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How to Survive in Gamedev for Eleven Years Without a Hit

GDC Festival of Gaming

555K subscribers • 54 videos on Hallway • Conference channel

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  • Recommended by 3 people: 3 on Hacker News.
  • A classic. People kept recommending it from 2017 to 2023.
  • Presented by Jake Birkett, founder of Grey Alien Games
  • May be out of date. Uploaded 9 years ago, in an area where tools change fast.

Beginner. No background in the topic needed.

1.1M views9 years ago3 recommendations

Game developmentCareers and interviewsGame designStartups

Jake Birkett explains how to sustain a career as an independent game developer by building a long tail of sales and managing expectations.

In this 2016 GDC Talk, Grey Alien Games' Jake Birkett explains how to survive as an independent game developer without having a single hit game. GDC talks cover a range of developmental topics including game design, programming, audio, visual arts, business management, production, online games, and much more. We post a fresh GDC video every weekday. Subscribe to the channel to stay on top of regular updates, and check out GDC Vault for thousands of more in-depth talks from our archives. Follow us on Twitter twitter.com/Official_GDC Check out our Facebook page for GDC exclusives facebook.com/GameDevelopersConference Visit our site: ubm.io/2ctNvqZ

Why it's here

3 people recommend this

What people say. Recommended for solo developers as a realistic, grounded look at the business side of indie game development and long-term survival.

angarg12on Hacker News • Recommends

On ““I thought I could ship at least 700 units to stay in business””

GDC: How to Survive in Gamedev for Eleven Years Without a Hit link to this video TL;DR: prepare for this to happen, and build a long tail of games/sales. I don't want to sound mean but I don't think anyone should buy the game because they feel sorry and he is begging. I can't condone it. It has become trendy for people to make GoFundMe campaigns or write articles begging people to help. Assume people do buy your game because they are sorry, and you manage to get by. Is that how you intend to create a sustainable business? What about other indie devs who failed, maybe even harder? Should they also write articles with their sad story? What about those who don't make it to the top of Hackernews? Should wh…

KronisLVon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ask HN: Any solo game developers here?”

…ither, but rather to have a product hit the market within a reasonable time frame and budget. If you want, make games, fail, iterate, fail some more, iterate some more, maybe eventually succeed. Have a look at some grounded experiences from other folks, for example watch this video titled "How to Survive in Gamedev for Eleven Years Without a Hit": link to this video…

Firmwarrioron Hacker News • Recommends

On “Making Games”

I see this sentiment a lot on Twitter and Reddit, but it's a an overpressured Copium tank You can see a ton of polished, fun games that weren't successful by just skimming over lists of games on phones, Steam, or Nintendo Switch. I'm not going to bother linking any of them, since you're just going to nitpick and insult the work of random people you don't know, and it won't be a productive path of conversation. That said, you can redefine your idea of "success" a little and make a comfortable living: link to this video

caxco93on Hacker News • Mentions

On “Developer gets Steam game assets stolen by Play Store copycat”

To be honest, no. It does not look like a game 50k people would buy in early access to me. I would assume it has to be with some streamer playing his game 0. Regarding your other question, I think that yes, you might have a high conception for what it takes to actually sell some games. Not to disparage on this other dev for example 1 because it sure looks like the games are well polished, but these games definitely look very unappealing to me and I'm pretty sure a lot of people as well. IIRC he talks about how people really have a fondness for specific topics in games and how one can leverage that. 0 link 1 link to this video