Jeff Vogel Soapbox Thread

[flushfire]

Well, 100k budget minus 76k salary still leaves more than half the budget of a game that looks like this

Xulima's graphics aren't the best either, I honestly don't understand why people find it appealing. Everything is blurred, shadows and perspective are inconsistent and after effects are everywhere.

 

[V_K]

I honestly don't understand why people find it appealing.

Same reason people like the visuals in Xeen games or Lands of Lore, which have many similar problems: they have a shitload of character, invoking a feeling of fairy tale illustrations.

 

[Grauken]

Well, 100k budget minus 76k salary still leaves more than half the budget of a game that looks like this

Xulima's graphics aren't the best either, I honestly don't understand why people find it appealing. Everything is blurred, shadows and perspective are inconsistent and after effects are everywhere.

They are at least consistent in their art direction and don't feel like a hodepodge of art assets

 

[Mastermind]

Sure, but doing good visuals implies that he cares about visuals (and even is able to judge good visuals instead of accepting whatever the artists he hires throws at his lap). I do not think it is an issue of money unless that money was enough to totally delegate anything related to visuals to someone else and he had zero say on that. From his blog post i doubt he's even near having such a budget.

You can hire a hopeful young artist who really loves computer games for a thousand bucks tops to give your game a decent art direction, especially if you have a relatively well-known name such as Vogel.

You can also hire 3rd world foreigners. Easy for south-east asians to do because all you need is a computer to learn and you don't need to be very good with english like you do for other jobs people usually hire them for (virtual assistant, customer support, order fulfillment, etc.)

 

[Carls Barkley]

You can hire a hopeful young artist who really loves computer games for a thousand bucks tops to give your game a decent art direction, especially if you have a relatively well-known name such as Vogel

No professional artist is that desperate. $10,000 at minimum.

 

[Roguey]

Here's an ancient post where an indie jrpg dev gave a breakdown of how much art costs
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.p...ter-coming-someday.86951/page-21#post-4476862

For the type of RPG Jeff wants to make, yeah the art costs would be roughly ten thousand minimum, tens of thousands at most.

 

[Beastro]

If you think my art is fine and don't understand what the problem is, bless you. I'll tell you what some think is wrong, as best I understand it.

1. Queen's Wish has a very retro square-tile top-down view, reminiscent of old Ultima games, old Pokemon games, Spiderweb's first games, tabletop D&D, that sort of thing. For some, that old style is really unfamiliar and/or alienating.

2. Queen's Wish uses art made by a lot of different artists. That means that the style is not quite consistent. We've done our best to make it blend well, but it's a little off.

3. All the characters only look in diagonal directions. I made this choice because I once thought all the art would be hand-drawn, and I desperately needed to reduce the number of icons I needed. This was a mistake, and I'll probably try to fix it in Queen's Wish 2.

4. It's not in 3-D. Some people will only ever be happy with 3-D.

I dunno how much I can speak for others, but the turn off looking at this new game is that it's a big change, but not a great change.

I had no issue his old style of graphics and like the personality to it, but I feel this bit of giving into the demand for better graphics has only made things worse. I'm trying to think of an analogy.... like if Disney hired Roger Corman to direct and produce an MCU film. You would not have any good talent of Corman's free of budgetary constraint, you'd just have a massive dip in production quality because looking good is not something Corman does and neither does Vogel.

With that said Vogel does have strengths Corman lacks (the only real one he seems to have in spades is finding ways to penny pinch even when it's not needed and an actual detriment to a film) and those are what he should be focusing on. I'd classify him in with the Taleworld folks where they make fun game mechanics and rightfully should skimp on graphics quality to make those strengths as best they can be. Sadly it seems Taleworld has gone even more overboard than Vogel in trying to correct their weaknesses.

I think where Jeff Vogel really missed out in his career is in failing to leverage his celebrity.

He talks about how as a humble indie he couldn't afford to hire an employee. Okay dude, but you're not just any indie dev, you're Jeff Vogel, a guy whose name still rang out loudly enough in 2018 that he could raise $100,000 for a game that looks like Queen's Wish. You don't need an employee, you need a partner. Join forces with another indie developer who's better at art than you are, and create something that's bigger than either of you could have done alone.

