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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)

#261

Post by johnnyanmac »

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…

Yeah it's tricky, and in 2016 we were on the tail end where this was perhaps the only way to get genuine feedback from actual humans. A fun game =/= a game people want to buy. Especially for party games.

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

#262

Post by toyg »

MattRix wrote: post #229
andsoitis wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The tastes of the market get more demanding over time. That seems to me to be true of most (every) industries / areas of human endeavor?

It probably is, but because games are such a new medium, the rate it’s advancing (not just in terms of tech, but also in design and audience expectations) is quite rapid. It means if you work on a single game for a few years, by the time you release it the demands of the market may have changed dramatically.

But do they really? It's not the '80s/'90s, genres are somewhat fossilized by now. Some things do change, but they tend to be refinements of well-established concepts.

In fact, I'd argue that, having managed to kill the assumption that "newer game == more lifelike graphics" (possibly still valid for AAA, but only there), has dramatically lowered audience expectations in recent years.

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

#263

Post by MattRix »

toyg wrote: post #262
MattRix wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It probably is, but because games are such a new medium, the rate it’s advancing (not just in terms of tech, but also in design and audience expectations) is quite rapid. It means if you work on a single game for a few years, by the time you release it the demands of the market may have changed dramatically.

But do they really? It's not the '80s/'90s, genres are somewhat fossilized by now. Some things do change, but they tend to be refinements of well-established concepts. In fact, I'd argue that, having managed to kill the assumption that "newer game == more lifelike graphics" (possibly still valid for AAA, but only there), has dramatically lowered audience expectations in recent years.

Tech is only a small part of what I’m talking about. I mean more that the standards have risen significantly as far as the quality of art style and polish, and the sophistication of gameplay and metagame depth.

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

#264

Post by somenameforme »

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…

Why are 'you' (in the general sense, you're far from the only one doing this) implying this is an incomplete information game? Steam has absolutely excellent tools for content discovery, and the vast majority of people use them actively. And due to the effectively perpetual nature not only of Steam, but also even of console stores now a days - there really is no 'survivorship.' There are games released [literally] 30 years ago now being discovered by new users, and making new sales.

And that isn't just some sort of academic point I'm making. Seemingly the overwhelming majority of indie success stories are achieving long-tail success now a days. Increasing numbers of indie games released like a decade ago are having better play figures today than they did at launch. This includes both the extremely well known titles like Terraria [1], as well as those that are still relatively unknown like Kenshi [2].

[1] - https://steamcharts.com/app/105600

[2] - https://steamcharts.com/app/233860

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

#265

Post by somenameforme »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #253
strken wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Most indie devs would define "success" as "profitable". And those costs include personal labor. even if a single person made a fully open source video game, it's hard to ration that 10 people buying a $10 game made even over 6 months is "profitable". If only because Steam takes $100 to publish a game, and then 30% of revenue. You're down $30. This is an overly literal exaggeration, but the example remains true even a…

SteamCharts shows average online users playing a game, not sales. The multiplier to convert that to sales is going to vary [dramatically] by game, but it's going to be a very big number.

At 1000 users on SteamCharts you are making some very serious revenue, especially if you happen to be a solo dev.

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

#266

Post by somenameforme »

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'd pick a different quote: "Each time an update landed, new players would try the game, and its overall player retention rate would tick ever upward. “That’s basically it,” said Willard. “We’re a slow-growing company. We snowball our way to the top instead of spike and tail like most Steam releases do."

I also think he may be being slightly coy there. Most games, especially indie, do spike and tail because they receive a bit of initial interest and new release type promotion, people try it, and move on. But what matters is not most games, but successful games. And there's an increasingly dramatic shift towards long-tail revenue. And there your games does spike, people try it, word of mouth happens, and then your real growth pattern starts. Reach a sufficient threshold and you get a big bump because you end up getting featured on Steam pages, and from there the sky's the limit.

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

#267

Post by somenameforme »

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #127
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.…

> 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?"

Cognitive dissonance and inertia, among other reasons. When asked if the game (which this topic is about) was fun, the author beat around the bush. Even the positive reviews on Steam make it clear people didn't often really want to play the game more than once. The top review on Steam [1] is some guy talking about, "Had a LONG night of playing this yesterday with my mates..." with less than 2 hours played, lifetime.

The developer clearly knew, deep down, that the game wasn't really fun, but he convinced himself it was. And that's really really easy to do. This is one of the few things the mega-studios get right. They're more than happy to cancel big games they've already sunk millions into if they're just not working out right. As an indie developer you either have to have some crazy degree of introspection, or a few friends who understand that absolutely tearing down what you've spent thousands of hours on is the biggest favor they could ever do for you.

[1] - https://store.steampowered.com/app/342920/Toto_Temple_Deluxe...

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

#268

Post by oreally »

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'…

> The thing is, I have limited time to play games

This in effect is why you're indirectly picking games with massive advertising budgets - they're far more likely to reach you than the average lower budget indie game.

It's fine that you like games with high production values, but don't just cast the lower production ones into this 'low-value' bucket and never look at them. AAA games might be diamonds, but you might just find other types of rare stones in the other buckets.

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

#269

Post by somenameforme »

SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #259
Etherlord87 wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My point is merely to counterpoint the claim that no one can cite specific good games that simply fall through the cracks of popularity even though on its merits they are quite excellent quality. Chicory is arguably in that category and then I followed up with a few more. If I wanted to lower my standards to stuff that I found charming but not deeply moving, I could name a few more after that. Good indie games are ig…

The sales:reviews ratio on Steam varies pretty hard, but tends to be around 60:1. That would leave Chicory selling in the hundreds of thousands of copies, and likely performing upwards of the 90th percentile. That's not especially neglected.

One thing you have to keep in mind is that we're all snowflakes to some degree. And so it can feel unfair when a game that really hits our preferences just doesn't receive as much attention as we think it deserves, but that may not necessarily be because people are unaware of the game, but simply because our preferences are not necessarily widely shared.

It's kind of like how in writing a Dan Brown is always going to be vastly more popular than an e.g. Dostoyevsky. It's simply that one author has much more mass appeal than the other. It can feel like a shame for fans of the latter, but it's the way society has always been and probably always will be.

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

#270

Post by fileeditview »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #258
fileeditview wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course there might always be exceptions but I doubt that games like Stardew Valley or Papers, Please! could fall through the cracks.. but who knows. I think there is a general saturation problem. I won't have the time to play 20, 30 or even 50 games a year. I don't need more games but better ones (in general.. there are of course great games).

That's the neat part of it all. They fall through and you don't know unless you spend a good amount of time digging yourself. Or finding a similarly aligned curator who dig for you. In other words, all games you liked were good. But you haven't played all good games.

Well I actually do quite some digging myself. I like certain niches that are not really mainstream (e.g. roguelikes). However I never found a game where I thought this should be a bestseller and it wasn't (compared to the audience).

Now I sure still might have missed some.. however I am convinced that games that are truly exceptional will be successful. Because they are (still) rare. Good is not good enough. I stand by the fact that this is not a marketing issue. Of course you need some exposure.. if you never release a gem and never show it to anyone of course it won't find an audience.

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