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

[palegray.net]

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

Citation needed.

Re:Interesting/Disappointing

[Trepidity]

I'm skeptical also, and I'm a big fan of indie games (that and retro games are almost exclusively what I play), and am acquainted with a number of developers. The number one biggest problem for an indie developer is getting noticed at all. Most people will not know you exist, and if they vaguely know you exist, will not remember to check back to see you released a game.

From that perspective, if your game is good enough to be betting pirated, you might actually benefit. It's hard to say what the net effect is, but there's been a bit more study of it done in music, and it seems small/underground/indie musicians come out ahead from piracy relatively often, compared to the big-studio types, because they get some publicity out of it which leads to additional sales (while the big-name kinds don't need the publicity, so just lose sales).

Re:Interesting/Disappointing

[Xest]

Yes I've seen it here before. Some indie developers aren't fussed but others seem to believe they have a god given right for their product to be immune from piracy.

I had a look at the article and saw he's selling the game for $28. When you bear in mind it's a game that looks around 15 years old in quality and style (something that's effectively admitted in the article albeit not quite so explicitly) one has to wonder why he thinks people would pay that amount for this:

http://www.spiderwebsoftware.com/images/geneforge4/Geneforge4SSThumb1large.gif

When you could pay the same, or in fact, probably even less nowadays, and get a few year old yet far superior game such as say Neverwinter Nights or Oblivion?

Sometimes I believe indie developers become a little deluded as to how good their product is and for every good indie title out there there's 100 crap ones. Still, the guy made just short of $112,000 from it (spread across 3 people) and didn't even push it out to 3rd party sales channels (Xbox live, RealArcade, MSN Games, Instant Action). Frankly, for what he's peddling and the amount he's peddling it for I think he should be happy and bitching about pirates is laughable when you consider how much he's asking for something so awful looking and compared to what you could get instead. It doesn't strike me as suprising that people would pirate something like that rather than pay $28 for it. He claims including salaries the cost to make the game was $120k (but doesn't reveal individual salaries- the two staff other than him are only part time) so is implying he's only broken even, but if he's taking a $100k salary out of that for example then of course he's doing much better than makes out. As he doesn't give any break down of figures we can't be sure whether his costs really are as high as he infers (I really can't see how they could be) or if he's actually making a fairly decent wage which seems more likely.

What should really be taken from this article is that even if you make a shite unoriginal game and sell it for much more than it's worth, don't bother marketing and selling through important channels, despite piracy, you can still make a decent buck off of it.

There's a lot of good indie titles out there, Popcap was always the prime example of how good titles sell (they made millions) but indies that are failing and blaming piracy need to look at why- if even this guy with such a poor product can make a decent amount then chances are, if your product is failing, you really do have a severely crap product. Even this guy seems to believe he deserved to make more even though it's amazing the amount he did make for what he's selling.

Perhaps another piece of advice to take from this article is that indie developers need to have realistic expectations and that whilst they'll still make a decent buck, they wont necessarily become the next Popcap. If they don't make much at all then they need to have a long hard look at whether they really have the skills to be making indie games that people want for the price it's offered at.

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

[Clover_Kicker]

Spiderweb games have a plot. People buy them for the plot, not the graphics.

The people who buy the latest Geneforge game have already played NWN and Oblivion.

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

[blahplusplus]

Economies of scale are the major issue in game development that indies need to take into consideration to temper their 'furor' at piracy or whatever else they think causes their 'lack of success', lets face it, you should be doing proper market research and targetting your markets appropriately, like Stardock did with Sins of a solar empire (500K+ units sold, for what is mostly a very "indie" game).

Make stuff a paying populace of people want and they will buy it. Many oldschool PC game developers got trapped in listening to internet fans when developing games (descent 3 and Planescape torment come to mind) and when they sold poorly some team members blamed the fans for not buying their product that they thought was "so awesome", lets face it here. This was a painful lesson in lack of market research for those PC developers who moved onto other games with wider appeal.

To develop a game up to "AAA" expectations one needs a hell of a lot of development talent and money in terms of art, programming and everyone else on the team. Not only that, real game development talent is scarce. Then add in the fact that games depreciate in value awful fast because they are competing against games both old and new, as well as piracy, and also because most games don't have any kind of solid replayability where you keep coming back to it.

