Lots of us here appear to be indie game developers in our spare time, but have another primary income source - so what do you do?
Of course, if you’re a developer making a living from games, tell us that too!
Cheers,
kev
Manager of a big team in an industrial company. Nothing to do with gaming but it’s my hobby and I would miss something without it. Beside, my coding level and production is not that good that I could live from it…
I work as a delivery architect in the application performance management sector. It involves a lot of customer facing activities as well as application troubleshooting/monitoring and SLA/KPI automation.
Been doing it for 6 years now and the nicest parts about it is the diversity of different customer environments which keeps me up to date with new technologies, the good salary and the satisfaction of helping people out in their daily jobs.
Not a full blown career because I’m still in high school but in the summer I work as an intern for a company that develops educational software for schools; They recently went international which is pretty cool. During the school year I’m now working with egghead games when I have time.
Year11 student , readying up for GCSE’s in 3 months, revision starts tommorow :cranky:. Naturally one of the best in the computer science classes (wasn’t that difficult but still), maths year early , surprisingly good at english even though my spelling and punctuation appear to fall flat. Hopefully going to begin doing an intern ship over the summer or to pick-up and finish SOLIS.
Up until the start of last year, I was a Resource Forester. Most people equate being a forester with being a lumberjack, but I actually spent most of my time with GIS, spreadsheets and databases. Most of my work revolved around mapping, forest measurement, research trials, fire fighting and working with laser-scanned sawlog data.
I’m now a casual work-from-home GIS Officer, and constantly trying to snag another forester role. In the meantime I’m studying Computer Science to pursue my interests, broaden my horizons, and augment my current skills. (Forestry is one of those great industries which brings together many diverse disciplines; stereotypical burly blokes with axes are in fact quite a rarity).
Freelance everything working mostly for insurance companies. Currently something between dev-op, cloud-manager, systems-engineer and portal-troublemakershooter…
Well, I… make games for a “living”. Not very successfully I might add :emo:
Cas 
After having worked from home for about a year, it turned out that I actually need people around me to function at any level. After that I landed a job in a rapidly growing company that supports schools in modernizing their education, for which we provide rather complex (web)services and support. It’s at times even more dull than it sounds, but I’m there mainly for the human interaction/cooperation. Actual work comes second, maybe third. :persecutioncomplex:
I am currently contracted by Dell SecureWorks as an on call developer.
I worked for Ericsson Telecom but recently changed jobs to a finance startup in San Francisco but most of the time I am working at home.
I must agree with Riven that home office is not so fun as it sounds. If you do it like 1 time per week is super cool. If you do it 2 months straight you start hearing voices in your head.
I’m still a student currently in the second year of college studying computer science, waiting to hopefully get into a good firm (still has 3 years of study infront of me). In free time, I do make $100 - $150 a month from Google Adsense, by creating videos for youtube.
I’m a CTO in a small french software company (around 40 employees)
We wrote softwares in many realms like insurance, stock gestion, …
It took/take me a lot of time and writing some “free” stuff at home is a way to wash my head.
I mean free for theses topics:
- no deadline / planning
- no success garantee
- no client’s returns
- no mandatory subjects
That’s why if at home i don’t finish a project, it’s not a problem for me 
The only things i regret with home job is to lost the team work (i love that),
But it’s the price for having previous topics : it’s hard to work without planning or sucess garantee when you start to work with someone else (just for respect him).
So, i learn some low-level stuffs at home (like OpenGL) for contrast with all high-level stuffs we work with at work (many of them was done by me).
Séb.
My friends are still in high school and I work for this:
www.on-5.com
Its been an amazing experience, because they hired me even though I had no formal education and almost no programming experience, and over the last 10 months period I worked hear I would think that my programming capabilities at least doubled or even tripled compared to what it was before.
In past Software game developer in indie company XD
(even Team lead some times, but its hard call Team lead when you have so small team like 3 ppl)
(its where specific indie company shi don’t make games for self like all used to think,
Shi takes order and money - to make games for client)
Games ar HOGs - http://www.bigfishgames.com/download-games/genres/15/hidden-object.html
making them is very - very boring
but even for them - budget is 300 000 $ per middle game (Collector’s Edition).
now quit (3 month ago) - tired, small salary, and want some time for coding for self ^^
up:
i feel self wrong because don’t say “small salary” how is it
- i simple even don’t want call that number,
but so many ppl ask self how much is “small” that I talking on )
15 000 $ per year - and you work for 3-4 different ppl ^^
- like Project Manager make Timelines
- then Like Team Lead split work for parts and watch to ppl make it in time
- Make tech art (like all animations for testing game mechanics etc)
- make Game animation except very difficult
- programming own timeline work
- and all that for 2-3 projects at once
From advantage this work:
I worked 6 hr per day 5 day per week – not 8hr, simple can’t - mind blow up after 6 there.
And 1200$ per month no so bad in place where I leave. =)
From cons:
it’s very tiring.
And no chance to payment grow up there
p.s Also (chief still owns me for 2 month payment and don’t want give it back XD)
Not really a career but I study at college which funny enough brings me on around £450 a month, then I work as a part time cleaner which brings me in a measly £215 per month.
I have also started doing voluntary work as well but I don’t exactly get paid for that.
I am hoping to make some money off mountain biking this year as well, as I have plans to enter events (with cash prize!).
Freelance developer/research for a company doing Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality.
They had crazy and insane ideas.
I made them into a reality for small pocket change.
I regret nothing.
I provide second-line support to developers using various enterprise APIs. I manage schemas and datamodels and build toolsets for these, and I write user guides.
I am a C++ programmer and in the days of the Playstation 2 I worked in the games industry.