build an audience during development? How much
| assistance did the publisher provide? Additionally, did you have
| contacts that introduced you to publishers? If not, what got
| their attention? Fanbase, demo, you personally?
| japhib wrote:
| Amazing work! Questions:
|
| - How/why did you decide to talk to a publisher? When in the
| process did you feel like you had a good enough prototype to do
| that?
|
| - What have been the pros/cons of working with a publisher? When,
| in your opinion, should someone do that vs. self-publishing?
|
| - What was your confidence level throughout various stages of the
| project? Was there a point before releasing the game where you
| maybe got a glimpse of the success you were going to have? (I
| guess probably Steam wishlists?)
|
| - What's next?
|
| Congrats again on the hit!
| newobj wrote:
| I worked with a publisher for a few reasons: 1) I didn't know
| what I didn't know, and didn't want to "find out" AND make the
| game at the same time. I needed a partner for the
| business/marketing end. 2) An advance (funding) helped de-risk
| things for me. 3) I needed help to find an artist. I was having
| no luck on my own. Even with the traction the game had!
|
| Publishers actually came to me. In a weird coincidence, I
| happened to show the game in a Discord where localthunk, the
| Balatro dev, was hanging out, and he shared it with a few big
| streamers. The prototype was streamed to thousands of people
| like ~5 weeks into its development, and the publishers started
| showing up immediately. Not normal. Very lucky.
|
| I started very confident, and stayed relatively confident, for
| myself, but there were some weird days where you'd get a
| paranoid feeling: "Wait, all you do is drop a ball in this
| game. Why do people like it? Are they just blowing smoke up my
| ass? Am I having a manic break, thinking the gmae is good? It
| really can't possibly be good enough, right? Making successful
| indie games is something _other_ people do, not me. " Needless
| to say the demo getting reception in October 2024 Steam
| Nextfest (before being released in December) was hugely
| validating and was like the "pinch" I needed to prove it wasn't
| a dream.
|
| Next is healing and recovery ... and supporting Ballionaire.
| Working on a creative project intensely for a year at the
| exclusion of almost everything else in your life, esp. at my
| age -- doesn't leave you in a great state when it's over. It
| was self-imposed crunch mode. It's not easy to be bounce back
| creatively or energetically.
|
| Thanks :)
| rsanek wrote:
| Appreciate your vulnerability. Awesome to hear your good
| fortune along the way, receiving positive feedback. Working a
| year heads-down even with that though does sound quite
| difficult. I think about all the time how one doesn't have to
| deal with these kinds of doubts when at FAANG-style jobs. I
| think _that_ , moreso even than the EV on compensation, is
| the reason FAANG can be so sticky.
| japhib wrote:
| Thanks for the in depth answer! Good luck with the recovery -
| hopefully the game has left your financials in a good enough
| spot that you don't have to worry about the next project for
| a bit, at least.
| delduca wrote:
| Who did the art work? You?
|
| Which engine have you used?
|
| Also, congratulations!
| newobj wrote:
| Godot 4.2 w/ C#
|
| The artist is Hanja Grgicevic.
|
| Thanks!
| eftychis wrote:
| Congratulations!
|
| This is a huge achievement and work -- although I do not know the
| space.
|
| What is the stack used? Did you end up substantially switching
| things in the stack during your journey?
|
| It would be great if you follow up later with experiences like
| the maintenance journey post-launch. Also, what do you feel the
| publisher provided besides the artist and guidance?
| newobj wrote:
| Thanks! Godot 4.2 w/ C#. I started with Godot 3 and C#, but
| ported to Godot 4 a couple months into the project, because it
| was my understanding that would help console portability in the
| future. It was a bit of a pain, but not too bad. Maybe a week's
| worth of work.
|
| Raw Fury I think also did a great job w/ marketing and
| promotion, e.g. connecting the game to streamers, and the
| trailer knocked it out of the park IMHO :)
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| The amount of genius talent that is being wasted making addictive
| products for Meta is borderline criminal.
|
| Congrats on shipping a huge hit
| daedrdev wrote:
| How much impact to you think internet influencers had on your
| sales? I recall seeing it being played there first.
| newobj wrote:
| 100%, it was really the only form of promotion the game had,
| besides the demo itself, and the trailer. Ballionaire was
| accidentally designed to be verrrrrrrry streamable.
| namuol wrote:
| Good lord that Steam page and the trailer have a ton of appeal.
| It's no wonder you've got a hit on your hands! Reviews are very
| good too. Congratulations!
| adastra22 wrote:
| What does roguelike mean? I've played the original Rogue, but
| haven't been a gamer for decades now. I'm not seeing how this is
| connected?
|
| Sorry, but you said ask anything lol.
| Zebfross wrote:
| My understanding is that roguelike means that when you die you
| start over from the beginning.
| newobj wrote:
| There are a lot of interpretations, but it's roguelike in the
| sense that:
|
| 1) It's permadeath 2) It's random 3) It's systemic
|
| The term is used quite broadly these days. Only the "Berlin
| interpretation" is quite strict about the sense of it you might
| be thinking of.
| adastra22 wrote:
| Thanks. TIL.
| joemi wrote:
| Is there a term that people who don't use the Berlin
| interpretation call games that fit in the Berlin
| interpretation? Or are they just called "Berlin
| interpretation roguelikes"?
|
| (I'm asking both out of curiosity and out of utility, since
| I'm a fan of the Berlin interpretation roguelikes (and have
| been since before the modern overly-broad interpretation came
| into use), so I used to be able to count on "roguelike"
| meaning it was one style of game, and I miss those days. I'd
| like to be able to know how to specifically find those games
| again.)
|
| Also, congrats on the success of the game! I'm looking
| forward to trying it out sometime. It's on my wishlist,
| despite my quibbles with calling it a roguelike. :)
| mijoharas wrote:
| I think I've heard of "old school roguelike" or
| "traditional roguelike" being used to refer to those games.
| (googling seems to show that the latter naming seems to be
| more common.)
| jamesgeck0 wrote:
| Hardcore players generally use "traditional roguelike" for
| things that are like rogue and "roguelite" for everything
| else.
|
| As far as finding traditional roguelikes, a few big-name
| commercial ones are Caves of Qud, Cogmind, Jupiter Hell,
| and Rift Wizard. The r/roguelikes subreddit and discord can
| point you at a bunch of other ones both paid and free.
| ghfhghg wrote:
| Wow congratulations. The game presentation is awesome.
|
| When working on this how long did it take before the game felt
| fun to you?
| newobj wrote:
| Honestly it felt fun on day 3, the first time you could drop a
| ball and there were a couple triggers that did things. As a
| verrrrrrry pessimistic person, the fact that I actually thought
| it felt fun was like a huge flashing light above my head that
| there was something to the idea.
| bb88 wrote:
| Hi, I enjoyed playing Ballionaire. I do like this style of rogue-
| likes where things can maybe break the game itself (infinity,
| slow down the game completely when too many eggs are spawned).
|
| I was curious in your platform choice of windows only. Was this
| due to the framework/programming language you're using? Or was
| this more of a time savings of trying to support more than one
| system at a time? Or maybe both?
| newobj wrote:
| FWIW, it works on the Steamdeck, natively, without Proton -- so
| it's a native Linux game in other words. Apparently a lot of
| folks are playing it on desktop Linux, as a result. It's just
| not "officially supported".
|
| I'm a one-man dev operation, so it's strictly a matter of
| opportunity costs of my time. Linux and Mac are miniscule
| gaming markets, like 1% of Windows, but could potentially
| generate a significantly proportionately greater burden of
| support. So I have to be careful there.
