31 replies to this topic

[glhf]

I am about 70% complete with a very indepth GDD for a game but I just realised that while the game would be unique and uncontested market (no one else has made a game like it) I'm unsure how much players it would attract really, Because the game that inspired me to create this game design has an extremely low playerbase, but I think it has a lot to do with their marketing too.

I will probably complete the GDD and create the game still since it's not too complex game.
But I wonder now what's the best type of game to create as indy if you want money?
And I don't want to read a lot of replies saying "indys don't make money, they just create games to gain reputation in the game dev biz."

So what kind of game would you think is best to make?
A singleplayer RPG? Can be cracked and torrented on torrent sites. Games really need a multiplayer feature now because that makes it extremely hard to make a cracked version that's always up to date and playable online. I also am not a fan of one time purchase of a game, specially if it's indy with so low price tags.

A coop PvE game (ex: Trine 2)? That's a possibility, Not sure how much money those games bring in though, I would prefer creating a f2p game with a cash shop system because I believe that is the best way to make money out of games but I have a hard time seeing a cash shop being implemented to a coop game unless it's for DLC's.. Could work.

Zombie survival multiplayer? This has what I reckon a big player market and I can easily see indy's competing in it. Cash shop could easily be implemented.

MOBA game such as Lol/Hon/dota/blc? Indys don't stand a chance in that market, I doubt even a pro studio would manage stepping into that already dominated market.

Terraforming/crafting multiplayer games such as minecraft, terraria? BIG market. easy to implemented cash shop. But would have to be a unique game idea if minecraft and terraria players are going to move over to your game.

MMORPG (theme based, not death penalties, only rewards, pvp, pve etc like tera/wow/rift etc) Forget about it if your indy.

MMORPG (hardcore, death penalties, open pvp) ? Very possible for indy to compete in. Big enough market to make some serious money. But it must be perfect game, Make any bad game designs or mistakes around release etc and you will have a big hit to reputation and lose so many potential players.

FPS shooters like COD, BF3, MW ? Too dominated market already.

RTS like starcraft, age of empires ? Too dominated market.


Ok, I'm tired of writing more suggestions to get the thread started.
Comment on my suggestions and what I thought of them and let me know of any more I missed out, I can edit this post later.

[Ashaman73]

Simple answer:
You have lot of many => take any game, polish it like hell and make a huge marketing campaign.
You have no money => let your passion drive the game, when you will like it , other will like it too.
You have no passion => look for an other job when you like to make money.

[SimonForsman]

As an indie your best bet really is the casual/social market, you stand a much better chance competing against games like angry birds or farmville than you do competing against Starcraft, Left 4 Dead and Mass Effect.

Now it all depends on what you consider "decent" money though. If you want to make millions then you're in the wrong field, indie game developers don't become rich unless they're insanely lucky and good but making a living is perfectly possible if you work hard. (As you build up a code and fanbase it will become easier but you should be prepared to have to put in 50-60 hour weeks to make ends meet on your first few games)

Edited by SimonForsman, 24 May 2012 - 11:38 PM.

[glhf]

As an indie your best bet really is the casual/social market, you stand a much better chance competing against games like angry birds or farmville than you do competing against Starcraft, Left 4 Dead and Mass Effect.

Now it all depends on what you consider "decent" money though. If you want to make millions then you're in the wrong field, indie game developers don't become rich unless they're insanely lucky and good but making a living is perfectly possible if you work hard. (As you build up a code and fanbase it will become easier but you should be prepared to have to put in 50-60 hour weeks to make ends meet on your first few games)

I think Decent is at least 100,000 usd within a year.
But I think it's also important to create a game that can keep generating content and make the players keep spending money more than just once.
It's much easier to keep working on a succesful game than to start working on a new game.

So if you do the above and can get 100k usd first year (total amount before split to team members) and can keep pumping out money form the game next year then that's decent money if you ask me.

Edit: "at least" might be better replaced with the word "around".

Edited by glhf, 25 May 2012 - 12:07 AM.

[jbadams]

Most successful indie developers focus on smaller casual games (puzzles, arcade games, match-three, etc.), produce some particular niche product where there is some demand but not much competition (Minecraft), or produce simpler mainstream style games with a quirky theme (Binding of Issac, Fancy-Pants Adventures, etc.). They might also create a common type of game for a platform where that type of game isn't yet widely available (Angry Birds). In the overwhelming majority of cases they produce simpler rather than more complex games and avoid competing with AAA titles or even bigger casual games such as Farmville, which tend to already be very entrenched and have a large team and budget to quickly adapt and push out new content.


Only the rarer smash-hit indie titles (Angry Birds, Minecraft, Braid, World of Goo, etc.) would usually expect to make the sort of money you've mentioned in a short period of time -- as much as you apparently don't want to hear it -- and putting aside the overwhelming majority of indie developers who don't make any money -- most successful indie developers usually survive on much smaller incomes from multiple smaller titles rather than having a smash hit game, and will often supplement their game-based income with other sources such as freelancing, a monetized blog or a part-time day-job.

