Steam Strategy now that Greenlight is gone

I think you're right about that. People pretty much just play the certain types of games they really like. I know people who only play multiplayer FPS games. Others who only play puzzle games. That's pretty much a given I think and goes back to the whole niche market thing. Some people just love games though and play or at least will try nearly anything and everything but I think they are a minority.

 

There are definitely some people who only play multiplayer games. There are some people who play both multiplayer and single player games, though. Some single player games pull a lot of hours. For example, No Man's Sky and Stardew Valley are both single player yet still demand huge hours per player. When a gamer pours a thousand hours into one game, they don't have time to play as many games. That trend is true for YouTubers, Twitchers, and other gamers.

 

That's true, but even when a game demands many hours, that doesn't mean the players are binging on the game.

I play American Trucking Simulator. It's a game where just one run can take 30 minutes to an hour, so it's one where you can put it many hours. So sometimes, if I want to get that experience in, I just do one run. I don't play for four hours or some long time.

Same for NMS - it's actually better suited to this. You can play in small chunks.

I'm rarely playing just one game at a time, unless it's a story-intensive game like an RPG. I split up time between some type of first-person game, some kind of third-person game, usually a driving game, maybe a visual novel...

Of course that probably isn't true for people on Youtube or Twitch. Maybe to a small extent, but they're probably playing and streaming mostly one game at a time.

 

If enough people feel this way, then I guess I could shift my focus to multiplayer, but this strategy game is a bit different than the typical Age of Empires Civ vs Civ formula. So, it will be a little bit different experience.

Now, me personally, I'm not much of a multiplayer guy. The only game series I've ever put any time into online is the Dark Souls series.

I don't know how hard it is to implement multiplayer. I've just never looked into it. I may be able to be clever and work it into the game without having to change much of the story or existing units or whatnot, but I would have to make sure it's worth it.

To be honest, I'm not sure if my programming skills are up to the task of multiplayer. It would definitely make things easier if I stuck to single player. I could start to take a look at how to do multiplayer on the side a bit just in case.

 

@DrewMelton no need to stress over multiplayer because there will be people who are fine with a singleplayer experience. It's more just that if you can get to the point of adding mp support sometimes in the future that would be a great update that should help you to make more sales.

I think you could create your game as you have been and when people mention mp support you can tell them that is on the drawing board for a v2. Then using the money from the sp sales perhaps even hire a dev to help implement that.

 

I haven't been interested in even doing the hobbyist thing for a while now but when I do I'm always focused on maximizing dev speed. And I think that is because besides just getting joy from it... in the back of my mind I consider it to be the greatest factor to be a success at the Indie thing.

Basically if a person could work as quickly as The Flash (assuming equipment could handle it) they could pretty much guarantee that every game they made would be successful. With successful being to average X dollars per hour for every hour they spent on a game dev activity. With X being more than enough for them to comfortably live.

An indie game making only $600 (after Steam's cut) seems like a failure to most but if the person made that game including doing all marketing work in 12 hours or less they averaged at least $50 per hour. And I think that would be very worthwhile. Unfortunately it seems like many games make maybe $6,000 but the developer(s) spend maybe 1,500 hours (or more!) averaging only $4 per hour or less. At least for the USA this would be a guaranteed way to go broke.

So... ultimate key to Indie success... become The Flash or as darn close as is realistically possible.

 

Here is what I have planned.

Last night, I though of an unobtrusive way to implement multiplayer without affecting the game too much. Basically, I would use the same units that the main player would use in single player (just a different color), and these would ONLY exist when multiplayer is chosen. So, it would sort of be an opposing faction that has entered the battlefield.

Now, it's not something I'm going to try right away. I think I will continue to develop single player for now, and in my free time occasionally check out some multiplayer examples/tutorials just to see if it's something I feel like I could do.

 

You know, I think the key to speed is to set up a nice template for yourself.

In my game, all my characters use a "base" model that I can easily tweak for different helmets/weapons/whatever. They use the same animation rig so they can share generic animations like a walk cycle. They use the same UV map so I can open Substance Painter and already have base texture work done that I can tweak.

It takes me maybe 2 or 3 days at most to make a new character. This includes props like a unique weapon, a nice texture, and unique idle and attack animations.

However, setting up this "base" character was fairly time consuming. But it was worth the effort as now I can work quickly.

For props, I sometimes tweak an existing prop instead of starting from scratch, but only if it makes sense. Using Substance Painter I can save materials and reuse them. This is handy for rocks, trees, boards, ect. that will use the same texture. I already have something saved, so I just apply it and tweak it if need be.