The vibe I get from him is that he wouldn't do it even if he had the perfect opportunity. It kinda feels almost like persecution syndrome even though that's not a good fit for what I'm talking about. I think he's happy doing things this way where whatever recognition he gets he gets all of it. The whole "living legend thing" and the vibe every article he writes comes across ("I don't think this matter is serious at all, but let's talk for a moment about it seriously *wink wink*, *tongue-firmly-in-cheek*, *show I'm unseriously serious about this* *pony gifs to add to my point*), I think he simply doesn't want a bigger pond, just to be the biggest fish he can be in the pond he's always been in.

Given his personality, I can't imagine Jeff plays well with others.

I could see him being a passive aggressive type which is in keeping with how he can be humbly unhumble and a starving artist who doesn't starve.

Truthfully, we're all approaching the thing from the wrong angle. Consider that Vogel, and this time I am not memeing, considers himself old and tired. He wants to optimize. Thus, why he went for the shittiest art style possible and Kickstarter?

+ Steam sales are probably slowing down heavily. He needs a new way to get money for certain and in advance, and if he can milk the audience by cutting down heavily on expenses and taking the extra Kickstarter money it's even better.

+ Getting good artists and keeping them (or getting non-Anglo artists for cheaper prices) is hard. Vogel is nowadays lazy. He goes for the minimum because he doesn't want to plan for art direction. He doesn't want better art. He doesn't need it. He needs terrible art that can be recycled ad infinitum (like in his previous entries) and he needs it to be fungible. There's some truth in his post, literally through the teeth: he doesn't want to pay again for more art assets, he doesn't want to plan for more art assets.

+ He's bored of the genre. Avadon has been perfunctory, derivative, and probably the worst of his gaming series. But he's a 25+ years old veteran that knows only to make retro RPG. We're not talking Illwinter or IronTower studios, with people with "real jobs" (pardon the term) on the side or with a burning passion: he wants the minimum and he wants it to pay the bills.

If you consider that the art style, more than a "ARTISTIC CHOICE" is merely a low effort for the maximum gain attempt, it makes sense. "BUT HE COULD GET SO MUCH MORE": yes, but he doesn't care. That would require risks. Effort. He doesn't want to risk or to work too hard on something. Literal wageslave mentality, and I am a wageslave, for sure I know!

Ok, now you're making him sound more like Roger Corman.

 

[Beastro]

Infinitron got it: Vogel after crapping on Steam for years managed to get in, and in that era of higher-level curation his games got a shitton of sales by being essentially the best of his catalogue. After indiepocalypse got in and his quality steadily declined, he probably never made the same amount of money (thus the endless blogposting crying about the "indiepocalypse" but HE IS TOTALLY FINE GUYS INDUSTRY VETERAN IT IS THOSE YOUNGSTERS THAT HAVE TO WORRY). I'd have to dig out the posts, but the 180 after he got on Steam and realized fuck this is going to get me a load of cash was amusing. Nowadays his games don't have a niche anymore (we got the RPG Kickstarter craze, Steam is flooded with cheapo games that are better than his last titles) and he probably trucks on brand loyalty.

Vogel's history is full of hating to take risks. Nethergate was risky: it didn't sold as much as he wanted and he complained for years that all that work has gone to waste and that he would never try something so "audacious" again (I mean, Nethergate with the two campaigns and the fake historical set-up is probably his second best work lorefag wise after Geneforge). Blades of Avernum was another "misstep" he sometimes talked about and never tried again after realizing that giving his players the development tools to make essentially the same games he was doing was nuking his endless remakes business plans.

I get a high contentious vibe from him which might be where this comes from.

Instead of looking on what made Geneforge so beloved, he seems to focus on avoiding repeating Nethergate again. He seems happy when he succeeded, but his main focus is not losing badly. I can understand that position, I'm not a gambler either, but the problem comes from how he isn't honest about these things despite his articles trying to come across as down to earth and from the heart in how informal they are in ways.

Something happened though. Remember, Vogel PROUDLY does not reply to fans. Does not read fan criticisms or forums. Fans are bad. Opinions are bad. They should be ignored. He's a professional. Feedback is bad.

Not replying I think he what he sticks to, but I think he can't help but have the opinions filter through, even the last article everyone linked here had quotes of criticism about his stuff.

