{"id":11349,"date":"2018-01-26T23:11:00","date_gmt":"2018-01-26T23:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/313792"},"modified":"2018-01-26T23:11:00","modified_gmt":"2018-01-26T23:11:00","slug":"shadowhand-developer-explains-the-cons-of-a-long-dev-cycle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2018\/01\/26\/shadowhand-developer-explains-the-cons-of-a-long-dev-cycle\/","title":{"rendered":"Shadowhand developer explains the cons of a long dev cycle"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/greyaliengames.com\/blog\/you-are-spending-too-long-making-your-game\/\">In a blog posted to his website today,<\/a> <em>Shadowhand<\/em> developer Jake Birkett\u00a0discusses the potential pitfalls of a long development cycle, especially as\u00a0an independent creator in today&#8217;s current market. His insight could prove useful for other independent developers considering the timeline of their next game.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Birkett\u00a0took to Twitter to ask his peers how long they spent developing their games and\u00a0found\u00a0that almost a third of them were\u00a0in the middle of projects three plus years in the making. <a href=\"http:\/\/greyaliengames.com\/blog\/you-are-spending-too-long-making-your-game\/\">His verdict:<\/a> developers are spending too long making\u00a0their games.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>He presents a hypothetical situation in which a\u00a0game took two years to make and grossed $100k\u00a0on Steam in its first year. After breaking down the cost of development (taxes, contractors, and full time contributors)\u00a0he points out how that $100k\u00a0sum can dwindle quickly.<\/p>\n<p>Then Birkett\u00a0looks at his own games on Steam. Between <em>Shadowhand<\/em> (which took two and a half years to develop) and <em>Spooky Bonus<\/em> (with a three month development cycle), he notes that the latter\u00a0has earned him the most $\/hour. &#8220;Even with a decent long tail, <em>Shadowhand<\/em> is basically NEVER going to match <em>Spooky Bonus<\/em> for $ per hour,&#8221; <a href=\"http:\/\/greyaliengames.com\/blog\/you-are-spending-too-long-making-your-game\/\">He acknowledges.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;That\u2019s why in 2018 I\u2019m focusing on making games a lot quicker,&#8221; <a href=\"http:\/\/greyaliengames.com\/blog\/you-are-spending-too-long-making-your-game\/\">Birkett writes.<\/a> &#8220;Note that quicker doesn&#8217;t\u00a0mean crappier.&#8221; He cautions that devs\u00a0should\u00a0spend longer making their game\u00a0<em>only<\/em>\u00a0if they have the funds to do so. Most indies, he points out, just don&#8217;t have the resources.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Just please be realistic about your game and don\u2019t fall into the trap of making a giant piece of art that earns you nothing except disappointment.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Check out the entire blog post <a href=\"http:\/\/greyaliengames.com\/blog\/you-are-spending-too-long-making-your-game\/\">here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a blog posted to his website today, Shadowhand developer Jake Birkett\u00a0discusses the potential pitfalls of a long development cycle, especially as\u00a0an independent creator in today&#8217;s current market. His insight could prove useful for other independent developers considering the timeline of their next game.\u00a0 Birkett\u00a0took to Twitter to ask his peers how long they spent [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11350,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11349\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}