Could we compare the Indie Developer boom with historic Gold Rushes?

News & General Discussion
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So the indie game development scene is super saturated, with ease of entry the best it has ever been.

In the dim distant past there were Gold Rushes, when a new seam or gold field was discovered there would be a global rush to get out there and strike it rich.

Was the boom of Indie game development such a rush, the rise of mobile platforms and engines like new seams opening up. The rush of game developers to these platforms as reports of a few early adopters strike it rich.

The adaption of the industry to make it easier to pan for indie gold as long as you can pay for the hardware, software, middleware, assets and fellow ‘miners’ developers/artists/musicians to make a go of it.

Is the Gold Rush over, have the major game developers/IP owners taken over and consolidated all the seams or is there still gold in them there hills?

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Not only has the comparison not been made countless* times before, it’s been declared that the rush is over for years now. Nobody knows. And I feel like people who act like they have it figured out are just full of crap.

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My feeling is that many many more people are flooding to the gold rush but there isn’t enough gold. Because gold is no longer good enough to get noticed. People want the diamonds.

There will be people who persist on digging anyway, and they have at least more of a chance (ie finish a game) than those who give up. But there is a lot of competition now. It used to be you could count the number of “game studios” on a pair of hands. Now… .I’ve no idea, but, it’s got to be thousands upon thousands.

And some people have become quite expert at finding the gold and diamonds. It’s become very big business. And then there are those who recognize the delusional gold rushing behavior and start creating pick axes and shovels to sell to the bright-eyed diggers (asset store).

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I’ll throw my hat in the possibly full of crap ring… lol

I think absolutely without doubt it was a gold rush. Don’t see how it could not be viewed as such. Over the past year I have seen a significant decrease in the activity and coverage of the game dev gold rush. I have also noticed a difference in the outlook of people on various forums. Not quite as much excitement over games and money from game dev as there was.

Not saying game dev in general but specifically the game dev gold rush. There are many of us who were active in this long before the gold rush happened and we’ll still be dabbling in it decades from now. But generally speaking there is more driving our interest than making money.

It is a common thing. There is always a gold rush going on. I don’t know what the current one is or the soon to be new one will be but quite likely many of the people who were pouring in here asking about making money several times per week are likely now over there checking out those other things.

It was once mail order, wholesale drop shipping, classified advertising, real estate no money down positive cash flow systems, real estate flipping, penny stocks, day trading, building content websites and monetizing with ads and affiliate links, website (virtual real estate) flipping, writing and selling ebooks, exclusive content membership sites, coaching, self publishing books, game dev… etc.

There are still people doing all of these things and any one of them can return to be “the next big thing”. But I don’t think any of them are close to their high points now. Something is or is at least growing. Be interesting to find out what.

I should say… the Gamemaker Studio community still appear to be quite active. That is from an outside view but I checked out their forum just yesterday and there are many projects in the works. Most of them are bigger projects with a fairly long dev cycle targeting Steam. What seems to have decreased I think is the Flappy Bird drive quick and simple ultra tiny mobile game for a fast buck projects and devs. There are stil people doing it. And still some late to the party that will come in but this sector seems to have decreased noticeably to me.

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Excellent point. This is what happens in all of these good rushes. If you are one of the first in work hard and fast and are good and learn and create processes etc (treat it as a business) you will get established. You build up your business presence and clout. You can basically crush much of the potential new competition.

These folks can then persist for the long haul. But no market can support “everyone” supplying. And so most of the “failed” people need to continually run to the next thing. Most people end up too late to every one of them but can’t blame them for trying. Almost every person hates their job or at least certainly would be happier working for themselves. And some will get in on the ground floor of the next one or the one after or… and some will simply persist and through pure determination and grit and long years of effort will “make it”.

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(+ @GarBenjamin as well)
Absolutely, but this is nothing new. And frankly, this has all been said before. The thing I don’t like about the comparison is that with a literal Gold Rush, the resource of available gold will, at some point, run out. That’s not what we’re dealing with.

My Take
What we have is a magical Portal from space that appeared out nowhere. Or some people say it was always here, we just never noticed it. Or maybe we noticed it, but it was in a different form before.

From this Portal comes a stream of Joy. Sometimes the stream is heavy, sometimes it’s light. But the trick is that the Joy is not in a usable form as it is. You need to catch it and transform it into something tangible first.

