The Realities of Selling Independently Developed PC Games

Not long ago, we discussed the realities of selling a game on the iPhone App Store. Now, spidweb sends in his experiences with a realistic level of success as an independent PC game developer. He writes "There is a lot of excitement about casual gaming and Indie game development these days, but there's also very little public information about how many games actually get sold, or the sort of income one can reasonably expect in this line of work. We've released full sales figures for a recent product to illustrate what sort of earnings can be generated by a quality niche product that isn't a massive hit. From the post: 'I am not the first Indie developer to reveal this sort of information. However, most public sales figures come from projects that were either blockbusters or disasters. Our games have never landed in either pool. I have been doing this for a living for almost fifteen years.'"

Comments

Interesting/Disappointing

[w0mprat]

Would like to see more indie developers be more open about their business model in this way. A very interseting read. But disappointing the developer takes a snipe at pirates (Can't blame him for being bitter of course)but doesn't really discuss/acknowledge the role of non-paying customers nor provides detail of actual piracy rates and how it has actually effected the business. That's what we really want to see.

It's been cracked aplenty

Says he. Of course, Indie games have a lower piracy rate than big titles.

Re:Interesting/Disappointing

[MadKeithV]

I think the article has a double reality check:

1. He only sold around 4000 copies. At first glance that seems incredibly low with a big margin for improvement with a bit of advertising, a more reasonable price and some more polish in the game. Of course, the market works in mysterious ways so maybe this really is 100% of what he can expect to sell.
2. Those 4000 copies were enough to break even on the costs of a year of development. I.e. he's sustaining himself and two others (part-time at least) on this kind of stuff! That's pretty cool considering it was a adolescent dream of mine to be in professional game development and I'm sure it was for many programmers.

This "reality check" tells me that developing games for an average living is possible. Don't expect to be a millionaire, but you could be doing what you like for a living for a long time.

Re:Interesting/Disappointing

[Anonymous Coward]

That's pretty cool considering it was a adolescent dream of mine to be in professional game development and I'm sure it was for many programmers.

Indeed. As a soon-to-be indie game developer, these kind of stories really give me hope.

That said, I can't help but see massive room for improvement in this guy's case.

Seems like most people that have commented so far here are really falling over the dated-looking graphics though. I wonder how much better he could do financially if he would put together a bit more modern game engine.

It seems that the outdated graphics, plus the relatively high price (most indie games go for between $5 and $20), are the main things holding him back. People that have commented on his site seem to actually really like the gameplay and extensive branching story lines, so that doesn't seem to be the issue. But if you simply ignore what the market wants or expects nowadays, I suppose you should be happy to even be able to recoup your costs.

It's really not all that difficult to NOT make your graphics look like ass. Just use something like Torque or Gamebryo or what not... there's a lot of cheap, pre-existing game engines out there that are very good quality. That would do the job just fine for indies like this guy.

I guess the dated 2d graphics are kind of like a "statement" though. It says: "This game is not about graphics! So please don't judge me on them!". But people WILL do that. On the other hand, I suppose if you would make things 3d and "modern" looking, people's expectations might rise. People will compare it to the latest high-budget commercial games' looks and will almost inevitably find it wanting.

Still, even keeping all that in mind, going for an outdated look on purpose is a bit cynical, IMHO. You can always compensate for lack of high budget or developement time with a stylized and original look (some form of cartoon-filter, or something along the lines of Defcon or Darwinia). That way, you can have nice graphics AND nice gameplay, and you might get more impulse buyers. But it his choice...

Re:Interesting/Disappointing

[JCSoRocks]

Yes, but musicians also get revenue from playing shows (which can't be pirated). A musician could make a living just from playing shows while all of his music is being pirated or given away for free.

This isn't true of software. Indie developers have one source of income - their game. If people pirate that game, that dev is not getting paid. I'm not going to get into a pissing match about whether piracy on a small scale actually ends up helping game sales. I am, however, willing to contend that music and games are completely different in this area.

The invisible game!.

[Tei]

I have never read about this game, and I watch obseivelly indie sites. Maybe has been posted on these sites, but I failed to see it. I think this guy has poorly advertised this game. Other than here on slashdot, of course.

QQ more, please.

Indie $ vs big name $

[Mad Merlin]

It's amazing to compare the cost to produce an indie game like the one in the article to a big name game, such as most games you can find in a brick and mortar store. Cost figures aren't usually released, but you can bet that EA probably spent 10-100x more on Madden n+1 than the ~$120k quoted in the article. Now, Madden n+1 probably also sold more copies, but it's definitely not 10-100x better of a game (some would argue it's worse, but I won't go there). So, where does all that extra cash go? Sure, diminishing returns (big company inefficiency, time creating flashier graphics, etc) accounts for some of it, but more likely is that advertising takes the cake. Advertising is incredibly expensive, so much so that only big companies can afford to do it, presumably it usually results in a net profit, but those numbers aren't generally available. It's an unfortunate situation, as there's definitely more to fun games than flashy graphics, and as it stands, most indie games are doomed to a relatively tiny audience, far smaller than they deserve.

