Thankyou papa Vogel
Video Game Thoughts Bonus Bag #3
We have a free demo out! Also, the world is terrible!
Posting this chart every year only gets more and more fun!
Every once in a while, I come up with a clump of topics too small for their own posts.
1. Geneforge 2 - Infestation Demo Available!
Since almost 14000 new games were released on Steam last year (Really!) and the pace isn’t slowing, getting anyone to actually learn about your tacky wares is almost impossible. Fortunately, Steam has provided one good way for indies with hustle to get a little bonus visibility: Steam Next Fest!
It's a biannual event where indie developers can make demos of their games available for a week. It's still desperately overcrowded. (Around 1200 demos this time. People, this is not a viable career path.) But it's less utterly hopeless.
Our next indie RPG, Geneforge 2 - Infestation, is coming out March 27, 2024. We had a demo in the fest. It worked out really well and we got a bunch of life-sustaining wishlists.
We're leaving the demo up for another week at the link above if you would like to try it! As always, wishlisting an upcoming indie game you support is hugely appreciated.
I’ll leave the demo up until the 25th or so. It’s around 6 hours long. It’s fun.
2. I Watched a Bunch of Steam Next Fest Demos on Twitch
Indie games mainly exist to mix, match, and utterly strip-mine existing genres. I found watching what people are working on to be kind of exhausting.
A great path to success in indie has always been to find a genre that is underrepresented and represent it. Give players the thing they didn't know they were missing. The problem, of course, is there are now no genres that don't have a million good games in them.
I don't blame indie developers for sticking to mix-and-matching existing genres and hoping to stumble on something that feels a little fresh. After all, the only alternative is coming up with a completely new idea. Two problems with finding a new idea: 1. It's almost impossible. 2. Most new ideas are terrible.
3. The Feeling of Burnout
For example, I was looking forward to Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor. (Hoped it had online multiplayer, but it doesn't yet.) But I watched streams of it and a weird thing happened.
I could sense it was trying to trigger those satisfaction receptors in my brain. That whole kill-loot-improve loop that is so addicting. But instead, I felt numb. I could actually feel the game's attempts to please me bouncing off.
I was looking for something that felt fresh, but all of the upgrades were just, “Numbers go up this many percent.” It’s still in Early Access, so they do have time to add some spice to it. Not optimistic.
I've played enough Vampire Survivors clones that my brain is burnt out on them. Other Steam Next Fest games gave me the same feeling in a way I found unnerving. It's a Tragedy of the Commons situation. As a developer, you want to eat that yummy potential player interest before everyone else burns it all.
You know who is going to make a fortune though? The genius who comes out with a really good Vampire Survivors clone in 2034.
When you’re making the 100th game in the genre, you gotta bring something fresh. Coasting on a brand doesn’t work forever.
4. Brotato Design Deep-Dive
Every once in a while, I find a game that's really, really well-designed and play the heck out of it and pick apart what makes it work. It's a great exercise for a designer. Lately, my kick has been Brotato, the Best Vampire Survivors Clone.
(I jumped off the Vampire Survivors train when they made an Among Us expansion. I love things that are silly. But they have to be internally consistently silly. There's a fine line between silly and distracting.)
Brotato is simple. There's 20 levels where you shoot monsters. Killing monsters give money, and you spend it on upgrades between levels. There are a ton of statistics (speed, attack speed, armor, life drain, etc.) you can improve on the way. The final level is 90 seconds, two big bosses. Kill or outlast them to win. (I'm describing the highest difficulty level, the only difficulty level of note.)
The genius comes from two things.
First, there are 35 different character classes. A lot are minor alterations on the base game. But the others are very strange. A lot of them make minor changes that turn Brotato into a completely different game and force you to rebuild your strategy from the ground up.
Then there is a pool of over 100 weapons and upgrades to buy. They are heavily balanced to allow for a lot of variety. Some are basic stat updates, but others force you to change your strategy on the fly to use their full power. Some items and weapons are better than others, but all of them are useful sometimes. They're strong enough to feel they make a difference without being broken.
So, while there are a multitude of ways to make your characters stronger, what you choose depends on which character you play. As you go through the game, every design element will, at some point, step forward and become vitally important. The design doesn't leave a scrap of fat on the bones.
