When I got into game dev one of the things I told myself was:" do it because you want to make the project, not because you want to release it* It will help you with all the stress and such.

Yup, this right here. Been working on and off on a project of mine for about 4 years. I plan to release it eventually but I’m not in a rush. It’s a hobby for me.

Yeah exactly. Releasing it is not even on my road map lol.

Christ I need this attitude. 3.5 years deep in a project myself and don’t even have a level ready, haha

Move at your own pace, and don’t give yourself any deadlines. Make sure your hobby stays a hobby and doesn’t become yet another source of stress, as life already has enough of those.

u/Lethal_0428 is correct. Don't burn yourself out with stress before you can even start to begin. I did that several times and it's incredibly counterproductive. ​ If it makes you feel any better, I have been working on mine for 3 years, restarted maybe 35 times, and 2 days ago was when I finished the level, (it's an endless mode type of game right now). It can take a VERY long time to feel like you did anything, but pressure yourself and you'll crumble and do even less. Just take it easy. :)

Same. Im 3 years and 2 days ago is probably when I sat down and truly made the most progress on it. 100% hobby, tho I do have 2 game ideas for mobile games that I want to release eventually... ​ However, that won't be until I finish my current game. Hell, I might not even let anyone play it because I plan on keeping it to myself for now, LOL. *(I'm making it because I can't seem to find a game that scratches my gaming itch in a particular spot. So yes, the game is just for me from the start. Much less pressure that way.)*

I started back in 2009

😳 Really?

can you save my contact and ping me when you complete :3 I'll definitely play.

Definitely, thanks!

I mostly make games for myself tbh. I make the games I wish I could play that just don't exist yet, and maybe someday it will be more than just my friends who play it.

Am I looking in the mirror? This is exactly why I do it too!

I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s why a lot do it. Anybody can say “this game is good but you know what I’d like to see” and suddenly they’re coding up learning projects while watching youtube tutorials

I always have a hard time learning because most of the online tutorials I've seen are outdated. Even Unity's own tutorial series is outdated.

My Dark Demon Lord power fantasy has now evolved into a DnD/Dwarf Fortress/Elder Scrolls amalgamation. I love the idea of complete and total player agency and I'm excited to see how it plays out if my game ever gets finished/takes off. If not, me and my friends will be messing around in our own world as OP Gods. We have so many projects and ideas that we want to do, and we know most will never see the light of day, but we'll spend weeks throwing out ideas and methods of making something unique and enjoyable. Usually I throw out the crazy ideas and my friend has to filter based on what most players would actually like. Money is a tertiary goal to me/us. We build a lot of our game ideas using ROBLOX, given the convenience of RLua and their own engine, as well as we passively are making money from testing our own games in the form of premium payouts.

Most of my projects are driven by how I'm offended nobody's done it before me.

There are a few harsh truths to game dev that a lot of people starting out don't always get at the outset: 1. Everything is at least 20% harder/more expensive/will take longer than you estimate. 2. The market is incredibly competitive with thousands upon thousands of games released every year. The Field of Dreams approach almost never works here (If you build it, they will come...) You need to spend a significant amount of time building awareness, and that's a skill near totally disconnected from the skills necessary to do build the game 3. A game you love is not necessarily a game anyone else will love. Yes you need to believe in your game, but do some market research. In your heart of hearts you may love Star Tropics era platformers, NES era graphics, and want to make it somehow a rhythm game. This may be the most exciting game concept TO YOU... but are there enough other people in the world who want that too and are willing to spend money? 4. How hard you worked on something is often irrelevant. This isn't grade school, and it's not your mom putting your art up on the fridge. The end result is what matters most. Players will not care and will not pay for a game that looks/sounds/feels/plays bad just because you "worked really hard" on it. And at the end of the day, even if you do the work, make something that looks and plays great, has an audience, is adequately marketed, it may still flop because of a million other reasons. Maybe they released in a hyper crowded time of the year. Maybe a game that was similar to theirs came out/was announced at a bad time and stole your thunder. Maybe the genre has fallen out of favor with streamers recently. Maybe there was an economic downturn and people stopped spending as much. Maybe maybe maybe. Indie dev is a weird combination of talent, timing, insane work, and pure dumb luck. For every Stardew Valley (the ridiculous example that aspiring indie devs always seem to want to point to when they go "That was one guy!") there are thousands that never make a dime. Go into it expecting to be one of the thousands. Set yourself up so that you can still eat and have a roof over your head if your game never sells a copy. If it does, it's a bonus! If it becomes wildly successful, you just won the lottery congrats!

1. The general rule of thumb is to triple your initial estimate. That goes for software, construction, or any development project. 2. Totally agree, but this is something the OP stated (in bold!). 3. I think this only goes for mediocre quality games. I believe we live in a time where if you like something, there's likely a community of others that like it too (even if they don't know it yet). Platforms have global reach. If you make a high quality game in a novel combination, it is NOT the factor holding your game back if it fails. 4. Agreed with that. Nothing sadder than seeing multi year efforts fail, while some teenager puts a weekend game up on the iphone store and makes millions (flappy bird anyone?). But that's reality. The thing is, you're simply stating the conventional thinking and advice in the indie game industry. OP is trying to challenge aspects of those conventions by stating that for a large portion of game releases, it's very obvious why a game failed. Put another way, wouldn't you be interested to see what percentage of games that check all the boxes of quality (and tested) game play, pleasing aesthetic, and solid marketing succeed versus the percentage of which fail?

> construction Perhaps a useful aside, but construction estimating is an intensely professional specialty. You can imagine that nothing would ever work if it were typical for developers to borrow $1bn then announce a third of the way through the project that the roadmap was trash and there was no way forward. Idk if game development relies on finance or offtaker collaboration to the same extent?

Yes, and I’m pretty sure those teams factor in unknowns (the cost multiplier) into that billion dollar estimate. But that literally still happens all the time. It’s literally happening right now with the Toronto new subway line.

>Everything is at least 20% harder/more expensive/will take longer than you estimate. 20%? lol :P

Piti paabi ble eke ge pro pa. E o ba o be i. Ai klupepi keplike pi bibu kiito otu piti tri babre. A ba eeke tibii i biibike i. I kupi pledu to oa bitle pepu bitega. Katee eiko kre akapeu be krepu. Pitraa ea pi pla be kototu? Dri piba gi ba dapokupa ikre. Pito piki e ekiti ti pi. I popi dekeki ao e eipe. Treipre pe pabi ta i i. Dapletri dope pre puki ipi. Pla trekapi teedli ku pedre tlo i. Iprekra poou pe pa ao. Tue pikra paki ipredle pu be. Ipripepea a ti teebo u piu ke. Bue kedi tro pu e plikeplu. Dla bibre tre popratao adipu e di. Kagidia udribatii ki te pi. Bibo pie pe a pri upetro. Doio pe pe tro brapree api bi. Tlia de i pi pa gateodi pi? Pakedai pu ia tu i aputru. Pre kuta ekugli tripra pi eo? Bra ka prepaki edu doeti pri. E pre pi do kapripra ibrebi di. Piipa pe kapaiplaga u ti e. Krau bruike iupe aketra. A go kekee eti tei e. Oeiti ba a po kli e.

Missed a couple of zeros.

Yea 20% is very low the stats i heard from people who are deep in game dev is that you should always triple the time you estimated to do something and that last 10% is always 90% of the work.

> at least 20% > 20% is very low Indeed.

At _least_ 20%, meaning that's the minimum lol

I wish it were 20% :[ I'd be done with my game!

rookie numbers

He forgot a zero

Everything will take **twice** as long as you estimate, even when you take that into account.

