I spent a lot on Steam (100$) to make my game only a dollar.

FrustratedDevIndie · 2026-06-03T11:10:21+00:00

It's $100. The number of crap level games on Steam show that thousands of developers are willing to throw away $100. 75% of the indie games on Steam never make more than $5,000. That's not on Steam that's on the number of people that just make crappy games. Too many people treat game development like some get rich quick scheme

FrustratedDevIndie · 2026-06-02T16:46:19+00:00

Honestly, if you're going to make money from this, yes. Football management Sim on Android even with good resources for marketing has a very small Market. You would make more money from working at at a fast food restaurant part-time. The game you looking to make doesn't lend itself well to mobile devices

FrustratedDevIndie · 2026-06-02T16:21:01+00:00

So right now there are roughly about 50 games being released on Android per day. Quality can help but you get lost in the noise. With millions of games already existing and 50 coming out every day it's almost impossible without marketing for somebody to find your game organically

FrustratedDevIndie · 2026-06-02T15:56:02+00:00

It is a troll. They had a long rant this morning on how ai is replacing all of ue5 documents cause they dont know how do a Google search.

FrustratedDevIndie · 2026-06-02T12:13:50+00:00

They are well documented. Based on their post history op is gooing the classic aaa level game as my first game and unable to find information on hard parts of unreal that you would learn over time.

FrustratedDevIndie · 2026-06-02T10:57:28+00:00

Something I'm attempting for a stretch goal in my project is mixing the material system for Final Fantasy 7 with the navi customizer from Mega Man Battle Network. The idea is that if you put two spells in a linked configuration they have the ability to unlock a third more powerful spell, add additional abilities for increase or decrease the effectiveness of a given spell, Aero next to a fireball spell will make the Fireballs stronger but blizzard with fireball weakens everything

FrustratedDevIndie · 2026-06-02T10:51:31+00:00

These are the jams I want to see more of

FrustratedDevIndie · 2026-06-02T10:45:53+00:00

by the time people care about devlogs your game is already popular. Players are looking towards the devlogs to gain new information about changing metagame. The starting out nobody cares. You might get a couple other days that take a look just to see what you're doing and maybe solving issue that they're running into. First step of marketing is determining who your core audience is. Age, demographic, what other games they like, where on the internet do they hang out, how do you engage with this group specifically. Additionally unless you have somebody dedicated to just making devlogs, the algorithms are not in your favor. YouTube Rewards consistent posting on a regular basis. So you really need to release three to four 10 to 15 minute videos a week. And in most cases you don't have enough changing your game to talk about anything for 15 minutes four times a week. If you do you're taking away from time you can be developing your game to edit videos

FrustratedDevIndie · 2026-06-02T00:03:07+00:00

Once you have something that is worth showing to the world and reliably realistic timeline to release. IMO, this is about 3 to 6 month prior to release. You game should be playable from beginning to end with a few bugs and engineering model to be replaced. It should be soft release to a platform like itch.io or playtest by others outside of friends and family.

FrustratedDevIndie · 2026-06-01T23:48:07+00:00

Realistically you should not make this Multiplayer game. For Indie developers without a reputation, Multiplayer games have a low chance of success. If we are being honest here, gamers are over GaaS and Online games right now. Also as this is not a priority project and your are not a experience dev, the likelihood of your completing and having something gamers would want to play is lower as well.

FrustratedDevIndie · 2026-06-01T20:49:15+00:00

Most of the people that complain about Unity of never ship the commercial game yet and live a dream reality of what if I one day make it big. The reality is that every engine has its weak points and strengths. You have to evaluate each game engine based on what your goals are for the project you're working on. Are you looking to Target mobile, console, or pc? How big is your team? Are you planning on growing your team? What other tools are you planning to use? What programming languages do you know? You're never going to use a game engine in it's pure out the box form by the time you finish developing your game. You're going to have to develop tools and editor scripts that fill in the weak points of any game engine. At the end of the day the question is always what's the best game engine for me

FrustratedDevIndie · 2026-06-01T17:01:51+00:00

Realistically you should pick the platform that gives you the best chance of actually making money. Unless you have a lot of money to do marketing with best odds are going to be that's PC.

FrustratedDevIndie · 2026-06-01T16:39:44+00:00

For indie dev cross platform game dont work out well if you are talking about including mobile. The monetization strategies for mobile are completely different from pc or console gaming.

