Steam The death of indie dev?

Fern

Member
NO THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH STEAM GETTING RID OF GREENLIGHT

My recent project is nearing its full release and I'm terrified. I've been looking at other games that recently released onto Steam (full release, not early access) and found that the majority of games barely broke 1,000 sales within their recent life times (1-3 months). I know 1,000 sounds like a large number but at $5 a copy, that's only $5,000 and in reality is a failure for a business.

After sampling 20 games (all from after the Steam Discovery 2.0 update) I found that only a handful of those games reached 1,500~ owners. This is deeply concerning and I want to know if I am overlooking any factors in this matter. It seems like I'm walking my game/career into an inevitable grave.

I ensured every game I looked at was an indie title and had little marketing (for a fair comparison to my own game). I always thought full released titles would sell closer to 10,000 or 20,000. I'm deeply concerned for the future of independent developers.
 

Jabbers

Member
I think you gave the answer Seabass; they are recently released indie titles with little marketing.

What are these games like? Are they unique projects, or just ho-hum casual games made by bedroom coders? 1000 copies is still pretty good for releasing an unknown game to a store, compared to other online game stores (especially app stores).
 

gnysek

Member
Lets look on Stardew Valley. It was created by indie team, mainly one guy and what? It sold in millions and earned dozen of millions.

I think that good game will always sell good, even with small marketing. It just need to have "this thing", which nobody know what is. Like Angry Birds or Flappy Bird. There's nothing special in it, we created Angry Birds clone in GameMaker in 16 hours, and Flappy Bird can be even created in 1 hour - but they also earned lot of money. Just because people liked it.
So, if people will like your game... you may be rich. If they think it's average - sorry, 5000$ may be all you get. It's a big lottery.
 

ramos

Member
Im thinking to become an investor and pay the fee for indie devs in exchange for % from sale :))))

but yes, this will kill small indie devs, instead of making a serios curator system they prefer an automated system that will milk more money from us .

So now steam will not only take 30% from sales but also a huge amount of fee wich is horible ...

If fee gona be more then 100$ many will migrate to itchyio and gog and start making exclusives for those sites wich will lure audience from steam .

IMagine in some countryes 250 is minimun wage , how can a indie dev launch his game ther ?

ANyhow my man , things gona get a huge change soon, for good or bad

EDIT: will this also affect hire rate for coders & artists and encourage colabs more ?
 
M

MishMash

Guest
The reasons for this imo are just from the sheer volume of games coming out, combined with arguably dropping standards for what the average indie game is like. Whilst there are many games on steam that will just get immediately buried, and as Jabbers said, considering these still pull 1000 sales is somewhat impressive.

I found this bit of information online (steamspy): "A median game on Steam now has 21,000 owners (2016), whereas a year ago that number was 32,000.(2015)". It is true that sales per game is going down, though I would almost certainly guarantee that overall game sales has gone up.

Now... being brutally honest, I do feel that alot of these games which pull ~1000 sales that you see in the new releases section on steamspy all leave me feeling "eh". There isn't a great deal of wow-factor from any of them for me. Some have great art styles, and interesting concepts, however a lot of them seem to lack depth, with a trailer repeating the same clips, and minimal screenshots of idealistic cutscenes, or simple locations. Granted, I feel many developers (perhaps including myself) fall into a trap of thinking their game is better than it is, but perhaps this is the reality of the situation. At the end of the day, Gamedev is a competitive field. You cannot expect to just release a game and rain in the gold, you have to fight for your place in the spotlight. You have to go that extra mile, put in more work than the people around you, create an experience that you want others to experience and shout all over the world to get peoples attention.

I don't think this will really affect the industry all that much, this happens with all forms of media. Most attention always gets focused at the top, where things are most successful. It shouldn't really have an impact on hire rates, it may just mean that there are a higher rate of developers who fail. Though these are risks that people need to be aware of. The same is true for any start-up business. Lots of them fail, just because they either cannot compete, or because they were just lacking the experience/ability/work-ethic to perform well in the environment.

One thing that is always important when looking at life and career is to set yourself up for success, the old saying "Don't put all your eggs in one basket" stands true today. For myself, i'm going full-time Indie this summer after I graduate, and if things don't go to plan the its okay, as i've spent the 3 years working and doing other jobs on the side, plus studying to give myself both a financial and career barrier if game development doesn't work out.

