The coming crash of indie games

Btw while I was reading that article I couldn't help but feel it is a jab at Unreal Engine 4, Unity, Unity Asset Store, CryEngine, etc. Basically any service that basically gives Indie developers a shovel.

Following the writer's logic, one might find more security being the guy that hands out the Tools (aka, the shovel) rather than incurring the great risk of becoming a miner (aka Indie game dev).

Looking through all the posts on this topic I am surprised not to find that mentioned. This was the first thing that occured too me but didnt get a chance to post about it

 

It's not so much a matter of massive competition making it difficult for developers to thrive in regards to a complete "crash". Of course shovelware will just continue no matter how little profit there is.
The main issue here is that the environment deters buyers.
And no matter how good your game is or how much publicity it gets relative to the other games, it doesn't matter if the audience just isn't there.

I personally haven't checked out the app store on my phone in months.

 

Yes, but on the flip side, if your primary goal is money then there are still more effective ways to get it. If you're in it for the money, why take a job at a game studio? If I was after stability or income then it's certainly not what I'd pick.

From what I can tell, the people with long and positive game dev careers at large studios are (or were) still doing it for passion more than for money. Some of them were lucky enough to be in studios that were also effective businesses (such as Epic) and got the best of both worlds, but that seems to be a rare combination.

 

When I first started out in the non-gaming sector I made much less money but I enjoyed better job security (my work hours was actually the same at both, 40 hours a week). Sure, some folks may fare better outside the industry but it depends. I have a friend that left gaming to go to Tesla to be an Engineer however he told me his salary was less than what he could have made if he remained in Gaming (but he was willing to take the salary dive to work on cars). So it's for sure not a guaranteed thing you will make more money outside of games. If you go compare salaries you'll find the industry is very competitive. Additionally, some places have good profit sharing programs (recruiter from Arena.net told me folks that shipped Guild Wars got like 25% of their yearly salary). A friend of mine that went to ship CoD made like 40k or something bonus and he was there less than a year.

 

Yeah all you need yo do is figure out an all purpose shovel that every dev needs and your laughing. Have a few wild success stories and it's off to the races.

 

Sure, there are definitely success stories. I just really want to highlight that all of the success stories you've shared here (that post and an earlier one) are from the top few percent of the industry - you're talking about people who work for one of the biggest middleware providers, one of very few MMOs competitive enough to have not gone Free-to-Play, and the biggest, most profitable FPS franchise ever.

I don't want to downplay their success at all, I just want it to be clear that those examples are not representative of the norm. (And hopefully nor are the horror stories we sometimes hear.)

 

Well your average developer will work at a big AAA company because those provides the most employment opportunities. Unlike other industries, game development tends to thrive in only a few small cities and with the way next gen is trending a lot of your smaller studios are getting gobbled up to help with big AAA titles in some form.

So the stories I'm telling above should be the norm than anything else.

[edit] For example, Riot Games employs about 1,000 game devs. It blows my mind but my friends that have been there claims its true.

 

How can that be true? You've picked a few of the best performing businesses and are claiming that their anecdotes should be indicative of an average experience. If that were true, we should be able to easily identify multiple other high-profile studios outperforming the ones you talked about.

In any case, anecdotes aren't that useful for making a decision or drawing a real-world conclusion. The numbers are available, so anyone who needs it can get their hands on useful info taken from a broader viewpoint. (Though note that averages can still be skewed from reality! The "average pay" is not necessarily anywhere near the same as the "pay from the average job".)

 

Yes but those surveys never take into account bonuses (because it's not our yearly salary). Since those come after you ship a title. Even a smaller studio offers bout 10% of your salary a lot of the time. Heck even Gearbox which was known for paying low salaries back in the day was also known for paying out huge bonuses (I don't know about now though btw this was many years ago)

[edit] Btw, for more accurate data I'd suggest checking out Glassdoor. For instance, Riot Games seems to pay pretty well. Compare that with NVIDIA which is known to be one of the highest paying companies in non-gaming sector. The Riot Games survey is pretty impressive. And I bet they have better benefits than NVIDIA (which does not offer matching 401k). Any most of your game devs will flock to a big company like this because this is where a lot of your job openings will be. And this does not include any data on bonuses which varies from person-to-person. Employees rate Riot a little higher than NVIDIA overall as well which suggests more happiness, stability, and work-life balance

 

If your business doesn't survive, you don't have a voice. Making games for free, as a hobby or to gain experience works as long as you can afford it.

Gigi

 

The horror stories are the norm. 57% of games make < $500/month. Note that is 57% of GAMES, not studios, and since the vast majority of successful titles are owned by a small handful of companies, your mileage may vary.

Gigi

 

Most game developers have multiple games on the store and (at least with Unity) probably also deploy to multiple platforms.

 

That survey is limited to Android and iOS. Mobile's problem is that the good games tend to get drowned out by the constant noise of so many low quality titles being produced. Catch is how many of those <$500/month titles are actually good?

 

Those are horror stories about cell phone development though. My posts are about successful AAA/Console employers like Riot Games, Activision, Ubisoft, etc where the bulk of your game devs are employed. I only have one friend working at a mobile games studio.

 

Mother of God, considering all the shovelware I would not have expected average revenue to be anywhere near that much.
I thought it'd be more like ~80% at < $100 per month, seriously.
I personally could live off two games at that rate.
Off now to handwash tomorrow's clothes in my 3x3 shower XD
#IndieLife

 

Do you have numbers for that? To be honest, it strikes me as some form of confirmation bias, since every time someone mentions numbers you pull things straight back to the Call of Duties of the world. Yes, their respective studios make a lot of money and employ a lot of people. But are they representative of the income of the average job? Pointing to yet another top-tier company doesn't support that hypothesis, all it does is show how great it is if you're already one of the best. That's kind of like pointing to Angry Birds or Candy Crush as an example of a mobile game - it's a genuine and valid example, but not indicative of the norm.

What if you're working at a mid-range studio?

Note that the survey I linked to cut off numbers below $10k and over ~$200k. While we can't know for sure, there's the possibility that it cuts out a lot of people working at startups for options rather than a salary. (For the sake of completeness, there's also the possibility that it's cut out some people earning >$200k.)