The coming crash of indie games

I thought it was an interesting article from a veteran successful solo dev

http://positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2014/08/27/will-the-indie-games-market-crash-and-burn/

 

Quite true. I've no idea why anyone would want to get into game dev for money.

 

I don't see it happening. If you think about it, the 'most known and popular' Indie Game is probably Minecraft and even that somehow still sells about 15k copies of its desktop version EVERY DAY. That isn't including all of their console or mobile sales.

IMO, I think that unprepared Indies will crash when it comes to all the things around developing a game (marketing, post-release maintenance, analysing current users activity, making money to pay the bills), instead of all indies crashing.

 

Minecraft is an egde case at best.

 

Cause people like me are sick of working for others lol(go to a place and only work on what your told). Although I am someone that would only try and make a living with it if I established good part time practices while maintaining a day job. Too many people think they can jump in and make quick cash :/

 

Good, maybe it'll motivate indie devs to strive for a higher bar of quality. It's amazing what some people will slap a "finished" sticker on.

 

LOL but it's not a gold rush we are not miners, they did not sell us shovels, they sold us game engines, engines of fun and creativity. They sold us virtual reality paint brushes, typewriters or video cameras through which we can explore our own imaginations, dreams and nightmares.

And a few people will hit a 'virtual reality' golden nugget and make it rich. But like artists and artisans of any age we should be here to create our own visions, ideas and improve our skills as artists.

Think of game development as the new art and game engines and technology as the new paintbrush/camera and then you will understand that just like any creative artist most start off busking or painting for small change and many stay that way, only a few are famous and many only after they have died.

 

I think its actually much worse than that. I think its not going to be localized to just indies, I think it will cover the entire gaming sector as a whole .... just the indies will get the brunt of it.

The gaming community is entering a phase of burn out, surplus of too many games, racing to the bottom prices for indies, racing to the top prices for big studios, fracturing whole games in hopes to gouge with DLCs, endless money pits for IAPs and subscriptions, big studios have been closing doors and downsizing left and right over the last few years, a big influx of former employees turning the indie route to make ends meet while trying to look for jobs, big studios stopped taking risks and started sticking to the same old same old leading to gaming boredom for consumers, media has been up-playing success stories for apps and making it seem like a gold rush leading more to enter the mix and increase the flood, etc.

It cant keep going like this. Its going to hit a wall and come crumbling down.

There's a difference, music is not seen as a gold rush in which anyone with a little effort and time will lead to stable financial income. Everyone knows it takes exceptional talent and exceptional luck to make a living off music.

Now when it comes to gaming and apps, thats a whole other story. Most think "if I go to school for programming or game art then I can learn enough to make a game/app (or many games/apps) to never have to do anything else". Its what the media sells to people, its what the schools sell to people. They promote the 1 in billion success stories like Minecraft or Kardashian's game as the poster-boys for "look anyone can do it, see, all you have to do is make something and take a gamble". But they dont say 99.9999999% of those who do will barely make anything, if at all. And not only will they not make any money, they'll lose money buying everything associated with it and not to mention lose time doing it

 

Or an "early access" sticker.

 

For the same reason some people think that having played many games qualifies you as a developer: Having absolutely no idea what they're talking about.

Warning! Opinions ahead!
As for the crash of the indie games industry:
If by "crash" you mean "the bubble is going to burst", I disagree with you. I don't see how indies will disappear unless Steam suddenly vanishes somehow. To come back to that metaphor: The bubble is going to deflate back to a healthier level, if you ask me.

The way I see it, it can't get much harder for indie developers than it already is. The combination of Unity Free - which flattened the learning curve just enough for unskilled people to produce 'something' - and Valve opening Steam's floodgates, results in people just not bothering anymore.
Personally, I don't check Greenlight and Steam's new releases section anymore. It's a waste of time. Early Access is just the icing on the top. The sad thing is that I know, for certain, that I'm not the only one who feels that way.
I shouldn't have to work through piles of crap, just to find one interesting game.
It's as bad for the players who just want to play well-designed games, as it is for the developers who created quality-products.

 

I learned to keep my expectations low a long time ago... then that way, when something does actually work out... it's like an extra extra special surprise.

 

That might be a pretty apt analogy. You can't have a crash if no one is investing, which last I checked, most indies don't have/haven't done. The only way the indie market could crash is if the economy picks up and people can finally find work...

