The Indie Dream is Dead

Everybody rides their own delusional unicorn, for as long as they can until they can no longer afford to ignore the reality they are confronted with. Delusion is the most expensive indulgence. That we are living in a meritocracy where freedom of speech is valued and anyone can do anything they set their mind to if they work hard enough is the greatest delusion of all.

This applies to everything, yes... including software development.

 

right, and 9/11 too, at that time, just before the events, believe it or not i contacted XXXsoft to propose a game concept i was working on... they just asked "how much do you think you'd need" ... that was a good start.... but days after 9/11 and the collapse of all the dot.com bubbles.... they replied "we changed our Policy about funding indie projects"..
so, indie or not, i think the market is also a matter of finance and how many investors are ready to risk their money.
greedy people funded about everything, but they understood they almost funded void... then those risk-funders became very shy .

 

Agree. Also, IT industry is already super crowded. We are not anymore in Netscape era. And rich peoples don't risk money on anything. Is much harder today have success as indie in a super crowded environment. Personally I think this is a temporary situation. Peoples will come, will see it does not rain with money next day, and they will probable go. Or who knows, maybe I am wrong..

 

The parents' basement indie dream is dead. There are still a bunch of up and coming indie studios out there.

 

Does not matter, world population did not trippled in last 10 years. We are pretty much the same. And so are the money we spend in general.

 

That was deep brah.

 

There is a super movie .. is called "No country for old man". Kids will understand nothing from it and probable some adults. We are pretty much in the same situation.

 

epic movie

 

How am I the one misinterpreting the words? As I said, picking a boulder up and putting it down for 8 hours a day is hard work. Do you really think that anyone giving the advice to work hard thinks that you become super successful if you do that? Flipping burgers 8 hours a day can be hard work, do you really think that anyone giving that advice thinks a career in fast food is viable? It may be, if you take initiative, show leadership qualities, and get promoted. But you have to work hard towards that promotion, not work hard at flipping burgers. My interpretation is the only one that makes sense.

If someone wants to make it in game development, as I've said before, they'll need skills for freelancing to fall back on. They'll need to be a cut above the average Greenlight garbage. You don't get that by throwing out shovelware. You don't get that by doing the bare minimum to chase the money. You get it by chasing the career and working hard to get there.

 

Ha ha. Yeah because they were addressing the "problem" with people buying so many games from sales and such they now have many games sitting on their PC hard drives and consoles (probably cell phones too) they have not played. The good news is they were buying them but again it goes back to the root problem here. Too many games. They cannot even play the games they have already bought and yet more continue to be made and the number released seems to increase each month.

The more I am looking into this to confirm or deny my own views the more I think we truly may be moving toward some kind of gaming collapse. I mean people are not going to continue just buying and buying and buying games and not even playing them. At some point they will say enough is enough. Exactly where that point is depends on how much surplus money each person has and how foolishly they spend their money but eventually for the bulk of people they will stop buying every time there is a sale and every time a YouTuber says "hey this is a great game!". It is inevitable unless they just have so much money to blow and don't know what else to do with it but to keep buying way more games than they can possibly ever play.

 

When I got my new laptop I bought three games for it, since I could finally buy games. I enjoy all of them, but I haven't played them much at all. I just don't have time. I also bought three games for $9 when GOG had their Indie Pinata special. I got lucky and one of the games that "fell out of the pinata" was Shadow Warrior, which is a $40 game. I haven't even downloaded it. It looks fun though. Another was a point and click adventure which looks okay, but I haven't played. The last was a game where you play a momma badger. I played that for a few minutes but stopped because I couldn't figure out how to advance. Turns out I'd make a horrible momma badger. I thought one of my cubs was dead so I was all like "Oh well, sucks to be him" and tried to leave the cave. Turns out he was just hungry and I needed to give him a turnip. Maybe one day I'll go back into the game and give him the turnip. It seems like the kinda game that would make me sad though. I doubt I'd be so flippant about a cub dying after I've raised them for a few levels or whatever.

Other than the special occasion of a new computer, and the special occasion of a really fun sale, I don't buy games though. I just don't have time to play them. It surprises me that so many people have a large stockpile of unplayed games. As a developer, I'm not sure how I feel about that. I mean sure, having their money is nice and all. But I want people to enjoy the experience that I've created for them. I'd rather say that I've entertained millions than that I've made millions. Making thousands would be kinda nice though; Eating is nice.

