Did I just waste 3 years? - <AUTHOR> https://infinitroid.com/blog/posts/did_i_just_waste_3_years <comment><USER16> Game industry is the economics of superstars.

The Macroeconomics of Superstars[1]

>Abstract

>Recent technological changes have transformed an increasing number of sectors of the economy into so-called superstars sectors, in which a small number of entrepreneurs or professionals distribute their output widely to the rest of the economy. Examples include the high-tech sector, sports, the music industry, management, fnance, etc. As a result, these superstars reap enormous rewards, whereas the rest of the workforce lags behind. We describe superstars as arising from digital innovations, whicih replace a fraction of the tasks in production with information technology that requires a fxed cost but can be reproduced at zero marginal cost. This generates a form of increasing returns to scale. To the extent that the digital innovations are excludable, it also provides the innovator with market power. Our paper studies the implications of superstar technologies for factor shares, for inequality and for the effciency properties of the superstar economy.

[1] The Macroeconomics of Superstars, Anton Korinek Johns Hopkins and NBER, Ding Xuan Ng Johns Hopkins, November 2017 [https://www.imf.org/~/media/Files/Conferences/2017-stats- for...](https://www.imf.org/~/media/Files/Conferences/2017-stats- forum/session-3-korinek.ashx)

[2] The Economics of Superstars The American Economic Review , Vol. 71, No. 5. (Dec., 1981), pp. 845-858. [http://www.uvm.edu/pdodds/files/papers/others/1981/rosen1981...](http://www.uvm.edu/pdodds/files/papers/others/1981/rosen1981a.pdf)

<comment><USER17> Yes. At this point, recommending that a 9-5 programmer quit their job to work on an indie game is equivalent to suggesting a PR writer quit their job to write the next Great American Novel.

<comment><USER18> It was always like that though. Game programming had always been the worst field for programmers, and the industry had and is exploiting the fact that some people like games enough to work on them under horrible conditions.

I don't think it's the equivalent to writing the great American novel though, because programming is just a minor part of game creating and arguably one of the least important. Design I'd the most important.

The author of this article rants about the swarm of unity games, but some of those unity games are better than what the author made exactly because they took design seriously.

<comment><USER19> > The author of this article rants about the swarm of unity games, but some of > those unity games are better than what the author made exactly because they > took design seriously.

Did we read the same article?

 _Not only the total number of games, but the rate of their release seems to be geometrically increasing! Holy crap. And while many of them are Unity shovelware, etc., many are polished games that a lot of effort went into. A tiny percentage are hits, but most are forgotten in the deluge._

To me that reads as someone that's fully aware that some people are putting a lot of effort in and making good games (Unity or not), but is upset by the realization that quality doesn't seem to be nearly enough. The problem is not (just) that a lot of crap is being released, but that a lot of _everything_ is being released, good and bad. So much so that even the good things can't make good money because supply has so far outstripped demand.

It's sort of like the Netflix queue problem. I'm continuously adding things to my Netflix queue that look interesting, but my time to actually watch them is such that my chance of getting through even a majority of the queue is almost nil.

<comment><USER18> To me it reads as someone who disregards unity games, while praising well made indie games in general. And in the light of the rest of the article, the author seem to favor people who did good programming, but the truth is that you don't need to be a good programmer to make good games.

I think supply is an issue, but I also think the author added to the problem by releasing a game that doesn't have appealing graphics, gameplay or sound. Where as many much of the unity "shovelware" is exactly the opposite.

<comment><USER20> Shovelware typically does not have "appealing graphics, gameplay or sound". It is term used for low effort games and imply nothing special in all aspects.

<comment><USER21> Shovelware can have appealing graphics and sound by way of licensing premade assets, but you can't really buy a game design and paste that into your own title to get appealing gameplay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> After being active in the indie game dev scene for many years I see this kind of story again and again. I see many people ask why didn't it work or others say he should have done better marketing. I think they all don't understand the real problem.

You have to look at really successful indie games, such as Terraria, Factorio, Mini Metro, Stardew Valley, Darkest Dungeon, Papers Please.. and there are many more. If you look at these games do you really think there is an alternative reality where they would not sell many copies? I don't.

And if you have a good look at them you should realize that they all are extremely polished and coherent. None of them has realistic AAA graphics but they still look good. None of them is just a "copy" of an existing game. They either bring something totally new or bring something known but with a greater overall quality.

Then you have successful niche games such as Cogmind or the Zachtronics games. They still have the mentioned properties but also target only a subset of players where there are not many games. I think that makes them guaranteed sales.

Now what's wrong with all the stories about failed games? They all are generic. They don't offer something special. And this is what doesn't work in a saturated games market. And I'm not saying the authors didn't work enough. They just don't see what's wrong with their games and continue on their path to demise.

I guess what I'm saying is: to make a successful game you don't need to be the greatest coder or greatest artist. But you need to understand what makes a game great and enjoyable.

Maybe the days (years) will come where I finally will make a (bigger) game of my own and maybe I will totally fail like many have. Maybe I will revoke everything I said here but today this is my opinion. :)

<comment><USER23> >You have to look at really successful indie games, such as Terraria, Factorio, Mini Metro, Stardew Valley, Darkest Dungeon, Papers Please.. and there are many more. If you look at these games do you really think there is an alternative reality where they would not sell many copies? I don't.

Very much yes.

Most of their success is due to being fortunate enough to get a bunch of coverage. From screenshots, most aren't very spectacular. Stardew Valley takes the formula of an existing series (Harvest Moon). Papers Please is a truly unique game that was lucky enough to get youtuber coverage. Plenty of equally unique and just as fun games are ignored. I've never heard of Factorio, but looking it up, it's graphically very unappealing. Maybe my opinion would change if I watched a playthrough of it, but it doesn't stand out. Mini Metro might be fun. But so are many of the hundreds of other minimalistic puzzlers released monthly.

There are loads of games that just don't sell but become classics decades later. Earthbound sold horribly in America until the main character appeared in a more popular series (Super Smash Bros). Almost nobody played Killer 7. Panzer Dragoon Saga is considered one of the best RPGs of all time. Nobody bought it. Its popularity mostly grew after people discovered it through emulation.

The game in this article flopped because there are an abundance of games, it falls into an overcrowded genre, and it doesn't stand out, but most importantly, nobody important played it. If pewdiepie played this, it'd see 10000+ sales in a week and likely appear in a humble bundle.

To make a successful anything, it's 90% marketing, 5% quality, and 5% luck. If the right person finds your product and endorses it, quality doesn't matter. You'll get guaranteed sales. It's then that it takes quality to sustain those sales.

<comment><USER24> > To make a successful anything, it's 90% marketing, 5% quality, and 5% luck

This seems very logical but indie games really do seem to defy this general rule. Pretty much every single popular indie game out there is really, really good in it's own specific way, and most of them had almost no marketing budget (when they first came out anyway).

Minecraft had no marketing. Terraria had no marketing. Stardew Valley had no marketing. These games spread through word of mouth and quality is the main criteria that causes people to talk about a game.

<comment><USER23> >Minecraft had no marketing. Terraria had no marketing. Stardew Valley had no marketing.

Nope, nope, and nope.

Stardew Valley has a notable indie publisher. There was marketing on various internet communities (reddit, 4chan, etc) leading up to the months of release. There it can pass off as organic word of mouth. Terraria was marketed months before release. As for Minecraft, Notch himself was throwing his game around a load before it got released and using anonymity to drive interest--it was the most organic of the 3.

Other notable indie games like Hotline Miami and Super Meat Boy also had especially significant marketing efforts behind them. And let's not forget Fez.

Most indie breakout hits aren't miracle successes. The just have very clever and modern marketing methods. They're not wasting money on magazine ads and gaming news sites banners like AAA studios do.

<comment><USER25> Super Meat Boy had the backing of the xBox store (they were promised a feature page release) and several major gaming websites/magazines wrote pre-release articles or reviews for it ... plus they got the tail end too with The Indie Game movie which I'm sure added some later sales numbers for Meat Boy, Fez and Braid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> You made the mistake of thinking that anyone would care how many hours you spent optimizing some C++ function that does something already solved a hundred times in a hundred different game engines. It's a natural tendency for all programmers. But making a game in 2018 is far more of a creative endeavor than anything to do with programming really. You need a massive amount of top notch artwork, music, 3D modelling, shader effects, SFX, etc. to have a polished nice looking game. That takes either superhuman talent or a large team of specialized people beyond yourself.

<comment><USER27> Minecraft.

<comment><USER28> GP is completely wrong on their last assertion. You do not _need_ AAA quality to make it as a game dev. But citing Minecraft reinforces their first assertion.

Minecraft was an underrepresented genre, released early, with an (accidentally) excellent marketing technique. Above all, the code is an atrocious, unoptimized Java pile of crap (Yeah, I used to be into Minecraft dev in the early days).

It's the best proof you can give that "making a game [...] is far more of a creative endeavor than anything to do with programming".

<comment><USER29> SDV is another example; the author himself admitted on numerous occasions that the code is, well, _not stellar_ , and in the community we also had some fun reading through decompilations of the parts of the game.

Yet another proof would be surprising number of very games made in tools like GameMaker - think Nuclear Throne, or Cook Serve Delicious. I actually took a peek at the sources of the latter (they were distributed with some Humble Bundle once), and it's... reinforcing this point.

<comment><USER30> Yes, many programmers get lost discussing what programming language to use, GC or not, which 3D API to use, instead of what actually matters, gameplay, design, graphics, audio.

I always advise indies to attend local meetups from game design schools, to learn about what actually matters when making a game.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> What is the target market for the game? I played Metroid when I was a kid on NES and the original gameboy.

Games these days are a lot about marketing and huge budgets. The indie ones that do well need to be targeted as well as refreshing.

Some hard thoughts just watching the video and reading a bit about the game:

1\. I don't really like the graphics as much as I liked the original Metroid. This is probably just a personal preference.

2\. It mostly screams low quality "Metroid clone" and not something cool I'd tell my friends about.

3\. Procedurally generated levels doesn't sell me. I don't really care.

That said totally not a waste of time. It shows you have the wits to bring something to market and the ability to ship. You coded the whole damn thing which is insanely involved. This is no small feat. However the market is generally the hardest critic and it doesn't matter how many hours you spent or how many lines and bugs you solved.

