Hello, I really would love to be able to construct a profile for an indie developer. And for that purpose I have made a survey (less than 20 questions, lots of multiple choice ->quick to answer!). I hope you could find the time to take this survey + spread the word to your networks, so that even developers outside TA could participate. And by developer I now mean all kinds of people involved in game development: concept designers, programmers, graphics designers, sound makers, composers... Here is the link: https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dGc5M3VMRVpBT3ktaUhzdmVSWjJTakE6MA I'll provide the results here later, as I believe that somebody else might also be curious about the results! And hey: I might have asked all the wrong question! Help me by telling, what I should have asked instead!! Best wishes Sunaitis
6 answers so far! Thanks! Wau, this is a lot of fun! Quick glimps at the results at the end of the first day (which only lasted for 5 hours, but who counts!) First the questions I forgot to ask 1. Do you do it for fun or to make money? 2. Would you consider developing for other mobile platforms, if you do which? 3. Did you become independent by choice? Excellent questions! And although they seem to be quite straight forward y/n-questions, they all would deserve a little bit longer discussion, namely, I'd also want to hear the whys. So, if you feel like sharing on those topics, the comment box is all yours! Especially the question about money versus fun deserves to be answered. So, throw in your vote in the comments below. And then some graphs Education Previous experience in game development App Store experience & Employment status Number of Apps Wishes for the future Uups! Quite a lot of images, my Preview froze and I had to replace the rest of them with links! Coming soon: info on all the languages these guys know (I don't even recognize half of them!) and some links to their games. Stay tuned, and answer the survey, please Thanks! Sunaitis
I did the survey!Regarding the forgoten questions : 1.Well i love building apps it's the best job one could have(not counting movie star), I would love living from this, so yeah money is important also!I think great apps need more than just the desire of making money! 2.I think Android is the only one worth mentioning!But the demand should be huge in order to port an iOS app to it! 3.I am in the proccess of becoming, and it is by choice!
I added "the usermade questions" + want to share a link to a great podcast Thank you MrLeQuack! I added the "forgotten questions" to the survey now. The answers so far have been in line, what I thought an indie looks like: a male round 20 - 30 years old, a game enthusiast from quite early childhood, who learned to code "at home". Many of you also take an interest in music. Most of the informants have a full-time job, and develop games as a hobby but wish to become entrepreneurs one day. Still, six answers isn't enough to convince that this really is a generalizable truth, so: the rest of you, please, take the survey! It's only for background info, my actual research uses some other ways of data collection. With the survey I just try to make sure that I have managed to recruit "the right kind of developers" to participate in the research project. I want to share with you an excellent podcast on indie developers, which I stumbled on while searching for the games some of you mentioned in the survey. So, if you haven't found this yet: I warmly recommend http://www.indiegamepod.com/. I just listened the two episodes about a hobbyist turning into full-time indie developer. Thank you for the interview Firemaplegames! best wishes Sunaitis
Impressions after 9 people have taken the survey Thanks, Sinecure Industries and the other two anonymous guys who took the survey! The count is now 9 (still a long way to go, if I aim, say, 100!). Some quick impressions: - still no females - 25 - 34 years just about covers it (three informant <25 or >34) - the Americas (USA, Canada & Argentina) and Europe (England, France, Romania & Russia) are present (assuming that the Russian answer came from the European part of this huge country), but still nothing from Asia or Africa (if you are from either of those areas, pleaseplease, take the survey!) - quite high education, 6 informants have a bachelors or masters degree, one didn't answer at all and two had high-school - music is the favorite hobby, but many of you also write, enjoy movies, do sports and go for walks - honestly, I didn't even know all of these existed!: C++, C#, Objective C, ActionScript3, MEL, TCL, Lisp, Basic, Visual Basic, Ruby, AS3, OBJC, PHP, HTML, CSS, Pascal, Java, Delphi, Java, x86 Assembly, Locomotive BASIC, AMOS Pro, DIV, Blitz 3D, BlitzMax, PlayBASIC, GLBasic - four of you had no previous professional experience in game development, but five had years of experience - 2 students, 2 entrepreneurs and 5 working full-time for somebody else - only 1 lonely rider, who does everything by himself, some sub-contractor type of