Could I make a living being an Indie Game Dev?

Just the content in the clip looks like a lot of time to me. It'd probably take me the same time to create and animate the character and create the rest of the visual content in that clip as it would to create my current game, create the next ultra low poly game and that little photographs & videos matching game if I do it.

 

Yeah, the game is lot of work, but the way textures and models are made is low poly.
You must have some skills indeed and enjoy making more complex 3D art and textures, while someone enjoying code mainly will quickly stop.
Anyway that's a great indie game made with passion.

 

It definitely looks cool I think. For me it's not about enjoying code but more about how much time I feel comfortable spending on a given game project at this time. I enjoy programming typing in the code for game dev because so far this is the most efficient way for me to develop a game. If I find a different way that is better & faster allowing me to do things just as easily & more quickly then I will switch in an instant. This is why I am looking forward to creating my next 2D game in Construct 2 or 3. I have dabbled in it and was very surprised to find it seems quite logical and fast to develop in it. I need to test that because if I can increase my dev efficiency by 20% simply by switching to a different dev kit well to me I would be stupid not to.

Same for 3D. If I can find something that would me let me create a 3D game just as easy & faster than my programming it myself through type type typing I will switch at that moment. For now I am using the best way for me to develop games as far as it is all logical, easy and efficient.

Ultimately I just enjoy getting stuff done as easily & quickly as possible. I don't care what I am using if it works for me. The problem is a lot of this stuff works great for other people and they kind of try to push it on everyone else and just don't get that it is not the same experience for everyone.

Anyway my plan is to just keep scaling up in project size over time. If I find something that can instantly make me 25% more productive then I could instantly scale up a bit that much faster. If you don't mind pm me with the tiny engine you are using for your 3D game.

 

I think you could increase the time spend on graphics ? Don't you think ?
Perhaps it could be lot more fun making gameplay in Construct 3.

Good things need more work and love LOL
But perhpas it's your personal way to deal with game creation.

This is not one but many good challengers LOL , i'll test each and see what is the best.
Try to find the minimalist ones among those
https://www.gamefromscratch.com/post/2018/09/04/CSharp_Game_Engines.aspx
https://www.gamefromscratch.com/post/2018/09/11/JavaScript-Game-Engines.aspx

 

Of course I could but why? We all could spend more time on audio or game design or programming or graphics. This is what I don't understand. I already am spending as much, if not more, time on graphics than I have spent on programming or audio or game design. I don't see why people believe they should put so much more time & work on graphics than they do on everything else in a game.

It was a lot of time creating the over 300 images used in my current game. Especially when iterative passes were done on them adding details and adjusting colors.

I guess... sure... if I came up with a game design that required much less content say it only needed a dozen images each 32x32 or less in size... then yes I almost certainly would spend more time making more iterations on graphics. But my goal is to be making games with the amount of content increasing because the game scope will increase over time. Like maybe several 2D games from now I might need 1,000 different images and so on. In those cases the time spent on each image will be like it was for this game. I simply can't afford to just sit around messing with graphics continually endlessly tweaking & otherwise improving them.

If anything I would like to decrease the time spent on any one image. That's why I look for games that have a very nice aesthetic with simpler less detailed visuals. I do plan on increasing resolution from 128x90 to 160x120 for the next game but still I am maxed out already on what I can achieve for the visuals. I have done as best as I can over multiple iterations and I think for a 128x90 resolution game the visuals are very good. I mean I have seen many games on Steam and elsewhere with visuals not as good even though they are using a resolution twice as high.

 

That's a lot, i thought code was more than graphics.
You are right, what matters is you have fun and you make a game whatever amount of work you put on graphics or code.

Perhaps you need to find some style reducing the amount of work.
What about those sprites :
- it reduces a lot the work
- easy to make all animations you need
- game content size is lot smaller.



You could make simple color shapes sprites.
There is some amazing games made that way.

Or do very minimal animations with two or three frames per animation ?

