A Terrible Time to Be a Game-Maker?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 3, 2013

Jeff Tunnell, who has been making games since I was a wee lad, and has been indie for more than a decade, weighs in on the complications of being a game developer in the current marketplace:

“We Can’t Make It Here Anymore”

The guy has forgotten more about making games than I’ve ever known, so I am not one to argue with him even if I was so inclined.

This makes me glad I’m in kind of a niche, though I think Frayed Knights 1 might have been a little too niche. Everyone is chasing the “everyone” market, it seems, and it’s really, really hard to stand out. But then, even if you stand out from the crowd, potential customers can still have a tough time finding you… even if they are looking you…

Is there a solution to this? Tunnell proposes one – one that I think Steam is currently pursuing as either an addition to or replacement for the Greenlight system. But basically we’re talking about decentralization again, when the current cycle seems to be back to centralization again. Give it a couple of years…

It’s not like the PC is that much better. I don’t know the numbers, but it is arguably even worse. It’s incredibly hard to measure because things are definitely not so centralized, but if you include web-based game and DLC for popular games, I’d imagine the PC isn’t too far behind the mobile platforms in daily releases. And we’ve got quite the backlog of legacy games going back to the DOS era. With emulators making it possible to play old games on new hardware, the PC was a saturated platform a decade ago, and gets more so every day. And I’ve kinda quoted the pundits calling it a “dying” platform, but I mainly mean that in jest – I think game sales on the PC – if you include all the available data (again, nothing’s centralized) – broke records again in 2012. It’s just no longer “booming.”

If the new consoles provide good opportunities for indies, then there’ll be a round of new opportunities — for a little while.

I guess it’s just gotta be about staying out there, staying loud, getting noticed, and pushing the crap out of your game. That’s tough. Maybe for some people it comes naturally, but I’m not one of them. I love talking about my game, but I’m not great about climbing onto the rooftops with a megaphone and broadcasting my presence.

If history is a reliable indicator, the boom and saturation that we’re experiencing now will be followed by a contraction and consolidation which pundits will call a “bust” and even suggest that things are “dying.” Which will really mean the rate of growth has dramatically slowed, preceded by a dip.

Yeah, it may be a tough time to be a game developer. But I think that’s pretty much the norm.

Challenges notwithstanding, you know what’s cool?

BEING a gamer. Right now. I’ve heard arguments that the term “gamer” is becoming outdated, like “movie-goer” or “TV viewer.” Maybe it’s adequate to explain what you are doing at the moment, but we’re entering an era where just about everybody in developed nations plays video games… if only rounds of Solitaire or Sodoku. If you are patient (and especially if you factor in inflation over the years), games are cheaper and more plentiful than ever before, with even greater variety and quality. As someone who was lamenting the state of the industry several years ago, this is a welcome change.

Filed Under: Game Development - Comments: 13 Comments to Read

OttoMoBiehl said,

In a way today’s game industry reminds me of pre-crash, early 80s game industry. Back when making a buck was easy so everybody and their brother was making a game. (Remember the games for the Atari 2600 from Kool-Aid and Purina Dog Chow?) That seems to be happening again now. So much money to be made in the mobile, free to play area that shovelware is becoming too common.

One of the problems when an industry becomes so saturated like this is there is soooooo much “noise” that trying to get our own product noticed is very, very hard. It’s hard to tell the quality titles from the shovelware. I figure it’s a matter of time before the whole industry collapses in on itself again and shakes out the bad companies. Anyway, hindsight tells me that. (to an extent)

I think the smartest thing to do would be the exact opposite of what everybody else is doing. If it were me I’d develop a niche product for a niche gaming system and develop a community around that. A dystopian-steampunk-SciFi- RPG exclusively for Linux anybody? 😉
Jeff Tunnell said,

It is strange that we have more people playing games on more platforms than ever before, plus we have amazing development tools, yet it is getting harder to make a living making games. I have always compared the games business to the music business, and I still think that is a fair comparison. Think about music. It is ubiquitous, almost like air. I listen to it every day, but I can’t remember the last time I bought any. Mobile games are starting to feel like that. There are so many that I can’t really care about any of them.

Darn, I’m not trying to be a downer. I’m just trying to figure it out.

