Spitballing...

I know I've whined about money before, but here I am again, broker than ever. 2011 looks to be a big year for games, and it also looks like I am going to have to sit a lot of it out (and be very choosey when it comes time to throw down my dough), and that totally sucks. Worse still, gas prices are absolutely killing me. It's bad enough that the university is robbing me blind, but now with gas the way it is I am losing money faster than ever.

For the first time ever in my entire life, money is getting to be a real issue. Like, not just my gaming fudge-money, but the money-to-make-my-car-go money. Scary.

So I was coming home from university the other day, a many miles long journey, and as I passed one of the many gas stations I routinely pass a thought occurred to me.

What if I robbed a gas station?

Nah.

And then I thought: Why exactly do I set out to make games so much? I thought about it a lot, and I don't really know.

A lot of my (douchey) game dev peers (or really, game dev betters) would be quick to explain that they do it for the artistic merit of the games they create. But honestly, that isn't it for me at all. I barely buy the whole "games as art" schtick anyway, and generally speaking the more a game touts its artistic merits the bigger piece of garbage it is (*cough* Dinner Date *cough*). I do think there is a kind of art to game design, but it is the art of making something as fun as possible, and not at all about telling a profound story or any such nonsense as that. The 'art' part begins and ends with the fun.

Again then, why do I try to make games? I guess the biggest reason is because I'm bored, and I want to make a game that I personally can play and have fun with. I also like the experience, and whether the project fails miserably (which is 98% of the time) or not I always learn TONS about programming and project management along the way.

Back to that gas station and its greedy pilfering of the beautiful green stuffings of my wallet, what if I tried to make money from my games? Is there anything stopping me? As it turns out, kind of.

The first problem that immediately arises is that I actually need a game to sell in the first place. Now, I have unbridled confidence that my latest undertaking will in fact see the light of day (and feel semiprofessional, to boot), but then my track record kind of blows. Plus, even if I get it to a releasable state, could I possibly feel confident enough to ask someone to pay money to play it?

No, I couldn't. However, I wouldn't be adverse to the idea of asking for donations if people like what they play (and, presumably, want to see more of).

The next problem is obvious, then: How do I go about doing that sort of thing?

Honestly, I don't really know. Viridian, the GameDevDad has used an organization called 8-Bit Funding to get some start-up funds for his (soon to be award winning, no doubt) iPhone game Inaria. And he has had a darn good amount of success with it. Still, I don't think it exactly suits my purposes. I don't want start-up money - Lord knows I don't need that kind of pressure.

The way I want to get money is more along the lines of how a street performer gets his. I want to pass around a virtual hat, as it were, for people to throw a buck or two into after my performance (likely a mime, feigning box entrapment).

How? I have no clue. I'm hoping there is another organization out there that suits this purpose exactly, but I doubt it. I could just set up a PayPal account tied to this blog, and direct people to here or the account after they play my game, but that brings up a monumental challenge of its own: How do I get people to even find my game in the first place?

I've always had a sort of "if you build it, they will come" attitude towards releasing my games, but then I was never worrying about making a buck at that point. Now that I am, I know that I'm going to need some attention. How? Well, Fileplanet seems pretty cool about giving front page blog space to free indie games, so that could be a start. Otherwise, I'm not really sure. ModDB recently launched IndieDB, a place to show off/recruit for/otherwise manage your game. I could do that, but I'd need to get a little more professional first... As in an actual website... Which costs money... Which I don't have... Aaaaagh!

I've got it! What if I robbed a gas station?

... It is just craziest enough to work... Lock and load.