relationships, and five fairly constant teams (one of these constant teams seems to be working for quite a few publishers, though) - previous friendship is predominant "how do you find your team members" -factor, but two informants say that they find team members "online" or "in forums" - four have launched one game, three >6 - the titles I'm not going to reveal yet, I'm planning on giving each game a try, and commenting them "from a non-gamer point of view" (so far the only games I have ever tried are Wooden Labyrinth 3D, Tiny Wings and SmileysPop!) - in five years 2 people wish to get a job in a game studio, 2 want to be doing their own games along with working for somebody else, and 5 people wish to have a company of their own (I assume in game development, but can't be sure, as I didn't ask about the field) Those were my original questions, but then I added "the user-made levels", that is, your suggestions on "forgotten questions" - Out of the three who have answered while the extra questions were available, everybody thinks that: Money is important, but great apps need more than just the desire of making money! - Some of you might consider developing for Android or Windows 7, but most feel iOS is enough - Most of you became indie developers by choice, but there are some developers, who feel they had to do it (e.g. they used to work for a studio, which then didn't continue the contract). Thank you for your paricipation so far, and those of you, who didn't answer yet, here is the link to the survey! Best wishes Sunaitis
+1 from me PS: http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.280329/symbian-ar-pa-vag-att-do translation "symbian will die" - i said this in december 2009. i guess i was right *g*
21 up! Thank you for your participation, TheRedThing, MikeSz_spokko, mobile1up, and a bunch of anonymous participants! Already 21 developers have taken the survey! Having Symbian on the list was my inside joke, after all, I come from Finland, the Nokia country. I was toying between Symbian and Meego, but decided that Symbian is even less likely platform, and put it there just to remind of the old times. Impressions - Still no women - Still no Asian or African, Europe and North America dominate - Surprisingly (to me), almost 50% of the informants are >30 years - 60% have academic education - You know soooo many languages! Interestingly most of you have learned most of them "unofficially" (from web tutorials, manuals, books, ...), not by taking formal classes at school. - You develop mostly together with people you know (from real life or online communities) or by yourself - Huh, I have more than 20 games to get acquainted with, and I'm the poorest gamer! Have patience, I'll share my experiences later, first I have to write a paper (and the deadline is too soon!) - In five years the majority wishes to be entrepreneurs (probably in game development, but that I can't know for sure, as I didn't ask what industry you'd take up) - In the forgotten questions some of you have listed questions about pricing and business models. Great, those are things I'll tackle in my next article (concentrating on how the game of selling games is played). In my first article I'll concentrate on who you are, what you know and with whom you play. - Luckily only two of you say, that they didn't become indie developers by choice. Having to do something tends to kill the fun! - Only one of you says he practiced coding by making mods of existing games. This surprises me, as I have listened many stories, where devs explain, how they first fiddled with somebody else's code and learned by hacking. Got to go now! Keep on taking the survey, and encouraging your team members and other acquaintances to do so too! Best wishes! Sunaitis
Oh, are you one of the Lemmings guys! I followed your link and ended up watching YouTube video with Lemmings, smiling through it! My grownup sons (who have all moved from home by now) used to play Lemmings ages ago. It was a game that made one smile! I remember that we'd sometimes light up a newspaper in the fireplace so that it only barely burned. It would look like a row of small Lemmings with their torches were marching on a rocky road, when the small sparkles glowed on the paper edge! All the best for you! Sunaitis PS The article you link to is in Swedish, and I started wondering, would it have made a difference, if I had asked "What is your nationality?" instead of asking "In which country did you spend your childhood?" (I had my reasons for formulating the question the way I did, though. The question here is just out of curiosity).
554 views! Quite a lot, I'd say! My conversion rate isn't very high though: 24 surveys taken so far! I'm not complaining, I am thankful for all answers! But I wouldn't mind a few more ! What is there to report? Got my first Asian informant from China, thanks! Still nobody from Africa. A slight change towards younger devs is noticeable in the results. Also the number of people developing just for fun has grown. Till next time! Sunaitis