<comment><USER32> I consider myself as a big fan of Metroidvanias, I'm even the kind of person who actively looks for new games in this genre, and those were my thoughts as well.

I would even say that this game manages to hit the 3 points in which I avoid on a Metroidvania:

1\. Rogue-like. I really dislike rogue-like, no special reason, just a personal preference

2\. Lack of a plot. I appreciate the feeling of exploring a world the feels alive, even if it's a very simple one. Going through levels for the sake of going through them, it's not much of a fun experience to me.

3\. Huge resemblance to the original Metroid. If I wanted to play Metroid... I would be playing Metroid.

Also... no Linux version? Really? That excludes me entirely from this game.

<comment><USER33> #1 and #2 are strongly related. Procedural generation makes it much harder to create a sense of a coherent world, rather than a series of disconnected mini- games.

<comment><USER34> The Binding of Isaac seems to trike a good balance, if you're into that sort of thing.

<comment><USER35> You're reaching

<comment><USER34> What does that mean?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Dear all,

I am the guy who shares this post on Hacker News. First and foremost, I wanna said that I am NOT the original author of the blog. Also, I am NOT advertising for the original author. As a software developer in Hong Kong, I am researching articles about game dev and find this interesting case. Therefore, I just wanna share on HN.

The discussion about this blog is really overwhelming. I hope that everybody can learn a lesson from this article. In my personal opinion, from a business perspective, I think to develop a hyper-casual game will have a higher probability of getting commercial success. However, from a more personal perspective, it is very difficult for a game developer to avoid the temptation of spending years to develop a hardcore game. I just wanna say: Game is the modern art form of the 21st century. So if we consider game developer as an artist, you will understand why he struggles about his artwork.

Anyway, I hope that everybody can earn something from this post. I read through all the comments and learn a lot. Thanks.

<comment><USER36> Please don't take offense: Just FYI, 'wanna' is a contraction of 'want to,' so writing 'wanna to' is redundant.

<comment><USER37> Please do don't take offense: Just FYI, calling out random strangers on the internet for improper or redundant grammar is a waste of your time and theirs.

<comment><USER38> It depends. Personally I'm happy to have my grammar corrected, as long as it's done with good intentions. Perhaps I'm in the minority. I do normally avoid correcting others though, since it's difficult to tell whether someone will be receptive (or offended).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> To be a successful indie dev, you need to take an auteur approach: have a singular vision, create a unique aesthetic, and possess a fundamental understanding of the medium (gameplay). You also need to be able to balance all of these qualities with the resources you have at your disposal. If you have a great story, but no gameplay, you shouldn't be making a game. If you have an aesthetic, but can't implement it correctly, you're going to need to pay for assets one way or another. If your gameplay is merely a rehash of something old, you better have some twist to the other elements that makes it stand out. And all of this doesn't guarantee success, merely gets you to the baseline where you can be successful. Being good at programming is probably the least important skill in game development unless your idea is so innovative that you will need complex systems without precedence.

You need marketable differentiation.

Also make sure your game appeals to furries. That's where the real money is in indie game dev.

<comment><USER40> woah, that certainly took a turn. not that i think it's wrong , just a humorously abrupt shift.

<comment><USER41> It's kind of funny how true it is. I think development shut down but there was an erotic furry Pokemon-like game in development that was pulling in like $35k a month on Patreon. There is definitely a market there.

<comment><USER42> There's a lesson to be learned too. Stop making games for the general public. There are too many people trying to reach everyone.

You won't be Minecraft, but you won't waste 3 years for $30 either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Yes. You did. Sadly.

And it is very little to do with luck or numbers or the state of the industry.

Good indie games:

1\. are almost never distinguished by programming (the days of Doom are gone and you are not John Carmack). Far too much time is spent coding. Use existing tools. Code only gameplay.

2\. are much more about art. The trailer looks like programmer art: no coherent style, no direction, no class. If this is what you produce. You need a collaborator.

3\. are even more about feel. Your character movement is janky. Jumping is floaty. Shooting feels flaccid. There is little sense of gravity, inertia or impact. If it isn't fun to move around a single screen, it's not fun.

4\. need a hook. There is almost nothing original about this game. You've got about 10 seconds to hook me. (10 seconds into the trailer you cut to a mostly empty UI.) Find the wow. And zealously focus on it.

5\. need to be polished. Ambient animation. Consistent sound effects. Screen shake. Lighting. Particles. UI. These are implemented. But none of them particularly well. And they don't tie together into a whole.

6\. need to be marketed. Someone needs to be working on that.

7\. needs to catch (or create) a zeitgeist. So many features of this game shout '2014' to me.

8\. needs a bit of luck. But beware! The converse is very rarely true. If your game isn't successful, it is probably _not_ because you were unlucky. The game probably wasn't very good. Don't spend your time trying to find alternative explanations. Be brutal with yourself. In game terms, git gud.

So this is harsh I know. I'm sorry. But frank. I've been in the industry for more than 20 years. 99.9% of games fail horribly. But 99.9% of them are not very good. This has absolutely always been the case. It's just that the 'fail point' used to be the publisher pitch. Now you don't need a publisher, you get to fail in public.

So yes three years have been ...um... call it learning. I suggest you do more jams. Figure out what it takes to win. Find a game artist. Use tools. Build prototypes. And start to build a community.

<comment><USER44> About your number one: I see lots of programmers putting too much thought (and time) into code. As if the code was the important part of anything.

I am a programmer, and I have this PSA for others: Your code is just a necessary evil, not something to be praised and cherished. No customer sees your code, no customer __cares __about the code.

<comment><USER45> It kinda feels like the effort is directed improperly. If graphics programming and tens of thousands of lines of C++ code is your passion, you probably would be better suited to working your way into some of the major gaming framework's shops.

There's definitely a unicorn quality to a developer who wants to work at the framework level. Unfortunately, there isn't really room for Yet Another Gaming Framework. That said, my personal experience is that it's hard to find people who are passionate about working at that level.

Me personally, if I ever did break into the Gaming Industry it would 100% be at the framework level. Transformation matricies, graphics pipelines, shaders, and all that low level stuff interests me way more and plays well to my strengths.

Making an "Indie Game" that stands out is well beyond my skill set. Grinding my life away for next to no money in a non-stop death march to hit a AAA studio exec's deadlines just seems a way to destroy my marriage and mental health.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> He doesn't mention how many hours he spent marketing it. I suspect not that many. I fully sympathize with his struggle, but this is a trap most programmers fall into so easily. Market need/fit > Marketing > Design > Programming when it comes to software products. You can't just build it and expect that they will come, unfortunately.

<comment><USER47> Its not necessarily marketing in the sense of A/B testing his game play or fictional background or artwork or whatever, but consider general user experience stuff.

So I hear its a cool rogue-like but unlike the fifty indie rogue-likes I have languishing unplayed in my steam account already, I can play this one in the browser, whoa cool, technically impressive and maybe fun too.

So I go to the web page expecting a slither.io like experience where I'll be playing in 10 seconds.

And there's too many choices. First its a wall of text I can already be playing slither.io before I figure out what to do here in a RPG-adventure-IRL sense. Second there's confusion I should click on "Update Try it now on the play page" or the button "Join early access to play the game" or the tab labeled "Play Game" or down in the text its got a hyperlink to "play online" in the "play online, in-browser" section. Or they're different or the same or cognitive load thats un necessary. Is one link free and one link paid, or they all go to the same place but I better check them all first?

Then the choice confusion continues. I click on one of many widgets to get to the same place, "join early access". No I don't want to join I want to play. And more decision problems crop up, I can pay $7.50 for the free steam key (huh?) or there's a note from Luke that I can skip the payment section and get an account anyway wonder if it comes with a steam key or not what if I change my mind this is all so confusing and I want to make in-game decisions not the second page between me and the game experience. And the page is full of three ways to pay or its also free or the steam key is free or what all is going on here why am I stopping to research this and why am I researching instead of playing. I got a tab open with slither.io to make this stream of consciousness post and its calling to me... What if I don't like it and want my money back what if I make a free acct and later decide to toss some cash in its just all so overly complicated.

There is another interesting impedance bump where there' three federated ways to pay, via amazon, paypal, or stripe CC, which is convenient, I'm not complaining at all. The point is just above that there is no federated login or account generation at all; I have to provide my email for harvesting (come on, I know Luke is a good guy, but I've been on the internet for longer than most kids have been alive; I know better than to provide my email address "for free" it ain't 1990 anymore so say hi to firstname.lastname@example.com). Then I need to create yet another username and password to forget because there's no federation. I must have created over a thousand logins in the last couple decades; tired. You integrated three payment processors how about one-click login via google / FB / whatevs.

After all this uphill battle in the user acquisition phase, the tab with slither.io is beckoning to me...

Note that I'm exclusively complaining about the new user acquisition process; everything else is pretty cool! Its just a lot of work and cognitive load to get to play compared to the competition in the market (the fifty unplayed indie roguelikes in my steam account, or .io style instant casual web games)

My constructive suggestion: One page one click login via federated accts and don't forget "click here to play as anonymous coward" then in the UI "click here to sign up or give us piles of cash". The competition can get them playing in one click and 10 seconds...

Interesting marketing mechanic that some might say is evil, whatevs, in game while playing as "anonymous coward" click here to have a federated account (play with your facebook or google acct) and get a minor in-game reward for signing up. Not so ridiculous that people claim its cheaty, but something at least amusing or an in-game joke or something making it a trade in users minds.

Don't give people a chance to think about doing something else while they're trying to decode the onboarding process. Low friction is where its at.

Think of the "S" in SOLID the single responsibility principle, don't make new users ponder if they're paying for something (what, a free steam key?) or joining a club forum or playing a game or whatnot. Give the new user exactly one single responsibility "play the game". Later on, buddy up with "membership" or "gimmie money" but get them into the game first.

Looks like a fun game, once you get into it. Cool!

<comment><USER48> This is exactly why I fell off of the aquisition pipeline as well. I actually went looking to find out what the game was about. Cool, a play now link! Err...I'm not playing yet and there's a barrier to entry and lots of text and nah! Back to HN.

Put up some screenshots, even a game play video, give me the short version and let me get playing.