Niche games for niche audiences is certainly one way of going about it, and that is what we are doing at Spotkin.
Anon said,

> “I think Frayed Knights 1 might have been a little too niche.”

and

“I love talking about my game, but I’m not great about climbing onto the rooftops with a megaphone and broadcasting my presence.”

You *do* see the problem here, don’t you? 😉

And is FK1 really too niche? It’s not that there aren’t other fantasy CRPG with “retro designs”(*) out there like the Eschalon series or Legend of Grimrock that seem to be doing well.

Maybe it’s time to forget about getting on Steam for the moment and try to get into one of the better indie bundles?

(*): It’s quite debatable how retro these games really are but it seems to me that anything that doesn’t resemble either Skyrim or Final Fantasy is being called retro today.
Felix said,

I think the question in the title is disingenuous. People are making more games than ever, due to ubiquitous, easy to use tools and widely-available knowledge. If you just want to create, this is the best time ever, and things will only get better.

The problem is if your main goal is to make money from games (or music, comics, whatever; it’s the same issue). Precisely because so many people create, the competition is enormous, and making money from selling copies just doesn’t work anymore.

But that only means that you need to find other ways. To hate this age of abundance is misguided in too many ways.
Rampant Coyote said,

I don’t see why you’d call the title disingenuous. It asks the question. My answer is certainly, “No, but…” and it seems like Jeff’s is, too. But you’ll certainly get some doom & gloom in some circles. The market is glutted – pretty much across the board. Great news for gamers, but it makes it a very nasty challenge for developers. Even if you are just trying to release your game for *free*, and have it played, you have a tough row to hoe. Getting noticed is a problem no matter what.

So yeah, the factors all play into each other. Some parts are better than ever, some tougher than ever.
Felix said,

I don’t see why you’d call the title disingenuous.

Because it equates making games with making money from games. Sorry I used a strong word.
McTeddy said,

Making money from games IS being a professional game developer. If so many good people have to quit the industry because they can’t afford to put food on the table… this is a sad time to be a dev.
Rampant Coyote said,

And like I said – if you only intend you game to be played by a few personal friends, fine. But even if you are just releasing a game for absolutely free – it’s really, really hard to get noticed. An unplayed game is not a success.

Unless you are Jason Rohrer, I guess, and wanna bury it in the desert…
Anon said,

“An unplayed game is not a success.”

Depends.

If a hobbyist is able to release a game – even if nobody plays it – it is probably a success just because he was able to finish it. At least I would be happy 😉

If an industry veteran finishes his very own game and is able to sell a few copies it could be a success.
If the number of sales is less than he expected he may be disappointed and the game therefore not be a success.

It’s all relative, I guess.

One thing is clear, though, if the gaming world is even big enough to support a game developer like Rohrer then not everything is lost…
Rampant Coyote said,

True dat.
GhanBuriGhan said,

His example also shows how problematic that $1 mentality on the Appstore is. If 50.000 sales mean that a developer can barely survive on Ramen Noodles, maybe that should tell us something…
alanm said,

Call me a cynic, but where he sees a problem with the distribution mechanism, I see a problem with his business model.

I have no idea of the actual numbers, but he mentions “billions” of devices and “hundreds of thousands” of apps. Well then: if there are a billion buyers and one hundred thousand products, and purchases are spread evenly between them all (as he seems to desire from the app stores), then that’s 10000 sales for every app, multiplied by the average number of apps each buyer buys. Obviously this math is simplistic, but you see what I mean. If 50000 sales (his example) is a problem… well surely it’s not an unexpected one?

I see an over-saturated market where the differentiators aren’t product quality or development effort, but some combination of effective marketing, addictive game mechanics and “viral” hype that we don’t fully understand yet. You might as well play the Lotto as pin your hopes on making it big on mobile games.
MalcolmM said,

As far as searching through games published on Steam to find ones I would like, I have no problem doing this. I just got back from a two week vacation and there were about 15 to 20 new games, and this was a busy two weeks for releases. I went through all the games in the genres I like to determine which ones I will eventually buy.

I don’t have an ios device, but I can tell by looking at the apple store that there are far to many releases for me to keep track of all of them. I would have to rely on reviews, and there are far to many of those as well.

The problem with Steam is not that there are too many released games. The problem is with how Steam decides on which games to release, lots of really good games never make it to Steam. I agree that allowing store fronts to be setup through Steam would help a lot.