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The Indiepocalypse happened - we are now in the Indie Post-Apocalypse

laclongquan

Arcane
Joined
Jan 10, 2007
Messages
1,870,144
Location
Searching for my kidnapped sister
Fuck intrinsic value! Game dev, by essence, is a business like any other. Sure, it has many art-like aspects. but in essence it follow business rules.

1st business rules: for whom do you serve?

Most indie devs say "Me, Myself, and I". Thus they are artists and will die poor, unacknowledge (or quit).
Some indie say "the specifically small audience" that myself is proabbly a part of. Thus they are indie dev and make game for a niche. Sure, they can be artist too, but that must serve who they serve. Which is a select group with very defined taste and demand.
And then some who say "the big mass" that pay the most money and play most game. Thus they make AAA-potential games. Hit or miss are depended.
 

some funny shit

Scholar
Joined
Apr 14, 2018
Messages
388
Location
nowhere
Also making games never been easier and more accessible. And tools are getting better every year!

Thousands of games were made in 72 hours for Ludum Dare 42.
I am sure everyone will find something interesting to play: https://itch.io/games/tag-ludum-dare-42

Situation is so bad that gamers dont even want to play free games!
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
Developer
Joined
Aug 15, 2012
Messages
5,703
Location
California
MRY tries to defend his existence as gamedev and existence of his new game that is probably doomed for 99%.
I view it as a fun hobby that’s made me a few hundred thousand bucks since college days. There is almost no scenario now where working on a game can affect my standard of living monetarily—I only spend a few grand on it. It’s mosty a timesuck, but I enjoy it. Is definitely be sad if Steam wouldn’t let me release on it, though.
 

Gerrard

Arcane
Joined
Nov 5, 2007
Messages
11,922

>28 likes
If this doesn't explain it to you then I don't know what will.


Golden Krone Hotel did okay in the Roguelike community. The steam post isn't about that game.

67 reviews, you sure about that?

I hope you're not using Steam reviews as a metric for the roguelike community lol.

Did you even read the guy's post?
I would go even further and tell you my personal rule of thumb: if a $10 indie game doesn’t have over 300 reviews, it was probably a financial failure. That is it hasn’t provided the equivalent of what someone could make in industry in a single year.
 

DexRiwus

Novice
Joined
May 17, 2018
Messages
59
Find Niche- Understand Niche- Make somewhat unique, good game for that niche- Market it to that niche- Niche buys predictable amount of copies (according to which you should have planned your budget)- Maybe it reaches beyond that niche. People thinking that they do not have to put any effort into selling their product just because its good are dumb.
 

Generic-Giant-Spider

Guest
At least there are some indie devs climbing to new heights, trying to keep the scene relevant and the zany whacky ideas are as fresh as they are fun!

p1_2461863_e3d5b968.jpg


shower-with-your-dad-simulator-game-2-796x447.jpg


Hahaha, a guy in a pot with a hammer climbing up reused assets! SHOWER WITH YOUR DAD! Who does that anymore?! God, all my imagination from the '90s on where games could be in the future never prepared me for such inbred levels of amazing design! A cadillac of incline!

So remember, the next time someone tells you we're in a golden age of gaming gouge out their eyes. I'll cover your bail.
 

Bester

⚰️☠️⚱️
Patron
Vatnik
Joined
Sep 28, 2014
Messages
10,992
Location
USSR
At least there are some indie devs climbing to new heights, trying to keep the scene relevant and the zany whacky ideas are as fresh as they are fun!

p1_2461863_e3d5b968.jpg


shower-with-your-dad-simulator-game-2-796x447.jpg


Hahaha, a guy in a pot with a hammer climbing up reused assets! SHOWER WITH YOUR DAD! Who does that anymore?! God, all my imagination from the '90s on where games could be in the future never prepared me for such inbred levels of amazing design! A cadillac of incline!

So remember, the next time someone tells you we're in a golden age of gaming gouge out their eyes. I'll cover your bail.

I couldn't even tell what your point was. Anyway,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sole_survivors_of_airline_accidents_or_incidents
 

Hobo Elf

Arcane
Joined
Feb 17, 2009
Messages
13,997
Location
Platypus Planet

>28 likes
If this doesn't explain it to you then I don't know what will.


Golden Krone Hotel did okay in the Roguelike community. The steam post isn't about that game.

67 reviews, you sure about that?

I hope you're not using Steam reviews as a metric for the roguelike community lol.

Did you even read the guy's post?
I would go even further and tell you my personal rule of thumb: if a $10 indie game doesn’t have over 300 reviews, it was probably a financial failure. That is it hasn’t provided the equivalent of what someone could make in industry in a single year.