Edit: went back and found the screenshots on the home page, so apologies for missing that. Though missing them was quite easy, perhaps consider putting others on some of the play now pages, etc

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> 'Infinitroid is a roguelike (or rogue-lite) sci-fi platformer with procedurally generated levels and deeply customizable weapons"

The problem is that the "roguelike" "metrovania" "platformer" genre is oversaturated with so many indie games, so if you're going to grab some money with it it's better gotta be absolutely perfect. From my first impression I don't know if the mechanics are solid, but the art and sound seems too... generic? Maybe if the game had some unique style in it (and some marketing too) it shouldn't have bombed this much...

<comment><USER50> This is _a_ problem, but it's not _the_ problem honestly. Every game that fails, there's something about it that people can point to as obviously why it failed. And just about every game that succeeds, also has something about that they could have pointed out as why it failed, had it failed.

Some games are so unpolished or uninspired that they were never going to succeed, but always picking apart "why it failed" makes people think that "if I just do x and y and z, my game will succeed!" Which right now honestly just isn't true; there's too much luck and random chance involved (plus of course other concrete factors like marketing effort etc).

The next argument is usually "well, then why don't I see really good games that aren't successful?" A few years ago that was a sort of reasonable argument, but there are plenty of great and unsuccessful games on Steam now. They just don't show up anywhere.

<comment><USER51> On the other hand, sometimes it's very much not chance. Take stardew valley. It's not like Barone hit some sort of jackpot with his game. It really is head and shoulders above the competition, and that appears to be entirely due to his hard work on it. My evidence for this is that after I played Stardew Valley I was thirsty for more similar farming games, so I played or looked at every single one on steam (there's only about a dozen or so that qualify) and none of them are half the game that stardew valley is. If there were some diamond in the rough, stardew valley-quality game out there that through happenstance never went viral I would have hoped to find it, but no, there really isn't.

<comment><USER50> I just had a look myself.

The first one I see is "Fantasy Farming: Orange Season"[1]. Looks very similar to Stardew Valley, review average is 96% positive, but it only has 61 reviews (a good general indicator of sales) vs Stardew Valley's 86,000.

I'm sure it's probably not _as_ good as Stardew Valley, but one has probably 1400x the sales of the other.

It did also release _after_ Stardew Valley which is a problem. You can certainly benefit from being a first to fill a niche that people are missing. I wonder if the Stardew Valley dev had taken another year to release and Fantasy Farming had released first, if things would be the same.

[1] [https://store.steampowered.com/app/416000/Fantasy_Farming_Or...](https://store.steampowered.com/app/416000/Fantasy_Farming_Orange_Season/)

<comment><USER52> It's also immediately obvious that it's just an RPG Maker game with very little effort put in to conceal that fact. RPG Maker games generally don't do well, because 99% of them are garbage, and those that aren't go to great lengths to distinguish themselves visually, like Yume Nikki, and I don't know if that title ever was a commercial success.

<comment><USER50> Nevertheless its review score average is equal to Stardew Valley's. Although I concede that people's expectations may be lower when buying this game, and that may make them less likely to leave a negative review.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> > I'm kinda floundering right now and not really sure what to do

        release it
        focus on marketing for a while
        Treat it as a purely hobby project
        Make it into an ethical game experiment
        pour a lot more time in, improve graphics and music, add more levels and variety

As someone who's gone through this, put years into a software startup, nearly had it fail completely after spending a lot of my own money to keep the family afloat while I goofed around thinking I was building something great...

I feel like there is only one right answer here, and it's just glaringly obvious. Marketing is the thing that needed doing before starting, during the project, and after it's done. Regardless of the trends on Steam, in fact even more so because of the trends on Steam. None of the other options will solve the problem. Releasing it won't help, and making an ethical experiment won't get anywhere without an audience. Pouring more time into graphics will result in greater loss without first gaining an audience.

<comment><USER54> Find someone who is good at marketing and believes in your game enough to get 30% of all revenue in exchange for marketing it. In other words, find a business partner with a clue.

<comment><USER55> I initially dismissed this advice. However, when i thought a bit deeper, it makes a lot of sense to do this.

If you can't convince somebody to market your game, how can you convince somebody to buy it from you directly?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> I wrote this controversial tweet on the matter a while back (embedded here for convenience [1], controversial because it uses averages!) Which might make things seem more or less bleak depending on your perspective, but an important note from this data is that the 2017 median sales were about 2000 units per game (yikes).

[1] [https://twitter.com/gavanw/status/967249172804943872](https://twitter.com/gavanw/status/967249172804943872)

Average number of units sold per game on steam by year (note many games have long tails)

      2004 - 11.6m

      2005 - <USER2>

      2006 - <USER3>

      2007 - <USER4>

      2008 - <USER5>

      2009 - <USER6>

      2010 - <USER7>

      2011 - <USER8>

      2012 - <USER9>

      2013 - <USER10>

      2014 - <USER11>

      2015 - <USER12>

      2016 - <USER13>

      2017 - <USER14>

<comment><USER57> You are looking at lifetime sales of games that have been on sale for different periods of time. All of these should be divided by number of years of sales, which gives you:

2017: 49k, 2016: 36k, 2015: 37k, 2014: 39k

2013: 120k, 2012: 89k, 2011: 73k, 2010: 48k

2009: 35k, 2008: 27k, 2007: 75k, 2006: 48k

2005: 43k, 2004: (this really just means Half-Life 2 and Counterstrike): 820k

With the sales normalized by year, and noting that 2004 did not actually allow third party games on sale, there is not an appreciable drop or trend across the entire time range.. I suspect the crazy spike in 2013 can be attributed entirely to Dota2 and 2012, Counterstrike Global Offensive causing mean skew.

<comment><USER58> Isn't mean probably very, very skewed for this?

Median would be much more interesting.

<comment><USER56> median would definitely be better. As noted, median for 2017 was 2k units sold per game, but I lost the rest of that data. Regardless, average still carries some meaning. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> I have some sympathy, having made an indie game that gave a return of about £0.07/hour. Sold a few thousand copies, learnt a lot, made a lot of friends and had a lot of fun, but it certainly wasn't a great financial decision. And that was 10 years ago when it was a lot easier!

Games industry is like the music industry - if you do it for anything other than the love, you're likely to be disappointed. Your chances of 'making it' are astronomically small.

</comment><comment><USER60> I learned this painful lesson 8 years ago indirectly, working a mobile app studio. The app store, like games and music are superstar markets and the vast majority will fail, even if you've spent 3000 hours on it.

That what makes stardew valley so crazy, because the %99 outcome of someone who works like him is failure and wasting 3-4 years of your life.

At this point, I would do the 'test if there is demand method' before seriously making a game. You make a MVP of a game, as a hobby, promote it a bit and then commence with marketing it with a kickstarter or patreon. If it gains enough traction, then you commence working on it seriously, otherwise stop or keep it as a pure hobby. Once your done release the full version for free or a nominal price. Add time release tiers for early access and so on to incentivize subscribing and supporting.

This probably means for games you need to do a whole bunch of art first more than programming.

<comment><USER61> Obviously, you've never made a game before. 'test if there is demand method' does not work for games.

<comment><USER60> Isn't that pretty much the early access model? I've seen indie games started that were mostly incomplete, started getting patreon / kickstarter traction and then fully developed over a few years. There are enough counterexamples out there to prove that it does work.

No traction? Then abandon the project.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> I used to think that making money was extremely easy. You can make an App, a website, a YouTube channel, etc. How absolutely naive I was. Turns out it's very hard to convince people to pay you.

I adopted a different strategy later on. I try to make things that I use myself. So if it turns out no one else uses it, at least my effort doesn't go to waste. My Android App is now sitting at 10+ downloads but I made peace with it fairly easily since I use the App myself twice a day.

<comment><USER63> What is the app?

<comment><USER62> It's a very simple App which helps you memorize and learn items using Spaced Repetition.

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nerfsoftwa...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nerfsoftware.memrep&hl=en_US)

<comment><USER64> Your app gets me figuring that it would be nice for a dictionary app to have a feature that, after you look up some word a second time (indicating it's not a rare one), adds it to the "to memorize" list and trigger the notification mechanism you wrote.

Also wondering if support for memorizing equations would be straightforward.

<comment><USER62> Thanks for your feedback. I would say that for the first use case, unless the "memorizing" feature is built in to the dictionary app, it's hard to do it automatically. You could use the OS's "Share" feature to manually add the word to the memory app.

I'm actually looking into displaying math equations. There are libraries out there so should be pretty straightforward.

<comment><USER64> Thanks for your opinion on this. I use Mac's built-in dictionary quite often. Guess the system provides some way to catch the look-up event, though then I also need to think about the notification part. Anyways spaced repetition sounds like a simple idea that could do the trick. The point of doing it automatically in the vocab learning (for foreign languages) case is so that you don't need to decide whether you've search a word before.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Poking around the guy's website [0], I'm not surprised his sales are so dismal- it's a very earnest description of a project its developer obviously likes, but which he describes in terms of other, pre-existing games and game- styles (e.g., metroidvania, roguelike, procedurally generated, crafting, etc)... which reads as "a mashup of other games you've already played." The one differentiating bit, that it's a metroidvanian roguelike that _can be played in the browser_ is buried a ways down the page (after a paragraph about how skillfully it's coded- good on you, but players don't care.)

If he really wants a commercial success, my guess is that he would be well advised to make a concerted, well-advertised run at the in-browser gaming market, and try to find ways to monetize that (likely by scummy micro- transactions.) His chances still wouldn't be _good_ , but perhaps better. (Getting on the front page of HN is a pretty good tactic too, though. : ) )

[0] Well, I spent about ten seconds reading the site's front page, but that's probably more than most of his hits did.

<comment><USER66> The play-in-the-browser bit should absolutely be his selling point, maybe pay- what-you-want. I've always got an eye out for browser shooters where, idk if there's a gaming term for it, you can walk into a corner and then step away from the keyboard and not get killed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> Hi, my name is Ivan and I made [https://www.Photopea.com](https://www.Photopea.com) . After the first 7 000 hours of work, I made $0.

Now (after about 10 000 hours of work), Photopea is used by one million of people every month, and I have a decent income just from ads, even without working on it.

