What can a solo gamedev do to get additional income?
Money is the most important thing for everyone who cannot create food from sunlight. Which points to, among many, us, solopreneurs making games. Depending on whom you ask, you will either learn that becoming a profitable solo game developer is impossible or prove that you can.
Of course, I'm talking about a full-time job. A side hustle doesn't have to bring you gold 😉
My point is, that if you're solo, you'll need to generate money more often than every time you launch a game.
And sometimes, life needs financial help, or you need to pay some contractor.
How do solo game devs make money?
Sell your assets!
Did you know that Kenney is making a game? He is a world-famous asset provider, both 2D and 3D.
Sell courses!
You can make them for free, but you can also sell them. Like serial Kickstarterer Thomas Brush, or the creator of the First Tree David Wehle.
Run a Patreon!
This one is interesting because people will support you, but you need to give them something for that. Take Stay At Home Dev... He makes tutorials and source code hits for the Godot Engine. And by encouraging people to support him he can give away the tutorial for free on his YouTube channel, while access to the code is for people supporting on a higher tier. There's a Discord server involved, so everything is about building a community.
Make smaller web games!
Recently I learned of the existence of…
Guess what, web games are still a thing!
Maybe do smaller games for the web?
As a break from that dream game?
Sell your tools!
Sometimes you will make tools that will help you make games. The creators of Glitch at some point ran out of money and decided to sell a tool they were developing for internal use. This example is a bit pessimistic because, in the end, they are not making games. The optimmistic part? You might’ve heard of their product - Slack.
One recommendation from me. If you’re searching for good music for working, I suggest you to a playlist I arranged. It’s a collection of a dozen tracks, mostly battle music, and the main theme.
aegis rim battle music - YouTube
I have played it on a loop since I finished playing 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim. It’s perfect for working 😎
What's Slack?
I work in silence. No music. I tried music once. It kept distracting me. I'd zone out to it or close my eyes & vibe, or it'd bring back memories to get lost in. It generated a dozen distractions away from explaining why the code ain't working.