 

I have already tested countless ways of creating the art. This is the best combination I can reach for quality and efficiency. I have tried messing around with spriter and for me that is agonizingly slow process. Well the only other way is using something like Inkscape and going HD simple visuals. Not a big fan of the look but sometimes they are good. But I have been through using photos, using Poser and 3d modeling renders to pixel art, Anime Studio and many other softwares and approaches.

The best for me is ultra low rez. Or possibly Inkscape HD. I am completely happy with what I am making now. But that's how I ended up with this approach by trying out numerous other things.

 

or find a style that work entirely ith code line, rect, oval

 

The rest of you... find your style. Lol I already found mine. My first test of using ultra low rez 128x90 was for a platform game 5 to 6 months ago. It was this that made me realize "wow finally I have this solved! I should be able to make about anything I want to in 2D using this approach"

I am going to keep things simpler and less detailed like the visuals for my platformer game test project. I think they are better overall. A little cleaner.

Although I think I will try 160x120 resolution but I won't go any higher than that unless I do something in HD inkscape style or quick sketches stickman and such.

 

lol

Its is your game ? It is very readable and have good screen resolution instead of ultra low rez zoomed graphics.

 

Yes. It's the same. I used the same 128x90 resolution as I did for my defense game. If there is a difference it may be due to me iterating so much detail into the defense game visuals OR simply because I have done sideview graphics for platformer style games and shmups many more times than I have top down.

 

It looks like higher rez , more space to move sprites and show graphic details.
Anyway you could increase screen rez and keep same sprites rez, this would make level bigger scale than moving sprites.
Design and color palette looks good, good trees, good looking rock platforms, and nice foreground grass, you done a really good 2D game design here.
It's like i find the rts graphics bad compared to this good looking platformer lol
You should make a castelvania or metroid like 2D games.

 

That's almost the resolution of the C64 in multi-color mode (160x200)

 

This is true sometimes lol

 

Those are the kind of games I have always liked. But have made so many experiments with them I wanted to do something different and someone on the AGK2 forum mentioned a tower defense so.....

I had just not long before starting my defense game finished making an example 2D single screen platformer example project. I used this as an opportunity to experiment with even simpler more abstract visuals. The alien androids came. Great war. You see the radioactive ash falling all around. The taller android has some slightly more advanced AI.

After releasing this example project (and several before it!) I wanted to actually make a complete game again. I still think there is potential in this more abstract visual style of solid colors even though I am not very experienced in such a style.

I think someone better at art could use this kind of approach to help them complete interesting games at less cost aiding them in building their Indie business. I can just almost kind of start to "get it" but nope. The idea I had was take abstract art one level higher. Forms but that is it. Well kind of like Limbo in a sense except not limited to basically black and white or dark shades and light shades. But introduce color and actually like the bullets almost glow even though there are no FX used. That is completely from the visual style and brightness levels.

 

Another style is realistic minimalist, assembly of detailed texture realistic assets with simple gameplay.
This boat game for example is very minimalist as it uses only few high quality rocks and ground models with some plants assets and a good water shader, it's very simple level design and few assets only, while the boat is simple to make.
It's another way to lower the assets amount of work, simple level design and focus on game.

 

Well that is strange if this is an easy thing to do because the visuals seem to look the closest to AAA games of anything I have seen done by (I guess solo or very tiny team???).

I see they focus on simulation games but while watching the video kept thinking this would he so cool if that boat had a cannon and enemies (even just turrets) were on the shore. Maybe add a simple rescue / collect & transport element as well so you pick up an object and take it a ways and drop it off on the opposite side. Cannon booming destroying turrets and sometimes the air filled with projectiles from the turrets on the banks.

I always wondered why solo devs who love trying to make AAA style graphics don't make tiny interesting games so they really can use graphics the majority of people would consider AAA (I am sure many game devs would critique and have a list of why the graphics suck, are nowhere close to AAA etc etc but I am talking about somewhat rational people lol) and actually complete their games.

 

Just buy those model packs, you have only to model a paper boat
Triple A means a big game with high quality content a solo indie can't make, this boat game is definitively not triple A and not double A, it's just few good rocks models and textures.