<comment><USER61> Great stuff, sometimes it takes to continue when everybody else decides to quit

<comment><USER68> It is very difficult to know when to quit, I've had projects (not gaming) that I pursued for far too long.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> Regardless of sales, this game demonstrates all sorts of wonderful qualities that successful studios are looking for in an employee, and its development was undoubtedly much more educational than any computer science program. It is never wasted time to do what one is passionate about.

<comment><USER70> I am kind of in the same boat doing something different. I do agree you learn a ton more than working for someone else or completing any computer science degree.

But whether companies look for this type of employee, I am unsure that is true. The truth is, most companies look for employees without gaps in their resume. They are looking for signals such as having worked Google or Facebook. They care much less about your startup than most people think. If you don't hit those checkboxes, you are going to have a hard time looking for a job.

<comment><USER71> I work at a AAA games studio and if this guy came to us with nothing else on his resume but this game he would definitely get a chance.

I mean, in terms of chances in the industry - I got in by completing a 4 year CS degree. If he gets in by spending 3 years building his own game then I'd say it was worth it.

<comment><USER70> That's great, but would you say its industry wide? Because I have also heard (non-gaming) the exact opposite. Also, would he get through HR? They are more often than not, the real gatekeepers. It would require someone to vouch for him personally to go through, and that isn't very scalable when applying for jobs.

<comment><USER72> Hiring in both gaming and non-gaming is about your resume, phone screen, and interview. The first two are gating factors for the interview. The interview is how the actual decision is made. References are of much less significance, often go unchecked, and are usually focused on simply confirming the truthiness of your resume.

If you spent 3 years of your life working on a game, it's not a gap on your resume. In fact, it's the shining achievement on your resume, and it should get you that phone screen. If you can't tell a good story about hard work and technology mastery from that experience, your problem isn't an HR department, it's that you don't know how to write a resume.

<comment><USER73> Yes and no. You are still at a disadvantaged even if you write a good resume. As an HR, when I need to fill a job, I search my existing database for candidates. I input keywords such as Unity3d, Unreal Engine, UI, etc. If I know another AAA studio has a specific department with those skillset, I input that studio name (disadvantage #1).

Let's say the candidate pool comes back with 30+ results. I will only interview 10 candidates realistically because I have other jobs to fill too. I will rank those candidates by experience and background. People that work at existing AAA studios always goes on top of the pile because I know their chances of filling the job is much higher (disadvantage #2). If there are more than 10 candidates from AAA studios, then too bad for you. Indie game developers goes to the bottom pile unless their skill set matches exactly what I need. Even then, he/ she is an unknown, for the simple reason, they might exaggerate their experience and AAA studios can guarantee the candidates quality.

As an HR, I need to meet quotas. And I have only so many hours to spend per day interviewing candidates. Each candidate takes an hour. Interviewing an indie game developer takes more time because I need to make sure he know his stuff. If I keep on passing indie developers that are not up to par to hiring managers, they will reflect that back to my manager.

<comment><USER74> > Even then, he/ she is an unknown, for the simple reason, they might > exaggerate their experience and AAA studios can guarantee the candidates > quality.

This has not been my experience at all. The opposite, in fact. I briefly did hiring at a medium sized game studio. We preferred to hire indie devs with completed games over those with AAA studio pedigree specifically because we can verify that the indie dev actually built stuff himself. He could provide code when asked and talk intelligently about it.

AAA studio developers couldn't share any code (for obvious reasons) and it can be hard to pin point exactly what they did on any given project. When a studio can put anywhere from 10 to 100 developers on a single project, authorship gets fuzzy.

That said, I would discourage the indie dev in question from pursuing a job in the industry. Why would you jump aboard a sinking ship? 1000 people in the games industry have been axed in the last year alone[0].

[0]: [https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-09-27-more- than-...](https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-09-27-more- than-1-000-jobs-lost-to-studio-closures-over-the-past-year)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> > I got good SAT scores. I'm disciplined, I have a good work ethic, and I love > what I do. I'm a lifelong learner, always evaluating my work and > experimenting with new approaches.

All that and you still believed hard work directly equates to a big pay out. Welcome to the school of hard knocks. Try some different metrics for defining success.

It's not even possible you've entirely wasted 3 years. There's no way you learned nothing or have only created things that could just be used in this project. It's possible you could simply re-skin this thing and make it big the next day. But don't count on it.

</comment><comment><USER76> I went through a similar situation when I created an Indie game studio with friends. We worked for a year and made a cool $5,000 but it was a "failure" by all sense of the word. We learned a lot and had a ton of fun. Some feedback:

Your website is god awful. Seriously.

The copy doesn't excite anyone to play the game

You make the user jump through hoops to play - if you already are writing it off, make it free to play in-browser without Steam (you want traction at all costs right?)

What did you learn?

Did you have friends or a community playing it as you worked on it? If you didn't, then you really need to look at the Lean Methodology

</comment><comment><USER77> If I'm reading it correctly you're considering:

\- call the game finished and walk away now you finished the dev work

\- call the game a hobby to excuse the sales now you finished the dev work

\- code some arbitrary addition to be ethical just to be coding something cause dev work is probably the only work that exists

\- keep iterating cause you can always invent more dev work to do

\- get a different project going for another type of dev work

All of these will successfully waste those 3 years and more if you don't focus on converting your nascent product into income.

<comment><USER78> Don't fall for the sunk cost fallacy. Walking away now might mean throwing away 3 years, but that's still better than working for another 3 years, still not succeeding, and wasting 6 years.

<comment><USER77> If someone has spent 1000 days building their MVP and 0 days establishing market fit it's a terrible time to quit.

<comment><USER79> Realistically they've spent 1,000 days building a pet programming project with little regard to market fit.

<comment><USER80> Yet it would be wise to try to stablish market fit of the toy he has first, before throwing it away and getting another toy to test for fitness.

<comment><USER55> > throwing it away and getting another toy to test for fitness.

how do you know what the opportunity cost of continuing is? It's hard to know either way.

<comment><USER80> Do you know? Does the OP know? Does anybody know?

The OP has a product almost ready on his hands. It should be easy to test it and check if it's worth investing any more time or not.

Throwing it away before he knows, just to go invest his time on another dubious thing doesn't sound wise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> From a marketing standpoint, the game "feels" amateur in the way it's presented ( very insecure narrative, etc )

But when you watch the demo the game itself "seems cool" but in a way that realizes immediately this is Super Mario Bros reinvented.

Also this blog post was from February 2018 and has sat on the Dev Blog "above the fold" for most of this year. It seems like the game has a dark cloud over it.

If something isn't a labor of love, you should end it. But then there's that quote "you cannot excel at something you do not love" ... which seems like the real thing here. It seems excellent in its own ways, just not entirely original or well marketed. So ask why are you doing it and measure by some other metric than sales and usage.

</comment><comment><USER82> Probably late to the party but almost a year ago I had my gamasutra blog post about failing to sell 700 copies of my game, to stay in business, featured on HN.

It's been almost a year since then. I kept updating the game, doing quality of life improvements and actively engaged with the people and reviewers playing it. I also kept people up to date with twitter and talked about the game every chance I had.

Hacker News initial exposure helped me sell about 200 copies and by March I passed my 700 copies goal. Enough to stay in business but, by then, I already moved cross-county and got a few consulting gigs happening.

Almost a year later I have over 4700 copies sold on steam with the total amount of copies sold being around 6000. The game was only recently added to a bundle that added ~1000 copies ("retail activations" are still happening). I'm at a point where I am so grateful for the luck I had after the initial HN exposure that now, one year later, I'm releasing the biggest update ever for the game and I finally got a professional artist to help me upgrade the graphics.

What I want the dev to know is that there's still a chance, but in my case, I already managed to secure enough money from my consulting gigs so updating the game and working on it was done on the side and I could afford to do some more marketing and sink time in it. If you are not financially dependent on the game, keep working on it and slowly build up your fanbase and outreach. Take note of people's feedback and if a common theme occurs maybe do something about it.

Hope you'll end up being happy with your project. If it reaches Steam I'll be your first buyer. On your site, I tried purchasing it via paypal and I cannot get pass the re-captcha. I'm trying to click on the "I'm not a robot" checkbox and nothing is happening. Might want to look into that.

</comment><comment><USER83> Game development always scared me as one of those studies that you hope your kids don't get interested in. Another one is manual drawing, especially when it is Anime (what are the chances that someone from a small European country is going to excel at such a job?).

> Abandoning the game completely doesn't seem like a sane option, after all > the time I put in.

Addictive games use the above cognitive bias to make you keep coming back, trying to level up by grinding boring quests. "You are not done yet, but the end is in sight!".

As a good game dev, in 3 years, you can: Learn TensorFlow. Publish an AI paper. Beat state of the art on a few datasets.

<comment><USER84> >in 3 years, you can: Learn TensorFlow. Publish an AI paper. Beat state of the art on a few datasets.

As a low income indie dev without the academic credentials to get past HR gatekeepers for stable full time work, I can't help but feel studying ML is about as wishful as creating a hit game. I have started studying ML this summer, and although I find the NLP applications really interesting since I have a social science background that exposed me to some literary theory and linguistic ideas that overlap with NLP at times, I think making a living wage doing it is just as much of an unrealistic dream as writing some killer app. The jobs all require PhDs, and the data science competitions have literary thousands of people with PhDs and industry experience competing for five figure prizes. When one is poor with no prospects these kind of pipe dreams feel so good to get caught up in as that sweet haze of hope numbs the critical thinking, but in a clear moment it looks like the ML gold rush is exactly the same as every other tech hype. That's not going to stop me from geeking out on PyTorch and trying to wring sentiment out of blocks of text or whatever, but I won't be able to honestly write a blog post about it in a few years asking if I wasted my time. I already know the answer.

<comment><USER85> Millions of people taking ml courses. Very few get jobs because for every 50 devs you need one data scientist. It's like design but way overhyped. Also from my experiences the ones that get hired are not the best or knowledgeable but the ones with good sales qualities that can continuously bullshit the employer. I'm talking about your average software company not FB/Google. ML is like painting, writing... it's good to know but not to make a career of it

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER86> Sadly, the author apparently mostly wasted his time pursuing an idea he considered good, based mostly on his high opinion of his own experience. Had he tested the idea with neutral, honest people (kids are great), he might not have been so stubborn.

As for the references to "Superstar economics": as if modern superstars in the music or film industry weren't 100% reliant on test audiences... It's why we don't get much original, experimental stuff these days.

