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Comment by ajnin | Hacker News Reader

Quitting your job with only 4 month worth of savings, with a new mortgage, to enter an industry known for its oversaturation, extreme competition, and high luck element for indies ? That's insane. Maybe I'm just risk-adverse.

That said, I think he actually succeeded, despite appearances. Managing to release a working game in 3 month, that actually got sales, is a feat in itself. The game will keep trickling sales, if he's a developer he can probably find a job in a few weeks and enjoy the now-passive income so I'm not too worried about him. Keep cranking out games like this one and the income will pile up.

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GDC: How to Survive in Gamedev for Eleven Years Without a Hit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmwbYl6f11c

TL;DR: prepare for this to happen, and build a long tail of games/sales.

I don't want to sound mean but I don't think anyone should buy the game because they feel sorry and he is begging. I can't condone it. It has become trendy for people to make GoFundMe campaigns or write articles begging people to help.

Assume people do buy your game because they are sorry, and you manage to get by. Is that how you intend to create a sustainable business? What about other indie devs who failed, maybe even harder? Should they also write articles with their sad story? What about those who don't make it to the top of Hackernews? Should what is essentially charity support people taking risks?

I take this article as a cautionary tale of what could go wrong when you go indie, one of those that we need more of in face of the wild success stories that saturate media.

It doesn't seem like a business story really, it seems like an artist / craftsman wanted to practice his craft and ran into commercial realities. It's a starving artist situation. There wasn't any market analysis, financial analysis, etc upfront. He wanted to make a game, and he did, so he should be commended for that. It wasn't really a business venture.

I think it became a business story as soon as the developer quit his job and risked his future livelihood on sales. He could have worked on the game in his free time and released it for free, otherwise.

That is exactly why I'm happy working for someone else. I love to code, solve problems and make things. I do not what to run a business. As soon as you are in your own you are running a business.

Same, except that I still sell my game and work on it at home on my own time.

If it wasn't a business venture, then don't treat it like one. Needing sales means it's a business venture.

Unfortunately we don’t live in a society where people who are passionate about art can pursue their passions fully and avoid starving or otherwise risking their quality of life. In our society merely choosing to pursue your art to your fullest extent is considered a business venture and not an artistic venture, and even choosing not to because of money reasons is itself a business decision.

True, but now is the greatest time in history to be able to pursue art. It's obviously tough, but people can sacrifice for their art and share it like never before. Just think how many incredible artists have lived but spent their entire lives merely surviving.

> how many incredible artists have lived but spent their entire lives merely surviving.

what you describe is basically the entire human condition as it has ever been since time inmemorial.

The idea that art must be sacrificed for is itself a profoundly toxic one.

Art is the culture that underpins society. Normalizing the idea of sacrificing to create it is itself antisocial.

There are plenty of people who are passionate about art and also able to pursue their passions fully and avoid starving. They get grants from the city or private organizations or they sell their work.

following your passion may not be the best advice for anybody. See Cal Newport's perspective on why. One of his examples is Steve Jobs. http://calnewport.com/blog/2015/04/05/what-steve-jobs-meant-...

It's fortunate that society is like that.

Almost all indie game developers think like this, though.

> It doesn't seem like a business story really, it seems like an artist / craftsman wanted to practice his craft and ran into commercial realities.

The author does say "I have been warned against going full time indie by everyone on the internet and by my friends and family. I believed I could make it, all I had to do was ship just 700 units of my game on steam." They also say "After more than 10 years of writing games I believed I had acquired enough know-how, knowledge and experience to make it in the industry on my own, on my own terms and on my own schedule." [my emphasis].

That implies they had thought about the financials, and were believed they'd be able to get a sufficient amount of revenue.

lol, of the 11 years he did mostly the same game over and over plus a bit of consulting.

It's a wonder that he survived at all

Seriously. His advice should be "don't make the same game for 11 years, especially when that game is either a generic card game (solitaire?) or a generic match three puzzle game."

I don't know if this makes me sad or angry.

This guy works for 11 years in the industry, aquired a whole bunch of knowledge on how to ship and market games, runs communities for indi game devs and what not and then when it comes to the actual games, he fails hardcore.

I'd say the learning experience should be to manage your own expectations. In my experience in music many musicians set out to ‘make it’ without defining what that is at all. They don't define success, so they'll always feel bad about not having achieved it.

The musicians that actually ‘make it’ are those guys/girls that say ‘I just want to write one song that is my own’ — ‘I just want to make a 5-song album’ — ‘I just want to play my album in a bar’. ‘I just want to sell a copy to someone I don't know’ — ‘I just want to sell 10 copies to people I don't know.’ ‘I want to play my songs somewhere that is not a bar.’ And every time it turns out the next achievement is just around the corner from where they are, so they always feel good about having achieved something and they always feel motivated to achieve the next thing.