There are those that will tell you that the Portal has stopped producing, and the stream is dry. They used to catch Joy, but haven’t had success in years and blame it on everyone coming and taking too much of it. They say it will only come back when everyone stops trying to catch it.

There are the salesmen that say that it’s flowing freely, and you just need these specific tools to catch the Joy! Their tool is better at catching it than their competitors’, for sure. People that bought that tool seem to confirm it’s a great tool for catching the Joy, even if they haven’t caught any themselves. Because they want to believe it will work for them.

Then there are the old men sitting in the shade nearby, not actively chasing the Portal or its products, but maintaining an interested eye on those who are. Those that listen to them will hear them say it doesn’t matter the tools you use, necessarily, but there are a specific set of actions you can perform that will increase your chances of catching the Joy. Have those old men ever caught any Joy themselves? No one’s really sure.

Wandering around through the crowds are the consultants - shouting how they alone have the secrets for consistently catching Joy and refining it! For a small fee, they’ll share their secrets with you, and even follow you along and tell you how to use your Joy tool properly.

Every now and then we catch a glimpse of someone running from the Portal back to town, an enormous bucket in their arms overflowing with Joy. That gets us all the more excited to catch some for ourselves, so we ask them what kind of bucket they’re using, what tool they used to catch it, where were they standing when they caught it, what had they eaten that morning…

The truth is, none of us know what the secret to success is. The Portal is too strange and unknowing of an entity for us to predict with any accuracy. Sure, there are facts we know that help (you can’t catch Joy if you’re not trying!) and things we know that don’t work (hold your bucket right-side up), but really… everything else is not just anecdotal evidence at best, it also changes with the mood of the Portal.

What games are popular today may or may not be popular tomorrow. An amazing game may find success, or it may not. Marketing could help you immensely, or it may amount to nothing but wasted time and money. Using this engine, or that graphic style, or whatever theme and genre combination may or may not lead to fame and fortune.

There are more failures today because there are more people trying. That doesn’t mean the market is gone. But it does mean that if you go into this game thinking you’re going to be the one that makes it big, you’re doing it wrong. If you’re a hobbyist and not enjoying yourself while chasing your dream, you need to find another hobby. If you’re a full time indie without a solid business plan on how to survive even if your game doesn’t sell a million copies, you’re a horrible businessman and should look for work in a different career track. If you’re a professional game developer, well… you’re probably not reading this because you’re busy working.

Analyzing the game market seems borderline pointless to me because of how it changes. The one consistent thing I can identify is that people like things that interest them. Whether that means a fun game, a hard game, a wacky bug-riddled game, or whatever. Whether it means a gorgeous game, one that triggers their nostalgic sense, or one that’s just… different. Instead of trying to find the formula, just make something interesting.

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It’s a known phenomena:

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Not just gold rush

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It’d be a fun little business to have in retirement. I often think one day when I retire I’ll do the Indie thing. Maybe not in the conventional sense of Unity and Steam or PS8 (or whatever). Possibly Amiga and AMOS, BB2 or C & Gamesmith. Or C64 Assembly. Who knows.

Needs a good amount of time I know that and I don’t have enough desire to allocate that time now. When my job isn’t sucking up so much time it will be different.

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Rushin for gold is an option.
Instead I’ll settle for bronze, maybe silver - with emphasis on creating gold value content. :wink:

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In fact I believe that fast following is generally a good idea, but have the flair to get rapid turn around, minecraft was more successful, but the trailing success of terraria isn’t too shaby, beyond that it’s scrap or arm race.

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Correction, almost every person believes they hate their job and would be happier working for themselves.

Many who actually try it end up back working a day job. It’s a very small percentage of the population that actually are better off working for themselves.

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Well I think they do hate their jobs and I agree most are still better off as far as money goes if they stick with the job instead of starting a business. They’d be better off looking for a different job. I don’t think they’d be better off to just stick with a job that was sucking the life out of them. But that is what most folks do. It’s a shame really.