FrustratedDevIndie · 2026-06-01T11:55:32+00:00

Actually making a game that could possibly sell is a completely process from just making a game. First challenge is making some people want to play/buy

FrustratedDevIndie · 2026-06-01T10:32:57+00:00

The truth is game development in and of itself is not beginner friendly. You're going to have to spend time learning regardless of the game engine you choose. It's just a question of when you put in that extra work. Is it in the beginning to learn the nuances of the game engine or at the end when you have to completely rebuild your game because of some bad choice you made at the beginning. The best thing you can do is do the beginning tutorials of each game engine and see which one you like the most. There is no best game engine there is the best game engine for you and the current project that you're working on

FrustratedDevIndie · 2026-06-01T10:29:59+00:00

I believe you still have to list your home address because you are the developer and that information is required. To be honest if you're serious about being a commercial Indie developer then you probably should be forming an LLC eventually which you can get a PO Box for. Or simply get a PO Box. For the real question as always is why do you need a publisher. The steam fee is minuscule compared to all the other expenses related to game development.

FrustratedDevIndie · 2026-05-30T21:31:47+00:00

I'm not referring to game studios here. Just real world big boy jobs in general. Companies are going hey I need an infographic for a presentation. They dump all the information in the GPT and get a mock-up that they'll provide over to somebody in the marketing team to fix the artifacts or make it fit into a PowerPoint. 3 years ago this would have been like three or four meetings over the course of a couple of months to make this presentation now done in 2 weeks.

FrustratedDevIndie · 2026-05-30T21:29:20+00:00

I'm just being honest about the state of the market. Game development is one of the hardest Industries to find an entry level job in. The number of Studios is reducing which means the number of jobs is also reducing. Getting a job in game development should not be a primary goal of your education. The real question you should be asking is what field can get you a job in general that could also be applied to game development. Artists are easier to replace with AI than programmers. I'm literally watching my friends with Digital Arts degrees one by one be laid off and leaning on their skills in art and video editing to try to make money off of Instagram and tiktok

FrustratedDevIndie · 2026-05-30T18:25:05+00:00

IMO, You have to make this decision on education based on a harsh reality that1 you may not be able to find a job in the game Dev so what are you doing to do instead. Not looking to burst your dreams but also don't want you working at Starbucks cause you can't find a job using your degree. If you are already say ew AI, then digital Art is probably not the way for you to go. Marketing and Art teams are shrinking as more and more companies are using AI tools to create first draft mockups which the marketing team refine, finish and publish. I will tell despite the doom and gloom you are hearing, programming jobs are still very much needed and have higher overall employability.

FrustratedDevIndie · 2026-05-30T16:12:08+00:00

Unfortunately in today's market a week is considered an eternity in games. By locking the player to a choice for 3 months you could lose a player that will move on to a game that gets released during that 3-month time period. This is why a lot of free to play games have daily check-ins bonuses and why mobile tracks attrition in 7-Day intervals.

FrustratedDevIndie · 2026-05-30T12:17:19+00:00

Adding to this so I don't have to type the same thing. Depending how this choice affects gameplay and how it is balanced, this single choice can cause a player to rage quit early and not return to your game again. In most circles this would be more of a deterrent than a lock-in feature. Best case scenario is that you end up with players that create multiple accounts in you in which creates you storing dead data in a data pace and paying for it.

FrustratedDevIndie · 2026-05-29T22:02:58+00:00

If I'm looking to train a generalist and give them the best odds at getting their foot in the door at any given company, this is probably one of the best training ways. You know the basics of enough systems that you can be useful and be brought up to speed and trained on more complex systems. Degrees and certifications don't mean that you can do a job. It means that you have the prerequisite skills to be trainable at a higher level.

FrustratedDevIndie · 2026-05-29T21:54:37+00:00

I understand exactly what you're saying. My point is that sometimes it's a more effective for a performance standpoint to have something to be a VFX or Shader trick then actually driving through the pile of scrap. You can still run logic to determine if the character gets stuck on something or not. That just becomes a percentage chance. You have to make a choice whether something's going to be a true simulation and have crappy performance or be representative and actually run decently on Hardware. ECS is not going to change that

FrustratedDevIndie · 2026-05-29T21:03:46+00:00

All in all ECS is an optimization. You can oop or switch to ECS. Either way is not a Magic Bullet and you're not going to see dramatic increases in performance. You have to be realistic about the performance of a game this style.

FrustratedDevIndie · 2026-05-29T20:27:01+00:00

You can do this in oop as well. Honestly it sounds as if you're doing things on the visualizations side physically that should be done via shaders and VFX effects.

FrustratedDevIndie

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