It's a low budget game with three games worth of design. Great strategy for an indie. As tons of graphics and voice acting are really expensive. But design is cheap!
So there's your secret recipe for indie success: Work very hard to develop a lot of really good ideas and then implement them flawlessly.
Plus, it’s only five bucks. I honestly don’t know how anyone stays in business anymore.
5. The Layoffs
The video game industry seems to be entering a really harsh recession period of the Business Cycle. An unending flood of product. Interest rates going up, pressuring companies to actually become profitable. Human beings going outside again. And, again, so, so, much product, much of it already free.
Much sympathy for the newly unemployed. I really hope you land on your feet. I'd offer bonus sympathy for those who want to start living the indie game dream, but there's not enough sympathy in the world to help you face that buzzsaw.
The situation does, sadly, remind me of the most controversial thing I ever wrote. A post that drew so much abuse that Substack literally added new moderation abilities because of it. (They contacted me personally!) This article might be worth revisiting as our eyes adjust to a brighter, harsher light.
6. Baldur's Gate 3
I'll write about it when I've finished it, but I'm in the mud of Act 3. I can't walk 30 seconds without some new demigod showing up with an ass that needs kicking.
Award Shows and Other Human Things
Trivial and silly can be great, if it's the right sort of trivial and silly.
In 1997, I got a Shareware Game of the Year award from a magazine that doesn’t exist anymore. Of all the meaningless things in my life, it’s the one that means the most to me.
I've always loved award shows.
I like getting in on big, cultural events. I also throw Super Bowl parties. It’s more fun to like things than not like things.
Awards are a silly, meaningless thing to love. Turning the glorious world of art into a tacky competition? It's silly. But it is also fun. And if I, a game designer, can't enjoy fun, what am I even doing here?
It's fun to argue about the awards. It's fun to complain about the broadcasts. It's fun to argue about the rules for the shows. It's fun to argue about if the shows should even exist. And, of course, all these arguments are utterly, safely meaningless. Which only adds to the fun.
Not long ago, I wrote an article about how terrible one of the game industry's award shows, The Game Awards is. And it is terrible. It's not terrible because of the awards it gives. It's terrible because it doesn't do what an awards show needs to do to function as an award show.
So what are awards for, anyway?
I’ll always remember where I was when I learned that Shmorrrbubzzzz had an upset victory over Jyzzmotrex.
I Mean, Obviously, Award Shows Are Dumb
There is nothing in the world more subjective than art. Any organization trying to say "This is the best movie of the year!" is on a fool's errand. It's an impossible task.
Or, to put in another way, if you look at the movies who’ve won the Best Picture Oscar, there's a lot of mediocre stuff in there. Or just plain bad.
But doing something silly and impossible is freeing, in a way. It means you don't have to worry about coming up with a right answer. Instead, you can focus on giving people what they NEED.
Why Have Awards?
It's a human thing. Awards serve a number of human needs.
They give us a chance to celebrate those among us who have excelled. Almost every year, an Oscar goes to someone who didn't create the best work, but who has had an amazing career that has not been recognized. (Great example: Martin Scorsese, the greatest living filmmaker, finally winning Best Picture for The Departed.) It's a chance for kindness and appreciation, which are always valuable.
Awards gives us a chance to reflect on the year that just passed, good and bad. It is a good thing to occasionally stop, take stock, and ask, "What have we been doing? What did it mean?"
When you argue about what should have won an award, you are remembering all the good things humans achieved over the previous year. When someone says, "It's an honor just to be nominated," that's actually true! You have been remembered and appreciated. Whether you get the tacky statue or not is just ego crap.
Awards give us a chance to send a message to the future about what was most important to us at the time. What we enjoyed, what we valued. Then the future can judge us.
In an increasingly atomized culture, they let us take part in a large, shared experience.
Awards provide the future with a pretty good recommendation list of things to enjoy. Flawed, of course, but a good place to start.
And, of course, the shows themselves give us a night to relax and have dumb fun. That is always important.
When a shockingly mediocre movie is acclaimed as the Best of All, it enables me to feel emotions in a safe, contained way. Feeling emotions about things that actually matter can be highly upsetting, and who needs that?
It'd Be Nice For Video Games To Have Something Like That
But we don't.