In all honesty, my props are low poly. I just use the texture work to make them look detailed. And since the game is seen from a distance, I don't have to get too carried away.

Programming would be the time-consuming part until you get enough code written that you can copy and paste or at least have an idea of what to do. Then comes tweaking gameplay balance, fixing bugs, refining the gameplay, and so on. I feel it is worth spending time here to make the game enjoyable to play.

If my next game is also an RTS or at least a top-down kinda game, I can use a lot of what I did on this project as a starting point. That will make a big difference.

 

That's pretty much the way I see it. Focus on building templates and libraries and focus on dev processes. I've done a lot of that always working on shaving off time without it impacting what actually comes out at the end. Still I've focused only on tiny games so far and I think that kind of goes along with this too... keep scope only as big as it absolutely needs to be and no bigger.

For me it is also identifying graphics as a major bottleneck so I've done countless experiments to remedy that. Ultimately for 3D things can only be ultra low poly or even primitives and almost certainly not textured (possibly depending on overall game scale). For 2D all games I make free or otherwise going forward I think will use a very low resolution of 160x90 and basically be monochrome objects. Possibly some texturing using airbrush. But that is it. No more.

I'm actually kind of getting in the mood to make a game again. I was dabbling a lot in 3D until I lost interest in it all again. It will return again sometime though.

And I absolutely agree the smartest approach is to pick a genre and just stick with it. Continually building on that framework in sequels or new titles in the same genre. The first game doesn't have to be an attempt at the end all be all game but only a first step.

 

I'm still analyzing numbers although I don't want to end up in analysis paralysis. But anyway basically I'd need to generate $30k per quarter on Steam. Gross before their cut and before allocating taxes. Then it becomes worth doing as a business.

If it was 1 game and I estimate I could only rely on 1,500 copies selling at most the game would need to be $20. However, if I made two games during the quarter (and always assuming the money is coming in next quarter) estimating 3,000 copies sold then each game would need to be $10. If I could manage to make 4 games per quarter with a total of 6,000 copies sold then I'm looking at a $5 price.

I think 4 games is very aggressive although if I was doing it full-time probably quite possible. Just not sure about being sustainable.

So that is the challenge. How to make 1 game per quarter that can sell 1,500 at $20 each or how to make 2 games per quarter that can sell a total of 3,000 copies at $10 each.

And I get people may think well 1,500 copies is crazy low but from what I have seen there have been many games (not asset flips or achievement-based) that failed to hit even 1,000 copies sold. So sure one game may sell 5,000 copies but I can't approach it from a business perspective relying on that. I want a target that I feel is reasonable to hit. Almost set it at 1,000 but I think 1,500 copies average is realistic if I focus on some marketing including building connections with key folks representing the target audience. And I certainly can't rely on getting a smash hit and making 100,000+ sales. That is just a silly dream IMO.

And all of this means scope of the games must be very small and my development processes need to be highly optimized. Everything has to be efficient.

Of course that's where doing it part-time first helps a lot.

 

Unless you can build a lot of consumer demand for those games, then the numbers are too optimistic. Steam is intentionally burying all new games by default. New games are not featured the same way they used to be years ago. Now new games are just buried under a pile.

 

I think it's impossible in that timeframe. Not only that, but you'd get a bad reputation quickly about "abandoning your games right after release". The steam/pc market at large doesn't want devs that do what you propose. They want quality products (not necessarily fancy looking, but polished, unique, creative, well balanced, bug free, well optimized, etc.) and they don't care how you make that happen or if it's financially viable for you.

 

Very good points. I get that stuff and am looking at it from a business perspective. And that's the thing entirely if these numbers are even too optimistic then I don't know if it is possible to really consider it a valid business to build. BUT I'd like to think it is possible.

And sure we can drag out the time frame say we go to 1 year. It's all the same thing in the end basically except the more time the more cost the greater the risk. If I spent one year per game that changes things so now each game needs to generate $120,000. At $20 per game it would need to sell 6,000 units. At $10 per game I'd need to sell 12,000 units. At $5 per game I'd need to sell 24,000 units.

Personally I think this approach is much more of a crapshoot than focusing on a quarterly dev cycle. I think this kind of approach is pretty close to what most Indies are doing who are not able to make this work as business to support them. Working 1, 2 or even 3 or more years on a game and then selling a low number of units. It cannot be sustained. Sure doing it part-time forever then yes that will work. Still not worth it from a business perspective but if a person is getting a ton of enjoyment out of it then it doesn't matter anyway.

