Yes, as user "scroy" points out I am talking about Voxel Quest.
Bits and pieces of my story are scattered around, but here is the full thing (grab a pillow):
In around 2000-2004, I was working several jobs while attending UCSB, as a gardener, a lab monitor, and a freelance web designer. I got by working the first couple years but the last year was hard and I was disqualified from engineering. I wanted to quit school but my parents pushed me to transfer. In 2004-2006, I worked on my first big game engine while finishing my degree. I lived the majority of my time in isolation (at a school that was built over a "haunted" mental hospital of all places; I wish I was making this up: http://www.hauntedplaces.org/item/camarillo-state-mental-hos...). The initial tech demo was well received, but no crowd-funding or "early access" existed at that point, and I tried to keep the game going via donations but only got about $200 outside of family (the original people who donated were given really good rewards from my recent Kickstarter campaign though).
My parents nudged me to get a paying job (I had been out of college for 6 months at that point), so I worked for a startup in SD called Goowy Media (funded by Mark Cuban, led by Alex Bard, and acquired by AOL - I was just an employee though). Startup hours killed any hope of finishing the project but I kept working on small games and other projects in my spare time. In a way my many failures turned out to be the perfect storm. For a lot of people, I think success kills their ambitions - they tend to get into funding other peoples projects rather than their own. My failures hardened my desire for success, while helping me hone my skills.
Several years ago, I was working for my twin brother and his partner making mobile applications (we have both since left the company although I think he still might consult). The people were all nice but the job was time consuming and not very interesting for me. In spite of working long hours, I still tried to do what I could outside of work. My job was often hard, but occasionally calm, so I had some windows to work on projects. After a few brutal months of work, I got really desperate. My life was falling apart in almost every respect - my health was suffering (there were some weeks I worked 100 hours), my relationship with my girlfriend (now wife) was naturally suffering as well, I was depressed, I had just finished paying off a large amount of debt so my financial situation was only just recovering. I started testing the waters for other jobs (could not find any good fits), and started cold-emailing investors to pitch bad ideas (no responses of course).
I remember the exact moment I turned my life around. It is kind of embarrassing to say, but I was looking at myself in the bathroom mirror, and I looked like hell, and I broke down into tears (I don't often cry, or express any emotion for that matter - it takes a lot to get anything out of me). I wanted to blame my situation on anyone but myself, I wanted to feel sorry for myself, and then I realized that was exactly what was wrong with my life. Who was going to change my life if not me? F__k it, I thought, I'm reprogramming my life now.
I put in my one month notice to quit, and threw a "Hail Mary" pass to Reddit, asking for advice about what to do in my situation. To my surprise, a person from Switzerland looked over my work and offered to invest some money (he was not an investor, just had some money in savings that he was willing to loan out). I was going to Germany to meet my (at the time) girlfriend's family, and made a side trip to Switzerland to meet my investor in what felt like a clandestine James Bond meeting. I also snuck in a proposal to my wife while in Switzerland. :)
With my job severance and new investment, I began to bootstrap my game (Voxel Quest). I worked over a year on it (doubletime), and posted here on HN a few times. In fact, HN was almost solely responsible for my success up to this point, as it was one of the few communities that seemed to get what I was working on. Each time I posted to HN, I would hit the top of the front page, and investors began to take interest. Right now I pay myself about $15/hour and have a wife/kid/dogs/car/house to pay for, so choosing to stay private was not easy. I invested my life in my work, and cashing out felt too much like giving up on realizing its full potential (or I am just really bad at making financial decisions, you choose). :) In spite of turning everyone down, several have offered more than once, so there is comfort in knowing that additional options exist if needed.
I launched my Kickstarter at perhaps the worst time possible, when projects are failing left and right, press is refusing to cover many KS projects, and backers are more skeptical than ever. I was lucky to reach and exceed my goal, and I am extremely thankful to everyone here for making it happen (over 1/3 of donations came from here on HN).
Right now I am just working hard, when not procrastinating as with writing this. I try to update weekly, and each update seems to bring a bit of new interest and preorders are picking up so I am still optimistic about the way things are going, even though life is not easy at this point.
A few more tips:
Never hide your work. Make everything you do public. I went 6 months between updates, which is an eternity in project time. Strive to update weekly, no matter how small the amount of work done. It can seem time consuming but you will get better at it the more you do it.
