Should I Become An Indie Game Developer?
"Should I Become an indie game developer?" I see this question a lot, posted on forums, sent to me in emails, and so forth. This is one of those questions for which the only answer can be found within the asker's own head, like, "Should I start my own business?", "Should I finish my degree?", or "Should I ask ______ to marry me?"

I think most people who ask this question (or one like it) are really asking, "Will I be successful at it, and how painful will it be?"

Well... going by historical precedent, the answers are, "No, and as painful as you want to make it."

Or as Steve Taylor of Ninjabee (developers of Outpost Kaloki, and now my day-job) once put it after getting his first royalty check from a major casual games portal:

"I now have an opinion on how to properly get involved in the downloadable games market:

Don't."

What?!? Why Won't I Succeed?
The forums of game development sites like GarageGames.com, rpgdx.net, and gamedev.net are filled with excited posters filled with great ideas and desires, enthusiastically reciting the reasons their upcoming game will be the best thing since sliced bread. Something like 95% of these posters dissapear after a few more excited posts about their progress (and often, some calls for help).

Of the remainder, many of these end up doing poorly as a commercial release. Small hobbyist games often end up selling less than 100 copies during their entire lifetime (many sell fewer than a dozen). More professional "casual" games will often cost around $20k - $50k to produce these days (figure 3 guys working 2-4 months). Yet Brian Fisher of ArcadeTown.com estimates that around 70% of these professionally-produced casual games end up making less than $10,000 across all of their distribution options (multiple portals, perhaps the developer's own website, and retail store releases) and the entire lifetime of the game. It doesn't take a math genius to realize that's a losing proposition. Of the 30% or so that do better than that, the majority are making somewhere around break-even.

Phil Steinmeyer posted a similar view a few months ago. A long-time "core" game developer now gone indie doing casual games, Phil has earned his understanding of the biz through personal experience.

What Is Your Threshold of Pain?
I've known many aspiring indie game developers who decided to "burn their ships," quit their day job and jump into full-time indie status. Many don't make it, and exhaust themselves and their savings trying. They invest whole-heartedly in the classes provided by the School of Hard Knocks.

Even among the more cautious developers, the amount of effort that has to go into even a small, simple game is usually pretty significant. It is not a trivial medium to work with. Even a very simple game is going to require an investment of hundreds of hours to make it remotely commercial-quality.

It's a crapload of work. And it's not all fun. In fact, much of it isn't. It's hours spent debugging code, making proposals that never pan out, figuring out why X doesn't have Y done yet when someone else is depending on it, creating code or content that gets cut from the final game, dealing with playtest comments that make you feel like the entire game is broken and something horribly less than fun, polishing, fixing, polishing, signing contracts, polishing, trying to make a candidate release at 4:00 in the morning and finding out that one asset was left out, and polishing.

So In Summary...
Take a look at some of the sales numbers over at GameProducer.net. Not just the top-selling ones, but also the ones that sell only a few dozen or a few hundred copies.

Indie or mainstream, computer and video games are a saturated enough market now that it's a stupidly hard way to make money. It's a lot of work, and lousy odds. It's not worth it. It's like the lottery - a tax on the mathematically challenged. You'll work very hard and waste a big chunk of your life creating something that is going to only lose you money.

Come to think of it, I'd have made more money working as a fry chef at Burger King than the hours I put into Void War.

That's it, the pure mathematical simplicity of it.

And that's all I have to say about that.



There's nothing more to see here.





The question is all answered. I'm just hanging out, here. See ya!





The Real Answer
Are you still with me? Okay. Now that we've scared away the wusses, here's the real answer. If you are still reading this, you already have your answer. You've probably already made up your mind, but you are looking for justification.

In college, a friend of mine started up a Game Development club. This was shortly before I graduated, so I was only able to attend a few sessions before I found myself not only out of school, but working in the game industry. But at the club, we talked about game programming, had little mini-lectures on the latest and greatest graphics or AI trick, and shared what little tidbits we had about the games business. There were about three of us who were pretty hardcore (and we were all working on demos in our spare time), but everyone there seemed excited and talked about the possibility of getting a job in the videogame industry on graduation.

A couple of years later, SingleTrac was hiring, and they tapped me to try and hunt down some of my college contacts to bring in for interviews. I went through my old phone directory and called a bunch of the guys who were in that game development club. Here was their chance for the dream job!