Watch more, the boat have cannon.

 

I mean overall as a whole everything looks very high quality. The water has a lot to do with that but the rest of the environment looks very high quality as well. I don't recall anything looking this good overall being shown in all of the threads over the years about trying to make AAA visuals.

Really?! A cannon! I will watch more. I never saw anything to shoot at even just the boat moving. But I only watched a couple of mins didn't have time for more... day job.

 

Okay I guess I only watched about 30 seconds first time. They should have the video start with the props customization and second gameplay clip. Good example of how often a person will only watch the first x seconds whether out of lack of interest or simply lack of time. Second clip seems like a completely different game. Originally I thought the entire game was simply controlling your simulated paper boat.

 

The lighting is great, while some textures are not so detailed or so great when you look more carefully.
This looks like an UE4 about post effects and lighting, this is what makes it look better.

They have several games, and most are about driving simulators.
https://www.tml-studios.de/game-listing-style-1/?lang=en

 

Yeah like floating grass etc lol


But generally looks nice.

 

Nothing is perfect not even the AAA with their hundreds of people. Remember those threads about achieving AAA visuals people posted weird artifacts on textures, very low resolution textures used in some spots, etc? If a person is going for perfection they will never be finished. Overall this game looks extremely good. I think you are right it is probably the lighting and whatever post processing that helps finish it all off so nicely.

I think the AAA companies get to about 90 to 95% to perfection and requires a massive cost to get there. Getting that remaining 5 to 10% is most likely beyond their means even that last bit may well require doubling the cost and is just not worth it.

For a tiny Indie team same kind of thing but maybe shoot for 50%. Solo maybe shoot for 20%. This kind of thing the higher you go the greater the expense per point to improve it more. For raw quality all around and considering overall scope as part of that.

 

Indie team around 20% and solo around 1% of what is AAA game content and costs.
I mean a game like Witcher 3 or RDR2 is so much amount of work and polish it is not comparable to a 10 people indie studio or one indie alone could achieve.

Anyway, like this boat game, you could put lot of work on a small amount of high quality assets you re use a lot.
Because making a huge amount of high quality assets would be too much work.
The game is not character based, that helps a lot also.

 

And even then, lot of content was not added into release, as really planned.
And I am not referring to later optional expansion packs.

 

LOL i was trying set a goal to strive for that is more realistic than striving for AAA. I don't know though... I think it might be possible to make a game 1/5th the scope of W3. I mean hitting 1/5th the visual quality is pretty much just hit the asset store and use whatever. 1/5th the world size. 1/5th on every thing all the way through.

What seems to kills projects like this is people sit there for months trying to make everything LOOK like 80% or more of the AAA quality rather than saying 20% is fine. So for months where they could have populated a fairly large world and had some life to it or even have produced a large amount of custom content instead they have a tiny mostly barren scene with nothing behind it just visuals and are still focused on how to make it look better.

EDIT: well yeah your 1% of overall scope is probably spot on. I was thinking in terms of size and quality on each aspect. But right like 1/5th the visual quality and 1/5th the amount of content is 1/25th but actually less because the higher the quality the greater the cost to improve it further.

 

Start a thread in Made With Unity or Work In Progress.

 

I've been checking on the progress of this game once every month or so for a year or more now. I see this as an awesome way for a solo Indie to approach the visuals. Visuals again because people seem to make that one aspect so expensive. Not only the fidelity of the images/models but the animations as well and this guy made a very interesting looking world basically from scratch in java with ultra low poly models and basically eliminated animation as far as rigging and such go. And it just goes that much further to give the game a distinct personality.

He still worked on it a long time 2 to 3 years I think but he continually created game dev videos and built up a large following through that process. Game launched on Steam last week to very high ratings and a good number of them.

Equilinox is a relaxing nature simulation game in which you can create and nurture your own ecosystems. Shape the world to your liking, cultivate and raise hundreds of different species, and evolve your wildlife to unlock more exotic plants and animals.