Maybe certain markets will recede. Mobile markets and F2P could potentially see a decline in numbers in a couple years if studios find they aren't actually seeing any return, but I doubt it will. I'm kind of thinking that in about five years, there will probably be a pretty decent market for small to medium size studios (in the 20 to 50 devs range).

 

Kind of a far fetched article. Some points in there make sense overall, but its not doom and gloom.

There isn't an impending crash of the indie market, most sales stats that are published from indies or solo devs show that they make very little money anyway. Some of the more well know Steam indie games only do 100k lifetime profit if they're good and the sales drop like a rock after a couple of days post release and anytime there isn't a sale. The people that are narrowminded enough to think that they can cash in on shovelware aren't going to finish their game anyway so whats the problem?

There's a lot of games you can describe as noise though, the mobile market rules in terms of shovelware but on Steam too there are just so many games new indie games and "early access" games that it feels like its just pure noise. Sales out the wazoo, new games weekly, dozens in your library that you've never even touched, regurgitated styles and experiments spun off with modern tech, just literally hordes of the stuff.

Some of it is great, theres a lot of great innovation and fun games. Are they making money? The majority of them aren't, but that doesn't indicate an indie market crash, it indicates an existing low profit market. There's been numerous articles talking about how indies easily get upside down and never break even - and thats if they even manage to publish.

Anyway, yeah its a fickle space with a lot of competition and low returns for all but a few. Crash? No.

 

@Aiursrage2k - Thanks for the link.

Since entering this market, I've released six products. Slowly building, and learning through 1000s of hours of deliberate practice. I've tried, failed, and improved my way to almost 200,000 fans! And within days, I expect Apple to release my 7th title.

And yet, still, I keep grinding at my day job to provide for my family. I have real products, fans, and a steady day-time income, plus a wife and two kids and a clear vision of who I am and where I'm going. It's a REALLY busy life, without much glamour, and I have no idea if it fits the 'Indie-Dream'(TM). I like it just the same.

Gigi

 

In music the internet eventually weeded out the weak, you had to be one step ahead at all times in every scenario and it wasn't that easy to get into in the first place, even in niche markets like METALLL "LALALAL" bands like Periphery flourished and they are doing well. As arts generally seem to do, games are heading the same way but there will always be people who buy games and people at the moment are SCREAMING drought. (Get yer' self in their leak matey).

If you have the undergoolies and the skill to pull of something special, you're fine. Simple 2D / 3D games unless they are majorly addictive and heavily endorsed ain't going to cut it anymore, because they're just a wash in a vast landscape of others.

Suck it up and show them whose king, booyah!.

 

Aside from a few outliers, who thinks any differently of games? Anyone who does even a little research - a prerequisite for a successful business - will know very quickly where the numbers are.

If you know what you're doing then it's like Hippo says, you don't do it for the money. (Though of course you need money to be able to keep doing it...)

 

Because said people have beliefs about games and what they could be that they want to make into reality.

What people don't realize is that software - any software, games or otherwise - is not glamorous; you can come up with the most awesome art/best-engineered solution to some problem, and just be another name in the credits. The games market is a saturated market - I read something a few years back that said, pretty much of all the games released in a standard year, only 5% attain something resembling financial success. Further, the fanbase can be quite horrible sometimes (poorly worded, vague, ungrammatical, trollish death threats are not uncommon for a sufficiently famous developer.) I know someone who worked for Zynga in Austin back in the day who periodically tells me some of the more idiotic examples of emails they would get from 'fans.' I'm no fan of Zynga, but no one deserves that.

Games are not sugar and rainbows, games can be quite a nasty business. If - like me - you're still in, knowing that, it's not because you're after fame or money. It's because it's something you want to do. This is the endurance race to end them all.

 

It's possible. I think in reality it will be a "market correction" which is labeled The Great Indy Game Crash. In many ways I suppose the current environment is similar to the 80s when the big crash happened.

The basic reason for that crash was a huge amount of rubbish games being released. There was very little to no quality control. People had to (as someone else mentioned above) wade through piles of crap games just to find something decent.

Nintendo basically saved / revived the video game market by focusing on quality even enforcing it with a Seal of Quality. While not all NES games were great at least customers knew the games had to meet a certain standard of quality (and in game-play terms particularly not simply graphics).

