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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)

#241

Post by strken »

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #227
somenameforme wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Among Us was released in November 2018, saw regular and rapid gains in users for nearly every month that it was released, and then went to the moon (briefly) after it became a streaming fad. I just don't think this is even an appropriate example? Keep in mind the way that word of mouth works, it's about the percentages - not the userbase size. Your active userbase growing 30% a month doesn't look impressive when that…

If you look at the Twitch viewership on the chart you can see that it led player count significantly even before the massive blow up. There's a 26k viewer spike in 2019 then consistently 2k+ viewers in 2020 before it went vertical. Without content creators spotlighting it I highly doubt the game would have gone anywhere. The developers even say "we're really bad at marketing": https://www.kotaku.com.au/2020/09/among-…

I think you're taking about two different things: a game rising from a small number of players to a massive phenomenon, and a game getting that small number of players to begin with.

The HN analogy is a SaaS company struggling to become profitable vs struggling to find the first ten or hundred users. Profitability is very hard, finding a big enough niche is very hard, but...ten users?

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

#242

Post by AussieWog93 »

hinkley wrote: post #213
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.

I released on 5! (Not a game, but still).

If you wrote your app from the start to be cross platform, it's not that much extra work to port it across.

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

#243

Post by spywaregorilla »

strken wrote: post #234
spywaregorilla wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

those games are not small narrative games. they're fairly large. I've only played sunless sea, which, tbh, I thought was dreadfully boring. I would have liked just reading the narratives but the forced tedium of sailing combined with ease of death was awful

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

#244

Post by NBJack »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #242
hinkley wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I released on 5! (Not a game, but still). If you wrote your app from the start to be cross platform, it's not that much extra work to port it across.

I invite you to give it a shot.

Apps don't normally have to care that deeply about UI latency, high cpu usage, various quirks of performance hits across platforms, VRAM, controller variations, achieving a solid 30-60 FPS minimum, battery life impact, etc. Unity, for example, is great at giving you the tools to do exactly what you suggest from day one, but it by no means solves the above for you.

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

#245

Post by johnnyanmac »

cttet wrote: post #79
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 don't consider the comments helpful as well, but quite contrastively, because of the over optimism. Lots of the comments contribute the failure to quite a few reasons, and emphasize on the effect of the reasons. But the real thing is this actually can imply that the failure can be narrow down to "a few simple obvious fixes". To me it make me feel good since "a bad title" can be a very simple excuse to think that "w…

>Things like "It's OK, you have tried your best" is the real negativity to me, since it implies that I have reached the best I can do in potential/capacity

I don't see it that way at all. It simply means you played the best hand you felt you could at the time. My best in college isn't the same as my best now, Some 7 years into industry.

I'll agree it's not necessarily constructive. But fluff encouragement can be reassuring. Non-constructive insults is almost never valid.

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

#246

Post by johnnyanmac »

badsectoracula wrote: post #63
epolanski wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm saying authors of such content should be cherished for sharing it, and after writing a 30 minute-long article they may deserve some criticism that goes beyond the "obviously they failed with such a name/marketing/game/whatever" seems way too cheap and dismissive especially if not really motivated.

How is it dismissive when that is the reason why they failed? What more can one way when they see a game that doesn't have any interesting visuals, a generic name and overly niche gameplay? Even ignoring that this is a very old article, what sort of feedback do you expect people to give?

>Even ignoring that this is a very old article, what sort of feedback do you expect people to give?

Something higher quality than the most common bike shedding comment in history. Names are important but not tue end all be all.

It's also useless feedback becsuse as you said: it's a very old article and the author already acknowledged 7 years ago that the name and genre it got assumedly stuck into didn't help. It's not only not useful feedback, it shows people did not read the article.

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

#247

Post by johnnyanmac »

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…

At the same time, most people aren't saying "he's singing off key", they say "he's a hack, can't sing, and is a bad person".

At some point the criticism isn't just useless, it's spiteful and just an excuse to get in your own soapbox. That's why the stereotypical Karen isn't exactly praised for their "criticisms". If they left it at "this steak is done and I wanted medium rare", such stereotypes wouldn't exist.

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

#248

Post by johnnyanmac »

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…

Games market is rough but I'd take it any day of the week over the YouTube black hole.You're not finding your beloved indie film even if you type the name in verbatim.

Besides, even if you did make the next paranormal activity somehow and it got a billion views on YT, you're maybe seeing a few hundred thousand in revenue at most (I'm being very generous there). The way to make real money in movies is still controlled by getting a theater chain to give you the time of day.

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

#249

Post by johnnyanmac »

_gabe_ wrote: post #185
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? Of course nobody wants to make a game that isn't fun. But I know just how easy it is to get caught up into the "hustle" mentality where all you're focused on is getting the features complete . Once you're in this mindset, it becomes very easy to realize that your own game isn't even fun to you . This simple reminder is huge, should be repeated often, and is g…

I've seen enough games I have enjoyed for hours that remain a small (talking triple digits, at best) undiscovered niche to know that this is simply no longer true. Maybe it was true in 2016 when this article is posted, but not anymore.

Many games aren't fun, but many games are fun enough or are marketed well enough. You won't stand a chance without going above and beyond in one of the two executions.

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

#250

Post by johnnyanmac »

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…

The big issue is that there is no consensus on "fun". You could make a "fun" platformer but you're not converting people who don't like paltformers (even if they make a few exceptions like Mario or Celeste. You're probably not making the next Mario, though). If the game is boring to that audience the solution shouldn't be to change genre. Not unless your goal is to attract a general audience.

So "the game isn't fun" needs a lot more context on who is saying it, and is useless otherwise. Do they like your genre? Are they miscommunicating what sounds like a game design issue when it could be an art/sound issue? Did they just grab your game in a bundle/gamepass and weren't really in the mood to play your game?

It's all speculation. And it's probably better to find better feedback than try to psycho-analyze every comment that way.

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