Comment by markus_zhang
6 years ago
I think there are a few lessons that we can look into if we want to be indie developers:
1) Need to be "cheap", i.e. to save a lot for daily spending and others, and definitely try to get as many free stuffs as possible. Because whence we go indie, we have to pay our own insurances and benefits.
2) Try to find a niche market, best if it doesn't require expensive investment. E.g. flight simulation is also a niche market, but we definitely need a LOT of investment to make it work. For Jeff's games it is tile-map (easy to replicate and make new maps for), small size and interesting story and game system.
3) Stay WITHIN comfortable zone but evaluate our situation every year. If we can stay in comfortable zone and make easy money, why not? Players pick an easy table in poker if they are professional. They don't play for fame or excitement, but for monetary reasons ONLY. Indie gaming is one area that are pretty sticky and our users usually don't go away unless we make bad games, so evaluation once per year should be good enough.
4) Like any other business, better know something before diving into. Jeff is lucky. He started early and had the talent. Most people are not that lucky so some industry experience would be appreciated.
The easiest solution of all is simply to live in a place where the dollar goes a lot further, which is like 95% of the rest of the world.
I don't really understand why more people don't go this route. It confuses me to see things like people living in places like Seattle/San Francisco when it's not strictly necessary. The amenities and interesting folks you find in these cities are not unique to these cities. The only things that seem very unique to them, in my experience, are the rather high salaries which, consequently, leads to an extremely high local cost of living as everything inflates in price in response to the salaries. Makes it a reasonable decision if you're drawing on these salaries, but if you're not...?
Moving to other cities might be difficult if one has a family. But generally speaking I agree that there are other places that are cheaper and still have access to a lot of talents.