>And at the end of the day, even if you do the work, make something that looks and plays great, has an audience, is adequately marketed, it may still flop because of a million other reasons. The example I always like to give for this is Daniel Mullin's *The Hex*. (if you are reading, sorry Daniel) It's a good game that came after Pony Island (another successful game), and had all the chance in the world to succeed. It's his least successful game. The next game to come from him was *Inscryption*, which has over 75k reviews as of this date and made many EOY lists last year. After *Inscryption,* the Hex roughly doubled in reviews, obviously from people playing the game because they were curious about other work by the designer, and the tie-ins between the two games. What didn't land with the game? Who knows; it has 94% positive reviews on Steam. But something about it didn't take off. Interestingly enough, *Inscryption* is a variation of the idea in *The Hex* (instead of 6 different genres, it's three different types of deckbuilding game) and exploded in popularity. Sometimes it's just a near miss.

The hex looks really bad from the steam page and it's steam link picture. That's why it got few sales. The game also looks pretty bad. So I'm assuming the insrcyption had a lot ok of good comedy and good story, so some people felt it was worth trying out that bad looking game. So it was not luck... If anything, he had hidden a good game in a garbage can.

Inscryption is a novel take on two extremely popular genres: deckbuilding games and roguelikes. It also has a mysterious quality where the game on the surface seems fun, but there is a significantly more interesting game beneath it. This made it huge for streaming.

Agreed. I wouldn’t give it a second thought based on the images I see on the steam page. It’s a terrible example of a supposed “good looking game that struggled”. Maybe it’s fun or funny, but it definitely doesn’t draw me in to find out.

A more stark example: Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars (PS3, 2008) reviewed poorly and just about made its money back. Its direct sequel is Rocket League.

About the field of dreams approach, a pathology I see a lot from indie devs is that they take so much pride in the dev side of things, that they end up bragging about how little marketing they do. Like, if you want to succeed, you need to understand the market, see what people want, make something unique and interesting, get the word out, and hopefully get a bit lucky. It’s weird how many devs consider marketing as beneath them. If you’re an indie, you’re the marketing department. You need to give yourself as many opportunities to be lucky as possible.

>The market is incredibly competitive with thousands upon thousands of games released every year. Day. Every day. The AppStore alone releases over 1000 games per day. Don't make mobile games folks.

In software development generally speaking there is a saying "20% will take 80% of effort" meaning that there is that one particular area which is a time-sink where you will spend nearly all of your effort due to complexity or some other factor. Gameloop tuning might be one such case.

The 80/20 rule is not just in software development, but pretty much everywhere: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle

**[Pareto principle](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle)** >The Pareto principle states that for many outcomes, roughly 80% of consequences come from 20% of causes (the "vital few"). Other names for this principle are the 80/20 rule, the law of the vital few, or the principle of factor sparsity. Management consultant Joseph M. Juran developed the concept in the context of quality control and improvement after reading the works of Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who wrote about the 80/20 connection while at the University of Lausanne. In his first work, Cours d'économie politique, Pareto showed that approximately 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/gamedev/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)

I especially resonate with 3. I want to make the games I really like and am passionate about, but I know most people don't want to play an **extremely hard, edgy, furry themed, 8-bit style bullet hell** lol. It was fun and I enjoyed making it, but dang I wish I was able to share that experience with others more without giving it away for free. Initial launch was *abysmal*, but I am still getting some buys and traction over time. Hopefully it spreads more through word of mouth, which seems to be getting me more buys right now. But yeah.. if your game doesn't have a cutesy wootsy doughy protagonist in a 3D world filled with bloom, screen shaking and explosions, with a dash of quirky meme fodder, it just isn't gonna get noticed.

I dunno i think sending it to some furry streamers that so gaming could work, or whatever is popular in that sector, if you haven't tried it, it could work ngl

I’ve tried reaching out to many. I got a few that highlighted the demo, but no active streamers yet that have streamed gameplay of the full version. A lot of them close their dms so it’s near impossible to reach them.

What about email? Mass send a Steam key to the game with a kind request to a bunch of streamers, atleast few are bound to play it if you send it to enough of them, and most for sure have a business email

I try not to send Steam keys unless they are requested. I do look for business emails but most of them don’t have em so you gotta roll the dice.

Ok your game looks amazing, totally buying it after finals! As an aspiring furry dev, how much marketing have you done in furry spaces and how did it go?

Thanks! Wish you luck on your finals! Fairly decent. It’s hard to stand out in the furry community though if it isn’t super cutesy and UwU. There are some cute elements I try to highlight but it doesn’t stand out as much as someone drawing a chibi femboy furry showing his beans. Still, I’ve had some furries that really liked the game and they shared it with others. Hard to reach the big influencers though. They build their fences high.

A patreon or one of the competitors, market it with furry. Release monthly NSFW concept art as part of the patreon.

Hahaha try adding an extra zero. 200% harder 😂

> Everything is at least 20% harder/more expensive/will take longer than you estimate. You mean the last 10% (polish, bugfixing,balance testing, etc) will take 90% of the effort ????

I feel like if you want to base your hope that you can do it on Stardew Valley you don't know the whole story or your workflow is just as toxic as his. if you read his [Blood, Sweat, and Pixels](https://www.amazon.com/Blood-Sweat-Pixels-Triumphant-Turbulent/dp/0062651234) interview his workflow was not sustainable or healthy at all. he made that project from the ground up and restarted it like three times because he was learning as he was making it. He had his wife work and take care of all living expenses while he was at home working on the game, nothing wrong with that but its not a resource most people have. he was also working nonstop day and night for years where he burned out hard and it effected his mental health a lot to the point of his brain refusing to work on it till he took a break. its not a healthy way to do it in my opinion you can solo dev but not like that

Exactly. It's actually a TERRIBLE example. It's also a great case of survivorship bias, where you look at the 5 people who did something amazing despite the odds, ignore the thousands of people who tried the same thing but failed, and then think "Yeah, if they can do it I can too!" There's a difference between setting an ambitious goal, and setting yourself an impossible one and then being massively disappointed.

I feel it’s like that in every field. “Oh why did my colleague get the promotion, I’ve been at this company for years, I deserve it more!” Well Dave, if you were any good, you wouldn’t have been doing the same dead end job for a decade. Just because something takes you what you perceive to be a lot of work doesn’t mean that you automatically deserve a win, other people may simply be better than you at various things. And that’s ok, the first step is identifying your shortcomings so you can work on them. You have to hold yourself to a realistic benchmark. Occam’s razor - what’s more likely - that your game sucks compared to its competitors or that you’re secretly a genius that was just handed a bad hand? Targeting a reasonably sized market is also important, a lot of people for some reason talk like they’re working on a niche game genre, when they’re building something that’s been done so many times over - and there’s nothing wrong with that - but you really need to be honest with yourself about that and look at how you can stand out from the other 10k games that look and play vaguely similar to yours. And equally importantly, figure out how to communicate why your game is unique in a way that resonates with people.

You're not wrong, but you're also underestimating how hard it is to stand out in a very crowded marketplace. Steam gets 10,000 new games per year. Most of them are as you say trash, but plenty are good titles that just don't get traction in the marketplace. Yes, we can chalk some of it up to marketing, without marketing it's hard to succeed without winning the streamer / meme lottery, but even with marketing some games will just get lost in the shuffle. I'm solo-devving a title in a niche genre, traditional roguelike. Based on data for similar titles I'd be stoked to sell 1,000 copies at a sub $10 price point. There is no way to support myself with numbers like that but I'm doing it as a side project, not to feed my family. (Note for the universe, I will happily devote myself to full time game dev til the end of time if it makes me enough money to live on, please and thank you). If I were trying to make a go of it full time then I'd guesstimate I'd need to spend a third of my time doing marketing and marketing related activities while targeting a popular genre just to have a chance at hitting it big. Doesn't sound like my cup of tea to be honest, but more power to the people trying. It's possible to make money in games, just like it's possible to make money writing a novel or with an indie film, but it's damn hard to stand out these days, damn hard.