What does it take to have a good award show? Scale, and respectability. They need to be given by an organization which is large enough to attract attention, and thoughtful and respectable enough that people will take its opinions seriously.
Awards are silly, of course. However, to work, they need to be a very rigorous and self-serious sort of silly.
They should be voted on by professionals. People who really understand the art form and are familiar with all of the works in contention. Popularity contests are nice, but they don't have the gravitas necessary for people to care.
The awards should be administered by an organization that manages the awards, makes the criterion by which voters are selected, selects the voters, and administers the process. These are big, expensive jobs. Someone has to step forward and pay for it. This all has to be done in a visible and well-explained way, so that the awards have enough respectability to be the right sort of silly.
Then the awards need to be given in a show that can maintain the delicate balance between respecting the award and the art form, and making money putting the show on.
This is a LOT. It takes passion, patience, and time, in a mercenary industry that burns out most people in it before they're thirty. I'm not sure it will happen in my lifetime, if ever.
Thus, video games will either get tiresome infomercials like The Game Awards or a host of tiny awards hardly anyone notices. Maybe one of those will grow. I hope.
Or maybe it shouldn't ever happen. For an award show to work requires a serious, dignified sort of silly. Feral fourteen-year-old boy silly doesn't work. I'm not sure video games can (or even should) manage it.
The Oscars let us share unexpected experiences. Like when the wrong winner for Best Picture was read by the World’s Oldest People.
And Anyway These Shows Are a Thing of the Past
Ratings of award shows have been plummeting like dropped stones for years, and there's no sign of that reversing. Maybe they're just obsolete. Whatever secret sauce made people care doesn't exist in young people. Maybe the other entertainment options on the night of the Emmys are just better.
Things change. That's just life. The awards will still continue as industry affairs, smaller and humbler, taking place in less expensive halls, but still around if we ever need that sort of distraction again.
At least the Super Bowl just had its biggest ratings. Maybe the problem with The Oscars is that Taylor Swift doesn't make out with someone at the end of it.
Since the Oscars Are Coming Up
A few words about that.
The King of Award Shows has been on a long slow decline for many a year. A lot of the problem: The movies that most people see aren't the best ones.
If you liked the live action Lion King or Furious 7 or Frozen 2, hey, that's great. And the studios who made them were rewarded well. With giant piles of money.
But Best Picture? No. I liked Avatar 2 a lot, but I'm not watching any show that pretends it was the best movie of its year. James Cameron wants a reward for making it? Fine. As Don Draper said, that's what the money is for.
However, nobody wants (or should want) to watch awards being fought over movies they never even heard of.
It's quite a pickle.
The Oscars tried to increase appeal by having Best Picture have up to 10 nominees, so that some big blockbusters could be nominated and lose. I could have told them this was a bad idea. It just means the nominees wind up being 10 movies most people never heard of.
It also alienates people who actually do go see artsy movies (like me) because it becomes very, very difficult to see all the nominees.
The Oscars had to try something to halt the decline. Alas, the problem is impossible. Oh well. The Oscars can decline into a small industry award until people find a reason to care again.
And that's it for award shows. The Oscars are soon. I really hope Killers of the Flower Moon cleans up. I'll find out after the show is over. I mean, I'm not going to watch that crap! The show is like nine hours!
Of course he is. Codex even interviewed him. https://rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=11
Understanding the Great Video Game Recession. Or Not.
This has all happened before. This will all happen again.
Hee hee! I’m just havin’ a little fun before I get started.
The video game industry is seeing a big wave of layoffs and game company closures, and it may be that we have begun the long, slow, agonizing bleed of a recession. Alas, I feel compelled to write about it.
It's a hard thing to write about. It's painful. Lost jobs mean real suffering. Lost livelihoods. Lost homes. Failed marriages. Crying children. No shell of protective irony here ... That is the truth behind the numbers.
Such pain makes it very tempting to either ignore the topic or retreat into soft, easy homilies.
But I have a whole lot of my own personal skin in this game, and I've been writing and speaking on this exact topic for a long time. Plus, I'm an old crank. There is a lot that needs to be learned, and fast.
This post will be two parts. This week, what is going on? Next week, what will we learn? (Because we will be forced to.)
