How much of indie dev success do you think is dumb luck?

I've come to see success, even outside of gaming, as more timing than anything. If you are early now days you stand a chance otherwise you need tons of money to out compete the competition and market the crap out of whatever you are selling.

Everyone I know that became "successful" did so based on timing. Likewise all those people became much less successful, and some even broke, after the timing factor wore off and the competition came to town.

 

What that means is it wasn't strong enough to stand on its own merits and didn't have enough support built from outside of where it was sold, so as soon as the rug was pulled out from under it is tanked. Which tells me it was only "accidentally" successful and they had no control over its exposure. As soon as the exposure was taken away, they were dead in the water. Relying on 'timing' is really a shot in the dark, a last resort bandaid over a total lack of security/stability.

 

You're hitting at the heart of it. Refreshing. I got burnt out seeing all the posts over the years endlessly going on about quality quality quality which as you stated is a first step... making something and is solidly in the "build it and they will come" fantasyland.

I think what you described has happened a lot so it is confusing for people to understand. Some put a game on a store do nothing yet it sells very well and they believe they must have made an incredible game. In reality the only way it can sell very well is by having a lot of exposure and if they have done nothing to get that exposure then someone or something is giving it to them.

We saw a perfect example of this recently in the mobile game views and installs dropping drastically thread. The quality of their games hadn't suddenly become lower. It was simply the algorithm which had delivered a lot of free exposure was changed and now the exact same games had a fraction of their previous views and installs. Zero to do with the games themselves. Entirely to due with a bunch of free marketing they were given being taken away or greatly reduced.

 

Yes exactly. It can make or break you. For example Google often updates their algorithms and I've seen how an ecommerce website for example can suddenly lose half its business because suddenly they're not considered valuable enough or relevant enough. It can happen at the flip of a switch. Purely on a basis of traffic, ie how much exposure you have. If they pull the rug out from under you you're gone. Which is why you have to try to build multiple different types of traffic sources to be more secure. ie don't put all your eggs in one basket.

Similarly if you are selling products on Amazon, if you do something wrong like late ship a few orders, they can suddenly massively ding you and cut you off. You could lost a massive amount of business overnight. And you were only getting the business because you were getting the exposure. All other factors aside it boils down to the two major factors:

1) Traffic - how many people are aware of and find the thing.

2) Conversion rate - how good your product is as turning the traffic into buyers.

And a huge % of developers are actually focusing almost exclusively on conversion rate optimization. They are trying to build a better game, a better app, a better website. Something that is more appealing IF you see it and WHEN you are playing it. But the fact is unless you can ALSO get people TO IT, its conversion rate has no chance to "work". You can't convert people into buyers if they don't even know you're there. And a lot of ecommerce companies do this with their websites too, they set up shop and open the doors and just sit there and hope people will find it, and they get no traffic, and no sales.

The same thing is happening there as is happening with the "democratization" or "game development for all" thing. Website platforms are making it easier for more and more people to open an online store, and yet no-one has a clue about how to get visitors to the stores, so a ton of them just fail and complain about it being over-saturated or unfair. It's just not enough to say "here I am, I'm great" if no-one is listening and no-one even is aware. It's not even that your product sucks. IF people could become aware of you, you might well sell a ton.

And it's not just about saturation, it's not just there is a lot of competition, and it's not just a matter of whether your game is better than all the rest. It's the fact that you are a tiny needle in a massive haystack and if you can't address THAT problem, you're going to stay there unless you happen to get "lucky" with someone somewhere finding your stuff and making some noise about it.

It's great if you can just take the easy route, dump your game on a store shelf (marketplace publishing) and let it sit there and hope that people find it. And maybe they do, and maybe it does well. But if they don't, all your effort is for nothing.

Speaking from experience here. I spent some time on a little game and I thought hey, this is at least as good as some of the #1 puzzle games on the app store, no real reason why I can't do the same, right! Well.... it's sitting at the bottom of that trash heap of darkness totally hidden in obscurity with barely so much as 1 person ever finding it a day. And I haven't taken my own advice either, which is why it's still sitting there, doing nothing. Even though it's a reasonable game that took a few months to put together.