I do notice I am seeing more and more games, especially on cell phones, that to me I would never release as an actual full game even for free. It is getting to the point where a person has an object the player can move around the screen basically do nothing fun and they call it a game.

Actually thinking about it... I think it will likely be The Great Indy Mobile Game Crash.

 

yeah great thread, steam greenlight full of spam / trolling / garbage

and the clipart from the gold rush is so true

 

I wouldn't describe that as getting into game dev to make money, though. It sounds like the focus there is on making something happen, not financial returns.

The issue for most of us is that financial returns are a requirement. I don't want my games to make me money 'cause I'm greedy. I want them to make me money so that I can spend less time making money elsewhere and, consequently, put more time into making better games. The money isn't the primary desired outcome, it's an enabler - something I need along the way.

Am I in it for the money? No. However, it's a reality that I still need to think about it, plan around it, and figure out ways to get it, otherwise I can't be in it at all.

 

How many people in this forum have read "The Long Tail" by Chris Anderson? That book explains why the future of online business is all about selling a little bit of lots of different items. With an old brick and mortar store (ex: Best Buy), there is a very limited amount of shelf space, so only the mega-hit blockbusters were sold on those shelves. With online businesses with digital distribution (ex: Steam), an unlimited number of different non-hit items can be sold. That opens the market up to let indies thrive, even though nearly none of those indies will ever launch a mega-hit. So if I had to bet on anything, it would be that indies will thrive even if the AAA studios doing the mega-hits do not thrive. The environment (Steam and other app stores) strongly supports indies. This will remain true regardless of market saturation.

One major change I could see happening is Steam figuring out new ways to search and recommend indie games to game buyers. For an "long tail" environment to thrive, the search and recommendation functions need to be awesome. At this point in time, Steam is definitely no Amazon or Netflix in terms of recommending things that a user will likely be interested in. For example, Steam constantly recommends blockbusters to me in genres that I don't even play instead of showing me indie games in genres that I do play. Steam needs to figure out how to do a vastly better job of recommending in order to really deliver a thriving "long tail" environment.

The other thing Steam needs to do is improve their user rating and review system enough that people will trust it when making purchasing decisions. People trust end user ratings and reviews at Amazon, and that definitely leads to more sales of lesser known products.

 

I haven't read it, but the conclusion seems to be based on the assumption that removing the shelf-space bottleneck results in there no longer being any bottleneck. That quite simply isn't true. Steam is already over saturated for me since I'm already buying more Steam games than I physically have time to play. Hence, I'm not going to increase my buying just because they can provide more virtual shelf space. Even taking less rational buyers into consideration - people who buy stuff because it's cheap rather than because they intend to use it - there's a limit on how much time they're willing or able to spend looking at stuff to be able to buy it. Y'know, at some point they go off to play the games they purchased.

It also seems to ignore some aspects of consumer behaviour, particularly social ones. How many MineCraft clones "thrive"? Everyone wants to play MineCraft 'cause its what their friends are playing. Just because consumers have a choice of a bunch of competing products doesn't mean they'll consider (or even be aware of) all of them.

 

I don't agree. Just because there will be a fair amount of indie devs that fail, there will be plenty more to take their place. You all talk about Steam effecting the crash but forget about mobile. For as long as mobile phones can play games, games will sell. To sell a game you need to make something people really want, not something they think looks ok and they'd download it if it were free.

 

I live by the maxim, 'do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life'. Generally has held true, but it was definitely some rough bits in the beginning.

Along the same lines, I have encountered people who really want to "be a game developer", or are interested in game dev because they think it must be fun. I tend to think those people are on the same path as people who are in it for money. The best folks I know in the industry are in it primarily because of passion for making games.

 

This statement is inherently ambiguous. It could mean two things:

1. Making games for money makes little financial sense.
2. People should be making games for fun, and not money. This may or may not mean #1 is true.

 

Well, I'm really tempted to give up my Apple dev license at the end of 2014. Anyone doing this since 2009-10 can tell that the numbers we were doing by then with shovelware are reduced to 1/8 or 1/10 now, even with decently executed small games. Carrying on as a real hobbyist, though. I have spent $400 in the Asset Store and want to complete the journey (breakout clone --> endless 2D runner --> small 3D game) for learning purpose.

