Not if the payout, based on time played, incentivizes reptitive or grind-focused GaaS games rather than enabling devs who maybe wanted to make a game that is only afew short hours.
-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
Verge: 'Indie game makers open up about the money they actually make'
- Thread starter MauroNL
- Start date
Or, at the very least, don't shout everywhere how you're not giving them a cent because they took some exclusive deal to survive.
Here's my story.
I wasn't sure what to do with my life. I had been teaching English overseas and then as a part time instructor on a college campus in California while doing a master's degree in TESOL. Xbox came out with the XBLIG program, I started looking into it, and at one point, I decided to go all-out and quit my master's degree program and try to make games (still was working part-time at the college, plus sometimes substitute teaching at the public schools). This was in 2009-2010.
My first couple games were text-based CYOA which did far better than you'd expect text-based games to do on the 360, but hardly sustainable. Then I teamed up with Bill Stiernberg and made a NES-inspired JRPG, Breath of Death VII: The Beginning. It didn't sell a ton but for a time, it was the highest rated XBLIG on the service. I think a big part of this was the fact that we decided to price it at $1 - whereas most of the $1 games on the service were complete garbage (along with many of the higher priced ones), here was a full 4-6 hour comedy JRPG priced at next to nothing.
We followed up with Cthulhu Saves the World. Since BoDVII took us about 3 months to make, we thought CSTW would be about the length, but it ended up taking us about 8 months. We released it around Christmas and like BoDVII, it didn't sell a ton, but it was reviewed well.
We knew we had to get off the XBLIG so we did a little Kickstarter (long before Kickstarter was a thing) to help fund a PC port and raised a few thousand dollars. We also managed to convince Valve to let us their service, largely on the strength of our positive XBLIG reviews. Since we were priced at $1 & $3 on XBLIG, they wanted us to sell a bundle at $3 and we agreed. We had one of the very first JRPGs on Steam and it did really well. For the first time ever, we were making enough money to survive so I quit my other jobs.
While we were finishing up CSTW, Penny Arcade contacted us and said they were impressed with what we were doing and asked if we were interested in finishing up their RPG series for them. We were fans & thought this would be a great opportunity so we agreed. PA3 came out and did decently, but we still had to make a PA4 to finish off the series. Worried that PA4 would sell worse, we did a brief promotion before launch where for a day, we gave away PA3 for free. That seemed to do the trick - although PA4 did sell worse than PA3, it didn't sell much worse.
Now all this time, I wasn't storing up huge amounts of wealth. No, typically, by the time a new game came out, I was down to my last penny and/or asking my parents to bail me out with a loan until we started getting royalties for the new game. We wanted to try to break the cycle so we thought we'd do a big game funded by Kickstarter and that would be our big claim to fame, our breakaway hit that set us up for life. At the same time, Shane Bettenhausen from Sony came to us and said that he loved our stuff and we had to get our next game out on PlayStation. So we set up a deal where Sony would help us with marketing & provide free PS4 codes to our Kickstarter backers and in exchange they got timed console exclusivity (which didn't really matter since it's not like Nintendo or Xbox cared).
Cosmic Star Heroine went up on Kickstarter and managed to do low 6 digit figures. We probably messed up in not doing stretch goals since funding died down drastically once we reached our goal, but on the plus side, we weren't on the hook for a bunch of extra features. We started development and then we seriously missed our release deadline. The game was more ambitious than we had expected, I was new to Unity (previous games were made with XNA) & Vita performance was so bad on my initial attempt several months in that I had to go back and rewrite a ton of code just to get it to sort of work (and then later, I had to rewrite even more to get the RAM usage down so it would work on actual Vita's and not just devkits). I ended up borrowing a LOT of money just to survive until we launched and I was a complete emotional wreck. And then the game came out and it wasn't the huge indie success story I had hoped for. Don't get me wrong, it did okay & we've made decent money from it over time (ports & physical releases have really helped) and in the end, I'd call it profitable, but it wasn't the "this is going to change everything" game I had hoped for. On the plus side, although the review average wasn't anything special (7s & 8s), some people LOVED the game so it was great to feel like I had made something that I could really be proud of, that if it had been released back in the 16-bit RPG days would have been looked back on as one of the good games of the era.