 

Except it's not. I've actually wanted to register there, the day it went live, and "post my story" about my awesome game I'm working on, but then it asked about my company info (which I don't have yet as it doesn't make sense to make one before I have something tangible, like a demo release or a trailer plus I work alone so I don't have to hire anyone which would be another reason to make a company), plus whole "accepting profiles" reeks for me of apple-esque closed garden.

 

sounds like crytek removed this feature from their forums... too bad that was a place to see who was working on what and eventually find an interesting team

Unity should really do this.

a Projects page that would allow each project Creator to create a page to showcase the concept, show progresses, recruit a team etc. maybe it would make linking with appropriate persons easier according to the style of the project, the skills of the members etc

 

And as few regulations as possible (basically only rules like no illegal content/spam). Too much regulations in devlog forum is precisely why I have a devlog on tigsource and not here. Ditto for made with unity, although here there's no real alternative with similar benefits.

 

I somehow don't think that means you'll be missed tho.

 

I beg you pardon?

Seriously, have hard time understanding what you just wrote (non-native speaker here).

 

He never promised you a rose garden. Sorry, that's a reference to a song that is now stuck in my head thanks to you

What about IndieDB? Unless I'm missing somthing MadeWithUnity isn't much different from IndieDB. I have a feeling that both of them will be more frequented by developers than consumers though.

 

I look at some games undertale, axiom verge, tower of guns, assault android cactus, and these games all did well, but the developers spent years working on these games. The low effort easy money games are over, although you'll still get stupidly simple games that are run away hits -- shower with your dad simulator, thats like trying to compete with hundreds of games released an hour (literally on the app store) . I think its going to be harder and harder for indies to make a game thats worthwhile, standing out from the crowd is going to require alot more effort (IE years for a solo dev), we have seen a few examples where people will spend years on there game and it still fails.

 

He means Unity would continue along perfectly without you.

If you feel in a flame war mood it could be constructed as a relatively mild insult. But since this whole thread is about how do we get less games made, I don't think any insult was intended.

 

Granted game influx is huge. But hopefully, if movie & music industry are any indication of the near future, people are not going to say "enough, we don't want new content" for games either.

 

i continue to think that there are lots of talents her, each one in a genre, lots of them are willing to make a game but most of them are alone or don't dare to ask for people to collaborate...
i relly feel that a media that could attract them all together would produce really interesting stuff, that's the way indie should go..

 

I think there can still be a market for any kind of game, just so long as something is different about it, so much different it can't be made in 3 days to clone.

I'm not going over lots of details with my game, it is in my signature spot. However, I think a game like that will be unique, I've never seen a game like this before. Using the 'Grays' only in movies have I ever seen anything about Alien Abductions, etc.

So hopefully my game will be able to pick up.

The closest thing I've seen is the game "Pray" or whatever that 3d realms made. However, again - not using the 'Grays' and not really based on supposed *true* story accounts. But yeah, I think ideas like mine, can really bring you at least temporarily to the spotlight depending how good/wanted it is. Problem I am having is, well - I've never been Abducted or even if I have I don't remember it *supposedly that happens* so I'm kinda going off my imagination by favorite films that somewhat try to depict it. But nevertheless I think there are still niches that can be very profitable and/or just free to play crap lol.

 

Very true. I think a ton of effort is needed to succeed financially. I'm not sure it makes more sense to devote all of the time to a single game for 2 to 3 years. Another option is to put in just as much effort and time and create many different games over 2 to 3 years. Due to the number of games out there and the limited number that can be covered by any list, search, mag, youtuber, etc I see this as becoming more and more like playing the lottery.

You can spend $500 on tickets for one drawing (spending 2 to 3 years on one game) or you can spend $20 on tickets for each of 25 different drawings (25 much smaller games created in 2 to 3 years). While these small games may not be nearly as impressive the value in this approach is you have 25 times as many chances of one of your games getting some attention. Being discovered. And that is really the whole key to succeeding financially.

If it was 10 years ago I'd say definitely go for the home run hit pouring all effort into the one epic game. Chances are it would have got a lot of press and done very well. These days? It's quite likely it will be completely overlooked. If it is found and gets some attention it is a race against time. Can it gain a foothold before attention gets diverted to one of the other 600 games released on the same day or the batch tomorrow or the day after?

