So, you've "released" your indie game and have made a whopping total of $10 on Steam, GameJolt, or Itch.io.

You're probably not sure whether to be encouraged that you've actually made money off of game development, or...

Discouraged, because you've only barely made enough to buy a couple of lattes at Starbucks.

What's should you do next?

I can't tell you what you should do, but I can tell you what I did, and how it shaped the trajectory of my career.

Let's backtrack.

So, I was a college kid working on an small ASCII game called SanctuaryRPG, and I launched it on Reddit.

It started getting a bit of positive attention. So, I kept the course. I continued on posting about the game on various subreddits, all directing it to the subreddit that I made, /r/SanctuaryRPG.

When the community hit 400 subscribers on Reddit, I launched the game as "pay-what-you-want" on Itch.io.

Within the span of a week, I had gotten my first few donations. Two people had given me $5 each.

It was then that I had a realization... this could be more than just a hobby. I could actually turn this into a career.

I was almost sure of it.

How could I be so sure? Five reasons:

1. I had a lot of free time, and I knew it. I had a part time IT job with a lot of idle hours at my university working the night shift. If something broke, I'd have to go out and handle it. But, for the most part there was just a lot of waiting around. While my colleagues watched Netflix or played video games during their down time, I coded. When a lot of my peers went to frat parties, I worked on my game.

2. I've always dreamed about making games. But here's what set me apart from a lot of other people: In addition to just dreaming, I dabbled a lot in the modding and mapmaking communities of games such as Age of Empires and Starcraft. This wasn't going to be my first rodeo game-design wise. However, it was the first time that I had to work on a game from a ground up in C++. I had a lot of game design experience, and I was confident that I could make engaging and compelling core game loops. I was building on top of pre-existing skills, and I was passionate as hell about it.

3. I had a small following who genuinely enjoyed what I had already put out, and were willing to go out of their way to pay me for my work. The game was 100% free at the time, yet two people actually cared enough to donate. Dozens more interacted with me on the Reddit forums, telling me that I should keep going. I was motivated as hell, and I had proof that I was headed in the right direction.

4. I had friends, family, and peers who were willing to help me on my path. From my friend Charles who helped me with optimizing the very first few lines of code, to Irving who helped me realize how both simultaneously fun and boring the early builds were, to Trent who helped me with the early ASCII art, to my cousin Jimmy who spent an entire afternoon testing the game in my bedroom, to... you get the picture. And this is just me listing people who helped in the first few months of initial development--I could go on for a long time listing the names of people who made this all possible over the past few years. A small handful at first, then a dozen, then several dozens. A lot people made SanctuaryRPG alongside me, and for them I am eternally grateful.

5. I was not willing to give up. Many times during development I thought about throwing in the towel... but I didn't. I stayed the course. I'd disappoint too many people if I did. Including Markus "Notch" Persson who had donated $100 to help me out (super generous guy). Including my colleagues who worked hard alongside me on art, on writing, on music, on marketing. Including myself. I wasn't willing to just walk away from something that I worked so hard on. A lot of people have said that if the game was terrible, this tenacity might have been a bad thing. It's far too easy to become delusional about something that you created. But, I had one trick: continual feedback from others. From fans, from colleagues, and from peers.

So, there's my recipe: A healthy amount of time. A childhood dream. A lot of practice and unintentional preparation. A small but loyal following. A lot of help and support from my colleagues. And a ton of grit and player feedback.

What's your recipe?