I think he'd like to think he doesn't care, in the same weird contrary way his articles are written as. IMO, he could be too thick skinned in ways that hurt him, like not collaborating like others have mentioned here, while he's too thin in other ways, like that vibe in his articles, which if anything, comes off as the way someone guarding themselves behaves similar to, but not as pronounced as, the stereotypical edgelord who proudly states how nihilistic he is, but whose posting behavior shows a concern for a lot of things he doesn't want others to know he cares about.

 

[luj1]

Don't understand this discussion. Vogel hasn't made anything worthwhile since Escape from the Pit. He is formulaic and clinical and not likely to change.

 

[Dayyālu]

Ok, now you're making him sound more like Roger Corman.

DEATHSTALKER THE RPG

JUST THINK OF THE POSSIBILITIES

(Corman is a fascinating creature, by the way, with much in common with "our" cheapo Italian cinema of the 70ies-80ies)

Instead of looking on what made Geneforge so beloved, he seems to focus on avoiding not repeating Nethergate again.

There's also the fact that without doubt his inspirations have changed massively. When people refer to Avadon as "Bioware-lite" they aren't particularly wrong: both in the games and in his articles there's a substantial veneration for the Golden Age of the Biowarian RPG (that here we hate with a passion, but that's beside the point). Plus Geneforge must have been far more complex to plan than Avadon, even if I fully admit that I could not be arsed to finish the Avadons, they were just too mediocre, so I can't comment about their reactivity.

Don't understand this discussion. Vogel hasn't made anything worthwhile since Escape from the Pit. He is formulaic and clinical and not likely to change.

We're not even his market, and he hasn't done anything interesting for "our" niche for almost a decade, but there's much to discuss about why he went weirdo places. particularly when he makes flat-out bizzarre points.

 

[vortex]

Vogel needs to hit the mainstream like DoS2 and then expand the studio.

 

[Alpan]

Vogel is usually more lucid than this -- perhaps andropause setting in. In any case, having written all that, he somehow manages to miss his own point: It's not that his games look like crap, it's that Queen's Wish looks worse than anything he's made in the last eight years, if not longer (I have Avadon 1 in mind as my reference point for a fairly nice looking Vogel game, which was released in 2011).

 

[Alienman]

I think where Jeff Vogel really missed out in his career is in failing to leverage his celebrity.

He talks about how as a humble indie he couldn't afford to hire an employee. Okay dude, but you're not just any indie dev, you're Jeff Vogel, a guy whose name still rang out loudly enough in 2018 that he could raise $100,000 for a game that looks like Queen's Wish. You don't need an employee, you need a partner. Join forces with another indie developer who's better at art than you are, and create something that's bigger than either of you could have done alone.

Who should he partner with though? Do you have anyone particular in mind?
Like what kind of indie gamedev who is into inclined crpgs who is good at graphics?
Maybe that ToME spirte guy? Is that the level of indie rpg graphical fidelity you have in mind? I have he partnered with a number of other rpg developers.

Battle Brother devs could have been cool.

 

[Beastro]

When I first played Vogel's games - what, 10 years ago? It was a long time ago for sure - I was put off by the visuals, even though I had never been a graphics whore. At the same time I was discovering old DOS games I missed in the 90s and never had any issue with their graphics. Yet the visuals of Vogel's games put me off.

I mean, just... look at the character portraits. I could get better art from some guy on deviantart for 10 bucks apiece, not even exaggerating.
And the colors of the tileset and the objects on the floor just look like puke. If I wanted to describe the visuals in one word, it would be "puke colored".
And then there's the tendency of just coloring higher level enemy sprites differently, which always looks weird and off.

I mean... just look at it. It's functional, sure, but it's just not beautiful at all. Everything looks terrible, from the tileset to the interface.

We've touched on it before, but it extends to his map design. He likes squares, and while he learned to do more natural, varied geography, he still seemed to struggle.

Geneforge 3, the shapes started to differ, but was still a "slap, slap" down of geography with mountains looking places over other terrain rather than emerging out from it:

Even the later Geneforges still have a bit of that design making good improvements in looking more natural:

 

[Beastro]

Did he ever figure out why Nethergate failed, or does he think it a cruel strike from god or something?

I can't help but feel it killed any further desire to try semi/historical fiction again.

Another is, IIRC, Geneforge was originally very differently than what it became being very heavily more Sci-Fi with more emphasis on technology. I wonder if he fell into the temptation of surety generic fantasy setting offers even if he managed to keep that heavily restrained.

