

So Here's How Many Games I Sell - Indie Game Developer Story - mkuhn
http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2009/03/so-heres-how-many-games-i-sell.html

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patio11
Covering a salary for yourself is no mean feat, particularly for selling
games.

In general, when folks with no business experience tell me they want to start
selling games, I tell them "It is a black hole of time and talent". There are
exceptions towards the top end (and $100k+ of sales is, if not stratospheric,
probably still in the top 1% of indie developers), but more typical games
either are never completed or end up profiting less than $1k per man month
invested (i.e. not covering reasonable imputed salaries of founders).

You can see a whole bunch of case studies here:

<http://www.gameproducer.net/category/sales-statistics/>

~~~
electromagnetic
From what I've followed with gaming, is that modding and level design is
generally the best way to get into a game development.

I believe there are a lot of indie developers who do make money, but if you
want a real career you can't go it alone unless you really want to invest time
into a truly unique idea. I believe the classic example is Chris Sawyer with
Transport Tycoon and RollerCoaster Tycoon, both of which IIRC were programmed
solely by him. If you do that and sell it to a publisher, you've got gold, but
unless you do that I doubt there'll ever be an indie developer earning a large
amount.

If you sell big like Sawyer did, then it doesn't matter if it takes another
two years before your next game, because your only company expense is your own
house!

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lucumo
> Some of you might ask, "Why would anyone pay money for a game that looks
> like that?" The answer is, "I don't know, but they do."

Some people really enjoy gameplay a lot more than pretty pictures. We've built
a webgame (a tennis manager game: <http://rockingrackets.com/>) where our
website didn't even had a decent layout for the first six months after making
the website public, but a lot of people were playing it because of the game
play.

We're not breaking even on the time part yet, but our other costs were covered
after only two months. Currently we're close to being feature complete, after
which we'll fix bugs and refactor some code for a short period. After that,
we'll be moving the game into a maintenance mode and we'll start developing a
new game.

Rocking Rackets' expected shelve life is long enough to cover our time
investment quite well even at the current rate of making money. The game is
still growing though...

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shabda
Geneforge, and Avernum servies of games are extremely good. If you are an RPG
fan and havent played them, you are missing something. (though I am pretty
sure if Jeff did not make these games, my GPA in college would have been much
higher)

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chris11
It's really cool that he's able to make a successful living making indie
games, but it definitely is a labor of love. So far, he hasn't broken even on
it, and it's a two year old game. He spent around 120k, and made around 116k.

It really looks like it needs some more promotion though. He said that the
original game sold a lot of copies on other sites. But this one was just
released on his site, and mainly marketed by word of mouth.

~~~
briancooley
Most of the 120K was his salary, so just breaking even is a significant
accomplishment.

~~~
trickjarrett
I think I am confused. Did he work on the game for one year, and thus the game
is judged based on paying back one year's salary? He says his other games have
done better and worse, not having looked at the game catalog his company
offers, it seems to me that this game has probably more than covered the part
of his salary he spent working on it. Am I confused?

~~~
pwk
Think of it this way: the game cost his company 120K to build, and his company
has pretty much made that back, so his company has broken even(1). While
developing the game he paid himself a decent salary, so he personally has done
well (and that's the part that actually matters).

(1) Leaving out the time value of money, etc

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triplefox
Costs for this particular kind of game are mostly content costs: Writing,
gameplay scripting, art. The engineering effort doesn't carry over a great
deal from one game to another. As well, downloadables get lower market
penetration than browser-based games. All those factors go a long way to
explain why he's only breaking even.

If you want a hope of success in games, either do a low-asset kind of game, do
a game where big assets are matched with big marketing, or involve the users
in creating content. I think there's still lots and lots of room for the
third.

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ido
Interesting read - I was wondering myself [1] how to get into that field, it
seems so unlikely that one can make money in that space (even only enough to
make a modest living out of it).

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=521475>

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tptacek
Can someone explain to me --- and I never even play games (Hacker News is my
computer game), let alone write them --- why any indie game developer would
sink $120k into a title and not design it so they could collect recurring
revenue from online multiplayer subscriptions?

~~~
ido
1\. Developing multilayer games requires more work than developing single
player games. You have to look at the cost/profit ratios, not just the profit.

2\. The work can be qualitatively different - multilayer games are not
designed the same way as single payer ones, you have a whole new can of worms
to worry about.

3\. Maybe he likes single player games (or making them) better than multilayer
ones.

as a side note - 120k usd is not _that_ much money, considering most of that
money is the author's salary.