I like that whole ditching the animation and think along those lines for tackling bigger projects. Did some experiments in as well with rectangles and cubes bouncing along as they move. But I think it is maybe more interesting to have an actual form of the object.

Anyway it just goes to show there are different options for reducing the workload and in the process using these can add some extra personality & uniqueness to your game. Instead of trying to copy AAA or AA it is probably better to just be different and saves you a ton of work too. Hard to go wrong with that combo.

 

BY ditching animation he also ditch what he had already made, which is work done for no reason, so I'll keep beating my drum, a lot of work is just iteration and throwing stuff, figuring out what you need is costly, so don't be in that situation to begin with .... which is hard outside straight up cloning!

 

He did extra work that was not needed for sure. He made models he never even used etc but like he covers in his 2017 dev summary video above that was because he didn't do enough planning up front to define the scope of what he was building. So like usual it grew and grew because he was caught up in just working away.

Not doing animations shouldn't have caused any extra work. I am not sure what you mean by that? Oh when I said basically eliminated I meant eliminated the need to do the work by making the decision to have the animals bounce around and rotate, etc instead of creating "normal" animations. That would be a huge amount of work I think because once a person added walking animation then they would probably make a running animation and then a jumping animation and then a lying down animation and then eating and then maybe rolling around so on and so forth. I believe that. Just doing movement animations would likely have spiraled out into a huge extra workload.

 

I'm saying that in the ideal, in the ideal he should have discover that before doing extra work. Basically playing a kind of devil's advocate

In the end the optimal way to work will be by striving to balance different ideal.
- the ideal minimalism of visual
- the ideal maximal amount of flash
- the minimal amount of work
- the ideal amount of impact
etc ...

If we find heuristic to get better decision upfront it will lead to less surprise and more manageable production that fit the cost and return we want.

Of course ideal are to be strive for, but we cannot exactly achieve it. But any finding we get just increase agency.

 

This cost a lot to change too much things ditching lot work that has been done.
Yeah, he should have better defined those things before doing so much, he is not the first in that situation.

 

The thing is, is there a methodology to do this? I mean the former garBenjamin conversation was entirely about figuring that, and it took a lot of meandering, is there technique and method to lessen that meandering?

So far I have categorized 2 types of meandering, execution and vision.

Execution can meander due to:
- lack of skills so you have to scrap stuff up until they are good
- technical difficulty, the target was ill define and you must find way to fit inside the cost budget
- originality, you are doing new stuff and you have to figure out things

Vision meander due to:
- fuzzyness, it's ill defined so you have to make things up as it comes, and you can corner yourself with incompatible addition
- "fitness", it's well define but cause execution problem (see above)
- "mood", things keep changing base on your mood, ill defined vision or not

So now this isn't a way to mitigate it, but now we have an analysis matrix we can see where our project fits in.

Probably any methodology will ever reduce these problem, but they surely can help us turn around project based on context. And while a methodology exist to ensure no meandering, it would probably create soulless production, but then even that can inspire proper creative production and make them into something workable.

 

There is two ways we see a lot.
- Experimenting level design , or graphics or gameplay, and start making a game from it.
- Clear game goals with lot of art design before creating 2D or 3D content and gameplay.

I would say the last one is lot better because you don't do 2D or 3D work before game design and gameplay are well defined enough.

 

You can never figure it all out and eliminate all "dead time". I have focused on this for years. You can get far more productive than the average though. The biggest things are planning & experience from having done many projects. Planning enough to guide the way forward & more importantly defining the overall goals and scope BUT not so much that you end up wasting time on that and locking things in too rigidly. Experience of course is obvious... if you have worked on 100 game projects you will be much better at estimating how much work is involved in a given task as well as the overall project.

LD43 is going on this weekend. If you find some people who are very experienced Ideally someone who has completed many games. And watch their streams either live or the later posted YT videos. That is a great way to gain some of the benefits of someone else actually having went through all of the effort and time.

These folks get better every time they do a game jam. You can see processes form over the weeks, months and years as they tackle project after project.