Another example: music. He could Kevin McLeod it like every RPGmaker game does, but that would require effort. Like, listening to the songs, choosing how to use them. He never did so, he can't be arsed to learn, it's not worth the time for his audience. So, he'll never do it.

That makes me wonder what his creative process is like. A lot of my creative ideas, once I get a setting in mind, come from listening to music. I can't help but run across certain songs that sound right for a setting and try to think up a moment that would mesh with it.

I can't help but feel his processes aren't very "artistic" like that.

You misunderstand. The 100k weren't for the game. They were for the retirement fund. Now he can develop and sell the game and be sure that even if it fails to break even on Steam he already got the money.

Kickstarter wasn't for a better game and Vogel never promised such: it was as a guarantee that the minimum sales would be reached. Also apparently the response to his bizzarre article was so bad that we'll get a response next week that I can already summarize: "I am a 25+ years old veteran and I know what I am doing".

That's starting to sound like Bob Sapp territory, the MMA fighter who folds at the slightest hint of damage being done to him because he wasn't to save as much money as he can and not spend it on hospital bills for retirement:



Commented in this video is apt:

Bob Sapp is the type of guy to tell you give me $100 and I will let you beat me up in front of your girlfriend.lol

 

[HarveyBirdman]

He likes squares

Perhaps one of the least surprising things I've ever heard.

 

[fantadomat]

I think where Jeff Vogel really missed out in his career is in failing to leverage his celebrity.

He talks about how as a humble indie he couldn't afford to hire an employee. Okay dude, but you're not just any indie dev, you're Jeff Vogel, a guy whose name still rang out loudly enough in 2018 that he could raise $100,000 for a game that looks like Queen's Wish. You don't need an employee, you need a partner. Join forces with another indie developer who's better at art than you are, and create something that's bigger than either of you could have done alone.

Sure,if we are talking about his career. But as consumer i am happy that he didn't. We wouldn't have got the games we did because of his indieness. Ahhh some people do things differently,i personally will never get a desk job no matter the pay.....now if i get the option to make my self a dream rpg that the codex would talk about 20 years later.....or become a Tzar.

Jeff made a lot of money in the 2012 Steam indie boom, before the "Indiepocalypse" set in. I'm pretty sure he's not doing as well now - it's likely a big part of why he did a Kickstarter.

I don't know about that,he was never a kickstarter star or something like that. He made good exploration focused rpgs for 25 years,he carved himslef a niche hardcore fanbase. Him making less money(if he does) is because of constant reremakes and Avadon being dumbed down.

Examples of games on the same or lower budget than Jeff Vogel's which manage to look better:

That is kind of unfair,we should be judging his finished games not a few screenshots from his latest one. Tho i do agree that they look terrible mainly because of different styles meshing terribly. His older games do look from good to serviceable. Another thing is the games themself,his games are like 5 times bigger than most of those games. While their art and music meh,they shine in another departments. Fuck most of his games are like 80-100 hours for me and i am a very fast player. I believe that his biggest mistake was that he listened to people and decided to go for the new graphics shit. I buy his fucking games to explore an unique world and kill shit,also i do enjoy some his writing,he have some pretty epic moments/stories. Solberg,you glorious old bastard,you are the biggest chad i have seen in a video game,going down like true boss !

or even Avernum

Nigga,really??? Fuck,the game have pretty unique setting lol. Avadon also had interesting parts,the corruption in the second game was pretty interesting.

He is formulaic and clinical and not likely to change.

You say it as it is something bad. I buy his games because every new one is like the last one,the same reason i buy PB games,kingmaker and atom. They are all like their predecessors and don't deviate from the core formula.


Fuck,this few pages make depressed,feel like i am on RPGWatch and not on the codex. Arguing about muh graphics and music in a fucking rpg.....



I honestly could give two fucks about how the game looks,even if it is hideous like his latest game. If i could get a good rpg experience and have fun playing for a 100 hours in unique world while exploring shit......well it is a buy.

Also you all forget something important about Vogel,he have 25 years of experience........which means that he is an old fag. Thus he could simply don't know about all that modern shit and such,most old people are pretty shit at modern tech and such. Why do you people assume that the old dude even knows about those new games and how the market for pixels is going on??? Most likely he is just paying some other old dude and believes that it is quality art work.





