September 4, 2015

Becoming an indie

I've recently parted ways with Boomlagoon and have now become an indie developer.

As a developer I enjoy most when I get my hands dirty on many subjects of the production, I get to create games in as short cycles as possible, and get to try different design quirks in each game. As a (mobile) gamer I've always been a casual player by heart.

Putting the above facts together, I've formed my own business called Part Time Monkey - me being the Monkey.

My idea is to be open about my goals, process and ideas in order to get the purest feedback possible. This will include public data of my products (good or bad), web versions of the prototypes I'm working on, blog posts about the ideas I have, and any other way of getting that feedback. I also try not to be too serious about this stuff, rather just enjoy creating what's cool at the moment.

If there are any experienced indies reading, let me know if  you know of any obvious pitfalls I should avoid while taking the first steps. :)

6 comments:

  1. I`m not very experienced, but what I`ve learnt that nobody really cares what you doing even though you try to promote your game in all the possible places. Since you already have name within the industry you will probably never get this "indie experience", but that is a good thing. But the pitfall definately for most indies is that thinking that if I make a good game people will find it and love it..

    Also what I have learned is to find all kinds of cheap or free assets all over the web; stock art, icons, buttons, music, sound fx etc. And if you remember I got this small piece of code even from you for which I`m still very grateful! :)

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    1. Yeah, marketing isn't my strongest field either, so the only possibility I have is to try to contact all the main players, and after just try to be experimental with it. :)

      If I follow through with my plan of being able to publish a game every 1-2 months, I hope it'll eventually build up into a cross-promoteable user base. That'd help getting the new games known as well.

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  2. I'll be looking forward to following your progress, Tuomas, and congratulations on taking the daunting jump into the world of indie development and entrepreneurship!

    I'll be looking forward to following your posts on here, and I cannot wait to get a look behind the scenes of what thoughts go into the decisions you make, which platforms you tackle first, how the financial aspect of being an indie developer will come along, and what games you'll work on first!

    I'll be especially interested in hearing more about how you manage your time, and I believe it would be fantastically interesting if you could do a quick summary of what you've been spending your time on since last, in every new post you make. How much time, for example, goes into developing the game, into integrating SDKs, into setting up revenue streams, into finding the right publishing channels etc. etc.

    I'm looking forward to following it all, and all the best of luck!

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    1. Thanks, Sune! I've been keeping somewhat of a summary of my time usage and will be publishing that info every now and then, too. :)

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    2. Sounds great, Tuomas. And at some point, maybe once you've published your first game (and thereby gone through the entire process once), it'd be fantastic if you'd be willing to share a few thoughts in an interview for NordicGameBits.

      But more about that later. For now, I'll just enjoy following your blog posts :)

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    3. Sure why not!

      It seems that it's still going to take at least a week or two before I get it out there. I'm still waiting for the company to enter the Finnish trade register (?), and after that I'm eligible to apply for the DUNS number Apple requires nowadays before getting enrolled as a developer, and only after that I can finally do my first iOS builds. I'm running out of patience! :)

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