Publicity will make you accountable for your work (or lack thereof), it will motivate you (via praise), and it will help you improve your results (via criticism).
Share your successes, even if you are not comfortable tooting your own horn. People like to hear about success, and it breeds interest in your work.
IMHO there are two reason you are not millionaire(yet):
-You need an application or game for your engine so people can play with it.
-You need to learn a little marketing. That is, you need to understand the needs of the people, so you can design around humans beings, not just around machines.
Both of these are things that I (massively) failed to address early on and am actually now striving towards.
I'm actually pretty happy at this point. If my wage were raised just slightly, and the threat of running out of (non-investor) money was not looming, I would be 100 percent happy. Wouldn't take millions, but nonetheless its good to aim high. :)
Currently working on putting out at least a minimally viable game to accompany the engine, which will be released with source this coming March (fingers crossed). I'm taking community input for the most part as to what they want to see in the game, filtered by my judgment.
Minecraft has actually been a great case study for me in terms of marketing. There are many Minecraftian games, but none have really reached the success of Minecraft (even though many clones generated millions), and you have to ask why that is. There are many theories, but mine is that:
A) Minecraft's success was a self-fulfilling prophecy (the more successful it was, the more news it generated, and thus the more sales it drove). This is not to say, at all, that any of its success was not well-deserved.
B) It appealed to the younger generation in a (say, ages 4 to 14) in a way that many people are still failing to grasp. A huge amount of marketing revolved around user-made Youtube videos. I don't think I can do this, but still it is interesting to analyze. It was immediately accessible but showed its potential for further development which is why it was so successful in pioneering the early access model.
C) Markus Persson is a likeable guy, and an entertaining read on Twitter. He created a culture around Minecraft. He is also genuine - he really takes part in the indie community, cares about what people say, and actively develops even though he no longer needs to. Another part of this is because he has befriended and surrounded himself with other interesting people, and curates interesting content. He has almost 2 million followers at this point, including the vast majority of the gaming press, so single tweets can have powerful effects.
The project is really impressive, you have some truly beautiful examples in the gallery. I see what you mean that user content creation doesn't seem easily accessible enough to hit Minecraft's level of self-marketing. But there is tremendous potential I think once you reach a more fleshed-out demo. Hope to see that soon.
Yes, I don't think I will ever achieve Minecraft's level of success, in part due to the fact that I'm designing something relatively niche and for a less broad age range. But still, I'm curious to see what the potential of it is.
Looks quite impressive, but I was wondering what language do you use to build your Voxel Engine? And the motivation for such a choice? Looking forward to your feedback.
This is all somewhat cliche advice, but as usual there is truth to be found in any advice.
Treat your life like an imperative programming language. Determine your goal, and start breaking it down into the simplest steps to achieve that goal. Many time you can simply replicate the steps others have taken (this does not mean exactly). Nothing will change until you start making the changes. Find everything you dislike in your life and determine a way out of it. There are certain things you can't do (not everyone can be an NBA star), but there are a multitude of other options. Also, be shameless. It is ok to depend on other people, promote your work, ask for favors (just don't spam). 99 percent of the time you will be rejected but don't be disheartened. More than anything else, develop some skill towards perfection so that you are less likely to be rejected. Alternately (or at minimum, in addition), find out how to market the hell out of yourself and your work. This does not mean buying ads, it means capturing minds. Find people who are better than you and take genuine interest in their work, and strive to make your work as good as theirs (they will take interest, and others will by association). Be honest in everything you do, dishonesty can destroy your future chances at anything. Be genuine, don't try to sell something you are not interested in. Don't get caught up in your own made-up principles, do the things that are proven to work.
There is no easy or guaranteed path to success, but every failure tempers you against future failures. Most successful people go for years before they produce anything successful (a common number seems to be around 8-10 years). People, like me, will say to do XYZ, but in the end even going against common advice can make you successful. Listen to everyone's advice, but weigh it against your own instinct.
Much of the advice people gave me I ignored, and it worked out for the better. This does not mean to act like you are smarter than everyone else - listen to what everyone has to say, it may help you as well.
Sounds fascinating. Could you give more details? What was your sideproject? What did you do to turn it into a unicorn job? Thanks in advance.