Ahhh fuck you guys,you made me defend a liberal fag,now i feel dirty. Still all that talk about muh art in rpgs piss me off,don't care how it looks as long as it gives good footjobs! Now i am going to cleanse my self with a litter of rakia!

 

[StaticSpine]

I never cared for his games, but Jeff himself is a rather unique person.

He sticks to his constantly shrinking audience repeating "25 years veteran" mantra. His posts look more like justifying being in negative comfort zone for himself, not for other people. And this is pretty unique, since a lot of other veterans try new things nowadays or at least modernize their formulas from the past.

 

[Infinitron]

The fun continues!! https://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2019/08/i-am-cheapest-bastard-in-indie-games.html

I Am the Cheapest Bastard In Indie Games


A Queen's Wish screenshot. Note that I use game art that I like to look at. This is necessary because I'll be staring at it for years, and I don't want to go mad.

A week ago, I put up a blog post called "Why All My Games Look Like Crap." It really blew up. A lot of people read it. Some were highly supportive. Others took precious time out of their days to let me know I am a gigantic, gigantic bozo.

Thanks to all! When you're trying to get attention for a small indie game, there's no such thing as bad publicity.

Basically, my blog post said, "Some people like my art, but I am still super-bad at art. Always have been. Fixing the problem costs time and cash, and I don't have any of either to spare. So that's why our games look bad."

I got a lot of questions about this. Good questions. Why can't I afford art direction? How much does art cost? Why don't I do this or that smart thing? So that's why I'm writing this. I want to answer the good questions.

So I am going to say some stuff about making and budgeting video games and why I am a bozo and why I am cursed to be a bozo forever. Along the way, I'm going to explain to you the whole indie games biz, from soup to nuts. If you like indie games, I think you might find how I survive interesting.

You see, I am the cheapest bastard in indie games.


I don't have this much money. And, please, I beg you, support bigcatclipart.com and the good work they do.

I've Been Doing This For 25 Years

Some people really get annoyed when I bring this up. It's as if having long experience and a huge body of work gives my words some sort of weight and my advice some value.

Well, it does. Do you realize how few people have turned a good profit for that long in this blood sport business? I am rarer than a unicorn made of bigfoots!

The indie games business is hard, one of the toughest there is.

Why Is It So Hard To Make Money In Indie Games?

What do you think the going rate for the best indie games ever made is?

Did you guess 'Free'? You're right! Go to the Epic Game Store every week and they'll hand you the best indie games, games way better than mine, for free!

That not enough? Join the Humble Monthly Bundle. For just $12/month, they'll send you 6-7 games every month, plus you can also download over 60(!) games in their "Humble Trove." They're good games.

So the competition is intense, and you can never ever match your superiors on price, ie free. That makes for tough business, friend.


Award-winning. Critical darling. Huge hit. Free. How do you plan to compete?

So How Can You Survive?

Simple. You provide something nobody else can ever provide. Something cool and distinctive that people will rather pay money for your game than get someone else's for free.

Consider me. I'm an OK programmer. I'm not good at art and visual stuff, and I haven't been since I was a kid.

But I can write well. I make good settings and stories, my spelling and grammar are ok, I make addicting game systems, and my systems and stories blend really well. THAT is the product I sell.

I'm in the business of selling Jeff Vogel games. And just like Van Gogh couldn't paint a Renoir, or vice versa, nobody else can make a Jeff Vogel game. Larian Studios is a great company with great resources that makes great products. However, no matter how hard they try, they can never make a game one of my fans will mistake for one of mine.

Fortunately for me, there are people who really like Jeff Vogel games, and only we sell them. So we have a business.

However, that's not all it takes to stay in business. I can get people to buy my games, sure. But I need to turn a profit.

That is why I need to be the cheapest bastard in indie games.


You can find a dedicated fan base for any imaginable art style. That's indie games, baby!

Let's See Some Numbers

I got into this kerfuffle talking about how my games look ugly, and I'll get back to that. First, though, let's look at budgets.

Our next game is Queen's Wish: The Conqueror. We spent about 20 months on it. For it to have a chance to pay for the time we spent creating it, it needs to make, after Steam and GOG.com and Apple and itch.io and Kickstarter take their cuts, about $200000 US.

