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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)

#71

Post by mejutoco »

Aaargh20318 wrote: post #67
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…

For me the main problem with indie games is the amount of value you get for your money. Games are software, if you sell 10 copies or 10 million, it’s basically the same amount of work. That is: no matter how big your development budget is, or how many you expect to sell, 100% of that budget goes into developing 1 copy of the game. However, the actual budget does scale with the number of expected sales. A game that is…

This is assuming that the more money is spent in development the more value you get out of the game. That is a big assumption, maybe true for very established game genres.

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

#72

Post by ilyt »

flohofwoe wrote: post #56
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).

> 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

That was never the case.

Just that some indie that made "good enough" or "great" game got lucky that they got picked by "right" streamer or youtuber that liked it and it got virally popular off it.

Like I doubt Minecraft would explode as it did if Yogscast didn't pick it up and made a popular YT series about it, which also made modders jump on the then-barren game, making it even more interesting.

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

#73

Post by ilyt »

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.

It was a massive mistake in game like this tho, the mistake many other games like that died by.

Appeal of buying essentially party game where you need other people in same room to get the most of it (games like that are rarely good singleplayer) is very low, even worse in pandemic.

Not saying it would make game succeed, as that's still 90% marketing in oversaturated indie market, but it is a thing that would make me go "nope" if I saw what I like then read that it is local-only, hell, it did in many cases.

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

#74

Post by ilyt »

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 had enough games that were not one gimmick to overshadow it anyway.

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

#75

Post by mvdtnz »

ilyt wrote: post #70
Aaargh20318 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me the main problem with indie games is the amount of value you get for your money. Games are software, if you sell 10 copies or 10 million, it’s basically the same amount of work. That is: no matter how big your development budget is, or how many you expect to sell, 100% of that budget goes into developing 1 copy of the game. However, the actual budget does scale with the number of expected sales. A game that is…

> The AAA game may cost me 4 times as much, but it gives me 400 times the value. So what non-multiplayer AAA game you played 400 times as long than an 10 hour indie experience ? Or did you had 400x the fun playing it? That's very MBA way to look at it. Game's budget is only vaguely correlated with how good it is as a game . Sure prettier blah blah blah, but we had plenty of big games coming out mediocre and just bein…

Outright play time isn't the right way to measure the value of a game (or any other piece of art or entertainment) unless your sole purpose is to spend time. I value Half Life 2 hundreds of times higher than skribbl.io even though I probably have more hours in the latter.

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

#76

Post by Aaargh20318 »

ilyt wrote: post #70
Aaargh20318 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me the main problem with indie games is the amount of value you get for your money. Games are software, if you sell 10 copies or 10 million, it’s basically the same amount of work. That is: no matter how big your development budget is, or how many you expect to sell, 100% of that budget goes into developing 1 copy of the game. However, the actual budget does scale with the number of expected sales. A game that is…

> The AAA game may cost me 4 times as much, but it gives me 400 times the value. So what non-multiplayer AAA game you played 400 times as long than an 10 hour indie experience ? Or did you had 400x the fun playing it? That's very MBA way to look at it. Game's budget is only vaguely correlated with how good it is as a game . Sure prettier blah blah blah, but we had plenty of big games coming out mediocre and just bein…

> if I look at the top amount of spent time in game (the "value" per spend money) it's some small dev management games (Factorio, Banished, Rimworld, X4)

I don’t care for those kinds of games at all. That’s the problem with most indie games: they rely solely on gameplay. Me, personally, I’m more into story driven games, and that additional budget buys you better writers, actors, mo-cap, etc.

> the type of game that most AAA developers just refuse to make in the first place. Most of "singleplayer story driven ones" I've played also fall out of AAA space

I’m mainly a PlayStation gamer and they release a lot of story driven single-player games. It’s the may reason I stick to PS. God of War, Horizon, Uncharted, TLoU, etc. are all amazing games and impossible to make on a small budget.

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

#77

Post by wodenokoto »

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…

> First the Ouya, which turned out to be a total flop,

They still paid for the initial development, so it is hard to argue that was a bad place to start.

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

#78

Post by Ekaros »

ilyt wrote: post #72
flohofwoe wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

> 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 That was never the case. Just that some indie that made "good enough" or "great" game got lucky that they got picked by "right" streamer or youtuber that liked it and it got virally popular off it. Like I doubt Minecraft would explode as it did if Yogscast…

Or by Valve and Steam itself. They were essentially king makers when they really curated the content. Then came Greenlight and later just opened flood gates. Justly I think. The curation was not optimal model.

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

#79

Post by cttet »

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.

I don't consider the comments helpful as well, but quite contrastively, because of the over optimism.

Lots of the comments contribute the failure to quite a few reasons, and emphasize on the effect of the reasons. But the real thing is this actually can imply that the failure can be narrow down to "a few simple obvious fixes".

To me it make me feel good since "a bad title" can be a very simple excuse to think that "what if I fix that, things would get better" and ignore more problem in depth.. Since I can never go back in time and retry it in the exact same setting.

Things like "It's OK, you have tried your best" is the real negativity to me, since it implies that I have reached the best I can do in potential/capacity, and can be quite discouraging. But it is quite helpful sometimes since I can recogonize my limits and try to improve myself or pivot.

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

#80

Post by Ekaros »

raincole wrote: post #44
tmikaeld wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such a missed opportunity, the current “Toto Temple Deluxe” sounds like a generic casino game

It's just my pet peeve, but I absolutely hate the titles with "Deluxe" in them. Maybe it's okay for a game that has lots of DLCs and a Deluxe version that comes with all (or the most important) DLCs. But nothing else.

In general have added new stuff and upgraded things in general for already well known name.

But from initial launch? Just no, that is just stupid.

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