Of course, everything will be personalized to some degree to the specific developer but other things you will see are shared across multiple very experienced game developers. One of my favorite game jam devs is Tim Ruswick... you can basically skip ahead to the 45 minute mark when brainstorming for game ideas begins or to the 1 hour 20 minute mark when he finally gets the idea for the game he will be building this weekend.

He is currently right now as I am writing this doing his second dev session and live streaming...

If you absolutely need for the person to be using Unity to stay interested then you might want to watch Jonas. Although I think he does things somewhat differently maybe. I don't watch a lot of his dev videos but I know he does focus on gameplay a lot and gives feedback to other game devs on the gamplay in their games. Because of that I think it should be worthwhile to tune in.

Anyway, Tim has completed more than 20 games in the past 2 years. He develops pretty close to the way I do but not exactly. Has a bunch of videos and a lot of it is pretty much the same way I view things and other stuff is not.But I definitely connect with his dev style and most of his marketing ideas as well. I've watched him progress as a developer where each new game he has decreased the amount of time spent up front on visuals until finally this one he is actually just scribbling things out. I was surprised because usually he does a bit more on the stuff than this but I guess this is just him learning improving for efficiency.

Anyway he likes to nail down the scope. Need to know what you are building, right?

I think this is where many people start out wrong they just start making graphics or writing code and don't really know what the end goals even are. What is the minimum you NEED to do. And what are the things that would be NICE TO DO but not necessary. That is what you need to know going into the project I think.

And then you can start working knocking out super simple placeholder graphics and such to get the game developing. IMO this is very important to approach it this way... because the game will change some during development. Some ideas won't work as well as you think. You will get much better ideas along the way. And a lot of the details will be brainstormed during development but you always have that high level overall scope and end goals guiding everything. At least that is how I do it not saying is exactly how Tim does it. The important thing is if you focus on creating the end quality graphics, audio, etc up front and then need to change in the interest of making a better game and do not use some of the audio / visual stuff then creating that stuff was just completely wasted time.

It's basically stuff that people have heard countless times really. You don't have to use cubes but the point is you don't need to focus on modeling detailed objects and certainly don't need to focus on creating a bunch of animations and such for them. Or their counterparts on the 2D side. You just need to build the game and then when you have it built you will know EXACTLY what the content requirements are so you only spend time creating visual & audio assets that are actually needed.

 

Like anything , more you do , better you get lol

Those games videos are again game jams , that does not compare with someone making a bigger game, with lot of content , polish graphics and extended gameplay.

It's entirely related to your game goals.
You have skills or artist on your team, replace cubes by good 3D models, otherwise buy ready characters with animations and models packs, it's something a lot do whatever it is mobile or desktop.
Many successful games uses popular high quality plugins to lower the coding.

Both can work.
Someone can start graphics or gameplay, and build on top of that and get a good game, perhaps it will take lot more time because he will have to create level design, new gemeplay ideas, or change things he has worked on.
I prefer the approach with a clear game design before doing any graphics or code, specify what will be the game, what will be all main gameplay features , and what will be the graphics levels themes and the game graphics style.

What matters is to work the way it works for you.

Back to indie games, this one looks lot more responsive and dynamic than most triple A fps melee games.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1068892436586479616

 

I agree more or less with your thoughts. LOL I primarily think about game dev as a solo or a tiny 2 to 3 person team. I do think scaling beyond that these basic fundamentals of efficiency are just as, if not more, important. I know in software development in general the larger the team the more likely there will be people jacking around iterating or otherwise playing (i.e. doing what they want to do) rather than the work that is important at that time. Pretty much exactly like @N1ghtrunner described.

A lot of stuff applies to game projects regardless of the size. If anything these things learned from game jams would be even more valuable in a 4-month or 1-year project. Typically a very experienced game dev approaches the jam like this...

Friday night lock down the game design and begin visually sketching it out and mocking it up with super simple (FAST) visuals.

Saturday focus hardcore on making the game. Always trying to do the most important thing at this moment... implementing gameplay, very basic feedback,, a simple functional GUI, etc. The focus is on making the game. Having something playable.