 

It reminds me a bit of a scenario where perhaps you're someone who has lived in the country all your life sheltered in some heavily religious group and you are really cut off from the outside world, then you break free and go try to live in New York expecting that you're going to strike it rich, and as soon as you step foot in the door you discover it's absolutely massive and filled with huge crowds and noise and bustle and everyone is competing for your attention, and no-one gives a crap that you just arrived. So then you are like this total newbie who has been living under a rock, just crawled out and somehow expects the world to hand everything over on a silver plate. Not going to happen. You gotta shine a bright light to get noticed.

 

There's really two pieces to it. You gotta make something so that people can at least have some reason to connect to it or reason to want. And then you gotta get it in front of the people.

Most dev work is basically geared to trying to make a better car. Look at all the ridiculous amounts of time people put into sculpting perfect looking 3D rocks for goodness sake. But without having a stream of people lining up at the front door looking at the car, it's going nowhere. Even if it's the most amazing car in the world. Even if it can fricking fly like chitty chitty. ... it's dead unless people know about it.

I suppose you could summarize...

Bad games sell S***loads when S***loads of people know about it.
Good games sell nothing if no-one knows about it.

 

I think that is where the confusion seems to come in a large part. Devs are thinking they are shining the bright light by making a game that is highly polished, looks very good maybe even is very good. And maybe not understanding the light shining on it you are referring to means separate from the thing itself. Quite simply a lot of people are making very good games these days and a lot of them are great looking games. It's like getting dressed up in a nice suit and going to an interview thinking you will make a big impression not noticing everyone else looks about the same and all have their own copy of Dress for Success. Lol

Anyway good stuff.

 

"If you build it, they will come."

 

That's exactly it. And guess what else.... all those thousands of other developers who have made quite-good, poor, or even excellent games, but are not selling any..... you might be thinking hey, the market is saturated and there's tons of games out there to compete with and everyone's making these games now.... BUT.... are those games even getting noticed? Are people even FINDING them? Does anyone even know that those 10,000 puzzle games even exist at all? There's a ton of games which are "out" but which are not really exposed in any major way>

That in effect actually takes a lot of your competition OFF the table, if you can realize that just being a released game doesn't make it a successful game. Doesn't mean it's even COMPETING AT ALL because if no-one knows it exists, it's not your competition.

Your real competition is

1) Your own obscurity and not being known to exist by anyone
2) Your own ability to make a game that people might like once they discover it
3) The relatively SMALL slice of the market that actually HAS exposure and is actually competing for the AWARENESS of the public by drawing attention towards themselves.

Think of attention as a kind of substance. People are trying to syphon it off and feed it into their game. But most people are not doing that at all so their game gets no attention. It's the exposure that people are all competing for, really. Trying to win attention.

 

Yeah, one of the biggest myths in history unless the thing you build is SO GOOD that it simply spreads like wildfire by word of mouth (the slow, organic way). And that usually entails people who are LOCAL to where the game is making noise about it slightly outside their neighborhood, and gradually spreading it beyond the confines of where it exists through "news" that travels. But that's also a very PASSIVE way to go about it.

No one's coming to look at your game.

NO ONE.

Not until they become aware that it's even there.

 

I agree with what you are saying but I was thinking in terms of starting something from nothing. For example you have no money to buy exposure. Without that then you need timing on your side. You need to move to the town that might turn into the next new york and stake your place there. Otherwise go to new york and fight it out with all the others. Some win but most lose.

It just seems now days everything is boom and bust aka timing. Some exceptions sure but very few.

 

And that's a trap of their EGOS. Because they think that by extension because their game is great so too they are great. And expect to just sit there and be admired by others without having to lift a finger. It's the desire to GET as much as you can, while GIVING as little as possible. And that means your narcissism is going to not only turn people off it's not even going to magically "attract" them in the first place. Especially not the ones who are busy looking at themselves in the mirror in another city.