From a purely business perspective it has to be reasonable. And from everything I have seen spending loads of time and effort does not pay off in the end. I think so many people just focus on the few games (a low percentage when you consider all of the games) that have generated enough money to make the amount of time spent on them worthwhile from a business perspective.

This is why you have established Indie devs out there continually saying do not spend many months and years on a game. It's just not worth it in most cases. I have no delusions that my game would be one of those exceptions.

 

Even one year for a game worth 20 bucks is highly unlikely.
For that amount of money, Steam users expect a lot. Some even complain about 5 Dollar being too expensive.

Go and check games in the $20 range. That are games like Slime Rancher, Subnautica etc. Games that took years.

I don't think it is a good idea, to make as much games as possible in a short time. It will likely hurt your reputation and not build a sustainable business.

 

I agree there should be a business plan for anybody who wants to do game dev full time as their only income. It is great to pencil out idea about how to make that happen.

I don't think anybody can post several games per quarter and get thousands of sales of each of those games. Maybe a few hundred sales on certain games at most. The Steam community definitely does not want to reward any indie that is pumping out quick simple games.

 

From what I've seen on game stores (and read about marketing) people are generally insensitive to price once they decide to pay some amount of money. The problem is getting them to spend in the first place, but somewhat counter-intuitively (or not) they will often want to spend an average-to-high amount once they decide to spend, because they see price as a marker of quality. And not only that, they will often defend their choices rather than be critical of something they spent money for, in order to feel good about it.

My strategy for marketing is simple - make something very good and either sell it at a high price, or make it free and make money from IAP or whatever. There's no better marketing than from a customer who has spent a lot to get something they are very satisfied with. A breadcrumbs price point just marks a game as being lousy even if it's not (although it usually is).

 

The hard thing about pumping out many games is not building the models or doing the textures, it's coming up with an idea for a game and refining it until it's actually good.

People have lots of ideas, but those ideas need to be fleshed out to make a worthwhile game experience, and this is the hard part.

I worked quite a lot on my game making charts comparing different types of units, their strengths and weaknesses, what the goals of the game will be, what the challenges and obstacles will be.

And then comes testing things out, tweaking everything, getting rid of what doesn't work, seeing what needs to be added or taken away, balancing the difficulty, and hopefully making sure this is all leading to an enjoyable experience for the player.

Sometimes you need to see it in action before you even know if it's good or not. I had to scrap a lot of ideas that sounded good on paper but didn't pan out well when I actually did a physical test in game. This also means having to redo assets, remake the HUD, add new assets, scrap things that you worked hard on, and so on.

You need time to play with ideas and refine them. Unless it's the most simple game ever, then I guess you could put out lots of them, but even then it needs to be a good idea for a game that actually works.

I don't know, I guess I'm the type who prefers to stick with an idea rather than get it done and start all over on a new game. I don't want to spend forever on it, but I remember how much work it has been making a fun, playable game experience, and getting it to a level of quality that I deem acceptable.

Of course, the fact that my game is a strategy game has probably made some of this harder, but even with any game genre I think there should be a focus on making it well thought out.

So, aside from creating the assets, the question should be how long does it take someone to come up with a good game idea, and refine it into a good gameplay experience? Then, we can start factoring in creating good looking models, sounds, or anything else that is needed to polish the game.

Factoring in some extra time for learning (learning programming, game design, 3d modelling, whatever) should also be considered. Well, unless you are already an expert in everything.

 

I agree guys. These are just numbers showing what would be needed. At least for me.

I always keep it firmly in mind that I am only one person. I am not a team of 12 or 5 or even 2. Only 1. So when thinking of game dev as a business I tend to look at games made by only one person or games that I know I could make in a reasonable amount of time.

So what I see as realistic for me is along the lines of these...

Lupinball I do think this was priced a bit too high at $10. I'd want just a bit more to it. I think $5 to $7 would be good as is.

The Superfluous $5

Pixel Sand $5

DYE $10

This is a $20 game and out of my reach.

So that's what I am thinking of. It would have to be games along the lines of these. Not focused on super graphics but focused on just solid good fun games. Trying out ideas and so forth. And definitely expect sales to fluctuate wildly. When I mention selling 6,000 copies at $5 each that would be the average over time to shoot for. One game may do 500 copies and other games do 7,000 that kind of thing. But the average to shoot for would be that $10k per month. And exact numbers may change. Maybe 5,000 copies at $6 each. Also, I'd expect to sell less in the beginning and build up a following of fans over time.

I think these kind of games are reasonable for 3 months. Really I think the best thing to do would be to spend 2 to 3 months working very part-time on a game, do some marketing, throw it up on Steam and see what happens. So maybe I will do that once I build up more desire to do so. lol

 

I definitely think you should spend 3 months and put something on Steam to get feedback. That will give you a better idea of what you can accomplish in 3 months and it will give you some idea what the sales side looks like.

