Who are the successful job quiters in this forum? I would like to hear what others (if any exists) have done before they quited job for indie development. (It does not have to be game only. Any alternative of indie development suits me fine.) What are the risks, what have you faced? Did you achive goals or are you about to go bankrupt? How much money did you spare before you quited.

I am planning to go indie under some constraints. One is ~0.3% CR at the first game. Another is 5000 downloads at that game. That makes 15 sales and ~300$. I know it looks too risky, since only download.com is 79$, shareware tracker ~100$, hosting ~10$/month, file hosting etc etc...

What would your constraints be if you quited job, or if you have already quited, what were yours?

I quit my job to make TV commercials. I quit as soon as I got my first TV contract, for about US$1000. No savings. Didn't end up receiving contracts very often; it was too small a market in New Zealand. I had very, very little money for 3 years. Got into computer games as a potentially more lucrative - and more fun - alternative use for my animation skills. Haven't seen hard cash yet, but still hopeful and positive; everything seems to be going to plan. And I recently started working a small, low stress, casual part time job just to keep my head above water.

I don't regret any of it, not for a second. I hated my job so bad. The day I quit was the best day of my life. And it's just a distant bad memory now. With any luck I won't ever find myself "workin' for the man" ever again. I've been much poorer these last few years, but much happier. And before, I may have been getting paid every fortnight, but it was a dead-end job. Now, there's no telling where it might all lead. All kinds of new things keep opening up for me.

I quit my job about 3 yrs ago now.

While finishing my cs degree I worked for about 4yrs at a startup company that grew to over 100 employees and successfully IPO'd on nasdaq. Since I was there early I had managed to head software development pretty young. For various reasons I left the company when it became large. Partly because it was growing and had changed character, and partly because my age was a factor in how well I could continue to do in the company. Lastly because I wasn't happy as a salaried employee.

I went from there into consulting. Got jobs working for big companies doing work like medical software and stock market server software, finance, web stuff, actuarial etc...

The last company I consulted for was bought by a large US software house and they offered me full time position with some cash to come on board. I liked the people there so I decided to stay. I managed some stock in the deal as well. Around the time the stock market was pretty high I sold what options I had vested and quit. At the same time I sold everything I had pretty much including my car, all my furniture and so on, and headed to southeast asia. So I didn't just quit.... I also left the country. Big change. With the stock I sold I had enough money to live comfortably for a few years so I wasn't worried. At that time Aargon was already on the market and doing reasonably ok. I felt that if I put everything I had into doing this full time I shouldn't have a problem making enough money from it to live.

So here we are 3yrs later. Did I succeed? Well... I wouldn't say I succeeded in the sense that I'm rich or anything like that. To some degree I'm successful. It's probably true that I could stop working tomorrow and just live from game sales for a few years without doing anything if I didn't spend too much. Twilight also pays out to several artists and other programmers so probably only less than 1/4 or so of the money actually makes it to my pockets after all the expenses are met.

I'm realistic though in that I know I've not yet reached real success. By real success, I'd define that as a level of financial security where I'm not worried about 6 months down the road. The money is there but it's still tight and emergencies would not be easily weathered. Once I reach the point where I'm very comfortable with the amount of money that isn't needed to immediately cover expenses and the financial security that provides I'll be quite happy. It's not quite there yet.

I think its really based on what you want to live off of when you decide to quit your job.

For me, I will need 2k/month to make it possible. That means selling roughly 200 copies of a $14.95 game (because taxes takes a big cut).

1k for rent/utilities/month....$200 for groceries/month...$800 extra.

Of course I could live off alittle less, this is what would need to happen before I would be inclined.

Selling 6-8 copies/day is a relatively reasonable goal...but it will take 2 or 3 products.

Alex

I quit my job to work on games. It's been going well. I've been taking contracts for about 1/4 to 1/3 of my time and between that and revenue from games, it's been paying the bills.