Sunday the first half of the day is focused on finishing the game. Get all of the loose ends tied up. Then they switch and devote the remaining time completely to the one part of game dev everyone loves... playing. I mean polishing! They will work on replacing the visual elements with higher quality pieces, strengthening feedback, adding sounds and music etc.

Generally they try to complete the game before Sunday so they can devote Sunday entirely to polish. In reality it rarely works out that way so is more likely to be sometime around halfway through the last day when they switch to polish. I think people would find it interesting to see the process just to see how doing the polish then makes so much more sense. It's kind of thing where you've done all of the hard stuff the maybe even boring stuff first and got it done with. Everything that has to be in the game for it to be an actual game is done. So now with focus on polish this work is highly productive. Because every bit of this work makes such a big difference that is very easy to see and hear.

I think some people might be missing this: all a game jam is in reality is a highly compressed game development cycle. A person will quite likely learn more about efficiency that can immediately be put into practice from watching people very experienced in game jams complete games than from watching people doing long drawn out first or second game projects.

Many of these people doing game jams are also working on their own larger Indie game projects and use what they learn from all of these game jams on the larger projects.

Anyway I finally got some game dev in the past 2 days. Going to try to finish it off today.

 

I am on that final polishing phase now. I have the list of items done now except for that Title Screen intro thing I thought about. I did spend 30 minutes doing a quick update to the colors in the gameplay piece OH I forgot I also updated the first enemy which seemed to be the worst of the 5... so hopefully that time will make it look a tiny bit better. The important thing is for people to get to the angelic Gar chorus (TM)... LOL ... I also decided to go ahead and knock out a very basic version of that News Intro I was thinking of back in the early days.

The reason I call this the "playing" phase is just because there is no real meat to it. It's basically messing around having fun focusing purely on audio visual stuff. It's enjoyable because it takes so little work to get results that can be seen / heard compared to the rest of the game development. Sometimes it seems like a lot of people focus on this kind of stuff and end up with an inaccurate view of how much work goes into actually making a game. This kind of stuff is near immediate highly visible results but the rest of the game is often a ton of work while seeing very little on the surface.

 

I agree, it's a great way to complete the basics of a game; a full tiny game with gameplay, graphics, some levels and menus.
This forces you to complete your prototype and not start some game , be bored , let the game and move on to another game idea.
The problem is you can get stuck on making game jams only, that's fine if it's your hobby, while some people could turn a jam into a full game.

He has done lot of jams and continue experimenting, while he is ready to make a full game, perhaps he does not want and find small experiments lot more fun.

lol

Yeah, i think you should focus this way to work as this is what you find the most enjoyable and fun.
Don't force yourself in a way that you dislike, or in a way other people tell you to go that does not correspond to the better way you make a game.

It depends if you make sequels or not.
The first game can be tons of work, but it's like you create the framework for your next games.
Let's say you make "Game Defense 2" , you could increase the rez, put better sprites, but keep all your code gameplay and menus, perhaps add some new gameplay features or modify some stuff, but the game would be lot more quicker to get completed.

There is indie rpg games that was lot of work, but they had a sequel or a new game based on the framework, so it's was long and lot of work for the first game , while it was lot more easy for the sequel and they could focus on art and polish.
Perhaps when you make a new game you should ask yourself why not making a sequel.
Anyway the more code you make, the more you will be able to re use when your code it as libraries.

Anyway, congrats on completing your tower defense game.


About game design, i have some idea for your rts game.
Do higher rez and add static in game portraits with some dialog for important moments during game, this would allow to bring some basic story plot, and make your game more appeal





A nice reminder

 

Yes a person needs to stay focused. Use the game jam simply to get a break from the bigger project and maybe test some ideas out for the bigger game or probably ideally do a few small game jams or at least a few tiny game projects whether game jam or not before starting on the real game. It is mainly just getting the overall experience and finding the right process and workflows that work best for each person to take a game from concept through to completion that has a lot of value.

