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Releasing an indie game on 3 consoles at once and failing financially (2016)

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Re: Releasing an indie game on 3 consoles at once and failing financially (2016)

#51

Post by coder_san »

magic_hamster wrote: post #31
jeroenhd wrote: post #12

First the Ouya, which turned out to be a total flop, and then the Wii U, which Nintendo marketed so badly many people thought it was an extension for their Wii. This company sure made some unlucky bets! Throughout the article I kept coming back to how generic the name sounds. It conjured pictures if the digital slot machines that are free mobile games, with gameplay loops mostly consisting of waiting or paying money…

> I understand how overworked the lone dev must've been Not sure that you do, especially when offering "just add multiplayer". Clear sign that you are not a solo game developer.

I agree. Anyone developer who has had to work on multi-player games will never say "just add multi-player". The whole way you approach the game changes massively.

Re: Releasing an indie game on 3 consoles at once and failing financially (2016)

#52

Post by lynx23 »

keyle wrote: post #25

When the movie "Indie games" came out, this was the prime time to get indie games out. The whole indie market thing was hot. But at a certain point, thanks to the free availability of game engines and their overal quality, the market got flooded with developers living on 5c a week and eating noodles, working on serial games and releasing top quality indie games. It became a game of marketing. And sadly that's where w…

Feels a lot like what happens with electronic music producers. There is a bunch of highly taltented sound designers out there, putting their hard work on BandCamp or whatever platform is friendly enough to make some bucks on. But almost nobody can make a living off selling releases. Almost everyone has to tour and play live gigs to make some money. And I guess the biggest reason why it is so hard to make money with releases is the same as with indie games, too many people trying to get a piece of the same cake... Paying fans are rare.

Re: Releasing an indie game on 3 consoles at once and failing financially (2016)

#53

Post by somenameforme »

keyle wrote: post #25

When the movie "Indie games" came out, this was the prime time to get indie games out. The whole indie market thing was hot. But at a certain point, thanks to the free availability of game engines and their overal quality, the market got flooded with developers living on 5c a week and eating noodles, working on serial games and releasing top quality indie games. It became a game of marketing. And sadly that's where w…

It depends on what you mean by "true" indie games. Valheim [1][2], by any reasonable interpretation of the word, is a completely indie game. It was made almost entirely by a single guy in his spare time after work, well at least until it blew up and he was able to expand the studio. And it was released with little more than a post on itch.io - 'Hey guys here's my game and a couple of pics. Let me know what you think.' And of course it did exceptionally well, because it's just a very good game.

In my opinion now is currently the absolute golden age for indie development of all sorts. But the catch is you actually need to make really good stuff. Just making a functioning game isn't really sufficient. There's even still a huge market for stuff that looks like it came from a 24 hour game-jam codeathon, but it needs to be fun. Check out Forager [3] for instance. As a warning, play that game for an hour - and you'll be playing it for 10 (or 100) because it's really just insanely fun.

And that's really all it is. The "problem" is that it's just become really (relatively) easy to make games. And so just making a functioning complete game is no longer any sort of real achievement. It needs to be fun. Make a game where people, with no connection or bias for you, will organically recommend it - and you're going to succeed.

[1] - https://store.steampowered.com/app/892970/Valheim/

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valheim#Development

[3] - https://store.steampowered.com/app/751780/Forager/

Re: Releasing an indie game on 3 consoles at once and failing financially (2016)

#54

Post by epolanski »

The amount of negativity and criticism in the comments here is sad.

Not only I think it's way too easy to criticize other's work and choices (in hindsight), but there's also a total lack of empathy.

We should cherish many small developers and entrepeneurs that share their experiences with such honest and thorough posts about the experience as they offer unique and valuable inputs and reflections.

