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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)

#61

Post by epolanski »

rawbot wrote: post #60
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.

This was 7 years ago. What good would vapid praising comments do?

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.

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

#62

Post by barrysteve »

keyle wrote: post #25

When the movie "Indie games" came out, this was the prime time to get indie games out. The whole indie market thing was hot. But at a certain point, thanks to the free availability of game engines and their overal quality, the market got flooded with developers living on 5c a week and eating noodles, working on serial games and releasing top quality indie games. It became a game of marketing. And sadly that's where w…

The market is saturated with remakes and games with nothing to say. This is the exact problem Norbet Weiner described in the 1950's book Human Use of Human Beings. Computers are characterized as a Spiritual Filter in that book and the aim is to get a message through the filter.

These games aren't selling, cause everyone can tell they've got nothing to say. The know-how that goes into making them is very good, but the content itself is hollow.

Steam's most played is plastered with games from 2015-2019 because nothing has knocked them off the throne yet. We all should be wary of making "a game" or "an game" or "a remake" and only make a game when we have something worth saying in a game format. The premise is so underrated lately.

We know what happens when the games market is saturated with hollow, empty games. 1983 video game market crash.

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

#63

Post by badsectoracula »

epolanski wrote: post #61
rawbot wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was 7 years ago. What good would vapid praising comments do?

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?

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

#64

Post by gareve »

fileeditview wrote: post #42
keyle wrote: post #25

When the movie "Indie games" came out, this was the prime time to get indie games out. The whole indie market thing was hot. But at a certain point, thanks to the free availability of game engines and their overal quality, the market got flooded with developers living on 5c a week and eating noodles, working on serial games and releasing top quality indie games. It became a game of marketing. And sadly that's where w…

I disagree. There are still "true" indie games out there. Just the masses of games produced that call themselves "indie games" are not. Often it seems to be used as an excuse for an unpolished, boring and in the end shitty game. You are right that it became a marketing game. It was a hype and everyone started to call its product an indie game. The solution however is not more marketing. It will automatically solve it…

> Games made by passionate small dev teams that really love what they are doing will still produce indie success hits.

If there's 5 indie games that fit that description, people can easily enjoy, & more importantly, remember them.

What happens when 20, 30, 50 games fit that description? There's no way no good games fall through the cracks. The amount of games developed in a year increases while people's retention remains constant.

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

#65

Post by melcor »

ponector wrote: post #33
Incipient wrote: post #19

I'm not sure why exactly but I see so many " Deluxe" titles out there I just assume they're janky cloned 5-minute games with 50c in the discount bin. At least for me, the name is an immediate "no".

There are exceptions, like Transport Tycoon Deluxe

That is one legendary exception in a sea of janky "Deluxe" titles

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

#67

Post by Aaargh20318 »

keyle wrote: post #25

When the movie "Indie games" came out, this was the prime time to get indie games out. The whole indie market thing was hot. But at a certain point, thanks to the free availability of game engines and their overal quality, the market got flooded with developers living on 5c a week and eating noodles, working on serial games and releasing top quality indie games. It became a game of marketing. And sadly that's where w…

For me the main problem with indie games is the amount of value you get for your money.

Games are software, if you sell 10 copies or 10 million, it’s basically the same amount of work. That is: no matter how big your development budget is, or how many you expect to sell, 100% of that budget goes into developing 1 copy of the game.

However, the actual budget does scale with the number of expected sales. A game that is expected to sell 5M copies is going to have a much larger budget than a game that is expected to sell 10k copies. Add to that the lower price of indie games and there is a huge budget difference.

The end result of this is that as a gamer I can choose between a €20 indie game representing maybe €500k of development effort, or an €80 AAA game that represents €200M of development effort. The AAA game may cost me 4 times as much, but it gives me 400 times the value.

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

#68

Post by barrysteve »

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.

The dev is obviously skilled. He created all of that game himself and made his crowd cheer at PAX EAST 2015. He did a good job, good for him!

I think there's a lot of empathy in putting yourself in his shoes and trying to help his game succeed, via deconstructing/criticizing the game's weaknesses.

And if he's around making indie games again, he'll want to know what current devs think of the market..

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

#69

Post by bigger_inside »

somenameforme wrote: post #53
keyle wrote: post #25

When the movie "Indie games" came out, this was the prime time to get indie games out. The whole indie market thing was hot. But at a certain point, thanks to the free availability of game engines and their overal quality, the market got flooded with developers living on 5c a week and eating noodles, working on serial games and releasing top quality indie games. It became a game of marketing. And sadly that's where w…

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.…

don't forget Rimworld. One guy making a huge and sprawling game that ignored the studio sensibilities and became hit (and a couple of memes).

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

#70

Post by ilyt »

Aaargh20318 wrote: post #67
keyle wrote: post #25

When the movie "Indie games" came out, this was the prime time to get indie games out. The whole indie market thing was hot. But at a certain point, thanks to the free availability of game engines and their overal quality, the market got flooded with developers living on 5c a week and eating noodles, working on serial games and releasing top quality indie games. It became a game of marketing. And sadly that's where w…

For me the main problem with indie games is the amount of value you get for your money. Games are software, if you sell 10 copies or 10 million, it’s basically the same amount of work. That is: no matter how big your development budget is, or how many you expect to sell, 100% of that budget goes into developing 1 copy of the game. However, the actual budget does scale with the number of expected sales. A game that is…

> The AAA game may cost me 4 times as much, but it gives me 400 times the value.

So what non-multiplayer AAA game you played 400 times as long than an 10 hour indie experience ? Or did you had 400x the fun playing it?

That's very MBA way to look at it. Game's budget is only vaguely correlated with how good it is as a game. Sure prettier blah blah blah, but we had plenty of big games coming out mediocre and just being bought coz of market inertia of average non-internet-scouring user buying next AAA title from big publisher and not even looking at the smaller ones or indies.

Like, 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), the type of game that most AAA developers just refuse to make in the first place. Most of "singleplayer story driven ones" I've played also fall out of AAA space because while 20 years ago industry was busy making games like Baldur's gate or Fallout, now anything similar only happens in sub-AAA space.

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