 

Okay

 

I think every single game ever developed is basically starting from nothing. As soon as you launch on an app store or market you are nowhere. No-one knows about you. And they will not find you except by some very slim long-tail random chance search result if you're lucky. The store owners especially are not going to feature you whatsoever until you prove yourself or show enough potential to be a big way to make more sales or boost the value of the platform. Getting a special nod from higher places is slim pickings for the elite mostly.

 

But that only means you need to build some bridges. It doesn't mean they hate your game, it only means they don't know about it. Your game could be totally awesome.

So lets say your game is really, really good and anyone who plays it agrees. But... no one is playing it, because no-one can find it. What will you do about that?

 

Just talking purely about the logistics of it here... if your product is positioned in a HUGE warehouse in the back corner shelf somewhere obscure, and all the bustle is happening at the front of the warehouse with barely anyone ever getting back there to look at it... that's a big problem. And it has nothing to do with your game being bad. That's precisely what happens on all the markets and stores and search engines.... due to ranking, you are shuffled WAAAAY down to the low end of all products. Way far away from the main aisles. Way removed from where the attention and excitement is, and you have to work your way up from there. And if you don't work your way up, what can you expect except total failure?

Humans will follow a crowd. When they see support for something from the social proof, they will trust it more. That's how things balloon and snowball into viral action. They go with the crowd. Everyone seems excited, it must be worth looking at. They take it as a referral. A vote of confidence. You gotta get more people on your side to advocate for you. But you can't do that at all if you're basically hiding in the shadows. And the unfortunate truth is that the internet and all markets and all app stores and all search engines are all huge giant warehouses. And it's just the warehouse ITSELF that is the problem. The sheer size of it, the sheer volume of contenders. That creates obstacles. It builds walls. Deflections. To rise above it you have to rise above the blockages. Rise above the obscurity itself. However you do that is up to you.

This is why there are also in the website world many "white hat" and "black hat" ways to go about getting traffic. People are desperate to get eyeballs on their stuff. There are many many many ways to do it. But sadly a huge % of game developers don't do ANYTHING. They submit their game to mommy and daddy app store and sit and wait for them to love you. Gunna be waiting a long time. It doesn't work that way. You have to give the love you want to receive. Which means you gotta shine and broadcast, rather than "publish and pray". Publish and pray is another way of saying "build it and they will come." That does not work for any but a handful of cases where something just grew by the grass roots buzz about it without any effort.

 

Early can be a path to (relatively) easy success. But people succeed every day in all manner of existing markets without large financial backing, or they build something good enough to get that financial backing.

Timing is different, timing is pretty important I wont discount that, but it doesn't just mean early, you can be too early to a market just as you can be too late.

Being able to build a sustainable business is a different thing altogether: some markets do disappear but its rare that this is instant, and generally incumbents will have an advantage as long as they are flexible enough to shift with the market. For those businesses that have a limited lifetime, the goal is to realise that and get out before you go broke!

 

The importance of timing and failing to become successful because people don't notice you is largely why I feel capitalism is heavily luck based. Too many variables that you can't control.

 

Luck is relative. 80% of population lives with less than $10 a day. But somehow that one 12 year old kid with a Ferrari we heard about has a much bigger weight in our self luck evaluation.

 

That's also why there is such a thing as advertising and marketing, to try to overcome that issue.

It would be wrong to say the growing myth that making a success on mobile for example is "pure luck". It's not luck. Part of it is, but it's also majorly influenced by social networking, websites, marketing effords, ads, money, business tactics, knowing people, etc. Big companies do not leave it up to "luck" to ensure their game will be a success. It's business.

 

Luck is a dismissive word. Like magic. It means "I quit trying to understand and this is the word to signify that."

 

I just got a visual of fishing in my head. Of course fishing blindly in an open body of water can come down to luck...however you can put yourself where there might be more fish. You could also, in theory, cast quite a bit more fishing line and bait into said body of water. Just a thought.

 

Yeah basically you gotta close the gap in any way possible between where you are at and where the fish are.