 

Need to read the article when I get a chance (gotta rush off to work) but at the very least making indie games can lead to a successful career making games at a major company.

 

It did. For me. And it also led to walking right smack into the game-industry's layoff mentality. Either way, my side Indie work has massively boosted my primary career building training games.

Gigi

 

I agree. In college, I went for a Computer Science major (with a concentration in Game Dev, since I've wanted to do that for a long time), with a minor in Music. Weird, huh?

Well, not so much. The connections I made in college helped me land my first IT job. My Unity projects in part helped me to land my current job, despite only physically earning me not even $30 USD in total so far. I spent about $30 on my last project, and more recently dropped $100 on ProBuilder. So, you could say my games are a failure, right?

Nah. Instead, the jump from my first job, to my current one, is $20,000 per year. And the beautiful part? I can still write games.

While it would be nice to exclusively write games for the amount of money I currently make in a year, that's not an easy goal to come to, and certainly one that's not going to happen in the next couple of years. Like the guy in the article says, it takes a while to establish oneself, and get up to snuff.

I'm not there yet, but each game I release, each post-mortem, each interaction with those who like my games, brings me one step closer to that future where I'm writing my own paycheck (and, paying the taxes), but also calling my own shots, that I will have the experience to guide successfully. As I said before: this is an endurance race, not a sprint. From what I've seen, in this business sprinting can be a horrible thing, because it means you catastrophically fail faster, instead of recoverably failing faster. There is a big difference in the two.

 

I definitely recommend everybody read "The Long Tail". If you have not read it yet, it is available through Amazon.

Anyway, the issue is not about how MineCraft clones could survive. As you already mentioned, there is little reason to play a clone if all of your friends play MineCraft. The really issue is that games like MineCraft itself were given a chance to thrive. Before online digital distribution of games over the Internet, games like MineCraft would not have been able to grab shelf space in brick and mortar stores like Best Buy. That would have prohibited MineCraft from reaching an audience. MineCraft is a perfect example, since the screenshots (which would often help sell AAA games in physical stores) are lackluster.

"The Long Tail" is all about giving a seemingly infinite number of options to the consumer. Obviously some will be hits and most will not be. Even though the market seems saturated, it still benefits indies a lot more than the brick and mortar style system. The limited shelf space in brick and mortars filtered nearly everything from being shown to the consumer. Back then, only the most likely hits were allowed any space on the shelf. Indies would rather sell a relatively small number of copies instead of being completely blocked from entering the market.

The flood of indie games is not going to lead to a crash. People won't stop playing games, and people won't stop making games. What will probably happen is places like Steam will find ways to do a better job of sorting the abundance of games, which will actually lead to more targeted sales of indie games. But that won't mean there will suddenly be gold found in shovelware. In fact, a better recommendation system actually makes it harder to sell shovelware.

 

I'm just honestly intrigued, what are you deeming as succesful here?

 

Indies that make a game and become millionaires out of that one title are very rare. Most developers that meet adequate success are not millionaires, and they still need to keep cranking work on a daily basis to keep publishing new titles and be able to stay independent (and not homeless.)

This is nothing new, it has always been so. It just happens to be bigger news because of a combination of huge market growth, more powerful tools, and handful of ridiculous success stories.

If you want to hit the lottery, well, play the lottery. Despite its low chance of winning, you have higher chances at winning that than releasing a virally successful game.

If you want to be a successful indie developer, you just have to learn to manage your time, set deadlines, and ship products on a regular basis. If you opt to go forth out of pocket, expect losses for the first few years of business making, any business tend to depend on loans and investors in their first few years (and spend the following decade paying back, or the rest of their lives being co-owned by some venture capitalist.)

Eventually, you may find yourself one day with several titles, all cross-promoting each other and generating a decent income, but this requires you be realistic. Don’t waste 3 years on creating your opera magna. Spend a few months working on small stuff. Learn to streamline the process. You will eventually start making better and better stuff on shorter development cycles.

Also: keep your day job, at least until you hit a point where the money coming from game development is actually enough for you to live from.

These are things that apply to any business, not just games. Even McDonalds started as a single corner restaurant in San Bernardino, California, and Rovio had been making mobile games for Nokia devices for 6 years before Angry Birds launched. It was their 52nd game.