So I made some adjustments. My family & I sold the house that we had a mortgage on, moved out of the country - we were living in California and we have a bunch of kids so our living expenses were high - and moved to countries with low costs of living which did wonders for my stress levels. In 2 years, we travelled between Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, and Malysia and spent way less money per year than we had been spending in California. I finished the Vita port and finally got over my trauma of making games and so about a year ago, we started working on a follow-up to Cthulhu Saves the World - Cthulhu Saves Christmas. It's not this hugely ambitious game, but it's funny & it has a cool battle system & neat graphics & music and I hope that the gimmick is neat enough that people will pay attention to it when it comes out later this year. I don't need to take out any loans to reach the finish line this time. I'm stressed about the game and how it'll be received, of course, but I'm not the emotional wreck that I was at the end of the development of Cosmic Star Heroine, and I'm looking forward to finishing it & being able to start on something new.
I wasn't sure what to do with my life. I had been teaching English overseas and then as a part time instructor on a college campus in California while doing a master's degree in TESOL. Xbox came out with the XBLIG program, I started looking into it, and at one point, I decided to go all-out and quit my master's degree program and try to make games (still was working part-time at the college, plus sometimes substitute teaching at the public schools). This was in 2009-2010.
My first couple games were text-based CYOA which did far better than you'd expect text-based games to do on the 360, but hardly sustainable. Then I teamed up with Bill Stiernberg and made a NES-inspired JRPG, Breath of Death VII: The Beginning. It didn't sell a ton but for a time, it was the highest rated XBLIG on the service. I think a big part of this was the fact that we decided to price it at $1 - whereas most of the $1 games on the service were complete garbage (along with many of the higher priced ones), here was a full 4-6 hour comedy JRPG priced at next to nothing.
We followed up with Cthulhu Saves the World. Since BoDVII took us about 3 months to make, we thought CSTW would be about the length, but it ended up taking us about 8 months. We released it around Christmas and like BoDVII, it didn't sell a ton, but it was reviewed well.
We knew we had to get off the XBLIG so we did a little Kickstarter (long before Kickstarter was a thing) to help fund a PC port and raised a few thousand dollars. We also managed to convince Valve to let us their service, largely on the strength of our positive XBLIG reviews. Since we were priced at $1 & $3 on XBLIG, they wanted us to sell a bundle at $3 and we agreed. We had one of the very first JRPGs on Steam and it did really well. For the first time ever, we were making enough money to survive so I quit my other jobs.
While we were finishing up CSTW, Penny Arcade contacted us and said they were impressed with what we were doing and asked if we were interested in finishing up their RPG series for them. We were fans & thought this would be a great opportunity so we agreed. PA3 came out and did decently, but we still had to make a PA4 to finish off the series. Worried that PA4 would sell worse, we did a brief promotion before launch where for a day, we gave away PA3 for free. That seemed to do the trick - although PA4 did sell worse than PA3, it didn't sell much worse.
Now all this time, I wasn't storing up huge amounts of wealth. No, typically, by the time a new game came out, I was down to my last penny and/or asking my parents to bail me out with a loan until we started getting royalties for the new game. We wanted to try to break the cycle so we thought we'd do a big game funded by Kickstarter and that would be our big claim to fame, our breakaway hit that set us up for life. At the same time, Shane Bettenhausen from Sony came to us and said that he loved our stuff and we had to get our next game out on PlayStation. So we set up a deal where Sony would help us with marketing & provide free PS4 codes to our Kickstarter backers and in exchange they got timed console exclusivity (which didn't really matter since it's not like Nintendo or Xbox cared).
Cosmic Star Heroine went up on Kickstarter and managed to do low 6 digit figures. We probably messed up in not doing stretch goals since funding died down drastically once we reached our goal, but on the plus side, we weren't on the hook for a bunch of extra features. We started development and then we seriously missed our release deadline. The game was more ambitious than we had expected, I was new to Unity (previous games were made with XNA) & Vita performance was so bad on my initial attempt several months in that I had to go back and rewrite a ton of code just to get it to sort of work (and then later, I had to rewrite even more to get the RAM usage down so it would work on actual Vita's and not just devkits). I ended up borrowing a LOT of money just to survive until we launched and I was a complete emotional wreck. And then the game came out and it wasn't the huge indie success story I had hoped for. Don't get me wrong, it did okay & we've made decent money from it over time (ports & physical releases have really helped) and in the end, I'd call it profitable, but it wasn't the "this is going to change everything" game I had hoped for. On the plus side, although the review average wasn't anything special (7s & 8s), some people LOVED the game so it was great to feel like I had made something that I could really be proud of, that if it had been released back in the 16-bit RPG days would have been looked back on as one of the good games of the era.
