Why do people buy small games

Hi there!
Lately I've been thinking about releasing my game(which was planned like half year ago). After seeing how Steam is flooded with bad games, I don't want to add mine there, partly because it is not the most proffesional game ever made, and partly because it would probably get lost in the sea of poop anyway.
Now I thought about Itch.io which I used for my LD entry, and it looks like a very nice platform, but one thing crossed my mind, who would even want to buy my game in the first place?

I don't mean it is bad, average player should get at least five hours of fun out of it and sandbox lovers could easily play for dozens more. The problem is, there are so many good free games, and also so many paid ones, which can for couple more bucks deliver AA+ experience.

I myself bought some cheap small games, but only in Humble bundles. Then of course there is Terraria, which i bought for around a dollar and played at least for hundred hours. So I am asking, why do YOU buy small cheap indie games? Is it for the self contained fun, that the game starts and ends and you can move on? Or do you just get bored with big games quickly and want to enjoy more diverse experiences?

 

I don't. I wonder how many people do...

 

I usually buy games that catch my eye, small or not. Results vary.

Negative expereinces: Starbound, Punch Club, Star Forge: Alpha
Mixed Experiences: Planet Explorers.
Positive Experiences: Axiom Verge, Valhalla (Va-11 Hall A).

Terraria is not exactly a small game, by the way. Valhall took 9 hours so far (and I haven't finished it yet), Axiom Verge took ten.

Also, unless your game is absolutely horrible, I think that you should try to release it. I mean steam lets real abominations through their greenlight, and you can't possibly make something worse.

 

I'm actually averse to AAA titles now. Probably having a mac mini has influenced this decision, haha but wow, when you find a little gem of an indie game like, Fran Bow or Limbo, those AAA games soon get tiresome.

For me, it's all about novelty, a great concept, execution and narrative.

Attached is my steam game library (I only played Assassin's creed on my windoze machine for a handful of minutes LOL )

 

You are probably right. I've hit a wall and the least I can do is to drop that 100$ on steam and put it up on other marketplaces too. I have no reputation to lose anyway. Thanks for the gentle push.

I have the unfortunate personality of wanting a world I can always return to, which means bigass multiplayer sandbox games, but the technology isn't there yet to deliver what I imagine. I mean I love good stories, but I always get the feeling that it will be over soon and I'll have to go find something new to do. However, when judging some LD games, visual and text novels were the best ones by a massive margin.

 

Some people only have like 5-10 minutes to play games. Like after a meal and before having to head back to work.

 

So to clarify, you want to sell your game that you think is crap, but you don't want to do it in the most profitable way because... ?

If your game is crap, make it better before selling it. If it's not crap, then there's no reason to avoid the most profitable marketplaces.

 

Well...I actually like my game a lot and enjoy playing it, but it's just not what I've wanted it to be, too big scope. After a year I've had enough of this project, and i tried to make it as complete as possible. Added so much content, but I won't get satisfied. The best thing of course would be to work on it for a few years, polish it up and have one of the best games made, but it just isn't happening. I'm finishing high school this year and I want to learn many things about development, and this game allows only creating more content, balancing and polish. I learned what I could and now i want to make myself a library of code to put into future games. I'm just burned out of constantly sitting in school and then spending all free time on this one game.
However, even if it is not very polished and not what I've dreamed of, it is still not bad. And if some people can enjoy it and even give me some pocket money for it, why not try? The problem with Steam is just that hundred bucks is kind of high for student living on 25c energy drinks, and now that I've seen how many games got on Steam lately, I don't believe my game will stand out from the thousands of other games enough to even pay for the investment. But in the end, I must try just for my own peace of mind.
It's not like I'm just here to get as much money as I can, but I've put so much time and effort into it that I'd like some reward even if it isn't the best game in the world.

 

If your game won't get attention on steam, it won't get attention anywhere else. The other markets have dramatically smaller customer bases, a lower quality bar then steam, and less advertising from the platform holder.

There are legitimate reasons to avoid Steam. Steam doesn't accept some types of games, extreme violence is okay, but extreme romance isn't. Go figure.

But if your game will qualify for steam, there is no reason to avoid it.

The fee is irrelavant. If you can make games you can put yourself out there as a freelancer and make the entry fee pretty quickly.

 

Do you have any demos of the game as is right now?

