How to make Extra Money as an Indie Game Developer
Being an Indie Game developer is an interesting yet difficult prospect. First of you have to have the passion, skill and determination to come up with your own work and see it to its end. Also in order to come up with a return for your hard work, time and money you invested, you need to complete your project and market it correctly, and even then you may not get much of a return back. If you are here that means that you are facing the same challenges as we did along the way. If that is the case then i got some good news for you, because there are ways to earn a little extra money on the side to cut down some of your expenses. Below you will find tested ways to earn some extra cash wile you work on your game. Please note that the following list does not and will not include ways to find a producer and publisher or getting contract work, that is another subject entirely. However if you know of a method of earring a little extra that is not listed below please come in conduct with us, we will add it below to make this easier for starting developers.
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Selling Images
Depending on the nature of your project you may have a height value visual content. In that case it can be easy to make pre rendered images of CGI landscapes , objects or even complete cines especially if you are working with tools like the unreal engine, frostbite engine and so on. Even when you are just learning how to use software packages such as these you may come up with beautiful visual especially when you are working with lighting, particle effects and simple shapes. It is true that most of the time when you are trying to make something work you are not looking to make another product, but it is just a case of spotting beauty and value in every step of the way.
Ok now that you have a way to come up with good images were to sell them. Well most places are online, you will really find people buying artwork offline this days and that means that you are mostly going to be dealing with stock images and backgrounds. Here are five of the biggest stores online out there.
Ok now that you have a way to come up with good images were to sell them. Well most places are online, you will really find people buying artwork offline this days and that means that you are mostly going to be dealing with stock images and backgrounds. Here are five of the biggest stores online out there.
- Stock images
- Crestock
- Shutterstock
- Fotolia
- Corbis
We encourage you to check them out. Most of the store are free to join and the take a percentage of your earning every time you make a sale. You should also note that this can be a full time job with great income for some people.
Sell 3D Models
Obviously this is only possible if you are going to make 3D models for your games. However if you are trying to make a game chances are you will have to make a large number of 3D models to populate your world with. Those models can be Buildings, Trees, furniture people, monsters, robots and so one. They all have value and you can sell them fairly easily online. There is a verity of industries interested in 3D models out there. Stock 3D models can be used is product design, prop making, toy design, architectural design, in SGI movies, Video Games, educations packages and so on. So you can't know for sure how much demand is going to be for any model. Although more generalist models like furniture, cars and landscapes can have a greater return than monsters and robots because they can be used by a greater audience.
3D Modeling can a very lucrative business if it is properly used, because there is no limit on the potential returns from this practice as long as the work you do keeps on pilling up. The more models you got out there the better. Even though the quality, scale and scope of your models play a crucial role. The majority of the successful 3D models that do this for the living earn between $50k and $100k with a small percentage of them earning way more than a hundred thousand dollars. But keep in mind that you are probably not going to be making any ware near those numbers since this is a side activity for you. Realistically you are looking at $2000 to $3000 per year on average with big income fluctuations between years.
Here are the five best places to sell your models, in our humble opinion.
3D Modeling can a very lucrative business if it is properly used, because there is no limit on the potential returns from this practice as long as the work you do keeps on pilling up. The more models you got out there the better. Even though the quality, scale and scope of your models play a crucial role. The majority of the successful 3D models that do this for the living earn between $50k and $100k with a small percentage of them earning way more than a hundred thousand dollars. But keep in mind that you are probably not going to be making any ware near those numbers since this is a side activity for you. Realistically you are looking at $2000 to $3000 per year on average with big income fluctuations between years.
Here are the five best places to sell your models, in our humble opinion.
- Turbosquid
- Shapeways
- CreativeCash
- Falling Pixel
- Sculpteo
Sell 2D assets
Selling assets is a tricky market because generally when you create 2D assets is for a piece of work that you want to have all rights reserved and its Intellectual Property intact. However there are ways that this can work. Things like wall textures and background art work used to populate a 2D landscape can be sold with slight variations in the design. Also many artists go through a process of trial and error with their designs. There for most of those experimental designs end up in the bin. Well don't do it, keep anything that can be sold like characters that can be broken down to character sheet rigs, salvageable backgrounds and even concept art .
Here are a couple of really good asset markets that you can use to sell your 2D assets, unfortunately those are the only two we have experience with.
Here are a couple of really good asset markets that you can use to sell your 2D assets, unfortunately those are the only two we have experience with.
- Scirra
- Gamedevmarket
Sell Sound effects and audio tracks
Just like everything else in our list sound tracks can be valuable. Many people are looking for royalty free tracks, music, sound effects and so on. They are commonly used by the movie and video game industries however over the past few yes YouTube channel owners became one of the largest consumers for this market. Although selling sound tracks can be a subject to theft but audio watermarks can be used to prevent that and are automatically provided by some of the stores.
Few of the best markets for audio and sound tracks out there are the following.
Few of the best markets for audio and sound tracks out there are the following.
- Audiojungle
- Revostock
- Audiosparx
- eStockmusic
- Partnersinrhyme
Sell Code
In game development there are two groups of people. Developers who are good with programming and developers that are not. Many beginners need example to work from to start playing around with and experiment for their project. So putting together code that do custom particle effects in a verity of ways or a 2D top down platformer engine can be valuable. Meaning you can sell your game at least two times, one as a finished game but also as a bare bones game engine. However because most games are composed by multiple engines that you can separate and sell those elements individually. For example a top down platformer, a inventory engine, dynamic 2D shadow engine, integrated facebook like button and so on.
Unfortunately the market for things like this is limited but still considerable. The problem is that in order to sell code you have to make sure it works and that it is compatible with what the buyer will use and that may not be the case if you build a custom engine in Java or C++. The best way to go about selling game features and mechanics it to build them in specific engines like Unity and GM Studio. Fortunately the companies that own this programs have build infostructure that allow you to sell your work specifically to users of those programs.
Unfortunately the market for things like this is limited but still considerable. The problem is that in order to sell code you have to make sure it works and that it is compatible with what the buyer will use and that may not be the case if you build a custom engine in Java or C++. The best way to go about selling game features and mechanics it to build them in specific engines like Unity and GM Studio. Fortunately the companies that own this programs have build infostructure that allow you to sell your work specifically to users of those programs.
- Unity Asset Store
- Unreal Engine Asset Store
- Game Maker Marketplace