Hi guys ,im doing a game that i would to play and i’m doing it free for passion and for the world of players,
but i was thinking is there some small smart game that one can do to make some money ?
And how actually can some 1 make money from a game ?
I know its not jme or java question … but it seems pretty interesting to me, sorry for wasting Topic 
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Prototype it and show it to the public. There is no way of knowing. You may think it’s the best game in the world but nobody else does. You may think it’s a bit crap but it flies off the shelves. There is just no way of knowing. The only way to know is put a prototype out there and see what people think. That’s just the way the world works.
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if you mean small smart, then you should do games like prison architect that only need some ai to function.
there are games like mythruna, 3079, rising world, skull stone.
you can see some old jme games like https://www.indiedb.com/engines/jmonkeyengine/games/page/
there are much more games and i hope there will be bigger games soon. most of this games are minecraft style. (maybe because there are many libs for voxel world)
Anyway ANY game is possible to do with this engine. Just need bigger companies to make games.
Graphic can be really nice too(yes, even like in witcher3). you can see some examples in monthly screenshot topics. Fact is some tools are not perfect, but its open source so you can modify everything yourself.(just need knowledge)
Well i’m making this one
it is pretty big :
8 castles , 4 villages x castle .
Really, you have a better shot playing the lottery. It’s more predictable, too.
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Interesting story: subnautica was released and shelved as a tech demo until jacksepticeye saw it and basically blew it up to what it is. If it wasn’t for him finding it from a dusty corner of the internet it wouldn’t have been anything more than that.
Personally I give it to my kids and friends to toy with. Most of the time it’s just a passing glance with obligatory compliments, but once or twice I’ve had to pull them off or stop the kids arguing for a turn. Even then, though, it’s still not a dead cert.
I think there’s definitely something in distraction. Always having something to do. Always working toward some kind of goal. Getting sidetracked from your initial goal. Stuff like that. No-go areas because you’re ill equipped, etc…
If you’ve got kids you’re at least one peg ahead ahead of the game I guess.
If I find myself playing an aspect a lot then it’s a good indicator, too.
I don’t think it’s necessarily the ideas so much as being able to write them how you see them in your head. It’s usually never a 3 month code-a-thon.
Who knows man. Failure is the path to success and all that story. As long as you’re learning you’re winning 
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Beware survivors bias.
For every game that was “fun to play” and “blew up” there are literally thousands and thousands (and THOUSANDS) that are “fun to play” and never see the light of day.
For every “I did it this way and succeeded” story there are 100 other “I did it this totally different way and succeeded”… but that’s because success or failure is more random than not.
There is a lot about getting advice from game success stories that is exactly like getting financial advice from lottery winners. I think this has been pretty well documented, actually.
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See No Man’s Sky vs say Goat Simulator.
Just to reinforce what people are saying here about finances etc. The average success rate for small businesses going into an established market (restaurants for instance) is about 1 in 5.
Now that we’ve depressed you and stomped on your hopes and dreams here’s another take. A lot of of Indie games start as a fun project, then they push for a community to get feedback, and then after a while (years in most cases) comes the money. This is just from what I’ve read but the general consensus as I’ve read is make a game first and money might follow.
Another example of the above… Portal wasn’t originally Portal. I can’t recall the original games name but effectively what happened was a demo of the game was made and Valve picked them up. Money came in the form of a new job for those developers.
But again, remember that for each one of these “this is the plan for success” stories… there are at least 100,000 games or more that did those EXACT STEPS and we have no idea anything about them because they failed.
Survivors bias is so thick in game development lore that we don’t even think about how deep it is.
There are actually some proven ways to make money with games but on the ethics scale they are one step short of using botnets to drain folks bank accounts. (I won’t go over them here.) And these “proven ways” probably only bring you up close to the 1 in 5 statistic quoted above.
Make indie games for fun. If they take off then great… if they don’t then at least you had fun.
Planning your future around it from step 0 is like planning your future around being a rock star the first time you pick up guitar.
I don’t think I can add much to the conversation that hasn’t already been said in a better way.
But one thing I’ve noticed in my research that holds back many indie devs (and small businesses of all sorts) is their aversion towards corporate tactics as well as a common generalization that all business is greedy and evil, which makes lots of small business entrepreneurs either give up due to to moral reasons, or suffer a serious disadvantage becuas they aren’t willing to go the same lengths as the competition when it comes to their business strategy, and especially marketing.
If you have a game that’s fun, then all you need to do is pay to market it to the right people - and if it’s as good as you believe, then eventually it’ll catch on. But that could also require more marketing expenses than you could ever afford, or maybe the game idea isn’t quite as fun as you think, or you aimed it at the wrong audience. Or maybe you did all that wrong and think your game sucks, but some random foreign audience might miraculously love your game and it still becomes a success.
