Releasing an indie game on 3 consoles at once and failing financially (2016) • Hacker News Board

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

#231

Post by rasz » Mon, Jun 19, 2023, 8:31 PM UTC

SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #143

Etherlord87 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you fuel your argument with some examples? I hear the argument in similar forms a lot, how a lot of good games failed because of bad marketing or just no luck. But I never see any examples. The response I get to my question is usually "I don't know of an example precisely because it never got popular", but I find it very fallacious - if there's thousands of good games out there, that failed to be popular, surely…

I have a one that immediately comes to mind: Chicory, A Colorful Tale is way less successful than it should be. It’s a cross between a Zelda style game (upgrades, bosses, dungeons, exploration) with a coloring book (you color the world) with a deeply touching plot about impostor syndrome and the pressures of being labeled a talented artist. It has a huge number of accessibility features, co-op mode, an amazing ost, d…

CGA, trauma inducing palette doenst exactly scream wide audience accessibility. This game has a very strong and distinct art style.

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

#232

Post by Etherlord87 » Mon, Jun 19, 2023, 8:32 PM UTC

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…

I have no hidden agenda here, so I compared, I admit, peaches to oranges, Chicory to Stardew, just because Stardew was the first popular indie game I found to compare with. Feel free to choose a successful indie game within the same genre as the Chicory, and then we can try to analyze the differences again.

> Stardew was genre-defining

What is the argument here, that it was very good? That's exactly my point, it was very successful because of how good it was (rather than lucky).

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

#233

Post by rasz » Mon, Jun 19, 2023, 9:04 PM UTC

Aaargh20318 wrote: post #101

ykonstant wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m more into story driven games I have yet to see a story as good as the Blackwell series. Perhaps you have made up your mind that indie games do not have good story lines, so you are not looking for them. I don't know.

I had a quick look and it looks really low-budget. The thing is, I have limited time to play games, so I can be very selective what I spend that time on. This means I can limit myself to games that do everything right, not just one thing. That means story, but also production value. Good acting, good mo-cap, good graphic, a good sound track, etc. Why would I spend the limited time I have for gaming on games that don'…

>really low-budget

because they were first. Look at later games from the list http://www.wadjeteyegames.com/games/

Gemini Rue, Primordia, Technobabylon, Shardlight, Strangeland, but especially Unavowed!

Clifftop Games Whispers of a Machine and Kathy Rain are also good https://store.steampowered.com/developer/clifftopgames/#brow...

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

#234

Post by strken » Mon, Jun 19, 2023, 9:17 PM UTC

spywaregorilla wrote: post #178

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…

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.

I really like narrative games and don't think they're boring, but the ones I play have hundreds of thousands of words of dialogue paired with reasonable gameplay loops, e.g. Failbetter or Spiderweb Software rather than critically acclaimed walking sims.

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

#235

Post by nathants » Mon, Jun 19, 2023, 9:21 PM UTC

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #204

Hermitian909 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 liter…

games are art, and art has a certain i don’t know what.

art has to risk failure or it’s not art. perhaps has to even be near certain to fail.

no one should be depending on art to feed their family.

no one should be making art for any reason other than love.

art must be beautiful.

as many have pointed out, blockbuster movies and triple a games are interesting, but they are not art.

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

#236

Post by rasz » Mon, Jun 19, 2023, 9:23 PM UTC

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…

>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 passable buggy mishmash of half baked ideas with no quality control or beta-testing done.

Hey, it worked for Adam Nickerson! Felicia Day and Adam Nickerson play Poosh XL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEbLXKKkvSQ

http://www.adamvisionstudios.com

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

#237

Post by krapp » Mon, Jun 19, 2023, 9:40 PM UTC

nathants wrote: post #235

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 liter…

games are art, and art has a certain i don’t know what. art has to risk failure or it’s not art. perhaps has to even be near certain to fail. no one should be depending on art to feed their family. no one should be making art for any reason other than love. art must be beautiful. as many have pointed out, blockbuster movies and triple a games are interesting, but they are not art.

Art is work, friend. I don't know if you've ever encountered an actual artist in your life, beyond someone making macaroni collages, but professionals in any craft can't afford to do what they do for love alone. Certainly not in game development, the most brutal, toxic and exploitative industry a creative can work in. Even Michaelangelo didn't paint the Sistene Chapel ceiling for free.

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

#238

Post by somat » Mon, Jun 19, 2023, 9:45 PM UTC

m_0x wrote: post #193

somat wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think that definitely language has shifted a bit, and terminology that used to mean "artist that is unable or does not want to get a publishing contract" now means "small limited resource artist". I mean for gods sake there are "indie" publishing companies now. Which I regard as this amazing contradiction in terminology.

But yes, my pedantic side insists that if a large well funded game(or movie or song) uses the same legal entity to fund the game as was used to build it. They are independent and may fairly use the term "indie". Steam is a weird kink in the rules, because they are technically publishing all these games. But I hand wave that away by claiming that they are a market not a publisher(the difference being that a publisher takes on risk by paying you before the work is done).

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

#239

Post by strken » Mon, Jun 19, 2023, 9:46 PM UTC

dbspin wrote: post #167

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.…

You're describing survivorship bias. It's impossible for you to know about the great games that you haven't heard about. I'd suggest listening to the devs on this one. I can attest that 'the cream rises to the top' isn't remotely true in areas I know more about - short stories, movies, music. There is indeed lots of cream (in addition to lots more crap with money behind it) at the top. there's also lots of cream, vas…

Which great games are pulling less than 1k steam sales? Or have just a handful of reviews? I've found some games I like with very low review count, but they're all clunky and whimsical, or extremely short, or can't be played without pestering the people you live with, or shoot themselves in the foot in other ways.

At some point the needle to hay ratio becomes untenable and searching the whole haystack is no longer possible for a single person. You can still randomly sample the stack, though, and rely on the opinions of others to find what you personally missed, and good games with mass appeal do tend to rise a little bit from random players stumbling across them; maybe not to blockbuster status or even profitability, but enough that a game with a marketing budget should get more than 21 Steam reviews if it's genuinely appealing. There's really not a lot of cream at the very bottom.

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

#240

Post by musicale » Mon, Jun 19, 2023, 9:55 PM UTC

Kapura wrote: post #177

Extremely detailed and good analysis, and I agree with just about every point. A lot of it feels like a mystery story, 'why did this game that had good convention vibes not sell?' and I think their ultimate root cause analysis is spot on: > we think the biggest factor is because it’s a local-multiplayer game with no online play. Ultimately it's important to think about who the people on the other end of the console a…

Conventions like PAX are basically the perfect environment for a pick-up-and-play multiplayer game.

There may be a shrinking market for those sorts of games, but I expect there are many people who only play Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros. locally and never go online.