This guy better change his blog post to ‘I made a game and I released it on Steam’ and talk about how he's going to take a job in order to fund himself while I tries to sell 100 copies, and then write ‘I sold 100 copies of my game’ and talk about how he will get to 200.

When I started my company like 10 years ago, I also had savings for only like 4 months. However my plan was not to do games specifically but anything that pays the bills. Though I made one game as well but more like for fun and training, not for money. My various products did little money, though I had to look for gigs quite often to support the development. After 1-2 years I made enough money from the products so that I didn't need the gigs any more.

As a developer it is quite easy to find contracting/freelancing gigs if you need money quickly. I don't know in what kind of business environment this guy lives, but I've never felt that those with programming skills need to stress about savings that much, because there is so much short-term work available if you want it. Of course it is not the kind of work that many would want to do, but it pays the bills.

I'm curious what kind of work you found and where you found it? If you don't mind telling.

I find digital consultancies / agencies always have spikes of work and they need folks to join in for a couple of weeks or months. Just make connections there - send in your cv, ask about part time positions etc. Agencies usually have one or two recruiters they trust so go and make friends with them too, chances are that recruiter is connected to a few other agencies and so forth. It’s all about networking though, and finding individuals that are reliable.

Bear in mind, to address the point about making money "quickly", that if you go direct to a digital agency, they will expect you to do a month's work, and then for you to send them an invoice with 28 day terms, and then they will pay when it pleases them to do so. So that might well be two months between sitting down at a desk and money actually appearing in your bank account - or it might be longer. (Speaking from experience in London.)

(If you go through a recruiter, you might be in a better position, because sometimes recruiters want you to invoice weekly and sometimes they pay more or less on receipt of the invoice. And sometimes they don't, of course.)

Well yeah it is in no way quickly in that sense, you need 1-2 months to actually receive the money. Unless otherwise agreed.

It comes down to have the savings, but as well to have low living expenses or otherwise lifestyle in a way where you can downgrade it when needed.

I had been working as a web dev (full stack) for some years, so the freelancing gigs I found were mostly web programming. One gig was for my ex-employer, other one was for other company. Of course you need to have some selling skills as well and know some people who need to do business.

During that time app stores were a relatively new thing, so the products I was developing were apps. They started making a decent revenue after 2 years if I remember right. The first year I didn't make about any money. I had very low-cost lifestyle, and cheap rent in a tiny apartment, which helped a lot. If I would have kids or some expensive hobbies it would have been much, much more difficult.

Having 4 months of living expenses should be doable within 3 years of having just about any programming job. Saving 10% gets you there and that's on the low side. X% / (1-X%) * 12 * years or savings / living expenses * time spent savings ignoring interest and taxes.

4 month is nothing. I needed 4 month just to get the new version of my already existing project working, that I thought had a chance in the market. If I had had the stress of being without work and home in 4 month that would never have worked. And at that time I hadn't even covered marketing, or having the time for it.

I got 2 years covered before starting this path (not all with savings, there is additional income).

Well of course it is better the more savings you have. However for me when I started my entrepreneurial career, I think the fact that I didn't have much money helped to launch the business. I had to pretty quickly to launch some products to make revenue and/or have contracting gigs. That for me was huge discomfort zone, because I was used to the the comfy life of an employee. I have seen situations where people don't have financial pressure, then they end up building product in garage for 2 years, and in the end not launching it and returning to kind of employee role.

It's not that I disagree, especially with the opinion that the gaming industry is over-saturated and that a lot depends on luck in that industry. But I'd say that 4 months worth of savings is in the better end when starting a new business. Most people who do startups or who otherwise become entrepreneurs have much less than that. And I think having too much of a cushion can lull you into a false sense of "doing something right" and that needing revenue soon can be an excellent motivator.

I was about to get married when I quit my job and started by myself, and my wife also had to quit her job because we moved country. And we honestly didn't really work out whether we were in a bit of debt or if we had savings for a few weeks. Sure, the first 6 months without pay were hard, and so were the next few years with low pay, especially when we had kids.

But if having 6 or 12 months worth of savings is a requirement, then you can rule out just about everyone except rich kids and upper middle class teenagers.

4 months of expenses, not necessarily 4 months of full-time-employment income.

Maybe I'm just way too risk-averse, but 3-4 months of expenses in savings is what I'd consider a minimum while in a stable full-time job.

