This indie business, it’s… well, it’s business. And that means it can be stressful.
I should be getting some income from two big projects at the moment – the contract work we did recently, and Vigilance. Unfortunately, the agency we did the contract work for hasn’t paid us yet. Meanwhile, I haven’t had a bid I’m happy with for Vigilance yet. So I’m stuck wondering: will I get a decent bid soon? Did I do something wrong? Should I abandon Flash games altogether, ditch the work I’ve done so far on Fight Back and just cut my losses?
Of course, realistically, these things take time to work themselves through, and some projects will do better than others. The contract work should pay off eventually; it’ll just take a little while for the cash to come in. Vigilance could hypothetically get a great sponsorship bid this evening, and even if it never does, it might just be that the project was too niche and Fight Back will earn enough to pay for developing both of them.
I guess you have to be a bit more emotionally resilient to handle running your own business, and accept the possibility (or reality!) of projects bombing in the marketplace or deals going bad. It’s especially stressful when you’re just putting out your first serious projects, trying to find out if you can make this indie thing work for you financially or not.
But, you know what? I know I’m okay at this stuff, and I genuinely do feel confident it’ll work out. If Flash games don’t work out for me, I’ll change strategy and do something else, and that’ll work out instead! For now, worrying doesn’t solve anything. I’m getting my head down and working on the next project. 😀