 

Not really, I was busy doing LD and now I will probably try polishing it a little. There is just something missing, some energy that I need to add for it to feel good.
But you know what? I need feedback anyway and progress isn't coming anytime soon. I don't know whether this build even works right, but I will just upload it and anybody can try it.
Controls are WSAD+Alphanumeric1-9 and mouse, shift to run, E to use fireplace, X to open inventory, tab to switch between building and spells, to equip spell or block mouse over it in the inventory and push number where you want it.
You have to keep yourself fed by hunting deer or farming carrots, then you can go defeat stronger monsters, craft weapons, armor and spells and repeat. There are two bosses but I think I haven't set up spawn for one of them yet.
Now that I think about it hella more needs to be done, I'm actually a bit ashamed.
Anyway, here is a link, let's say alpha version is free.

 

I'm on mac 64bit do you have any screenshots?

 

There are some.

 

I like little niche top down shooters that only indies seem to make

 

I would try it there seem to be alot of people who like the more retro looking games and your graphic style seems very clean and tbh quite interesting cause it's different from what I have seen so far. You might end up getting yourself a little fanbase over it I think.
Are you ready to expand it, if there would be bigger interest in it than you expect? And for how much do you want to sell it? (although if it's getting greenlit steam will contact you about pricing anyway)

 

Because it's the quality of the experience that matters, not the quantity.

 

WebGL + Kongregate dat ****, fam.

 

But let's be real though, the quality bar on steam is plummeting like a rock. There is so much crap that is coming out on steam ever day.

 

True. Still higher then Kongregate.

 

Check out Neon Chrome. Even I liked that one.

Just imagine people only buy games when at that moment the game seems pretty much the best thing in the world to spend their money on (or fill the void in their life). I sometimes feel like I wanna play something, but I'm bored of everything I own at the time. That's when there's a chance I'll buy a non-sale indie game when it's really innovative and appealing, like this one:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/416680/ (made in Unity btw).

I don't really buy the "visibility is an issue on steam" argument, because I really feel like their suggestion algorithms are on point with telling me about the things I might care about. Do you know how often I thought "this game looks exactly like my cup of tea, If only I had known it came out two years ago"? Never. It just doesn't happen. The other day I saw a new game on steam and thought "This actually looks kind of interesting, I'll put it on the wishlist. I wonder when this came out, I never heard of this one before... oh... it released today". It was a tiny low budget indie game with zero reviews, and yet I've seen it without going out of my way to manually dig through all the new releases. Steam is great at making suggestions!

 

Your game is way better than most stuff on Steam. The world generation is amazing. So many people tend to undervalue their own work.

I think there's a lot to gain by putting your game on Steam at this stage. Your game will get known, you'll get user feedback, and hopefully start getting some money for your work, you'll start seeing results for what you do.

I watched this video yesterday I found it very inspiring!

 

this is a great talk! thanks hadn't stumbled on that one yet ^^

 

I love it because it's an example of success for all of us. It's not a statistical impossibility, not a 1 in a million success. Just a person who shows us how its done!

 

Well in spring I'll be doing "Maturita" - leaving exams at our high-schools, and I'll have to learn a lot for school, but generally if people like my game, I would love expanding upon it. In that case I would be miserable I wrote such a bad code to speed up the development and performance. There are lot of things hanging on a thread - mainly z sorted sprites which are layered in such a complicated manner it breaks easily and never does everything right, and then the freaking networking which is just..a networking.

Yep that is a great idea, but there are a few practical issues.

• Networking - probably would work in browser, but people would expect online multiplayer and LAN would confuse them I think.
• Data persistence - You can't just save to disk from web, my game saves maps, states of active blocks, inventories etc. There are some ways, but I don't know about any good ones.
• Performance. While it is a 2D game, I've made some shaders for shadows, weapon swing effect, proper sprite ordering in a same mesh etc. It may or may not lag a lot.

Thank you! I will set a deadline on Christmas, make a trailer, polish as much as I can and then release.
I've seen the GDC talk and it is really good. I'm glad we don't have to rely on a huge successes to live a normal life.

 

I've not had a chance to play it, but judging by the screenshots I think you've got something there. Rogue like top down shooters are very popular on steam most with very high ratings beating most AAA titles.

I'd say polish it off and put it on steam, plus your $100 is going to a good cause.

 

As many people have already mentioned, for me it's the experience with the game that matters. I also tend to prefer smaller, more focused games simply because I don't have that much time nowadays. For example, I've really enjoyed Somewhere Out There (it took like 1-2 hours to beat), VVVVVV, Race The Sun, or Savant - Ascent.

