I travelled the world for 13 months with my partner and our two daughters (4 and 6 when we left) in 2017/2018. We talk about our experiences on that trip all of the time.
We didn't work at that time, unless you count being an amateur travel agent, which actually a lot of work.
We are actively attempting to design our lives in a way that would allow us to do it again.
Needless to say, it was incredible. I would do it again. It cost us a lot (in both money spent and opportunity costs), but I would easily pay 2x (and we certainly could have done it cheaper).
Then, when I got home, I receive multiple job offers (which I mostly avoided). So, it did not harm long-term earning potential (and given how much people admire the story, may have improved it).
You're right in that load times were abysmal. I have since removed the Product Hunt-like popup modal on the landing page. While I personally enjoyed the aesthetic and UX, my no-code pop-up was loading all of the images/videos for 100+ job listings upon load. No wonder it was so slow.
The new simplified experience (and many would argue, improved UX) goes directly to a full page listing AND reduces load times by >90%.
I have been operating this job board in beta for a couple of months and never had a complaint about load times (maybe it is all of us gamers that are used to download 12 hour game patches). I owe a great debt of gratitude the HN community for surfacing the issue.
As with any industry, there are both good and bad. One of the reasons that I have created this job board is to highlight best practices and raise standards across the indie community (through creating awareness of other jobs, how they communicate to potential candidates, the benefits they offer, etc. that were previously hidden on the jobs pages of 1000+ indie developer websites).
In general, I would anticipate pay and benefits to be less than you would receive in your well-funded tech company or startup. There is upside in joining a studio that has a hit game where you not only receive a salary but a % of revenue.
Work life balance is generally favorable as many developers escape to indie games in order to get away from the crunch and routine layoffs that you often see at larger publishers and developers. And indie games on the whole appears to be a more inclusive and diverse part of the game development community. (Of course, there are exceptions.)
There are some fantastic indie studios out there that really care about their people and pride themselves on creating a safe haven for game developers.
A couple of things that I would look for when evaluating a potential indie game employer (if pay and work life balance are of concern):
- A job description or about us page that speaks to these issues, that includes a benefits/perks section, that puts in the extra effort to recruit you into the job/studio. Those are likely the studios that are going to understand that you have value and choice. They are the studios that are thinking about their people, job satisfaction, and retention. Not all indies, particularly those that are just starting up, have taken the time to think through how to be a company/employer and may simply be focused on shipping their first game (again, there are exceptions).
- A studio that has shipped a few successful games, which signals that they might have the financial stability to both offer a healthy compensation package and have had to grow/retain employees through multiple projects. If a studio is brand new, you then might want to look at who is on the team and if they have shipped successful games in the past.
- Of course, I would then look to reach out to current and former employees to gather first-hand insight into what it is like to work at those studios. You might be able to find those people on LinkedIn or in Team/About Us pages. For actual communication, instead of a LinkedIn DM, most everyone in indie games is on twitter.
Another thing of note is that there is a decent amount of contract work in indie games, which would allow you to have greater control over your own compensation and work life balance requirements.
I would say similar to the startup world, it is going to be hit or miss (mostly miss). The potential is in being part of a small team (<10) that ships a game netting tens of millions of dollars in revenue. There are also a small handful of indie games with > $100M in revenue, those that get bought by Microsoft and Epic (i.e. Minecraft and Rocket League), and those that turn into the next Rockstar (they all had to start somewhere).
All that said, most don't go into indie games looking to strike it rich. They go into indie games because they are looking to make something unique and creative, away from the bureaucracy of the larger studios/publishers, with the potential for a nice "lifestyle" income.
