This guy is making TONS monthly from HTML5 games

[Gunner]

Hey guys, very sorry for necroing, but even until today I'm still pretty curious with this guy.

Is he making stuff up and not telling the truth? Part of me says that he makes all of this just to sell his 30 page ebook for $30, his engine, and it works like a charm surprisingly.

All the "jobs that deter your souls with abysmal working hours" aside, if you reside in US sure I think this kind of salary is just meh, especially considering that $$/hour. However if you're from some other countries with lower living cost, I think this would be a freaking revelation. That said, only if he's telling the truth..


Benefits include:
- Can work from anywhere
- Can take holiday anytime
- Don't have to go to workplace every single damn day
- More time spent with your wife and families
- Holy crap just the amount of freedom that you can have is giving me chills

I don't know about you guys, but for me personally (a kid), I would much rather put extra hours at home and not having to commute everyday, dealing with your boss, coworkers, damn strict working hours (sometimes I can't sleep at night so that KILLS me to have to wake up the next day to go to work), and soo much more. But again, I'm a kid with no experience, so if I'm exaggerating things please let me know.

I say it's more about a privileg of being able to work from home than outside in general, however I can't think of any other jobs that you can take at home with this kind of salary other than this.

What do you all 'adults' think?

[Jackolantern]

He probably isn't lying. He may be neglecting to mention some of his down months or he may be exaggerating some months or maybe even every month. But he likely at least makes in the ballpark of what he says.

There are a few downsides to this that you may have not thought of or don't have experience with yet.

- More time spent with your wife and families
- Holy crap just the amount of freedom that you can have is giving me chills

Actually, to make this kind of money doing solo, independent game development he probably works much, much more than 40 hours a week. Most independent contractors do. He probably works about 65 - 80 hours a week.

And I wouldn't really call it "freedom". If anything I would say I am actually more free being a salaried employee of someone else. When you have a family, a mortgage, car payment, etc. you don't really have flexibility in your freelancer work. There is only one option and that option is to turn over every rock looking for work and take all comers who can pay for your work. Freelancing can be an incredible grind, mostly in finding enough work. Sure you can hit a point where you come over the hill and things get easier on the other side because maybe you have gotten a reputation and a name so more people are coming to look for you but it is always a grind.

And then there is the ultimate downside to freelancing that keeps a ton of people from ever doing it: you are absolutely working hand-to-mouth and there is no safety net at all. I have a salary from a major corporation and make a pretty generous amount of vacation time. If I get sick, I can just take vacation and stay home until I feel better. If it gets worse, I can take paid leave for a number of months until I get better. If I get let go I could get months of severance pay that would cover the bills while I look for another job. If everything goes rotten, I can at least get something for a couple of months through unemployment.

When you freelance, you give all of this up. If you aren't working, for any reason, you aren't making money. Sure you can go on vacation whenever you want but you have to save up 2x more money to go on said vacation because not only are you spending on the vacation but no money is coming in while you are taking it. I have to spend the same amount of money for the vacation but I am being paid my normal salary while I am on it.

Sure you could start to make a decent amount of money but you have to be extremely careful about adjusting your lifestyle up to that level of income or you could be locking yourself into struggling to pay all of your obligations and working around the clock to try to do so. On the other side of that, if I get a raise at my work that is guaranteed extra money I will have as long as I am working there.

So there are pluses and minuses to both sides. A lot of people tend to freelance when they are younger and grow to dislike the uncertainty once they have a family and children. I don't have kids but I would not do it today for the reasons of uncertainty.

EDIT: As for working conditions going to a regular job, it depends a lot on the job. I love going to work, they are pretty flexible with their hours and in general I love my job. I think once you get older, get more experience and hopefully get into work you like doing things will change. I have never dreaded going to work since I became a software developer.

EDIT2: Yes, the money is much better for someone in another country but do keep in mind that unfortunately the pay also goes down if you are outside of the country. This mostly has to do with people's biases about "outsourcing", possible past negative experiences they have had with sending work "off-shore" and also the idea that there should be some perceived discount for sending the work out of the country. Otherwise they would rather have someone they can meet with face-to-face who lives at least marginally in their same area, etc.

[Gunner]

Working 65-80 hours a week at home is fine for me. Working 40 hours a week and having to commute everyday to work however is not. 40 hours plus traffic can be a lot more than that. I think ultimately it depends on you, where you live, etc. Maybe if you live in places like US where salary is pretty good and traffic is somewhat acceptable then yes.

