Learning the Mystery Gamedev Business Mindset

And the three biggest mistakes all hobbyist developers make

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: most mystery game developers will never ship a commercial product. Not because they lack talent or ideas, but because they aren’t taking the process seriously enough to make it across the finish line.

I can speak to this personally through at least three different projects: my first Detective Butler game that I released while in college, my second Detective Butler game that stalled for years and I’ve repeatedly had to put on hiatus, and the group project Reaplaced that won multiple awards with less than 30 days of development.

And across the years of running Mystery Gamedev, I’ve noticed certain patterns and behaviors that the most successful developers tend to adopt, while the least successful developers tend to ignore.

It’s the difference between a game that takes several years to develop and sells practically zero copies, and a game that takes much less time yet brings in much more revenue.

In other words, you’re thinking with a business mindset rather than a hobbyist one.

Now to be clear, there’s nothing wrong with making games purely as a hobby.

But if you want to succeed commercially, you cannot treat game development like one.

So if you’re working on a mystery game right now and want to know whether you’ve truly adopted this business mindset, then keep on reading.

I’ll explain to you the three biggest “hobbyist” mistakes I’ve consistently seen developers make — including myself — and how you can overcome them.