Re: Releasing an indie game on 3 consoles at once and failing financially (2016)

#55

Post by wodenokoto »

dehrmann wrote: post #26
jeroenhd wrote: post #12

First the Ouya, which turned out to be a total flop, and then the Wii U, which Nintendo marketed so badly many people thought it was an extension for their Wii. This company sure made some unlucky bets! Throughout the article I kept coming back to how generic the name sounds. It conjured pictures if the digital slot machines that are free mobile games, with gameplay loops mostly consisting of waiting or paying money…

> Wii U, which Nintendo marketed so badly many people thought it was an extension for their Wii I can't decide if that's better or worse than Xbox. Xbox One isn't the original Xbox? And do I want Series S or X?

Xbox names are the worst.

Just look at these names:

one, one S, one X, series X and series S

I had so much trouble figuring out which xbox was “the new one” when I considered buying one last year.

Re: Releasing an indie game on 3 consoles at once and failing financially (2016)

#56

Post by flohofwoe »

keyle wrote: post #25

When the movie "Indie games" came out, this was the prime time to get indie games out. The whole indie market thing was hot. But at a certain point, thanks to the free availability of game engines and their overal quality, the market got flooded with developers living on 5c a week and eating noodles, working on serial games and releasing top quality indie games. It became a game of marketing. And sadly that's where w…

> It's a marketing's game now.

Making games break even always was 90% marketing though, maybe the current indie scene had it's own little "happy time" period where it was enough to create a high quality game and put it up on Steam to sell on its own, but that definitely wasn't the case for "non-indie" games since at least the late 90's (the way how game marketing is done has changed dramatically though).

Re: Releasing an indie game on 3 consoles at once and failing financially (2016)

#57

Post by badsectoracula »

adhvaryu wrote: post #27
bulbosaur123 wrote: post #18

The game looks just bland.

It was 8 years ago and the Indie game scene was not so saturated with games in this style and genre.

It was even more saturated 8 years ago, especially if you take Flash gaming into account that was still fresh in people's minds.

Re: Releasing an indie game on 3 consoles at once and failing financially (2016)

#58

Post by mike_hock »

jeroenhd wrote: post #12

First the Ouya, which turned out to be a total flop, and then the Wii U, which Nintendo marketed so badly many people thought it was an extension for their Wii. This company sure made some unlucky bets! Throughout the article I kept coming back to how generic the name sounds. It conjured pictures if the digital slot machines that are free mobile games, with gameplay loops mostly consisting of waiting or paying money…

> Wii U Wii U Wii U Wii U

DAE this sounds like somebody mocking a siren?

Re: Releasing an indie game on 3 consoles at once and failing financially (2016)

#59

Post by badsectoracula »

somenameforme wrote: post #41

This feels like they completely missed the reasons that they failed, which is a great way to ensure they fail again. I don't know how you can blame marketing with a straight face when your game was featured on multiple Nintendo front pages. That's more marketing than like 99.9% of games get, and you're performing way worse than average. The issue isn't marketing. In the article when it gets to the question of whether…

> There is no recipe for success in games, beyond making good games.

There was an ancient gamedev site in the ancient times of 2000-2001-or-so when the "indie" term first started being used online to describe what up to that point was largely called "shareware games" and the term already a lot of negative connotations attached to it.

I don't remember much about the site because i only found it around when it shut down but there was an advice from someone who actually made a living back then making games i remember that went something like: code, graphics, music, design, marketing are all aspects and elements of your game and they do not add, you can't ignore one and hope the others will pull it up, instead they multiply - fail to pay attention to any of those elements and it will drag down the rest.

I paraphrase a bit (or a lot) since it has been more than two decades since i read that but i think it holds up today as much as it did back then.

Re: Releasing an indie game on 3 consoles at once and failing financially (2016)

#60

Post by rawbot »

epolanski wrote: post #54

The amount of negativity and criticism in the comments here is sad. Not only I think it's way too easy to criticize other's work and choices (in hindsight), but there's also a total lack of empathy. We should cherish many small developers and entrepeneurs that share their experiences with such honest and thorough posts about the experience as they offer unique and valuable inputs and reflections.

This was 7 years ago. What good would vapid praising comments do?
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