Personally, I don't mind the market getting more competitive, I believe that at the end of the day, the most important thing is creating games that people will enjoy and want to play. It is important that the players remain happy and don't get burnt out on wave after wave of mediocre games that make false promises. < This is what caused the great video game crash of 1983.
 

RangerX

Member
MishMash said:
At the end of the day, Gamedev is a competitive field. You cannot expect to just release a game and rain in the gold, you have to fight for your place in the spotlight.
So that's exactly what Greenlight was doing. If you really think so, the new system needs to accessible so even the lone guy like me (making his game in spare time 'cause he currently have no other possible choice).
Competition itself is supposed to weed out crap. People like that what they like. If they feel there's too much clutter this is an entirely other matter! They simply need to make up rules for a game to stay hosted there.
 
M

MishMash

Guest
So that's exactly what Greenlight was doing. If you really think so, the new system needs to accessible so even the lone guy like me (making his game in spare time 'cause he currently have no other possible choice).
Competition itself is supposed to weed out crap. People like that what they like. If they feel there's too much clutter this is an entirely other matter! They simply need to make up rules for a game to stay hosted there.
Well, with greenlight, you "could" fight for your place in the spotlight, or ya know.. you could just wait 8 months and eventually your game would get through. The sad side of this is, if games don't get through during their "boom" period when they first get added to greenlight and get lots of views in the first few days, it will often take them months. If this system was changed so that games that did not meet a certain voting threshold were cut after a certain amount of time, a lot less games would get through, but then people would just be complaining about how Greenlight is too difficult to pass.

To avoid derailing this discussion too much into the other one, i'll stop there.
 

FrostyCat

Redemption Seeker
If there's anything that currently threatens the viability of indie game development, it's the romance surrounding the field that entices people to enter it with their eyes glazed and their pants down. The day it dies off is the day indie game development truly lives.
 

RangerX

Member
If the systems were well made, those people would get weed out.
I think there's a way to not kill indie people by making accessible publishing platforms that also weed out shovelware.
 
M

MishMash

Guest
If the systems were well made, those people would get weed out.
I think there's a way to not kill indie people by making accessible publishing platforms that also weed out shovelware.
The definition of Shovelware is very subjective though. What is shovelware? A mediocre game? A game that you personally do not find all that interesting? A game with a limited scope for success, or a niche market? A game which has limited content, but relatively cheap? A simple concept churned out to try and make a quick cash-in?

The issue with making these assumptions about a possible system relies on the fact that certain quality standards are employed at one point in the process or another. What one person considers to be a viable game may just be a bad game in the eye of someone else. The other issue that plague's this kind of discussion is the idea of illusory superiority, we all suffer from it (I know I definitely do), this is the idea that people have a bias towards their own creations, overestimating the quality of what they are producing. We like to believe that if a system like this existed, we would end up on the right side of the fence, however the reality is, there are always going to be people who loose out.
 

RangerX

Member
The definition of Shovelware is very subjective though. What is shovelware? A mediocre game? A game that you personally do not find all that interesting? A game with a limited scope for success, or a niche market? A game which has limited content, but relatively cheap? A simple concept churned out to try and make a quick cash-in?

The issue with making these assumptions about a possible system relies on the fact that certain quality standards are employed at one point in the process or another. What one person considers to be a viable game may just be a bad game in the eye of someone else. The other issue that plague's this kind of discussion is the idea of illusory superiority, we all suffer from it (I know I definitely do), this is the idea that people have a bias towards their own creations, overestimating the quality of what they are producing. We like to believe that if a system like this existed, we would end up on the right side of the fence, however the reality is, there are always going to be people who loose out.
I don't think we need a clear and perfect definition of shovelware. Everybody in the thread here are seeing those "near scam" cheap game attempting a quick cash-in or trumping players. (I love this word since the last election)

And I also think quality standards have nothing to do with this all anyways. (Although I would totally love to see all game passing a "content approval" and paying for it). Shovelware should die fast in sales. If you don't want it to clutter your system, filter out the games by sales over time. You could bring up pretty much any problem and I would find a rule to help it or make it go away completely. I think its possible to keep accessibility quite intact while improving MUCH over Greenlight. We fought and ask for accessibility for a long time and this to the point the industry changed and there has been a TRUE indie scene now. We need to improve and not regress on this. Pulling back accessibility (like a 2500$ fee would clearly do) is a regression in my opinion. And one that can be easily avoided.
 