| bb88 wrote:
| I am playing it on the linux desktop. It's super nice.
|
| I'm also curious about the changes required between linux and
| windows, is it quite a bit? Or is that just abstracted mostly
| by the framework?
| timvdalen wrote:
| How do you get it to run? The first time I clicked the [Play]
| button it installed Vulkan shaders, but it doesn't do
| anything on subsequent launches.
|
| EDIT: Ah, a re-install fixed it!
| TomK32 wrote:
| Godot makes it easy to export to Linux and I'm sure it's
| still true that feedback from Linux users is better even in
| terms of finding bugs as mentioned in this interview with
| Croteam in 2015:
|
| > The feedback from Linux gamers is great - they seem really
| happy that we're supporting the platform and they are a huge
| help in finding bugs. Often, bugs that are initially reported
| as Linux specific turn out to be issues in all version of the
| game, it just sometimes happens that it's easier to reproduce
| on some platforms. So, yeah - we'll definitely keep on
| supporting Linux in the future.
|
| [1] https://www.marcosbox.com/2015/02/13/interview-with-
| croteam-...
| pbronez wrote:
| Here's the ProtonDB entry: https://www.protondb.com/app/2667120
| mrsofty wrote:
| Outstanding!!! Spent some time in the valley in the 90's. Tom
| Perkins was our Chairman and Ceo so I learnt a LOT. One of the
| takeaways was that innovation starts with an itch you want to
| scratch, to KNOW that your idea is better than the others.
| Doesn't matter if you are delusional, the market will set you
| right either way. WELL DONE!!! taking this step and I wish you
| all the best for the future. I'll pass the message onto my chums.
| deelowe wrote:
| I bought it day one. The marketing was great and I had I ton of
| fun with the game! Congrats on the success.
| uejfiweun wrote:
| Congrats on your success! Making games is what got me into
| programming and while I'm currently doing the same big tech stuff
| you were, I would love to become an indie game dev after this
| phase of my career ends.
|
| The biggest challenge I've had in my various personal projects is
| the art, for sure. I may have programming skills but I certainly
| have no art or animation skills. How did you get over this
| hurdle? I've made so many cool prototypes for games that I end up
| having to shelve due to hitting a progress wall when it comes to
| art or 3d modeling.
| xetrics wrote:
| I bought ballionaire a couple weeks back. So funny that I see the
| creator on HN. Congrats on your win!
| kurokawad wrote:
| The trailer is hell good!! I love it!!
| bodegajed wrote:
| So I'm here practicing writing small apps in 40 mins, leetcoding
| medium and hard. I think I should rethink my next plans.
| thehodge wrote:
| I've seen this game played on YouTube a LOT and really want to
| give it a go.. Any chance of a Mac port?
| newobj wrote:
| "There's always a chance" ..
|
| People have had luck playing it via Whiskey/WINE, but I would
| hate for you to spend money and find out it's not a great
| solution, so I can't encourage it.
| axus wrote:
| Did you like Peglin?
| mips_avatar wrote:
| How did you structure your work in the first year? Did you set
| specific goals or just follow what felt right? Where did your
| motivation and energy come from, and how did you keep momentum?
| newobj wrote:
| The game took one year to make and I am a severe workaholic,
| so, I found it easy to just put the pedal to the floor for
| exactly one year (and then simply die afterwards, lol)
| mips_avatar wrote:
| but like it's a creative thing, you must have had moments
| where you weren't sure?
| mattigames wrote:
| What is your opinion about the top bad review on Steam? Have you
| addressed those issues or perhaps you disagree with them? Posted
| here for reference
|
| > Really fun game at first, and it has a lot of potential.
| Unfortunately you are very strongly incentivized to NOT UNLOCK
| ANYTHING (i.e. the meta-progression).... because after you unlock
| many additional items and get to the higher difficulties, the
| vast majority of runs become impossible since there are way, way
| too many items in the pool and way, way too few rerolls (and no
| ban feature for some reason), so you end up with random unrelated
| crap almost every run and auto-lose because of it, as strong
| synergies are mandatory to win on the higher difficulties. It
| feels really bad having to fish RNG over and over again just to
| get a run that's actually winnable. They could easily fix this
| with many solutions, like: stronger reroll tag affinities, more
| choices per round, item bans, 10x the amount of rerolls,
| builds/profiles with more limited pools, map-specific limited
| pools, etc. etc. If they fix this massive roadblock then this
| game has the potential to be a amazingly fun.
| newobj wrote:
| It was intentional that the game got harder by broadening the
| pool of drafts. The design goal was that you need to develop
| your skill to build more flexible boards, that don't rely on
| just forcing a single synergy to materialize.
|
| Unfortunately, I don't think the game communicates this goal
| well, AND prevailing design trends (rogueli _T_ e, which this
| game is NOT) I think have trained players to expect that games
| should get artificially EASIER over time by increasing the
| player's power level.
|
| It's a point of the design I'm willing to concede, so it's
| something I do hope to address. But not increasing the power
| level as in a roguelite, just by preserving the density of
| drafts and taming dilution a bit.
| martinmakesgame wrote:
| The widening of the pool of drafts doesn't work because it is
| not fun. When you find something that works you want to use
| it as much as possible because as the player all I want to
| see is the numbers get higher and higher. This is where the
| fun is. Most of the additional drafts aren't fun. Some I
| never use. When I play I don't even care about the forces
| that make it harder at the start anymore because most of the
| gameplay comes from what cards show which is heavy random
| number generator. There should be a continue play button when
| you fail the run though just so you can keep playing and see
| the numbers go higher and higher.
| windward wrote:
| From my experience of messing around with cheats in other
| games, things like this are a great way to permanently ruin
| the fun for yourself.
| burgerquizz wrote:
| I love the animated stickman!
|
| building myself html games myself[1] with my own game engine.
| Getting players is really hard. I was betting on SEO, but results
| will take a long time. do you think getting a publisher worth it?
| I was reluctant putting the game on steam too since I think the
| target players wont be there
|
| Happy to hear recommendations!
|
| https://pixelbrawlgames.com/game/blast
| optymizer wrote:
| 1v1.lol is fun! The mouse movement gets janky at times but I
| had a blast
| npinsker wrote:
| No questions but congratulations on your game and success! It's a
| great idea.
| hoten wrote:
| This reminds me of the high quality, addicting PopCap games. Very
| nice!
| napierzaza wrote:
| I am also working on a project after being laid off, though I got
| hired elsewhere. Any suggestions on how to promote your work? I
| am fairly far away from that but it will be a harder thing for me
| I think
| prashp wrote:
| Congrats, great to hear a success story. I wish I had the time to
| do this too. How did you pitch to the publisher so they would
| find you during development? How did you find a publisher?
| jmcgough wrote:
| Congrats, I've seen a few people playing this lately :)
| RheingoldRiver wrote:
| We had someone request a wiki on wiki.gg for Ballionaire, and
| it's at https://ballionaire.wiki.gg/wiki/Ballionaire_Wiki.
| Assuming you have structured data easily accessible, you can
| pretty easily use the MediaWiki API to create some automated
| pages for each of the items and any other entities that should
| have pages. Example repo:
| https://github.com/RheingoldRiver/sorcerer-update That repo is
| assuming that some "infobox" templates already exist, which you
| can find documentation about here:
| https://support.wiki.gg/wiki/DRUID_infoboxes or feel free to
| email me (address in bio) if you'd want to create the pages
| assuming that the infobox template already exists and have me
| make said template for you!
| genewitch wrote:
| Thank you for saying what game everyone is talking about.
|
| I have it on my wishlist already.