</comment><comment><USER87> Its probably hard to see this right now but any code you wrote was not a waste of time. You learned something that will become invaluable two years down the line in another role and probably will boost your salary more than the opportunity cost of washing dishes and thus repay itself every year.

Everyone who tackles a project like this should keep this in mind. Its almost certainly not going to make you immediate money, but you'll learn a lot doing it, and that will repay itself down the line.

I've done this twice to myself and it was hard at the time to watch them fail but I now make $500k+/yr at one of the FAANGs and a lot of that salary I attribute to trying build these things, end to end, myself. I just have a much broader context on the industry, on technical stacks, and on software development than if I hadn't.

So, congrats. :)

</comment><comment><USER88> Well, looking at that youtube demo, although it might be a nice game a lot effort went into, it is nothing conceptually new. I could understand the despair of someone who had an original idea and artistic skill, pulled off a game with unprecedented gameplay and then it didn't float because people didn't get the hang of it. But this game? It is for people who like that kind of games (Metroid inspired games or whatever).

</comment><comment><USER89> The end user doesn't care you hand built your engine out of C and other beautiful technologies. They care if it's fun. Period.

It's looks like way too much time was spent on an engine when off the shelf would have done better.

<comment><USER90> I couldn't agree more. When I read the engine was built in C++ it absolutely knocked me flat.

Why? With perfectly awesome and _free_ technologies like Unity, you're setting yourself up for failure by spending hundred hours putting together something that has already been created for you.

It would allow you to focus on making the best game possible, instead of wasting countless hours re-inventing the wheel.

IMHO, that's the first, and largest, mistake this project made.

Furthermore I agree with others that it simply feels 'uninspired.' Maybe less hours spent on the engine and more spent on the content would've made the game more notable.

<comment><USER91> For what it's worth, it looks like his initial focus was on making a 2D web game. Unity had only just started supporting HTML5 as a target around the time he began, with plenty of rough edges, so it may not have been an obvious good choice then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER92> Market is EXTEMELY saturated for many genres. Metroidvania games are one of the most saturated right now. Feel bad for the guy, but I think he should take his existing tech and experiment with different game modes, or game mutators and see if he can discover some cool experiences that will make his game stand out from the crowd. I'm not saying this will guarantee success, but staying the course on such a saturated genre and not doing something radically different seems like a bad strategy.

</comment><comment><USER93> Not sure what OP's background is, but if he's not in the tech industry and wrote a complex C++ game engine, plus a website with Flask+SQL on his own, I'd say he has a potential career as a software developer there.

<comment><USER90> Sure.

But why did he do that to start? Seems like focusing time on the content instead of the engine would've made him feel like he 'wasted' less time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER94> Here's what a publisher is for: to shoulder the risk. They have (presumably) umpteen different games (or whatever they're publishing) going, not only they can (if they do they job right) shoulder a few flops, and can hire marketing staff that wouldn't make sense for a single project. They can, finally, hire PR that would shield the developers from the public angry over the framerate or presence of women or something.

And yes, they haven't been doing their job right, they had too much power, they played it too safe and mistreated the developers.

But instead of supporting game developers who wanted to unionise, instead of supporting social projects (like basic income!) that would reduce the risk an independent takes, we asked people to go indie, and just shoulder that entire risk themselves. Good job, everyone!

</comment><comment><USER95> Ugh. This is the depressing side of the huge wave of indie dev / maker / game creators that has been on the rise in the past few years.

The creativity from everyone is great on the building side, but on the marketing and traction side, there can always be bad luck, like this example.

I think a lot of consumers are just fatigued from too many options - <USER15> about how much of instagram and facebook is ads vs what it used to be, even back in like 2010.

</comment><comment><USER96> Yes.

You are only asking to have people point out possibilities that you didn't.

But in your heart of hearts, you know you did.

That doesn't mean you didn't have fun. I suspect you need to revisit what 'waste' really is for you though.

</comment><comment><USER97> having worked in the ad business... a conversion rate of 1 in 1,000 of in- market people is fairly standard. having zero sales with just over one thousand visitors is not surprising at all _especially_ if you consider that a good percentage of those people probably aren't in-market for your particular game anyway.

You need _way_ more visitors to have any clue if your efforts are resonating with your potential market or not.

</comment><comment><USER98> I think the biggest problem with this game is the lack of atmosphere and story. In 201X it's not about the pixels and latencies, it's about the creative part.

The nearest "success" example I can think of is Jets-and-Guns [1]. The guys that made the game partnered with an indie 8-bit rock band that wrote the soundtrack specifically for the game. The story is full of parodies on common cliches and silly jokes that made me replay the game several times.

There's a bunch of other successful indie games in other markets and unless it offers a radically new addictive gameplay (say Minecraft), it has to be about the story. Stardew valley, Papers Please, you name it. Unfortunately, this title simply lacks both of them and is hence doomed to fail.

P.S. It shouldn't take 3 years to find out the lack of product/market fit. There's a funny saying that if you are not ashamed of the v1.0 of your product, you have released it too late. This 100% applies here. Release it with just 1 level based on a commodity game engine, gather feedback, decide onward based on it. Anything more than a couple of months is just wrong if you are doing it for the first time as a 1-person project, IMHO.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEnHolPt8zw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEnHolPt8zw)

</comment><comment><USER99> I'd have started this blog post with links to the game, the game title plus cool screenshots.

<comment><USER90> I completely agree - the lack of screenshots in the article was almost as strange as hearing the author wrote their own engine.

Furthermore, a simple Google of the game reveals very, very few results. As others have stated, nothing markets itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER100> I don't mean to poopoo how hard it is to succeed as an indie game maker now, but I can barely find /any/ press or information about the game when I search for it. It's rarely enough to just build something and cross your fingers, especially in a saturated market.

Coding heads down without any marketing or validation (like selling early release steam copies) and hoping it'll see viral growth is a mistake, for both startups and indie games.

<comment><USER101> Also from this page it simultaneously says the game is free and asks me for money [https://infinitroid.com/new_account](https://infinitroid.com/new_account)

Also doesn't have any screen shots, info about the game, etc

It's actually hostile to someone coming across the page trying to check out the game

Edit it's possible the note about "You can skip the payment section below" was literally just added

</comment></comment><comment><USER102> > I've had a lot of fun building and sharing the game. But I did have some > hope of creating something that a lot of people would check out and enjoy, > and making some return on my time investment, perhaps enough to keep doing > this as an independent career.

I wrote a video course on Amazon Machine Learning [0]. I spent about 80 hours researching, writing the outline, putting together the material, recording and re-recording the 105 minute course. I think I've made about $200 from it, directly.

But, I've done several talks on it (which were non paying, but sharpened my presentation skills), wrote half a book on it, and got one consulting opportunity around it. I also got a bit of schwag from AWS because someone noticed my forum contributions, which was cool.

If everything you do is a hit, you aren't taking enough risks. However, I will say that 2600 hours without market validation is far more commitment than I would make.

0: [http://www.mooreds.com/wordpress/amazon-machine- learning](http://www.mooreds.com/wordpress/amazon-machine-learning)

</comment><comment><USER103> Whats the equivalent of testing your business idea before building a business in the gaming world ?

<comment><USER104> Releasing a basic game with the same mechanics/concepts before expanding on it through updates?

Well, that seems to be how many multiplayer games are released nowadays anyway. Look at ARMS or Mario Tennis Aces on the Nintendo Switch, or Pokemon GO, or Sea of Thieves* on Xbox. Released in very basic states, then slowly expanded upon via regular updates. You could even possibly say Minecraft went the same way.

That said, this sort of 'Minimum Viable Game' idea may not work as well here as it does for business products or web services. People are practically spoilt for choice when it comes to what games to buy, and a game that leaves an initial 'meh' impression (due to a lack of content/replay value) can often die out before the updates ever come. And the critics will certainly not be kind to it either...

* Admittedly, that one took four years to develop, which may not have been the best setup given the lack of content.

Other ways this is sometimes done are:

1\. By releasing demos on a regular basis to test the waters 2\. Splitting the game up into episodes and selling them one at a time. Valve did this with Half Life, but it was arguably TellTale Games who ran with it. 3\. Or by running a beta test for the game and gauging reactions from that.

Of course, all the above assumes you can build at least a somewhat sizable portion of the game in a reasonable timeframe. If you want to know whether a completely untested idea will be viable... well good luck with that in this industry. You'll always need at least a core gameplay loop setup to know whether the idea is fun, and you'll need much more if you want to know whether anyone will buy it.

<comment><USER103> Looking at the industry they also have the approach of announcing or teasing things which then never get build. So thats probably a way big companies test too

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER105> If anyone wants to try this without making a login: justchecking/justchecking

Personally I played about two rooms and then got bored. It sure is a tribute to Metroid. With weird, floaty jumping (did Metroid have that? I never played that one very much.). And tiny, dark graphics. Plus I was playing it on the keyboard and not fullscreened which never helps.

</comment><comment><USER106> > I have a backlog of dozens of purchased-but-never-played Steam games picked > up at ridiculously low prices from Humble Bundles, Steam sales, etc. Does > the world need any more games at this point?

When I started to find myself with half a dozen of such games, I remembered the year we spent saving money with my brothers to buy a hard copy of Caesar 3. I was just a child. It costed us what would now be 15€. Considering the inflation since then, games were quite expensive.

So, I've decided to stop buying games in those promotions and having games in my library that I will never play. I prefer paying the full price for a game I really want to play, like before. I think it's more honest to the developers. Whether that will mean more money to them in average I don't know. Does someone know if the developers/editors really benefit from the sales on HumbleBundle and the like (the prices really look pretty low)?

</comment><comment><USER107> >> Does the world need any more games at this point?

It's like asking if the world needs another pop song or pizza joint. There's always room for the next great game and another good place to get a pie.

</comment><comment><USER108> Are you making this to sell as a fun game, or as something you'd put into a portfolio to advertise yourself to employers?

If you're trying to sell games, your site focuses on all the wrong things.

1) I need a reason to want to play. Some games present themselves as a challenge to overcome (e.g. Volgarr the Viking, Dustforce), while others have some kind of interesting narrative or world to explore (e.g. Metroid/Binding of Isaac.) Some games promise comedy (e.g. Enter the Gungeon.) I can't tell what your hook is. Weapon customization and survival are fine game mechanics, but they're not a reason for me to want to play all by themselves.

