

Indie games: Still Too Cheap. Getting Cheaper. - lucumo
http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2009/06/indie-games-still-too-cheap-getting.html

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patio11
There are a few issues here, and together they're major components of the
stock explanation why I advise people to not get into games development.

All portals, including BigFish and the Apple AppStore, want to own the
relationship with the customer. You, the developer, are an interchangable cog
in that plan -- you can always be replaced. The customer comes to _their_
storefront, _their_ name shows up on the bill, the customer thinks they are
doing business with _them_.

This is about as conducive to building your own brand loyalty as it would be
if I grew up listening to Californication by Best Buy. Want to develop a
mailing list, a following, upsell users into other products of yours that
they'll find interesting? Well, that is going to be a little hard because the
portal wants to do all these things and they'll actively prevent you from
doing them.

To add insult to injury, you have to pay the portal 60% of your sale price.
(The portal will phrase this, of course, as "We're generously going to allow
you 40% of _our_ sale price." Always remember, it is THEIR customer.)

Now, why would anybody put up with this? Well, to be blunt, most programmers
suck at marketing and think they can't do it themselves. The portals do not
suck at marketing and have distribution nailed. Thus developers get in bed
with the portals and, well, its all over but for the crying.

You are much, much better off if you sell software on your own website,
assuming you can get people to actually visit it. This is another reason why I
warn people off of games: the ways I know which are really viable for small
software publishers (SEO and CPC advertising) really really suck for games.
People don't search for software, they search for problems and solutions to
problems, and nobody has a hole in their life that they know only a dragon-
themed match-three game can fill.

Oh, the natural dynamics of games (constantly increasing asset quality
expectations) plus the incentive of portals to drive volume by maximizing
selection through stomach-turning churn rates means that the sales vs. time
curve for them looks like walking off a freaking cliff. This is unfortunate,
because you can't do the "fire, adjust aim, fire again" learning process that
categorizes most successful small software development. And, since you're not
building a brand or a list, you aren't really developing any assets which can
be used to make the next product more successful or less of a crapshoot.

On pricing: far too many people who play games have expectations for truly
staggering development budgets to justify minor expenditures, and that is
ignoring the large contingent who will steal the software given half the
chance. Getting $2.50 on a product which took $100k of implied labor (a man-
year for a single senior developer, not really that hard to imagine for a
game) is just painful to think about.

Back in the real world, because you're addressing problem-sized holes in
people's lives, you can charge more. A LOT more. I think at least a thousand
people have bought Bingo Card Creator for $30. I get to keep about $28.85 of
that, less expenses. The math gets more attractive than $2.50 a unit in a
hurry. (Not to mention that $30 is, ahem, fairly cheap. You should see
developer tools or B2B.)

Meanwhile, I get to keep a bit of a springboard towards future products and,
of course, improvements.

~~~
SwellJoe
There's another issue that folks rarely talk about (or maybe even understand):
Game development is a "fun job". Fun jobs have tremendously more people doing
them than the market will profitably support.

Like being an actor or a musician or an artist is the fantasy of coffee shop
employees the world over, making games is the job a lot of nerds _want_ to be
doing. In fact, so many people want to be doing it so badly that they'll do it
even if they don't get paid (much) for doing it. Thus, you don't find a lot of
people getting rich doing community theater or playing in a garage band, but
you do find thousands of people doing it, anyway. Fun jobs only pay the bills
for a small number of the most successful practitioners of the craft...and
often they are so successful by virtue of skills other than the craft itself.

On the other hand, building your bingo card software would not be a "fun job"
for the majority of software developers. Building enterprise software is not a
"fun job" for most software developers. Building systems management software
is not a "fun job". At least, not for enough people that there are thousands
of new products entering the market every month competing for the attention of
the available buyers.

Add this to all the other issues you've mentioned, and it adds up to games
being a lot like hopping on the bus for Hollywood. You're probably not going
to be a star, and the industry will still have a hundred more just like you to
chew up tomorrow. Of course, most of us aren't exactly destitute. If any of
the folks here make a game and it fails (I've started building a brain games
company in my spare time, so I've voluntarily entered this market, knowing
enough to know that the odds of it being profitable are astronomically
against; so I'm one of those folks), we'll still be working on other stuff and
making a good living doing jobs that are not "fun", by most folks definition.
I only spend a couple hours a week on my games-related stuff, and 10-12 hours
per day on my real company.

