Hi All,
about ten years ago I got a small indie game published. A lot of things have happened since then but I was just thinking about it.
It was called Lexiclix and I was the lone programmer/developer and level designer. In fact I did everything apart from the music (which I bought online) and some of the artwork (which was done by an artist I hired).
Anyway, I was thinking about all this (maybe open sourcing the game or making a Lexiclix 2) when I began to wonder how much I had been paid by the hour.
Well, I began to sketch out the concept of the game around 1999 when I began investigating DirectDraw and various other graphics libraries and wrote a little code to move bitmaps around the screen. Life got in the way, but in 2004 I moved into a flat alone and began development in earnest, full time. I estimate that over the next decade that I spent thinking about/writing Lexiclix I spent between 5 and 10 thousand hours of work on it before getting the game published in 2009.
Along the way i learnt about graphics programming, graphics libraries (thanks Haff for the marvellous and FREE! game engine https://github.com/sungiant/HGE ) and sound libraries. I learnt UML and Photoshop and how to make music and sound effects. I also learnt a LOT about the C++ programming language.
All in all i enjoyed those years tremendously and wouldn't change them for a thing, but how much had I earn't financially?
Well, I after completing the game I managed to find a publisher who agreed to take on the game and put it out as a cut price CD game (remember those?). I had no illusions about my game being triple A (though I was and still am tremendously proud of it) so this seemed good.
After the game got published I ended up in a bit of trouble and spent some time in hospital. When I got out I looked into how much the game had made. Not much. Three years later the rights transferred back to me and I had made a grand total of £800 GPB (about $1000 USD).
So, dividing through this works out at 8 pence an hour or around 10 cents per hour of work.
Now, this wont be the least anyone has earn't from making an indie game (most never get finished or if they are given away free), but could this be a record for a published game?
Let me know if you developed a game and got paid less (or more).
Oh, if you want to see the game I lost the source code and .exe but here is a "teaser" video on youtube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrecCehErvQ
Thanks
Cleerline
lost the source code
ReplyDeletelmao