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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)

#91

Post by hhmc »

bigger_inside wrote: post #69
somenameforme wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

don't forget Rimworld. One guy making a huge and sprawling game that ignored the studio sensibilities and became hit (and a couple of memes).

> that ignored the studio sensibilities

I mean, it's strongly 'inspired' by dwarf fortress, so any heterodox design credit mostly belongs there

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

#92

Post by cubefox »

somenameforme wrote: post #53
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.…

Of course there are some successful indie games! But the only relevant thing is the probability that any one game will be successful. That chance is very small.

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

#93

Post by Cthulhu_ »

onion2k wrote: post #32
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 marketeting's game now. I don't think that's true. Not because I think an indie game can succeed without marketing, but the opposite. I think most indie games would still fail even with incredible marketing . They'd just lose more money because they'd have an additional cost. You can't always advertise your way to success in a completely saturated (or over-saturated) market, especially if your competitors are…

Non-indie games too; think Daikatana, Anthem, Babylon's Fall, Duke Nukem Forever, Shenmue, etc; all high budget, high marketing budget titles but ultimately flops.

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

#94

Post by somat »

somenameforme wrote: post #53
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.…

Valheim is not an indie game, it is published by coffee stain studios. Now it is a small dev team, and they defiantly take the slow burn approach to development. Both common traits to independent developers. And good for coffee stain publishing to let them develop this way. But... I don't think I am being too pedantic in saying indie means independently published, and if you have a company publishing your title... you are not indie.

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

#95

Post by Cthulhu_ »

tmikaeld wrote: post #6
Quarrelsome wrote: post #3

> You also need to have a good title that is both memorable/catchy and describes the game well. I feel like "get the goat" was just screaming to the be the name of this title. (they even use this term in some of their marketing)

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

Yeah, or like 90s / 2000s 'addictive' puzzle games that later were converted into Facebook and then mobile cash cows.

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

#96

Post by Cthulhu_ »

Incipient wrote: post #19

I'm not sure why exactly but I see so many " Deluxe" titles out there I just assume they're janky cloned 5-minute games with 50c in the discount bin. At least for me, the name is an immediate "no".

Same with "$thing Simulator" (there was a 'gas station simulator' on Steam recently) or (in the 90's) "Sim $something" or "$something Tycoon) (sim city, sim ant, sim skyscraper, sim hospital, apparently there's a huge list [0]). Or "$something Online", because every franchise had to be turned into an MMO; Lord of the Rings Online, The Elder Scrolls Online, Eve Online, you name it.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sim_video_games

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

#97

Post by barrysteve »

noobermin wrote: post #88
barrysteve wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market is saturated with remakes and games with nothing to say. This is the exact problem Norbet Weiner described in the 1950's book Human Use of Human Beings. Computers are characterized as a Spiritual Filter in that book and the aim is to get a message through the filter. These games aren't selling, cause everyone can tell they've got nothing to say. The know-how that goes into making them is very good, but the…

This might be harsh, and may be a crash isn't needed, but clearly if there's oversaturation, it is just natural that making "indie" games shouldn't make money. It is depressing perhaps for people who want to make games which clearly is a lot of people, but you're just upset at the economics of reality.

Huah? I'm not upset about the economics though. I'm just describing what I see. What upsets me is the drop in meaningful/just games to play. I really like playing and making games, and seeing a valuable thing be created.... It's not happening often any more in the Steam games space. It genuinely hurts to go from GTA V, RimWorld, Stardew, CS and HL (ect) to empty, hollow games.

It's okay with me if it crashes. My core ethos is that cream rises to the top. It should be hypothetically possible to make a video game that sells in the great depression or whatever economic nightmare. I wouldn't try to do that, because it's basically insane to try... but if you're going to make a game, don't half-ass it. Have something to say!

It has to be worth playing and buying even in hard times.. Just making "AN game" isn't enough. The Hollywood screenwriters would beat a premise to death before green-lighting it. I only say that to point out that the phenomena exists in other industries too.

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

#98

Post by flohofwoe »

Aaargh20318 wrote: post #76
ilyt wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 m…

> God of War, Horizon, Uncharted, TLoU, etc. are all amazing games and impossible to make on a small budget.

You only list successes, but it's exactly this type of story-driven block buster games that can sink a development studio if just one thing goes wrong (and it doesn't even have to be the fault of anybody involved with the game).

Enjoy this type of game while it lasts, because this era is coming to an end, it's just not sustainable. Eventually each studio will produce an expensive flop, and it's much harder to build an AAA development team then to destroy one.

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

#99

Post by cableshaft »

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…

> Like I doubt Minecraft would explode as it did if Yogscast didn't pick it up and made a popular YT series about it

Pretty sure before Yogscast there was already the rollercoaster minecart video released and on Kotaku (and other sites) that made Notch a millionaire overnight.

Yogscast may have helped shoot it into the moon, but Notch had already joined the mile high club by then.

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

#100

Post by a13o »

cyode wrote: post #35
adhvaryu wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Even so, that was the era of Cuphead, the first Overcooked, and other local multiplayer games that had undeniable character about them. Even compared to marquee 2010 _flash games_, this game comes off as lackluster. (Props to them for their effort and this writeup, of course.)

Juicy Beast was considered a top tier studio in the Flash ecosystem with many hits in that space, and Toto Temple was well-known and much anticipated at the time by the scene. Unfortunately the scene was dying; and the gameplay aesthetics that made for a successful Flash game did not translate well to the PC and console markets.

Cuphead and Overcooked wouldn't come until a couple years later, on the next generation of hardware. It's easy to blend these timelines together in 2023, but at the time these things were worlds apart and not influential over each other at all.

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