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I’ve only been a developer now for about five and a half years. In that time, I’ve worked at 6 different places. It took some time and experimentation (to see if I really wanted what I thought I wanted in a job) and the requisite salary requirement increase each change, but I’m finally at a place now where:

  • I’m getting paid appropriately.
    It’s not crazy money, but it’s fair. And around 3 times what I was making 5.5 years ago.
  • I feel trusted by my managers and respected by my peers.
    If I tell my boss something will take a week, he believes me. If I tell another developer I can handle something, they let me do it my way (this is kind of rare in devs, from what I’ve seen)
  • I genuinely enjoy my coworkers.
    It’s the perfect balance of fun and professionalism. Going too far on either of those isn’t right for me.
  • I don’t have to give them my personal time.
    When my 40 hours are in for the week, that’s it. Nothing more is expected of me. This is a huge deal for me, having a kid and everything. And the two jobs I was least happy at were big violators of this.
  • I generally am proud of what I do.
    The products I work on aren’t ground-breaking or saving lives, necessarily, but I do feel they have a real impact in some positive way, and that’s something for me.
  • It’s just under a mile from my house.
    As much as I love podcasts (and listening to @Gigiwoo 's GDZ!), I burn out on long commutes quickly. The last time I filled my gas tank it lasted me 2.5 months.

All of this not to brag, but to indicate how I took the time, effort, and job changes to discover what really was important to me. In the last 5.5 years, I had contemplated going full-throttle into the freelance gig and starting my own or a partnership company. But I know now that I don’t want that. Or rather, the items above are more important to me.

At the end of the day, I’m tired enough and my brain is spent from coding all day that I may only have an hour in me to work on my game. But that’s fine. With my current job, in the year and a half I’ve been there, I haven’t once woken up and thought “Ugh, I just don’t want to go to work today!” which was a very common occurrence previously.

People… If you’re not happy at your job, make the effort to change it. You don’t have to have your dream job, but life is far too short to be miserable. Having a job that doesn’t steal your moments of happiness is a great step in the right direction.

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Absolutely agree. And if a person wants more money generally the best thing they can do is just to get a different job. I have a friend who started out as an entry level software developer (this was back in the late 90s) at a small company. Made about $28k per year IIRC. The highest paid person there was getting $40k at the time. Anyway, he stayed a year then got a different job starting at $42k. Stayed 8 months. Got a different job starting at $60k or so. Stayed there I don’t know I think it was 10 months. Got a different job starting at $72k. Stayed there about 1.5 years. Got a different job this time at Mastercard starting at $90k IIRC. Tripled his income in 4 years time. And had he stayed where he was to begin with he would probably be at $35k or so I’d guess.

And I have seen this happen time and again with people. It is even common for people to work at a place, leave and get another job stay maybe 1 to 2 years then come back to the original place and end up making $15k more per year than they did the first time around. Meanwhile the people who stayed there may have got a pay increase of $3k or so.

Beyond money yes the things you listed are very important. A person needs job satisfaction. A job just is such an important part of our lives it takes up a significant amount of our time. And if we enjoy our jobs that carries over and we’re happier outside of work as well. If we dread going to our job and maybe find it stressful as hell that can also carry over and make us not very fun to be around outside our jobs.

Definitely I would never tell a person to keep their job if they hate it. I think that is a recipe for a miserable life. Sometimes a person has very limited options though so they feel they have to keep a job they can barely stand going to.

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How much higher is the multiplier when you’re factoring in your cost savings on gas? :wink:

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I’ll be honest, I find this terribly depressing. This breeds an environment where you’re never really “settled” and instead always hopping about from place to place. It wasn’t always like this, was it?

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Well in a way it is true you never really settle. But then a job isn’t something to settle into if you are miserable there. The main thing is opportunity is out there but it rarely is just given. It would be awesome if a person could get a job and the company policies and management were very much for quality of life (as in the employees). But from what I have experienced anyway that is not very common.

I think it is reasonable that a person may need to try out several jobs and different companies to find the best fit for them. Not all companies are equal. Could be doing the same job at one company and it is awesome and at another company feels like a ball and a chain.

Why stick with that if there are other options? Also I see it like how else are those companies going to learn to improve unless they keep losing their people? Then they have perhaps a little motivation to change. Of course it all comes down to who is making the decisions that directly affect you. May be a great company overall but one person just makes it hell.

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In tech and evolving industries? Yea, it’s always been this way.

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I agree. And probably it could be a good thing, even. Because, as a programmer, I frequently feel the urge to just run away from all the legacy craps(or ‘tech debts’, if you like a fancier wording) I created myself.

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Heh fortunately you don’t have to run away most of the time, it will fade into the past. :wink:

I actually thought this thread was a necro, that pattern has been common knowledge since the 90s. It’s adorable when people excitedly discover something that everyone else already knows. :wink:

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