~~~
tptacek
Considering the other expenses in that budget, 120k gross expenditures sounds
more like a 60k salary for him.

Obviously it's trickier to develop a multiplayer game, but the economics seem
so compelling; in a 15 year career, he's never broken out into multiplayer? Or
is there something I'm missing about those economics?

~~~
rgoddard
He mentioned in the comments that the reason why he has not made a multiplayer
game is because he is only a so-so programmer and lacks the skills to do so.

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NonEUCitizen
It looks quite good if you view it as returning somewhere between 35-50% per
year on invested capital. However, it's hard to guess what shelf life of the
product will be.

~~~
rdrimmie
It's hard for us to guess, but the Vogel has several other titles that have
been available online for a number of years so I bet he can make a reasonably
strong prediction.

I would be very surprised if Geneforge 1 (which I don't think is his earliest
title, but is several years old) hasn't sold more than 5 copies this year. The
tail for his products is very long. Pretty flat I'd guess, but very long and
since they're distributed digitally there's no reason not to keep them
available, gradually dropping prices or making bundles available. Once 5 is
released he could sell a "box set of the entire series" and spike sales of the
old titles again.

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justindz
I'd love to see sub and renewal data like this for "indie" or small shops
making an MMO or other on-going, recurring revenue games.

~~~
electromagnetic
Agreed, I'd love to know if an indie game can accomplish a profitable MMO
following.

I mean assuming you can keep roughly 1,000 people subscribed at $5 a month,
then each year a game would pay out $60,000 dollars. If you get a loyal fan
following then this would be a great revenue source. Once people are
emotionally tied into a game then it can often keep them in the game for many,
many years.

If you could keep a lot of the heavy work on client-side (not unreasonable for
modern computers if you're producing a non-CPU intensive game by nature) so
that your bandwidth and server needs stay low, then once you break-even you'd
hopefully be able to keep a large chunk of that $60k.

Correctly done, I imagine an MMO could quite possibly be the best way an
"indie" developer could make big money without a publisher taking a huge cut.
I mean sure if you can get a publisher to sell the game for $20 or so and let
them take most of it to help grow your users, but keep the monthly fees in
your pocket.

~~~
sketerpot
I want to see a major MMO start offering modding tools that let indie
developers make mods that people can play for some small sum of money -- say,
somewhere between free and a dollar. I think it could really take off if the
modding tools were flexible enough and the mods cool enough. Small profit
margins, large audiences, and tiny marginal costs are where it's at.

Installing new games and learning how to play them is work. Making a game you
already like be bigger and better could be a profitable business.

~~~
njharman
> I want to see a major MMO start offering modding tools that let indie
> developers make mods that people can play for some small sum of money --
> say, somewhere between free and a dollar.

Done. It's called 2nd life.

~~~
gnaritas
2nd life isn't a game, it's an online world, vastly different thing. There's
nothing to play, there are no goals, nothing, it's just a world; you go there
to socialize with others in the world.

~~~
njharman
There is lots to play. People make games. People play games,
<http://slgames.wordpress.com/> There are active RPG groups. Star Trek, Harry
Potter I've heard about. Basically virtual world LARPing with kick-ass
interactive props that don't need to obey laws of physics.

There is nothing stopping anyone from creating games in 2nd Life. It's exactly
what you asked for mod tools. It's all mod tools. It's all up to you.

Games esp mmo's are mostly socializing.

It's just a world. Geez, only a __world __. Like saying its just reality
there's only sticks and rocks here, no games. Pick up the damn rock and hit it
with a damn stick.

Have a modicum of imagination.

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torr
Would love to see sales numbers broken down by platform for a cross-platform
game that's available for GNU/Linux.

~~~
Macguffin
My research has shown that, traditionally, an indie developer can get 40-50%
of their sales on the Mac, and a 5% or lower share on Linux. There's a bit of
a chicken-egg question over why Linux sales are so low - most game devs don't
go for Linux because they hear they won't sell well, but low numbers of games
for Linux may contribute to that trend.

~~~
ido
Another issue might be that linux users are not used to paying for software.

