1 year 8 months

This is the time I know create games for living, alone from my home, lien in my bed doing what I love most, create video games.
Gamesalad enabled this path for me, together with it’s active community and tutorials by @tshirtbooth @The_Gamesalad_Guru which delivered key resources for a fast learning process (1 month full time).

As everyone here I had to learn the hard way, launching plenty of apps which where unnoticed and only resulted in a couple of downloads. Forced to change and re-invent what type of games I create multiple times, finding my path by try and error.
I was many times doubting myself but always could ring down this thoughts with the simple believe that I get better each time I fail.

As I advanced new helpful persons crossed my way and with one of them, his name is Sabba Keynejad we created a simple game called „Three Points“ that got featured by apple over a full week Europe wide in the „Best New Games“ section. And another week in a few european countries as „What we are playing“ and „Best Indie Games“. Leading to 400.000 Downloads and ranking us on only 1 spot behind candy crush on the App Store, back than.

We did not know much about monetization and the game was free, the only advertising was an Apple iAD’s Banner Unit. Generating in this month around $ 1200, we sold a copy of the game to a marketer for $ 2000 which pushed his app even higher. (he called it Impossible rush)

Since we did not create enough money looking at the incredible amount of Downloads, it was time to overthink the way we make money in our apps. I spend a full month updating my back than 28 Apps with Chartboost interstitial Ad units. Which performed from day 1 well. Unfortunately we were no longer featured.

Calculating backward we could have made extra $ 12.000 to $20.000 if we would have had the chartboost Advertising in the game from the beginning. But thinking like this is poisonous, so I moved on.

Sabbe Keynejad and myself create a game called PewDiePug, two months before the success of Three Points and the Pug game started to take off and this time we were prepared to make money.
It did by far not reach the Download volume of Three Points but it pays my bills since over 6 months, brining it constant cash which I share 50/50 with my partner.

Getting a grasp of what people want and an improved Art Style learned by Sabba Keynejad I created my most recent title called „Orcs“. It is the one game that keeps Players in the longest up to 4 hours straight can be seen in the analytics. And it monetizes therefor the best so far, beside of not having the traffic of Pewdiepug.

Also players keep the app and wait for updates, they became loyal fans which is the greatest what can happen to your Indie Game. It’s great to know that people look forward to your next update and brings back that feeling you are really looking for when making games, it feels purposeful, you make them happy.
Bye,
David Zobrist