So what can be done? Most people that play Game! seem to enjoy it a lot, but word of mouth only goes so far. How do we get indie games to a larger audience? I think that's a question a lot of people are trying to answer, but the Internet certainly helps, without it, we'd be unlikely to see indie games that get exposure outside of the town or possibly country that they were made in.

Re:Indie $ vs big name $

[Anonymous Coward]

So what can be done?

Indies need to get together and organize.

Mainstream marketing only "works" because games companies are willing to spend a lot of money marketing games that aren't total trash. So people buy mainstream marketed games knowing they're not wasting their time. Indies can't afford to do that so they need to figure an alternative.

I think I'm fairly typical of the Indy target market; likes games, has disposable income and spare time and will buy cheap things on impulse but:

Simply, reliably finding a new game to play that I will probably enjoy is a boring time waster (finding, not playing) that I and I suspect most people can't be bothered with when TV, slashdot or a book is just a click away. Indies are not competing with mainstream games, they're not competing with other indies, they're competing with the entire world of impulse entertainment.

The indies need to get together to create a highly organized and complete sourceforge-like index website that catalogs the vast majority of indy games in a way that allows a casual browser to find and buy a game they like with a minimum of fuss. I can't stress this enough; it is a major pain to quickly finding a decent game while avoiding the trash. The web site needs to be well organized with detailed game categories, detailed information about each game including license category and price, sample screen shots, a highly consistent user interface (so it's fast to use). Leave the creativity to the game, not to the index web site. Note: most current games sites are not well organized and just have a mess of untrustworthy, disorganized reviews, cataloging by release date only, no details and limited selections. A waste of time.

Make this index web site valuable enough (i.e. usable) so everybody wants to use it. Such a web site would not be too difficult to create if each indy adds their own entries. You would need a web master to enforce user interface consistency however.

Then you'll get the impulse buys from people like me.

Re:Indie $ vs big name $

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not saying you can't have quality without graphical flair, but come on - you've got to look like your making an effort if you really want to move product!

The only indie game I've ever heard of is Dwarf Fortress. It has no graphics, is pre-alpha, has a crappy UI, has zero investment in promotion, is given away for free yet its authors still manage to make a living off it.

If you don't make money from something it's because it is not good enough or you are not trying at all. Period.

Representative?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't help but think that this is perhaps not a representative example of what a typical indie can expect, for a couple reasons: first, the market for these games appears to be previous fans, so without ten years of people playing your games, it might be tougher. On the other hand, I feel like the design decisions in this company's games are driven more by what they've done before than what would be truly good for business, so I seriously question whether they are thinking much, if at all, about how to improve sales to people who don't already know the games. An indie that cared to could do a lot better on that front.

A first-impression of the title based on a quick play of the demo would not lead me to think the game should have taken as long as it did to complete, and while I trust that there probably is real depth to it and it's probably a very well thought out game with a lot of content, it's the first few minutes of play that grab someone. And this just feels like a typical mid 90s isometric D&D game with some annoying UI characteristics (click on everything? Yeesh...if you're going to play in the same genre as WoW, learn from the massive UI improvements that they made, they really make a difference!) and way too much text per minute (if I want to read a book, that's what I'll do)...

If you were putting $120,000 (or the equivalent in time) into a project, why would you not throw some of that into making the game attractive at a glance? 2D art is extremely cheap these days if you take a bit of time to find an artist you like, and while I can respect (to some extent) a retro aesthetic, in this case I think it's seriously hurting sales.

Re:additional data

[ClassMyAss]

Wow, that's incredibly low for Gish, given the publicity it recieved - though I probably shouldn't be surprised, since I didn't buy a copy either.

I can't help but feel that $20 is a bit high for most indie games. Maybe there's some logic to the price point, but personally, I find it a bit high, and I'd be a lot more likely (i.e. more than twice as likely) to buy if the price was halved. $10 seems like something I'm willing to purchase on impulse because I'm curious to spend a couple hours playing it; $20 and I really have to love the idea or demo before I'll shell out.

Re:Can we drop the trend-speak here

[skreeech]

Some related insight from his blog http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2009/03/shareware-is-dead-long-live-shareware.html

Angband

[janwedekind]

I used to play Moria and later Angband. Although it is text-based, the source code is several hundred thousand lines! On the other side there are the old proprietary games which you can now get for a low price. I think it may be easier to differentiate your product by developing for J2ME mobiles. Event then competition will be very hard.

Very intresting.

[Anonymous Coward]

Despite what a lot of people has said in as reply to this guys blog. I think it's very interesting, if I had the time to actually start developing Indy quality software I would. Cause to those that complain about something or the other, it takes a lot of time, more then you think to develop even a game that looks like his. I'm happy that he has made the small amount of money that he has, it gives hope to an otherwise very hard businesses. Not many people make a dime out of Indy sales.