Though, looking at your game, I personally wouldn't purchase it. This is not meant as an insult or as a slight at your game, but I'm just not into Minecraft-esque games, also -- and that's completely my personal preferences as an artist here -- the art style makes it look cheap-ish, regardless of what the game itself actually plays like.

But if I were you, I'd still try to sell it through Steam, even if only to see what you could do better next time. You can't learn from mistakes if you don't make any. And as you yourself and also others have said, there are much, much worse games on Steam.

 

Forgot about this. I've been thinking 5 dollars, but after consideration of all the things I wanted to add, 2 dollars is more realistic.

I envy you a little bit, for me it seems I spend more time sad that such a great game already ended than actually playing it.
And yes there are many people that don't like these do-whatever-you-want sandboxes, that's ok, and also I made the art and am not an artist, just spent some time learning about colors, shapes and such, and hearing it's cheap-isch from an artist is almost praise. Hey an artist didn't say my art is utter garbage

 

you did the right thing i hear so often people complain about "they can't do art", giving up before they even started because they don't understand that good art follows rules and simply that makes it look good...and anyone can learn rules
so it's refreshing to see that you just did it

 

Thank you, I just hate when people do that. I found out you can do just about anything. Of course it takes some time and those who want to be best have to put years into it, but things are not that hard people think. Anyway when people say they want to be good at something, they mostly want it enough to talk about it but not to put a few hours into it.

 

I actually forgot about neon chrome . Im playing ff7 right now otherwise I would pick it up right now.

 

Howdy! I took a break from game dev (and even games to a degree) the past two months. I doubt anyone noticed besides @theANMATOR2b but anyway getting my head back into it a bit lately. Been dabbling again.

I play a lot of small games. You can view my Steam library here. The play times aren't accurate because sometimes I play outside of Steam. At least I think that is it because some games I have played for many hours and yet none of them show more than 2 hours in my account. I think the ratios of time played for the games is accurate. And yes you will notice that when I got the urge to get back into game dev I finally checked out AGK. And what do you know it seems that I finally found the game dev kit I have been looking for.

Anyway... there are two main reasons I buy games like these.

First, I like games where the presentation is simple and the focus is (hopefully) more on the innards of the game. For me personally, I think this creates a more balanced gaming experience. For example, I don't care much for very basic simplistic games that are in HD with tons of FX and such. It makes me think the dev(s) are trying hard to cover up a simple game with a bunch of superficial crap. I'd prefer if the game is simple and solid they embrace that model whole-heartedly. If they are going to go light on something I would much prefer they limit the presentation quality over limiting the actual game itself.

Simple solid games where I can jump in and immediately start playing without having to learn a bunch of stuff will always find a spot in my library.

Second, I buy them simply because I am always hoping... searching... to find something really good. You see although I like most of the games that I have played in my Steam library none of them are really the perfect game I am looking for. Each does some things right and other things wrong. IMO. So I continue to buy games hoping that one of them will give me the gaming experience I have been looking for.

I think a lot of people, whether they consciously think about it or not, do the same thing. Always looking at or buying games in hope of finding that magical something that up til now they haven't been able to find. And it is this reason that games continue to be bought and will likely always continue to be bought at least by us die hards.

I checked out the screenshots of your game and it looks fine to me.

 

Hey, I noticed too! You just weren't gone quite long enough yet for me to get worried. Good to have you back though!

Can confirm. It's sort of true for me and a friend of mine told me something like that too.

 

Of course, this is why many folks end up on this side I think. We wonder why they come here wanting to make COD, Skyrim, etc and really they want to make COD / Skyrim that is closer to what they envision the perfect implementation of such games to be.

 

@Murgilod makes a great point - and is also solid advice on your development.
Instead of adding stuff to the game, and increasing the work needed to release, why not instead, de-scope some of the features that aren't needed.
Seems odd there is a network requirement - personally this is the first thing I'd drop - to solve many problems of getting the game in a releasable state. Though from reading your posts - we are diametrically at opposite ends of entertaining game features. Me - I have about 2% desire to play online with other people. I find local multiplayer marginally entertaining - when my son wants me to play a shooter with him.

I also enjoy smaller games in addition to more popular AAA releases. I get tired of a game after I've done pretty much everything I can do in the game - and there are still 10+ hours to finish the game. Most high quality AAA release suffer from this - even critically acclaimed games. I was done with The Last of Us about 4-6 hours before the game finally wrapped up.

