The Indie World, Post-Minecraft

Posted by Rampant Coyote on September 15, 2014

Unless we’re all victims of the most epic troll of gaming history – or the deal suddenly turns sour before the contracts are all signed (and it may be too late for that), it’s official – Minecraft and its studio Mojang are being sold to Microsoft for $2.5 billion. Which – is mind boggling. Utterly mind-boggling.

You can read some general information from Mojang here – Yes, We’re Being Sold to Microsoft.

And from Notch himself – I’m Leaving Mojang

I think Notch’s personal comments struck me the hardest. Here’s a small indie guy who made games for the love of games, and making them. And he found a role thrust upon him. Of course, for millions of dollars, one can deal with a great deal of additional pressures. But after a point – no. I get it. At least as far as someone who has never been rich can get it. But I have been poor enough to know that how some days it feels like money will solve everything, and then comfortably middle-class (and friends with some relatively wealthy folks) for long enough to know that it won’t.

But here’s the biggie. After so much money, Minecraft really wasn’t an “indie” game anymore. After this sale, it definitely won’t be an indie game anymore. And we’re living in a world where a game started in some guy’s apartment as a solo effort for a few months managed to make a truly obscene amount of money, to the point where it was sold for $2.5 billion dollars to one of the biggest companies in the world. And let’s get real here – it’s Minecraft that’s being bought / sold here. With a support team. The rest of Mojang is an afterthought – or, to be more charitable, icing on the cake.

Nobody believes this sort of thing is typical, but the fact that it’s proven to be achievable may drive some very strange thought. I remember several years ago when new people would constantly ask (and I was one of them, at first…), “how much money can you make with an indie game?” The answer was never satisfying, because it was like answering, “How long is a piece of string?”

Today, the answer to the question of what you can theoretically make with a single indie game is roughly $2.5 billion. Plus the millions made up to this point.

The thing is – and new game developers often don’t get this – it’s not a linear scale. You can’t make a game that’s half as good as Minecraft and expect half that kind of return. At this stage in the game, you can’t make a game that’s ten times as good as Minecraft and expect half that kind of return.  You can’t make a business plan out of these kinds of stories, any more than you can “invest” in a metal detector expecting to find millions in buried gold coins in your backyard. Sure, it’s been known to happen. But the odds are against you, and it’s not like there’s a prize for being a runner-up.

My feeling is that this is the climax of the so-called “indie bubble.” Maybe there’ll be a lot of johnny-come-latelies who finally figured out that there was a gold rush going on, and cluelessly believe they can achieve Minecraft success levels if only they spend enough money marketing.

But what it really does for me is put the final period on this chapter of game development history. Towards the end of the last decade, I would ask, “Is this the ‘Year of the Indie’?” – Whatever that meant. I couldn’t really tell until the year was over. I think around 2007 or 2008 marked when I thought indie gaming finally gained some real traction, beyond the “casual game” space.  And of course, with mobile – particularly the early success of the iPhone – things just exploded. But that’s died out now, and anybody piling on because of this Minecraft peak is probably going to experience disappointment.

I guess my new question is, “What now?” Of course, if I could answer that question, I’d probably be rich. Maybe we’ll get one more surge of Minecraft wannabes. Maybe – after this last surge, we’ll get something approaching maturity and sanity. I dunno.

Filed Under: Biz, Indie Evangelism - Comments: 7 Comments to Read



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