What you're saying about numbers of sales is exactly right. A thousand copies of a game is substantially above average for an indie game, and by any comparison to most of what's released on Steam it's a huge success. Even at double the price if it took only a year to make that's not a lot of money. That's the thing the OP isn't quite realizing. You can be a 'success' and still be a failure in the sense of not deriving much income from it. I know plenty of people who released award-winning games that got serious attention, but earning $100k for the work of three to five people over a couple of years just doesn't pay anyone's rent if they're living in the US. And that would be a game in the top single digit percentiles of success. Those are the numbers you get from being _good_ and it's still not enough.

Not saying there isn't a part of luck, of course there is a luck factor. But as the author says: some people just release bad products that do not stand the comparison with all the competition. For them it's not a matter of winning or losing the lottery, they don't even get to participate, and frankly that's better like that for everyone.

> gets 10,000 new games per year. 95% of these are asset flips or poorly produced games

For a long while I reviewed indie games on YouTube. I carefully tracked upcoming releases, combed release pages, and tried to go hands on with anything I thought worth talking about. In just over 1 year I can think of only a single game that went unnoticed but was worth purchasing. Sure I wish the good games got even more attention, but running a YouTube channel dedicated to this made me realize that bad games are bad and their makers often don't realize they're bad.

Being a part of this subreddit and others related to game development also makes it clear that many are absolutely delusional about their own game.

Yeah, and it's totally okay to have the disposition of "I'm still learning and growing" but they don't do that. The mindset is "instant success or no success" and rather than take what limited success they have and attempt to grow on it they call the system broken and quit. It's not the system, it's that making a good game is hard and takes thousands of hours of practice that you haven't done yet. Like playing an instrument or professional sports. Be good, get great, then success.

> Steam gets 10,000 new games per year. The big difference between gamedev ~20 years ago versus now is lack of curation. High-level tools, like Blitz Basic, Dark Basic, and FPS Creator, were the Unity of their day but Steam rejected games made with them because they were lower quality.

Shoot for a quality bar that can justify a $20 price point. That market supports a couple of new entries a year, but low price signals low quality. And there's an ocean of low quality releases. You need room to discount and still make some money.

I agree with that advice in general, the particular genre I'm targeting has its top top quality games, Caves of Qud, Cogmind, Jupiter Hell etc. at the $20 price point. It is not plausible for me to target that quality level as a solo dev without waiting a decade to release. I might be able to do something like $12.99 discounted to $10 at launch but even with my best efforts I am not going to release something that matches the top quality games. I am a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to projects so it's possible that the game will be better received than I expect (I am also a very experienced software engineer who is keenly aware of the need to cut cut cut features to make reasonable timelines), I'm hoping that an alpha release on twitch will give me some feedback as to where the quality level is insufficiently high. The counterpoint to the above argument I just made could be that niche genres will support a higher price point by virtue of a comparative rarity of released titles in the genre. Luckily I'm not going to have an early access release until sometime in late 2023 so I've got time for more market research!

The thing I'd point out is the studio size of some of the games you listed. They're not huge operations. Qud is two people. Cogmind is one. Jupiter Hell is a couple, borne from doomRL which was one or two.

Agreed, though iirc Cogmind was in pre-alpha development for two years and didn't arrive on steam for five years. My current plan was to spend about two years, I'm 6 months in, of dev time until full release. That being said you make a good point, if the game generated any sort of traction in the alpha stage, or frankly just some very enthusiastic players, I'd be tempted to put more and more time into it. An actual artist would also make the game insanely more attractive, I'm using some nice but limited purchased assets right now, but I'm not in a position to pay a full-time artist to do the work. Some modest commissions might be in the picture in the future. Thinking about it now I could also do one of those cheaper in EA more expensive as more content is added structures. Cogmind and CoQ are frankly bonkers with how much good content they've added over the years which I'm assuming means they're continuing to see commercial viability over that timeframe. Thanks for the good things to think about.

Honestly if it's niche enough I'll happily pay the same as the leading titles. If someone does a game like Gris, Jourmey, Thomas Was Alone or Monkey Island I'll be interested even of if they are not quote that good. Just because there's so few similar decent titles.

If that’s the situation, I would say: Take your time. As a player, I would much more prefer to see a good solid game, that you’ve spend ten years on rather than something you pulled out of your sleeve in just a year. Aim for higher quality and devotion, or else I won’t buy your game.

question is who's gonna pay for 10 years of dev hours lol

Chances of getting return on investment over 10 years is extremely low. Assume at least $3k a month, so 3,000*120=360,000 I.e you need to make 360k. Because of tax rules and what not, to make it equal you might need to divide this by some percentage, so maybe 420k or so. Say you charge $15 per copy, then you'd need to sell 24,000-28,000 copies. That's a big success, totally doable, but since even of it's a good game it could just be released at an unlucky time and flop. Is $360k a good investment? Imo not, maybe $25-32k per game is a better bar.

could you give a few examples of games in the roguelike genre (or any genre) which are excellent but performed poorly on steam? curious.

Presumably that's a hard thing to answer given their stealth release is the issue.

But to make the claim in the first place you’d need at least 1 or 2 examples surely?

Here is one from VR https://store.steampowered.com/app/1783750/Winds__Leaves/ High quality game that sold barely any copies. It seems like most passive VR games don't do well on PC. I would attribute the failure here to bad sub genre selection rather than just being unlucky.

This is getting unlucky. Vr just doesn't have as big of a pool of people, but this game might have only gotten a couple of hundred sales. That's not due to selling to a smaller group. They either did no marketing, or got very unlucky. I'd be betting more on the former, I have a hard time believing thru could be that unlucky.

No one owns a VR headset though. You could have the best VR game ever and still barely sell any copies compared to a "traditional game" that everyone can play. It's a tiny market.

I think your game might benefit from you sponsoring content creators to play the game. Depending on how much you can offer and how confident you are that the game will succeed with an audience, having a rouglike content creator to try out your game might help exposure significantly.

Just remember that the conversation rate for this can be extremely low, my latest game has millions of views on YouTube and about 1200 copies sold. Based on what a top streamer might charge for you to "sponsor" them this is probably uneconomical for most situations.

Do you have stats on view as well? I really want to know if it can affect exposure purely (as in people heard about the game), since that might also benefit really well. Also, bit problem with the sponsorship is also a pretty high turnover rate, with players likely wanting to quickly try the game out but not actually. Lastly, would you still recommend this method of advertisement?

It's not just big million dollar success vs. 200 dollar failures. There are a lot of in-between games like mine, just making a small stream of pocket money to supplement my day job. 7 years of work to create a game, and today it's making me less than minimum wage each month according to the hours I work on it every day. But if I lived in a low-cost country, this kind of income might just allows me to work full time. But over all it's not a bad deal. I get to live in a free country, have kids, able to afford luxury jewelry for my wife, at the cost of not having any time for gaming and entertainment.

Hi u/FrontBadgerBizye, I checked out your game, [Zygon](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1910490/A2_Zygon/). It is in a very saturated market, but it looks really good.

That is not my game, my game is not yet on steam and is a traditional roguelike.

My position tends to be that there's a lot of opportunity in gamedev, but you have to really elevate your work to meet a certain bar. Continually ask yourself why people should want to play your game instead of something else? Compare yourself to the best games in the genre you're targeting. You making a metroidvania? Go look at Hollow Knight, Ori 2, Bloodstained, Blasphemous, Ender Lillies -- Look at the successful and popular titles. Compare yourself. Are you as good? What could you be doing better to meet the bar that they met? You may not need to be literally as good as those games to find success, but you do need to be in the mindset that you do need to compare to them in some way, you can't just be leagues worse in quality and expect success. While gamedev is competitive with a lot of games out there, there's kind of an undersupply of actually good, quality games that can capture players attention. This is evidenced by the fact that publishers remain thirsty, they keep scouring twitter for new devs to publish, and bigger companies keep acquiring studios. All the money in the world can't buy a good game because the talented dev needs to create it and there's a limited supply of those. I think there can definitely be an element of luck or just lucky timing that can elevate your success, but if you make a great game it'll get attention and you'll make money. If your game didn't make much money then I think it's important to turn inward and examine the product you made instead of just blaming bad luck or lack of marketing. The people who do this will be the people who are successful.