(It will take years for the game to earn this money, but we'll be earning money from back catalog at the same time, so it evens out.)

Why that amount? Because that is what long experience has told us we are most likely to get. Low-budget high-text, thinky RPGs don't become giant hits, but we have a loyal audience, so we'll get decent sales.

Then we take out, say, $60000 for business expenses and insurance. Then we spend X dollars on art (the key factor we are discussing here). We use what is left to pay our salaries (to get baubles like food, clothing, and shelter).

So our earnings for 20 months of hard work is, let's say, $140000 minus art expenses. Keep your eye on the ball.

Twenty Months? That's Not Very Long To Write a Game

No! It's not! Whenever I ship I game, I immediately begin the race against time to write another game before our bank account runs out. Twenty months is actually an unusually long time for us, but Queen's Wish is an all-new games system and engine, so it needs it. I normally need 12-14 months.

By the way, for people who asked me why I don't just learn to do better art myself, this is why. To learn to do better art, I'd need to spend at least 6-12 months. (To think it takes less is insulting to artists.) I just don't have the time to not be writing games.


I made the frames and button background for this interface. It was years before someone say, "Um, Jeff, are you sure this isn't a little too green?"

So Back To Art

After I wrote the last blog post, a lot of people wanted to make sure that, "Oh yeah, pal. No matter how bad your art is? It's WAY worse than that." The most common complaint I got is that there is no unified style and color palette. My art looks like it was cobbled together from like 20 different artists, blended together imperfectly by my nonexistent Photoshop stills.

Well, I've got news for you. Our art WAS literally cobbled together from like 20 different artists, blended together imperfectly by my nonexistent Photoshop stills.

Here's the thing. Many people don't notice this. Some notice, but it doesn't bother them. But for skilled artists and people with an eye for this sort of thing, looking at the icons I use makes their faces do this ...


Hello darkness, my old friend.

Sorry about that.

How I "Art Direct"

When I do what might laughably be called "art design", my first step is to cobble together any floor/terrain objects that will function. I pull art from old games, from https://opengameart.org/, from sites that license icons for cheap, from anywhere I can get icons that will function. I use Photoshop trickery to make it blend as much as possible.

Eventually, I will reach a point where I need stuff that I can't use online resources for, stuff that needs to be custom-made for how I want the game to look. Then I go to freelancers.

I pay for bespoke art for terrain types with different looks that need to fit the engine, like tables and statues. Also, for terrain that I have my own unique formats for, like walls and doors and gates.

My artists work very hard to make sure the icons they do blend well with each other and look great. They do awesome work. Then I defile it by mixing it in with all the other weird stuff I find. If anything looks bad in my games, blame me! Seriously!

Doing the art this way costs around $40000. That leaves $100000 of earnings. For 20 months of work, that's pretty thin, but I'll live with it. I'll make up for it with the next two games in the series, which will take a lot less time to write. (Plus, eventually, remasters. I will be squeezing pennies out of Queen's Wish for literally decades.) So it's fine.

So that is where the weird mix of styles in my games comes from. Suppose I wanted to have unified art, all one style guide, all one look, everything done from scratch to give the game one pure look. I'm not a total idiot. I know it's possible. This is why I don't do it ...


This is a literal screenshot of the first computer game I ever owned.

Here! Have Some Hard Numbers!

Queen's Wish is a big game! Five nations and biomes! A surface and underworld! Multiple sets of furniture, all kinds of environments. The game currently has, to make the different regions look distinct and give enough visual variety, well over 1000 terrain icons. (An icon here is defined to be a 48x48 tile. Some terrains require multiple icons. Each wall type, for example, is assembled from 60 icons.)

Now suppose I do all this from scratch for the game. I need to hire freelancers. So I have to assemble a team of them that work in the desired style, that all make art that blend well, that are available and reliable, that are willing to commit to a job this big, and aren't too expensive. (If you think this is easy, you have a lot to learn. Assembling this team takes a lot of my non-existent time.)

So I hire Fredrika Freelancer (F.F.) for short. F.F. charges $25/hour.

(That’s a really fair price. If you’re paying less, someone else is going to hire her away from you. On the other hand, many freelancers charge $50/hour or more, but F.F. likes me and gives me a break. She probably lives in a country where the U.S. dollar goes farther. If you live in Brooklyn, I can't afford you.)