2) Artistic theme. Games that age well have a cohesive look-and-feel. My initial impression of your game's theme is "asset store default." Maybe you didn't use an asset store, but that certainly is my first impression

3) When I hear "procedurally generated exploration" I have a negative reaction. It is incredibly difficult to do well, and when done any way other than well, it becomes boring and repetitive almost immediately. On your site, I am given no reason to believe it was done well.

These three things, taken together, mean that I probably wouldn't play your game even if it were offered to me for free with no strings attached.

</comment><comment><USER109> There's something I see as a mistake that people do over and over. There are fundamentally two markets you can target: niche or popular. The niche market is small but under-served and so it's much easier to stand out, but your potential market is limited. The popular market is huge, but it also tends to be over-served. You need to really stand out. It's going to require much more to be able to compete, but if you do manage to compete then your potential market is enormous.

Metroidvania and roguelike are two of the most crowded markets. And they're full of very good games that can be had for a few bucks. Competing here means you need something that really stands out. This, by contrast, seems very genetic and lacks the production values that can help mask an otherwise generic product. For instance this [1] is a metroidvania roguelike that can be had for about $4 on a sale (and is a great game as an aside). That's what you're competing against.

I think it makes more sense to aim for niche. And there's also the nice outlier that occasionally proves that niche wasn't really niche at all.

[1] - [https://store.steampowered.com/app/252030/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/252030/)

</comment><comment><USER110> congrats you made it to number 2 on hn - I'm sure your revenue just went up a lot. The game actually looks pretty cool. I echo the price and platform. It looks like it would appeal to a fairly casual gaming category with a lower price. I'd pay a couple bucks but 7 or 8 seems high but I don't do gaming off of my phone so this game would appeal to me but isn't targeted toward a platform that I use.

</comment><comment><USER111> Couple of things came to mind from reading this. First if your latest game doesn't sell despite past successes, you might have bungled your marketing, namely company branding. Most AAA game developers heavily invest in this, because if gamers like their current game, they might be interested for the next one, but only if they know who you are, not just your games. Consumers in games industry work just the same as they do in every other industry, indies just seem to think that because core gamers know who they are and engage with them, that the average consumer does too, but they don't.

Second one was that quote about lack of interest from games media. They do work as gate keepers, and most of them are heavily advertising driven, so the problem here is the same as above, indies suffer because they don't have marketing budgets. When the industry grows so large that it has to start attracting casuals, that always means spending marketing dollars, and indie industry has grown and saturated the core gamer group through, and casual interest just isn't there without marketing.

</comment><comment><USER112> That's why addressing a smaller market can be useful. Release your game for Linux and engage with Linux gaming community. You are more likely to be noticed.

Here is an interesting article about it: [http://cheesetalks.net/proton-linux- gaming-history.php](http://cheesetalks.net/proton-linux-gaming-history.php)

</comment><comment><USER113> In terms of wasting your time, I think it's only a waste of time if you perceive it to be a waste of time. If you had fun developing the game, then I wouldn't beat yourself up over it. Simply because, as you've noticed, releasing a successful game is in general very difficult! The odds are not in your favor. I'm also developing an Indie Game (Ninja Turdle), and will release it to steam but have pretty low expectations on any success. I'm just doing it for fun, with the extra hopes that it could make some extra cash, but if not, oh well, I will have accomplished one of my life goals of releasing a video game. If no one buys your game but you still want to get it out there, maybe just wait another half year or so, and release it as freeware, Then at least people still get to enjoy your game. That in itself is a very rewarding feeling.

Great job on the game, the videos look very smooth and I will be sure to give it a play!

</comment><comment><USER114> Reading this makes me think of all the indie app developers building educational mobile apps. Most of them are parents with the best of intentions. Maybe they started off building an app for their kids. Maybe they saw a need at their local school and decided to fill it. Maybe they themselves always wished for their particular app and decided to build it.

The vast majority of them eventually burn out and leave the field or take on a day job to supplant their income. A small number sell their apps to a larger publisher or get hired by a larger company. And very very very few break through that barrier to generate self-sufficient income, much less growing profits.

They have many of the same business challenges of indie game developers too, it seems. Too many alternatives/competitors, distribution challenges, marketing challenges, lack of differentiation, etc.

I suppose the same could be said for indie developers in many other verticals too.

</comment><comment><USER115> That's from back in February but more recently others have been saying similar things:

[https://www.polygon.com/2018/9/28/17911372/there-are-too- man...](https://www.polygon.com/2018/9/28/17911372/there-are-too-many-video- games-what-now-indiepocalypse)

</comment><comment><USER116> If you released a game with no market research and under the naive expectation that "if you build it, they will come", you likely learned a very painful lesson.

There needs to be a market for what you're writing, you need to find and reach out to this market, and you need to entice them by providing more value than the spare $X they have in their pocket (plus, you need to communicate this so that they realize this).

You also need to realize that small differences in quality can lead to huge differences in interest, ESPECIALLY given how "copycat" your game seems appears from the homepage. If your game is only 1% worse than the other game I'm interested in, I'll probably give the other game 100% of my free gaming time (others may not be so extreme, but you get the idea).

Marketing/sales folks exist for a reason. You just figured out why.

</comment><comment><USER117> If you look at successful entrepreneurs (or basically anyone who has gone the less ordinary path and reached some level of success), you'll usually see a list of failure or at least non-successes prior to the success you see them enjoying today. Same goes for artists and entertainers who become "overnight successes". It wasn't overnight for them!

So you've done good work and gotten not the return you expected... it might take one more game or 10 more games. Or this game might lead you to meeting people that can help you be more successful in the future.

It's ok to "give up" and move on too. You can stay the course and probably eventually become successful, but if you have other interesting things to do and less interest in continuing gamedev, then go try something new.

</comment><comment><USER118> Most of the modern games I have played have no replayibility, very limited in scope and on top of that archaic buisness models.

I understand that it is very hard to make games and 100 times harder to make good games. There must be a sane method for decent compensation waiting to be thought out I hope

</comment><comment><USER119> You sort of did. Depends on what you expect.

You got half decent at a whole bunch of skills, which you can reapply. I'd say it was equal to going to a school for this, but not an exceptional school. It's a start, and it's a toolset.

Me and my brother make games. I do a brainstormy intuitive thing, and he builds stuff brick by brick. He has a tendency to decide things like 'I will build an Asteroids', build the skeleton of such a thing (with all the effort going into code elegance) and not have anywhere to go from there. I have a tendency to have wild exciting-sounding ideas, implement about a quarter of them, and end up with something that's certainly not like anything else, but isn't necessarily FUN or even a game.

I think I have a slightly higher chance of breaking through into the realm of 'making an actual game', but it hasn't really happened yet and may never happen. Even if it did, there wouldn't be money in it. I'm just not that good a designer, though I AM a sort of nascent designer. Plus, I'm too devoted to open source these days and that would likely be a handicap to market adoption; if nobody else can get rich off it either then it ain't gonna be a hit.

To make a hit thing you have to be able to see how exploitative third parties can get rich off you, and then let them do it and hope you get a cut (or some publicity).

I think the future isn't creative (insofar as popular hit products). It's basically focus-grouped artificial blandness and knock-offs consuming the market, and will not go back (occasional fluke successes will doubtless happen)

The future is learning how to manage these creative exploits as communication, perhaps to a very small audience for whom they're specially crafted. You'll be a craft beer or a hand made cheese. You have nothing to do with the market as we know it, it's all about what manner of distribution you can function under at the scale you will forever remain.

So who did you get to know in that three years? Did you form a community, perhaps of other game makers?

</comment><comment><USER120> 7672 games released in a year still seems so, so low to me. How many books are published in a year? How many albums?

I don't say this to minimize the pain of indie devs that find themselves suddenly deluged with competition... but that's where things are headed, yeah?

<comment><USER121> Around 2,256,508 books (data is not up to date [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_published_per_country_pe...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_published_per_country_per_year))

But I guess it will be fair to compare also with Movies. As some games have budgets on that scale.

That is around 730 movies per year for USA and Canada. [https://www.statista.com/statistics/187122/movie-releases- in...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/187122/movie-releases-in-north- america-since-2001/)

> I don't say this to minimize the pain of indie devs that find themselves > suddenly deluged with competition... but that's where things are headed, > yeah?

Yes. In the 90s there were not so many people with the skills and equipment to create games. Nowadays is a global market where everyone can give it a try. From cheap computers to Unity3D it is easier and cheaper than ever to create games.

<comment><USER122> > 730 movies per year

Is that apples to apples? A 'movie' release could be anything from a quick short on YouTube to a $x00 million blockbuster, and everything in between. The same goes for games.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> village-idiot I love gaming. I'm glad that people make the video games that I buy and play.

I would never ever consider actually becoming involved in the space as a programmer, not in a million years. I advise any potential programmers to stay way the hell away from it too.

</comment><comment><USER123> OP, Try contacting some streamers that love trying new games like CohhCarnage. If they play your game for 10+ hours it will be better than any other form of advertising. Also, make sure they pay for your product, don't offer it free.

</comment><comment><USER124> It's difficult for me to be excited by indie games. Sometimes they can be really great and unique, but a very large amount of indie games are some variation of platformer or roguelike or both. That is great and all, but that area just seems extremely saturated, and maybe there's just no room anymore?

There are plenty of types of games I'd still love to see made or have ideas for, but they require 3D, money, great art teams. Indie games generally cannot pull this, so they tend to be limited to rather rigid subgenres, and there are only so many variations of Metroid you can make before people mostly find what they're looking for.

</comment><comment><USER125> Making games is an incredibly risky business. Akin to starting a restaurant.

I personally dont think of it like a business _at all_. I think of it as a vocation. By choosing to make games, I consider myself to have chosen the life of an artist.. My goal right now is to make great games that I want to make, thats it.

I'm living off the savings from my last _real_ job, and being extremely frugal. I moved out to the country, where everything is cheaper (rent massively so). If / when I run out of money I'll do some contracts, worst case scenario is get a fulltime job as an employee again.. But I am _extremely_ happy with my life right now.