I love side scrolling metroidvania games, and there are a ton at varying degrees of length. If a game is too long - there is just too much lull between action / reveal / story elements - the game starts to drag along.
I'm trying to wrap up Environmental Station Alpha now. A real good game, but there is a lot of traversal of the world that gets very old.

Consider de-scoping / removing features that aren't required to help you move forward on completing your game.

Your perceived presentation here doesn't leave anyone with excitement to check out the game. If you don't know if the build works - why expect anyone to check it out - to see if it works.
Better to have a solid build of the current game - and get feedback on what people think.

Again - presentation, this info should be always available to the player in the game. If you need a player to return to a website to understand what the controls are - that's not good design.

I totally agree - though I'd love to know how they do this. I think it is based on your library and play times. And some of the games in my library are junk from bundles I purchased. I guess I could remove those from my library, but I wish they'd take into account our wish lists when suggesting similar games.

 

Yes, generally multiplayer, open world and different clothing were biggest mistakes, but I don't play singleplayer games at all since I can play with friends or family, and it would be hard for me to make something I wouldn't want to play. I know about sunk cost fallacy, but when everything is already wired for multiplayer, it would just kill me to not use it. Will not do it for next game though.

Tutorial is something I will do after I figure out more important things, I don't even have the controls set in stone yet, there is somehow really small amount of good keys to use for stuff, almost everything is out of hand. For example using the 6-9 alphanumeric keys in a game is just plane useless for me and I'll probably remove them from the casting tab.

I will do proper feedback thread when the ingame presentation is better, this build was just to finally throw it away into the world and stop being so closed. Gives me some initiative to make things better for the next build I guess

 

There is market for every type of game, small, big, cheap, expensive, AAA class, and just A Sometimes people are interested in deep-content games, while those same people are sometimes interested in 5 min fun

 

@Pagi just put your game on Greenlight and see what happens. If its a good game it will get voted in. Even if its not it might get voted in! Then you will still have time to improve it before publishing it.

As for that video, I'm surprised he made so much money from 3-in-a-row type games off causal game websites. Yeah maybe you can survive for 11 years doing that, but its not really the kind of things I'd enjoy making for 11 years I don't think. After a while you might want to try and challenge yourself with a bigger game.

From what I heard anyway, that about 70% of PC games sales are through Steam so its silly to ignore that market.

 

Awesome video. I usually just close the window once I see it's a 1 hour video, but that was really helpful.

 

Zombie Night Terror is one of the best looking games on TIG devlogs, hands down. The gifs were breathtakingly awesome throughout development.




To me, the OP's title question means "Who would buy anything except the best?"

AAA aside, a lot of my purchases are indie. But these are top tier indie games. Either amazing art or innovative gameplay or theme. Often both. Darkest Dungeon, Curious Expedition, Clockwork Empire, Neo Scavenger.

Your anecdote proves the OP's concerns valid. Your "off pick" is one of the top most visually interesting games on an entire indie community site. A "best of" among hundreds/thousands of titles.

Those are all either gorgeous, or do what no one else does thematically or gameplay wise.

So the question remains for me, "Who buys these small games?" or in other words "Who buys anything but the top tier in any particular category?"

A game that lacks all these:

• Major Innovation in at least 1 aspect
• Breathtaking Artwork
• Thematic Emotional Pull
• Something totally new, that no one else does or even comes close to trying.

And IMO, all of those are LARGE games in their own right.

Large talent in art or design. A lot of devotion (time; hardwork) to polish this aspect.

 

Spot on! I had another post written down already but seems I didn't hit reply. You've already said it much better though:

True, but some people forget that for almost every type of game there already are very good games and you need to create a compelling reason for someone to want to play your game over the good one they already know.

 

That's also my problem. For the first time in 26 years my computer is completely Game-free, I have no time and I want no distraction. On those very few weeks of the year where I find myself free from work, I'd rather play a game I know I'd like instead of an indie game I am not sure about. I even feel bad about it, trying to be a game developer without supporting others sounds a little hypocritical, but I really have no other choice....

 

Put it on itch for free with the option to donate.

Obviously there are a lot of normal people and jerks who will just play it, but there are also a ton of good people who will have no problem going back and donating a dollar or two if they played a game that was fun for a few hours. I also think people appreciate the community and the humble side of giving away a game and only asking for donations. If your game is even moderately fun and it is obvious you put some serious work into it, you will have a decent amount of people who appreciate that enough to donate later on.