Oh my god you are using Steam reviews a metric for the roguelike community.
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
Developer
Joined
Aug 15, 2012
Messages
5,703
Location
California
Oh my god you are using Steam reviews a metric for the roguelike community.
No, he's saying that the guy who made Golden Krone Hotel is using them as a metric, and by his own metric, the game bombed. (I think?)

That said:
I would go even further and tell you my personal rule of thumb: if a $10 indie game doesn’t have over 300 reviews, it was probably a financial failure. That is it hasn’t provided the equivalent of what someone could make in industry in a single year.
This is an incredible statement on many levels. Let me lay them out:

(1) A person who works from home on his passion projects, with complete creative control and complete public credit for the project, should not expect to earn as much as he would when working for a corporation. Otherwise, why would anyone ever work for a corporation...? To the extent he is viewing "be my own boss" as a professional alternative to "work for a boss who pays me," unless he's being utterly irrational, he is putting a value on control over his work schedule and work environment, fame, creative freedom, etc. that makes up for the shortfall in pay.

(2) A tiny, tiny percentage of people who make failed Steam games are doing it as a full-time profession. So the choice isn't between making Game X and working for Ubisoft, it's between making Game X and going for a hike, posting in another Codex thread, reading a fantasy novel, getting more sleep, etc.

(3) Most of the people who make failed games on Steam couldn't get jobs in the industry. Yeah, yeah, standards are low everywhere. But basically this argument is like, "If instead of writing Warhammer fan fiction on Usenet, you got a job writing shared world novels for Games Workshop, you'd have made so much money!!!!"

(4) If making more money is your goal, making games is a bad idea. So, "If you're only getting 300 reviews, rather than working from home making your dream game project, you should sit in a cubicle writing item descriptions for a F2P micro-transactions idle game" should really be rewritten as, "If you're only getting 300 reviews, maybe you should just get a job in data entry or accounting or pipe fitting."
 

Bester

⚰️☠️⚱️
Patron
Vatnik
Joined
Sep 28, 2014
Messages
10,992
Location
USSR
A person who works from home on his passion projects, with complete creative control and complete public credit for the project, should not expect to earn as much as he would when working for a corporation.
No, indeed, he should expect to earn more, because there is no boss to steal his employee's added value.

Or do you mean that a passion project means less sales? I'm sure most games are someone's passion project, so it bears minimal impact.

If a game doesn't sell, it's not because it's indie.
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
Developer
Joined
Aug 15, 2012
Messages
5,703
Location
California
A person who works from home on his passion projects, with complete creative control and complete public credit for the project, should not expect to earn as much as he would when working for a corporation.
No, indeed, he should expect to earn more, because there is no boss to steal his employee's added value.

Or do you mean that a passion project means less sales? I'm sure most games are someone's passion project, so it bears minimal impact.

If a game doesn't sell, it's not because it's indie.
Capital, how does it work?
 

J_C

One Bit Studio
Patron
Developer
Joined
Dec 28, 2010
Messages
16,947
Location
Pannonia
Project: Eternity Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath
(4) If making more money is your goal, making games is a bad idea. So, "If you're only getting 300 reviews, rather than working from home making your dream game project, you should sit in a cubicle writing item descriptions for a F2P micro-transactions idle game" should really be rewritten as, "If you're only getting 300 reviews, maybe you should just get a job in data entry or accounting or pipe fitting."

Aaaaacctuallyyy...
xtreHhf.png

Did you get that data entry job? :P
I know Primordia got much more reviews, but I couldn't let this go. :D
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
Developer
Joined
Aug 15, 2012
Messages
5,703
Location
California
Did you get that data entry job? :P
I know Primordia got much more reviews, but I couldn't let this go. :D

Errr, you know that I have a dayjob, right? As you note, Primordia has ~1750 reviews, and I'd still be silly if I'd made a dayjob out of it. My personal take on Primordia was about $120k. Even if I could knock out one of those a year, that's still only 2/3 what a first-year associate makes in the law, not even considering benefits. (Also, I didn't actually work on UIHY except doing a very little bit of editing work on James's story. It was Primordia's coder (James) and an artist (not Vic) who made it.)

I was responding to the article's stupid point that if you're not making money at indie games, you should take a job in the industry. My point, probably not well made, is that in my opinion

[Indie Passion Project]...................................................[Video Game Industry Job]...[Any Other Job]

If you're making the first leap, you might as well take the second small step and maximize your income. That's especially so because most video game jobs are far worse than their normal corporate counterparts along many metrics. The only ones where video game jobs are predictably better are "are you working on video games" and "are your coworkers nerds." If those two factors are overriding, then a job in vidya isn't a bad idea. But otherwise, I think it's more reasonable to keep your hobby your hobby and earn your living at the most pleasant job you can find.
 