</comment><comment><USER126> This also looks a bit like a less polished version of "The Swapper": [http://facepalmgames.com/the-swapper/](http://facepalmgames.com/the-swapper/)

</comment><comment><USER127> You can market a 2D platformer all you want, it's still a 2D platformer in a market absolutely _saturated_ with them.

If you're making one in 2018, it should either be a hobby project, or you should be prepared for very few sales.

</comment><comment><USER128> The graphics are not great. They're not bad, but they're also not on par with most successful indie games. My suggestion, if you don't insist on going solo, is to team up with an excellent designer.

</comment><comment><USER129> Click the link to find information (screenshots, maybe video) Play now button, but im not on computer to play with, just hanging around in HN while eating at work.

Soo i got lots of text and links but no pictures of game or video whatsoever. All the information i have is what i pieced around in comments, seems like rogue-like metrovania.. this dosent really sell me the game. Sure there is play now but that also lead to page full of text.

Bad marketing

</comment><comment><USER130> > Not only the total number of games, but the rate of their release seems to > be geometrically increasing

The derivative of an exponential is again an exponential :p

</comment><comment><USER131> Niche markets may be the way to go. For instance, I would gladly spend $250 for a deep economic simulator game. I haven't seen one of those in years.

<comment><USER132> Out of curiosity what titles do you have in mind when you say "deep economic simulator"?

<comment><USER131> Well, the depth that I'd like has never been done :)

But ... if a game could blend aspects of Railroad Tycoon 3, Patrician, Capitalism, Industry Giant, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER133> As I was reading this post I thought I could be writing it myself... Although I am in the mobile gaming industry (maybe even harder than steam) and I "only" spent 2 years on my project the outcome was similar. Conclusion: don't spend that long on a project with such an unpredictable fate.

Shameless plug: [https://www.dinorush.com](https://www.dinorush.com)

</comment><comment><USER45> I mean, the author got three years to work on something they loved. It's unfortunate they didn't have what it takes to turn it into a career, but the game itself should be enough to get them into a studio or smaller indie shop.

I don't think it was a waste, but maybe the author should be looking for alternative ways to parlay the game into a paycheck instead of ... ... whatever this is.

</comment><comment><USER134> I really hate when people try to justify them not being successful saying something along the lines of, i'm smart why am I not successful.

</comment><comment><USER135> If you look at most of the recent smash hit indie games\\* they really don't innovate graphically at all, instead they bring something new to the table in terms of gameplay.

Most are "rogue-lite" which is a hot genre right now but all have something that make them stand out.

Rogue like games have the potential to become indie hits because they are very good for twitch/youtube audiences, because in general, up until the moment the player loses, they are winning.

This is great for streamers, no long-drawn out sequences where they know they've probably lost, no ability for audiences to get bored watching the player struggle in a losing fight. Instead the player gets to live out their power fantasy up until the moment that fantasy is betrayed and they lose.

And then it's a quick or instant reset and they're back to the pit / whale / plane and off they go again.

But a rogue-lite platformer? Ok that can work, Risk of Rain did an OK job with really poor graphics. But the gameplay was top-notch to compensate, and that was released before the big indie-deluge, that might not do so well if it were released today and had to go up against competetion from the likes of gungeon or dungreed.

With regards to this game, the graphics are too low to look good but haven't masked that by making the choice of going pixel-art, instead it just looks like it's from a PC gamer cover CD circa 1999.

Compare that to Slay the Spire, which has very basic art but has an engine that is well made, so it's limited art is still delivered very nicely. In the case of slay the spire they compensate with a good soundtrack which doesn't get irritating even on repeat playthroughs and some really solid gameplay.

Those are the smash-hits and a hits-based industry follows a power-law, so there's a vast quantity of mediocre games below there. What hope does a game which appears to mostly replicate previous gameplay with weak graphics stand?

That's not to say it was a waste of time, only the author can judge that.

\\* Far too many to list, but I'm thinking along the lines of Slay the Spire, Enter the Gungeon, They are Billions. Even Playerunknown's battlegrounds or fortnite in some way fits the 'rogue-lite' formula of facing ever more difficult challenges up until a sudden and final death and complete reset.

<comment><USER124> > Compare that to Slay the Spire, which has very basic art

Basic is not what I would call this.

But I think we shouldn't confuse graphics fidelity with quality. You can have an ugly pixel art game or a pretty pixel art game.

</comment></comment><comment><USER136> Games are a lot like movies industry. #metoo's, low median pay, too many hours put into flops. This kind of effort is best financed by deep pockets that can eat the loss.

One area you might reuse your talents and efforts, is gambling industry. It is another toxic environment, I take antidepressants since 2003 since I worked once with a client of this industry, but the payout is at least certain.

</comment><comment><USER137> >I'm not a dumb guy—I got good SAT scores. I'm disciplined, I have a good work ethic, and I love what I do. I'm a lifelong learner, always evaluating my work and experimenting with new approaches. Should I be failing this badly?

This paragraph reads like the guy thinks all of this means he deserves success. I can't say I feel bad for this guy.

<comment><USER138> Anyone who has studied hard, possessing a good work ethic, willing to learn lifelong and open to new approaches does indeed deserve success. What else would you have them do - walk over coals?

</comment></comment><comment> yoz-y I think that unless done for artistic or exploratory reasons, it is better to have a pre built audience for large projects like games. The fact that sales in the indie space are bleak is not news. Try a crowdfunding campaign and if it fails then think hard whether to continue to invest time into the project.

</comment><comment><USER139> Is this a marketing problem? You mentioned ~1000 visitors to your store page, I'm not surprised there are no sales yet.

Good luck and don't be too disheartened, you've already put in the large amount of work needed, now just spend some time trying to market in order to get some return.

</comment><comment><USER140> The indie game marketplace has a massive discovery problem that is not whatsoever met by current tools. Humble Bundle tried to solve this for a while but I just checked their site and it's filled with AAA titles to include Overwatch, Assassin's Creed, and COD: Black Ops.

</comment><comment><USER141> You need to find as soon as possible trusted people that can tell you how bad is your idea/game play/sound/narrative so you can fix it or do something else. Most will just be polite to you or be trolls.

</comment><comment><USER142> In the gold rush days, it wasn't the miners who made money (other than a very few early miners). It was the people who supplied the miners.

It isn't surprising the internet has been called a gold rush.

</comment><comment><USER143> I just bought the early access. Interesting what thoughts go through your head after you read such a blogpost. I had to ask myself ten times if I'm not buying it to give parallel-universe-me a leg up...

</comment><comment><USER144> You should go through your code and try to extract generic abstractions that you can release as resume building projects or as assets that other developers can license and include in their projects.

</comment><comment><USER145> Releasing a game is as much of a marketing exercise as it is a technical one. It appears that the author focused on the technical aspects and somewhat neglected the business/marketing side.

</comment><comment><USER146> People should build the game they want to play.

That's really how I view things. I just play nice games, find flaws and things to be perfected, and gather up all those things in a game that could be enjoyed.

</comment><comment><USER147> If you are interested in making an indie game, do it only because you want to not because you think you'll make money.

You will lose money. That's it. There's no magic message here.

Source: an indie dev. I keep my passion for my project because it's something I truly want to do.

<comment><USER148> That's clearly not entirely true though, because there _are_ hits. They're just extremely rare, but extremely visible. You can read interviews with the Stardew Valley guy all over where he talks about spending 4 years working solo on his game, refusing to give up on realising his artistic vision. Then he releases and it's a mega-hit. That's a very seductive story.

This isn't a problem unique to indie games. Every creative field has an overabundance of hopefuls, all chasing a tiny chance of turning it into a success. The problem, as Daniel Clowes observed back in 1991[1] is that everyone thinks that they'll be one of the lucky ones.

[1] [https://artinfiction.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/asc-3.jpg](https://artinfiction.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/asc-3.jpg)

<comment><USER149> You may have missed the nuance in the comment you're replying to. Everyone knows that it's possible to win the lottery. But the best advice you can give is to tell people they're never going to win the lottery.

People who are super passionate about making indie games I'm going to do it regardless, so this is good advice.

<comment><USER148> "Best advice" why? Accurate, perhaps. But do you really find going around telling people that they're not going to win the lottery makes them stop playing? Even after they read an article about someone who won $100m and has quit their job to sail around the world?

I think such advice misunderstands the psychology of why people gamble on very long odds. The primary drive is emotional, not rational. The rational brain only has to be convinced that a theoretical possibility exists. After that, it's a matter of emotional appeal, and culture is very good at presenting seductive narratives based on rare occurrences.

<comment><USER149> _But do you really find going around telling people that they 're not going to win the lottery makes them stop playing?"_

Not 100% successfully, but of course it helps. Why don't you go around and ask some people why they don't play the lottery?

 _I think such advice misunderstands the psychology of why people gamble on very long odds._

It's why I don't gamble. It's why lots of people don't gamble. People aren't completely rational, but they're not completely irrational either.

Helping people put understand the true odds of what they're engaged in is a good thing.

What do you have against people knowing the facts?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER150> I wonder what is the outcome distribution for an indie developer spending this much time building an utility desktop Mac/Windows app. Somehow this seem to have fallen out of fashion.

</comment><comment><USER151> What was his target audience / market and what need did his game satisfy that an existing game couldn't? Essentially, did he have product market fit?

</comment><comment><USER152> Yes, but that is only if you didn't learn anything. Problem is not many people appreciate the skills that go into writing your own engine and game.

</comment><comment><USER153> Market, marketing and basic UED on the site are all issues here.

1\. why would I pay 7 bucks for this, when something like PUBG is ostensibly free? There is no easy "trial" download (Do I even down load this?) Does it work on my phone (a lot of the low end game market went there.

2\. Selling things is hard when your up against free. I dont like the freemium model but free stuff with ad's makes money - give it away and monetize on the back end.

3\. Every one pays for customers. Marketing matters and especially in a competitive market. Your going to need to spend money to make money in todays age.

<comment><USER154> PUBG is $30: [https://store.steampowered.com/app/578080/PLAYERUNKNOWNS_BAT...](https://store.steampowered.com/app/578080/PLAYERUNKNOWNS_BATTLEGROUNDS/)

<comment><USER153> I was thinking of the current mobile version! [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tencent.ig...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tencent.ig&hl=en_US)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER155> My rant on games:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10955276](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10955276)

</comment><comment><USER156> _reduce addictive qualities of the game..._

Not sure if applying this strategy to a game that has sold only 4 copies in 3 years would really help the situation.