| Pikamander2 wrote:
| There's also a small subreddit for it if anyone is interested:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Ballionaire
| Ragnarork wrote:
| Bit of a tangent but nice seeing you here and offering support.
| I remember your name from my time when I admin'd one of
| Liquipedia's wikis (IIRC you were going through some hardship
| with one wiki provider or something at the time), happy to see
| you're still kicking in that area!
| Lucasoato wrote:
| How did you reach publishers? Did you have any previous
| contact/connection to get to them?
| jeffchien wrote:
| Congratulations, that is a roaring success I daydream about all
| the time!
|
| I think you've already answered a lot about your development
| journey, so I want to ask about the post-release experience.
|
| - How were the weeks immediately after release? Hectically
| shipping out patches 3 times a day?
|
| - Now that we're months out after release, what are you doing
| now? Are you still spending a lot of time on this game (ports,
| updates), or are you thinking of another game or returning to
| office work?
|
| Frankly I bought it on release but couldn't get into it because
| the meta progression (unlocking triggers that dilute the trigger
| pool for little perceivable gain) didn't feel as good as Luck be
| a Landlord or Balatro. I hope later updates address that.
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| My friend Joe from the Anime Sickos podcast talked Ballionaire up
| a lot and I'm looking forward to playing it, which would happen
| sooner if it were available on switch. Congrats on your success!
| tastyface wrote:
| Congratulations! I saw Yahtzee playing this a few weeks ago --
| seems like a fun time. The market is notoriously saturated right
| now, any wisdom on how you broke through with marketing/outreach?
| (Or was that entirely on the publisher?)
| newobj wrote:
| I crunched myself to get the game out by the end of 2024 before
| the saturation I knew was coming took place. I think the simple
| premise, watchability, humor, and presentation of the game
| helped it stand out.
|
| My advice: Have a super solid hook, that's marketing.
| Everything else is promotion and is far less effective.
| yapyap wrote:
| My god, you're the creator of Ballionaire!!
|
| I dont know what I was expecting clicking on this article but it
| wasn't that.
|
| Magnificent game, I watched Northernlion play this after he beat
| Balatro.
| kbenson wrote:
| Strong Peggle[1] vibes from the video on the store page, which is
| a good thing IMO, since I enjoyed Peggle quite a bit. Maybe I'll
| take a look at this.
|
| 1: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3480/Peggle_Deluxe/
| gennarro wrote:
| Oh yes, I've played that actually. The mechanics weren't my jam,
| but the art and level of polish are great.
| Conan_Kudo wrote:
| Congratulations on the game! It looks great and I kinda want it.
| :)
|
| I'm going to be that guy... Native Linux build when? I assume
| your game stack supports exporting native Linux builds. :)
| mupuff1234 wrote:
| I still don't really get the appeal of roguelike games, to me it
| always just comes off either repetitive/boring/frustrating/etc.
| Could someone explain why they prefer it over just a "normal"
| game progression?
| sky2224 wrote:
| Maybe this will help a bit. I'm a drummer. Drums are literally
| all about doing the exact same thing for hours and hours on
| end, but with the goal of perfection. What's perfection? That's
| all in the eyes of the player. Been doing it 15+ years and
| don't plan on stopping.
|
| I can do repetitive stuff like that for hours on end. A
| roguelike takes that and makes it a game with some slight
| variation to keep it interesting (kind of how a drum beat is
| the same thing, and then you change it to add some variation).
| mupuff1234 wrote:
| I definitely get wanting to perfect something, but for me
| it's frustrating because a roguelite forces you to do so vs
| just you deciding to redo something to perfect it.
| mantovanidaniel wrote:
| I just bought your game :)
| winrid wrote:
| One of the OG devs from Netpanzer in the late 90s went on to do
| AAA games and then compiler stuff at FAANG, is that you?
| newobj wrote:
| Not me
| guywithahat wrote:
| Not to get too personal, but how did working on a video game
| affect your personal life? If you worked from home, do you have a
| wife/kids? Was anyone upset or disappointed you were working on a
| game and not getting another job at a big tech company?
|
| I don't mean to be critical, but I've always faced pushback
| working on startups/side projects, and I'm wondering how that was
| for you?
| newobj wrote:
| It was discussed with my family (wife/kid) that this was going
| to be my near singular focus for a year, and it basically was.
| Luckily everyone was supportive because they knew how long I'd
| wanted to do this, and the fact that I already had a "good
| idea" with some proof on my hands certainly made it easier.
| Having traction helped convinced everyone, myself included,
| that it would be a worthwhile investment of time, and not just
| "fucking around in the basement." No one was disappointed that
| I was not getting another big tech job. I'd just spent 20 years
| in FAANG.
| Nition wrote:
| Honestly very impressive to plan a one-year game project and
| have it take one year!
|
| How many planned features did you have to cut? ;)
| newobj wrote:
| None. What I delivered is what was in the contract.
| Nition wrote:
| Awesome!
| em3rgent0rdr wrote:
| What a concept. Like back in the cartridge game system
| era, where what the developers burned onto the ROM was
| the final game.
| p1necone wrote:
| I think people doing gamedev who have/had a day job
| writing business software have a tendency to eschew all
| the boring scope/time management/actually shipping stuff
| because being able to just write the code you want and
| spend however long you want polishing it is so freeing.
|
| Seeing someone come from the corporate world to gamedev
| and seemingly carry over all the right lessons and keep
| the discipline is pretty awesome, kudos.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| It's really hard even with coporate experience. But given
| that OP:
|
| 1. already had gamedev experience on top of tech
| experience
|
| 2. kept his technical scope very low for his assumed
| skill level (2d game, Godot engine for fast iterations,
| full-time focus and scheduling)
|
| 3. Was relatively stress-free in terms of his personal
| situation
|
| I can understand a pretty smooth development period.
| GlacierFox wrote:
| Your partner stops you from working on startups and side
| projects? Come join the other 99% of us not working at a big
| tech company, life is still fulfilling, honest!
| ascorbic wrote:
| I've mostly worked in startups and on side-projects since I
| met my partner, so I'm fine there, but I think in many
| situaitons it's perfectly reasonable for a partner to push
| back on it. If your family relies on your income (and you
| don't have a decade of FAANG earnings saved) then it needs to
| be a family decision. Likewise if you have kids then anything
| that involves extremely long hours that prevents you from
| doing your share of childcare is also something that isn't an
| automatic yes.
| williamdclt wrote:
| There's a world between "big tech" and "startup", and between
| "startup" and "solo project that won't bring any money for a
| year (if ever)". What the OP did is much more less usual than
| working at big tech.
| XCSme wrote:
| The most pushback you get while building it if there is no
| money coming in. They see you working a lot, being stressed,
| but still struggling financially, so from their side it's hard
| to see the benefit of doing it.
| guywithahat wrote:
| I mean video games are notoriously competitive, and very
| little money comes in until it launches after a year of
| building. It was not impossible OP was going to launch to
| 4000 customers.
|
| I think OP's story is inspiring, and I'm happy to hear he had
| support, but I could also see a wife being upset her
| previously highly paid husband is working on a video game,
| and presumably a low salary from a publisher (if any).
|
| When I was working on my previous startup we had a couple
| customers and a small investment, but I got intense pushback
| from a female friend who would often come and live with me.
| She couldn't stand the fact I was passing on a high salary to
| work on something I cared about, and we weren't even dating.
