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Comment by DizzyDoo | Hacker News Reader

I'm making video games for PC, Mac and Linux (like this one - http://store.steampowered.com/app/386900), it's a very traditional release cycle, I work on a project for x months, and then I release it, moving onto the next game after a few weeks of post-launch support. PC games are generally seen as more valuable than mobile games, so I don't need to sell a terribly large volume in order for me, a single developer, to make a living.

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>> [...] moving onto the next game after a few weeks of post-launch support [...]

How do you handle patches for prior games into your workflow (i.e. long-term maintenance)? Do you build up an issue queue and then work on patches in between major releases?

That's exactly how I do things. I'm very glad that by distributing digitally, it's incredibly easy to roll out small fixes that are applied as incremental patches, so I don't tend to 'save up' for major updates. A benefit that comes with a stable engine is that it's already been tested on a wide variety of hardware, so most of the issues I fix are very rare gameplay bugs.

Hi , Can you tell us how you are rolling out patches to your unity client. As far as I know unity doesn't have an inbuilt updater. But there are few plugins on the unity asset store which do that. But they don't cover all scenarios.

As I sell mainly on Steam, Steam handles the updating, it works out the diff and updates the files that have changed.

When you say "make a living" - how does that compare to a "typical" US developer salary/benefits - say around $120K total compensation? (and yes, I know that's far below a SV total compensation, but you wouldn't have to live in SV for this kind of lifestyle business).

Just to keep your expectations in check - I work for a major games company in the UK as a C++ programmer and make 25k pounds/year($36k USD). US salaries are an abnormality.

$35K is what a decent developer in India would make. So, your UK seems too low.

Much of the games industry is incredibly low-paying. I felt fairly fortunate to have worked in my 20s for a good game company (where I was paid OK, learned a ton, and we eventually had an exit to Sierra), but I feel like most of my peers at other companies were working for terribly low pay and often under poor management.

GDP per capita in India is $1,498.87 though

As a web developer I frequently get offers for 50k+ in UK you are seriously underpaid

I only see 50k+ offers in London though, and I have no intentions of moving to London. I also don't think it's entirely fair to be comparing web developers to C++, I would say I'm an advanced C++ programmer but I would need to learn how to do web development from scratch, it's not like I can pick up a web development job and just get on with it.

Writing advanced C++ code is more difficult than writing node.js code for sure imo. So having a /2 salary for the most difficult option is meh. I have also had these offers from companies outside of London (don't know about rural areas OK). I think you should research a bit because I really think you are taken advantage of mate.

My first job when I graduated outside of London was 30k. You are seriously underpaid.

Was your first job in the games industry?

Web dev.

I'm still in college, and and an Eastern European country (where the average wage is around 550$). And I still make > 20k USD per year. So yeah, you are underpaid.

That only shows that you are being paid extremely well, not that I am paid poorly. To say that I am underpaid you would have to say - compared to what? To people doing jobs that have absolutely no interest to me? I like my job, I genuinely enjoy it. The money is enough to allow me to live very comfortably. If I lived in London, it would have been a different discussion - but out here, it's not bad at all.

If you don't mind saying, what sort of area in the UK do you live in, where 25k pounds/year is a good salary?

North east. My partner makes 30k(as a web developer, no less) so together we can easily afford to rent a 4-bedroom house, have 2 cars and save enough to get a mortgage soon. On top of that having a job that I really enjoy is just icing on the cake, really not complaining.

Got it, thanks.

Refreshing attitude! Nicely put. Midlands here, and while I always want more 'stuff', reality is I'm quite steady. Still, happy to try new projects a few times a year just in case.

$120k in just salary is common for a regular developer with 3 years experience here. Not even SV

Mind sharing your stack?

Not at all. Unity is the engine I use, these engines are immensely valuable to developers like me, I can't invest years into building my own stable core right now, and although it has its rough edges and problems, it suits my projects very well. Builds to all sorts of targets, too. For my latest project I'm using the FMOD middleware for positional 3D audio. On the graphical asset side of things, I paint everything in Photoshop, and animate it in the amazing animation software Spine (which has an open source Unity runtime).

Thanks!

+1 for Spine. Will literally change your perception of what's possible in sprite animation and illustration ;)

Check it out: http://esotericsoftware.com/

Oh man, Spine is amazing. The latest 3.0 release has some great new scale features, and the fact that you can browse all the runtimes on github and submit patches is just the best. And the community is great too, lots of support on the forums, and bugs I've reported were fixed in days. So yes, Spine is absolutely worth the investment.

What do you use for modeling?

Oh wow you're The Cat Machine guy, nice game :D

This game looks awesome! Thanks for sharing.

Steam is cross platform right? Would it be insane for me to develop an Enterprise application on the Steam platform?

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