Yes, our mortgage advisor recommended a certain buffer amount in savings, and it was quite a lot. Either one year or 18 months, and I think that was combined income. That was just to ensure the mortgage could still be paid for a while if we both lost our jobs.

I'm personally planning for an exit strategy which will see me working for myself in about 6 months time. I have roughly one year's take-home pay and will ideally have 18-24 months by the time I quit.

It sounds like the mortgage advisor encouraged you to borrow a larger sum, so that she/he could get a larger commission.

There's no need to keep that much money in the bank just in case you lose your job and can't pay your mortgage. Most lenders (at least where I'm from) will arrange a payment holiday if you tell them you've lost your job. After all, they benefit by earning more interest whilst you're not making payments.

Of course, there are many other good reasons to want that much liquid cash in the bank.

1 year in the bank (CD/savings) is for multiple reasons. Mostly it's for that really nasty scenario where there's a major recession leading to household job loss, when it can be particularly hard to find an equivalent replacement salary. And cash equivalent is important because selling assets in a down market is doubly expensive. Worse is a down market may make the mortgage lender even more likely to foreclose in the hopes of extracting some short term gains to offset losses in other investments. So you risk a losing your equity just by missing a single payment.

I certainly don't drop every dollar into my mortgage every month, it's just not worth the risk for a potential 4% return on investment.

I don't know if these exist in other countries, but some banks in the UK offer an 'offset mortgage', where any balance in a specific current account at the same bank deducted from the loan amount when calculating interest. The last time I looked, they were a little more expensive than regular mortgages, but would be worthwhile for someone who keeps 6 months or more of mortgage payments in their current account.

I completely agree. There's a hell of a lot to be said for having a buffer like this for your mental health. When a long-term relationship I was in collapsed and I was struggling with a bad environment at work the one thing that stopped me from spiralling back to a more dangerous form of depression was the comfort and knowledge of having immediate expenses covered. It gave me enough breathing room to know I didn't have to panic or run away from it all. I really couldn't imagine taking on a mortgage with so little cash in the bank and relying on Steam sales. If the author could go contracting instead it seems like they'd be able to carry on with their journey between contracts. It's not perfect but would be preferable to the situation they're in now.

Re. the GP's comment though - I don't understand how you could do this without any savings, there must've been some? At least rent (assuming you don't live with parents), food, internet connection - it has to be paid somehow surely - either by "you" (through savings) or family/friends taking the hit (eg letting you crash, using their facilities). With the right setup and network you could live extremely cheaply but someone is going to be paying for it. I don't think this is limited to rich kids or upper middle class teenagers (not sure of the focus on children rather than independent adults?) - if the average person can save for a holiday or whatnot - they could equally save towards living expenses, even if only "paying for my own food whilst I stay on my friends sofa rent free".

Forget 3 months, the rule of thumb is 6 months for an emergency fund

And twice your salary in a retirement fund by the age of 30, and three times your salary in retirement by 35.

Basically quit your day job only if your side hustle is already making more money per month (not per hour) because odds are even making more per month is still going to result in not being able to survive much past 57.

Side note, how many 57 year old indie game devs are there?

How does the average American put tens of thousands of dollars into a retirement account within 5 years at a point in life where there is a morgage and/or children? That does not seem like conventional wisdom.

Don't do the mortgage and children.

It's conventional wisdom in the same way that you're supposed to drink 8 glasses of water and eat 5 servings of vegetables ever day.

The average American doesn't do what is "conventional wisdom".

It's doable if you get 5% annual growth on the balance, and put in 10% of salary. I ignored compounding, and assumed your income was flat.

This is the conventional "textbook" wisdom. It is obviously desirable, but in real life completely impossible. And the gap between reality and this kind of "on-high" prescription is why so many people/families have no savings and have no real way to get out of their current situation.

They don't.

I would guess a few but they are retired from full time work.

Huh. I mean, I'm in a full time stable job and I don't keep that much in savings. Nowhere near in fact. But then again if the company wanted to fire me it would have to give me at least 3 months notice,so I treat that as my "buffer" to find a new job while still getting paid.

4 months savings is nothing in self-employment or for freelancing.

A million things can happen that delay payment and sales coming in. A year to keep personal and businesses cost running is a good and sane minimum that also keeps your mind from the worries you get when suddenly alteady 2,5 of these 4 months are gone and another expected positive sales/payment event didn’t happen for whatever, maybe accidental, reason.

(Says a 10 year running freelancer who started with 12 months savings and currently runs on only 5 for some events in the past 2 years - but luckily with good project and customer base)

And about that:

> But if having 6 or 12 months worth of savings is a requirement, then you can rule out just about everyone except rich kids and upper middle class teenagers.