So I made some adjustments. My family & I sold the house that we had a mortgage on, moved out of the country - we were living in California and we have a bunch of kids so our living expenses were high - and moved to countries with low costs of living which did wonders for my stress levels. In 2 years, we travelled between Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, and Malysia and spent way less money per year than we had been spending in California. I finished the Vita port and finally got over my trauma of making games and so about a year ago, we started working on a follow-up to Cthulhu Saves the World - Cthulhu Saves Christmas. It's not this hugely ambitious game, but it's funny & it has a cool battle system & neat graphics & music and I hope that the gimmick is neat enough that people will pay attention to it when it comes out later this year. I don't need to take out any loans to reach the finish line this time. I'm stressed about the game and how it'll be received, of course, but I'm not the emotional wreck that I was at the end of the development of Cosmic Star Heroine, and I'm looking forward to finishing it & being able to start on something new.
As much as we say the devs deserve the money- this is the free market, and it's demand that drives how much you make, not the effort and skill that goes into what is being made. The market is super-saturated, and even if you make a good game, luck plays as large a role in success as anything else.
Best of luck to those making great (and even not-so-great but still full of love!) stuff out there love Zeboyd and others!
They had sold 2.8 million copies as of February this year.
It's no doubt well over 3 million by now, and even if Silksong does half as well they probably have enough money to retire, if they wanted.
Are we surmising that only games with a lot of retention are getting green lit on these types of systems?
I don't know what the numbers are like, it's all very secret, but it would be interesting to hear from an indie dev who's done both, and how it fits in.
I'm also interested to hear how much value is put into metrics like hours played vs metrics like units sold (comparing traditional marketplace sales vs subscription systems)
For me time is the limiting factor. There is just sooooo much to watch, play, read and listen to, that a lot of stuff just falls off for me. I barley read books or articles anymore and pass on most AAA games and even with a lot of free time, which I have, it just isn't enough.
Back when I was looking at schools I gave some thought to Digipen, but weighed that against the concern the game industry would be murder and ruin my enjoyment of my hobby. This was back in 1999/2000 - things only seem to have gotten worse for many devs.
This is kinda where I'm at. I love indie games and just recently started into Cosmic Star Heroine, but I only have so many hours available for play. Reading, hobbies, tv/movies, all eat up a lot of time. No kids but if I did I'd probably have almost zero time available for gaming.
So everytime I buy a big RPG (eg Three Houses), that's basically a month+ where I don't buy or play any other games. I look at Steam or the Nintendo Store and it's page after page of what could very well be really solid games I'd enjoy, but I don't buy them because I already have a backlog of games I want to play and don't want to add even more to it, sale or no sale.
End result is that I rarely play anything that isn't the cream of the crop or itches a genre need that's underserved. I'm spoiled for choice.
This is kinda where I'm at. I love indie games and just recently started into Cosmic Star Heroine, but I only have so many hours available for play. Reading, hobbies, tv/movies, all eat up a lot of time. No kids but if I did I'd probably have almost zero time available for gaming.
So everytime I buy a big RPG (eg Three Houses), that's basically a month+ where I don't buy or play any other games. I look at Steam or the Nintendo Store and it's page after page of what could very well be really solid games I'd enjoy, but I don't buy them because I already have a backlog of games I want to play and don't want to add even more to it, sale or no sale.
End result is that I rarely play anything that isn't the cream of the crop or itches a genre need that's underserved. I'm spoiled for choice.
While I do think a bell curve percentage system is a better option you can't really blame anyone for indie debs not making a ton of money. There is a lot of luck involved with any business venture.
Nowhere in there does he actually indicate how much Baba is You sold though. Looking at Steam, the game already has over 3k user reviews which means it probably sold 6 digits on Steam alone which is very good for a $15 indie game that hasn't even been out for a year.