| The 1.5 years+ she referred to me as unemployed lol
|
| Again though I don't mean to be critical of OP or his dream,
| I was just curious about the social dynamic he encountered.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| he worked at facebook for 10 years, so there is a lack of
| distraction in relationships that don't have financial
| stress if this was managed only moderately well in those 10
| years
|
| A facebook compensation package for 10 years + the pandemic
| rally. any trade and speculation with a 6 figure account
| would be multiple seven figures
|
| its important to put these things into perspective
|
| although there are a lot of risk averse people in big tech,
| irrationally afraid of not having corporate salary coming
| in, there are far fewer partners that base their identity
| on their partner being employed when the partner is wealthy
| already
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >It was not impossible OP was going to launch to 4000
| customers.
|
| Having a publisher helps a lot. But 4000 copies for many
| indies would be a rousing success (albeit, not a financial
| success). It is simply that competitive.
|
| >I could also see a wife being upset her previously highly
| paid husband is working on a video game, and presumably a
| low salary from a publisher (if any).
|
| Very true for 99.99% of indie devs. But I figure that OP's
| savings and RSU's (almost a deacade's worth) would easily
| put them in a situation everyone else can only dream of.
|
| >When I was working on my previous startup...
|
| I know startups are risky, but I really don't get this
| attitude. It might just be lack of knowledge, but once you
| can get a startup off its feet, the VC money from seeds
| easily makes up for that downtime. And unless you're the
| founder or are a near-founder being paid with future
| equity, startups can still pay very respectably. It's the
| time committment that you need to worry about.
| jlokier wrote:
| > once you can get a startup off its feet, the VC money
| from seeds easily makes up for that downtime
|
| The depends a lot on the startup. Many startups don't
| take VC money.
|
| Of those that do, in my experience as first non-founder
| employee, the founders were paid very little compared
| with employees, on the hope of future success with their
| equity instead, even after the startup got decent pre-
| seed and seed investment. Both rounds of investment were
| enough to pay some key employees well, but not to pay
| everyone well for long enough. So the founders felt they
| has to continue with low pay for themselves.
| peterkelly wrote:
| Sounds like you need a better partner
| somenameforme wrote:
| Saying the quiet part out loud, but yeah this is a very weird
| relationship where you have a partner who wouldn't be
| outright enthusiastic about you pursuing something you really
| want to, so long as your family can still live comfortably.
| protonbob wrote:
| Being a good father/husband requires a lot more than
| putting food on the table.
| JohnnyMarcone wrote:
| You shouldn't jump to judgement without knowing any of the
| details.
| hijinks wrote:
| if op was working at Meta for 10 years and they started at 2013
| they probably have more then enough money stashed away to not
| worry about bills for a few years.
| n9com wrote:
| highly likely they have millions from the stock alone,
| assuming they didnt sell
| raincole wrote:
| > but I've always faced pushback working on startups/side
| projects
|
| You mean from your SO?
|
| I think most sane people don't have issues with their SOs' side
| projects, but they have issues with that their SOs 1) not
| spending enough time with family and 2) being the main income
| source of the family but not making enough money.
| keyle wrote:
| Nice one! Looks like peggle on mushrooms instead of coke.
|
| I've done many games myself, including PS4 exclusive, and I
| haven't been able to afford anything else than 2 mins noodles for
| my effort. So I applaud you on "making it."
|
| I should really talk to publishers. I don't really know how, how
| did you approach them? How did that initial aspect go?
| mmastrac wrote:
| Hey Brian, so happy to see this! I always knew you'd knock it out
| of the park with one of your games!
| newobj wrote:
| Oh hey Matt! Thanks!!!
| randfish wrote:
| Incredible work, Brian! I'm in awe of what you've done in such a
| short amount of time. I started an indie game company (still
| working on our first title) and had a few related questions if
| that's OK?
|
| 1) If you didn't need a salary or marketing help, would you still
| have signed a publishing deal? My sense is most of the publisher
| value lies in getting paid before the game launches, and with
| marketing around launch, but curious if those are wrong
| assumptions?
|
| 2) Early Access vs. Straight Launch - any insights about why you
| chose to do a full launch vs. an early access beforehand? Was it
| something you and the publisher discussed in detail?
|
| 3) Outside of Steam's ecosystem, how much marketing, promotion,
| social media, YouTube, Discord, etc. stuff did you (or the
| publisher) do? Do you think that pre-launch work had a sizable
| impact on the launch and post-launch success? Or would you say
| it's mostly the Steam algo making the game more visible to the
| right buyers as the positive reviews rolled in?
|
| Truly kind of you to share so openly here. Already sent some of
| your other replies to our game team
| XCSme wrote:
| > My sense is most of the publisher value lies in getting paid
| before the game launches, and with marketing around launch, but
| curious if those are wrong assumptions?
|
| Don't publishers pay you a cut AFTER sales start coming in?
| jotson wrote:
| Yes and some provide funding during development which they
| recoup later. Every deal is different. Raw Fury provides
| funding in advance for some.
| newobj wrote:
| Thanks Rand!
|
| 1) It obviously varies w/ each dev's situation, but I think
| your sense of the value prop is a fair default one w/o context.
| In my case, there were four reasons: 1) having a partner to
| help with (to me) "the unknown unknowns" (i'm only a dev and a
| novice designer, literally anything else would be my first time
| doing it, so i figured having an experienced partner there
| would be wise) 2) the advance was nice just from a "bird in the
| hand" mindset 3) they helped me connect with a really good
| artist (critical to the project's success imho) 4) having a big
| name behind you can't hurt, and bigger publishers do have more
| relationships with the ecosystem (streamers, platforms, etc) to
| help your game succeed.
|
| 2) EA is appropriate for certain kinds of games. But I knew
| exactly what Ballionaire was going to be, and felt it could be
| achieved in a year. I knew that this mechanical space was going
| to be rapidly saturated, once all the games inspired by LBAL
| (including Balatro!) started appearing. So I was determined to
| get the game out before that happened, which set a certain
| scope and pace, obviating EA.
|
| 3) The trailers were a really good promotional tool, very
| effective. But most of the paid promotion was sponsored
| streams, not traditional "marketing" (ads). I think the game
| has a natural tendency for organic spread, due to its
| fun/simple premise, watchability/streamability, low price
| point, and so on. It's just an easy game to see, and say "ooh,
| I wanna try!" because it's instantly understood how to play,
| and IMHO is very inviting aesthetically.
|
| My takeaway: Make sure your hook is glowingly radioactively
| good. Don't overbalance. Leave in some jank. Scope down and
| finish quickly. And avoid tropes. Stand out. (Of course this
| only works for a certain kind of game!)
| Apofis wrote:
| How far were you into building the game before you began to
| approach publishers? YC speaks frequently about investing in
| the founders, and not the idea---but then dives right into
| well you need to have revenue and/or users and it's a bit of
| a double-standard---so I'm curious what stage you were at
| when you started talking to publishers and what state your
| product was in when you finally signed a deal.
| gcheong wrote:
| I'm curious about this as well so I took a look at the
| publisher's site and found some info:
| https://rawfury.com/talk/ under "Game Pitches". Would still
| like to hear from OP on any specifics though.
| randfish wrote:
| "Make sure your hook is glowingly radioactively good. Don't
| overbalance. Leave in some jank. Scope down and finish
| quickly. And avoid tropes. Stand out."
|
| Sounds like outstanding advice. I hope we can follow in your
| footsteps! (and thanks for the kind and comprehensive answer)
| mikeshi42 wrote:
| Honestly sounds like good advice for almost anything
| new/creative :)
| JansjoFromIkea wrote:
| RE: "Make sure your hook is glowingly radioactively good.
| Don't overbalance. Leave in some jank. Scope down and finish
| quickly. And avoid tropes. Stand out."