M

Misty

Guest
Gaming has become a dormant ghost. The days of Mario Kart 64 are long over. We are entering a cultural malaise, we are in a Great Depression of games. In the 90's games were a new thing, a technical marvel, there was energy there. Now theres nothing new under the sun, its all old hat. The same thing happened to the movie industry, when movies first were invented it was a craze. Movies were basically simple stories without much philosophical depth. Then WW1 happened and a cultural malaise. People's were cold and battered. They just didnt have the excitement for it anymore. Hopefully, will will rise from the ashes and then games will be even better than before and a new era of deeper games like the deeper movies of the 40's.

Games are a hard sell, coca cola has immediate refreshment effect. So I suppose the best way to sell your game is to make it refreshing to the spirit.
 
M

MishMash

Guest
I don't think we need a clear and perfect definition of shovelware. Everybody in the thread here are seeing those "near scam" cheap game attempting a quick cash-in or trumping players. (I love this word since the last election)

And I also think quality standards have nothing to do with this all anyways. (Although I would totally love to see all game passing a "content approval" and paying for it). Shovelware should die fast in sales. If you don't want it to clutter your system, filter out the games by sales over time. You could bring up pretty much any problem and I would find a rule to help it or make it go away completely. I think its possible to keep accessibility quite intact while improving MUCH over Greenlight. We fought and ask for accessibility for a long time and this to the point the industry changed and there has been a TRUE indie scene now. We need to improve and not regress on this. Pulling back accessibility (like a 2500$ fee would clearly do) is a regression in my opinion. And one that can be easily avoided.
Though as FrostyCat said in the other topic, for anyone who is serious about game development, those who are serious enough to treat it as a business, $2500 is not all that much in the grand scheme of things. What this system really aims to avoid is games that would originally have been freeware (like the ones you would find on Gamejolt, the old Yoyogames sandbox, kongregate etc;) from becomming commercial entities. Yes, you could argue that this does reduce accessibility, but imho, a step back in accessibility is exactly what is needed.
We don't need every indie game that comes out to be a commercial one. Many developers (myself included) spent years and years creating free games. I know for a fact that a 14 year old me would have paid $100 in a heartbeat to get one of my older games on steam, though in hindsight, my old games weren't really worthy of being commercial and I would have just been part of the problem.

One thing that has died in the last few years is the access to quality, free, indie games. 6 years ago, you would come on the forums and see great freeware games being made, before developers all just jumped on the commercial bandwagon. What I honestly hope this fee does is allow developers to experiment before they decide to try and go commercial. Creating a commercial game is hard, this is why early access has flopped. Steam and greenlight have contributed to this problem of saturation. We don't want steam to become the app store, we want i to be a location where quality games exist.
 

RangerX

Member
My answer for you MishMash is on the other thread. I don't think we need classes and "worthy" people or games. There are just people making games that wants a audience and business wanting to make money. Classic reaction, business people doesn't understand the other scene, they only think as "they should become like us". No, It think its wrong. There's no such things as a game being worthy to be commercial product. There's no such thing as an hobbyist or amateur that shouldn't have access to recoup or make some money on the side. One approaches doesn't prevent the other and Steam gave signs of opening up in that sense since a couple of years. If they remove accessibility its because they decided to change the direction in which their were going. Accessibility to free and great indie games didn't die, it improved in the last 5 years or so. Its booming! You might not see it because the more games there are available in the system the more the system is having a challenge pushing those games towards their audience. The more games there are, the more quality games there are as well as crap. Its harder to find the good because of the numbers. This is why we need improved systems and stores. Better at pushing the right content to the right audience instead of the visibly easier solution that anybody can think of: restraining accessibility.

If you agree with restraining accessibility if that was making games better out there. But the reality is that its not. Being serious doesn't make you create a better game. Sales doesn't represent the game's quality on many instances. Businesses don't make better games than indies. That's the problem. If it was otherwise, restraining accessibility would be a solution in my view.
 