Yeah Hollow Knight is far from the average indie release.
I really enjoyed CSTW and CSH and it's a shame your games haven't been more successful for you. I wish you good luck with CSC and I will definitely be there when it launches!
I actually went there!
But yeah, it's pretty rough. I love indie games -- I play then more than AAA ones -- but it always kind of makes me a little sad that for every smash indie hit you hear about, there were dozens of quiet little games that were someone's dream and passion that just... died. It's not even necessarily anyone's fault -- nobody's obligated to buy a game they're not interested in, and sometimes the lightning just doesn't strike.
There's an old article by polygon I always think about whenever I read about indie games, written by a guy that started his own studio. It's from 2014, but I still think it's a useful insight. I respect the hell out of indie devs.
I really had assumed CSH had been that breakout hit, dang. Even my spouse bought it and he's not really the "strong preference for indies/low budget titles" type the way I am. Lesson learned.
I suspect this mistake I've made is a common one, since hard data about sales and money is basically non-existent. Even soft data like most of what's in this article doesn't surface that often. It's all vague generalities or extrapolations based on limited public data.
For what is worth, I looked at a trailer for it and I liked what I saw, so the game is now on my wishlist.
Good luck with the launch.
Eh, greatness thrives and mediocrity isn't good enough these days. People don't have infinite time and money.
Games like Dead Cells, Hollow Knight, Celeste, Into the Breach, inside, etc did/are doing great. Don't see huge marketing campaigns, just word of mouth spreading the quality of the title.
Wow okay thanks for the insight on the only handful Of great games deserve to get positive word of mouth.
even though almost all of those games had larger marketing assistance from large console manufacturers as well.
Plenty more games sell and get good word of mouth, those are just the ones that came to mind.
Citation is also needed for your second part. I'm pretty sure all of those games made a name for themselves BEFORE the big dogs took notice.
Great games will get great word of mouth, you are fucking delusional if you think otherwise.
This is going too far, in more ways than one.
Some great games will get great word of mouth, but too many of them exist. Attention is finite. It's sadly impossible for all the games that deserve success to actually succeed.
And the insult really isn't helping your case.
Celeste, Into the Breach, and Inside all had the advantage of being from studios that had already had hit games before so they got tons of coverage.
Quality doesn't always translate into sales. I think we all can think of amazing games that we love that nobody else seemed to buy. To give a recent example - Overland is a great game, that was shown off in a Nintendo Direct, and has a famous indie personality attached to it, but judging from the number of Steam user reviews it has, plus how quickly the OT thread for it died, it isn't selling amazingly.
I have a question for those that are more "in the know" in terms of the economic side of game development. Were B games not successful in the sense that they lost a lot of money, or were they not successful in that they made money, but just not enough of a profit margin for investors (capitalism!)?
I ask because it almost seems like moving towards having more B tier games would help solve some of the problem in that you would have fewer games and hopefully more consistent funding for the teams that work on them. I think indie dev is great, but at this point it seems like there are just so many games that no matter how innovative, polished, etc. cannot be guaranteed to be successful.
I would just like to say again, I have no experience or knowledge with economics of game development on any scale, just curious to see what others think.
I ask because it almost seems like moving towards having more B tier games would help solve some of the problem in that you would have fewer games and hopefully more consistent funding for the teams that work on them. I think indie dev is great, but at this point it seems like there are just so many games that no matter how innovative, polished, etc. cannot be guaranteed to be successful.
I would just like to say again, I have no experience or knowledge with economics of game development on any scale, just curious to see what others think.
I'm interested in how you managed to do this and save money. Also Breath of Death looks hilarious and gives me some serious FFIII(NES) vibes.
The kinds of stories in this article reminded me a lot of the annual GDC "Failure Workshop", which I'd recommend anyone check out if they want to hear more developers talk openly about their games not being commercially successful and how they dealt with that (2016, 2017, 2018).
These people are artists and as long as they are making something great they can feel proud of, that should be enough even if it only sells a few dozen copies. It doesn't sound as if anyone is really expecting to make a viral megahit, they just want to be able to continue living, and the pressure of coupling that to their work really stresses people out and harms them. Art grants are great while they last but some system that includes a kind of socialized healthcare + UBI feels like the only practical way to enable these kinds of people to follow their passions without feeling like they're ruining their lives and careers.