One thing I wanted to do before I quit was complete one game -- from start to finish -- to make sure I could design a game, program it, make the art for it, get it bug-free, build an e-commerce site, and actually sell it. It was very important for me to know I was capable of the dedication to do all this before I stepped of that plank. this is partly why Rocknor's Bad Day is not as feature-rich as it could have been ... there were more important things to me than tricking the game out, like getting the web store set up, and figuring out whether or not I had the programming chops to get the game bug-free.

I did 90% of Rocknor's bad Day in my spare time and finished it during an extended leave from my job. With occasional contracting I've been able to keep afloat without running into money problems.

Before doing games I was the Senior User Interface Architect for SonicBlue (now-defunct makers of the Rio MP3 players, and ReplayTV digital video recorder, among other things.) I did a lot of user interface design for those products.

I used to be an artist and level designer for the Lucas companies but I left that for UI design. I got sick/frustrated at working on other people's game designs.

@Anthony; I got one of those *men*, I can understand you. Now do you live in Japan? Isn't living there expensive?

@svero; With that momentum I think you will cover financial security soon. Your way is the optimum that I would like to experience.

@Sirrus; Oh! 2k. Even when you start getting that much, monthly risk is so much that it is hard to see 2 months from now. If I need 2k/month I would quit at 4k to make it safer.

@hanford_lemoore; After 90% how did you quit job, how did you know it would succeed?

Yes, the cost of living is higher in Tokyo. But not *too* much higher if you live simply. We don't really spend much money on entertainment etc (there's no limit to how much you could spend on fun here if you got carried away with it; I'm afraid we don't really go out much because it always costs too much), plus we tend to have different eating habits over here - if we ate the same food we eat back home it would be much more expensive. And of course, we live in a small 2 room apartment whereas back home we would have a whole house.

All in all I'd say it costs us about 2x as much as back home, and our standard of living is lower. BUT, our wages are about 6x what we'd get back home. We're working part time jobs (I only work 10 hours a week), and not only living off it, but actually sending money home too. It's just so much easier to get money here, it's kind of redefined my concept of money in a way.

@hanford_lemoore; After 90% how did you quit job, how did you know it would succeed?

Well, I knew by 90% I had a decent game becuase I got people to playtest it and they enjoyed it. I knew I could make a game pretty-much bug-free becuase the game was not crashing. I had built some test store code with PHP and I knew that would work.

But let me clarify, Rocknor's Bad Day alone did not pay my bills. It wasn't a success in a quit-my-job-and-live-off-the-profits way. It was just a success in the I-got-a-game-out-and-people-are-buying-it way. If my criteria for quitting my job was simply "do I make enough off of games to not need a job?" then I would not have quit.

At 90% complete, I did not quit my job. I managed to get some time off to dedicate myself to getting it done and out.

~Hanford

0.3 CR at first game is a really good result, but not impossible to reach :p
I developed USM in 5 month part time working in an impossible hours. After that, in september I switched to part-time.
Not because I was sure that USM could do well (and the fact proven me wrong infact!), but because I couldn't stand anymore doing webdesign :)
I think you should quit your job (if you can) anytime when you realize that you're actually wasting your time.
I thought that even if I won't ever be a fulltime indie, at least I tried. Also I've already learnt some good things like:
* basics of C programming
* basics of marketing/advertising
* good knowledge of 3d modelling program

In a few months I already learnt those things. I am sure that if I didn't changed to part-time, I would still only know HTML/ASP and nothing more.

Anything that can make you improve your professional skills should be tried.

If you also find a way to quit a job you're starting to hate, even better!!

With any luck I won't ever find myself "workin' for the man" ever again. I've been much poorer these last few years, but much happier.
This is the essence of a happy life!!

My ultimate goal would be to make *any* kind of job that leaves me the most important thing for men: FREEDOM! :D
I don't care much if I'll became a indie dev, a freelance artist, a poet, and so on: the best thing is to live when and where you want and earn some money out of it.
I'd be much happy with 500 $/month than with 2500$/month but under pressure, under a stupid boss, driving in a crazy city, etc.

This is just my personal point of view of course... but think about it ;)