 

Yeah I was looking on steam and I guess the prices are alot higher.

 

Yeah I was thinking... $7 sounds reasonable for a simple solid game. It is true... if it is a game (or anything for that matter) that someone is interested in the game being $5 or $7 is not going to be a deciding factor 99% of the time. Although I do think price to value comes in at some point.

$7 need 4,285 total sales per quarter. That sounds fairly reasonable. It is kind of laughable though to think this is the reality... even a very optimistic outlook if anything. I find it a lot more realistic to target no more than 1,500 sales per game but that would require about 3 games per quarter. If it is more realistic to expect sales of 750 copies per game (and I think it is) I'd need 6 games per quarter. It's an interesting problem.

Basically the only way I can see to make that work is spend 7 to 8 weeks making a game and then in the remaining time make 5 other games that are variations of the first game. Still sounds like a heck of a grind. Lol

Alright enough crunching numbers. I've done this each time I think about doing the Indie thing and always arrive at the same point... the numbers just don't really add up... unless you are The Flash or build up a great following who buy basically everything you make.

 

You need to spend enough time to learn how to make that type of game "good", the more time you spend on the game the better it will become -- the better you will be at making that type of game. Look at edmund mcmillen how many platformers he made. After your a "master" of the genre you can pump out games
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_McMillen

 

I think I can definitely make the games good. I was actually just checking out some games on Steam and checking out a few of my tiny games. And based on the time I put into the games I think spending 100 hours or more would make a big difference.

36 hours

40 hours

18 hours

They all have the core implemented and are complete in this simple form. People seem to really enjoy them. At least I've heard good feedback from quite a lot of people.

What they need is just more to them and that is just a matter of time.

• With another 36 hours the first game could be expanded into a side scrolling action adventure.
• Another 40 hours on the second and there could be more variety in enemies, some traps in the floor, more magic spells as well as gear to collect, actual levels to roam around in and so forth.
• Another 18 hours on the third could add power ups, additional levels, a couple more enemy types and a boss or two.

The biggest problem I run into is after working all day on the computer in a high-pressure fast-paced development environment I just don't have much desire to do more development in my free time. So I do it in spurts here and there and prefer tiny projects that don't drag on and on. Now if I was free that would be a huge difference. My mind would be fresher and would have a lot more time.

Anyway I think the next time I do a game I will budget 64 hours for it. Odd number I know but I am a long-time programmer I have binary burned in my head. lol Just see what I can done in that amount of time. Then maybe increase it up to 80 for the one after that and then finally 100 hours.

 

@Aiursrage2k you've been working in Unity for a long time now. Do you have any games out there on the market? If not what is your plan for the Indie thing or are you keeping it a hobby?

 

I have no idea how I'd price my game; being an arcade game, the amount of playtime is completely dependant on how much the user enjoys it, and I'm negative so I assume they'll play it for 5 minutes before getting bored

EDIT: did not see there was another page of posts, sorry for replying to an old part of the thread

 

I don't think you can create a following just from "solid good fun", because such games exist by the thousands, are a dime a dozen and everyone already owns a ton of them. You might as well call them "generic". To create a following you either need to make things that have unique character and give people something they can't easily get elsewhere (like the morbid touch of binding of isaac, the complexity of dwarf fortress, or the branching narratives of telltale games), or you need to be a character, like all the popular streamers.
I think financially your goal can't be reached by the vast majority of indies, no matter the strategy they apply. The market just doesn't support it.
Almost everyone has games in their steam library that they have either played barely or not at all. And if they've bought bundles, they might have even more unredeemed keys in their humble library or wherever. You aren't competing with just the thousands of games that come out the same year, you're also competing with games that people already have, and tons of f2p games. "Being a game" no longer guarantuees a product to have a market-value. It needs to be a game that is either better than many thousands of other games, or fills an underserved niche.

 

I agree with this for the most part except I wouldn't be focused on hits. That is an entirely different strategy trying to hit homeruns that most folks here (and elsewhere I guess it is the Indie dream hit it big on one game) seem to think about.

I'd be focusing solely on singles and when the occasional double happened that would just be icing on the cake. Basically the old saying it's a lot easier to get a bunch of singles than it is to get a homerun makes more sense to me to build a business around. It just doesn't seem realistic to build a business on smash hits.

