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OFFICIAL A Call For Hobby GameMakers

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rmanthorp

GameMaker Staff
Admin
GameMaker Dev.
Hello.

We are currently looking to put together a 'Hobby Survival Guide' for GameMakers out there so we are interested in those who use GameMaker in a hobby capacity to ask a few questions about how they use GameMaker and if/why they don't see it a career. If you are interested in taking part please send me a message with your contact email.

Thanks!

EDIT: Got enough people now. Thanks!
 
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curato

Member
I think a lot of people around here that are hobbyist would consider it a career if they could convert their interest into a decent income they could support live on. Like right I am working on a project that I hope I can successfully market and be successful and parlay that into making a bunch of successful titles and be able to live off that income, but the reality is you can't really drop you day job and call it your career until you obtain some sort of success money wise out there. The real challenge is to turn your determination to make quality games into decent money.

Also, side note, a while back you guys were pushing your own publishing company. Is that still a thing? Did that go anywhere? If so, were their any successful titles I missed seeing?
 

rmanthorp

GameMaker Staff
Admin
GameMaker Dev.
Yeah. We're hoping to get a mix of those who are happy to keep gamedev as a hobby and hobbyists who want to see it evolve into a full-time career. It really can be a difficult balance! Good luck with your project. If you'd like to join in with others who have reached up just drop me a PM.

Our publishing venture hit a few bumps in the road and we thought best to focus back in on GameMaker rather than overextend ourselves. More details here. It was a shame ultimately because there are so many great games out there we wanted to support. We still try our best to help devs out with console support and promotion with our Showcase, Made with GM sales and guest tech blogs.
 

Kezarus

Endless Game Maker
Yeah, I would love to become a full indie, but life happens and indie games don't sell as much as they did in the past. Steam is full of crappy, pornographic, bad games nowadays.

I do development as a hobbie and pay artists to the games I code. Industry-wise... almost every place uses Unity. And, as much as I have some experience in it, the market pays too little and the projects are short. So... hobbie. *shrugh*
 

dawidM

Member
I am also a hobbyist but would love to turn it into the full time career. As others wrote, it is very hard to make a living as an indie game developer. Now I use GMS to create some small business apps for the industry I work in. At least it makes my resume looks good. It is not easy to create software in GMS ( lack of good and easy GUI system) but GML is the language I know well, so I decide to use GMS instead of WinForms. Also I love the community and the whole history of GMS, so I am emotionally bonded to GM.

It is sad, that almost no game companies hire people with experience in GMS. There are a lot of companies that hire Unity guys and I would b very happy if GMS has the same popularity among commercial companies as Unity. I hope that it will happen in the future, maybe in a few years from now, but when it finally happens I will gladly leave my steady job for coding games in GMS, even if salary is much smaller.
 

Zhanghua

Member
The GML’s poor flexibility now
But I'm waiting for the BIG version 2.3.
I think at the end of the 2019, I can organize my code more efficient !!

A suggestion is why not let the GML support the Matrix Operation?
For the hot staff on Nerual Network.
 
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Chaser

Member
I would say i'm a hobbyist, or aspiring game developer, unless I actually released a project fully, then i would consider myself a game dev, successful or not, but if i'm honest, I like the tag ' hobbyist', it doesn't feel as pressured when working on projects. Even if i had multiple successful projects, i'm still not sure i would ever consider myself a full time game dev and make it a full career out of it.
 
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