IHaveHugeNick

Arcane
Joined
Apr 5, 2015
Messages
1,870,123
Did you get that data entry job? :P
I know Primordia got much more reviews, but I couldn't let this go. :D

Errr, you know that I have a dayjob, right? As you note, Primordia has ~1750 reviews, and I'd still be silly if I'd made a dayjob out of it. My personal take on Primordia was about $120k. Even if I could knock out one of those a year, that's still only 2/3 what a first-year associate makes in the law, not even considering benefits. (Also, I didn't actually work on UIHY except doing a very little bit of editing work on James's story. It was Primordia's coder (James) and an artist (not Vic) who made it.)

I was responding to the article's stupid point that if you're not making money at indie games, you should take a job in the industry. My point, probably not well made, is that in my opinion

[Indie Passion Project]...................................................[Video Game Industry Job]...[Any Other Job]

If you're making the first leap, you might as well take the second small step and maximize your income. That's especially so because most video game jobs are far worse than their normal corporate counterparts along many metrics. The only ones where video game jobs are predictably better are "are you working on video games" and "are your coworkers nerds." If those two factors are overriding, then a job in vidya isn't a bad idea. But otherwise, I think it's more reasonable to keep your hobby your hobby and earn your living at the most pleasant job you can find.

Kind of depends on what specifically do you do in video games. If you're an IT guy and/or have any sort of tech chops, yeah, it's shit, avoid it like a plague. Writing? Yeah, fuck games, go into advertising, technical writing, or anything else where there's any sort of predictable career progression.

But there's probably niches in video games industry where things are different. It's probably the largest industry in terms of variety of skillsets that are required.
 
Self-Ejected

IncendiaryDevice

Self-Ejected
Village Idiot
Joined
Nov 3, 2014
Messages
7,407
I found myself quite interested in Sword Legacy: Omen while browsing the latest releases in Abu Antar 's shovelware releases thread. It even got picked up for distribution by Team 17, the guys behind the Worms franchise.

They wanted £14.99 for it on Steam.

Yeah. No.


Similarly, it's been a couple of years since the Grand Ages: Rome sequel came out; Grand Ages: Medieval. So I looked that up on Steam.

They wanted £14.99 for it.

Yeah. No.

As an aside, that last game is available physically, like, wow, you can actually buy it on a disc in a box an all. £3.99 at GAME brand new & similar on eBay.

Cos digital distribution is such an incline over crappy old discs, why I'm delighted laptops don't even come with a DVD drive automatically anymore, I mean, it's just win win for us gamers in the digital marketplace of endless options isn't it. What's that? PoE 1 is still £22.99 on gog without any expansions as the cheapest 'edition'? A game which was released over 3 years ago? What's that? The Physical edition at GAME which comes 'complete' is only £19.99 brand new, wow, all hail digital distribution, where lower manufacturing costs = higher prices at the till...
 

vonAchdorf

Arcane
Joined
Sep 20, 2014
Messages
13,465
It would be interesting to know how much Chinese / Eastern European reskins and porn games influence the median.
 

Machocruz

Arcane
Joined
Jul 7, 2011
Messages
4,315
Location
Hyperborea
Fuck intrinsic value! Game dev, by essence, is a business like any other. Sure, it has many art-like aspects. but in essence it follow business rules.

1st business rules: for whom do you serve?

Most indie devs say "Me, Myself, and I". Thus they are artists and will die poor, unacknowledge (or quit).
Some indie say "the specifically small audience" that myself is proabbly a part of. Thus they are indie dev and make game for a niche. Sure, they can be artist too, but that must serve who they serve. Which is a select group with very defined taste and demand.
And then some who say "the big mass" that pay the most money and play most game. Thus they make AAA-potential games. Hit or miss are depended.

At some point in time, the art world overseers decided that technical craft and hired work were contemptuous and deluded people into thinking that you can serve only yourself, and become fabulously wealthy and famous. But you'll see some sleight of hand there when you study some of the wealthy and famous artists that the art establishment propped up in the 50s and 60s, and find they either were already established (i.e. had an income outside of their personal, experimental, or just plain bat-shit work) in other creative fields like illustration or graphic design, or had acquaintances of high social status who served as their marketers and meal tickets into fame; in other words, cronyism. I've experienced it myself with my work, and of course we know favoritism can be a key to entry and advancement in any field.

In more practical times, skilled artists worked for whomever had a large purse if they hoped to make a living, and whatever level of vision, creativity, and passion the artist had within him would, naturally, still manifest itself within the confines of the work desired by the customer.* And they had to be able and willing to sell themselves, none of this shy, nerdboy/girl, muh artistic purity shit that a lot of creative types have been on for several decades. At least in visual arts, some of the greatest, most powerful works of all time were the fruits of such impure practical concerns. Go figure.

*Genius compromised, but never fully quenched.
 
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