|
| For games with a limited run time is it possible to balance
| this against Steam's 2 hour return policy? Feel like we're
| now trapped in a position where you can make short little
| proof of concepts on itch but when it comes to trying to make
| something professional you have to bloat it in a way to
| minimise people abusing that.
| pc86 wrote:
| This is very much personal opinion but if you can blast
| through all of a games content within 2 hours of purchase
| it wasn't finished / big enough to justify a financial
| transaction in the first place.
| wjnc wrote:
| Two hours is about movie or novella worth of content.
| Both are priced at about the same rate. Not all games
| have to have 10s or 100s of hours of content. Today, I
| expect a big(ger) part of gamers are like me: older
| people who like games, but can only game a few hours a
| week. Last non-4X game I fully played was CoD2. That was
| 2005.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Honestly, that could go both ways. Like I'll happily pay
| cost-of-small-game to watch a movie that will be over in
| two hours, and there's a whole category now of single-
| sitting games like Journey, Minit, A Short Hike, etc,
| that are easily able to be completed in that timeframe
| but are obviously worth their modest purchase price.
|
| To some of us adult gamers with actual lives and
| commitments, having something that can be completed in
| 1-4 sittings is a huge boon, like okay this is a thing I
| can do without abandoning my family for the next two
| weeks.
| michaelgburton wrote:
| I literally started a company on that thesis. It failed,
| but I still believe in that mission.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Were you trying to make short games or offer some kind of
| abridging service?
|
| Because I've wondered about that too. Like, right now
| there's a pretty big dichotomy between "purchase and play
| a game myself" and "watch someone else play it on
| youtube/twitch". But it would be interesting if there was
| a market for a kind of interactive guided tour, like for
| $10 let me play the best 4-6 hours of AC:Odyssey, and
| that's delivered as a mod that just trims all the fat,
| levels me up quickly enough to hustle through the main
| story beats and see the good boss encounters and action
| set pieces.
|
| (Ubisoft themselves sort of do this with their paid XP
| boosters, but that doesn't actually cut content, it just
| lets you skip a few hours of grinding over what is
| otherwise still a 40hr+ experience for most people)
| albumen wrote:
| I love this idea; I can no longer justify 40-100 hour
| playthroughs. Lots of people rave about Elden Ring but
| the time investment is just really offputting. I'd buy a
| version of it at half the price and one quarter of the
| playtime.
|
| That said, I'd imagine a fair chunk of the impact of
| major set pieces and end bosses is that you've spent many
| hours to get to that point. An abridged version would
| have to leave bough in to allow emotional investment in
| the story. This is still possible.
|
| Gamers Digest? (For those of you who remember Reader's
| Digest).
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| I'll happily spend $5 on a 2 hour game. That's a better
| return than a movie theater ticket.
| tristor wrote:
| My PM perspective on this is that games are dominating the
| media market primarily because they are a good value
| proposition in our tightening economy. I think a good thing
| to shoot for is around 2 hours of game play per dollar
| spent, e.g. make it so that it's an absolute no-brainer for
| a customer to buy your game vs going to a movie.
| Replayability is a major aspect of this, look at how many
| hours people spent on LBAL and Vampire Survivors despite
| both having relatively simple mechanics.
| xvector wrote:
| How many people really would abuse the return policy like
| that? I can't imagine it's that many.
| JansjoFromIkea wrote:
| I can't find the source now but I recall reading about
| some game that was heavily impacted by it. I don't think
| it was this one but here's an example I found just now
| https://kotaku.com/steams-two-hour-refund-policy-forces-
| horr...
|
| A big part of the issue is that a lot of people do not
| consider it abuse. The value of games is so heavily
| burned into a lot of people's minds as being a dollars to
| hours ratio and Steam having this blanket policy could be
| perceived to be endorsing that perspective.
| acomms wrote:
| In your case, what do you think your glowing hook was?
| TomK32 wrote:
| "Don't overbalance" is an invitation for Spiffing Brit to
| play yet another perfectly balanced game :-)
| theanonymousone wrote:
| > most of the publisher value lies in getting paid before the
| game launches, and with marketing around launch
|
| Reading this, I'm wondering if there is something like a
| publisher for other types of Software than games? Looks a
| decent deal. No?
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| Isn't that exactly what vcs do?
| butler14 wrote:
| Funny that, of all the questions to ask, you of all people ask
| marketing questions, Rand :)
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| You need to put this on the Nintendo Switch
| davidczech wrote:
| The main menu is awesome
| greenheadedduck wrote:
| Did your work at meta help a lot with this project. Tell us about
| it if so!
| ttt444 wrote:
| How much is left after steam takes their cut, taxes, etc?
|
| Heard it's about 30-40% which is really demoralizing
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| Then ask yourself this: How much in sales do you lose if you
| don't launch on Steam?
| SXX wrote:
| If your game funded by publisher your company will get like
| 30%.
|
| Then it's depend on location of company, corporate tax, etc.
|
| So 25-30% of net profit for game development studio.
| dartharva wrote:
| I first saw it on Second Wind's "Bytesized" review and it looked
| so good I instantly wishlisted it. Will try it out soon.
|
| Congratulations!
| danielhanchen wrote:
| Love the red tomato and balloon faces :)
| mattfrommars wrote:
| I'm been fascinated to make games but never truly jumped into it.
| I'd love to pick it as a hobby but quiet unable to balance this
| hobby when always worrying about to put time into 'doing
| certification' or doing 'LC'. To get an idea on your situation
| and compare it with mine,
|
| 1) did you have any formal game development experience in the
| past? say in school? 2) since you made it into FAANG, did you LC
| before or time during FAANG to find another FAANG job? 3) does
| anyone in your personal circle does game development? 4) so
| instead of first developing the game, you already were in talking
| with publishers? what kind of background did you have for
| publisher to 'ok' you which i'm guessing supported you
| financially?
| pfisch wrote:
| Use every sale period available to you and not as weekly sales.
| Make custom 14 day sales.
|
| Add steam cards to the game asap. You should start doing this
| right after reading this comment really.
|
| Also you should lobby steam for a daily deal sometime next month.
| If they say yes you should set that daily deal for the day the
| summer sale ends if you can.
|
| Also you should push raw fury to do a publisher sale, those can
| really generate a lot of money.
|
| I've been managing games on Steam for a long time and doing stuff
| like what I said will have a very large impact on your long tail
| revenue. I'm the game director of Kingmakers.
|
| Also you should really have some kind of DLC asap, even if it is
| small or like an art book even. You are just leaving money on the
| table because there are gamers with lots of money on steam who
| just buy all the dlc when they buy games.