I mean sure it would work if you could count on smash hits but that is the point you can't. But I think a person can count on a single. To me a single is a game that basically nobody knows about or plays except a small group of people with that group being around 1,500 or less. And maybe I'll need to revise that 800 or 400. But I don't think so. I think there are easily 1,500 people willing to buy basically any game but they have to know about it first.

Another difference I think is that it seems like a lot of people think only games that sell millions or hundreds of thousands have any value. Like only those games should be made because clearly they appeal to a majority of people. And I just don't agree with that at all. I mean if that is the case then Indies might as well just close up shop now because AAA is and has been producing those games for those people all along.

On the other hand there are masses of games out there that are enjoyed a huge amount by several thousand or even just hundreds of people. For those people such games are every bit as good, if not better, than the hugely popular games. And I really think a big part of why such games sell only hundreds or say 1,000 units is due much more to marketing (or rather lack of it) than anything else. Clearly many of these games are very good having Very Positive ratings. So the games are not bad but I'd guess they are only reaching a fraction of their market.

I'm just trying to figure out a strategy to bring quality games to those people in a way that generates enough revenue to be sustainable. And it could be that perhaps charging $15 or $20 is the key but I suspect it has more to do with reaching them than anything else. I'll know better once I make a game and put it up there.

 

I'm not talking about hits or homeruns, I'm talking about climbing the obstacles you need to climb to get people to consider buying a game, or even follow your future releases. I don't think you'll be able to reliably sell 500-1000 copies each time with 3-month games, unless there's something really special about them. E.g. looking retro and appealing to nostalgia isn't a unique hook anymore. If all this was so easy, sweatshops in low-income countries would crank those games out by the thousands. If it was realistic to make 60k a year by doing what you propose only half-time, then people would do that while working on their dream games. I just don't see this happening. I'd love you to prove me wrong and I'll gladly admit if I am incorrect! But wouldn't you imagine we'd have heard at least a dozen or so of these success stories here in recent years, just from our own community?

 

Not necessarily because if you have a formula that works you wouldnt want to blab and have alot of competition

 

Yeah that's it exactly. I talk about ideas now... plans and such because I have no risk in doing so. If I was actually doing it and making a good living from it I absolutely wouldn't post about it in a public forum.

It would be stupid to do so. Because as you both said there would be a mass of people all scrambling to do the same thing. Some would fail on the games part some would fail on the marketing part but there are just so many people wanting to do this it would destroy it. Just like it did on mobile. That is just the impact of so many people doing something.

I often wonder if this isn't why many people push the super high quality and completely original lines of thought on forums. Perhaps in at least some of these cases it is because the person making the post is doing exactly the opposite and wants to steer people wrong to keep things going well for as long as they can.

I do think in some ways taking the approach I am thinking of is even harder than or certainly it is just as hard. Like someone else said coming up with ideas playtesting tweaking perfecting gameplay that stuff takes time.

I'm not talking about throwing out complete rubbish. The games would need to feel good and be fun. And so many people seem to do all of the pieces well even with superb quality art and music yet the games don't feel good... they don't play so well... it doesn't all come together to be greater than the sum of its parts. The feedback or controls or game loop just hasn't been mastered I think is what is missing in most of the ones I have checked out.

It will be a fun experiment if nothing else. All of this talk about it I think maybe this weekend sometime I will choose my next project.

 

So for me that is the basics of how I would do it. I would target a niche audience with very small scale games. I would focus on a quarterly development & release cycle. And of course, over time as I build up more of a code framework and more art & sound assets more time is saved. Especially in the case of sequels. This savings of time could be split between slightly increasing the scale of the games that can be made and doing occasional tiny updates for older titles (which really shouldn't be needed much to begin with this is not going to be a case like most big games coming out and are 1/5 or more broken).. Growing a community all of the time so the number of sales for a new release should slowly increase as well by some tiny %. Ultimately as things solidify the development cycle can be increased... up to 4 months. Then 5 months. Then 6 months. And that is probably where it would stay.

I'd be interested in hearing the plan for those people who are focusing on making big games, what they call high quality (near AAA quality etc) games. I get that part so you make the game but in how much time do you make the game? How much income do you need the game to generate to cover that development time? How are you growing your business? Basically what are the other bits n pieces beyond I'm going to build a really awesome game!?