</comment><comment><USER157> That's why its usually recommended to fail fast. To not sink in too much without knowing whether there is any product-market fit.

</comment><comment><USER158> I don't play games - so maybe I have no idea - but why people try to compete solo with big companies?

</comment><comment><USER159> Having mastered C++ is not a bad outcome for the OP's future in the software trade, though.

</comment><comment><USER160> Reading advice from successful game devs to "my game didn't sell well" -style posts on reddit can be instructive too:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/9k8wsi/my_games_di...](https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/9k8wsi/my_games_didnt_sell_well_heres_my_advice_for_you/)

Jason Rohrer's advice there was essentially:

\- Games have to either make an instant emotive connection via their art style or gameplay concept (and be priced well enough for an impulse purchase), or prove that they are deep and long-lasting enough that they'll be worth the investment in time and money.

\- Single-player games that don't do the above are especially hard sells, because hit gameplay trends are veering toward multiplayer games: "If your game's initial impression gives people pause, it's already over."

The Infinitroid developer might learn something from that advice — I checked the trailer at [https://infinitroid.com/](https://infinitroid.com/), and the game looks fun, but I don't feel that instant connection to the art style or gameplay concept in the same way I did with Minit or Monument Valley (both instant impulse purchases), and I don't get the impression that it offers weeks of gameplay like The Witness or Stephen's Sausage Roll do (purchased both later after consideration and persistent appearances in media and social feeds).

It feels like most "my game's a commercial failure" posts I read could have been saved by spending more time on the initial concept and art style, and on testing the market before the three-to-ten year investment in building the full game was made.

Reducing the time to market also seems like a sane strategy. It may have taken five years to build Stardew Valley and 10 years to make Owlboy, but that does not mean every successful game involves holing yourself up for half a decade or more.

Developers also seem to underestimate just how much marketing a successful game needs even when the concept is great. Look at what the Boyfriend Dungeon team did to get traction for their game (5 years of marketing, 10 releases of other mini games on itch.io to build a following, website built 11 months before release, appearance on panels and in game press, months of Kickstarter planning), and check that you're prepared to do the same with your game if commercial success is important to you (it is fine for it not to be):

[https://medium.com/@kitfoxgames/years-in-the-making-how- kitf...](https://medium.com/@kitfoxgames/years-in-the-making-how-kitfox-games- played-the-long-game-with-boyfriend-dungeon-hype-debd0338a0dc)

Rohrer also mentions that he made 13 games before he had a hit (also happened to be his first multiplayer game), so perseverance and learning from failures seems like a big factor too.

</comment><comment><USER161> It's the fonts. They look like you're reading something.

<comment><USER39> Yeah, it's like the equivalent of using the default in iMovie. Very little thought given to art direction. Has the effect of making this seem like a Unity game, even though he built the engine from scratch. Seems like he played Axiom Verge, said "I could do that!" and then put his nose to the grindstone for three years without asking anybody else for input.

</comment></comment><comment><USER162> i just looked at the website, went to the main page and watched bits and pieces of the gameplay video.

rogue-lite: check. metroidvania(gotta get that retro street cred) : check. Bland uninspired assets: check. post mortem blog post posted to some link aggregator about how you released the same thing that every other copypasta developer on greenlight has crapped out for the past 3 years and it isn't selling well?: check.

yep. 3 years, down the crapper.

</comment><comment><USER163> I'm not a dumb guy—I got good SAT scores.

</comment><comment><USER164> Congrats on shipping a product!

</comment><comment><USER165> Sorry but the reason that your game and others have not sold is because they aren't new and they don't offer anything that consumers want. It's so simple.

The graph of steam sales, as you mentioned, is poisoned with shovel-ware. But it's also inflated by another kind of game that nobody wants: games that are just remakes of the same old tropes and mechanics — nobody is interested in playing them even though they are implemented with care. It's a problem that is huge in the programming world: lack of high level thought and consideration. The super meat boy guy who you linked to should have asked himself if anyone really is excited about platformers _before_ sinking all that time into it. There is no indie game problem. It's a bad ideas problem.

Look at the witness. It did good. It's because it's a good game with freshness and insight. Messages are passed from developer to player through every aspect of the game. It is something to sit down and consider for hours. Something to be inspired by. There has to be actual value in the game. This torrent of let's players and people who use video games and v.g. Culture as some kind of crutch or something to give them identity — endlessly grinding away at meaningless and stupid achievements and 100% completions — all of that is nonsense and it is your own fault for diving into it.

<comment><USER166> While it could have been said with more consideration, I think this comment tells the core of why the game isn't a success. From my eyes the game does not appear interesting to play. At some point not too long ago, the idea of a remake with a twist would have been interesting (eg, Geometry Wars). But people have come to expect different things from indie games and games in general. It's not enough to rehash old ideas. The idea of revamping a much beloved gsme or genre has lost its novelty as so many developers have done that already.

The games that we love from the past exist. And spiritual remakes of those games exist. It's not enough for a game to succeed based largely on nostalgia. I don't mean to discredit the creator's hard work. This is what I understand from a glance at seeing the preview video.

</comment></comment><comment><USER167> Don't write a single LOC until you have at least one user.

<comment><USER168> How exactly would you do that for a platform game like we are talking about here?

<comment><USER167> Assuming you have a tight budget (no budget for marketing or user testing) pick someone, yourself, a friend, or relative, then make some concept arts, and show it to them, if they like it, continue iterating, if they are not interested you have to pivot. Note that the user can also be yourself. It's unlikely that you would make a game that you yourself _love_ to play but no other one does. It's however likely that you love _developing_ it much more then playing it, then you are not the user! And you have to find an actual user. Test the game/product on your target user(s) throughout the development process to see what works and what doesn't. If the "users" are engaged they will have suggestions, actually you will get flooded with suggestions, so it helps if you also is a user yourself so you can prioritize features according to your vision and not just the most popular.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> Iwan-Zotow Yes, you did

</comment><comment><USER169> Games are a great example of how "if you build it, they will come" just doesn't work in crowded market place. You need 2 other things: a way to build a community _and_ a way to convert that community into incoming cash. It's important to understand that indie game devs usually don't have a huge runway of capital, so both of these things are necessary right from the start.

I don't exactly know how you do this because I haven't done it before, but my naive feeling is that it's a huge risk to sit down for 3-4 years and just write code. You have to find a way to engage your potential future audience _while_ you are developing the game. Many of the most successful indy games have the same development ethos of open source software: release early and release often.

Second, I think it's important to ask for money very early on in the process, if that's your ultimate goal. I think the article is good to point out the economics. Users have played 1000 hours (roughly 1 hour per user) and the dev has made less than $30. That's 3 cents per hour. There are plenty of games that cost $4-$5 that have no demo at all. Even at 1/10th of the engagement, you're still talking about $400-$500 rather than $30.

Finally, as others have said, I think the idea that you are going to strike it rich with your first game out of the gate is naive. Indy game development is about the long tail. Don't throw 2K hours into a game. Throw 200 hours 10 times and try to build up a revenue stream. At the very least, it allows you to pivot a lot earlier if you find that your are getting absolutely no engagement.

But at the end of it (and I haven't played the author's game, so I'm making no judgement here), a game has to be fun. You don't need a finished game to demonstrate the fun. That first proof of concept needs to be distilled down to pure fun. Once you've got that sorted, you can start working on the rest. I think it's temping to build a whole infrastructure of code (or write a game engine ;-) ) and then once you are hundreds or thousands of hours in discover, "Wait a minute... this game is actually kind of boring". Only now you have a legacy code base and it's really slow to start trying to morph it into something that is fun.

I was just looking at Kenta Cho's blog the other day and earlier this year he was doing a 256 byte JS Browser game challenge [1]. What interested me about his blog post is that he concentrated _entirely_ on game mechanics. He tried a couple of game mechanics and then tried to mix and match them to find interesting variations. I think this is the kind of thing you need to do very early on in game development. Then once you have a core game mechanic that is really fun, you can start building a game around it.

[1] - [http://aba.hatenablog.com/entry/2018/03/07/174528](http://aba.hatenablog.com/entry/2018/03/07/174528) (Sorry, Japanese only -- but has some interesting gifs)

</comment><comment><USER170> Ep

</comment><comment><USER171> take your game to decentraland . virgin playing field, it's the future

</comment><comment><USER172> The game _looks bad_. You will not get a foot in the door with a game that looks like this in 2018. It looks like amateur/programmer art. There are some people that aren't bothered by that, but when it comes to media the looks are paramount.

If this game had an appealing art style, it _might_ stand a chance in the already saturated market of Metroidvanias.

<comment><USER173> That's not really true - take a look at the graphics from Factorio 0.1, released in 2012:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_a8_zxYLik](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_a8_zxYLik)

They've since sold about 20M copies at $20 (now $30) apiece. I started playing in 2017 with Factorio 0.14, when the graphics were better but still decidedly retro and they'd sold maybe 4M copies.

The difference is that Factorio has a unique gameplay concept that is both extremely addictive and not really found in any other games. People will overlook shitty graphics if the game has a compelling concept that they can't get elsewhere.

<comment><USER172> > That's not really true - take a look at the graphics from Factorio 0.1, > released in 2012

Yes, that was _in 2012_ , well before the indie explosion. If you saw this game today, you would assume it is one of the hundreds of crappy 2D Minecraft clones.

<comment><USER173> I mean, here's Factorio 0.14, which was 2017:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulIqPXiM0X0#t=1200](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulIqPXiM0X0#t=1200)

It's better, but it's not _that_ better, and probably something that still looks like a "crappy 2D Minecraft clone".

<comment><USER174> I think his point is that it was already well known by 2017 and didn't have to struggle to distinguish itself in the current market, because it had built momentum and interest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER175> Hey, I liked the game. It's really nice looking and I got hooked for 5 rounds just now =)

</comment><comment><USER176> I just spent 9 months playing poker while my net worth dropped over 40%. Did I waste my time? Hell no.

</comment><comment><USER177> Yes. Didn't have to read it.

</comment><comment><USER178> Apparently you can try that game in the browser for free, but you have to create an account first. And they wonder why they don't sell any licenses! If someone manages to shoot themselves in the foot in such an epic way I am not surprised they never sold anything.</comment>