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| You, sir, are the devil. :)
|
| Just kidding, or maybe not.
| zer0zzz wrote:
| I wonder if I worked with you. I was a compiler guy myself.
| telcal wrote:
| Congratulations! As a non-gamer I have absolutely zero idea what
| this game is about or how to play it, but you've got a big
| audience!
| crazypyro wrote:
| Love your game.
|
| Is there any plans for expansions? I find the different maps to
| be less interesting. I want some kind of harder progression,
| higher levels of difficulties and of course more of everything
| that exists.
|
| I found myself out of stuff to do at ~20 hours (which is awesome
| and beats a lot of games I've tried to buy.).
| jaydeegee wrote:
| Myself and my 6yo son watch a youtube channel Real Civil Engineer
| as he plays cool games like this. We saw the Ballionaire video
| and instantly got it we play it a lot.
| mentos wrote:
| Love the quality of the marketing videos did you produce those or
| work with another entity?
| joez wrote:
| Omg! the creator of Ballionaire is a laidoff metamate?! That's so
| inspirational. I'm sure this will make it on Meta blind sometime.
|
| I'm at Meta still and working on my own take on the roguelike
| game inspired by Balatro/Luck be a landlord and Ballionaire too.
| Any advice for myself and others on how to balance
| work/life/game?
|
| If you're interested, I bet people would love to have you back
| for a tech talk. I think we should at least link this to your
| badge post haha.
|
| How much time did you spend on tweaking the tutorial?
|
| Do you use analytics to balance your game? (So Meta right?)
| coderunner wrote:
| First of all congrats on the success of your game. I've been
| mulling over taking a break from my corporate engineering job and
| making a game. Would it be possible to send you an email in about
| two weeks or so with some retrospective questions of your game
| dev journey? I'm currently in a crunch mode for a work trip then
| going to be with limited internet access while on the trip so
| wanted a chance to get my thoughts/questions together before
| asking.
|
| If you don't have time, totally understand and congrats on all
| your success.
| somenameforme wrote:
| Beautiful and really appropriate artwork. You mentioned in
| another thread that the publisher connected you with an artist.
| Can you share, in vagaries if contractually necessary, the
| literal cost of this? Was it percent of revenue, fixed rate, a
| mix. Substantial (given you two would be _the_ team), or more
| like a typical contracting affair?
| xyst wrote:
| Now that you have some reputation, and insight into what the
| publisher does to get your game out there.
|
| Do you think your next game will be managed completely on your
| own and reap all of the profits (--steam cut)? Do you still see
| value of using current or another publisher?
| somenameforme wrote:
| How did you go about choosing a publisher? What stood out about
| Raw Fury? If you were making another game now do you think you
| would go with a publisher again?
| ILikeCats321 wrote:
| Congrats on the game! Saw the trailer and instantly brought it on
| steam :D
| ponderchan wrote:
| keep it up brain! great game tho
| docmars wrote:
| This is an amazing story, nice work, and congrats on the hit!
| Looks like a lot of fun. I've always wanted to buckle down and
| make the RPG of my dreams, but working full-time just doesn't
| make that feasible, and I care very deeply about balance (i.e.
| not "working" outside of work) unless I have an idea that's
| achievable in a short amount of time and won't burn me out.
|
| Looks like the hard work paid off for you! Maybe if I can retire
| early I'll finally realize a similar dream.
| dustbunny wrote:
| How was the process of talking to a publisher? Did they find the
| development? How did they help? What was the pitch process like?
| Buttons840 wrote:
| Do you think "diamond in the rough" games exist?
|
| Some claim that there are games that are hidden gems that haven't
| received the recognition they deserve.
|
| Other claim they have never seen a generally good game that
| didn't have generally good success.
|
| What is your view?
|
| I think some games are good within their niche, but their niche
| sucks. Something like a hardcore roguelike with ASCII graphics.
| Within the hardcore roguelike niche, the ASCII game might be
| "good" and have some interesting new mechanics, good execution,
| etc; but within the entire gaming industry, classic roguelikes
| with ASCII graphics are outdated, they "suck". Some will say the
| ASCII roguelike is underappreciated, but only because they over-
| appreciate the niche.
|
| I'd like to believe that a generally good game guarantees at
| least some success.
| ChadNauseam wrote:
| I'm not sure if it counts, but I had a great time playing
| screencheat but it never really seemed to be very popular. I
| think part of the problem may be that it's only fun to play
| with friends, so you kind of had to buy copies for yourself and
| your friends which added a ton of friction.
| SXX wrote:
| Around 19,000 games are released on Steam in 2024 and platform
| itself give very little traction. You can't sell bad game with
| all marking in the world, but good games flop without
| marketing.
|
| > I'd like to believe that a generally good game guarantees at
| least some success.
|
| Many "good" games werent "good" in very beginning during early
| access or first release. If game dont get any traction at all
| there simply no resources for developer to keep refining it.
| teamonkey wrote:
| There are many, many, many great games that fail, while many
| mediocre games succeed. There's some correlation with fun, art
| style and polish, but more often it's down to marketing,
| exposure and luck.
|
| I've heard it said that a fun game is the baseline, though. The
| game should be doing the heavy lifting, not the marketing.
| Marketing a bad game doesn't automatically lead to success, for
| sure.
|
| Many breakaway hits are simply lucky by hitting the zeitgeist.
| Among Us is an example - without the covid hangover and some
| bored streamers randomly deciding to play it one day, you can
| imagine it not being the massive success that it is.
| partomniscient wrote:
| I've even played a version of the original Rogue. Nethack and
| Brogue are my preferred rogue-likes. The term rougelike has
| been watered down so much it means many different things to
| many different people.
|
| I do however have a hard time nostalging over old games I used
| to love - mainly for screen resolution issues. Once you get the
| new space/bling its hard to go back. I do like some of the
| remasters though, but some have been done so poorly or so
| identically they're almost meaningless.
|
| Its a bit of a quandry. I played the Command and Conquer
| remaster for a bit, and it looked nice/resized nice and played
| well until you realised it had the same @#%ing pathfinding bugs
| - which is authentic to the original, but to me an opportunity
| to improve so missed it made me lose interest in continuing
| playing the remaster.
|
| I can't even comprehend how young people would view old games,
| there'd be a few hipster types into the equivalent of
| cassettes, but for the most part old games are the equivalent
| of phones that can only be used if they're attached to the wall
| of the house, though they are a few exceptions to this that
| seem universal such as Tetris.
|
| I think there are some great games out there that aren't
| successful, and a lot of games that are more succesful than
| they deserve to be. A lot of longer lasting franchises from
| Diablo, to Call of Duty and recently Civilization are averaging
| down, not up.
|
| As a 50+ year old, the OG posters pachinko type game has no
| attraction and seems way to ADHD for me to deal with, let alone
| associating it with rogue/rouge-likes.
|
| I also tried to like Dwarf Fortress, but there's too much
| complexity too early (same is true for a lot of games coming
| out now). I miss the era of well designed tutorial levels that
| introduce and build on previous levels before you get to 'open,
| anything goes' levels of complexity. Even minecraft has (had?)
| this built-in by design originally.
|
| The original rouge/rogue-like games all worked well because of
| the difficulty curve ramping up so nicely as you progress to
| deeper dungeon levels, although reading the source or
| alt.nethack was kind of spoilerish.
|
| The world is different now. Because we're so connected, we
| follow online 'recipes' on how to play the game so we don't get
| 'left behind' rather than immerse our individual selves via
| experimentation.
|
| Also what makes a game great is going to vary from individual
| to individual. Some love puzzle games, some hate them. Some
| like twitchy FPS games, some like strategical slow-play FPS
| games etc. etc.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| > it had the same @#%ing pathfinding bugs - which is
| authentic to the original, but to me an opportunity to
| improve so missed it made me lose interest in continuing
| playing the remaster.
|
| Remasters/Remakes are often a "damned if you do, damned if
| you don't" situation for the developers.
|
| If they make the game function exactly like the old one, just
| with an updated skin, people complain that it's all they did.
|
| If they fix bugs and update mechanics for a modern audience,
| people complain that it isn't the same game at all, just a
| similar story being told through a different game.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| Especially with RTS games, some like the simulation, some
| like the interface to the simulation.
|
| I never understood StarCraft 2. I thought "you know you can
| zoom out further in other games, and other games have
| better controls--you StarCraft players do know this,
| right?"
|
| I now understand that StarCraft 2 is a game about
| interacting with an interface, and it's good at it, the
| interface feels good. It was never about the largest
| battles or the widest camera angle.
| tanujsh979 wrote:
| Wow, what an inspiring journey!
| iam_saurabh wrote:
| You mentioned that 2024 was one of the hardest years of your
| life. What kept you going during the toughest moments? Were there
| times you felt like giving up?
