Some of the testimonies:Some of the people I spoke to were anxious about a video game industry they perceive to be in flux. Apple Arcade and Xbox Game Pass are ushering in a new subscription model, similar to Netflix and Spotify, which could profoundly alter how we value games, despite offering a short-term cash injection for those it supports. Elsewhere, changes to Steam's discoverability algorithms have significantly impacted some game makers' incomes. The burden arguably falls greatest on indie's new wave, which has emerged as a result of the increasing accessibility of video game tools. More people are making stranger, cooler games than ever before, but it's seemingly never been harder to make a living.
DOC BURFORD, MAKER OF PARATOPIC
Being disabled and living in Kansas, a state that is super red, isn't great because they don't really have the financial support for disabled people. For most of Paratopic's development, I was doing freelance games writing, and I had a Patreon for other esoteric games writing. I was living with family, paying them $250 a month in rent — that's half of what I pay now — and I didn't have to pay utilities. Could I have made it without living there? Probably not. But at the same time, I was not getting by. I was eating a meal a day. I ended up getting diabetes. I was working 20-hour days in February 2018, and that's how I discovered I had a congenital heart defect. The physical cost of poverty and untreated disability is enormous, especially in the United States.
We thought we were going to make a few grand on Paratopic, and we ended up making enough that I could justify moving out for an entire year to get my own place. I wouldn't have to worry about food and rent. Did it make a lot? No, we priced it five bucks. [Since GDC this year], I've had a funding deal, which enables me to make a game at over the poverty line. That's stable for a year or two. I also now have people hitting me up for freelance narrative design work. The freelance gigs individually pay a lot more, but the stability I have from funding is a huge [peace] of mind. Right now, for the kinds of games I'm making and the scale at which I'm making them, it's enough to live on. It's not enough to get medical insurance.
JASON ROBERTS, MAKER OF GOROGOA
I was a software engineer from 1997 to 2012. When I quit my job in 2012, I'd been tinkering with Gorogoa for a while. Crucially, I'd managed to save up a bunch of money. This is kind of my secret: work as a software engineer for 15 years living relatively frugally. I didn't have a car, and I have a rent-controlled apartment in the Bay Area, so I was able to save a few years' worth of living expenses. I spent all of that plus all of my retirement savings. This is why I'm cautious about telling my story. I don't think I made good decisions.
After I ran out of money, I got some more from Indie Fund, and I got some personal loans from friends and family, and then finally got picked up by Annapurna. The game was successful financially because I get most of the royalties after the publisher and platforms, but I'm still rebuilding my retirement and savings so I can survive the next project failing. If it had been a four-person team, it would have been different. Having no dependents also helped. I had no one's life to blow up except mine.
There's a lot of self-deception, which goes into working on a project like this. I didn't have a plan B. I would sometimes wake up in a panic during the middle of the night. I haven't thought about it in a while because I guess once Annapurna came along, I had more security. But looking back, I was worried a lot of the time. The possibility of a real disaster was always looming. You just kind of yo-yo between too much confidence and panic.
Lots more in the full article. Interesting and often hard to read for sure.