So as it has been mentioned, theres definitely way too many variables at hand, and Its probably a detriment to your success to try and base your strategy based on what has worked for others.
Although ive definitely taken my time to study the websites, steam store pages, and funding campaigns for other games that have been successful to look for any correlations. But the only correlation is that these games look cool and seem to have a player base that think they’re fun.
My theory, personally, is that if you’re having fun with it and as long as you’re willing to build your game whether you’re making a profit or not… Then one day it is bound to be fun enough that atleast a small community of people will catch on and appreciate that there is a dedicated dev behind a fun game 
75 percent of people who buy games on a marketplace like steam never even install them.
Want to make money? … make the best game you can in 4 months, release it.
Rinse repeat forever.
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yeah i think it a same way and thats how i started,then just felt like ,need to make some cash (can fide a job as software developer)
Soo may be becoming commercial and selling soul to devil ,just for now might be a good idea .
i will probably put a free demo on steam when its ready
I think there is also a lot of room for developers to be this way in the video game industry, since the large companies are just getting worse and worse, yet they keep selling the most games and the market keeps buying them.
I personally hate those things with the industry, like pay to win games being as popular as they are despite all the apparent outrage, or the companies that release cinematic trailers that do not accurately depict the game-play at all…
But if consumers are still buying games that get advertised with bloated marketing tactics, and that have these undesirable features like pay to win… then I feel like its almost necessary that indie developers double think their business strategies and step up their marketing efforts if their goal is to make a profit.
I personally don’t think I’d ever want to make a pay to win game, and as indie developers I think the market would be much more critical towards us for doing so.
But if you really are confident that you are delivering a fun game with the player in mind, then I think any tactics to make money and further perpetuate your game can be considered ethical, arguably of course 
For a “pay to win game”:
Step 1: have many successful franchises already
Step 2: turn one of them into a pay to win game
No one is going to want to pay to win in a game no one is playing, really.
“Yay, I beat ‘super blotto dude’ and only spent $20… You probably haven’t heard of it…” who cares?
So that’s not really an option for most folks here, I guess.
Edit: unless we stretch the definition to “pay for more lives” puzzle/matching games… but I consider those a class all their own. (Exploiting gambling addiction… lots of articles on how to do that if exploitation is your jam.)
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Sounds like the recipe for a win to me… and indie game that’s sole mechanic is pay to win. If it catches ground in the right circles it prints money.
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Yes most likely not, but there are certain small gaming companies I’ve seen that seem to round their business model around making a lot of small app games that will eventually prompt you to pay to continue playing or to speed things up.
But that also does not even sound fun to me as a developer. I like to design something that I also consider fun to play.
Yes, I also think that this model is very apparent with a company like Blizzard. They have games like WoW and SC with such balanced mechanics and diehard fan bases, that they can get away with so many micro-transactions in their other games like HOTS and Overwatch
Edit:
Yeah I guess that’s more what I meant by pay to win. I just consider any additional purchases within a games as pay-to-win (unless its DLC, or things that are solely cosmetic and offer no advantage)
Typically “pay to win” is associated with games that allow you to shell out cash for the “super gun” instead of grinding to get it. The key gripe being that players who don’t have time to grind 500 hours to get the super gun, but also can’t/won’t pay for it, feel bad that they get killed all the time by the newb with the super gun and a deep bank account.
That’s why a lot of games try to limit the payable add-ons to vanity items like hats and dance animations, etc… to avoid the “pay to win” moniker.
This is also why the scheme doesn’t make sense for a game no one is playing… and doesn’t make sense for single player games, really. Why pay $$$ for the super gun if you aren’t going to get to frag people with it?
When a gem matching game wants you to buy more lives to keep playing that’s a pretty straight forward “pay as you go” scheme… same as any coin-op arcade game. That’s not “pay to win”… that’s “pay to play”. The fact that they give you some number of free plays per day isn’t really relevant to the name of the scheme.
But what it seems from here is :
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Make advertising super hard push (indie developer can not ,no money for )
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Make small game on gambling and addition :
pros : We can do that :smiley: cons: just need to put it in visible place and hope for some luck getting right guy :smiley:
3)Game must allways having some objective to reach
4)Avoid dig too mutch in Pay to win
I’d say take a look at successful games on steam and pick a genre/type you would like to do.
Now, if you make a quick game, then there won’t be much content in it, will there, thus less value.
If you make a solid game, and pour into it 1000-5000 hours, then it will probably(hopedfully) will have value. Also consider the gameplay time needed for player to finish it.
Finally, objectively assess whether your game is really FUN to PLAY, and NOT FUN to CREATE only.