I ask F.F. to do, say, a stone pillar, about 20 pixels wide and 70 pixels high.

She builds it in her 3-D program. Textures it. Shadows it. Sizes it properly. Renders it. Sends it to me. I request some changes. She makes them. (I'm really easy to work with. I almost never ask for more than one round of changes. Believe it or not, freelancers tend to really like working with me.) I get the art. This probably will take about two hours.

So, if I'm lucky, I get this pillar done for $50. Yay! One terrain type down.

999 more to go.

But for Queen's Wish, I want 4 different pillars, to give distinct looks to four different cultures. Suppose on opengameart, I find a set of public domain pillar icons that basically work. They aren't great, but they function. If I download them, I save $200.

$200!!! That's folding money! You know how much money that is? That's enough money to buy 200 donuts! WITH SPRINKLES!


But That's Not All!

So do a little math and tell me how much money I'll need to shell out to get all 1000 terrain icons done, how much money will be chipped out of my $140000. And then remember that's just terrain! Then I need creature art, and an interface, and portraits, and color paintings, and sfx, and item icons, and ability icons, and ...

RPGs are art-intensive!

Are you seeing why I go cheap whenever I can? Freelancers charge money because they DESERVE it. They are talented people in a hard job. But they are selling the art ala carte, and I'm too much of a doofus to be able to afford too much of it.

To art everything being done from scratch with a unified style and a consistent, pleasing color palette and all the other good things artists like, if I'm lucky and get a lot of charity and really scale back what I want, I can easily end up spending $150000. Again, I can't do it myself. I'm a writer, not an artist, and RPGs absolutely need certain sorts of assets.

So here is the math: Doing art the cheap bastard way, I spend $40000. Doing it the good way, I spend around $150000. 150000 – 40000 = 110000

So to justify the extra art cost, I need to sell $110000 more worth of games just to break even. Remember that number.


We should be grateful that indie games have expanded what a game can look like and still break through. It wasn't like this a decade ago.

Or I Could Hire An Employee

I don't have to use freelancers, of course. I could hire an artist full-time for 20 months. Suppose I do a big search and find someone whose style I like and who wants to work for me. How much will that count, taking benefits and taxes into account?

Many who are unfamiliar with this industry are surprised to find that artists are some of the highest paid people. Good, reliable artists are rare! Check out this site https://www.careerexplorer.com/careers/games-artist/salary/, for salary estimates.

If I'm lucky enough to find a good artist who wants the job, with bonuses and benefits and so on, I might be able to get him or her for $150000.

If I'm lucky enough to find a good person, with bonuses and benefits and so on, I might be able to get this person for $150000-180000.

(LOL! This is probably way too low, especially if I want the person to live in Seattle so I can work with them face to face, which I do. I will be paying under the median at this rate.)

I don't want to do this. I'm an introvert, and one of the reasons I got into this business was so that I could work alone. But I'll do it. For the Sake Of Art. You, the customer, deserve it. I will never let you down!

Again, my cheap bastard art is $40000. If I hire a full-time art director/artist, I need to increase sales by $110000-140000.

Where Does the Extra Art-Buying Money Come From, By The Way?

So can I even spend the extra $110000+ to begin with?

I don't have that much cash on hand. Nowhere near. To launch this project, I need to take a bank loan or raid my retirement fund. Then, if I don't break even, I'm in big trouble.

OK. I Need To Increase Sales By $110000

I know. This blog post is a long slog. Here's the punchline! Remember, most indie games are sold at deep discount now. After the store's cut, I'll probably average about $8 a sale.

To make that $200000 I think I can earn, I'll need to make about 25000 sales. For an indie game, this is a LOT. But give me a few years and let me luck into a Steam daily deal or a Humble Bundle and I can manage it.

But to break even on my all-new art project, to earn that extra $110000, my still very low-budget indie turn-based-retro-word-heavy RPG needs to sell about 40000 copies.

That increase may not sound like so much more, but it is a LOT. Ask any indie developer. 40000 copies is a HUGELY aggressive number. (So is 25000, but, again, I have an established fan base. Every sale I get requires more work than the sale before it.)

That is just to break even. If we don't hit that number? We can easily lose the entire business, poof, all sacrificed for the sake of a nice, unified art style.