 

For me and for now my proper job comes first. The game's a hobby and I'll work on it when I feel like it. Right now that's 0 hours per week, so it's still very questionable if I ever get it into a shape where I'd be comfortable showing it to people. If that - against all odds - indeed should ever happen, I'll try to find an existing thematically related gaming community that'll grant me a thread on their forum to recruit testers and get opinions (*), if they basically start throwing money at their screens and I have the game featurecomplete, I'd consider a kickstarter to get maybe 500+ "preorders" and use them as beta testers to iron out all the bugs that I wouldn't be able to find myself, and if that all went well and people are happy, then I'd put it on steam, do a round of marketing, give all the backers keys, and ask them nicely to review it. Historically that kind of approach has worked extremely well for some games, because a game has a better chance of entering the cycle of getting featured under popular new releases and staying there through ongoing influx of new players.
More likely is that I just never finish it, and that's fine too. I'll still have my regular freelance artist job and all's good. Would I recommend this to anyone wanting to go fulltime-indie? No. Do I want to be fulltime indie at all cost? No.
I would like to spend more quality time with gamedev, working on the type of game I truly care about, but ironically I don't believe fulltime gamedev is the most effective way for me to achieve that.
I think the game would take me between 1 and 3 years if I work on it fulltime, but I don't think the market would adequately support that kind of game in terms of sales. It's just too niche and uncommen I think. It doesn't even firmly fit within an existing genre.

(*) I believe the key to that is having something that at a glance looks amazing and fun, because their interest must outweigh their desire to be left alone by spammers wanting to advertise their own games.

Good point, didn't think of that!

 

This is very interesting and I have thought the same thing and even read statements made by some Indies who switched back from full-time to part-time.

They said when they were full-time Indie they had to continually create & release games as quickly as they could to get money coming in including games that weren't even their favorite kind. It was very high pressure and limited them. Going back to work (even part-time) let them loosen up and focus on making games closer to what they wanted to make.

As a hobbyist or part-time Indie a person can do whatever in heck they want to do and spend as long as they want making a game. Even if they spend 3 years and make a grand total of $3,000 it is not a disaster by any means just extra money.

So I get that completely and you are certainly making a very wise choice.

 

Luckily, for me, I'm in a position where I can spend a long time on my game since I don't have expenses weighing me down at the moment. This is probably the only chance I'll get like this, so I may as well give it a shot and make a game that I can be proud of.

If this game succeeds, then I will probably keep doing it full time. If not, and sales are just way below anything reasonable, then maybe I'll get into freelance either doing art, voice overs, or whatever else I can for games.

 

I just bought this game on steam and it looked good but I didnt like the controls, and its an instant death game (where you have to press "left/right" to switch directions but its delayed).

 

Yeah, controls have to be tight. I don't care what kind of game it is. If the controls are lacking, the game experience will be lessened.

 

You know I've been relaxing browsing around checking out Indie game dev interviews (not the widely known ones but the real folks normal like you and I) and it crossed my mind that it seems like we should actually get to a point where there are less games coming out. Or at least see a change in the kinds of games people are making.

It's pretty interesting to see developer after developer spending a year or even 2 years or more working on games only to make a few thousand dollars in the end. And they basically all say they won't be tackling projects like that again. Next time will be something simpler and smaller. A few even mentioned they will most likely just do it as a hobby from this point on and make free games for places like GameJolt and Kongregate.

Anyway maybe in time... a couple years or 5 things will die back down again. It also seems like as time passes we will start hearing about many of these bigger Indie teams shutting down. It's kind of sad in a way because so many people want to do this for their living but of course that is also exactly what makes it so most people won't be able to. Catch-22. It's a wonder even the gamers don't get burnt out at some point of following all of these games. I'm sure at least some percentage of them will get bored at some point.

Basically just rambling here after reading random articles here and there. To me that would just suck. Extremely bad. I can't imagine setting out to do this (or anything for that matter) and pour 18 months of time into it working every day and in the end get like 1 month's worth of pay at best. Talk about demotivating. No wonder some are thinking of just switching to small hobby games. That is just a lot of effort and time. Imagine someone focusing on eating better and walking daily and after 18 months they lost only 3 pounds. I figure it is basically the same kind of feeling.

 

I definitely know what you are saying here. However, I think we will see a lot more games being released in the future, even though fewer people will do it with the intention to make money at it. The best analogy would be what happened in the music industry. It is now easier than ever to make a music album, but it is next to impossible for most musicians to make a living doing it. Musicians who love creating music have continued to make even more music despite their inability to make decent money with it.

What I suspect will happen is many of the current indies who are building games that take 1-3 years are going to shift to building many smaller games instead. Instead of releasing 1 relatively big game every 1-3 years, there will be 10-12 small releases per year. Some of those small games will be a surprise hit, similar to what happened with Flappy Bird. Then even more small indies will shift toward frequently releasing small games.

For example, I spent over 3 years developing the game I currently have on Steam. I could have punched out at least 30 small games on itch during that same period of time. Most of those games would have been completely ignored, but with 30 tries there is a decent chance at least one of them might have gotten some measure of popularity.

