i was watching this , it s an old video but that scare the shit out of me.
i knew being indie was tough, but 95% are not profitable and 80% has lost revenue, that sound crazy!
and it was in 2013
Not really surprising at all if youâre friends with enough indie devs who have actually released games. Making and putting a game out there is a surprisingly expensive process and youâre likely never going to see that money again unless you make a surprise hit.
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I am pretty sure Steam greenlight was not taken in to account here.
4 steps to success:
- get a ârealâ job
- enjoy gamedev as a hobby
- ???
- profit
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Canât say this is news.!
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Like you said, itâs an old video. Todayâs numbers are closer to 99% are not profitable and 95% lose money.
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i got to laugh at this youtube comment
âyou know why 95% of all indie games are a flop??? Not because of marketing⌠BECAUSE THEY ARE SHIT!!! GAMES!!! I have watched HUNDREDS!!! of these panelsâŚâ
so true tho⌠that make even harder for indie to make a game that not look like a Sh⌠or a clone of something.
My dream to live from my indie game start to fade awayâŚ
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Iâll bet youâll find similar numbers for virtually and creative field with a low barrier of entry. Music, singing, dance, visual arts, writin, photography, etc. even sports. When itâs something that virtually anyone can do, you have to be in top of your field to make a living at it.
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That damn #3!
Itâs a mystery - we all do a little different.
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#3. is scary it could be Wall Street or Federal reserve. Credit default swaps. Credit crunch. National debt 1 trillion dollars. P versus NP.
#4 no profit.
Those numbers are only scary when you donât realize that 90% of self proclaimed indie developers have no business trying to sell products as low quality as they do.
It would be one thing if these indie devs were making proper products, but the reality is that 95% of devs release sub-par quality content and 80% of those titles are a one time effort never to be repeated.
It would be one thing to make a great effort, fail, and repeat several times and still not succeed. But the reality is that most of those numbers are more like kind-of-sort-of try, fail, never try again.
Want a good example of how this is true in other avenues?
Go peruse artists sites like deviantart.com and see how many people have no business trying to be professional artists that do. Sites like that are packed to the gills of people who donât put in the time and effort to become commercial quality artists but are failures that blame everyone and everything for their short comings.
I hate to be that guy, but this generation of young people is really full of kids who think the world owes them something, that businesses exist to further their life plan, and that skill and quality is secondary to being âcreativeâ and âspecialâ.
Thatâs extremely harsh and negative, I know.
But if youâre listening, what Iâm actually saying is that success isnât that unlikely if youâre willing to put in the effort.
And the biggest thing you have to be ready to do is put in 60 to 80 hours a week. You have to learn to control your scope. And you have to be able to accept failure and try again.
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Spot on.
If you make a polished, decent quality production, I think your success rate becomes much better than 5%.
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True. The numbers for game dev are skewed by the general low barrier to entry.
But the numbers for any small business succeeding are pretty stark. In general only about 50% of all small businesses reach the five year mark.
So even if you have a decent product, the business side can still chew you up and spit you out.
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What do you class a âlow qualityâ? I mean itâs entirely subjective, I wouldnât class flappy birds as a high quality modern game due to complexity alone but it still did extremely well for itself. At 60 to 80 hours a week youâd have an extremely polished flappy bird in a weekâŚ
But I am playing devils advocate, because I always deem these as the exception not the rule and theyâre nothing to bank on. They are by nature flukes and / or fads that have no fiscal consistancy. Many of these developers that âmade itâ had 50 games+ proceeding before it and some have released probably hundreds of games over the span of five years never to even grace the top ten.
But many still talk about Baldurs gate, in years to come Iâll bet weâre still talking about games like Witcher 3⌠Weâre so lost in nostaligia and shouting for good games that a remake of FF7 is a âthingâ.
Just to play devils advocate one more time, I was recently having another go at the last of us for inspiration⌠From a players perspective it is an awesome game well worthly of itâs critical acclaims. From a developers perspective there are a lot of issues, blocky looking poorly re-topoâd meshes, UV warping / stretching / seams in most places you look, what appears to be mocap in some areas and none in others⌠Thereâs also quite a few bugsâŚ!
Still, again itâs one of the best games Iâve played and holistically better looking than near enough any indie games Iâve seen actually released but by that logic do they have any business being a âprofessional games developerâ? Well of course they do, thatâs the tricky thing about âqualityâ the holistic picture (the game as a whole) means far more than a single instance. Not that I condone outright sloppyness or lazyness in a paid product, itâs just they are smart about picking their battles.
Also they were responsible for Uncharted 4, which if youâve played it looks and plays amazing.!!!
Anyway, Iâm happy to spend more time creating the game I want with as little compromises as possible because the alternative isnât worth pursuing in the first place IMO.
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So what are we saying then, that MOST indie developers are really just hobbyists and ameteurs who sort of know a thing or two about games but not about how to make really good onesâŚ? And only a small percentage of people developing actually know how to make a âbusinessâ out of it and be successful?
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At the core I think that fits well. Then on top of that as someone mentioned above a person needs to be able and willing to put all of the time in. They can have that âknow howâ on both sides but that is just the basic requirements, right? Need to then put it all to use and treat it seriously (as in pouring loads of time in).
Saying that I do think many people learn those things (game side and biz side) through the practice of making and releasing many games. Wo probably the real key is to spend as much time as possible on the computer constantly working on a game (not messing around programming systems for the heck of it or making art for the heck of it but actually pushing a game forward).
Well, some indie developers are hobbyists. Some are really, really lucky. (Notch) And some are shameless hacks who will do anything for a dollar. (a very large number of Steam Greenlight abusers) If you donât fall into those categories, you are most likely one of the âstarving artistâ developers who are desperately trying to make things work, and hopefully get your own lucky break. (become the next Notch)
The problem is that becoming Notch has roughly the same odds as playing the lottery, and your hard work has very little to do with the end result. (which largely consists of simply having the right product at the right time, and the right exposure, usually not due to your own efforts) So many starving artist indie developers waste away in obscurity for years before eventually caving and getting jobs in other industries. The same is also true of the actual game industry, where most developers burn out before their mid-30s and leave to work in other industries.
Being a game developer is hard, no matter how you slice it. Almost no one wants to pay you for your work, indie or otherwise, and you usually end up working paycheck to paycheck. Making it in the game industry is kind of a crapshoot or a slog, which is why you have been hearing more about people treating it as a hobby as opposed to a career. There are just too many failed developers to ignore.
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Yeah, imagine if anyone would just be allowed to practice, say, medicine, or engineering or architecture without years of prior learning. Numbers would be even worse. Luckily itâs illegal.
But bad games donât put peopleâs lives at risk so ⌠no harm no foul? I say keep on making games! Just donât expect to be a pro on the first few tries. If youâd try to be an indie doctor ⌠your first patients would die probably ⌠it wouldnât be pretty ⌠donât do that guys! Iâve said too much D-:
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Itâs not really luck. Itâs because we have a history of blowing things up and killing people. Highly regulation tends to come only after high consequence failures.
Thatâs probably one of the biggest reasons why Iâm attracted to the no consequence world of games.
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Is that the royal âweâ? 
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