And that is why I need to be the cheapest bastard in indie games.


All my best art direction is done when my eyes are covered with slices of cucumber.

But ... But ... I Thought Indie Games Made You Rich!

Yeah. Sometimes you get a hit. Then you get a pile of money. Then you hire a bunch of employees and make a real company. Then one of two things happen. You write a new, expensive game and it's a mistake and fails and everything explodes. Or you keep writing good games and grow until GiantMegaCorp gives you hundreds of millions of dollars for your company and you fly free and take a big vacation and buy a Tesla and realize you have no idea what to do with your life.

However, most indie developers are like most small business owners. We're humble folks scraping by and doing what we can.

That is why I am writing these too-many words. If you want to have a small business or make a living as a humble artist, I have kind words for you, because I really want you to succeed.

The Inspirational Ending!

I got yelled at a lot for the previous article. It was basically a massive expression of contempt at me for being such a hack that I was content writing such ugly games.

(And if you want to get Extremely Mad Online and dunk on me more, it's cool. Whatever is fun. Shine on, you crazy diamond.)

But here’s the thing! If you want to be a game writer, or creator, or small businessperson, you should find my story to be inspiring!

I write games so ugly that I am showered with contempt, and yet I make money! I’ll have a full, lifelong career! If I can have so many flaws and still succeed, you can too!

Figure out what you are really good at doing. Sell that. Make your dream real. Get it out the door, whatever it takes, whatever corners you have to cut. If you’re better than me (and who isn’t, really), you have a chance.

Good luck!

###

I am writing these blog posts to get attention to our newest game, Queen's Wish: The Conqueror. You can also follow me on Twitter.

 

[thesecret1]

I've Been Doing This For 25 Years

Vogel didn't disappoint

 

[ghostdog]

Vogel is simply art-blind. Even when he buys some good freelance art, the results are just bearable.

In a few years he'll probably make an isometric queen's wish remake.

He's been doing this for 25 years after all.

 

[Dayyālu]

Also apparently the response to his bizzarre article was so bad that we'll get a response next week that I can already summarize: "I am a 25+ years old veteran and I know what I am doing".

As predicted.

Well, this solves the greatest mistery. The Kickstarter money wasn't for the retirement fund, he already has it.

Tbh, there's nothing interesting in what he says. "I am old, I am scared, I can't do art, I can't get out of my comfort zone because indies are dead". I'll give it to the man, even with his passive-aggressive demeanor (I AM THE CHEAPEST BASTARD BUT I AM ALSO A GAME CREATOR) he at least has the honesty to admit his games nowadays are just a by-the-book product in an assembly line to pay the bills.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

He spent more time writing that post than he spent on art in the game.

 

[Carls Barkley]

So I hire Fredrika Freelancer (F.F.) for short. F.F. charges $25/hour.

(That’s a really fair price. If you’re paying less, someone else is going to hire her away from you. On the other hand, many freelancers charge $50/hour or more, but F.F. likes me and gives me a break. She probably lives in a country where the U.S. dollar goes farther. If you live in Brooklyn, I can't afford you.)

Amateur mistake. Commission per individual asset and request evaluation from multiple artists.

I don't have to use freelancers, of course. I could hire an artist full-time for 20 months. Suppose I do a big search and find someone whose style I like and who wants to work for me. How much will that count, taking benefits and taxes into account?
Many who are unfamiliar with this industry are surprised to find that artists are some of the highest paid people. Good, reliable artists are rare! Check out this site https://www.careerexplorer.com/careers/games-artist/salary/, for salary estimates.
If I'm lucky enough to find a good artist who wants the job, with bonuses and benefits and so on, I might be able to get him or her for $150000.

Unnecessary. The key to good art direction begins in pre-production. Hire a concept artist to draw a few pieces representing the style of your game, and have your freelancers use it as a guideline.

So can I even spend the extra $110000+ to begin with?

I don't have that much cash on hand. Nowhere near. To launch this project, I need to take a bank loan or raid my retirement fund. Then, if I don't break even, I'm in big trouble.

What was the point of the kickstarter then?

 

[vortex]

What if Vogel could get an Epic Mega grant? This could be his breakthrough. He could get himself more employee and more money for better art.

I love the game Inqusitor for its art. If only Vogel could get himself such quality. Epic could make this possible and do good here .