It’s been a while now that October has begun. “So, what’s so special about October?”, you might ask. Well, it is the time for the October Challenge, duh! “So, what’s the October Challenge?”, is your instinctive follow-up question.

Hobby VS Profession

Well, October Challenge is about bringing a game to the market (making it publicly available) and earning at least 1$ from it. October Challenge isn’t about making a game, it also isn’t primarily about earning money but instead it’s about becoming a professional. Not all of a sudden, but making the first step. What differentiates a hobby game developer from a professional game developer? One makes (hopefully) enough money to live from it, the other doesn’t.

I now have been a hobby game developer for some time and sometimes I dream of becoming a professional. But on other days I fear becoming a professional. The problem simply is, when you do something as a hobby, you can do it whenever you want as much as you feel like. But as soon as you go (full-time, independent) professional, you HAVE to do it, if you feel like it or not, otherwise you won’t earn any money to be able to pay your food and rent. This simply drains fun from the experience and can put someone under unbelievable pressure.

The benefits of not being a professional

Being a hobby game developer has so many advantages. You can not work on something for a while, if you don’t feel like it. You can create all the things you want, without having to worry about focus groups or marketing strategies. Heck, you can produce shit games and nobody will complain. You can give things away for free and never have to worry about DRM or pirating. It just gives you so much freedom.

The benefits of being a professional

Of course it isn’t all rainbows and lollipops. Doing this as a hobby forces you to have to work on something else to earn money, meaning that you will have less time to work on your games, resulting in less games or lower quality games. Being a professional simply gives you more resources (time and financial), given you manage to do well.

Back to reality

As confucius once (might have) said: “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” The only question is, if something remains fun after you have made it your job. But you can never find it out, if you have never given it a try, therefore becoming a professional is still a desirable goal.

But first, I would have to create something I feel like I can charge other people something for, without feeling like ripping them off. I never felt like charging someone for something I made. I make games mostly for myself for fun and for the learning experience. I hardly consider them absolutely great and I’m happy if someone is checking them out. I also refrain from putting ads in my games, because I also hate them being in games I play.

That’s why I will try to earn my dollar for october through donations. I will put up an improved version of my LD30 entry, ‘Hello, Alien!‘, to download for free on the play store and will set up a donations button for people to support the developers. I like the idea of letting the customers decide what something is worth to them and giving them the power to support what they like.

And maybe, just maybe, I will have earned one dollar by the end of the year.

I will call that a success.

-Anton