Much to my surprise, most weren't interested. Sure, they all would love to be involved in game development, get their name in credits, and talk game design. But the money wasn't so great, and it was a lot of really hard work, and so it just wasn't worth it to them. Except the three hardcore members - and mysteriously, we were already working in the videogame industry.

It felt to me that those who really wanted it were already making it happen, and those who were content to wait for Opportunity to knock just let it knock until it went away. Not that they were wrong or lazy to do so --- I know several of them were hard workers in jobs they really enjoyed. It's just that they had their priorities elsewhere. Creating games for a living was cool and something they wouldn't MIND doing, but it wasn't a passion.

And that made all the difference.

It's Not About Beating The Odds
Steve Pavlina recently wrote an article entitled, "What Are the Odds of Becoming a Black Belt?" In fact, he even mentions the sample question, "What are my odds of succeeding as an indie game developer?" During his years as a successful indie, I've no doubt he was asked that many times. The article goes into great length, but the upshot is that success at these kinds of things is a matter of personal choice and commitment, not luck.

Jeff Tunnell, founder of Dynamix and GarageGames, is fond of providing the advice to aspiring indie developers: "Don't quit your day job." Last year he expounded on this a little bit in his article on "Five Foundational Steps to Surviving As A Game Developer." His final step is persistance... to keep working at it. He says, "Every game brings you more opportunity, your company brand grows, your niche audience grows. Then, suddenly, you are making enough money that you are doing this full time. It IS your day job, and nobody can take it away from you."

Steve Taylor, the guy who said the best way to get involved in the downloadable games market was "don't," talked to me about his emphasis on downloadable games when he interviewed me to come work for him at NinjaBee. He told me he'd be perfectly happy spending the rest of his career creating small, downloadable games. Why the change in heart from late 2004? Well, in spite of his frustrations, he stuck with it. New opportunities arose, and he took advantage of them... principally related to the opportunity to do downloadable console games for the XBox 360.

And stories abound of more "exceptions." Cliff Harris (Positech Games), Amanda Fitch (Amaranth), Andy Shatz (Pocketwatch Games), and a host of successful casual game developers. In a few cases, like Andy's, they had reasonable win right off the bat (enough for Andy to be looking for full-time employees now, though he also had previous industry experience). But in many of the cases, it took time and multiple titles.

Desire, Commitment, and Persistence
The common thread with all these stories is that they have desire to do it anyway in spire of the odds, a real commitment to making it work, and the persistence to keep hacking away at it. To them, the absence of immediate success isn't failure. And except for Steve Pavlina (who is now entirely out of the games business), they are still at it. Even what other people might call "success" is just part of the process. It's just one more milestone. Last I heard, Amanda's still working the day job and making games in her spare time.

In spite of my cautions to the contrary, I'm constantly encouraging people to go indie. If you are passionate about games, and have the creative bug to make them, there's nothing to stop you. Take it up as a hobby to begin with. Expect to take some time to learn the ropes. Don't expect to turn out the next "Doom" in your basement in four months. Sure, it could happen, but don't pin your hopes on it.

Like they say, it's the journey, not the destination.

Now, my indie game company isn't really a major success by most standards. It's a side business, and it is making extremely modest profits: not enough to live on, but enough to allow me to buy some tools, content packs, and ... yeah - GAMES! - on a regular basis. I've seen it grow substantially in the last year, which has been a major thrill ride (up from "losing money each month" last January). So in some ways, I guess I'm still paying my dues, but in others I feel pretty successful (and climbing!)

Starting a business, creating something of value to others (even if it's "only" entertainment), having players call you up asking you how they get past the harpies - it's addictive. It's awesome. I can't say I love every minute of it, and some days I wonder if I have the ability to stick with it with all of the other priorities in my life. But I can't imagine giving it up! I can't even imagine "retiring" one day. I imagine I'll still be cranking out games on my home computer (with the USB holodeck or something).


If THAT is the sort of thing that would make it worthwhile to you, and if are willing and able to weather the really horribly boring / painful parts, then the answer to the question is: Absolutely. What are you waiting for?


(Vaguely) related mindless wordage:
* How Do I Get Past The Harpies?
* Losing Your Limits Without Losing Your Mind
* How To Avoid Making Money Making Indie Games
* Is $42,000 All You Can Make With Indie Games?
* Living the Dream

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Labels: Biz, Indie Evangelism, productivity

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