M

MishMash

Guest
There are just people making games that wants a audience and business wanting to make money.
If you agree with restraining accessibility if that was making games better out there. But the reality is that its not. Being serious doesn't make you create a better game. Sales doesn't represent the game's quality on many instances. Businesses don't make better games than indies. That's the problem. If it was otherwise, restraining accessibility would be a solution in my view.
Your understanding of what I am referring to as a business is misrepresented. A business doesn't have to be a collection of grey men sitting around a table making assumptions about things, anyone who makes the decision to monetize their game and treat it as a product becomes a business. Indie's and businesses are one and the same. Therefore, it doesn't make sense to say things like "businesses dont understand the scene", "businesses dont make better games than indies", businesses are the scene, it is just a term used to describe the concept of someone who is creating games in a financial setting, any individual who is distributing a scene would be considered a business.

The distinction that needs to be made clear at this point is that there is a difference between a hobbyist developer, who solely makes games for fun, and commercial developers, who make games for fun and to support their own livelihood. No one should be entitled to a platform, someone has to provide that platform, someone has to maintain it, it doesn't mean that you will automatically get a place to stand on it. If you don't like this, do what loads of other people do, create your own platform. Between 2011 and 2015, me and my team maintained a site for freeware games (MantaGames.net, now offline). We created our own platform, because you don't need steam, or any other distributor to generate an audience, you can do it yourself.

Greenlight was good for a bit, but it got overkill once too many games started flooding in. The other important thing to note is that the more people who have access to a platform, the less attention each individual game gets. Remember aswell, a number of popular indie games didn't even go through the greenlight system. If you had a good game, you could still get it on steam through the conventional method.

Being serious doesn't make you create a better game. Sales doesn't represent the game's quality on many instances.
This is a ridiculous statement, of course being serious makes a better game. When we are talking about being serious, we are talking about people's attitudes to the game development process. A serious developer will add more attention to detail, more attention to polish, ensure their game is less buggy, approach every problem in their game correctly and make efficient use of time. They will also therefore commit more time to the overall development of the game. Most importantly, someone serious is far more likely to have an in-depth understanding of the market, how it works, and they will also have more realistic expectations about what they can expect in return.

Regarding the sales of games. Some games are undeserving of their sales figures, though if they weren't fun games, people wouldn't buy them. Often times, games with low sales figures are either poorly marketed, or are just not as objectively good as other games. Sometimes games do get buried, though this is exactly the result of systems like Greenlight. If there were less games overall, then people would be more aware of the games coming out, and thus, the sales figures would more accurately line up with quality.

EDIT: Apologies for diverting this thread, this reply would be more suited to the other topic.
 
Z

zendraw

Guest
i very much agree with misty. something revolutionary must happen for people to get again excited when look at games and not just another timekiller, which pretty much all media has become. we need a new diablo or counter strike or somthing. and i think one needs to go very deep into game-dev to do so, gaming is not somthing new where devs can get lucky and make a masterpiece.
 
M

Misty

Guest
Right. the spirit and global consciousness is worn down, overstimulated from hedonism. We need a reflection period to once again become our childish youth, the nymph consciousness must again return to society. Society is overenlightened.
 

RangerX

Member
We are playing scemantics. Indeed its not what I meant by "business". Its much more like the comparison you made between amateur and commercial. I mean, like it or not, they is theory and market studying that is possible in order to make a successful commercial product. And if you're serious about making money, you will make those maybe soul-less games. Because afterall, who cares, its about baking entertainment and making money out of it. There's no vertue in the process. They can be serious about those projects and it doesn't make those games more fun. That's what I meant by "serious doesn't mean better". AAA games often cost hundreds of millions of dollars and made by 300 serious people and yet, the game was crappy.

As for sales.... Sales depends largely on marketing. The more marketing and good the more good marketing, the more sales you'll get. Sales indicates only the number of people to which you influenced their perception enough for having them pay something to try your game. That's all. Millions can try your game because you're good at selling it and yet, your game still can suck ass.

