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Did I just waste 3 years?

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Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#511

Post by yifanl »

sago wrote: post #483

Yes. You did. Sadly. And it is very little to do with luck or numbers or the state of the industry. Good indie games: 1. are almost never distinguished by programming (the days of Doom are gone and you are not John Carmack). Far too much time is spent coding. Use existing tools. Code only gameplay. 2. are much more about art. The trailer looks like programmer art: no coherent style, no direction, no class. If this is…

There are absolutely indie games that don't have any of that, and yet are wildly successful.

See: Five Nights at Freddy's and Getting Over It. (You could argue that the hook of Getting Over It is the intentionally annoying controls, but I highly doubt that that much of the market is a bunch of masochists.)

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#512

Post by fileeditview »

bodas wrote: post #495
fileeditview wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I disagree a lot with what you are saying. Marketing is important sure. But you cannot market "bad" indie games to be successful. Maybe big gaming companies can do that but even they fail often enough. Luck is an important factor and maybe I would even rate it higher than 5%. I find the number of 90% marketing for an indie game ridiculous. Stardew Valley is based on existing formula but it is incredibly polished…

Quality is subjective but marketing is not. Every person has a different taste, I've played some "good" indie games that bored the socks off me. F you have enough people coming through the marketing funnel then only a truly awful game will fail to find admirers.

There are subjective qualities such as visual quality but there are also objective qualities such as "hours played" or other measurable ones.

Also people will do the marketing for you if your game is good but if it is not you will need to convince them (money most likely). And that is what bigger companies often do (via Twitch streamers e.g.) and what indies cannot (especially solo devs).

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#513

Post by drb91 »

macspoofing wrote: post #436
drb91 wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, making money just off of novels seems impossible these days (you gotta hold out for HBO); there’s still a good deal of difference.

Is there really a difference? I know an acquaintance that published a novel they worked on for a few years. They didn't share any numbers with me but they were clear, they made no money. I assume there are thousands of people trying to sell their novels, and a tiny minority succeed in making (big) money.

> and a tiny minority succeed in making (big) money.

Who is making big money JUST off novels? Not speaking, not tv deals, writing.

Meanwhile I know several game developers making a living. Setting out to do it still follows a success distribution, but it’s fundementally achievable in a way unavailable to writers entirely.

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#514

Post by OskarS »

sago wrote: post #483

Yes. You did. Sadly. And it is very little to do with luck or numbers or the state of the industry. Good indie games: 1. are almost never distinguished by programming (the days of Doom are gone and you are not John Carmack). Far too much time is spent coding. Use existing tools. Code only gameplay. 2. are much more about art. The trailer looks like programmer art: no coherent style, no direction, no class. If this is…

Yep. It's certainly true that indie gaming is a harsh place to be in right now, but there's no mystery or deeper reason as to why the writer's game failed.

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#515

Post by OskarS »

yifanl wrote: post #511
sago wrote: post #483

Yes. You did. Sadly. And it is very little to do with luck or numbers or the state of the industry. Good indie games: 1. are almost never distinguished by programming (the days of Doom are gone and you are not John Carmack). Far too much time is spent coding. Use existing tools. Code only gameplay. 2. are much more about art. The trailer looks like programmer art: no coherent style, no direction, no class. If this is…

There are absolutely indie games that don't have any of that, and yet are wildly successful. See: Five Nights at Freddy's and Getting Over It. (You could argue that the hook of Getting Over It is the intentionally annoying controls, but I highly doubt that that much of the market is a bunch of masochists.)

You're 100% wrong about Getting Over It. The graphics of that game are extremely intentional, as are the controls. Bennett Foddy is a veteran who knows exactly what he's doing, and it's no accident that that game hit.

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#516

Post by scott_s »

Theodores wrote: post #334
hannasanarion wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because a "winner take all" industry is one that trends towards monopoly, that's not the same thing. No one person will ever have the entire video game pie. "Superstar industries" follow extreme power law distributions, where, due to the low barrier to entry, high ceilings, and limited consumer base (there are only so many hours people can spend on entertainment), the pie isn't growing and new entrants aren't goi…

Adele? Nearest example I can think of, mySpace was where she got noticed so that dates her breakthrough to a good decade ago. Adele was legitimate however others have pretended to have an Adele grade story. Lily Allen also claimed to have been discovered on mySpace but her dad was rock and roll celebrity so her efforts can be dismissed as nepotism. Often these links to rock and roll celebrity are not obvious because…

Justin Bieber was discovered through YouTube. And he helped contribute to Carly Ray Jepsen's career because he saw one of her songs on YouTube, covered it, and helped it go viral. The Weeknd used YouTube at the start of his career as well.

I don't think this phenomenon is limited to one form of media. "The Martian" by Andy Weir was originally published on his website one chapter at a time. The internet has, in general, lowered the bar to publishing any kind of work significantly - be it games on Steam, songs on YouTube, or ebooks on Amazon. There are now new avenues into the wider industry, but the big players are still the big players.

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#518

Post by fileeditview »

marvin wrote: post #493
BigJono wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You have to look at really successful indie games, such as Terraria, Factorio, Mini Metro, Stardew Valley, Darkest Dungeon, Papers Please.. and there are many more. If you look at these games do you really think there is an alternative reality where they would not sell many copies? I don't. Interesting. I think you're right about half of those. I can't see any way that SDV or Darkest Dungeon could have failed. SDV…

The trailer of "Papers, Please" was what sold it to me. Really catchy music and a weirdly freaky premise. ("A game about denying immigrants from entering your country? That's such a weird premise it just has to be good, and the visuals are super well done").

After your comment I re-watched the trailer and liked it very much. The music is great and the trailer really captures the mood of the game.

I then showed it to my wife who is not a gamer at all. She liked the trailer too but thought the player would be one of the immigrants :)

It's tough to make a perfect trailer..

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#519

Post by theandrewbailey »

macspoofing wrote: post #435
malkia wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haven't read the paper, but kept me thinking about twitchers, youtube streamers and such...

You'll see the same thing: a tiny minority of streamers making most of the money, and a large majority making little to no money.

That's a Pareto distribution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#520

Post by cableshaft »

Angostura wrote: post #479
bspammer wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To make a successful anything, it's 90% marketing, 5% quality, and 5% luck This seems very logical but indie games really do seem to defy this general rule. Pretty much every single popular indie game out there is really, really good in it's own specific way, and most of them had almost no marketing budget (when they first came out anyway). Minecraft had no marketing. Terraria had no marketing. Stardew Valley had n…

> Minecraft had no marketing. ... ish. You can certainly think of the prolonged free alpha (and beta?) as marketing

Also Notch spammed 4chan with the game anonymously for awhile to drum up some interest.

Also he made a highly viral video of him building a minecart rollercoaster during his paid (but cheaper, I believe it was $13, and he was telling people that was half the price that it would be on official release) beta which he got Kotaku and Penny Arcade to share with their massive audience and suddenly he was a millionaire pretty much overnight.

I personally saw the minecart rollercoaster video while browsing Kotaku and that's how I discovered the game.

Notch absolutely marketed and knew how to market his game. He may have not had an advertising budget, but he made the right type of content and the right type of advertising, then shared it with the right types of promotional avenues to reach his target audience to get enough of a start that word-of-mouth advertising could pretty much take over. And that's all marketing really is.

And since then (especially since Microsoft bought Minecraft) you better believe that game has had lots of money dumped into its marketing.

It's just that most things aren't as sexy as a build-your-own-minecart-rollercoaster-brick-by-brick-and-ride-it-in-first-person and therefore require a lot of money to get it in front of enough people.

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