 

Is this true? Let's find out. In a typical lottery, there are 6 lotto-balls numbered from 1-49, which works out to a 1 in ~14 Million odds. So, over the first 1.5 years, I invested ~$12,000 of my own money into Gigi, including a Macbook, Unity licenses, various hardware, legal fees, and so on. Maybe it could be done cheaper, and yet, if I had purchased lottery tickets, napkin math gives 12,000 / 14,000,000 odds. So, if I had just thrown my money to the wind, I'd have had a 1 in 1,000 chances of 'Hitting the Lottery'. Which seems pretty bad.

And yet, what I did was worse! Lots of reports indicate there are around 1,000 new apps each day, so ... in order to have the same odds of winning the lottery, I'd have to release an app EVERY DAY. Since I only have six (seven if Apple approves), I'd say the lottery might in fact have better odds, especially since I did not count the Opportunity cost of 1,000s of hours of labor.

What qualifies as 'successful'? For me, it changes. First, there was the 100 downloads - CHECK. Then, 100 ratings - CHECK. Then 100 downloads/day - CHECK. Then there was $5/day- CHECK, and $10/day - CHECK, and then 100,000 downloads - CHECK, and 1,000 reviews - CHECK! And most recently $20/day - CHECK. My next milestone is 200,000 downloads (very soon) and then $30/day, with a side trip to exceed $100 in a single day (current high is $47). What's next ... I don't know. My products start slow, and increase slowly, over time. Regardless of how any individual product does, the portfolio trend is GROWTH.

Meanwhile, all this deliberate practice has improved my skills drastically, and spilled into my day job resulting in new contracts, winning national awards (including for speaking about Why Games Work, and for the Games I've designed), and being contacted by a dozen AAA companies. At each step, I've considered myself both a success and a failure. Success for releasing a product in 9 weeks, failure for not making massive $$. A success for releasing two, three, four products, and then for keeping Gigi permanently in the black! Failure for releasing a fifth product which did terribly. Success for hitting 100,000 and then $20/day, and failure for getting laid off from a AAA.

Success for building my first Indie game! Which my phone just pinged to say that Apple is now reviewing. Failure? Who knows what my next failure will be.

Try-Fail-Improve. Small projects. Deliberate Practice. It's been a long time since I've decided that I succeed because I try and fail. Michael Jordan said it best:

Your mileage may vary,
Gigi

 

I'm just glad 95% of indie games look like garbage.

 

@Gigiwoo

By the way, wasn't trying to be disrespectful here. I was just curious ...

@Everyone else ..

You have to love games to do them, if it's money I could name several other industries where you'd best be suited. In IT you can earn $2 - 4K a DAY by sticking your finger up your nose and reciting manufacturer specs and recommendations.

Not that I'm slating it, lot's of VERY hard working individuals in the world of IT even though it's lobsided in areas. But at least your hours aren't all consuming, the payout is generally good and you don't get abuse for doing a good job. Plus without an early background in Telecomms there is no way I'd of been able to finance any sort of career in games.

 

[edit] Btw read the article and it seemed like a great read.

I dunno we were flown out to Epic Games once (when we were a mod team) and I haven't seen so many exotic sport cars at an office before (including banks, etc). Spilling drinks at the job, coming in late (10am at earliest is the norm), etc are all excellent perks at average studio. My friend has a Viper and now works remotely. Bought a huge 3 acre house where he could get a lot of land dirt cheap since he can live where he wants.

Let's not even mention studio heads. Even a studio head at a small 40 man studio usually has an exotic sports car and a huge house by the lake or downtown

It's a lucrative industry. Now- the main reason Game devs like to whine they are underpaid is because generally we all get worked like twice as hard as folks in other industries. Some have mandatory overtime while others have soft implied overtime. The ones that are perceived not to work as hard usually end up getting laid off after game ships. Game industry traditions. And average dev is laid off at least once. I got laid off once when I was noob over a decade ago too. But had another job within a week before I could even file for unemployment...

But pretty much all your senior guys will have brand new houses, sports cars, etc. And spouses usually don't work (because the husband is often not home as it is!).

I still think Indies have the potential to make so much more money because you are self employed and you do not have to share profits with publishers, marketing people you'll never meet, etc.