Me at GDC 2016. I’ve been talking about this topic since I had hair.
I've Been Writing About This For a Long Time
Who the hell am I anyway?
My name is Jeff Vogel. I've been writing indie (aka shareware) games as the nearly sole source of my family's income for 30 years. (Thirty!) We have survived multiple recessions (sometimes a close thing) and gained a certain amount of experience.
During those decades, I've written a ton about the indie business, for money and on my blog. My most popular article, written wayyy back in 2013, was about the creation of the Indie Bubble. Then I wrote a similarly heavily read follow-up.
Also I got to give a talk on the topic at GDC, which is probably not worth your time. My part is OK, but you're way better off watching this talk. It’s really good.
And then the Video Game Bubble grew, and grew, and grew. A lot of successes happened, which makes me happy. But, alas, every unsustainable process ends.
Our next game! I’ve been pretty shameless about pushing it. I’m fueled by terror.
But First, a Word From Our Sponsor
I write these blog posts to get attention for our next indie game, because this is a very hard thing to do. Geneforge 2 - Infestation is coming out March 27th. It's a really cool, low-budget, story-heavy, turn-based RPG,
You gotta hustle in this business. We're begging for wishlists. We're not proud.
Let's See Where We're At Now.
As upsetting as recent events have been for people who make money in video games, it's important to remember that 99.9% of our customers have no idea what is going on. They don't read industry news. They just like to play games. If you understandably haven't been paying attention, here's what has been happening in the video game business.
There have been lots of layoffs lately. Lots of studio closures. It's still just a tiny portion of a gigantic industry, but the disaster curve is ramping up fast. Maybe things will be all better tomorrow. However, when Steam alone is getting over 14000 new games a year, I'm not betting on it.
This is because the video games business is super-bloated.
How many game subscription services are there now? Apple, Google, Netflix, Nintendo, Playstation, GamePass, EA Play? How many of the best games are just plain free? How many non-free games just get handed out on Epic?
Again, 14000 new games on Steam last year. Sure, most of them suck. Sturgeon's Law says "ninety percent of everything is crap". But that means there was still 1400 GOOD games. Just one year, just on Steam.
And this is just PC games. The enormous mobile side of the business has been churning out massive piles of product (and 80 ripoffs of every game that gets any traction) for years.
And there's more competition. There are now so, so many of those cutscene-only video game apps called streaming services. (Which have themselves grown massively bloated and saddled with debt. But I digress.)
Someone will tell me these things aren't competing with each other. Simply untrue. We are ALL competing with each other. We are all miners, and what we mine is peoples' leisure time. That is a hugely limited resource, a zero sum game. There is just too much entertainment out there fighting for too little free time.
Why did we ever think this was sustainable?
Another image I use a LOT. The big question: Where on the curve are we at? Another question: Is that upward trend line accurate?
Our Friend, the Business Cycle
So what actually is going on here?
The video game industry is very young, as are most of the people working in it. This leaves old grumps like me with the unenviable job of teaching Business 101 basics to each new generation of cannon fodder.
This is a phenomenon, universal to all industries that are not monopolies/oligopolies, called the Business Cycle.
Almost all industries go through boom/bust cycles. Here's how it works:
Things get good and money is made. This results in lots of new investment and sales money pouring in and new product pouring out. Until suddenly there is too much product! The demand gets too low and businesses aren't making enough money for their bloated budgets. Which results in layoffs and closures. (You are here.) Then the industry overcorrects in the other direction, capacity gets too low for the demand, and the whole cycle begins again.
Note what I am NOT saying. A recession means a period of shrinkage, an industry getting a percentage smaller. There will still be video games! And indie games! And hits! It's not an apocalypse. It will be a time with tighter belts, and an honest reckoning of what is going on will help you and your business survive. You can probably survive!
This was the moment where I was sure this would all end in tears.
Hope You Enjoyed the Happy Time!
Recently, we had a period of zero interest money and Covid trapping everyone in their homes. Great time to play (and invest in) video games! Zero interest rates meant companies didn't need to turn a profit. They could just roll their free debt over into fresh debt.
Those times are over. Businesses need to make money now or they explode.
This is the down part of the curve. There will again be a great time to start a new game company. That time will be 2040.
As for now, things aren't so great.