You might expect to make more money once you've built a large catalogue of back-titles that are still bringing in income to supplement your new releases, and are able to grow your business through simpler and cheaper expansion/add-on releases and have a loyal fan-base to get your products quickly selling. That being said, it's very possible to live quite comfortably on an annual income that is much lower than US$100,000, assuming of course that you avoid living anywhere with a prohibitively high cost-of-living.



It might be a useful exercise to examine some of the existing indie success stories to see what types of games they produced -- particularly if you also consider the competition at the time they chose to make those releases. Some examples you might consider include Minecraft, Braid, World of Goo, Super Meat Boy, Steam Birds, Realm of the Mad God, Angry Birds and any successful Flash games amongst many others. The common theme seems to be relatively simple games which offer a highly polished experience, often very casual (able to be played in short sessions, low barrier to entry, etc.).

[TechnoGoth]

One approach to making good money in the indie market that has emerged with the mobile revolution is producing lots of small games. Rather making 1 game over 2 years in hopes that it turns a decent profit. You invest your resources in reusable frameworks and assets and launch a new game every month or 2. if you produce 6 small games a year sell them $4 each then you can make a good returns off a fan base of only a 5000 people. If you produce fun well polished games then most of your fan base will buy the next game you release especially if the has small price tag. Producing a lot of small games also should gradually increase your fan base and new fans may buy items from your back catalogue. Also it increases your chance of getting a smash hit.

Also it worth noting that smash hit indie games are virtually never a for a first game.

Rovio who make Angry Birds probably one of the best know successful indie companies had been in business for over 6 years and released 51 games before angry birds.
Angry Birds itself initially cost €100,000 to make but then its also generates over €50,000,000 in revenue. Even then the game was a flop for the first 3 months after is was released.

I'd aim for turning out lots of fun polished games that turn a profit and hope that ones becomes a smash hit.

[glhf]

One approach to making good money in the indie market that has emerged with the mobile revolution is producing lots of small games. Rather making 1 game over 2 years in hopes that it turns a decent profit. You invest your resources in reusable frameworks and assets and launch a new game every month or 2. if you produce 6 small games a year sell them $4 each then you can make a good returns off a fan base of only a 5000 people. If you produce fun well polished games then most of your fan base will buy the next game you release especially if the has small price tag. Producing a lot of small games also should gradually increase your fan base and new fans may buy items from your back catalogue. Also it increases your chance of getting a smash hit.

Also it worth noting that smash hit indie games are virtually never a for a first game.

Rovio who make Angry Birds probably one of the best know successful indie companies had been in business for over 6 years and released 51 games before angry birds.
Angry Birds itself initially cost €100,000 to make but then its also generates over €50,000,000 in revenue. Even then the game was a flop for the first 3 months after is was released.

I'd aim for turning out lots of fun polished games that turn a profit and hope that ones becomes a smash hit.

I agree about the iphone games being a good market atm.. might have to look into it.. I don't even have an iphone tho and never played any iphone games hehe.
I don't agree about just pumping out mass small fun games though, Every game you make has to be as good as it can get and has to have a solid game design that makes sense and logic not just the gameplay but marketing as well.. So if you're just making games that you don't think will make a lot of money then you're not making good games imo.

[jbadams]

To be fair, TechnoGoth didn't say the games shouldn't have a solid, sensible design and good marketing; just that they should be smaller, fun titles. You should absolutely try to make each release the best you can, and market them as good as you're possibly able to; preferably you should try to automate and set up re-usable systems for these tasks as well so that you can minimise the time spent (and cost) on these tasks.


You can (and some people do) concentrate on pushing out smaller unpolished games in the hopes of finding those designs that are worth improving upon, but you certainly wouldn't make much (if any) money on the unpolished titles; this can however be a good model for people who are developing in their spare time whilst holding down other unrelated full-time work, as it allows them to trial a lot of different game-play demos without having to spend time polishing those that are less effective.


You're correct that if you want the best chance of making money from all your titles they should all be as good as they possibly can be and should be marketed to the best of your ability; there's absolutely no reason you can't do that and pump out a series of smaller titles though.

[Pratik]

Somebody plzz tell me which languages are the best for learners (first time game developers) , maybe small game or large game doesn't matter but want a language that can b used to develop from small games like angry birds to big games like mmorpg like Ragnarök , rune scape ,world of Warcraft etc.
plz do help me as i am interested in developing games and i do know basic programming in C and am trying to learn C++ ,C# for the above purpose.
i am planning of developing the games in India (my home country) 'coz low labor costs.
can you plz give me an estimate for runescape type game how much money is needed for every aspect of developing like servers, softwares , how much hours of developing , what are the per hour rates for developers in Europe , U.S. and also the currency.

i do have some concepts in mind though but am thinking of developing small games (coding wise) and then go for the big ones !!!

[Inukai]

...