I'm glad for me this is all just a hobby. There was a time I considered getting into it to make money but I think that opportunity is pretty much gone now. At one time I knew it was only a matter of putting in the time and effort over a period of time and a business could be built. Now I think it'd make more sense to buy and sell retro video games, invest in real estate or other things. Things that are in limited supply and have real value.

 

This isn't my main source of money (releasing games). However, i do find the Asset Store can very well be a GREAT source of income. I've done it, and still make it. So I find my self making my game when I'm not busy making an update for any of my other products I've put on the store.

 

Yeah that is smart I think. Obviously all of my ramblings are just my opinions based on what I see and what I've experienced. It's not written in stone. Still I think a lot of it is just common sense really. If "everyone" is making games trying to make money and gamers are actually accumulating a library of games they don't even have time to play doesn't it just make sense to switch over to serving the developers instead of the gamers? If you want to make money I think it does.

 

@GarBenjamin - Oh I agree completely.
I'm just taking a chance with my game, I just feel good about it. Espically if Xbox will accept this game and send me some DevKits lol. Already went through my whole application process with them, just gotta send them a game to either approve or not approve for DevKits.

I hope I can tap into the Xbox Market, it's not filled with useless stuff right this minute lol.

So aside from Steam and hopefully Xbox, my main business is making tools, etc.

 

Well yeah I guess buying and selling stuff from other developers is also a good way of keeping the indie developers economy going. Probably better then even the game economy, I usually just put my asset store money back into the asset store by buying stuff to make games

 

Indiedb is run really tight. I only got one of two posts pushed successfully to the front page. You get a bunch of traffic when you do and you jump up their rating system, but their rating system is based on very small amounts of traffic, or driving traffic from elsewhere, and you drop really rapidly without getting back up on their front page, so it's a bit hard to really know.

Your post really needs a lot of images in order to make their quality cut. It's kind of a mixed bag. Any way you cut it, indiedb requires more time per post than any other site. The biggest problem is that the email you get is nondescript as to why it didn't get published to their feed.

I got really excited when I saw the indiedb rank when i made my first post, but I got sort of quickly disillusioned when I realized that getting another post through their curation (with only an auto generated rejection note) just takes a really significant amount of time.

It's worth noting that they may be willing to give you a bye for real announcements (greenlight, release, major milestone) - but in order to really get value from it, I think you need to get stuff published to feed fairly regularly.

 

Isn't IndieDB owned by the same company Desura is? You know, the company that is one leg in the grave yet unexplicably keeps running their sites?

 

Yeah, I had the same experience. You really have to go out of your way to include three screenshots or a video. I think it's a strange requirement. Sometimes news is more important than media. It seems pretty hard to get watchers too. I'm not sure many people use the watch list or whatever it is. It might be a better idea to have a solid presence on some other social media site like Twitter or Facebook and remind people to go there in every post. It quickly becomes a full time job trying to update tons of social sites every time you want to make an announcement or progress report though.

I'm too lazy to look it up now, but IIRC the two split and are no longer the same company. I know you can no longer submit to Desura right from your IndieDB page anymore, and I'm pretty sure that's the reason they gave.

 

From what you are saying IndieDB is terrible. I've had much better experience posting stuff on GameJolt, unfortunately they don't allow pages for commercial products.

 

It isn't all that bad. You can get a few thousand views on a news post if you post early and work within their very strange rules. I've only used it for my simple nostalgia game, which probably doesn't attract much interest. I suppose more mass appeal projects will have better luck in the engagement department.

 

The thing about that site is that the ranking are like a kind of drug. I believe they're based on daily traffic (and generally very small amounts), which means they're just incredibly volatile. I believe top 100 is about 100-150 views.

Full disclosure: my indiedb page has 2 articles (one pushed to front page), it has 1,100 total visits. I got around 8 watchers. The only place I have it linked is from my greenlight page, so I think I've driven most of that traffic passively, aside from around 110 views on the first post.

They also have a 'personal blog' section you can post on with little restriction, this can drive 10 or 20 views to your game for the day.

I also had my girlfriend try to post there for me (neither got published, I deleted them cuz they were kinda bad - shh don't tell her).

 

Absolutely true. The problem is there is also to much ego. Lot's of indies never worked in teams. They don't know what that means. That's why most of them prefer to be solo.