Honestly, at this point, you can stop reading. That was the big punch line. This has all happened before. This will all happen again.
Still just having a little fun.
Panic Is Starting To Set In
Because this is an industry of young people (old people get driven out about the time they figure out to ask for decent wages and working conditions), they haven't experienced any of this before.
And I feel really bad for them. It's SCARY. Losing your job is one of the most stressful things that can happen in your life. It destroys marriages and lives. I've seen it.
Desperation is making people weird. Recently people were yelling at Geoff Keighly, host of The Game Awards, for not helping. Really!? People, he's making giant infomercials to get people excited about playing video games, thus helping us keep our jobs. He's doing EXACTLY what he's supposed to be doing.
But It's Never a Good Idea To Panic.
It won't do any good to get mad at any company that lays people off. Are some of the layoffs unfair suffering caused by idiot executives? Yeah, sure. But some of the layoffs will also be at companies that are struggling to stay afloat (Unity), which are losing people who just don't have anything to do in their jobs.
When times are good, nobody watches the employees that closely. When times are tough, eventually your boss is going to ask you, "So what do you DO, exactly?" You better have a good answer.
More importantly, what if a company doesn't make enough money to pay for the headcount they have? Or if they are turning a profit now but earnings are dropping? Any project that seems risky will be cut loose, as, in the current environment, profitability MUST be regained.
Getting really angry about this won't make it less true. If a company believes (rightly or not) its profitability is at stake, it will cut costs, no matter what you think. It's not your money on the line. (Watching the struggles of Unity is a good way to watch this whole mechanic play out.)
I apologize to everyone I've angered by saying this. If yelling about the Evils of Capitalism gives you a therapeutic moment of release, by all means do that too. No, it won't make anything better.
I entirely understand if you are sick of me posting this chart.
And That Is Where We Are
I normally really enjoy writing blog posts. This one, not so much.
My tiny company is still a going concern, but it's harder every year. In the last 30 years, we've had lots of lucky breaks. The first Dot Com boom. Steam. Bundles. Promotionals. Selling out to Epic. Whenever things got tough, we could always hustle and find a way to grab a few extra bucks and get through.
Every year, there are fewer parachutes and more people fighting for them. I think we'll make it to retirement, but we're all two bad years from disaster.
I'm not complaining. I have been an incredibly fortunate person, and I'm so much better off than others. This is just what life as an artist is like. It's the truth.
So that is what I think is going on, and will be going on for some time. It's always interesting writing things I hope are wrong.
Next week, I'll provide some thoughts for how to react and what to learn, based on disasters we've survived in the past. If you need something to relieve stress, can I interest you in an inexpensive indie RPG? (Sequel coming March 27.)
What To Learn From The Video Game Recession. And Do It Quickly.
Failure is always an option.
Before we get grim, remember this: The goal is creation. Everything else follows that. Figure out what you NEED to actually make the art. Anything else is just a bonus.
Last week, I wrote a blog post about how the video game industry seems to be entering a sad and painful period of contraction.
I've been writing these State of Indie posts for a long time. They're usually the most popular things I write. Last week, nobody seemed to care what I had to say. Nor should they. I'm a tiny, tiny figure in a big world, my time is past, and I'm writing depressing things.
But I still have a new RPG to sell (Geneforge 2 - Infestation, coming March 27), so the current grim conditions are very much on my mind.
So, the world is changing, and we need to figure out how to adjust with it. How do we need to change how we make our work? What do we teach to aspiring game makers? What does it take to survive?
This image is a repeat, but it’s vital to understand it. Dark times come and go. There will still be hits and still be growth.
I Feel Like a Traitor
I've been writing advice for making a living making indie games since 1997 or so. (My first site about it is still up, somehow.) In 2012, I wrote "Principles of an Indie Game Bottom Feeder", a much-read ode to the joy of this life.
And now here I am, being depressing and crapping on everything and wondering how many people I accidentally lead to ruin. I feel like a traitor.
After I wrote my last post about this mess, a longtime reader wrote me a long, thoughtful, heartfelt, sad email about how much hope I gave him and how much it hurts that I'm taking that away.
It's a bummer, man.
But my goal in all of this, all along, is to be honest. I'm not always right. I get things wrong all the time. I just never want to tell you anything I don't genuinely believe is the truth.
