The Hardest Part

A lot of people ask what the hardest thing is about making a game. The art? The programming? Documentation? Story? Sound? Team management? The dedication to get everything done? Honestly, there is no one answer to the question. Any or those (or a million other things) can be the answer. It all depends on the game, the team, and the person being asked.

For me, when it comes to indie work, one of the things I have the most trouble with is advertising and promotion. These days, without getting a lucky break (a celebrity or major game site takes a liking to your game), promoting an indie game can be extremely difficult. That’s especially true if you don’t have a large advertising budget. Fortunately, I’ve learned a lot of lessons in that regard from some of my past projects and have plans to do better with Aurora’s Nightmare. This blog is one of them and the rest will start to kick in later in the year as we draw closer to the release. Here’s hoping it works out well. I’m not looking to make millions (though I certainly wouldn’t complain), but it’d like to break even at the very least. Aurora’s Nightmare may be a fairly low budget game, but I’m still putting quite a bit of my own money into it. If it’s not successful, I may have to scale back my plans for some future projects, or at least prioritize the ones that have few, if any, expenses.
Anyway, for now there’s nothing to do but keep working on AN, fine tune my marketing plan, and see what happens.