If you’re a good Software developer and have no idea how to save some 20-30k bucks in 2-3 years for your plan of your own business you’re doing something wrong.

Like you are bad at contract negotiations, no good contact network in the industry to find someone willing to pay for good people, have too high expenses, too low saving potential, or, you’re just not as good of a dev as you think.

Any of those should be reason enough for you to think again about your plans.

And don’t hate me for being honest, better be honest to yourself...

I don't think life is that simple. Being a skilled developer/engineer has very little to do with the ability to save money.

Aehm yes these are independent qualities. And i didn’t state they are connected. But both (and other business stuff as mentioned that doesn’t come automatically just by being a great dev)are helpful if you wanna bootstrap a small company / freelance business without external funding. You can be lucky and be so well paid for being a so great dev that you never need to save, but it’s good to be able to save when anything doesn’t work out as good as dreamed.

I state you need more that tech skills to be successful. If you don’t have these other skills, better keep in a “safe” employment. But also then i recommend to work on some of these, like at least the negotiation stuff. It will help you.

The post says the guy lives in Eastern Europe.

That'a big deal. EE = most likely no property tax, which makes a vast difference in financial planning compared to the west. Basically if you're lucky to have a house or apt. you're set for good.

Where did you get the info that there is no property tax in Eastern Europe?

Most EE countries do have a property tax, in fact it can be quite sizable if your 50k Soviet era apartment gets appraised for the same tax base price that the luxury 500k condominium next door.

The property tax bill can be a huge problem for retirees who live on Soviet era pensions in old houses next to new developments.

Incidentally this is the problem that Prop. 13 in California set to solve initially.

> Incidentally this is the problem that Prop. 13 in California set to solve initially.

It's the problem Prop 13 was sold as solving, but not at all tailored to specifically address.

Then he earns less but also needs less to save for the targeted time frame to save for...

I mean when the guy is talking about a couple hundred dollars being a month of savings obviously talking about saving twenty thousand dollars easily is not relevant

   But if having 6 or 12 months worth of savings is a requirement, then you can rule out just about everyone except rich kids and upper middle class teenagers.

Here you have hit the nail on the head - of why most successful founders come from at least a bit of money. Not all, of course. But is sure helps.

The point isn’t really how many months of savings you have, it’s what sort of safety net yo have in practice. Does anyone have your back if you can’t make rent payments?

I mean, I'm 25, married, about to have a kid, a nice house, full-time job, two months emergency fund in the bank (after buying my house this year), and a stupid monthly payment in student loans (larger than most mortgages with my wife and I combined).

I'm also from a poor class family, who worked up, got a job, etc. Because I'm white most burden scholarships I couldn't get, so I got a fair amount from research etc. I wasn't going hungry poor, but I did have to buy my own clothes, pay for school, lunch, what ever, at 14 poor.

Now, I've been planning since I went to school to start my own business. Next year's bonus (which is 2 - 3 months living expenses), plus tax return (estimated 2 months living expenses) gives me right around 6 months living expenses. That's 3 years out of school. There is no reason people looking to start a company cant be patient and get some savings first. I actually have two websites making profit (albeit small) at the moment:

https://easy-a.net/

https://projectpiglet.com/

Both of those were completed while on vacation from work or weekends. And both are growing rather consistently and I should be able to leave my current role in the next year. I grant it's a stupid amount of work (I work ~80 hours a week, or 12 hours every single day), but there is no reason people from a poor background can't have savings AND start a business.

Just a different perspective. Kudos to you for making it work though.

Just because your white doesn’t mean you don’t get scholarships, trust me many minorities don’t get squat

Four months is nothing. Especially for the games industry -- you're not going to get outside funding in any realistic scenario. Also people who commit to making an indie game in a short time-frame rarely do service work to fund it.

> But if having 6 or 12 months worth of savings is a requirement, then you can rule out just about everyone except rich kids and upper middle class teenagers.

Disagree, but I suppose it's highly dependant on location and salary.

The last time I worked for a game company, I made $95k/yr, which equated to $5002/mo after taxes and deductions. This is in Toronto, Canada.

An expensive 1-bedroom luxury apartment steps from the subway was $2100/mo. My share of daycare cost for the kids was another $900 or so. Heating/electricity $100. Totally unoptimized mobile phone and fiber internet, another $220. Car insurance and home insurance, another $300. Gasoline $100. So, $1280 left over for food and random stuff. Let's say I bothered with any kind of cost-control: I could probably save $900 / mo. That's 2 mos salary in savings every year. After 10 years, that's 20 months in savings, without compounding or other windfalls. In fact, I'm now in a 2BR apartment that's $400 cheaper /mo.