There are times for joy and ambition. And there are times to tread carefully. Times to take big risks. And times to cover your ass. If you can't adjust to both modes, you shouldn't start a game business. Or any other sort of business.
And It Feels Like The World Is Changing
Let's assume that the video game industry is going to shrink. Not go away, just shrink. A lot of people lose jobs. Companies go under. People in the industry end up leaving it.
There needs to be a period of mental adjustment. We need different plans. We need to figure out what questions we should ask so that we can start answering them.
Making a living in art is HARD. You gotta be GOOD. Sorry, but someone has to say it.
Video Game Jobs Are Art Jobs. Plan Accordingly.
When a young person says, "I want to write video games for a living," it's just like saying, "I want to be a writer." "I want to be a film editor." "I want to be a musician/record producer/actor/poet."
It's good to have dreams. And is it possible to make a living as a musician? Of course it is. People do it all the time. But it's a hard, uncertain life. That's the price you pay for a life in art.
A life making video games is a life in art. It's easy to forget that because games do, in fact, make a ton of money. However, the ability to make bank while being an artist who makes video games attracted a LOT of other contestants, and high supply drives prices down.
Video game makers will probably always make more money than musicians or actors. However, it's always going to be a tough field to make a career in.
I get asked all the time by worried parents whether to encourage their kids' dreams of making games. I tell them what we've been telling aspiring actors for a lot of years: "If you could possibly have a happy life doing something else, do that instead."
Meanwhile, for a degree in Computer Game design, Digipen tuition is almost $60000/year now. I don't even know what to say about that.
Annual tuition to learn to make games at Digipen. Almost $60K! The name ‘Digipen,’ by the way, comes from the Latin word ‘digipus,’ which means “Horrible, life-destroying mistake.”
Wait. People Invested In Video Games?
I've noticed that lately a lot of indie companies have been complaining that it is very hard to get investors. Some have given this as the reason why they went out of business.
This is how old and dusty and out of touch I am. Every time I read this, I think, "Wait. Indie games have INVESTORS? Like, I can say I want to make a game and someone might just hand me a sack of cash? REALLY? And I've been out here alone in a room squeezing my pennies and reusing art like a SUCKER?"
I totally see why indie game investors appeared. If you own a chunk of a megahit like Don't Starve or Terraria, you will do very, very well. But as they say about Broadway, "It's a place to make a killing, but not a living."
Due to changing economic conditions, investors now need to make money on their investments. The days when VRChat, an online world populated exclusively by frisky furries and literal children, can get $80 million in actual Earth dollars are GONE.
I used to break these long posts up with ponies. Are we still doing ponies? Do I need to dig up some Hazbin Hotel gifs now?
If You Already Got A Business, Go Cheap
If you want to live your dream, at some point you have to dream practical. When the meteors land, the rodents hiding underground survive. I have long proudly called myself a bottom feeder.
There are always going to be ambitious young people who dream of making it in this peculiar art form. I say, if you can go cheap, go cheap. You can get amazing assets of all sorts for cheap. License music, art, sound effects. Squeeze every penny until it screams. Only get something bespoke if you actually have to.
The problem, of course, is that people get driven in this industry by dreams. Not dreams of being a humble, scuttling creature like me. Dreams of actually running a COMPANY, with headcount and production values and influence. (And, once, shiny offices in a shiny building furnished in Modern IKEA.)
You have to be hard-headed about the math. Suppose you have a 2 person operation and you want to hire two more people. That will double your expenses. So ask yourself: Doubling your sales is difficult. Will these two new people double our sales? No, really. Will they? If not, do you really need the headcount? If you're not rich, ask this question about every new expense.
Along these lines, sometimes you won't like how people decide to reduce their budgets. Tempers are really heated about AI right now, so I don't want to say much about it. I want to avoid using it, but I'm also not going to get angry if a poor developer starting out uses it to get into the business. I mean, it's 100% going to happen. A lot. If someone thinks they need it to survive, desperation will keep them from listening to your opinions.
“It’s a 2-D Roguelike Metroidvania Platformer, but it has a strong Vampire Survivor influence!”
Where Goeth The AA (Two A's) Game Company?