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| Apologies for my ignorance, and I'm asking this because no one in
| this thread has done this:
|
| This looks basically like a slot machine
| 27theo wrote:
| Asking what?
| msephton wrote:
| How and when did you hook up with Raw Fury?
| MrDresden wrote:
| Congratulations on both the launch and the success!
|
| Never having been in the video game industry, nor knowing anyone
| that has, I've never really understood what the role of a
| publisher is now that games are distributed digitally.
|
| What were the benefits for you of having a publisher, could you
| have gone without one and maybe finally how does one go about
| finding a publisher?
| parkerhiggins wrote:
| Been following this game! Congrats! Please bring us an MacOS
| port!
| helsinki wrote:
| How much of a cut does the publisher and steam take from a $20
| purchase?
| SXX wrote:
| In gamedev we usually count it like this:
|
| * Refunds and VAT 16% overall
|
| * Steam cut 30% below $10,000,000 sales
|
| * Publisher cut from net profit after recouperation is around
| 50%
|
| So developer get around $5.88, but obviously for some countries
| it's can be better because there is no VAT or lower VAT, but
| price there would be like $5-15.
|
| PS: And yeah from $5.88 you still owe some corporate tax.
| helsinki wrote:
| Damn! Thank you very much for the info. Quite interesting -
| and unfortunately, more of a cut than I expected.
| SXX wrote:
| Unfortunately games that did not succeed never make it to
| the point where publisher recouperated it's investments so
| it's actually worse. If the publisher fully funded the game
| they will take 80%, 90% or everything.
| CptFribble wrote:
| why are refunds so commonly counted against sales in this
| way? Wouldn't a refund cost essentially nothing?
| SXX wrote:
| To be honest it's just a thing from financial models inside
| industry. When you plan how much copies you suppose to sell
| to turn profit you must consider refund rate as well.
|
| Another reason is that games on Steam can and are often
| refunded after quite long time has passed. E.g people buy
| lots of games on holidays or sales and then refund them
| when they decide not to play it. Sometimes refunds can
| happen even after a year if e.g player can't get your game
| to run on their device, etc.
|
| But yeah it make sense not to include it in math for single
| sale that was not refunded.
| jeffwass wrote:
| What kind of up-skilling did you have to do when you started?
| kbar13 wrote:
| congrats to the author!
|
| i haven't had (enough?) opportunities to say this but - being
| laid off from a company that i thought was probably the best
| place to work at was actually likely the best thing to happen to
| my career. while things were real cushy at this job, my career
| was not going anywhere, and there was no way i would have taken
| the opportunities that have presented themselves after i was
| ejected.
|
| so, while being laid off is never a good feeling, i hope that
| other folks affected by the tough market can find the silver
| lining and motivation that i did
| kleiba wrote:
| How hard was it to get in touch with publishers? I've always
| imagined that without prior contacts, cold calling a game
| publisher is as promising as sending your screenplay to
| Hollywood.
| SXX wrote:
| Not author, but fellow indie gamedev company founder. Getting
| in touch is not hard at all and there are several avenues:
|
| 1 - Majority of publishers do have public submission forms and
| they do look though what you send. There is a few existing
| lists that you can use [1].
|
| 2 - Industry is generally very friendly so often you can also
| reach out to publisher game scouts on Linkedin and even ask for
| what kind of projects they looking for.
|
| 3 - And obviously there are industry events where again it's
| totally okay to pitch to people, get their contacts, etc. If
| you're good at followups you'll easily be able to reach right
| people.
|
| 4 - Also fellow gamedevs will happily made an introduction if
| you have worthy project.
|
| There of course some requirement what you need at very least
| is:
|
| * Prototype for 5-15 minutes of gameplay. Prototype must be
| playable and fun, not just tech demo. There is no way to make
| any deal without one.
|
| * Short and very juicy gif or video representing core loop that
| sells.
|
| * Pitch deck. The farther your build is from final game the
| better pitch you must have. There are some examples of game
| pitches you can find on internet, but if you curious reach me
| I'll share ours.
|
| Whatever you will actually sign with publisher will depend
| heavily on how close is your game to release. If it's something
| nearly complete you'll have more chances than with prototype.
|
| Actually getting funded though can be very tough and for small
| game it's hard to find budget over $300,000. Yes you read this
| right - whole games are being made by teams with only publisher
| budget of one FAANG SWE annual salary. [1] http
| s://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15AN1I1mB67AJkpMuUUfM5ZUALkQ
| mrvrznnPYO5QbqD0/edit?usp=sharing
| kleiba wrote:
| Thanks for this, mate. This is very informative!
| myl wrote:
| I never felt more like a grandpa developer since having to google
| every word in the description of what this game is :)
| autoexec wrote:
| These days grandpa developers (and many grandpas in general)
| grew up playing rogue/roguelikes and watching plinko played on
| TV while being reminded to help control the pet population by
| having their pets spayed or neutered. I don't know how popular
| pachinko is outside of japan though. All the pachinko video
| games I've played to date were old and intended for a Japanese
| audience.
| genewitch wrote:
| My favorite is pachincremental but I have an unnatural
| affinity for those games. Number go up.
|
| Someone called doom and quake boomer-shooters and that's
| funny to me.
| rgreasons wrote:
| This comment introduced me to pachinkremental. Thank you /
| goddamn you.
| genewitch wrote:
| You're welcome and thank you ;-)
| saejox wrote:
| Great work! My game has some features inspired by Ballionaire. I
| also used Godot, i need to dissect your pck file to see how you
| organized things.
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/3499470/Rogue_Bricks_Demo...
|
| Although i should caution poeple, most indie games fail. They
| fail hard. #1 tip: your game must be good looking to sell copies.
| kod wrote:
| > your game must be good looking to sell copies
|
| Nah, vampire survivors and balatro look like crap by modern
| standards, yet are breakout hits.
| ViolentTurkey wrote:
| Thank you so much! Me and my friend played your Beta, and we
| found it to be a really fun and a good lecture game: a game to
| play during boring lectures. I also love the animations and the
| satisfying feel of it, really cool!!
| Simon_O_Rourke wrote:
| Well done Brian! What would you say to Zuck if you met him on the
| street now?
| alok-g wrote:
| What would be good resources for me to learn about the (digital)
| gaming world from an entrepreneur's perspective? I am a general
| developer, otherwise am a complete newbie to gaming (played Mario
| once with my son). Thanks.
| jz10 wrote:
| Can you get it out on Geforce NOW too please so us mac users can
| also partake? (Also curious on the process behind enabling it on
| Geforce NOW actually)
| butler14 wrote:
| Played the demo of this a few months back on our living room tv +
| controller and my u5 y/o kids were quite taken with it.
|
| Congrats!
| Tade0 wrote:
| Is the music in the first clip on Steam inspired by _I Love You
| So_ by Junko Ohashi?
| kleiba wrote:
| What did you like/dislike about Godot?
|
| How did you find your graphics artist? Sound?
|
| In hindsight (or for your next game), what would you do
| differently?
| oscord wrote:
| Congrats!
| igleria wrote:
| Congratulations! Given the results, I'd say your time was well
| invested.
|
| Did the project start as a hobby or did you intend it to be a
| source of income eventually?
|
| Again, well done!
| cwiz wrote:
| Animations and artworks is what make this game special. Thanks
| for inspiration.