These people are artists and as long as they are making something great they can feel proud of, that should be enough even if it only sells a few dozen copies. It doesn't sound as if anyone is really expecting to make a viral megahit, they just want to be able to continue living, and the pressure of coupling that to their work really stresses people out and harms them. Art grants are great while they last but some system that includes a kind of socialized healthcare + UBI feels like the only practical way to enable these kinds of people to follow their passions without feeling like they're ruining their lives and careers.
Steam reviews for Overland are mixed with only 50% giving a positive review.
I dunno man. Not saying its bad as I've never played it but I wouldn't want to take a chance on something like that either. Time is not infinite which is why my initial point was very high quality is the key to success. Nothing is foolproof obviously, sometimes good shit just doesn't sell, even in the AAA space. But I feel like with hardcore geeks like us forum dwellers, exceptional quality will lead to sales.
I had never heard of Celeste but when everyone here was saying its one of the beat platformers of all time, I HAD to see what it was. Maybe I'm totally off base though.
There are larger studios that have actually done 'B' tier games, but IMO they kind of suffer the same issue as... y'know, most indie games -- they get drowned out because there's a lot of stuff.
A Way Out, Sea of Solitude, and Unravel are EA games that I would consider AA games. They're done by smaller studios (some not owned by EA) and released to a niche audience. I know A Way Out was successful; I'm not sure about the others. On a non-EA side, there's Ubisoft's Valiant Hearts and Grow Home which also come to mind. And then this isn't even including that a lot of these big studios release mobile games, which are often teams that are made up of 10-20 people making a smaller product with a smaller budget and a quick turnaround.
So yeah, while I'm not economically in the know about the profit of these games -- bigger studios are releasing tinier, quicker games. Much of that, however, is on mobile -- which are largely ignored by your standard PC/console gamer audience.
I'm always rooting for you and Bill and I'm always happy to support you guys. I kickstarted CSH and bought it again on Switch. You haven't had your big breakout success yet, but you both are too talented to not hit it big eventually. Thank you for all that you do.
I know that they are out there. I guess what I am getting at is, would it make sense/be viable to have more of a shift to B tier studios/games than tons and tons of indie devs. I understand that right now B tier games can be drowned out by all the other small games out there, but in a purely hypothetical scenario, if you took all Indie devs and then grouped them into smaller studios that made B tier games, would that offer more economic stability on average for those who would work at these B tier studios?
I guess your point about mobile does sort of get to something I was trying to get at though. Basically, would a lot of these people that work as Indie devs be willing to give up some creative freedom/work on projects that they are not super passionate for to have more stable income. I would think not based on the fact that they are working as indie devs now, but then again I have no idea how saturated the market is at the AAA or AA dev level.
I hope people can see the problem is caused by the ease of making video games these days. This drastically increases the supply of games while putting downward pressure on the price of them. I do wonder if the indie games industry would be healthier if prices for AAA games went up to $100 so that indie games can price themselves around $20-$40 to give them healthier margins. I just can't imagine any developer making a decent living by selling a $5 game.
Personally I think the way smaller games get advertised needs a serious rethink but there is something to be said about how society works in general. That developer in France had a stability net everyone else clearly lacked and it's troubling how much indicates how society might need to be structured so people have more flexibility to pursue their personal ambitions.
Basically stay in an Asian country with a low cost of living, and take a trip for a few days or so every few months. Airlines in Asia are so much cheaper and higher quality than in the United States plus my wife is really good at spotting deals and we weren't picky at where to go. Generally, we were looking at about $100 USD per person per flight (x2 for round trip). So even though we were spending a couple thousand of dollars every quarter for a vacation, our overall expenses were way down since we were saving thousands each month.
Overland is brutally difficult, that's why the reviews are so mixed. It's a very clever & well designed game.
Pretty depressing. I guess compared to other art forms though, the skills required to make video games are directly transferable to high paying jobs in the computer science world. I'd like to save up and move somewhere like Thailand for a year or two to work on a passion project, seems like the only viable way for me to do something like that.
