Can You Make Money Out Of Your First Game ?

Ou SaMa
3 min readFeb 28, 2022

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Hi, Fellow Game Developers,

I remember when I started making my first game “Haste” that I’ve had such an urge to finish it as fast as i can,
I was still just scratching the surface by the way, but why did i do that ?

The Short Answer : Money .

as every beginner I thought that I just had to make the game, and with a little bit of ‘Zero Budget’ marketing
i’ll be making some money out of it, maybe a couple of hundred box, in the first month or so,
and frankly i’ve still thought of that until launch day,
then the truth hits you. 4.44 $ in about 3 months..
Yup, that’s the mobile market, or maybe the game wasn’t enough to go viral..

Started questioning my self-worth for sometime then i’ve let it go ..
still happy that i’ve made it.

So, Let’s Get Into The Topic, “Can You Make Money Out OF Your First Commercial Game” ?

There’s no short answer by the way, we all delve into this realm with a gut feeling that someday we will make it,

the equations and the elements that interfere in the process of “Making Money” or “Not Making Money” are almost infinite.
The only people that have almost all the answers are AAA companies, and sometimes they don’t make as much as they assume.

So how the heck are we supposed to make money as first-timers ?

after debating for sometime with my inner self and reading/watching about this matter, I’ve come to this conclusion,

WE’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO MAKE ANY .. BUT SOME OF US DO..

I know a lot of people won’t agree with me and consider this pessimism or any other negative trait!
but hear me first,

you see, for every new “THING” we decide to do, failure is the default outcome, success is the exception.
we all heard the story of successful ‘GameDevs’ like ‘Edmund Mcmillen’, ‘Phil Fish’and others..
these guys made a lot of games before success, I think ‘Edmund’ made about 40 games before ‘Super Meat Boy’.
40 Games ,on the course of 10 years or so, maybe he made some bucks on some of them, but they’ve never went viral.

you see what he and other successful ‘GameDevs’ did?
they were patient and they didn’t give up.

So, guys, be patient, hone your craft, learn and learn ..’Make Games.. Network’..then wait for it.

I am as beginner as a lot here, less than 2 years now, and i’ve decided to be patient.

anyway, this talk is mostly for solo developers or very small teams, if you have a bigger team you have more answers to this equation,
the bigger it gets, the closer you are, because people are the most important resource.

If you wanna read more make sure you follow me on ‘Medium’ or Connect with me on ‘Linkedin’ :

Medium : https://medium.com/@oussikhazmenski
Linkedin : https://www.linkedin.com/in/oussama-khazri-38133592

And don’t forget to share it with other beginner game developers,
Thank You For Reading..

-” Oussama Khazri”-

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Ou SaMa

Hi, I am ‘Oussama’, a Game Developer & Guitarist from Tunisia .