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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)

#211

Post by chaostheory »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #89
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 mean, even if the developers did everything right, that's no guarantee for success; there's a ton of competition, and a lot of indie hits are more by chance than design.

Getting just the basic things right is hard. Imo designing and implementing fun is much harder than utility.

I’m sure everyone has seen beautiful looking and sounding games that were downright boring or broken

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

#212

Post by karpierz »

bobthepanda wrote: post #200
karpierz wrote: post #172

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…

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.

If you want to make a game, it's never been easier! Download Unity, download a bunch of free sounds/textures/models/etc, and then write some simple code to your things around.

If you want to make a movie, it's never been easier! Grab your smartphone, write a script, grab some friends and have them read it, then post.

But from experience, actually making something passible (much less "good" or "great") takes years of dedicated practice, which is more accessible thanks to the above, but still doesn't really make the years any shorter.

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

#213

Post by hinkley »

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.

We should cherish small developers. Simultaneously releasing on three platforms? What small developer do you know who does that? I’m still waiting for critics’ favorites to be ported to platforms I own.

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

#214

Post by TylerE »

SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #139
MattRix wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has been working as an indie game dev for the past 13 years, I think you’ve got a pretty unrealistic view of the situation. You can’t just make a “good game” anymore. The tastes of the market get more demanding over time. To put it another way, the bar for what constitutes a “good game” gets more and more difficult every year. There are successful games from a few years ago that would not get any sales…

Could you name a few? Not trying to challenge I’m actually really curious how the bar has shifted over time. (It also makes me curious if it means newbies have an increasingly high bar to clear and eventually pushes out young people?)

Frankly most of them.

There are a dozen rogue-lite survival zombie games released on Steam every week. (Only a slight exaggeration).

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

#215

Post by hinkley »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #89
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 mean, even if the developers did everything right, that's no guarantee for success; there's a ton of competition, and a lot of indie hits are more by chance than design.

World is full of great movies or games that came out a few weeks after a blockbuster and never got the buzz they deserved. Once in a while they become cult classics.

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

#216

Post by TylerE »

SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #186
Etherlord87 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I must admit it's a very good example, overwhelmingly positive on Steam with 1987 ratings, so it's hard to argue the game is bad. If I compare Chicory, A Colorful Tale (A) to Stardew Valley B: A: 97%/1987 B: 98%/483781 on Steam A: 93.2%=2317 B: 97.33%=562`831 on Steam.db I don't know where the disparity comes from, but those 4 % are significant. And here's something even more important: A: 8 in game B: 36`293 in game…

I wouldn’t compare Chicory with Stardew: for one, Stardew was genre-defining (as some people call things soulslikes, a whole heap of games are trying to capture Stardew). Replay ability of Stardew is part of its specific genre niche, where Chicory is again more like Zelda, in which replay ability isn’t a huge selling point to the game (although I find chicory just as fun as a Zelda to replay). Additionally stardew ex…

Huh? Stardew is blatantly, ahem, "inspired by" the Harvest Moon series. It was mainly successful because it wasn't a Nintendo exclusive.

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

#217

Post by JohnFen »

karpierz wrote: post #172
bdw5204 wrote: post #163

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…

But games and movies are very, very different mediums that don't substitute for each other very well.

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

#218

Post by bobthepanda »

karpierz wrote: post #212
bobthepanda wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you want to make a game, it's never been easier! Download Unity, download a bunch of free sounds/textures/models/etc, and then write some simple code to your things around. If you want to make a movie, it's never been easier! Grab your smartphone, write a script, grab some friends and have them read it, then post. But from experience, actually making something passible (much less "good" or "great") takes years of…

I think for most of the general public, a movie shot on your phone represents a significantly smaller burden than programming.

The oft-quoted figure is that the production cost of the original Paranormal Activity was $15,000, and that was made before the advent of smartphones.

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

#219

Post by Hermitian909 »

flohofwoe wrote: post #98
Aaargh20318 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Enjoy this type of game while it lasts, because this era is coming to an end, it's just not sustainable.

Do you also think blockbuster movies are not sustainable? Because AAA games have a very similar business model. Actually in some ways games are more attractive due to the possibilities with DLC.

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

#220

Post by diabolo96 »

rideontime wrote: post #209
diabolo96 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i meant in general.

Ah. Did you have any opinion on the article?

When i was a kid I spent hours and hours playing Burrito Bison on Newgrounds so I know Juicy Beast know how to make games, really good and enjoyable games.

As for the article, it was an interesting read and I almost predicted every raison why the game was a failure but I don't agree with some:

1.The "strike a deal first" one is nonsensical. Get famous enough on one platform and the sales will be as good on the others. 2. Only one console at a time should've been obvious ( currently it's the Switch first, others later)

I also think that a significant part of the failure comes from the fact that the market was saturated with party games at the time as i remember seeing a lot of ads about similar games and then it just stopped. Also, these kind of games are not really that interesting and become repetitive very fast and no single-player / online multi-player killed it before it was even out.

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