To be honest it's a bloody miracle anyone pays for software at all, since it isn't a scarce and it is easily duplicated. Developers need to learn to live in reality and develop games people want to buy, or move to consoles to publish their crapware, most games aren't anything special now-a-days if you've been gaming since the NES or pre-NES era.

The problem with indie development is that we've moved past the era where expectations were lower in some respects, I could see indie's thriving in the time before 3D acceeleration, in fact many "indie" games were shareware lets not forget.

Doom and duke nukem were both SHAREWARE if anyone old enough here remembers. I first came into contact with doom through BBS's in 'yeee old days' and there was piracy back then through BBS's, lets not say that piracy has not been there all along. The "warez scene" started out on BBS's. Many popular games shareware games (like doom, doom 2, duke nukem) were pirated.

Developers should focus on making games that make money, and either fund their personal pet projects on their own dime and stop complaining when no body but them and a small cultish group of people likes it.

This is exactly why certain genre's died out on the PC and console, certain developers didn't know where to take a genre or the market for that kind of game was shrinking and they ended up dying.

Re:Interesting/Disappointing

[osgeek]

takes a snipe at pirates

Defensive much?
 

but doesn't really discuss/acknowledge the role of non-paying customers

Puhlease. Their role is to fuck up his shit. Oh, do they show their friends the title, thus garnering sales? Or do they show their friends the title and say, "here download the cracked version from this link".

Play your cracked games that some small developer barely eeks out a living on, download your free music from some schmuck who eats ramen because he doesn't have rockstar money, and copy indie movies whose publisher went out of business despite the quality of their films... but don't even get a glimmer in your eye that you're doing the world some sort of good by doing so. Have the sense of decency to just quietly stay in your hole and feel a little bad about ripping someone off.

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.

Re:Interesting/Disappointing

[Draek]

Your post, in a nutshell: "More Madden and less Ico, you lazy fuck!".

And as a gamer, allow me to say "Fuck you". The day indie devs start worrying about making marketable, "sellable" games instead of developing various, innovative ideas and see what sticks, is the day I stop buying indie games altogether.

Re:Interesting/Disappointing

[Psychochild]

I wonder how much better he could do financially if he would put together a bit more modern game engine.

As someone who as been there and done that, the answer is: he probably wouldn't do better. We worked on a major engine upgrade for Meridian 59; we upgraded the game to use 3D hardware acceleration instead of a software-based renderer, added dynamic lighting, and lots of other improvements to the engine. We didn't upgrade the art (I'll get to that in a moment), but the engine was a significant improvement, especially if you ran it at higher (read: modern) resolutions.

After a few years of work and a final big push, we saw pretty much no increase in interest after the upgrade. The problem is that while the presentation does improve, it still can't compete with the AAA level of quality. And the AAA games are what you will be compared to, no matter how much you improve your engine. The reality is that writing a more modern engine would probably cause the author to spend more time for very little return on investment.

"But, you should have improved your graphics, too!" We had to do some lovely hacks to get the 2D player art to work in the new 3D engine, so we had seriously discussed upgrading the art. The problem is that it was a huge amount of work. We'd have to replace a lot of artwork since the players (and all the variations of equipment we have) as well as monsters, items dropped on the ground, scenery, and lots of other things would all need to be upgraded. It's not something we could have done piecemeal and still have anything resembling a consistent look. And, inexpensive, quality 3D artists aren't as easy to find as a good engine programmer willing to work for free, unfortunately.

Ultimately, people play indie games because they like the gameplay. If you really enjoy old-school PC RPG type games, then the graphics shouldn't matter much. Heck, I still fire up Might&Magic 7 on an occasional basis because I enjoy the game, and that thing has graphics that are barely better than M59's old engine. Yes, there are going to be people that turn up their nose at the graphics but, to be honest, those people probably wouldn't be interested in the game anyway.

My thoughts,

Re:Interesting/Disappointing

[mattack2]

Playing shows can't be pirated? Uhh, have you ever heard of the term "bootleg recordings"? I imagine that some people that got the recordings would be less interested in seeing the band live. Plus, even if the band itself thinks its fine, if the band itself doesn't own the copyright to the songs themselves, that can involve other copyright infringement too.. (and get even more tangential if they are covering other bands' songs).