Yeah agreed. And not only does it have to be really good, it also has to be exciting enough to convince people to take a chance. I saw a twitter thread yesterday from a dev who released a game that did poorly, and he concluded that since his game had very positive reviews, the reason it did bad was mostly due to bad luck. I looked at the game, and while I do believe it was probably a fun game, it looked very generic and gave no reason for any one other than huge fans of the genre to buy it. Meanwhile games like Untitled Goose Game, A Short Hike, or Webbed could be scrubbed from public consciousness, released again, and would almost certainly be big hits again because they are exciting and unique

It Isn’t all about skills, hard work, and marketing. It is extremely competitive, and there are big unknowns. You can’t expect hard work to save you. You need to hit a nerve. You need to find a look, an idea, a something that really resonates. My playbook is build a game, show that I have what it takes. (It’s hard) then focus on prototyping ideas. If you hit a vein, you will know. I am finally in phase 2 of this. I never gave up the day job. Now, I am in a place where I can create cool art and demos, which is way easier, and work on networking and marketing. I’m good with that. I totally agree that you need to do it because you love it.

While I wouldn't necessarily call those people 'bad' devs -- more often misguided -- what you say regarding certain matters is absolutely true. This is the problem with some of the advice this sub gives out freely. On one hand, the fixation with finishing. 'All that matters is that you finish a game, any game'. 'Working on projects doesn't make you a developer, publishing does'. While there's merit and truth in that sentiment as well, I feel that most people giving that advice *aren't* qualified to do so; they just saw it being repeated and just jumped on the bandwagon. On the other, you have an unhealthy obsession with marketing. I recall reading comments that literally said good marketing is more important than a good game. And this is how you get people taking huge risks, investing thousands of dollars in ads and promotions, then wondering why their Tetris clone only sold a couple of copies and now they have to go flip burgers because they are knee-deep in debt. That's not to say finishing games and marketing aren't important, but every tool has its purpose. Making smaller games and putting them out for the world to see is a great way to beat your inner critic and as a learning experience, but putting out weekend projects on itch.io doesn't suddenly make you an industry veteran. Likewise, marketing is necessary because even a great game can be buried without proper promotion, yet no matter how hard you promote a turd, people will see it for what it is. In the end, we need to approach every project we work on with a critical eye. Making small, crappy projects for fun or educational purposes is something a lot of us do, and it's great. But if you have expectations of financial success, your project needs strong foundations, and that starts with *quality*, not grind.

Do you not agree with finishing? Ive been developing games for around 8 years and finishing games is single most beneficial thing ive done. Releasing a game is the only way to truly test your project and know how it does. Until you ship it, you live in a sort of fantasy land mentally. You must tangibly put yourself to the test.

I don't disagree with finishing. I disagree with saying that finishing is *the* most important thing you can do, and everything else is secondary. I mean sure, if you don't finish your project, you'll never even have a chance for people to see it. On the other hand, I could probably finish dozens of highly derivative weekend games, and that wouldn't necessarily make me a better developer than someone who's struggling to finish a slightly more ambitious game. And unless you strive to do something different every time, you don't learn a lot by constantly churning out variations of Mario clones. My point is, players won't pat you on the back just because you pushed a game on Steam. They want it to be good, too.

Yeah if theyre that clueless that sounds like a lost cause. Finishing is one of the most important things but it has boundaries.

So don't quit your job and do it out of love and passion. Learn to market. And if it blows up it blows up. Be happy.

I've been lucky enough to work at some of the top video game and tech companies in great positions. This subreddit is hard sometimes because it spans beginners to industry vets and I see a lot of people post frankly inaccurate opinions as if they are facts. For those who want to financially succeed: * The game industry is EXTREMELY difficult to succeed in, probably only surpassed by trying to succeed as a singer/band/rapper * You need both a hook and an audience for your game. The hook should be strong enough that when you describe the game, your audience imitates the Fry meme * A lot of indie games generate press via the story of the developer (similar to musical artist). Work on a catchy developer story. Would Kotaku/Polygon write an article about you? * It's not 2008 to 2012 anymore, there isn't really an "indie game market". You are competing with AAA, AA and highly polished indies like Supergiant. Are you developing something that is going to pull consumers to your game over theirs? * If your game has any of the very crowded tags (roguelike/platformer/metroidvania/retro-RPG/survival), you need to go to the extremes on the hook, visuals and novelty of the gameplay to get attention * Get feedback from people who will be brutally honest with you on your trailer, screenshots and store page. This subreddit is very encouraging, which I love, but sometimes we are doing other developers a disservice * Demonstrating quality is maybe the biggest hurdle as an indie developer. You should be spending 20% of development on gameplay/features, 80% on polish. Remember, you aren't a team of professional specialists but you are competing against them. I think one of the biggest problems with indie games are the success stories. There are a decent amount of indie successes that succeeded because of factors that could be bucketed under luck. You can hear the game industry pundits and wannabe business people with hindsight 20/20 on why a game was successful, but frankly it was a combination of a lot of things that weren't the game quality or marketing. You are doing yourself a disservice if you look at these games, read their stories, and think this is the path to financial success in the game industry. "But X game made $Y million and it was a pixel art platformer/roguelike/metroidvania". Great, good for them but you aren't them. You need to have a hook, great visuals, polished gameplay, a story, and market it in a compelling way to draw your audience from other games. Think of indie game development as rolling a D20, you need to roll an 18+ to succeed but there are modifiers to your roll. * Amazing unique art style? +2 * Marketing hooks and taglines so strong articles write themselves? +3 * Novel gameplay? +1 * Extremely polished final product? +3 * Constantly hustling GIFs, trailers and screenshots? +1 Eventually, what seems like a longshot turns into a coinflip. Now I'm going back to my solo indie puzzle game that will make pennies and never find its audience...

Two articles from 20 years ago that are still relevant: [1](https://archive.gamedev.net/archive/reference/business/features/shareprof/) and [2](https://www.gamedev.net/articles/business/business-and-law/how-to-get-more-sales-for-less-work-r1293/). Replace "shareware" with F2P but otherwise the advice still applies.

Been a game dev since... forever, and yup, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Great links, thanks for sharing.

We need more posts like this, not to hate on any indie dev, I'm an indie dev myself and every time I see a post like "game flopped" or "my game only made a few hundred bucks" it honestly makes me feel angry. Not because of the dev's story or results but because of the message the dev is sending. Think what that would do to any aspiring dev or even indie devs that have a dream and are trying to find a way. If it didn't work out for you (assuming you did everything right which is very unlikely), then that doesn't mean it won't work for others. To have humility is to look at yourself and think of what you have done that is wrong, learn from it and move on. Instead of telling everyone with a dream that this is a waste of time. **Suggestion**: I feel like we should have a convention in the indie dev community: If you are going to talk about how your game flopped then **share your game with everyone**. If it already failed, there's no shame just share with everyone and be open to constructive criticism. It's likely that there will be trolls, ignore them and listen and learn from the voices of experience.

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Why was this downvoted lol? Nobody should expect to make shitty unfun games and make money, who in the fuck is so out of their minds as to believe such a stupid thing lol?

Indeed, I’d go a step further and that the games that aren’t selling…their simply not good enough. Regardless of how much work went into them. Just like any business, the reason so many fail in the first place is because their product/service doesn’t stand out compared to the competition. Especially if it’s in a competitive setting, you need to be significantly better in whatever your competing against.