That is an interesting game and a very long jam. Appears to have been a 25-day game jam. But maybe that worked much better for him. I can understand that. He might only be able to put in a couple hours per day instead of the 10 to 12 per day many people put in for a weekend game jam.

I definitely think about this. Every game project produces some stuff useful for future projects. And absolutely for something like an rpg or other huge project is how I would approach it. First one yes be a lot of work but also be pretty basic creating a foundation more than anything. It's sequel or otherwise just a second rpg can build on that first and focus on adding more to it.

Thanks. That is a cool idea and originally I was going to have a commander head talking for the story snippets but axed it. Each day does end with the scrolling story snippet as it unfolds so the player learns about the story behind the game as well as in the beginning the CO doubts you being the right choice and as you prove yourself just maybe you can gain his confidence.

115.5 hours and now I am at the very beginning of a new project. Release. So need to focus on setting everything up and doing marketing. I just have extremely little infrastructure in place so this first project is a huge amount of work to build all of that as well. But next game I will at least have all of the accounts set up ... a presence.... at various sites as well as experience in using all of these sites and will focus more on them from the beginning.

I have done a little of this as far as some basic research and getting some tiny amount of marketing itself done. Think I have about 7 hours on that side. Lol It's a start. I will basically this week reverse engineer the marketing strategy for a few tiny games and focus accordingly.

That's awesome! I have the Hidden Depths version of this as a poster hanging on a wall in my house but this one is even better in some ways.

 

I did some calculations last night and I think basically I need to get a mention of the game (leading to a game landing page) in some form or other out to about 10 million people.

I think this is basically the minimum to be sure of success. Not crazy level of success but just reasonably could expect bare minimum success of covering the development expense. Of course there is always it could do this... that could happen... but since I have no control over any of that ignore. Any extra thing that may possibly happen outside of my direct firsthand efforts cannot be counted on at all period.

So yeah... 10 million people in the target audience (which actually is multi-faceted of course).... alright I have a number. It might be overkill but can't leave things to chance.

Hope to dive in tonight identifying everything needed!

 

That's too big for an indie ultra low rez pixel game, even many triple A games don't do a million sales.
When you'll get a game selling to 10 million buyers you can quit your job lol

 

I think i meant marketing view rate, not bought games.

 

Yeah not expecting millions of sales by any means LOL I mean a target for people seeing or hearing a mention of the game. Reaching people. Introducing someone to the game and leading them to the game ideally via a link. I realize it seems huge on one hand but take Twitter for example.

Say I manage to get RTs and other coverage placing my "message" on 1 million peoples Twitter accounts who seem to be a reasonable fit for the game. At the BEST I'd expect 1,000 people to click through to the landing page for the game. Everything is so flooded and to get the right message in front of the right person at the right time when they are not busy / distracted so are able to check it out AND have them want to check it out... 1 out of 1,000 I think is a reasonable max in that situation. Of course the best part of this campaign is in the collateral of increasing my own followers.

Other things would have different rates. If a person frequents a website and always checks it out routinely they will see a preview / review at some point and will probably be more likely to check it out than if they came across it on Twitter I would guess.

Ultimately some number of people check out the game and then again some tiny % (but not nearly as tiny as people clicking over from Twitter for example) want the game.

It will all be a lot easier after I have a following and can instantly let thousands of people who have proven to be interested in my games know about a new game.

Basically I'm at the very bottom and need to build up through all of that process. It is an expensive slow process. At least it was in my previous experience and I expect the same now.

I expect to have to claw my way forward bit by bit. I mean I will try to do things as smart as I can and of course leverage everything I can. I have some contacts already who can provide a fair amount of targeted reach but I expect basically every single sale I will need to work for.

This is a realistic mindset I think. Expect nothing except tiny rewards from a large amount of my own efforts. Next time I can build on this. This time... I expect it to be a real beast that I need to relentlessly chop at.

