Live data from Hacker News

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

juicybeast.com

191–200 of 280 posts

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

#191
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Microsoft decided to name their consoles that way, because they didn't want their console to be one number behind the PlayStation.

They should have skip a number and aligned on PS numbers

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

#192

Trailers are important and this one doesn’t convey what’s going on or why someone should be interested. Couch coop only is an obvious mistake too because your convincing someone to buy on the off chance people will want to play it with them

The trailer looks like pure twitchy chaos to me, even after watching it twice. And the article has a detailed description of how the developer thinks the trailer perfectly explains every detail. To me, it's still incomprehensible chaos, and it tells me almost nothing.

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

#193
post #94

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.…

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... yo…

None of coffee stain studios are AAA games.

I think there's a blurry line that separates indie games to non-indie games. Sure stardew valley is an indie game and God of War is not. But those are the extremes of the spectrum.

Is Hades an indie game? It is developed and published by Supergiant Games, but at this point is really well known and funded.

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

#195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Analogously: I wonder if many of the low budget films, especially narrative focused films, might be better off as games. Given how everybody has a computer these days, AAA games are formulaic garbage and games aren't centered around a single developer any more, there's probably a market for innovative low budget games made in a basement on a single computer by a few friends and with little to no art assets. That seem…

You can only play so many small narrative focused games before you realize they're pretty boring. Especially if you're saying they have few art assets. People say these things are great, but part of that appreciation is for the novelty of a game being so stripped down and devoid of gameplay that it feels interesting.

> You can only play so many small narrative focused games before you realize they're pretty boring. [...] People say these things are great, but part of that appreciation is for the novelty of a game being so stripped down and devoid of gameplay that it feels interesting.

I honestly like this kind of games (and buy copies of them). But as far as I am aware (I read quite some articles about this topic) such games typically have a very small audience that is highly positive about such games. This means: such avant-garde games, if they are good, do have their niche of people who will buy and highly praise them, but outside of this group, which is quite separared from other types of gamers, hardly anybody is interested in such games. In other words: you will sell some copies and get great ratings if the game is good, but you won't sell very many copies.

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

#196

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 remeber Gamasutra (game dev news site) having a regular Post Mortem column, where developers who had shipped a game would write about what worked and what didn't during development and launch of the game. Even though I wasn't a game dev I really enjoyed reading these, as most contained info applicable to other teams as well. edit: Oh wow, I had assumed they had gone the way of the Dodo after being bought way back,…

I used to love reading Post Mortems back in the early 2000s. Maybe it's nostalgia lenses but the problems and obstacles just felt so much more relatable and interesting. Now it's all market dynamics and marketing and tortured business mechanics and layers of artificial tech complexity. It's more depressing to read than motivating.

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

#197
post #111

I was deeply involved in the indie scene during this time and played many of these local multiplayer games at GDC indie events, weekly barcade meetups, game jams, Indiecade, etc. I think this misled many developers. Your peers are together often, able to play local multiplayer games, and giving you a false sense of market. I played hundreds of hours of these games in that setting, but never once booted them up at hom…

"Your peers are together often, able to play local multiplayer games, and giving you a false sense of market."

Well this sounds like fun. Like the old social arcade experience, but made of people playing fresh indie multiplayer games. Even in prototype form.

Why not make THAT a business model? If my town has a little cafe with a few bit screens and controllers, and every night (or even once a week), I could turn up with a bunch of gamers and were all playing novel small games together, that could be really fun.

The games could be in varying stages of completion. It wouldn't matter. Because it'd feel like an intimate setting of people just hanging out and socializing and playing things.

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

#198

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.…

> Make a game where people, with no connection or bias for you, will organically recommend it - and you're going to succeed I.e. "make a fun game that has organic viral growth" As if developers don't want to do that. You have not provided any information of value here. Organic viral growth is extremely rare, and "fun" is a useless descriptor for someone trying to replicate "fun" in their own game. Why would developer…

> Why would developers want to make a game that isn't fun?

I mean, why do people want to write buggy software? It's not on purpose, they're just not good enough to deliver quality in a timely fashion.

My experience with most indie games cannot deliver on a core gameplay loop that's satisfying, even when that loop is not the draw of the game in which case I'd expect them to ape something competent.

IMO an example of a studio that doesn't mess this up is Giant Games. I've liked some titles more or less but the core gameplay loop has always been competently designed.

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

#199

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.

In general, a socially and personally healthy life choice is to refrain from pointed criticism of anyone's work whose specific profession one is not in. Apart from instances when their performance has directly impacted you. If for no other reason than the fact that you haven't attempted it and therefore don't actually know. After that, the next level of karmic adjustment is to refrain from posting bad reviews of rest…

No, that’s just stupid. If someone sings off key, I have every right to say that person is singing off key and it sounds bad even if I also cannot sing on key. If I see a bad movie or read a bad book, I have every right to criticize it even if I cannot direct a movie or write a book myself.

I don’t need to have attempted any of those things to know that what I experienced was sub-par. I’ve heard better singers, seen better movies, and read better books.

If what you said were true, only movie directors would be able to criticize movies. That’s not helpful.

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

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Game development has turned into the same kind of nightmare that music is for anybody who wants to go into it. Unless you're really good at marketing/get really lucky, you're never going to make a living doing it because the market is insanely oversaturated and the gaming media focuses most of its attention on a handful of popular high budget games because that's what draws the traffic. Another major problem is how l…

Analogously: I wonder if many of the low budget films, especially narrative focused films, might be better off as games. Given how everybody has a computer these days, AAA games are formulaic garbage and games aren't centered around a single developer any more, there's probably a market for innovative low budget games made in a basement on a single computer by a few friends and with little to no art assets. That seem…

The issue is that filming in meatspace is still often less complicated than trying to make those graphics on a computer (assuming your low budget movie has little to no CG). And if you want voices, you still need labor.
Post reply on HN