I am looking at Linux.. so much wasted effort world wide.. are over 300 distro Linux now? Heh...

 

I blame Unity.
*hides back in dah shadows*

 

Unity is a key culprit. It would have happened anyway. But if you want to see who has profited the most from the flood of unskilled devs, it's definitely the tool, engine and store providers

 

If a proper collaboration platform is to emerge, it needs to address some of the reasons why so many talented individuals avoid entering collaborations.

Frankly, looking at how unity structured its business I find it more likely that such a platform to be made by Epic (Unreal engine) as they have a far greater interest in having games succeed and not simply get published.

*Thinking further about it, there is some incentive for Unity to have games succeed and break the 100k threshold for Unity free.

 

Problem with that incentive is, 98% of the devs will never even get close to that. But that is total net income also (that includes your day job if you have one, etc) not just within Unity. But that's in general money you make daily.

 

In terms of collaboration platforms, I was thinking of creating one... doing my research this morning, I stumbled on this:

http://www.develteam.com/

 

that's interesting, but there should be a unity specific Platform, here

 

I still say make some new type of mechanic or go for a style of game you rare if EVER see and your game could be a success, I truly believe in it, as long as you get the right people to know about it. Well outside of the Mobile Markets. I still have faith in High End PCs and Xbox and PS4 or any console at that. Yeah console gaming is sorta dying out because of the mobile market, but the console market that is there, is open for business. And if your game is truly unique and not some POS, it will definitely be successful, I truly believe that.

When I say not some POS. I mean something not with AAA if not near AAA Quality art, a story that is believeable. Not some game where you are stick figures trying to rescue a princes on the other side of a cliff kinda thing lol. I could make that in an afternoon.

 

What? So if someone earns over $100k per year with their day job and then decides to download Unity and try making a game they instantly have to buy it? Doesn't sound right.

 

Yeah that's not right

 

Interesting.

My opinion on "indie team" is that is not working. I can't see kids&teens full of rage accepting to team up. 99% of cases they end up disbanding before releasing even a screenshot. Adults may try to collaborate.. I am not sure on what level.

 

Why would non-game revenue be counted, that would be very unusual.

A working platform is not simply there to enable the 'fun' of working together but rather to get projects done that would otherwise not be possible, as such I think some proper legal templates of how to enter a collaboration and how to calculate contribution would be part of the platform, these are the sort of things that an Indie dev is too occupied to research and may not be able to obtain proper legal consultation to review a written agreement.

 

yes plus all useful management Tools and templates (meetings, communication, schedules, marketing etc).
it's not about enabling the "fun" but more to help people find like-minded people and make them work together .
sharing their concept, artwork, wip etc so others could just jump in on a professionnal manner.

 

A while ago, Adriaan DeJongh published contract() which is an online contract template in plain English specifically for devs hiring freelancers. It could be a good starting point for collaborations within the platform.
http://docontract.com/

 

It is 2015 and there are millions of Indie Game Devs... you gotta realize just about anything you can think of related to gaming and development already exists.

Team Ups
ITu (Indie Teamup)
Develteam (as @Metron already mentioned)

There are others I have stumbled upon this year and cannot remember now but they are out there and they all have at least several thousand participants.

There are also specialized collaborative development communities some by genre other centered around a dev tool:
CraftStudio (billed as the Cooperative Game-Making Platform)
Gamefroot has Private Groups where people can collaborate

Again there are other (so many game development communities and tools these days!) such tools and collaborative communities out there I have found and forgot where now.

The main take-away here is there really are a lot of people making games. If it has to do with making games chances are you can find it out there some place. There are some huge communities I stumbled upon this year that I had never heard of before. It is odd really to think there are things out there with thousands even tens or hundreds of thousands of people using to make games and yet you never really even hear about them. Just so much stuff. Kind of why I decided to spend less time digging into that stuff and more time focusing inward. lol

 

As a Hobbyist I'm honestly not interested in chasing the dollar through game making but I am interested in the creation of Con Worlds. As soon as the focus turns to money making, there are hoops that need to be jumped through that ruin the integrity of what I am trying to achieve artistically.

 

This is incorrect. It used to be a grey area in the EULA. In the new EULA released with 5.0 it was made very clear that for individuals the limit applies only to your unity related business. For companies and schools and charities it's still the total income, regardless of source.