 

I think your type of player would be more aspiring dev,
I sure a devlog that explain your rational + livestream of dev could be a marketing ploy, with a dedicated twitter account for the game, that use appropriate hashtag to declare new post or stream (like #unity if done in unity etc ...).
And a clear message and brand, which I would assume would be along the concept of lean and fast, and take authority on making simple small game that goes to the point, with rants about spending too much on game. Basically repackage your post in that thread in recurrent manifesto and we good.

 

LOL! I actually did think about instead of focusing on making games for end gamers instead focus on making ready made games for sale that people can take swap their own stuff into and release. But I don't really want to contribute to that stuff even though my games are awesome. ha ha

Well... there are a lot of people for basically any quality game. The laser focused audience is just the one the most money / time can be devoted to because it will be the highest converting.

Same is true of my game. There are multiple markets for it... the first one is of course the most laser targeted highest converting audience...

• People who love tiny tower defense games in "chunky pixel art" style
• People who love chunky pixel art style games in general
  
• People who love tower defense games in general
  
• People who love tiny (< 2 hours to complete) Indie games in general

And more generically I can market to people who love retro style games but this is not very targeted. They might want 16-bit graphics. They may love platformers or shmups or whatever. But some of the people in the targets above will be from this larger group.

The people who love tiny "chunky pixel art" tower defense games will be the highest converting & the smallest group of people. Maybe 40% of these people that I find will buy the game.

The people who love "chunky pixel art" games in general will be a larger group and maybe 20% of these people that I find will buy the game.

The people who love tower defense games in general will be probably even larger group than chunky pixel art loving people and maybe 10% of these people I find will buy the game.

The people who love tiny Indie games in general will be by far the largest group here and maybe 1% of these people that I find will buy the game.

Those % aren't meant to be accurate but just representing the general idea of how I view the landscape when it comes to marketing.

Anyway... back to digging. I'm getting a good list compiled. Like everything else it... Just. Takes. Time. (or money... I am sure someone somewhere already has done a good amount of this and for only $999.95 if I order right now... I could get it)

 

Except it's lossy compression, so you lose out on a lot of things that work for long term development projects that don't apply to short term ones.

 

WAIT that's totally NOT what I was implying! I was more like in the inspiring business, ie:
- showing how its' made,
- showing you can make it, it doesn't take much (scope)
- showing how your game is awesome
- leading by example

Basically the core market is aspiring dev, and the secondary market is chunky pixel gamer with nostalgia callback to c64/amiga/commodore/intellivision aesthetics

 

Yeah I got what you are saying. I have thought about doing that kind of thing but I always think that would be a great thing to do after being an Indie game dev for 5 to 10 years and building a decent business from it. The Internet is filled with self proclaimed experts usually just parroting things someone else said. Look at how many people are on YT making Indie game dev tutorials who seem to have never completed a game in their life and just as many if not more giving out marketing advice that is easy to see they have simply read some things and made a video or wrote an article on what they have read without having ever actually done it themselves. I don't want to be like that.

I guess you are right though. If it is just aspiring developers and not aspiring Indie Game Developers (as in business) that is very different. I have experience in the areas needed for Indie Game Dev success but I have not put them together before. And that is what I am trying to do now. So that is where my ramblings in this thread come from. Experience on both sides but I think I make it clear I am just now trying to put it all together.

 

Actually @neoshaman that is a good idea. Sorry my head was completely at a different place before. lol Had to go to town and was thinking about it on way over and back. I have thought of it before as a momentary thing. Probably back when I was still very much against the idea of starting a business again so flushed that out quick.

You or many people could do that. Someone like @Arowx would be an ideal choice to do it. Simply because if you have a collection of 20 or more games released you have more clout for such a thing. I mean you have actual proof to back up why you are doing what you are doing. Help a lot to set you apart from all of the other people trying to do the same thing who have 0 games released anywhere.

Just remember though your main competition is out there... the infamous Coding Your Own Games Is Easier Than You Think Udemy Guy... someone even made a jam game with him in it appearing on a bunch of monitors you have to click to skip the ad... ha ha ha! I see more and more game devs "I'm so sick of seeing that guy and that ad!"