EDIT2: Yes, the money is much better for someone in another country but do keep in mind that unfortunately the pay also goes down if you are outside of the country. This mostly has to do with people's biases about "outsourcing", possible past negative experiences they have had with sending work "off-shore" and also the idea that there should be some perceived discount for sending the work out of the country. Otherwise they would rather have someone they can meet with face-to-face who lives at least marginally in their same area, etc.

No, I think they amount of money is more or less the same. Nobody cares if you're making games from azerbaijan or dubai or the UK. What publishers want is your game. I read all of his blog posts and yup this is true. He is living in Australia yet 95% of his clients are from other countries.


You're right in the end about that safety thing. I don't think these trends go on forever. Eventually HTML5 will go down and nobody cares about the crappy mini games you make anymore.

But heh I'm young, might as well try all

Also, all that crap about grinding.. Dang I can't agree more.. It's so true.. Only indians do freelancing because they have utter horse sh!t pay over there, might as well be a slave on the internet and still get above average pay..

Yup really, in the end it all comes down to personal things. Where you live, what you seek for, what your most comfortable work condition is, etc etc.

[hallsofvallhalla]

I worked remote for 3 years. It is a lot harder than one might think. It is a lot harder to get things done and stay on track. The isolation sucks too.

[Jackolantern]

No, I think they amount of money is more or less the same. Nobody cares if you're making games from azerbaijan or dubai or the UK. What publishers want is your game. I read all of his blog posts and yup this is true. He is living in Australia yet 95% of his clients are from other countries.

It depends on where you live. If you live in a non-native-English speaking country, they will want a large discount. It is just the way that it is (the company I work for is mostly known for out-sourcing so I work with it all the time). Someone in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh or many other countries is expected to work for 1/5 of what an on-shore worker would be paid. That is the market rate. Someone working in Australia is a very different case. In those cases, he is getting work that would be given to someone locally if there was someone locally that could do it. Someone in the USA wouldn't hire someone in Australia to make a .NET website, for example, because the cost won't be any less and there are people in their region would could do it.

Basically, the countries that could make the money go further due to conversion are the ones who are expected to be paid less. Australia isn't in that category, but they also would not benefit much from the exchange rate. The cost of living in Australia is roughly the same as in the US or Europe and in some cases even higher (video games and other imported electronics I know are quite a bit more expensive in Australia).

I worked remote for 3 years. It is a lot harder than one might think. It is a lot harder to get things done and stay on track. The isolation sucks too.

Yeah, I personally don't like working remotely. I can work remotely a day or two a week but I prefer going into the office. Like you said it is hard to stay focused and it makes communicating with your team 10x harder.

[Gunner]

But what about video games? If you sell games on Steam ofcourse you will get the full amount minus the 30% steam cut + some tax and that's it..

The way he does his things is by licensing his HTML5 games to large companies that have a site to host those kinds of games for the customers to play, sometimes monetizing via ads and such.. I don't think even the company needs to know where you live..

That's different with traditional freelancing where things might go as you described, but even then I'm not sure. Why would anyone care tho? The important thing is the work. Yes I do agree about the whole conversion rate and standard $/hour rate on your local area, but why? It doesn't make any sense. That seems to me like a d!ck move by the publisher and just an excuse to pay lower.

As with the working condition and isolation aside, aren't all enterpreneurial fields like that? There is no one setting the goals but you, if you let yourself slip up a little bit prepare to get far far behind. That's no surprise really.

Someone in the USA wouldn't hire someone in Australia to make a .NET website, for example, because the cost won't be any less and there are people in their region would could do it.

Why would you ever hire someone based on their location? Isn't the whole point is to both hire and work regardless of current position? Why not just do "I need someone to make me a .NET website"

[a_bertrand]

Something most under-estimate is the cultural aspect. Even if I hire somebody from India instead of US just because he/she is cheaper, the culture will be different than the one in the US. Working with somebody which have a different culture can prove to be harder than you initially think as what for you is "normal" for the others may not. If your software is then expected to run in a local hospital for example or a video game is for a local burger chain or whatever, you expect that your software / game reflects the company you make it for. Remote people with a different culture may not get those differences so easily.

Other issue is time zone. If I live in GMT+1 and you are in GMT-8 then we may have an hard time to even meet online and discuss things. Every time I spot a bug it may take just another day for your to grab my message and work on it. That is in most case show stoppers for remote collaboration as the team must work together even if we don't work in the same office.

Working on games I can assure you that any game with some quality cannot be done by a single dev. Forget the days of "pacman" where the art and music could have been done by somebody in a garage. Today games even the one on mobile phones need to have a lot more efforts put inside it, being the story, the concept, the art, the music, the advert and so on. Single person projects will not go all that far and I doubt they will make much money by their own. Therefore if you need to start working with a team of other people you will end up with the issues of remote collaboration or you will need to be together to work on it at the same place.

