Did I just waste 3 years?

Post by djsumdog » Mon, Oct 01, 2018, 4:46 PM UTC

fiblye wrote: post #476

bspammer wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To make a successful anything, it's 90% marketing, 5% quality, and 5% luck This seems very logical but indie games really do seem to defy this general rule. Pretty much every single popular indie game out there is really, really good in it's own specific way, and most of them had almost no marketing budget (when they first came out anyway). Minecraft had no marketing. Terraria had no marketing. Stardew Valley had n…

>Minecraft had no marketing. Terraria had no marketing. Stardew Valley had no marketing. Nope, nope, and nope. Stardew Valley has a notable indie publisher. There was marketing on various internet communities (reddit, 4chan, etc) leading up to the months of release. There it can pass off as organic word of mouth. Terraria was marketed months before release. As for Minecraft, Notch himself was throwing his game around…

Post by softawre » Mon, Oct 01, 2018, 5:00 PM UTC

gmueckl wrote: post #253

Nokinside wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a lone programmer wants to write tight code for games, they should build game engines or libraries that games can use and then sell those to game developers. There exists large value added chain for specialized tools, arts and libraries.

Except that it turns out that artists and game programmers are too cheap to pay for tools, even if you can present them with a clear benefit in terms of productivity gain vs. sales price. To make matters worse, big companies that could afford those tools will generally only buy exceptionally well established tools and rebuild the rest from scratch in-house. The only way to make money with games is to sell games.

Post by 1123581321 » Mon, Oct 01, 2018, 5:08 PM UTC

gmueckl wrote: post #319

azernik wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're absolutely not "too cheap" for that - it's just a saturated market. Don't start a new company, look for a job working at Autodesk or Havok or Unity or Crytek or one of the dozen other companies that makes bank off of selling professional tools to professional game developers

I can tell you right here and right now that I know that some of the companies you name do not make a bank off of their products. And it's probably not the companies you would expect and not for the reasons you would expect. I have sources for this, but unfortunately I cannot name them.

Post by novembermike » Mon, Oct 01, 2018, 5:32 PM UTC

fileeditview wrote: post #430

After being active in the indie game dev scene for many years I see this kind of story again and again. I see many people ask why didn't it work or others say he should have done better marketing. I think they all don't understand the real problem. You have to look at really successful indie games, such as Terraria, Factorio, Mini Metro, Stardew Valley, Darkest Dungeon, Papers Please.. and there are many more. If you…

Post by yifanl » Mon, Oct 01, 2018, 5:36 PM UTC

OskarS wrote: post #515

yifanl wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are absolutely indie games that don't have any of that, and yet are wildly successful. See: Five Nights at Freddy's and Getting Over It. (You could argue that the hook of Getting Over It is the intentionally annoying controls, but I highly doubt that that much of the market is a bunch of masochists.)

You're 100% wrong about Getting Over It. The graphics of that game are extremely intentional, as are the controls. Bennett Foddy is a veteran who knows exactly what he's doing, and it's no accident that that game hit.