EDIT> Forgot Long-term disability insurance, Life insurance, and medications. Call that another $500, but about $300 of that is meds. If you're young and healthy, or have full health insurance, hopefully you're paying less for medication.

It seems the author saved around $2000 before quitting his job. And promptly spent $1000 of it on paperwork and such.

I know 4 months sounds like a lot, but $2000 does not sound like a lot.

4 months worth of savings really lowers your chance of surviving the first few customers.

You want to feel safe so you can take calculated risks.

Yes, it's very impressive, and the purpose of the whole post IMO is part of the marketing (call me evil). Also if he didn't quit his job, he probably wouldn't be able to get this far within a year.

It is for sure, and it's fine, the amounts of money being mentioned are only material if you picked the short geoeconomic straw.

He was only a month away from completing the game when he quit. If he'd worked evenings and weekends, and used some vacation time, it seems like he could have easily finished and released the game by early next year. That way he wouldn't have to bet everything on the "magic unicorn" of instant Steam success.

I sometimes think people starting businesses take on an unnecessary amount of risk out of some unconscious belief that, by doing so, it will "prove" to God or the universe, or maybe just themselves, that they really want it.

From the name, I'm guessing he's Romanian; it's not illegal here to have a contract that states "everything you create, even in the spare time, is the company's property, unless you get written manager approval first". I have exactly such a contract. And yes I know it would be illegal in the US.

(I'm not exactly sure how enforceable such a clause would really be, but that's another story, and I really understand him not wanting to take the risk)

US has similar contacts actually.

examples?

It's an old link, but here's Apple enforcing that against a developer who developed an app in their spare time, and Apple wanting to take ownership of the app & source code:

https://web.archive.org/web/20060316084454/http://www.thinks...

That app is competing with Apple's iTunes, so that seems more like a non-compete issue. I'd like to see an example of an employee developing something completely unrelated to his employer's business.

Well, this guy was working in the gaming industry...

It's quite common.

My last company required IP assignment of all works that were:

- created on company hardware or

- related to the business in which the company engages

...and that struck me as eminently reasonable as a default. My current company defaults to everything full stop. I'm pretty sure this is going to be the default for most knowledge work in any state that hasn't specifically ruled such provisions unenforceable.

Strange. My US colleagues were surprised I have this clause and said it would be blatantly illegal in California. Guess they were wrong :)

It depends on which U.S. state you're in.

Surely that clause would still apply if he made 90% of the game while employed by the company?

Yes but my understanding is that he (claims to have) coded it all in one month. After resigning.

Quite honestly, it sounds hard, but not impossible. This is not WOW we're talking about.

Actually, I'm pretty sure it's the other way around. That is the default for the US (see [1]) but I believe it's unenforceable in the EU.

[1] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/developers-side-pr...

Nice link. I like Joel's writing. Haven't kept track of it in a while. The last para really rubbed me the wrong way ("sleeping with boss"). Most likely it was in jest but we need to have a zero tolerance to this kind of crap now (men and women).

Wait... you're offended by a non-gendered joke about the fact that interpersonal relationships in an office environment can impact the enforcement of contracts against you?

Do you just look for things to be offended by, or is there a particular reason?

The power of the witchhunt attracts a certain kind of creature.

You sound way more offended than the person you replied to. All I see up there is a harmless, well-intentioned critique with a perfectly civil tone. Meanwhile, you sound angry.

I haven't looked into it extensively, but I believe the EU has no laws about that. It's down to the individual countries, which have differing employment laws.

This is normal, and unenforceable, almost everywhere.

This similar in in Germany: It's not "everything is company property" but you need to ask permission to do "work" outside your employement, need to disclose if you create/"invent" something and allow the company to aquire your invention. Frankly, no idea how/if that will be enforced but something along these lines were in most contracted I had and it always made me feel uncomfortable.

I did some research about "work outside your employment" in Germany and found that the main thing is about the amount of hours one can (or is allowed) to work. The idea here was that working more than the "normal" 8 hours a day, would have a negative effect on the actual job, i.e. you're too tired to do your job properly if you work an additional 4 hours at home. In plain English, if you work additional hours daily on a side project, you'll be too tired the next day at work, hurting your productiveness (and upsetting your employer...). I did not find anything relating to weekends and/or to software created in one's spare time.

Are you aware of any specific laws concerning this whole thing?

If that's really true then I am glad I don't live there. Sounds like coporations want to own their workers completely. O_O

I also read it as a success. Developing and selling hundreds of units of software in less than 4 months for mere hundreds of dollars is challenging and iterable.

I wonder how many hundreds of sales he got simply from that article.

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