~~~
Raphael_Amiard
>Add this to all the other issues you've mentioned, and it adds up to games
being a lot like hopping on the bus for Hollywood. You're probably not going
to be a star, and the industry will still have a hundred more just like you to
chew up tomorrow.

I totally agree with you, but as a musician, i would go even further and say,
when you're a succesfull musician or actor, you can make big bucks pretty
easily. AFAIK, this is just not true about game developpers, who even if they
are successfull, will probably earn just as much or a bit more than a regular
programmer.

We talk a lot with my friends here about artist's condition, and how it's hard
for a musician to make a living. However, the situation has greatly evolved,
and being an indie game developper today is more like being a musician in the
fifties, where musicians were really truly exploited by record companies and
where releasing a hit album could be paid almost nothing.

I really hope the situation evolves, tho. The emergence of more conscient game
portals would be a first step IMHO

~~~
SwellJoe
_I totally agree with you, but as a musician, i would go even further and say,
when you're a succesfull musician or actor, you can make big bucks pretty
easily. AFAIK, this is just not true about game developpers, who even if they
are successfull, will probably earn just as much or a bit more than a regular
programmer._

The average record deal pays the artist about 12%.

The "ridiculous" rates being paid by the games distributors that have been
mentioned in this thread are 45%.

Going it alone in music and games is harder, but in both cases it pays much
higher percentages on sales. I suspect it is easier to go it alone, or use a
hybrid model, in game development, but I'm not sure about that.

I think you have a sugar-coated view of the music business if you think it
treats people better than the games industry. As someone that started out
working in the music industry in the early 90's and moved into technology, I'm
absolutely certain that it doesn't. Software developers have it easy compared
to musicians, and even the game industry treats developers dramatically
better, on average, than the music industry treats musicians. You should
realize that the average full-time musicians salary is about $21,000/year (or
was when I worked in the industry; I'm sure it's gone up a few grand due to
inflation). The average full-time software developer is making something like
$80,000 (much higher in expensive markets like Silicon Valley).

All the same evolutionary pressures that are making the music industry more
tolerable are also occurring in the games industry. Indie developers can get
their games in front of players via all sorts of paths, including mobile app
stores, aggregation sites like Kongregate and Heyzap!, the various console
stores, as well as traditional shareware models and channels. These are pretty
much the same things that are happening in music (and a lot of the same
players, Apple in particular, are involved in building them).

------
aaron_vernon
In my opinion there are really two types of indie games, the dime a dozen
shovel-ware games sold cheaply in portals and the art-like, experimental and
edgy ones. I think the key is for the latter to avoid competing with the
former.

This type of distinction is made all the time in different areas of life.
Gourmet food targets a different market segment than take away food, they do
not compete directly against each other and as such they are priced
independently.

If indie developers make a game that is trying to take a new direction and has
some depth then they should be bold and market/price the game accordingly.
What is great about our current environment is that the barriers for
developers releasing and marketing their own games are much lower. There seems
to be a real shortage of original games and thus good independent games tend
to stand out. Braid is of course the pinnacle example of this but there have
been others recently.

As with all kinds of development you really need to find and target the right
market. If you do that then you don't have to compete on price with the
'casual' games where it is very hit and miss. If your game is a delicacy, a
fine wine, then I think you should not hesitate to price it as such. Of course
the upper limit to pricing is the price of AAA titles.

Jeff has really succeeded in finding the right under-serviced niche and
focusing his efforts on it. I really enjoy his blog posts and he has actually
been part of the motivation behind my decision to quit my job and start an
independent game development studio instead (I do have games industry
experience before you think that I am completely crazy!).

I really hope that the indie scenes continues to grow, strengthen and keeps
taking those risks that the big guys are too scared of taking, especially in
the current economic climate. In order for this to happen though, they really
have to make sure that they don't price themselves out of existence.