Now there are indie peeps that will make games but not in a commercial mindset. They don't make a pure and cold product. If they make money its cool and if they don't its cool. Does this mean they shouldn't have access to trying to make money easily? Does the fact they aren't pulling a "commercial" game doesn't make them serious or worthy of finding an audience? There's no difference really. I am serious in attitude when making my game (like you explain up there -- and I agree with that you say). This doesn't mean I want to become a videogame studio. This doesn't mean I care about making đź’©đź’©đź’©đź’©ons of money. But does that means I shouldn't be able to access an audience easily? Nope. Does that make my game less good? Nope. If big guys don't want to see small guys on Steam, give us each a blade on the webpage. Those not wanting to shop indie games could have the liberty to NEVER click on that page. This thought of Steam having to preserve some kind of image is the bullđź’©đź’©đź’©đź’© here. Them being the "be all end all" one place stop for gaming would be actually benefital to them. Charging me 300-500$ for hosting my game in some hypothetical indie section that the store would have wouldn't be threatening to nobody. I would say someone that someone not being able to imagine a powerful and successful Steam store that includes all types of games and products in simply short sighted or lacking a certain type of imagination.

And I say all of this as as person that doesn't even care about his game not being on Steam right now. Its just the principle and people mentalities related to this topic that stinks.


(last post in this thread for me too)
 
Z

zendraw

Guest
Ranger, i get what your sayn, but in reality, if you need them, you play by theyr rules, if they need you, they play by your rules. 'rights' for me is a pure phylosophical term that has never prevented anyone from abusing his freedom.
 
A

Ampersand

Guest
This sounds like more of the "but Steam was supposed to make my game famous!" talk. In the end, sales will be up to how well you design the game, how engaging you create your marketing videos and images, and how well you push your game to indie gaming press. Maybe a lot of Steam games haven't done so hot lately -- but I also can't remember many indie games at all in the last year that really knocked my socks off.
 

Dan1

Member
Game developing on the whole is a big gamble, regardless of platform - while it seems to be impossible to say what is, without all shadow of a doubt, a "good game" that pleases all, even high end AAA games have their faults and have been ruthlessly picked apart by critics, it is much easier to tell what would generally be considered a "bad game" - you can tell when games are blatant cash-grabs, games that are hurried, rushed, badly made, badly designed - ultimately, I think that if you put passion in to what you do then people will like it, it CAN get there, it CAN make money and you CAN make a job out of it - but success doesn't happen overnight. Angry Birds was Rovio's 52nd game after all and Final Fantasy got its name because of the developer having no luck until then and it being his "final" attempt at developing games - these things take time and a lot of work but if you are passionate about what you do then be patient and the money will come!
 
O

Otyugra

Guest
The better the game the better the sales.
I wish it was that way, but I do not believe that to be true. To quote hbomberguy, "indie games are not a meritocracy."

Also, good marketing is Always helpful, put your game on a lot of sites and make it look as interesting as possible, without lying of course
This, however, is something I agree with fully. In my experience, marketing is everything! Without marketing, any game is screwed, and I'm counting word-of-mouth by others to be part of marketing in this case.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

FrostyCat

Redemption Seeker
How does an indie survive?
If surviving means making an adequate income, then ensuring that is no different than how every other line of business survives.
  • Knowing and playing to the tune of the market
  • Attracting and retaining customers and employees
  • Having and following a plan for finances and HR
  • Targeting and seizing opportunities
  • Having an objective view of its reality
Almost every business that ever closed down did one of these badly. Indie artists in general (this includes musicians, artists, designers and game developers) often do the third and last ones badly --- the last one particularly badly.
 

Xer0botXer0

Senpai
You could make a rock famous if you give it a good story that people want to talk about - marketing.

  • Those games didn't make a million sales within the first three weeks because they were not marketed.
  • Those games didn't make a million more sales after those few weeks because the game didn't appeal.

"Scientists also use thought experiments when particular physical experiments are impossible to conduct (Carl Gustav Hempel labeled these sorts of experiment "theoretical experiments-in-imagination"), such as Einstein's thought experiment of chasing a light beam, leading to Special Relativity. This is a unique use of a scientific thought experiment, in that it was never carried out, but led to a successful theory, proven by other empirical means."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_experiment

You can predict outcomes without ever/before doing the practical work. This would be my assessment.
 
