I talk often about how to find success with your games. How to pick a good marketable game idea in a well performing genre that allows your marketing to be effective in order to have the best odds of finding success. However I also try to constantly say how it's up to YOU to define what success means to YOU!

Maybe making 6 figures is your definition of success. Maybe it's just $10k. Maybe it's just releasing a game. Maybe it's just making something playable to have fun with friends. Maybe it's building something personal just for yourself and no one else. All of those are perfectly valid definitions of success!

One developer on Reddit posted and excellent image showcasing 10 levels of success. They range from "1. I made a video game!" to "5. I have a modest income from my game" to "10. My game is a cultural phenomenon with a long lasting legacy."

Which one best matches YOUR definition of success?

Personally my goal has always been "6. I made enough money to keep being a full time game dev", I just want to keep doing this for the rest of my life. I have no interest in making a phenomenon, I'm happy with making small niche games that only a few people even know about. I also have no interest in making a game with an enduring fanbase or turning a game into a multi-media IP (like FNAF). And I also certainly never want to retire! If I ever have a mega hit, something that makes $10mil, then I would still keep making games. I would definitely take it easier and work fewer hours, but I don't imagine I will ever completely stop.

Looking at the comments it seems the most common answer is 6 (make games for a living) and 1 (publish a game).

In order to achieve a goal, any goal, it's imperative that you are very specific on what the goal is, so do take some time to clearly define what is YOUR goal with game dev.

It’s been quite a while since Synty did a HumbleBundle, but here it is! ENDING SOON

Nice pack with Sci-fi assets, some UI, animations, prototyping assets and even a pack in their new style: Sidekick.

Absolutely perfect pack if you’re making something Sci-fi, or great if you want to try out their Sidekick character creator.

It’s a great discount 95% OFF so if you like their style (like I do) then go and get it!

The Publisher of the Week this time is SURIYUN, publisher with a ton of cute anime characters and creatures.

Get the FREE Pspsps Monkey which is a cute chubby monkey character with tons of face sprites!

Get it HERE and use coupon SURIYUN2026 at checkout to get it for FREE!

Yet another awesome HumbleBundle this week is this one all about Realistic Assets!

It includes a ton of awesome stuff from some excellent publishers. You can find Vehicles, FPS Devices, Environments, Characters, Tanks, Zombies and more.

All in a super high quality high resolution realistic style.

Get it HERE!

Cities: Skylines is one of the most beloved games of all time. It sits with 92% very positive rating with 100,000 reviews, it has made over $100,000,000!

Then in 2023 came Cities: Skylines 2 and it was a disaster, currently with Mixed reviews just 55% positive.

How did this happen?

In a recent interview to PC Gamer the CEO mentions how part of the problem was Unity, or more specifically it was them basing their design and the core tech of the game on Unity DOTS which was very early, very experimental at the time. They thought they were future-proofing their game, when in reality they were just signing up for an extremely difficult development process since the tools were simply not ready at the time. It lead to a lot of engineering problems which in turn were reflected in the final game.

So use this story as a reminder to NOT use Experimental tools/packages in Production!

Nowadays Unity DOTS is an awesome Production-Ready tool! If you want to use it now, you can! There's also awesome games already out that are using DOTS, example Diplomacy is Not an Option. I have an entire full-length 17 hour course on making an awesome RTS game with DOTS. But I only went through the massive months-long effort of making that course AFTER Unity DOTS hit 1.0, not before.

For years now Fortnite has been the juggernaut of the industry making seemingly infinite amounts of money! It's the cited reason why some other AAA games have failed, everyone is just playing Fortnite and no one has time to play any other game.

However apparently they have finally reached the peak in 2025 and have been downhill from there. Epic games has just laid off 1000 employees which is 20% of the company. In the announcement Tim Sweeney (CEO) talks about how they're spending more than they're making, how the industry as a whole is slowing down, and how recent Fortnite updates haven't managed to bring the magic like previous years. The only good news in this situation is that at least they got severance (4 months pay), but still it sucks to lose your job.

How is it possible to have the #1 game in the world that literally prints money, and yet end up with layoffs? How much are they spending on all those weird IP deals? Or is it their expensive legal battle with Google and Apple? Or is it them trying to make the Epic Game Store work by giving away free games?

If Fortnite is on a downtrend, who is on an uptrend? I believe Roblox is doing quite well but I have trouble imagining people going from Fortnite to Roblox. So perhaps those players are moving on to other games which could be a positive for the industry? The fact that Fortnite has massively dominated in the past few years isn't a good thing, it's not a sign of a healthy industry to have one massive title making all the money and everyone else fight for scraps, so if those players move on to other games we might have a more broad sustainable industry, but perhaps they just stopped playing altogether.

Tim Sweeney posted something on Twitter that I'm guessing he intended to be a positive message but really just comes across as incredibly tone deaf: "In the coming days, employers will see a stream of resumes of once-in-a-lifetime quality folks."

If they were so talented why did you fire them? You couldn't figure out a way to monetize all that talent? I wish all the best to the people affected, hopefully they can put their talent to work at a better company.

Do you have a cat? Do they jump on top of your keyboard and make it hard for you to work?

Here is a solution! Cat Desk! It's a desk with dedicated shelves and holes for your cats! Obviously it's made by Japan.

Although knowing cats I imagine they actually just ignore the places intended for them and will still just lie on top of your keyboard.