| itzami wrote:
| 1. What are your plans now? 2. Your style seems unique, and even
| your mood board that you shared with the designer has a
| particular style; did you always gravitate towards that type of
| art? If not, how did you come upon it?
| dominicrose wrote:
| I guess Meta did you a service since you're a creator and the
| company stopped creating. I barely used FB at all since the
| beginning, but I like rogue games.
| lynguist wrote:
| Can you compile your game to target Mac? Why/why not? (Like is it
| a technical or business decision?)
| pbronez wrote:
| Yes, curious about this. Looks like Mac and Linux support are
| available with Godot...
| nosrepa wrote:
| Not op, but: .https://youtu.be/qRQX9fgrI4s
| eigenvalue wrote:
| I don't really play any games but the game play demo video looked
| like something that might entertain my 4 and 1 year olds for a
| few minutes at least (just watching, I doubt they could really
| play it), so I bought it. Congrats on your success. Sometimes
| getting laid off can be a blessing, but only if you handle it
| constructively like you did.
| drumhead wrote:
| Congratulations, I've heard so many good things about your game.
| onemandevteam wrote:
| Congratulations! I've been working on a browser-based MMORPG
| inspired by OSRS (https://news.reconquer.online/)
|
| What method did you use to reach out to streamers for
| sponsorship? Was it through email or through some other platform?
| davedx wrote:
| How is it roguelike?
| napolux wrote:
| woooo when is this coming to console?
| gentleman11 wrote:
| My question is: how did you manage all that the refined art in
| such a small amount of time? I can see the coding but I always
| assume art takes forever unless you have a partner who handles
| the art
| 27theo wrote:
| OP has mentioned that they worked with an artist in other
| threads
| zug_zug wrote:
| Wow, I think you've just become iconic to dozens of us (self
| included). Congrats on taking life's lemons and turning them into
| sweet victory.
|
| I saw in another comment you were able to make yourself work with
| complete focus (8 hour+ days 7 days a week). I have two questions
| --
|
| In hindsight, if you had only worked 5 hour days for twice as
| many months do you think the project still could have succeeded?
| Or do you feel that there's some momentum or other factor at play
| here?
|
| Nextly, are there any discords or other networking resources that
| you found crucial to the process? I saw you mentioned a
| publisher. Personally I'm more motivated when I have people
| depending on me (or eager to see what I'm making for example).
| Clubber wrote:
| Good for you. I've always thought one of the reasons the tech
| companies would hoard talent is so that talent won't become a
| disruptive competitor. Though there is a lot of pain involved, I
| hope the silver lining is that we get more tech innovation from
| people who aren't vested in the status quo, like the tech
| companies.
| deadly_syn wrote:
| I bought your game a few weeks ago; and out of everything I've
| fired up on my bravia...
|
| I had the biggest smile watching all those smooth vibrant
| animations roll around like a dopamine factory.
| megamix wrote:
| Hi
|
| Thanks for sharing this, I was first struck by the fact being
| laid off from Meta, I mean 10yrs of service and then laid off.
| I'm glad you did well and recovered after that.
|
| I'm curious to know about the technology behind, did you use a
| framework?
| c0wb0yc0d3r wrote:
| This article has a link to the steam page, at the end.
| https://godotengine.org/article/2024-cherry-picks/
|
| So my guess is Godot.
| vjerancrnjak wrote:
| rouguelike is such a fun genre, congratulations
|
| the only genre that made gaming fun for me after my childhood
| attachment faded.
| cheshire137 wrote:
| Looks like a fun game, I love the art style and that it's
| Verified on Steam Deck. Just bought a copy to try it out!
| for1nner wrote:
| from itchio to 200K+ on steam. Fantastic work. I have loved every
| minute of playing, and am astounded by the amount of work you've
| put into the game. Wild to see it a year+ ago vs today. But also
| still rage inducing when a drop misses every one of my triggers
| (gg). <3
| Uptrenda wrote:
| Your game reminds me of a ketamine trip. So many symbols, emoji
| things, spites. It's so colorful and creative. Maybe it was a
| good thing Meta laid you off.
| failrate wrote:
| Billionaire is great.
| c0wb0yc0d3r wrote:
| How did you determine the price of the game?
| SXX wrote:
| Since this game both have a publisher and at least partially
| funded by them (by author comments here) most likely it was
| publisher decision on pricing.
| ozarkerD wrote:
| Dude I love your game. Been playing it on steam deck, thanks for
| putting good controller support in!
| coef2 wrote:
| We should thank Meta for laying off a talented engineer.
| throwme0827349 wrote:
| I'm helping an enthusiastic young adult family member write an
| indie game in a similar space. I'm a professional software
| engineer in the full stack/security space but I don't have much
| experience in graphics or games. We would be thrilled just to get
| it implemented, and we're close, on steam, and get a couple real
| players. Currently it's running in the browser and on android.
|
| I think he has very good taste in games, and is learning to code
| very quickly, so I'm acting in a supporting technical role.
|
| -- What are the crucial skills, technical or otherwise, that I
| should learn to be effective in this space?
|
| -- We're currently using the Godot environment, which feels a bit
| limiting to me (easy to start but: IDE is just ok, config feels
| GUI dependent/doesn't facilitate committing atomic deployment or
| other project changes...) Is there a different stack, or other
| complimentary tools I could learn that might be a better fit for
| a more professional dev workflow?
|
| Thank you for the inspiration. :)
| japhib wrote:
| Unity is kind of the default, worth trying out at least. I've
| been using it for 6+ years for money-making hobby projects.
| It's not without its problems, but there are a lot of perks to
| using the same engine that all the pro gamedevs are using.
| Fokamul wrote:
| Good trick is also sell steam keys in bulk. But you need a reason
| for steam support :)
| smugma wrote:
| Have you considered porting to mobile? Looks like it could do
| well, either independent or part of something like Apple Arcade
| or Netflix Games.
| kraig911 wrote:
| Man I bought this game for me and my kids are we love it. I am
| also trying to make a game/app on the side for my kids. Your
| story is inspiring!
| stets wrote:
| Great work! I picked Ballionaire up during the winter sale I
| think? Hope it keeps crushing
| TomK32 wrote:
| Oh god, I love watching RCE playing it. I'll steer clear off it
| though, pachinko games are a bad idea for my ADHD :-)
| Congratulations on the success.
| SeeManDo wrote:
| Just put in a request for a cheat on WeMod :)
| pabna wrote:
| inspiring story. thanks for sharing
| yoeven wrote:
| Cool stuff!
| serial_dev wrote:
| I'm sorry I don't have any questions about the game. to me the
| most shocking part of your post is how you were let go after 10
| years at the company.
|
| Do you know why Facebook let you and/or your team go?
| cantSpellSober wrote:
| > I even worked in AA(A?) back ca. ~2000
|
| Cool, can you say what titles? Just curious. (congrats! they
| clearly laid off the wrong person :)
| rochacon wrote:
| Congrats on the launch and success so far!! The game seems really
| cool and I relate a lot to the desire of working with gamedev.
|
| I think local prices/discounts can get you another 200k+
| purchases worldwide. In Brazil current prices shows as ~R$42,
| which is quite a lot for a game for a big chunk of brazilians.
| Thor from PirateSoftware has some good tips on this.
| mk89 wrote:
| Absolutely not my type of game. But man, kudos to you! I wish you
| at least 2x the sales you got until now!
| WickyNilliams wrote:
| I've been eyeing up this game. Looks fantastic. The trailers are
| very well done, really capture the vibe. 200k units is a huge
| success. No questions, just want to say congrats. I'd love to try
| making a game one day!
| awilks wrote:
| Very inspiring story! Thanks for posting.
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