Last edited:
M

Misty

Guest
The definition of Shovelware is very subjective though. What is shovelware? A mediocre game? A game that you personally do not find all that interesting? A game with a limited scope for success, or a niche market? A game which has limited content, but relatively cheap? A simple concept churned out to try and make a quick cash-in?

The issue with making these assumptions about a possible system relies on the fact that certain quality standards are employed at one point in the process or another. What one person considers to be a viable game may just be a bad game in the eye of someone else. The other issue that plague's this kind of discussion is the idea of illusory superiority, we all suffer from it (I know I definitely do), this is the idea that people have a bias towards their own creations, overestimating the quality of what they are producing. We like to believe that if a system like this existed, we would end up on the right side of the fence, however the reality is, there are always going to be people who loose out.
Shovelware is basically half the games on caiman.us. You ever play their 3d games?
 
R

Remixful

Guest
Don't make garbage games and nobody will know about the game if nobody tells them about it.
Simple as that.
 

Phoebe Klim

Member
This is not "The death of indie dev". This is just you not being a millionaire for reasons obvious to experienced developers. Who probably don't even visit those forums. Because most discussions here about losing motivation, abandoning projects, "The death of indie dev", etc.

(Forgive me for being salty, I've got excuses: My game is on Steam since 2016 May and I'm still far from 1000 sales AND I am not eating anything that has sugar in it)
 

gmx0

Member
The reality is, indie game development is not a gold rush, if it ever was. Don't quit your full time job for it until you have games making enough money for you to live already. Even then, you will still probably need a part time job.
 
M

Misty

Guest
The reality is, indie game development is not a gold rush, if it ever was. Don't quit your full time job for it until you have games making enough money for you to live already. Even then, you will still probably need a part time job.
Some guy made a Smash Bros clone in Game maker and made a million dollars.

Indie games is a gold rush, it is a total gold rush...just like the 1800's 95% of prospectors never found any gold
 

gmx0

Member
Some guy made a Smash Bros clone in Game maker and made a million dollars.
What SSB GM clone are you talking about? I have played most of them, and even been in teams where some were made, and I have not heard one that made a million dollars.
 
E

Ethanicus

Guest
@Seabass (The Human) To be completely honest, for how long and often you've talked about your game, I have no clue what it is. I can tell you've put a lot of work into the game itself but I think the main thing is this:

Big companies can afford and are experienced at mass marketing, indies are not. That simple.

Sure you get out-of-the-blue hits like Undertale and Minecraft, but those "won" based on sheer unbridled originality and hype alone. Not to insult, but to the gamer community, you're nobody. You need to show them what you have and why they should know you.
 
S

Sam (Deleted User)

Guest
You can't really call it a job unless you are making money already (at least min wage and decent revenue per a certain number of hours in a week). Calling it a career is not the same thing. I can flip burgers, nanny, and mow lawns, but that ain't no career. In all honesty, I know game development will never be my career, perhaps pocket change, I guess.

Anyways, where I'm getting with this - I'm terrified of becoming 40 year old man still living with mommy and daddy, making games under someone else's roof, paying no rent, having no family of my own, until parents either die or go in assistent living, and I move into a homeless shelter. Soo... I've procrastinated enough, this summer, I'm getting a job. Who's with me?
 
J

JVGameDev

Guest
Its tough, because the days of web games has died, and the great thing about web games is they were free, but you could still make a small dollar off ads, so now days, with web games out of the picture, a lot of developers sell they're game for a dollar or two to make a small dollar, and thats where the lack of free games came from.
 
A

amusudan

Guest
Its tough, because the days of web games has died, and the great thing about web games is they were free, but you could still make a small dollar off ads, so now days, with web games out of the picture, a lot of developers sell they're game for a dollar or two to make a small dollar, and thats where the lack of free games came from.
Thanks but that's not what we're discussing, at all.
 
A

amusudan

Guest
Lol someone said something earlier about a lack of free games, and everyone wants money for their games, so i said its because of web games dying.
Maybe quote who you're replying to next time, because otherwise it seems like you're replying to whoever posted last.
 

FrostyCat

Redemption Seeker
Want to know another way "indie game development" can die? When people define it out of existence by equating it with a quality conducive to dying off. The practitioners won't necessarily be going away any time soon, they just go out of scope for people whose tunnel vision is too severe.