Honestly I don't believe you can live for very long alone in your house without any real contact and make long term money. It can work for some time, just maybe because you published something which sold a bit but you will soon have to move around and meet other people to make it further work.

Anyhow that's my own opinion. Personally I love working for a company my 8 hours a day, biking 10 min to go home, and that's it. I know that every month I get my pay and don't have to worry if tomorrow I can pay the bills or not.

[hallsofvallhalla]

Something most under-estimate is the cultural aspect. Even if I hire somebody from India instead of US just because he/she is cheaper, the culture will be different than the one in the US. Working with somebody which have a different culture can prove to be harder than you initially think as what for you is "normal" for the others may not. If your software is then expected to run in a local hospital for example or a video game is for a local burger chain or whatever, you expect that your software / game reflects the company you make it for. Remote people with a different culture may not get those differences so easily.

Exactly, not to mention in the US outsourcing is frowned upon. When I had a call center in Jamaica I was paying 17 cents an hour for agents and 80 cents an hour for "tech" related jobs and to be honest I often wondered if I was paying too much. The skill gap and culture differences made it incredibly hard to get things done successfully.

Anyhow that's my own opinion. Personally I love working for a company my 8 hours a day, biking 10 min to go home, and that's it. I know that every month I get my pay and don't have to worry if tomorrow I can pay the bills or not.

I would LOVE if I had a 10 minute bike ride to work and back. Instead its 30 minutes of traffic and terrible drivers.

[Jackolantern]

The way he does his things is by licensing his HTML5 games to large companies that have a site to host those kinds of games for the customers to play, sometimes monetizing via ads and such.. I don't think even the company needs to know where you live..

Okay, if that is what this guy is saying he is doing then no. No way is he making that kind of money (I honestly couldn't remember since this was posted so long ago). Because I have known a ton of people who had tried doing that, where they license their games to game portals and get a cut of ad revenue or a per-play fee. You make peanuts off of that. Not even $1 an hour for your development time. Most people that do that only do it to supplement their full-time income while learning game development or something like that. You can't survive on that revenue stream.

He must be doing some kind of full, pay-per-hour freelance game development to be making those amounts. He has to be.

[Gunner]

The way he does his things is by licensing his HTML5 games to large companies that have a site to host those kinds of games for the customers to play, sometimes monetizing via ads and such.. I don't think even the company needs to know where you live..

Okay, if that is what this guy is saying he is doing then no. No way is he making that kind of money (I honestly couldn't remember since this was posted so long ago). Because I have known a ton of people who had tried doing that, where they license their games to game portals and get a cut of ad revenue or a per-play fee. You make peanuts off of that. Not even $1 an hour for your development time. Most people that do that only do it to supplement their full-time income while learning game development or something like that. You can't survive on that revenue stream.

He must be doing some kind of full, pay-per-hour freelance game development to be making those amounts. He has to be.

Actually he doesn't get paid by a cut of ad revenue or per play, but simply the companies pay him upfront to host his games on their portals. Much like how investments are done. What I meant was the publishers were the one that monetized the game via ads etc. once they got the game. Generally he licenced his games non exclusively, meaning not just one publisher got it but many. If publishers want an exclusive license they will have to pay more.

He might be doing more than I know, but I assure you he does none of that conventional pay per hour freelancing. His $30 30 page ebook says it all. Being someone who reads quite a lot of books, I can tell you it's not even worth any close to $30. Not trying to be negative but more and more he sounds like some salesman who's trying to make you believe to stuff. I pray to lord that I'm wrong though.

Honestly I don't believe you can live for very long alone in your house without any real contact and make long term money. It can work for some time, just maybe because you published something which sold a bit but you will soon have to move around and meet other people to make it further work.

Anyhow that's my own opinion. Personally I love working for a company my 8 hours a day, biking 10 min to go home, and that's it. I know that every month I get my pay and don't have to worry if tomorrow I can pay the bills or not.

It's not like I don't want to go out or anything, it's more like I hate being tied down 8 hours a day fixed schedule like that. Sometimes I'm just not in the mood, sometimes I just wanna work without meeting coworkers or my boss, and knowing nothing I can do about it sucks. I LOVE to collaborate with people however. I just need to have that control to do what at when.

If it's as you described, staying at home all the time not wanting to go out then I agree, you can't really get anywhere if you stay. My problem lies more into having abnormal working hours. Sometimes I work through the nights and sleep 5 hours in the morning because I just can't sleep. Also with the fact that you can work anywhere. If your parents are dying back home you can always relocate to your hometown and take care of them and still have work, no problem. It's all personal preference and for me those things are important.