Hello everyone, I've just started making my first game in Unity. Right now I am building just mechanics using downloaded content and then plan to design it on my own. Everything seems easy which is a little suspicious.
So, let me know what are the biggest struggles of game developers starting from making the game until its publishing in promotion.
Performance and memory are the most troublesome issues you'll come across your road. They don't occur on your development maschine (mostly) but will on the target platform as not all of yur players have such powerfull devices at home. Optimizing a game takes most of the time from a developers view while creating and animating 3D models might be the most time consuming factor on the art side.
However, don't underestimate the loss of motivation
One thing I've found is, using the pre-made engine, at first it seems relatively easy as you're using only stuffs it provides. Once you're stepping out of that then you'd realized that the thing that make it easy to begin now becomes difficulties you have to solve.
For example, I was working on a game a long time ago. At one point I had to display Thai text, so I loaded Thai fonts in and think the engine would render it as nicely as in English. I found out later that almost no engine in the market is capable of displaying Thai properly (the only exception I've found is Unreal Engine 4, which utilize ICU and Harfbuzz internally. Godot has plan to support this AFAIK).
If this is my own engine, I could write my text rendering routine to support my language. I have to maintain this engine anyway so it doesn't cost much more, and I have control over the engine. But in the pre-made engine case things are more difficult. If it's closed-source, I'd have to find a work around. If it's open-source, then I have to push it into upstream or separately maintain the code base and merge in changes from the upstream from time to time. I have to explained a couple of hundred developers that why this is needed, and they might just ignore me.
PS. shameless plug ? I have a report on Thai displaying capability in game engines in my website. Feel free to check it out.
So, let me know what are the biggest struggles of game developers starting from making the game until its publishing in promotion.
I think it is highly dependent on your specific game and your specific skill set. If you are an artist, it might be coding. If you are a coder, it might be art. Even inside these broad skills you might struggle with something specific. I can model a room just fine (I think) but modelling a character is a deep mystery to me.
And there are some many skills outside of game design that are needed. You might find that you can make a game just fine but running a business gets completely over your head, for example.
@Tomato Head Tell me more about running a gamedev business. To be specific, I am interested in:
I will be grateful to everyone who will help me answering these questions!
@FleaSter Sorry if I misled you, I have run several business in my life but I have just started in the gamedev business. I can tell you in a broad sense (not specific to game development) that there are ALWAYS costs you didn't account for. I have always found that the less you know about the specific area you are getting into the more important it is to have some slack in your budget to cover these hidden costs. That way if everything went fine you got it under-budget and if things got more expensive you got it just right.
A rule of thumb I could share: if you are absolutely sure about your budget add 10% over it. If you have some experience but are doing something you haven't done before add 30% over it. If you have major doubts add 100% over your starting (responsibly done) budget. Get quotes from more than one source and have possible alternative sources for the more expensive things. Don't buy things you are not 100% sure you are using right now and delay the acquisition of things as much as you can (especially things that incur in upkeep costs). You will be better off having money in the bank than spending in something you are not using.
The basic things you should account for in your budget:
This might seem like a lot of things to consider but remember the BUSINESS should cover all the costs of doing business. Don't mix your personal money with company money. I understand that at first the investment might be personal but separate this money from your own in a different account if you can (document well all your personal investments in the company). Don't withdraw or pay for things from your personal account at all, even small values add rapidly and get out of control (and are a mess to do the proper accounting). If you have to have additional personal investment in the beginning of your company: plan it, document it and be very mindful of what you are doing.
@Tomato Head Thanks! That's an amazing checklist for budget planning.
Is there anybody who knows about video game marketing? I'd like to know what works best for PC games (SEO, SMM, YouTube/Twitch influencers, Publishing on Blogs and Forums, or maybe something else) and how much it costs (please, give me as much details as possible on this, I'd like to plan how much would it cost me to partner with popular influencers and blogs).
Hey @fleaster
I did an ad campaign with Google Ad about a game I made on Google Play : Chase The Rabbit VR.
I had a budget of 5$ per day for 3 days. The budget was low because it was my first campaign. The video was posted on YouTube. The result is pretty cool and satisfaying for a budget like that. Maybe those graph will help you ?
@protokoll Looks cool! Thanks!
Was Google Ads your only strategy to get these installs, or you were doing something else along with that?
For this project, I have used Google Ads and the Instagram and Twitter account of PROTOKOLL Studio. I have posted some content every wednesday and friday during the development.
I also tried to find what are the most used # for Instagram and Twitter. I also posted the game on the Unity Forum and Homido.
It's really difficult to have a little audiance. At the beginning, my posts on Twitter have been retweeted by 80% of bots…