 

The indie games market went up and down pretty quickly and has already crashed, but it's still way more approachable than, like, 10 years ago. So: good (imho).

 

@TheDMan What you say the school is doing , is actually giving hope .

Have you guys ever thought why games sell , what is the most important factor ? well , because each successful game is unique , like anything in life , if its new and unique , and you like it , then you will get it .

Havent you though about all the inventions that lead to the technology we have now ? what do you think would happen if Thomas Edison gave up the first time he failed ? do you think he didnt spend money on his inventions and didnt waste time ? or that he thought that the first test would make him rich ? how many scientist was inspired by him ?.....

The thing is there is always something to make , if Thomas Edison gave up somebody else will have done what he done although that would be maybe from 1 to 1000 years later , same for games , alot of the successful indie developers were inspired by either successful or not successful other indie developers , and in the future some will be inspired by them .

I have about 20 old games in my "Projects" folder , some have failed due to art problems , some due to programming problems , some were bad enough to publish , but I didnt give up and I will never stop making games until I successfully make one , because I love making games , and all successful indie games started as a enjoyable game , not profitable .

AAA studios start a game project to get money , while indie start to make their dream true .

From the article you showed above , thats one dev , every one is different , some people like to release any game they make whatever was the game , some others like me prefer to dumb all games until I reach a game that is good enough to show to people and sell , there will always be unique games and if someone didnt make a game , other will .

 

A lot of (most?) successful games are basically reskins of existing games. In fact being unique is frequently a turn-off, or at least makes things harder.

Probably the people who actually invented the stuff he ripped off would rightfully be more well known.

--Eric

 

By your logic, Thomas Edison would be a good game developer

 

Well, he was a terrible person, but was certainly successful. In contrast to actual unique geniuses like Nikola Tesla, who was mostly broke. So...yeah. Apparently the moral of the story is to be like King or Zynga....

--Eric

 

I don't see how "coming in late" is a perk when it's mixed with that mandatory overtime you mentioned. Doubly so when you add the thing about "the husband is often not home as it is".

There are some places where flexible working hours are cool. At our office, as long as people are around between 10 and 4 and put in the expected overall hours, we don't care about when they come and go. I see that as a good arrangement. It would be a very different story if starting later was a result of overtime requirements pushing the whole working day back...

Also, I wouldn't at all consider Epic to be an "average studio".

 

Which "coming" crash? It's already there.

 

Right now there is a bit of a gold rush effect.

Too many people making too many games just because they believe there is a chance they will hit some kind of internet gold mine. For example, Everyone saw during the Flappy Bird Saga itself, a zillion clones being made without much planning or work put into them just for chasing the numbers.

This process will eventually run its course. The herd will gradually cull itself as more and more failure stories start doing the rounds. This is the point at which people who are in it for the long run and have a solid commitment to making quality games can benefit from their work.

The main point that you can't rely on indie games for your livelihood and its corollary - don't quit your day job are still valid though. This is mainly because since success is never guaranteed, there is no guaranteed income stream and financial stability a day job provides

 

Ok I can't resist. In spite of the new Like option I have to +1 this beauty of a comment with all my heart

 

The article writer assume that every game made needs to sale, and that's a wrong point of view and the entire article is biased.

Look for a second on movie industry, from hundreds of movies made every month, just a few made it to the top world wide.

That's with games also. And frankly, we are not in Z80 era anymore or discovering a virgin forest and be first to put our settlement. Everything was made before, coming with a top/hit idea is practically impossible. Another Tetris will not come out to soon. And even will come, will be one in a zillion.

Make games for fun, don't expect money.

 

It is a bit off topic, but I just can't resist...

 

I think my post got too long winded. What I was trying to stress is that even if you create a lot of games that never make a penny, you are still gaining priceless experience that can make you money even if you end up taking a job. So the way I see it- working on games should, in the end, always assist in helping someone earn a living.

Should someone expect to make money from games? Well even if they take lots of losses they are still gaining priceless experience as a game developer that can make them money anyway. You are simply going through all the challenges and failures any owner of a studio goes through. Hard to meet one single Studio owner that hasn't had a failed business first

edit- Granted it is debatable if working at a game studio is a desirable result like what you were getting at. I agree, I don't know anyone working a 10-4 shift at a games studio. The closest I can think of is my friends working remote (which is much better than working on-site in my book)