A decade or so ago, we saw a mass death of AA game companies. Mid-size companies (10-30 employees) found themselves in a vise where they weren't big enough to keep up with state-of-the-art production values and marketing budgets, but they were too large and expensive to have cheap budgets. They tended to get bought out or just go under.
Thanks to the generosity of investors and publishers, we have seen a resurgence of the mid-range game company. We just call them indie now.
(Note that the biggest indie success lately, Baldur's Gate 3, was by an indie company that was able to grow BIG.)
However, the problems such companies faced back then are still here. They were sustained by easy money, but that is gone, replaced by tons of competition.
I would hesitate before trying to form a midsize game company right now. Have your end goal be writing and shipping the game, and plan whatever it takes to make that possible. Then, when you have a hit and can afford 20 employees, hire 10.
You Need To Compete With 'Free'
Suppose you have a realistic goal: You just want to get a game out there in any way possible. Fine. What's the next hurdle to overcome?
One of the things I say to ambitious developers is, "A lot of the best games in the world are free. Can you compete with free?"
Sometime at 3 AM, when you’re tossing and turning and worried, stare up at the ceiling, take a deep breath, and ask yourself, HONESTLY, “Do I have the Sauce?”
What You Need To Do Hasn't Changed
The way for a poor, lone creator to sell their indie book/music/game has gotten harder, but it hasn't changed.
You have to have a Secret Sauce, something you provide that nobody else was offering. Something they couldn't get anywhere else. If people want something and you are the only one selling it, they WILL open their wallets.
This is why it is important to, as soon as possible, share your work with people. Watch their reactions carefully. They shouldn't just be tolerant of it. They should want more. They should be begging you for another chapter/song/game level. People should be taking your game home and playing it on their own until late at night. That's how you know you have something.
(This is also why people who want jobs in AAA should try making their own small games and mods. You need to show you can make things that compel people.)
It's become routine for those who make indie games to have contempt for gamers. It's sad and tiresome, this dumping on those who love us. The true thing is, gamers are natural evangelists! Alas , it's impossible to get Steam visibility and advertising is extremely expensive and unpredictable. The good news is that when people love your work, they will force it on their friends until it's annoying.
Everyone Finds Their Own Route
Me, I write turn-based, story-heavy RPGs. This is an evergreen genre. There are ALWAYS people who want this. But it's also a game that's hard to write well. I write something people want that there isn't much of.
Each of my games has a new world, a solid story, and a new sort of choice to make. This packed in a world dense with STUFF, so you can't turn a corner without finding something new. Plus, I can be funny.
This is my Sauce. Thus, despite the many flaws of my products, I can compete with Free and stay in business.
What is unique and special about your game? Unique and special enough that people will pry open their wallets? You need an answer to this question. Your answer, the one that fits the art only you can make. This is why art school is not necessary. Professors can’t answer that question, only you can.
Also, at several points in my career, I got lucky. At some point, you'll need a little luck.
It’s true. For a six-month period in 1996 and a similar time in 2000, I was goated with the sauce. From such brief visits of the muse are careers made.
It's Hard To Make A Business
This takes work. Years of work. You gotta hustle. Make forums. Talk to fans. Build a Discord. Have the tenacity of a cockroach. Do anything you can to get people to try your work, and refine it until they love it.
If, like most people, you fail, remember that failure is always allowed. It's almost inevitable, even for those with great skill and determination. Just take comfort in that there is nobility in creation.
And yeah, I'm telling you, "Just be as great as the greatest," as if it’s an easy thing. That's an almost sadistic goal to hand to someone. I get it. But if you aren't aiming for true awesomeness, why are you even doing this?
Me, I'll just keep on as a bottom feeder. My games aren't unique enough to be big hits, but they are unique enough to keep a small, happy fan base following along. It's all I ever wanted.
If you want to see how lame you can be and still make a living, check out Geneforge 2 - Infestation! Indie RPG, coming March 27! To make it, all you have to do is be better than me. Surely you can do that!
I think there was some romance in Avadon, so Jeff did the first step.
Jeff was born in 1970, he's 54. Isn't that a bit early for retirement? What he's gonna do for the next 25-40 years? I'm sure we can get some more games from him.
He's been doing that as long as he's been alive. In fact, "I'm old" were the first words he uttered to his parents.
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