But this should not be a source of despair. I look back at the past decades and see how much better things have gotten. For example, 30 years ago I made (a very small amount of) money off some of the games I had written by selling the source code to magazines, and those magazines would publish the source code for users to type into their computers. Imagine postal mailing a physical printout (dot matrix) of your source code along with a cassette tape that contained a copy of the physical printout. This was how a lot of us distributed our games back then, and it was not ideal for anybody involved. More people have already played my current game on Steam than the total number of people typed in the source code from magazines back then. So today, my current game has reached more people with far less effort than through printed magazines many years ago. So that is an improvement, even if it cannot lead to making enough money to live off of video game development.

And of course, building my own game on top of Unity is far easier than building everything completely from scratch. For example, back in the mid 1990's, I built my own custom game engine to build a game that I wanted to make. I could not afford to license any of the existing popular engines, so my only option if I wanted to build that game was to build the game engine. It was a lot of work. I spent a couple years on it and made no money on it back then. Starting with Unity (or something similar) puts game developers today way ahead of that.

My advice is to make games if you enjoy making games. If you find a way to make money doing it, even better, but don't let the money be the only motivation to build games. I have gotten a lot of enjoyment out of making games the past few decades, even though game development has consistently provided me the least income of all of my endeavors.

 

All solid stuff. I agree. And you know I can see that happen. What you described that' the switch I was referring to. Many already have made that switch from working on a large game to something much smaller. And I think you are right that is more likely to be the outcome. I guess I can see solo devs doing that more than I can these big teams though so I do wonder how it will impact them. Not that it matters really more just a curiosity thing to ponder. Perhaps when the 7 to 12 to 18 and more people teams spend years making a game and it flops they will simply split up and we'll have many more solo devs creating very small games.

For me this has always been just a hobby something done because I enjoy doing it. Well one time back in 2001 I tried the shareware thing and learned that I really needed to learn marketing bad. I have this weird thing where whatever I get into it I get obsessed with learning it inside and out and mastering it so I spent many years studying and doing Internet marketing. It was supposed to have been a year or two and then return to shareware. Haven't done it since and instead make little games for family and friends or more recently throw out on game sites such as Kongregate and GameJolt.

I was just thinking about the making money part because of the subject of this thread. I definitely think small even tiny games are better for a solo dev. With a team of 8 to 12 (experienced) people working for 1 to 2 years I think they could very well produce something big enough & different enough & super high quality enough to get a lot of attention. But compared to a solo dev a team of 8 to 12 is absolutely massive.

 

Yeah, a team of 8-12 is absolutely massive compared to a solo dev. Even a team of 2-4 can operate like an army compared to a solo dev. One big advantage a team of 8-12 gets is that one person can be the constant marketing guru, which is always more effective than having career programmers try to do marketing in their spare time.

 

I could understand making more games, but I would put a limit at 2 per year. That gives 6 months per game, which seems reasonable for a smallish game.

10-12 games per year seems a bit extreme. You wouldn't even have time to make many assets or do much testing. If you reused assets to the extreme, maybe, but I feel that people would catch on and call you out on such behaviors.

I really don't want Steam to become a flappy bird collection.

I would be perfectly okay with people shifting focus to simpler games (which seems to be the trend even for AAA these days..), but there has to be some standard for quality. If all developers shift to putting out as many games as they can per year, quality is going to go down, and I don't think anyone is going to be any better off.

 

I don't think we'll ever see all Indies switching to making smaller games. Even if they did I don't think it would be to the extreme of Flappy Bird. Speaking of that people mention quality a lot around here and Flappy Bird is a high quality game from what I've seen of it. As far as I know it looks good, sounds good and provides a heck of a challenge that a lot of people found quite addicting. Too often I think scale is being confused with quality.

Anyway, a Flappy Bird size game would be an extreme and sure some people will make those for Steam (probably already have) but that's not something that would take a month or shouldn't anyway. Obviously depends on if the person is part-time or full-time and their level of experience / skill but 1 month should be enough to make a side scrolling platform game, top down roguelike shooter, 3D FPS, etc.

This month for example has 23 "work" days in it. So even if a person did their Indie work only on these days... a full-time Indie may be putting in 6 hours per day or maybe 12 hours per day. That is a heck of a range. So already we have work ranging from 138 hours to 276 hours. And then you have the part-time Indies who may put in 5 hours per week to 20 hours or more per week. So now 1 month represents anywhere from about 20 hours to 276 hours.

