"Winning" in the game industry simply means you get to survive to work on the next project. Even high-profile studios with great track records are financially stumbling from one project into the next, and a single failure will sink them. Nobody is getting rich here - best case scenario you make a market wage, worst case scenario you make little to nothing.
Winning in games is worth billions of dollars - King, SuperCell, Rovio, EA, Zynga etc. Almost nobody reaches this level however there's many levels of success between bankrupt and billions where the good enough can survive to try again.
Exactly like startups and businesses in general.
It's pretty much a rule in business: if you go to the shiny/fun/popular market, you'll have a hundreds of competitors and it will be very hard. If you go to a more "boring" market that competitors ignore, you have a higher chance to get the jackpot.
Plus the bit where game developers are happy to make minimum wage while everyone else is more expensive sounds imaginary.
YC has funded a ton of companies, very few of which have/will generate huge rewards, one of which was a game company.
I know most game developers make more than the minimum wage, but I'm talking in reference to the article - that illustrates that these people exist.
"I’d like to be able to pay myself a wage of ~$1k/mo (around 2/3 minimum wage) for future projects, to accommodate a similar lifestyle."
Later: "Altogether, this is a somewhat exciting success for me. I’m making just barely what I need to keep going, which allows me to stay independent without the burden of success or wealth. Cutting so close to my bare necessities is frightening and unstable, but ultimately it’s an emotional trade-off."
That's why there was a race to the bottom in mobile games prices, and that's why you'll find 10 similar games when there should be a market only for one.
iOS has barely more than one million apps total. That number gets a lot smaller on other platforms within reach of an indie developer. These guys and many more are not struggling because there's "too much competition" they just haven't made a popular product.
An example in the form of a digression: I live in a town in a relatively rural area of the SF peninsula. I've recently received some bids for a small job involving heavy machinery, and -- at least in this area -- suspect that owning your own business in that "boring" market provides a more reliable source of revenue with a better quality of life than 95% of HN readers who work in cubicles at tech companies.
Owner A is a fellow who owns a bay area company that does grading work. He built his own house in the Woodside flatlands, where land costs tend to run in the millions of dollars, and the construction cost including permits of building a new house may be $2M-$3M alone. Neighbors include Larry Ellison and the Steve Jobs ex-Jackling estate. It's true he's driving around a lot for bids, but many folks would prefer that to staring at a screen. It's probably psychologically and physically healthier as well.
Owner B is a fellow who owns a bay area company that does excavation and sewer work. He owns a house in Portola Valley (another affluent community, for instance home to VC Vinod Khosla, who hosted Obama recently) and a second home in the Sierra foothills. Has a stable of Porsches and eight motorcycles. Is a pillar of the community, and sends his crew out to open roads closed by storms or downed trees when the town or fire department can't get to them quickly enough.
They may miss out on the upsides of billion-dollar IPOs, but a precious small percentage of startup founders or employees will get those anyway, especially post-Sarbanes-Oxley. I'm not saying I'm going to quit http://recent.io/ to dig septic tanks, but it does put bay area quality of life in perspective.
However, this family business has been in existence for 60+ years. I don't think that starting a new tree cutting business and going head to head with them will be nearly as profitable if at all, because you wouldn't have the same contacts and good will that they do. Contract work is often a word of mouth and referral business, not dissimilar to the legal world.
I totally agree that such small business owners can make great money. I recall from The Millionaire Next Door that many of the "millionaires" profiled in that book have the unsexiest businesses that they'd been working hard at for decades, saving wisely. I do know of an electrical contractor that worked on our house a couple of years ago has a healthy, very profitable business going on. But I think there's more than what immediately meets the eye, and just going into an unsexy business for the sake of going into an unsexy business is not a sufficient condition for financial success in one's business.
I think routine tree removal and trimming around here is kind of cutthroat -- which I've used to my advantage when getting bids. But, on the other hand, who would trust the lowest bidder to take care of your Prized Live Oak That Is The Centerpiece Of Your Old Palo Alto Backyard?
But I think there's more than what immediately meets the
eye, and just going into an unsexy business for the sake
of going into an unsexy business is not a sufficient
condition for financial success in one's business.
I agree that there is "more" to this than just going into something unsexy. But a key part of business success is differentiating yourself from the competition.
If you have no competition, then you win by default. Finding unsexy jobs that need to be done (ie: Payroll) gets you customers.
http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/04/03/how-much-do-game-deve...
Your parent's post is quite right--you don't get rich making games anymore, least of all because the margins are crazy thin. You get rich publishing games.
Specifically Rovio, SuperCell, King, Zynga and Mojang owe all their success to their own games released in the last decade. (Although king used to license/publish little flash games but they pivoted past that years ago).