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 $

[ClassMyAss]

I think the big publishers correctly realize that they need to make games look attractive at a glance - the problem, IMO, with this game (in TFA), is that it's just not something that grabs you immediately. And even if Madden N+1 is not 10-100x better as a game, it has ultimately brought more pleasure (==> utility or wealth) to the world because it properly marketed itself and looked good enough to get anyone that might enjoy it to buy it. I don't think the game in the article has maximized its own potential, and that's a problem...

I'd personally rather see figures for indie games more along the lines of Droid Assault or Robokill (check these out if you haven't - maybe a shameless plug, but I'm not involved with either, just a fan!), both of which have the kind of immediate traction with a player that an RPG with graphics that were getting stale a decade ago just can't pull off.

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!

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 $

[Bastard of Subhumani]

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.

As Winston Churchill said: "Half of what I spend on advertising is wasted. I wish I knew which half."

Or maybe it was Henry Ford.

Re:Indie $ vs big name $

[Shrubber]

IAdvertising is incredibly expensive, so much so that only big companies can afford to do it

Why pay for advertising when you can get your game on slashdot and watch the hits come rolling in? He's certainly going to get some sales out of it which is not bad for a game that's a couple of years old and arguably vastly overpriced.

additional data

[Trepidity]

A few indie game studios have been forthcoming with data, although as he points out not a lot apart from the real blockbusters or bankrupt ones. One I'm familiar with, though, Chronic Logic, has released some numbers.

One of their more high-profile games was the platformer Gish, since it won the 2005 IGF grand prize (an indie-game award); it sold 4,500 copies at $20 apiece, netting about $121,000 after expenses. Slightly under half of those were in the first year out, a bit over a quarter the second year, and the rest trailing in in subsequent years. The puzzle game Triptych (2002), sold 1,000 copies at $15 apiece, netting about $25,000 after expenses. Again about half were in the first year out, but sales straggled in more slowly but consistently after that, with about 15% of the total in each of the following 3 years.

I haven't been able to find sales stats for probably their best-known game, Bridge Builder, though; pointers would be interesting.

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:additional data

[telso]

it sold 4,500 copies at $20 apiece, netting about $121,000 after expenses.

sold 1,000 copies at $15 apiece, netting about $25,000 after expenses.

It may be 5 a.m. here, but that's the best business model I've seen in ages:

1. Sell x units at $y apiece, creating $xy in revenue
2. Factor in negative expenses to increase income
3. ...
4. Profit!

Re:additional data

[Trepidity]

Haha yeah, I should've explained that better; the linked post has more detailed numbers. They made a more numerically accurate $81,176 on those 4,500 direct sales, after credit-card/paypal fees. The additional income was $16,000 from the IGF prize money, $6,200 from other sites that resold the game and gave a cut, and $17,500 from small retail publishers who licensed the game to sell in Europe and Asia brick&mortar.

Re:additional data

[Trepidity]

Seems like they might almost agree with you, since their most recent game is $14, so getting closer to that price point.

As far as demos, they do actually have free demos for all their games; that's one thing I think Chronic Logic does right versus a lot of other indie game publishers.

(Perhaps I'm sounding like a shill here, but I spent a good portion of my youth hooked on Bridge Builder, despite the relatively small size of the game.)

Re:additional data

[Trepidity]

Oh, I forgot the other, rather important reason I'm a fan besides Bridge Builder: all their games are available for Linux.

Some games just don't make a profit.

[SpazmodeusG]

Not every game makes a profit, we'd all be game developers if that were true. So is it fair to say piracy is to blame in this case? Or is this simply just one of the many games that don't make a profit regardless or there being piracy or not?

Re:Some games just don't make a profit.

[montyzooooma]

That's such a flamebait of a post. Nowhere in the article/blog post does Jeff BLAME piracy for his games not selling. In fact he quite clearly says he's made a living at it for the past 15 years. He mentions piracy, yes, but it's a tiny part of the overall article.

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.

Re:Hmm..

[KDR_11k]

When you make money with it you can spend more time on it rather than squeezing it in the gaps left by your day job.