What happens when you look into your heart and find yourself staring back?
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OrâŚ
Believe in yourself! Work hard, never give up & anythingâs possible. OR: Kick back, relax & aim low-youâll never be disappointed.
-from Mark Hamills Twitter Page
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Since the award is gained by selecting yourself out of the gene pool via death or self-sterilization, well, if it is not by death, Iâm almost afraid to ask which kind of âeffortsâ youâre rambling about âŚ
exactly.
Delivering another smash hit
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How about going with a publisher this time? I think it should be easier to get one with the success of TWP. Or is it?
In most cases the publisher âownsâ the game and more important the IP. I donât know if there are publishers out there who just/only publish the game. (Maybe Daedalic?)
If I remember rightly, Ron avoids publishers, because he doesnât want his creativity to be restricted.
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Maybe Ron is the exception, but often it can be good to have your creativity restricted. Think about Star Wars. For Ep.1 production Lucas was so famous that everything was done as he liked it (unrestricted creativity). The result was⌠hmmâŚ
For Ep.4 I once saw an interview, the actors refused to read out the lines from the script and made up own dialogs. The result was ⌠hmmm⌠better.
âŚthe most disappointing thing since my son.
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Story of my life. I have been into lots of creative hobbies, wanting to turn some of them into a job. Namely, writing novels and making games. But, just like everything in life, you need to have money to make money, at least to pay for food and shelter while youâre working on your first product. Otherwise, if youâre just producing in your spare time, your product will either take too long or be of too low quality to be appealing.
And, if it were for myself, I could say âok, letâs do it, I quit everything and work full time for my own projectsâ, but nowadays Iâd just put my children into a bigger risk. And I prefer not having the time to work on my new game / novel, because it means that my children have a solid life situation.
So⌠in order to get going, you need some kind of insurance. Maybe youâre young and have your parentsâ support when you start, or saved enough money to invest a year or so, but thereâs a point in life where you canât just say âok, from now on Iâll be a full time artistâ, because you have too much stuff going on that would be irresponsible to leave like that.
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The problem is that the/some publisher are changing the game. They donât give just constraints or rules, they force the developer to change the content (that includes important parts).
Then start with it as a hobby. If we take the novelist as an example: Begin writing novels in your spare time and publish them via self-publishing (for example Amazon). I know a person who has a family and published this way many books. She build a fan base, found a publisher and is now able to live from writing.
Sometimes you canât walk straight ahead over the mountain. But in most cases there is a way around.
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I still donât agree with the âmost casesâ, but still:
I am still writing and coding as a hobby. I think every aspiring artist will do it. You just donât have enough time. My game was more successful than expected, I had people writing me they were waiting for the next one. Then job and private life problems came, I had to suspend development for a while, people lost interest. The same with books: I already published a book, not even self-publish, and I have another novel ready which I just have to polish and submit to some publishers⌠but no time at all to do that. And even if I did, thereâs no guarantee at all that Iâd âbuild a fan baseâ with my second book out there. I could still write a third book, and a fourth book, and maybe someone will like one of them and begin to follow me, and I could earn enough to live from that.
But I also live in one of the most expensive cities in the world. So, it becomes more difficult. And again, either you are really good, so your books / games / albums / pictures sell very well, or you have to put A LOT of work into your hobby. Work that you canât put because you have a day job and a family you care about.
My sister quit her day job last year to work full-time on her projects. So it IS possible. However, this has been done after FIFTEEN years of day job, and only because her husband found a stable job and they donât have (nor will have) kids and they donât pay rent and live in a way cheaper town than mine.
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Why donât you agree with âmost casesâ? Because it doesnât fit to your situation? Or do you know more people who failed then people who succeed?
And just to get it right: Would you like to be a writer or a game developer or both?
That depends on what you are doing, if it should stay a hobby and how fast you would like to be able to pay your bills.
And to avoid confusion: I donât say, that you can snip with your fingers and be a famous writer that is able to live in a house in Monaco. I just say: If you love to be a writer, a game developer, a musician or whatever, then there are ways to do this as your job. Yes, sometimes itâs not easy to achieve that. But Iâm still confident, that in most cases (not all) it is possible to do it.
I know a handful of full-time artists. They all live miserable lives, financially speaking. They are happy, but poor. They can sustain themselves, but canât feed a family. So, there might be a way for âmost casesâ, but that way needs compromises that you canât accept after some time.
Again: maybe I can really put myself into my gamedev and, who knows, earn 1K euros per month. Cool, thatâs enough to live from it in my hometown. I could stay at my parentsâ house for a bit, work hard and publish some games that guarantee me that thousand euros which will be the start of my independent developer life. I totally agree.
Unfortunately, I donât live in my hometown anymore, I have family, and 1K euros per month would mean being WAY below the poverty threshold. In order to survive (and let my family survive too) with my games / books, I need to earn at least 5K euros. Ok, I donât have to live in Zurich. Cool, I can force my children to leave the town they were born in and their friends just because I want to follow my dreams (with no guarantee that it will work out).
Should I? Is this âthe wayâ you say exists in most cases? I donât want to, sorry. And thatâs what I was saying all the time. Sometimes itâs just too late to follow that way.
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You assume that you have to work as a freelancer. But thatâs only one option. For example you could work as an employee for a game developer or (in the example of a writer) at a publisher. I was never in Zurich so I canât give more specific examples. 
But of course you have to figure out for each situation what would be possible and what not.
Really? That sounds as you have lived your life already. Many famous writers and artists started their career at an old(er) age. I wouldnât never say never.
Iâm just speaking about being your own boss, where you and only you decide whatâs going into your art. OK, publishers still tweak books, but thatâs a minor annoyance. Just to clarify - working for the TWP team would have counted, since it seems that there was enough freedom and everyone could bring his/her own view into the game, while working as a developer in a bigger company with no word on the design doesnât.
But I agree with you about the âwhen youâre olderâ. Thatâs the very same reason I never gave up my hobbies 
because I hope that, when the children grow up and I have more time for myself, I can still try to earn something and maybe work part-time.
Thatâs great it broke even so far, though!
Looking back at the Kickstarter campaign, the project requested only $375K. I gave in proportion to that goal. Maybe Iâm different (or so says my wife!) but if the goal was $1.2M, Iâd definitely give more. Certainly with an explanation of why itâs needed. Everyone wants high-quality.
Iâd imagine all the podcasts added to the cost / time factor. However, i really enjoyed the weekly discussions. I could almost see that being a separate Kickstarter add-on project, if they allow that sort of thing. A sort-of insider game creators podcast, especially focused on older games. (Iâve lost interest in most first person shooters.) Actually, you could likely make money doing that now and interview / chat with others who were or are in the industry. I havenât found many of those.
The virtual rewards are a great idea, too, since while they take time to process, they have less actual cost (e.g. voicemail recording vs a t-shirt.) More of those can increase backing.
And honestly., after having funded two (TWP and DFA / Broken Age), Iâm not entirely sure how much value the voice actors provide. Itâs great, but Iâd totally fund a game without them. What percentage of the cost is in voice acting? Not that the quality was in any way bad in these two games, I still fondly recall reading as the only way in older games and never really minded it. Well, my internal voices are usually better. 
Iâd totally 3x to 5x my pledge on another game. Obviously you have to do whatâs best for you, but this was the thinking I used when funding TWP.
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I would be an instant backer of this kind of Kickstarter campaign!
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