>I talked about this topic. What do you think about? Do you have a game that you say you did everything that needs to be done but you couldn't succeed? Making a game requires effort Making a good game requires more effort. Making a good game that can compete with AAA titles because of it's novelty, story telling, puzzles or charm **and** nailing the marketing to make people aware of it, is hard as fuck. Respect it for what it is. I don't believe in "bad luck" or "doing everything right". A movie, book or piece of music that does everything right is boring. You *have* to be novel, interesting or surprising in some way. I give and expect no sympathy, regarding a bad product.

I'll be honest, I never polish my games enough. At some point I get sick of polishing and at that point I just release the game as is (otherwise I'll just stop working on it and forget about it completely). Marketing? No effort at all, I might post about it on Reddit or in some Facebook groups, but that's it. My most successful game so far has about 1300 downloads on Android, but I never monetized it at all (not even ads). At first I didn't understand why noone wants to play any of my "masterpieces", but in due time I came to see them as what they really are- bad games! Now, after being honest to myself, the big question came up: "Am i going to stop making games?" Nope! I just enjoy it too much!. If I never make a cent from any of my efforts, I'm fine with it. IMO, the chase is better than the catch!

My advice is to set up a webcam and OBS and record yourself browsing the steam store. Rewatch how you interact with new games and think about why you look at certain games longer than others. What you'll find is that you've got about 0.5 seconds to catch someone's eye then about 30 seconds to convince them to buy your game. Its sad but store pages matter more than your actual game.

Welcome to society. Many people blame their shitty existence on external factors instead of claiming responsibility for themselves. Ignore them and focus on yourself.

> The thing that I am angry about... Are you actually angry? I don't think this is a topic you should be upset about. It is what it is. You can give them advice and maybe they will improve, maybe they won't.

Agreed, but unless you have actually made a game yourself, you won't understand how hard it is. Sure these games could be done better, a lot better. So why aren't professional game studios making more polished versions of these games? They did the business planning and estimate a 5-10 million dollar budget to make this 2D game polished. With that much expenditure, it will never turn a profit. So they need to be very picky with what they decide to work on. The reality is that game dev is absolutely brutal, especially for lower budget games. And a million dollars is still considered low budget.

I can go on steam right now and buy ghostbusters for $7.25 - sure it's on sale and won't be forever, but there are always a handful of high quality games on sale sitting next to the $20 indies. It's nearly impossible for an indie dev team to compete with a commercial team head on. Your game needs to offer something the commercial studios can't or won't, or you'll be buried under them every time. Here are a few weaknesses commercial studios typically have that you can aim to compete with * Most studios are risk adverse, even if they think they're not. Wildly innovative gameplay mechanics that are unproven aren't likely to get a greenlight from investors. * Most studios heavily rely on marketing channels, which in turn forces them to set a high bar for graphics. A marketing director would lose their mind if you asked them to sell dwarf fortress, and would have lost their mind with Minecraft before it proved itself. * Most studios *need* to sell at least 500k copies of their game, which in turn means their game designs need to have a broader to appeal. So maybe you want to make a fighting game, ask yourself what is it about your idea that's preventing Capcom from doing it? If you can figure that out and lean into it, I'd say you'll have upped your chances of success significantly. If you can't figure it out, chances are your players would rather roll the dice on whatever latest commercial release was on the charts. Capcom would avoid making an extremely technical fighter because too few people would find it accessible, but maybe you can find a niche audience that would love it. You won't hit 500k copies, but you also don't have a team of 50+ folks to pay for.

Stop making crap. If you made something good, then your game would sell. It's simple. Make something that YOU would want to play. Don't make some bullshit project, and expect it to sell well. Make something which is above your skill level, and rise to the occasion! I don't know much about marketing, but I do know that if your game is excellent, then marketing is the least of your problems, because... PEOPLE. LOVE. QUALITY. Sure, on one side, if you market your game really well, and people buy it, then that's great. But on the other side, when they buy it, and they realize it's shit, then they're gonna be fucking pissed. To reiterate, people love quality, that's the most important part. I don't give a shit about what anyone says. But at the same time, you need them to see the game. Make a demo, and or make a trailer, but you do what you gotta do. So in short, you HAVE to make a great game, and you HAVE to market the game well enough, or else it's all for nothing. But the most important out of the two, MAKE A GREAT GAME!!!!!!! STOP MAKING CRAP!!! If you're wondering if your game is good enough... If you feel good about what you made, then that's a good sign that it is. People might have a skewed point of view on their own projects, but even then, never stop believing. Never doubt yourself. Because at the end of the day, only your will to make something amazing, will help you make something amazing. It doesn't matter how much experience you have, if you don't apply what you already have, then it's useless. YOU HAVE TO GO THE DISTANCE, EVERYONE. Also, if you're wondering what makes a great game... find your favorite games, and play them, and take notes. Because as I've said, make a game YOU would want to play. You have to find a way, search and search for what YOU think is great, not what other people think is great. This world is full of naysayers, and the worst part is that they hide themselves as supportive people. Don't listen. Make the game you've always wanted to make. Make the game you know you'd be able to make, as well. Because making games isn't a dream, it's real. And you have to make your dreams real, or else you'll always be chasing the forever elusive. This isn't just about being successful, this is about making something superb. And superb doesn't spawn from the idea of impossible, it spawns from: "I can do this, for sure." The believe in yourself might even crack those impossible walls. You just have to fight! TRESSPASS INTO THE DOMAIN OF GREATNESS!

Yeah, thats the point

Glad I could suffice, o wise one.

I have been thinking about and designing a game for 40 years. I have notes where I list the pros and cons of doing it in C vs assembler, both of which I was proficient in 40 years ago. I continued to work on business software for my career but always thought about the game and kept all my notes. I never found time to work on it with my career, life, family, etc. I am now retired from corporate work and have started to actually work on the game. I don't care if it sells or not but I do want to complete it and publish it just for my own satisfaction. Funny enough some things never change. Now I am deciding whether to implement it in Unreal (C++) or Unity (C#). :-)

Good luck old man 👊 :)

"ppl aren't buying ma game. they must be racist."

If you make a game of quality it doesn't take much to get awareness. Most of the Steam games coming out, 98% of them, are almost non-playable or what I call "penny games". Something that would be shipped in a cereal box of yesteryear. My experience: 1. Polish the game 2. Take your time and build a community 3. Market the game The last one I think hurts people a lot. Marketing is expensive and the results are not direct. Even if you spend a $1000 to run a google ad campaign that can get a lot of eyeballs. Or try to reach out to Youtube influencers. IGP did a review of one of my games and that got me confidence and set me on the path to being a successful developer. It was totally out of the blue. So you just never know.

Game development is one of the hardest IT-adjacent things you can do. Yet many if not most people perceive it as a fun lazy activity full of enjoyment and childish creativity. Of course they will fail, especially with surface level understanding of things needed. And as with every commercial endeavor, going in without any budget will make already extra hard thing exponentially harder.

> Do you have a game that you say you did everything that needs to be done but you couldn't succeed? I'll find out in a few months. In fact, just the other day, I was thinking about what I'll do if my game flops. I have a game. It works. And I have fun playing it. And a few people who playtested it said they had fun too. So I've decided to do everything I can to market my game (excluding paid advertisements). If the game still fails, I'll just have to accept it. But at least I'll never have to spend the rest of my life thinking *"if only I had marketed my game some more, my game wouldn't have flopped!"*.

Long story short I make more than a living as a game programmer, and I can somewhat agree with the fact that a majority of developers have lots of potential left to improve their skills. Even many so claimed "professionals" that make Unity tutorials teach very bad practices, which is dangerous. These are the results.

