How to make money from creating a game for Windows?

Question

I'm going to create a game. Well, a set of games, but they will accrue little by little. So, at the beginning there will be one game.

The game will be written in C# with WPF and WCF techs, including server-side game processing, statistics and so on.

And yeah, I just have quit my current job in one company, so I need to live on.

So, how to start making money on this wonderful development? It will make much pleasure for me, as soon as I like developing and actually playing those games (gomoku, sea battle, etc)?

I only see two ways — one of them is to find an investor and the other one is to complete at least one game with 100% server uptime and start distributing it.

But I need recommendations. I need help, actually — the explanation how exactly to do all of this things and to to not starve:) .

Answer 1

Most of the indie games that have made it big in the past few years have published extensive development blogs, engaged with the gaming community, and eventually released their games on Steam. Buzz for games like World of Goo, Braid, Super Meat Boy, VVVVVV, and others often took a year or more to build up. Many of them were made by 2-person teams consisting of a programmer and an artist. Polish and beauty are very important when you're trying to get noticed.

Answer 2

I am not sure the size of these games you are planning, but I have seen a lot of success with indie developers on the Steam store (Terraria is a great example of a game that earned $1 000 000 within one year of when development started). But if you are planning on a series of small games, maybe it would be best to make a website and use silverlight and let people play for free, and try to make money on advertising (similar to Addicting Games).

Though definitely a key to success with indie development is promoting it through social media. The game can be fantastic, but if no one ever hears about it then no one will play it. So while you are developing, start a blog or forum or something to build a community and when you have a demo/trial mode ready try to find indie game reviewers that will play it and blog about it on their websites.

Answer 3

Just to add to what many people have already said, "Buzz" is a key factor. The "hype-train" of a game can indeed make it very successful. Steam is an option, particularly if you want to reach the biggest user-base of gamers (as we all know Steam has the most users). However, and i can't stress this enough: It is extremely difficult to get any indie game onto Steam unless it has a huge amount of "Buzz".

However there are quite a few specifically tailored alternatives: Desura, Indievania and IndieCity. So there's defiantly plenty of options, I believe Desura is probably your best bet to getting the biggest commercial audience without too much worry. I say "too much worry" because it's important to note that each service will have quality control. Steam is known to have very high standards albeit a bit obvious, whereas the alternatives suggested are defiantly a lot more varied and open to all sorts of games. Which is why i say it's your best bet.

There is also the legal side of things, and of course this depends on where you live but there is the matter of taxes, and it's also important not to forget that each of the services will take a specific cut of the sales (their cut varies from service to service). Do your research and find the best one for you.

Note: This answer is very much tailored to using indie-game hosting services that are already on the internet, and there are other alternatives such as Andrew Jackman stated in his answer, but for the majority of indie developers, depending on their background, using an established service is the most straight forward way.

(For example, I personally have no experience with Silverlight or using any form of web language, so personally for me, using a pre-defined service were all I have to worry about is making my games meet the terms of the services, is a lot easier.)