It's possible the 20 hour folks may focus on Flappy Bird scale but it really depends on how much foundation they already have to work with and how good they are. Some may do more in those 20 hours than others will do in 60 hours.

I get what you're saying though. Just saying I think some folks would be making games in 1 month that have much more to them than Flappy Bird

For example, if you're Notch you might make something like this in 2 days.

or this that he also made in a single weekend

Or this in 1 week

So what would he make in a 23 day / 4-week dev cycle? Obviously, the scale could be much larger and or the presentation quality could be higher.

And it may take other people 3 months or more to make to any of these. Basically what I am getting at is time is useful for figuring out business numbers how much money is needed to pay for that development time but time alone isn't much use in measuring quality / scale of games. It fluctuates greatly depending on who is spending the time.

 

Yeah, I guess it depends on what kinds of game you want to make. The types of things I would want to make would typically take longer.

I worked on a couple of other projects before starting the game I am working on now. Granted, I didn't know what I was doing as much back then, but it takes me a while to make something. I never finished or released any of those older games because they were mainly experiments so I could see what making games was like.

If I wanted to make games in smaller time frame, I would have to completely shift the type of game that I make. I would have to change visual styles, and just overall change my workflow.

I mean, I guess it could be done. If you got the process streamlined so assets could be made quickly and an adequate amount of time could be spent on game design and testing, then yeah, I could see it.

It just worries me when I keep hearing failure stories from anyone who spent any decent amount of time on a game. Mainly in that the time spent vs money earned wasn't enough. I'm already nervous enough working on my current project. I try to stay away from doom and gloom stories. I know there are people who have been successful in making larger games, so I'd like to think that the market still has a place for these types of games from solo developers.

 

There is always hope. A lot of has to do with the perceived value and people need to stop pricing their games that took many months and years so low. Indie devs created the situation by trying to undercut each other on price due to all of the competition and of course can't blame gamers for buying. But I have seen many Steam reviews where a gamer has said this game should be much more than this. $6 is ridiculous. So there definitely are gamers who also think the prices of some games are crazy low. It's not good. It hurts everyone in the end including that guy or gal who decided hey I will set the price really low that should sell a few more copies!

 

Yeah, I can see setting the price low in hopes of getting impulse buyers or something, but I think that should be reserved for sales.

I'm putting a lot of effort into the overall presentation of my game so that it looks like it should be $20 rather than $6. I'm not talking about just graphics, but overall as a whole going the extra mile to put in all the little touches and make it look like care and effort went into the game.

I just need to make sure I can offer enough gameplay for my price point. Perhaps I will hire a programmer to implement multiplayer after I get my game a bit further along. That alone will give people something to do to keep playing.

But even for people who play single player only, I am making sure they can spend plenty of time with the game.

 

Yeah agree. We definitely don't need Steam filled with Flappy Bird clones. I could see a lot of devs shift toward building lots of small games for itch instead of Steam, though. Maybe making 10-12 small games per year for itch and then only bringing the top 1-2 games over to Steam.

 

That's actually kind of clever, soft launch where the repurcussions are low to determine what has gem potential

 

My own approach is heavily influenced by my time in startups and having spent a lot of time on the business side of games.

The first thing I do is I want to narrow the competition. I would not even start a game without knowing who my competition was specifically. And unless I'm making a game that I think is better or improves on something, it's not really interesting.

Basically if I can't get my competition down to around 20 similar games, I won't do it. I also want to design in some features that narrow that down to say 2-3. I might miss on those, they might not be features players care about, but I'm still going to try and have those selling points.

Personally I do this by leveraging skills. Intentionally designing around what the team is good and and not good at. That takes priority over any personal preferences in the game design. Easy to apply to others fyi more difficult to enforce on yourself

IMO if you think about it strategically you can narrow the competition and give your game a better chance. The above is the approach that I use. But it will vary a lot because it is very much an individual thing. What you have to leverage might be something completely different. But leveraging team skills is I think almost always a good starting point.

 

Sounds like a waste of resources to me. How are you planning to maintain an active multiplayer community in times where even many big releases struggle massively to pull that off? One of the reasons many multiplayer games get priced so ridiculously low in sales is, that they need to constantly pull in new players that aren't bored of the game yet, or else the community dies and no one has a reason to buy the game anymore, since there are no players. I'd focus on singleplayer if I were you.


Somewhat related:

 

I think it's worth noting that not all multiplayer games are equal in this area. If you build a game that relies on having a lot of players to have fun, like your typical mmo, ya that's not where I'd want to be. But on the other hand multiplayer where it's coop, or where you can run your own server and play with friends, those have done fairly well.