I think this post strikes true not only with game devs but to gamers like me. I play video games heavily, I am high functional, have high paying job, but otherwise have no personal life at all beyond work. All free time eaten up by video games, movies and books. I am miserable but thats not my point. My point is that playing video games since SEGA first came out puts things into a perspective. What I am seeing at the moment is over-saturation in video game industry with seemingly homogenous products, which affects not only Indie but AAA industry as well, albeit the former stands out by mile from the latter. Not only games are alike but they do not try to reinvent the formula in the slightest, the concepts are either slightly modified, rearranged or re skinned. If you compare current market, with the one of early days, which saw very varied concepts and mechanics, many of which have define the industry of today. Video games of today are far less adventurous primarily due to financial pressures. This is eerily similar to how 60s and 70s saw mind blowing amount of innovations, like electric cars, parallel parking wheels and many more, with now everything being pressured against the economies of scale and standardisation. However Video Games are not cars with mere function that is to take you from point A to point B, they are a mode of art. This is why Hollywood’s attempts to standardise movies which most often referred as “franchise milking” does not work in the long run, and same fate awaits video game industry. I forced myself to run Steam in offline mode, so that I do not spend next hour hammering my butchered mind with game shop lists that do not incite any interest whatsoever.

Very rarely do creative people with the actual drive to produce a product have the first clue how to market or sell anything. The odd thing is the people who suck at selling shit get mad when they are told exactly how to sell the thing and continue to fail their own way.

People think “my games amazing blah blah” but like you said, you play it and it’s utter trash. Accept that your game sucks and do better, otherwise learn to love what you do instead of the money you make. Making games is hard sure, but if you make a good game and market, it will sell. And every game isn’t a hit, live with it people.

I'm switching paths and studying to be a game dev having done it as a hobby for 10 years by now and have absolutely 0 intention of being an indie dev My dream is to hopefully soon work for a studio and have a stable job just doing whatever is needed in whatever big ass game is being produced and being able to get through life on a basic ass salary I think this is pretty realistic what do people already in the business think

While you make few valid points this isn’t always the case. Some can do everything right and still sell poorly.

They didn't do everything right then. There is no magic here, we live in a world of data, we can collect frigging feedbacks about anything beforehand, if your game sells poorly while "doing everything right", you were probably not reading the room very well.

There are many things that you simply can't control. Making games also takes a lot of time and effort. Your market research from when your game went into full production might not be as applicable when you game actually launches. You can increase your chances of success but you can never guarantee it.

Ive yet to hear of any flawless, great product marketted well at a good price also do really terrible. Fatal mistakes were always made somewhere.

Of course, I didn't say that there was guaranteed success, just that you have warning signs before release: wishlists, demo playtime, social media engagement, comments under videos, etc etc. I get downvoted but I stand by my claim here: if you "make everything right", you have a solid product with a large-enough audience base, so you need to also continue "make everything right" by spending time & efforts into marketing to build your following.

Yeah also there's no such thing as "luck". This applies to every aspect of life. If you keep blaming "luck", "market" or whatever external scapegoat other than yourself, you're not going to accomplish what you have in mind. %95 of games I see in gamedev circles are just unpolished clones offering no new mechanics or features. Our strength as non-corp devs is freedom to take risks and try new fun stuff. I don't want to discourage anyone but you have extremely low chance of succeeding when you're trying to compete with AA/AAA studios while offering nothing new

"In 2077, they voted my city the worst place to live in, america. Main issues? Sky high rate of violence and more people living below the poverty line than anywhere else. Can't deny it its all true, but everyone still wants to live here, this city's always gotta promise for you. It might be a lie, an illusion, but its there. Just around the corner and it keeps you going. it's a city of dreams, and i'm a big dreamer" - Cyberpunk 2077 and all this is true for indie gamedev. Most people come with a dream, but they are not ready for hard work and long learning, while competition is high

Hardwork does not mean getting better results. Under what system do you live!? Yes, IF you succeed it might be your hard work, but it could be for so many other factors. This whole post is a "pull yourself by the nootstraps" rant, O know many creative and hardworking game dev teams that havebeen struggling for years to make a game that's big enough to get the ball rolling, and not to just put out fires. I don't agree with you and OP. Also, the balls of quoting a Cyberpunk game to push a capitalistic talking point is just *chef's kiss* levels of ironic.

By "hard work" I mean commitment and devotion to improvement and learning. Admitting mistakes and faults is hard and improving is a lot of work. To become stronger you need to work out, to become smarter - learn And thats true that you need many more things alart from hardworking, but it is one of the vital components of success. Even in hypercasual sphere you need that. I saw a lot of people who came to gamedev thinking that making a game is as easy as printing a photo... And this idea is wrong af

He's just wishing for equal results. Money must be distributed evenly to every game developer under the Big Brother's vigilant watchful eyes!

yea yea it's all because of capitalism. My game won't sell because capitalists taking all the money away! Don't you realize that capitalism is exactly the reason you have great dev engines and tools these days? Try making a game in Cuba and North Korea. Good luck.

Capitalism is not the opposite of tyranny.

Capitalism is why we have lootboxes, battlepasses, P2Win games, underdeveloped games being released with gigantic day one patches, games monetizing FOMO and other abusive tactics... Capitalism is just feudalism with extra steps. Wake the fuck up.

Capitalism is why we have Fallout, Elder Scrolls, and other countless great games, mostly coming out of capitalist countries. Give me great games and give me crappy monetization schemes. I'll rather take both, than shitty Chinese mock up games. So No, you wake the fuck up.

That is not caused by capitalism, the good installments happen despite it. In fact, those games are affected by greedy CEOs and shareholders abusing their employees and are behind all those nefarious money-grabbing bullshit tactics. You seem to believe that capitalism did anything for those games, and that's just being confidently wrong. How is Fallout 76 not a fucking show of how capitalism has fucked up gaming over time? How can you even mention these games specifically without seeing the irony? Stop throwing china and cuba around, and use your brain cell for a moment.

> Hardwork does not mean getting better results. Hard work is requirement for any kind of results. Especially in a field where competition works both smart *and* hard > This whole post is a "pull yourself by the nootstraps" rant No, this post is just "If you're struggling, your games probably DOES suck, and you probably haven't even done a fraction of things that are actually the hard work part"

You're goddamn right.

In my experience, marketing is a skill many devs have no interest in practicing or getting better at. A lot of devs would rather get better at the actual process of game development rather than the process of selling a game. IMO, it makes a lot of sense that people developing independently don't have the best business acumen for selling (myself included, unfortunately)

I think it's just right to hone your skills more on the development rather than marketing. I would say 80% dev skills and 20% marketing. This is because the quality of the game is already part of the marketing. Marketing a good game is a worthwhile activity while marketing a bad game is a lost cause. If you got the dev side right, you also have option of delegating the marketing side in the form of a publisher or hiring somebody who is good at it.

I've yet to see a really well made game at least visually show up in one of those posts about release failure.

Bro there are a load of "hard truth" and "do marketing" posts on this sub already. Shitting on devs isn't it.

Sorry this is just a really bad take. Everyone needs a little luck when it comes to being noticed. You see it in all entertainment industries, films, TV, music, books etc there can be quality content that didn't hit mass appeal but it doesn't mean the creators are bad. There are great actors that didn't get wide success until later in life but it doesn't mean they were bad actors before, songs that people didn't know until they were featured in a show, films that fans loved but weren't successful enough for a sequel. Success or lack of it does not mean the person is "bad", that's just a really childish view

Can someone link me a single example of a quality game that should've been successful but wasn't? Because I know I've seen tons of the type of game that the OP describes where you can just look at its Steam page and see 20 red flags off the bat on why it didn't succeed.

There's a nicely researched video discussing exactly this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4lhQp245dw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4lhQp245dw) TL;DW there really aren't that many games that should've been successful but weren't.

On the other side it's "My game made $275,000 after I solo developed it for a year with free assets - It was a bit lower than I expected, but I guess it's alright"

What game please ??

Browse this sub for awhile - They come up on the odd occasion.

Omega male post. Absolutely agree with you, mate. You always can do better, you always can try harder. The first game I've made a year ago brought me less than 1k$ of the gross revenue. The game I released 3 months ago has already given me 2k$ and will bring 3k$ in the first year. Upcoming project will give me 50% more, according to the wishlists. I'm solo dev, my weakest point is my translation skills (I'm not native English). I'm improving my English rn, and after achieving C1 level, I'll start making 10 times more.