I mean, I think the issue would be: A) do these bigger studios want to hire these smaller devs? and B) do the smaller devs actually want to work within a corporate structure?
There's no greater games governing body to just look at a bunch of individual game makers and be like "okay, group project, y'all get together now." Anyone can literally close Resetera right now, download one of the many game maker programs, and bam -- they're an indie dev, too. I think this is great, honestly, but it has lead to... well, anybody can now make a game. Which means there are going to be more of them. Which means you're going to struggle to stand out.
I think a lot of folks who would be willing to give up passion for stability... probably already have. I know I did. Furthermore, like you kind of hinted at -- one of the overarching issues with how devs are treated in the first place is because the applicant market is oversaturated, too. You don't want to work crunch? Alright, walk out that door -- 10 wide-eyed college students are chomping at the bit to throw themselves into that grinder for that chance. It is exceedingly difficult to get your foot in the door at a large studio, and there are a decent amount of folks who go into indie development specifically because bigger studios aren't hiring them. Note: that's not at all to say they're the cast-offs or not good enough for a big studio space. But it's a big market.
Also (sorry to ramble -- I'm passionate about the industry!) relating to what I brought up in point B: while bigger studios have stability, there is a degree of flexibility you're giving up. Bigger studios have gates, they have bureaucracy, they have other people putting their hands into what you're doing, and some folks understandably don't want any of that.
Sorry, again I'm rambling, and I'm not sure if I'm making my points clearly lol.
No problem at all. It is super fascinating to discuss this stuff, especially since I am not in the industry at all. Thanks for your input!
Yeah, I make good money (non-gaming related field) and there are lots of interesting looking/sounding indie and bigger budget games that I just have to skip for these reasons, and because of the library of games I already have to get to, budget/priorities, and lack of time.
It's rough for those folks and I empathize.
I feel like we've known indie developers are struggling for years now, its not a new revelation.
Actually, no.
There are lots of great games that never get great word of mouth, because they are never discovered by enough people with big enough mouths. There are so many games out there right now that a great game, on its own, is no longer enough.
The word of mouth that causes a game to really get noticed is like a giant snowball rolling down a hill. Do you understand how many people need to be involved in order to get to that level?
I personally released something extremely unique on Steam, that also really lends itself to streaming. And while I have a couple of really good reviews (particularly from a few gamers in Korea, written in Korean), it's not anywhere near enough to get that snowball started. I haven't really put any effort into promotion--and that's a good chunk of the problem, and it's 100% my own fault--but what I'm trying to say is that a good game does not guarantee good word of mouth. It just doesn't work that way.
This is not like the 1990s or 2000s, where you could get a list of everything coming out on every platform and look it all over and figure out what you're interested in. Dozens of new games come out on Steam literally every single day. Many of them are good. The majority of them will never get noticed. That's the reality of the current market.
I've been on the fence about buying CSH on Vita for quite a while...after reading this, you've made another sale, good sir
That didn't take long.
On topic, I wish I could buy and play every game that looks interesting to me, catch up on a shitload of movies and TV shows, read all the books I buy, but never have the time to read. And then there's music and comic books. Oh yeah, and my hobbies, art and roleplaying games. And work. And a social life somewhere in all that.
I just don't have the time. I pick and choose titles, and discard dozens and dozens of others, barely giving them a look. There is no magical algorithm or desperate price cut that can change that. There's too much stuff competing for my attention.
Last edited:
This is about comics, but has some of the best advice I've ever heard on pursuing a dream career. I just wish I'd come across it before I burnt out on mine.
Key point: I heard years ago that one of the keys to a life well lived is to take your two deepest passions, make your second-favorite your job and make the other your hobby. If you make your deepest passion your job, you'll get caught up in the bullshit that inevitably crops up and you won't be able to see it in the same untainted light. If you reserve that for your second-favorite passion, you can always keep whatever it is that really excites you alive and fresh and energizing.
I currently make short games as a hobby (and give them away for free), but every once in awhile I wonder if I should do something bigger and charge money for it. Financial stability is something I don't have to worry about, but the crowded indie landscape is nonetheless terrifying. Burnout is rough and not something I ever want to go through again. All the respect in the world to the indie devs toughing it out.
Risk is part of the business. However, a fair revenue division can make things better.