Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

juicybeast.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 280 posts

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

#201

Post by honkycat »

I was one of those kids who LOVED video games, and I went to school to learn how to make them. Thankfully, I listened to my parents, and got a degree in Computer Science instead of a game focused major.

I tried for a long time time do the indie dev thing, but i just didn't have the commitment to stick with it after a full time job.

The friends I went to school with who DID end up in games are not working on Dark Souls 3. They tend to work on shitty mobile games with barely any game play, and make half as much as I do with a way less portable skill set.

Personally: I am happy with how it all turned out. I prefer building actually useful tools and applications over building shitty video games.

After reading enough of these indie game funerals, I have come to the conclusion that there just isn't a market there anymore. I think the data agrees with me here.

I also make music in my free time, and it is a similar issue. I pour work into my music, and for what? For nobody to care or to listen to it. So it goes.

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

#202

Post by honkycat »

Solvency wrote: post #197
a13o wrote: 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 w…

In PDX there is "Portland Indie Game Squad" and they actually do this.

Also in PDX: Retro Game Bar, Ground Kontrol, Quarterworld... there are others that host fighting game tournaments etc...

Unfortunately, it just doesn't make money for the people putting in work developing the game.

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

#203

Post by honkycat »

robertlagrant wrote: post #130

> The process of porting the game was hard by itself, but following up a year of non-creative work with a launch that doesn’t make much noise, nor sell a lot, was pretty hard on all of us. I think classifying the one (!!) programmer's work as uncreative when he got the game running on multiple consoles is completely wrong. That guy is your main asset, and probably your most creative team member.

I think he was trying to show empathy that the work in porting the game was not "fun game-design-y" work, which I would absolutely agree with.

I doubt the dev got into game development so he could mess with console APIs and squash bugs.

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

#204

Post by ZephyrBlu »

Hermitian909 wrote: post #198
ZephyrBlu wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Right, so what does saying "[the game] needs to be fun" achieve? Absolutely nothing, because people who get it translate that into something useful like "make a satisfying core gameplay loop" and people who don't get it are still wondering what the hell "fun" means.

I'm criticizing the shallowness and lack of information in the comment. Everyone knows games should be fun. Saying "[the game] needs to be fun" has literally 0 bits of information and is a lazy explanation for why games don't succeed.

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

#205

Post by joebob42 »

thewebcount wrote: post #199
mrangle wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Thank you.

I see gps sentiment more often than I can understand, and it horrifies me. Especially as regards creative mediums (music, art, etc) where the point is to entertain. I may not know exactly what's wrong with a work, but I'm obviously qualified to critique it.

But even in other areas. It's easier to tell if something is good than to make a good thing. With a limited number of exceptions, I can tell if something someone did is crappy or not with a fairly limited understanding of their field.

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

#206

Post by diabolo96 »

rideontime wrote: post #169
diabolo96 wrote: post #164

The problem of indie games is that indie devs with no prior knowledge of programming, no prior artistic talent, either in terms of crafting an enticing narrative and/or graphical design wake up one day, decide to drop of university/quit their job to create their big commercial "dream game". The problem is that they often jump over the first step of learning how to make a game and go straight to publish their barely p…

What part of the article gives you the impression that this was the case?

i meant in general.

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

#207

Post by diabolo96 »

bequanna wrote: post #171
diabolo96 wrote: post #164

The problem of indie games is that indie devs with no prior knowledge of programming, no prior artistic talent, either in terms of crafting an enticing narrative and/or graphical design wake up one day, decide to drop of university/quit their job to create their big commercial "dream game". The problem is that they often jump over the first step of learning how to make a game and go straight to publish their barely p…

Is there any indication that games that do have excellent art and storytelling are much more likely to succeed?

They dont need to be excellent but at least not dumpster worthy. Is that too much to ask ? for game stores to not being flooded with bug-ridden half baked asset flips or cringy VNs

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

#210

Post by fullshark »

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.

People are doing a postmortem, for the purpose of learning 7 years later. Comments don't strike me as that negative really and people are relishing an in depth look at failure cause the in depth looks at success are overrepresented statistically.
Post reply on HN