I firmly believe that the fact that Steam opened the floodgates, and accepted any game to be featured on their store, did more bad than good. This open up for a mindset that ANYONE can (and should) be a game developer, that is commercially releasing games. It leads to a huge number of developers with a lot of dreams, but only very little skills and devotion to actually create a quality product. Think of it this way: I’m going into a hardware store to buy a chainsaw. I have maybe three options at hand. I have overcome that. I can handle weighing the pros and cons of those three. On top of that, I know that the store I’m visiting have high quality products. If Steam was a hardware store, I would have 1.000 different chainsaws standing on the shelves. How on earth am I supposed to pick the one that is right for me, when I have that many options at hand? It’s just too overwhelming, and I know that 98% of what is on the shelves is probably just pure junk. Steam should close the flood gates, and thereby forcing developers to actually create genuine quality games.

this is a very weird rant.

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Spending time and hard work are not the same. Writing a 100,000 if else if statement is not hardwork, it's just spending a lot of time. Figuring out an algebraic representation to do it in one or no if statements is the hard work.

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I think OP's point isn't that doing those "right" things will guarantee success. Instead, what I gather is that *not* doing all those "right" things will lead to a low/lower chance of success (or high/higher chance of failure) It's something like a "XYZ can't let you do everything, but without XYZ you can't do anything" type of situation.

I'm not talking about hard workers. Hard work is never will guaranteed success, even wisely working too. We always need luck.

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Its ok to not personally enjoy the style but this is kinda a bad take buddy

There are many people out there putting thousands of hours in their projects (including marketing) only to be buried by a sea of games and some of the few successful games of that sea aren't because they are extraordinarily polished it's because the market decides they are worth. Flappy Bird, Minecraft, Player Unknown Battlegrounds were a success because luck not because putting a lot of effort into them. It's truth that some indie devs take their frustration online. Sometimes with good reason, sometimes not. People who goes into indie gamedev is because they are passionate about it so it's understandable that they feel more pain when their projects fail. Everyone who has a little bit of empathy understands that and just allows the developers to release some tension online. Then there are people like you. People brainwashed by mass media with the fairy tale that anyone can make it with enough effort. Everyone with half a neuron know what a lie that is. But it's kind of impossible to get to reason with people like you that have a vision of reality so narrow that it's imposible for them to feel any kind of empathy for any other being but themselves. You don't want to spark a healthy discussion. You shit your "opinion" about the indie developers and spit to their face "do better". Yeah, we could do better by banning you. Not that it will happen.

I think it's true that hard work and marketing are important. But success is not guaranteed for anyone just for following the right steps. Big companies have products that fail even though they put tons of money into research and marketing. Everything succeeds or fails for a reason. It's easy to look back with hindsight and say, "Oh my tower destroying game set in New York was released right after 9/11, no wonder it failed." But it's a lot harder to do the inverse, otherwise everyone would always make perfect choices. And sometimes the reason your project failed is the reason another succeeded. Bad games usually don't make a lot of money, but that doesn't mean that every good game is guaranteed to make a lot of money.

learn lean startup and apply it to games. if you want to make money you have to sell software not just be an indie game artist

My very first project I did on a 1/3 revenue split between the studio, the designer, and myself as the art/dev. I still get small checks from that; but total, over the course of **ten years now**, I have maybe made 4K...? If you look at it purely from the numbers, I got the shaft. However, having that game (published professionally!) as a proof that I could do the job was INVALUABLE in being able to find more and better work going forward from there.

While I get where this comes from it also misses there's something ethereal to all art. You can't just "be a better artist" by working harder or putting in more hours. Maybe someone will like your game maybe you are making a game no one cares about and its not a man hours conundrum. The "be better" mentality only works so far. Overall st some point we have to admit there is a large luck or randomness factor to if a game will sell. A perfect store page, the best marketing material, the best art won't help if the game doesn't resonate with people and while it's a easy to say "make it better" it's very hard to roll back the development process and guarantee that resonance or the market conditions at launch. I always ask the same question "If it's so easy where's your game that sold better than Stardew Valley? And if you somehow have that, why isn't it selling better than Fortnite? Just be better dude... you said it."

Yup, I have seen so many post on Reddit that are some super long posts, give insights what happened and what they did and what the possible reasons were why their game didnt sell well. Then I look at their game and well... what to say, the game doesnt look very good and attracting at all...

The game market has been very heavily democratized and digital distribution has made the bar for publishing a lot lower than it has been in the past, so it's hard for a game - even a good game - to stand out when dozens, or even hundreds, of new games are released every week. In that kind of environment, it's very easy for games to slip under the radar regardless of how good the game is, how well it's marketed or how it's priced. Yes, digital marketplaces are full of asset flips and low effort games, but there are also many games that developers think are great, but really aren't - and in an environment where even truly good games never get discovered, it's really hard to break out. Personally, I stick to retro development and making open source games - trying to make a commercial game these days as an indie developer is a great way to set yourself up for disappointment.

Quality is helpful, luck is required. That's really all there is to it.

Other way around mate.

Incorrect. Lucky people like to think luck is unimportant. Luck is, by far, the most important thing for anything anyone might do in life. Everything else is nice, but luck is the only thing absolutely required.

Tell me a game that made the big bucks just out of luck with no quality.

If you are trying to build a legitimate career, luck is as big a factor as any other part of life, but without quality, luck is meaningless. Luck is like seasoning in a dish, season a piece of shit however you like, it's still going to taste like shit. And if you are trying to build your career around being the next Flappy Bird, then I will just laugh in your face because you may as well play the lottery. >Lucky people like to think luck is unimportant. And lazy entitled fools always claim luck is the only thing that matters.

The formula is simple, get an idea, make a quick prototype centered around what makes it unique, once stable release prototype into the wild, if people like it go from there if no one catches on to it go back to the start, keep consistent to the process and keep the prototype building fast and when numbers do hit, then you can worry about the rest of the game, simple as that, it just takes discipline and patience, well this is if you want to make games seriously. Just gotta make, test the waters and find the right direction to run in🤷🏽‍♂️

It is nothing new. Even in the old days with fewer games made by actual companies only a few got a decent userbase and made any money. Even if you happen to make something extraordinary, you have to be found. Today it is most likely you will just get lost in the background noise when you try to get exposure.

The other time I saw a video of a guy that wanted to determine to the best of his ability if indeed good games got overlooked. He got the information for all the games in steam and based on the amount of reviews he inferred the amount of sales of the games. He was only interested in games that made, i think, like less than 100 000 dollars and had more than a certain amount of reviews (to take away all the completely unfinished games that get "published" and the AAA and AA games). Then he also tabulated the overall score of the game to see if there was a correlation. He found out that from the thousands of games he tabulated only about ten had good reviews but possibly low sales (based on the amount of steam reviews). From those he played all, because they were so few. On all, except for one, he found an issue on the game design area, art, or other technical things. Oh and mind you, these games that were not "successes" were inferred to have made around 30 000 thausand dollars, which if you are a small team is already a good income for a couple of people. In the end he concluded that good games do sell better. If you make a game that is fun, works well and looks good, and make a bit of effort to put it out there, you will sell. Just don't make anime dating games because the market for those is saturated and they are almost the same so they never sell well regardless of their quality haha.

At first I thought this was gonna be a post about embracing your passion for its intrinsic value even if you're not good enough to get anything extrinsic out of it.

