
Five Years of Being a Full-Time Indie Game Developer - danso
http://www.paradeofrain.com/2015/08/06/five-years-of-being-a-full-time-indie/
======
hellofunk
Admire anyone who can go full time into the game industry, which is one of the
most competitive anywhere. And to do so as an independent is a high challenge.
To pull that off for five years deserves great merit. Anyone who has published
games to Apple's app store knows how hard it is to see any money from it.

~~~
emsy
Most games are generic crap. I've seen crap games make money, but I haven't
seen a great game fail. People see Flappy Bird and want to imitate it because
it's easy. Those who work hard don't rely on luck can still build a
sustainable business. See also
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=45&v=1BCg31KVJok](https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=45&v=1BCg31KVJok)

~~~
GuiA
> but I haven't seen a great game fail.

Think for a bit about your sentence and what it implies :)

(solution: that you've seen 100% of all great games ever submitted to the app
store, which seems doubtful)

~~~
rsaarelm
It is falsifiable though. All you'd need is for someone to notice that a game
that has been lingering in obscurity for years is actually great and start
bringing attention to it.

~~~
Paul_S
There many games that only achieved success years after release (for example
Psychonauts). It's the same thing as with films (my favourite: Blade Runner).

------
geminiradio
Can a great game fail? I guess I'm finding out right now. It's early, it's
currently scary, and it could still go either way. Pure drama! Our game was
released 2 days ago (Spider: Rite of the Shrouded Moon - ShroudedMoon.com).
It's metacritic'ing at 94, which is stellar. It's got almost exclusively very
very positive reviews on Steam and the App Store. It's the sequel to the Game
of the Year in 2009, per TouchArcade, the Indie Games Festival, and Apple
themselves. Sounds like a guaranteed hit, right? So far it's doing 1/3 the
business of any of our prior games, despite an App Store banner (not as good
as ones we've had in the past but still - we're super spoiled, very few
companies get one). This is definitely our best game, we truly poured our
hearts and souls into it, we are a highly respected company (called Tiger
Style), and players are responding super well to it.

So what's different? Well most notably, there are probably 20-30x more indie
development studios in the market than there were when we started in 2008.
I've heard hundreds of games come out on the App Store EVERY DAY. Angry Birds
2, one of the biggest properties ever, is free and it came out last week. This
feels like a quiet time on Steam, but so far we have little traction there,
and you need to demonstrate sales before Steam gives you main carousel
promotion. Gaming press is overwhelmed with things to write about, so although
they've been interested, we don't have many reviews from them yet. We've got
lots of Lets Play and YouTubers, but how many sales does 500 views convert
into?

Honestly, in the past we've been like "It's fine. We make great games that
people love. We'll just release it, and the audience will find it." That was
true in 2009 when we released Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor with literally
no promotion whatsoever. It was less true in 2012 when we released Waking Mars
(alongside Outwitters, if you're out there Alex!), but still the App Store
sustained us and the Steam market eventually found and loved us and gave us a
few dollars. But the worry is that in 2015, no matter how good your game is,
the audience has way way way way too many amazing games to choose between.

We're currently far behind, as just one example, a game about programming in
Assembly language. It's probably amazing, I can't wait to try it. And that's
the problem. So many things to play, competing for your attention.

SO! What does the dramatic near future look like for us? Well, I think we have
major piles of new press reviews coming in on Monday and Tuesday. That will
definitely help with awareness. And we're pushing on some of our more unique
features in hopes of being recognized as newsworthy (eg - it uses your local
real world time and weather and mirrors them in the game, it's based on a real
historical secret society that you have to research in real life to learn the
deepest secrets, many many layers of mystery and gameplay). We're asking our
tastemaker and other well respected developer friends to help spread the word.
I believe with enough awareness we're back in business - it's happened for us
before. But if that doesn't pay off by the end of the week, very few people
will write about us after that. So our hope at that point would be to be a
"long tail game" that wins awards and winds up on "best games you didn't play
last year" lists. It might pay the bills, or not, and it certainly isn't what
we hoped for.

Alex - if you're out there - I've been in indie 7 years, before the indie
revolution really started. I was in mainstream for 11 years before that. It's
been crazy watching the market as we worked on this game. It's hard to target
a market this volatile when the game you make takes 2+ years to make. By the
time you're done, everything is different. So, yeah, I relate to a lot of what
you wrote, and thanks for sharing! -Randy

~~~
Frqy3
One issue might be your landing page for the game in the App Store.

The static images and their text descriptions do not convey what the game is
about. e.g. Platform action, puzzle solving. The description section helps,
but I'm not sure how many potential customers go past the images as a first
filter.

As someone not familiar with your previous games, it wasn't until I went and
looked at the video on your website that I thought that yes, this is something
I would find fun to play.

I think the reviews coming out should help to attract customers for you. That
is, it will be the review that sells them, and then they'll go and buy your
game, rather than making an impulsive choice while browsing the App Store.

~~~
geminiradio
Holy crap, you're not going to believe this, but we have a version of that
video that was supposed to be on the App Store and you are the first person to
point out that it's not there.

I'll go see what the heck happened.

Wow the time I spent hanging out on this thread totally just paid off. Thanks!

