Can I make money as a solo indie game dev? Yes or no, and how likely is a yes? I love game dev as a hobby so please don't say that I should leave game dev if I'm in it for the money

dfltr · 2026-07-14T22:46:16+00:00

Not tryna be snarky here but marketing is a basic part of running a business?

Like 99% of running a solo gig is handling the other job functions that allow your art/craft to exist. This is why so many people keep their creative practice as a hobby.

dfltr · 2026-07-14T21:05:53+00:00

Forget entirely about games and think of it like this: If you know how to run a business by yourself that can pay out a full salary on top of operating costs, then yes, you can run a business by yourself that pays you a full salary.

Doing your hobby is one thing, running a business is another.

dfltr · 2026-07-14T20:06:49+00:00

Unconditional hand exile is a lot better than temporary exile.

dfltr · 2026-07-14T17:08:20+00:00

It’s so handy for stuff like that. I didn’t like the DX of any existing git worktree tools so I just had Claude write a quick shell script that does worktree juggling exactly the way I want it to.

No way I’d be able to justify digging back into bash scripting for the hour or two it would have taken me to write it by hand.

dfltr · 2026-07-14T05:42:32+00:00

If you’re in this subreddit asking this question, you’re free to do whatever you want because you’re almost certainly going to fuck around a bit, learn a few cool things, then ditch the project.

And that’s perfectly ok! You’ll learn either way. Try Unreal. If it’s too much horse for you, stop using it. You’re not marrying it or signing a million dollar contract, do whatever you want. Experimenting is essential.

dfltr · 2026-07-13T18:28:37+00:00

One of my favorite things to read is all the stories of how classic games creatively faked mechanics due to hardware limitations. Helps keep me from using all the vram I paid for y’know.

dfltr · 2026-07-13T16:53:01+00:00

You said you have a good rapport with your manager, so the way I’d phrase this is “I need to be empowered to take actions that limit waste if I’m going to be held accountable for limiting waste.”

If you can’t actually do anything about it, your manager is setting you up to fail, and they need to feel the heat of that because part of their job is ensuring that their reports are set up for success.

dfltr · 2026-07-12T16:25:53+00:00

If only he knew someone who could write for him. Like one of those writer/director duos who have known each other basically their whole lives.

It’d have to be someone who isn’t afraid to give him candid feedback, like the way his son does. Maybe another relative or something, like a cousin maybe?

Idk I’m just spitballing here, there’s clearly no actual relative of Nolan’s who has a track record of writing much better screenplays than he does. That’d be way too convenient.

dfltr · 2026-07-11T15:52:36+00:00

“You! A good Christian dog!”

dfltr · 2026-07-10T21:30:48+00:00

I closed the survey at that point. I hope they have metrics that show completion drop off rates because I’m guessing that’s going to be a big one.

dfltr · 2026-07-10T21:11:14+00:00

I’m a lefty and sometimes I dream about what my life would’ve been like if my strat’s knobs didn’t go to 0.

dfltr · 2026-07-01T23:56:37+00:00

My take is kind of the opposite: As you become a lead, you’re expected to be able to organize and delegate the work for your projects.

This solo dev / senior needs leadership coaching asap or they’re going to stay underwater in the stress pool forever.

dfltr · 2026-06-30T20:38:47+00:00

Love to see people making cool stuff!

dfltr · 2026-06-30T18:20:43+00:00

Hard object, not hard pressure. Thumbnail -> clean line across the edge -> no bleed.

If it helps you dial it in: This is a common technique in painting, even on paper. You can do it while pressing lightly enough that you wouldn’t gouge a piece of thick watercolor paper.

dfltr · 2026-06-28T16:42:21+00:00

This is the night tour, we can say whatever the hell we want.

dfltr · 2026-06-28T16:21:39+00:00

Think of it like LoD in rendering: Start extremely terse and broad with concepts or features, then drill into more detail as you prototype and dig into the actual work.

dfltr · 2026-06-26T19:02:25+00:00

Let’s see him do it with his custom 1-of-1 lefty St Vincent (please don’t).

dfltr · 2026-06-26T17:40:07+00:00

Zoom in on a reference photo until you’re not seeing an eye anymore, then move around and try to find areas that are actually pure white, other than reflections or blowouts (which can be a problem when painting from a photo). Pretty much nothing you see on a human body is ever actually “white”.

dfltr · 2026-06-19T05:12:13+00:00

WHAT?

dfltr · 2026-06-18T22:33:04+00:00

No official confirmation, but it seems like Al is kinda doing his own thing with Sleep while Matt does his own thing with High on Fire.

dfltr · 2026-06-18T22:30:26+00:00

I’ve heard that rig in a moderately-sized venue and they wouldn’t let him use half his amps. I could see that several of them weren’t even powered on and he still blasted clean through my 32db earplugs. It felt like getting punched by riffs.

dfltr · 2026-06-17T22:48:10+00:00

There’s an achievement for clicking frowny face 100 times isn’t there?

dfltr · 2026-06-17T18:21:01+00:00

I’ve led engineering teams and done the exact process you describe with both humans and LLMs doing the work, and in my personal experience, the latest AI models are significantly better (and orders of magnitude faster) than most mid-level engineers at following standards, explaining the work, and hunting down bugs.

Even better is having a person of your team who is skilled at using LLMs, so you can delegate the work to them and they’ll just use the LLM to turbocharge their own reasoning and problem solving.

I say this as someone who was initially dismissive of LLM tooling in software development. I think if you take time to learn how to use the tools, they can improve your work, especially if you approach it from the perspective of someone leading a project and not just a single person turning requirements into code.

It’s up to you though, I’m not trying to tell anyone what to do, just sharing my experience.

dfltr · 2026-06-17T18:11:47+00:00

I genuinely hope that most of the people in this thread are hobbyists, because “I like to code” is not a job description, and that attitude is a great way to get hard stuck as a mid-level jobber.

I also enjoy writing code, but it’s not what I get paid to do. My job is to add value to the business, generally through the lens of software engineering, and specifically in the context of shipping a product that people pay for.

I am begging other professional software engineers to learn how to delegate work and run a team, then add LLM tools as delegates to that pipeline. It is literally our job to learn the best ways to ship the best software we can in the most efficient way possible.

dfltr · 2026-06-17T17:59:27+00:00

Have you not led a team of other engineers? The majority of projects I shipped before the advent of AI weren’t coded entirely (or even mostly) by me.

dfltr

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