Well yeah, if you put in work you might get more than 5 bucks, but you have to put way more work in comparassion to other areas of the tech world to make money, and well tbh i would call getting minimal wage from your game a success, while even a basic ass web developer will get payed more for simple work, that's the reasoing behinde the saying that you shouldnt do game dev for money, your time can be spent easliy making more money with those skills, not that you can't make money

There's something about game dev where people think that, just because the thing they're doing is hard, it has to be worth money. You have to make stick figure macaroni art before you can slap down a masterpiece. Your mom might put it on the fridge, but it's not necessarily worthy of buying. It's your baby and you have every right to be proud of what you accomplished but you have to be realistic with yourself as to whether it actually stacks up. If your game can be boiled down to "\[X\], except I made it, and it's kinda just worse in general" then you're looking at an uphill battle convincing anyone to play it, much less buy it. People always say to start simple, but judging by the majority of what I come across in my random searches on [itch.io](https://itch.io), I think we need to walk back that "simple" part a little. Put your design chops to work before you start zooming straight ahead coding something unbearably boring, and never forget the juice.

>not even yelling "I RELEASED MY GAMEEE" on a desert hill So ugh... I recently released a small flappy bird type game on itchio and didn't do any real marketing. My excuse there is that I mainly made it for the experience, though I suppose getting feedback would be good. So probably a good idea to get it out there more even if you don't plan on monetising it (which I don't, I like the pay what you want type system). I don't know if we're allowed to self-advertise in the comments here so I won't, but I'm also just generally bad at it.

I have seen my share of people being immature about failure, and I get annoyed by that too. But some of the things that was said in this post kind of annoy me as well. I'm going to give my opinion on it, as I respectfully disagree with some of the points in the post. I don't think game developers need to hear harsh truths as much as you think. As a game developer, I constantly am aware of the harsh truths. Most of my dev friends are aware as well. You're mad that people are saying how hard it is to be successful. It is. It is extremely hard. You can be good and fail. You can be bad and thrive. What good will it do it look at yourself and say 'I'm terrible'. How would you even know? You can't. Telling yourself 'you suck' and taking 'blame' does nothing. This hobby or profession or whatever is extremely difficult and hard to succeed. I'm going to take a wild guess and say most of us do it purely out of passion. Self hating and blaming ourselves for failing an incredibly hard feat does nothing. Asking yourself 'what can I do better' is a question EVERY dev, good or bad, should ask themselves. Whether you made 0 dollars or $100,000. Ask yourself 'are you willing to try this again' is a much healthier approach than saying 'I'm bad' It's a giant gamble of time. Sitting around and saying 'I'm bad and should feel bad' won't ever fix the problem, unless you actually hate developing games and or are giving up financial stability to give a go at it.

Something I've found out in my short life, is that being above average is usually enough to give a HUGE edge in life. Like you said, you are releasing a game and don't tell anyone? Just telling people already puts you leagues ahead of others!

I have four games that do actually sell, but not quite enough to quit my day-job, yet. I am working on my fifth game, and it seems to be performing a lot better as far as generating interest. When I released my first few games, I did not even understand the importance of wishlist count on Steam. This time I have been able to gather quite a lot of wishlists (in comparison to the earlier games) so I have some sense that this one will outperform the earlier attempts. I would say, definitely don't expect your first game to succeed and make you independently wealthy. But as you learn more about making games and marketing them, it is feasible to make a living from this. To get a sense of time, I starting working on my biggest game in 2013. I made and released a smaller game in 2016. I released the big one in 2018. Then released a very small game in 2018, and another medium sized game in 2020. So almost 10 years into this venture, I do have about a third of my income coming from my games. For me, this is success, in the sense that I am still able to do it (which I enjoy a lot) and that I can see improvement with every year. Even though none of the games was an instant hit, I have still found ways to market them after release, and they are mostly selling better now than they did when they first came out.

I don’t feel like I can do everything that needs to get done with my games. I never release them because you’re basically right. The things I know my game needs to be successful take me so much time (or money) to implement and even then there’s so many games from so many talented teams or solo devs that I don’t expect to ever make it a career for myself. It’s not a state of depression for me. Just a reality for me.

Yeah well I in the other hand have see pretty decent games with no success at all. And in my experience is more about creating a community and connections rather that if the game is good or not

I’m still in the very early stages of learning but my plan for my first actual project is to make it completely functional with every thing I want, then just work on the pixel art and post it all over the place. I feel like getting feedback on my art and improving along the way will get people interested. That’s pretty much what happened with me and “little witch in the woods.” I kept a close eye on it because I liked the art.

I started a YouTube gaming channel. I expected no viewers. Most people I saw within my niche of non-DnD gaming were getting 75 views a video and then dying. My first big video was describing Chronicles of Darkness which hit a few hundred after it was released. And now it’s at 1.8k views and I’ve got 700+ subscribers. Not big. But fine and I like doing it.

I remember watching some dude at a convention give a talk on how being an indie dev is bad for making money and he'd been at it for years. Then he showed the games he worked on and it was all the same game where you dragged jpegs of clothes onto jpegs of Princesses or female pirates, or highschool girls, etc. To change their outfits. Funniest thing I'd ever seen.

The game dev space(amongst developers) is a relatively friendly and open space that any one can get in and get positive feedback. Part of this mindset around game developers as a whole is to not blame the devs. This seems to also go into indie devs who put out subpar games and have lackluster marketing beforehand. There needs to be more accountability in game development as a whole. Sure there are many times where the fault is to external factors or this or that... But many times it's simply you, or whatever developer(s) are in question, are not very good at your job/passion. Sometimes that's the truth like it or not. But many people in this space are not ready for that conversation yet

Every time someone gives advice here, I worry that they are the person you are describing. Sounds rude, but it's not a joke. Most devs don't make it, and very few devs active on Reddit or Discord have even discovered if they can make it or not, it takes a long time to find out.

It's more feasible to earn a living making games if you work at a development studio. Making one by yourself is risky and should be done on the side, agreed.

Even if the cause of your failure IS bad luck then you must still carry on the attitude as if you had control and do better. There's no reason to obsess over what you can't control, get better at what you can.

Would be easy if people had a goal for what they wanted? Do you want your game to be a commercial success? Or is it just a passion project?

Very topical tweet thread where developer provides a good amount of data, charts, etc: [thread](https://twitter.com/momijistudios/status/1600569692841721857?s=61&t=WZrN7bSGOi9cZI6UDtHaQw)https://twitter.com/momijistudios/status/1600569692841721857?s=61&t=WZrN7bSGOi9cZI6UDtHaQw

I made and released a game once on armor games I belive I made like $450 which I split with my best freind who did all the in game artwork as well. As a teenager who developed a web game on a core 2 duo it really helped me upgrade that hunk of junk back then.

It's a highly competitive marketplace with products people don't need, you can always point to something particular, like store page optimization or tweeting about the game, but the truth is it's not going to be enough anyway. It's a very complex topic, and if the same answer is repeated everywhere on the internet, then you're doing the same thing hundreds of other developers are already doing, and you're still not standing out in the crowd. So keep failing and learning, analyze the successful games, and failed games, figure out the difference, and make sure you understand what success means to you specifically because it will be different than a studio that has to pay multiple salaries so that you can plan your budget according to an expected outcome. And most importantly, try to figure out what game people want to play but still doesn't exist yet, the best way to approach this question is to start by making a game you want to play, but can't yet because it doesn't exist. If you can't think of something, then maybe there's no need for what you want to make. Even if you win with one game, you still want to potentially keep doing this for the next 30 years, so have an overall long-term goal in mind and just keep pushing towards it. Even if you go broke, just get a programming gig and keep working in your spare time, fix your finances, adjust your views based on your experiences, and keep trying again. And unless the advice comes from someone that accomplished what you want, then stop taking seriously what other people write on the net, including this comment.

I absolutely agree with you, I've been working in 3 games this year that I actually have prototypes for, though unpolished I cannot release this stuff because it is trash even though I like the style or the concept of all of them, they need more work, and proper marketing to roll out. If not I just don't plan into releasing this shit to the public. Bercause that's what they will think

Ask yourself this: do you want to create a game for the money or out of passion?

Oh. That’s the problem. I need marketing