 

In spite of the genre you choose, what matters is that you have a long tail. Meaning that you should give support to your games long after release.
Some of his games are giving him profit after 10 years. This means several games can overlap, and it means to have your eggs in several baskets.

I mean, give support to your game as long as it makes sense. But otherwise don't just call it done after 1 year. Or after 1 week.

Remember that game Airscape: Fall of Graivty? They released their game, and because they didn't make a lotta money the first week or month, they declared it a flop and made an article to warn others that it doesn't matter if you do everything right?

Well if you check SteamSpy now they sold like 100k copies already. Though it would seem most of it comes from selling it super cheap. But it means the game is not dead. And they can still make it work. By promoting and keep working and not giving up.
And this is only Steam... if they didn't port their game everywhere they can... well they oughta.

So long tail! You must have it. That's the important thing about the video. And it takes away the fear of "all or nothing". It gives you an extra-hope. It gives you extra-lives.

 

You mean like the story with the two marketers and the hungry lion that chase them?

 

Never heard of that one. Please tell us how it goes.

 

Just a follow-up here. Another reason I buy small games and retro pixel art games is because... I like them.

Ha ha. That doesn't say much I know. I find them to be quite interesting. There is a certain elegance in the game design, graphics, etc that is appealing. I also find them to be unique or offer some unique things without going "Indie Weird". See a lot of Indie games these days are just plain weird IMO. Hard to relate to them.

I just checked out Steam to see what new games had come out in the past couple of months and now have 3 more games for my list to buy at some point. Probably some today or tomorrow.

Creepy Castle ... Released October 31, 2016 ... 1,840 Steam owners "Positive"

Momento Temporis: Light from the Deep ... Released October 27, 2016 ... 4,106 Steam owners "Mixed"

Abduction Bit ... Released November 14, 2016 ... 3,172 Steam owners "Positive"

These three are just very unique games IMO. The games look so solid. Now that might not hold up when I am actually playing them but they look like they are very solid. And they have uniqueness. Creepy Castle looks like it is just filled with a lot to find and do. It also has a very cool visual style very much like the ZX Spectrum games... and something very cool is it even appears to simulate using character sets (tiles) for the sprites and using coarse scrolling meaning they are scrolling by whole tiles instead of pixels. This is cool for two reasons. First it gives it a very unique look & style very authentic and second it means the amount of objects animating and moving around the screen are basically unlimited. I mean of course they are anyway but I meant they can do it and keep it authentic to the game.

I won't go into what I find appealing about each of them like that but anyway yeah I mean each of these games has a certain charm to it. Take a good look at each and then take a look at the Work In Progress or Made In Unity sections here and see how many similar games you can find. Well that is another big reason people buy stuff like this. Because it is different. We've got what seems like 10,000 FPS games these days and 50,000 Infinite Runners and a 100,000 platformers but they nearly all look to be about the same and / or poorly done. So games like the three above stand out as being exceptional. At least to me and the others who buy such games.

 

Nice post Benjamin. You wrapped up what I was also thinking about indie (small game) purchases.

With the glut of game genres that you listed - are you (and others) looking for uniqueness in these genres?
I really like pixel games and platformers with strong RPG elements among other genres - and Ive been playing runners for the past year because (research) I have a solid design for a unique runner.
Ive found some gems over the past year in other genres - but runners really seem to be a genre that is pushed out as a beginner game genre - with very little push to innovate - beyond camera perspetive and types of objects to dodge.

The Mario runner just recently released seems to have almost a couple hints of innovation in gameplay - however from just watching my son play the game - it appears the most innovative aspects seem to be the pay-to-play, paywall gating of the content. Yuck!

I think there is a lot of room to grow in that genre.

 

I usually play on console. Not sure which games are you referring to by saying *small*? Is it mobile games are you referring to? Super Mario just came out and people are going crazy over it, I tried it too and it gave me nostalgia! childhood memories.

 

Yeah, doesn't make sense. I wonder what the limits are on romance in a game on steam...

 

I don't think they really care, as long as it's wrapped in a nice AAA game that everybody likes, like The Witcher. I'd imagine they just don't want a flood of low-quality porn games on there, which could hurt their brand. The line seems to be drawn rather arbitrarily.

Edit: this seems relevant (and NSFW)

Spoiler