Ways can be defined, but never fixated.
 
Want to know another way "indie game development" can die? When people define it out of existence by equating it with a quality conducive to dying off. The practitioners won't necessarily be going away any time soon, they just go out of scope for people whose tunnel vision is too severe.

Ways can be defined, but never fixated.
Well, yeah, sure. But that's not what this thread is about? Seabass clearly defines an indie dev as someone who makes a decent living making their decent games. He's worried about that not being feasible anymore. I don't think that's an unreasonable definition or an unreasonable worry, even though I disagree with his idea that it's happening right now.

Yeah, if you want to define "indie dev" as anyone who's ever touched GM and hasn't made any money, then sure, they'll never go away. That's not what anyone means when they say "indie dev" though, hahah!
 

YanBG

Member
@Seabass (The Human) your previous game has ~13k players, that's not bad. Well i guess for 2 people working 2 years full-time is not much but still.

So for my RPG, i started it in the end of 2014 and it's my first game but for these 2.5 years i didn't work on it full-time. Lately i've been looking around the similar indie RPG releases and which/how made sales.

Balrum, 2 people team, worked on the engine for at least 3 years and had kickstarter i think - 20k players http://store.steampowered.com/app/424250/
UnderRail, 2 people team, started nearly 10 years ago but with huge breaks - 70k players http://store.steampowered.com/app/250520/

To me they look the same, but why one of them sold a lot better than the other? Heck Balrum even have farming so it attracts some Stardew Valley fans.
These games also have a higher price of about 10$(even on a sale) and they are longer to complete, some people refund shorter games.

Honorable mentions are the Eschalon and Avernum series(Jeff Vogel basically releases the same games since 1995).
 
E

Ethanicus

Guest
@Seabass (The Human) your previous game has ~13k players, that's not bad. Well i guess for 2 people working 2 years full-time is not much but still.

So for my RPG, i started it in the end of 2014 and it's my first game but for these 2.5 years i didn't work on it full-time. Lately i've been looking around the similar indie RPG releases and which/how made sales.

Balrum, 2 people team, worked on the engine for at least 3 years and had kickstarter i think - 20k players http://store.steampowered.com/app/424250/
UnderRail, 2 people team, started nearly 10 years ago but with huge breaks - 70k players http://store.steampowered.com/app/250520/

To me they look the same, but why one of them sold a lot better than the other? Heck Balrum even have farming so it attracts some Stardew Valley fans.
These games also have a higher price of about 10$(even on a sale) and they are longer to complete, some people refund shorter games.

Honorable mentions are the Eschalon and Avernum series(Jeff Vogel basically releases the same games since 1995).
Well if you look at the reviews on Balrum you'll see some obvious issues. I think that's more of a details issue.
 

FrostyCat

Redemption Seeker
Well, yeah, sure. But that's not what this thread is about? Seabass clearly defines an indie dev as someone who makes a decent living making their decent games. He's worried about that not being feasible anymore. I don't think that's an unreasonable definition or an unreasonable worry, even though I disagree with his idea that it's happening right now.

Yeah, if you want to define "indie dev" as anyone who's ever touched GM and hasn't made any money, then sure, they'll never go away. That's not what anyone means when they say "indie dev" though, hahah!
Except there are people derailing the conversation with assumptions like "indie game development is development with 'soul'", "indie game development is producing non-'garbage/shovelware' games by my standards" or "indie game development is free games on the web".
 
E

Ethanicus

Guest
I think the point here is that no, it's not dead, and probably won't ever be. You win some, you lose some. It's just that us small devs have a much slimmer margin of error whereas big companies can screw up over and over until they succeed.
 

FrostyCat

Redemption Seeker
I think the point here is that no, it's not dead, and probably won't ever be. You win some, you lose some. It's just that us small devs have a much slimmer margin of error whereas big companies can screw up over and over until they succeed.
When did it become the exclusive domain of "big companies" to stand up again after falling? If small developers fail, they can always close up shop, get another line of work, save up and start again later. As long as the individuals are alive and willing, going out of business isn't catastrophic or permanent.

Anyone who can't ride out the rough with the smooth is a professional whiner, not a professional indie.
 
Top