Seriously, you should create your own Thread in the Beginners section instead of hijacking this one.(well, it your case it would be better to search for other threads with the search field on the top right).

http://www.gamefromscratch.com/post/2011/08/04/I-want-to-be-a-game-developer.aspx
http://www.gamedev.net/topic/284756-development-cost/

[jbadams]

Somebody plzz tell me which languages are the best for learners [...]

I'm going to have to agree with Inukai: don't hijack a completely unrelated topic with your questions. If you want personalised responses you should start your own topic to ask your questions in our For Beginners forum, but again as Inukai has said, your questions are very common and can almost certainly be answered by searching for existing topics.

You'll also get better responses from our community if you take the time to type properly: it's "please", not "plz".


If everyone could stick to the topic at hand (or start a new topic for unrelated questions) from this point onwards it would be most appreciated.

[Konidias]

I agree with making several smaller games per year. You have to also think about the development time/risk.

You keep mentioning MMOs or games that would take years to complete... but that isn't really a realistic approach for an indie developer. Instead of trying to make a blockbuster game that will make you millions, aim for making 2 games a year that might net you $50k each in sales.

That's not all that outrageous considering you'd need less than 17,000 sales of a $2.99 game to hit that mark. That's totally possible with a small indie game that is semi-decent. You also need to consider that these games will continue making you money for years. The more games in your library, the more chances to make money.

I'd rather have 10 games made over the course of 5 years than 1 MMO made in 5 years that may or may not even do well. It's likely that 1 of those 10 games will do really well, a couple will do decently, and the rest will just bring in small bits of extra money that add up over time.

I guess the lesson to take away from this is to just not put all of your eggs in one basket. Also it's far easier to finish a small game as an indie than to finish a large scale, multi-year project.

[jbadams]

Another benefit of multiple smaller projects is that any damaging mistakes you make in creating, marketing or monetizing -- and you will almost certainly make mistakes on your first try -- the game should have a reduced impact on your other projects rather than having only 1 product that's stuck with the baggage of your mistake; you can learn and improve as you go along, without having to scrap your existing work.

[glhf]

I agree with making several smaller games per year. You have to also think about the development time/risk.

You keep mentioning MMOs or games that would take years to complete... but that isn't really a realistic approach for an indie developer. Instead of trying to make a blockbuster game that will make you millions, aim for making 2 games a year that might net you $50k each in sales.

That's not all that outrageous considering you'd need less than 17,000 sales of a $2.99 game to hit that mark. That's totally possible with a small indie game that is semi-decent. You also need to consider that these games will continue making you money for years. The more games in your library, the more chances to make money.

I'd rather have 10 games made over the course of 5 years than 1 MMO made in 5 years that may or may not even do well. It's likely that 1 of those 10 games will do really well, a couple will do decently, and the rest will just bring in small bits of extra money that add up over time.

I guess the lesson to take away from this is to just not put all of your eggs in one basket. Also it's far easier to finish a small game as an indie than to finish a large scale, multi-year project.

I wasn't talking about mmorpgs mostly but I had to mention them if I'm making a list of the different types of games.
I even made negative comment about MMORPG if you can read.

And I never said anythign about large scale multi year projects.
You can make big hitter games in months too.. It's really up to how good the designer in your team is.

You gotta make the best out of every game you make, if we go by your own logic that it's just a freak of luck that one of your games becomes a big hit then it's important that you designed the game so it's capable of making millions of money if it does become a big hit, but also so it makes decent money if it doesn't.

But the way you talk about your "small quick games" that you pump out every few months.. sounds like terrible games that you'll never get sold for more than 2 bux.

[jbadams]

...and to repeat myself again, no one (other than myself, in an aside where I specifically mentioned quick throw-away games as an alternative approach for those with less time available) who has mentioned smaller games has said they shouldn't be polished, fun games that are made an marketed to the absolute best of your ability.

You're disagreeing with something people aren't actually saying. We all AGREE that your games should be as good as you're able to make them - we're just suggesting that is probably a more achievable goal if the games are smaller.

[glhf]

...and to repeat myself again, no one (other than myself, in an aside where I specifically mentioned quick throw-away games as an alternative approach for those with less time available) who has mentioned smaller games has said they shouldn't be polished, fun games that are made an marketed to the absolute best of your ability.

You're disagreeing with something people aren't actually saying. We all AGREE that your games should be as good as you're able to make them - we're just suggesting that is probably a more achievable goal if the games are smaller.

I haven't ever said anything about large games either?
Even a "small" game takes time tho, It's like writing a movie script.. Sure you could write a script in a couple months and keep pumping out 4 scripts per year.. but you first gotta know what you're gonna write.. just the pre stuff to getting started on a game can take a month or more depending how hard you work. You can't just start creating a fps shooter game without a good concept and marketing or else you'll get a game that most people would want to get paid to try out.. And you really should have a detailed GDD as well because concept is a bit like an idea, it doesn't always work out the way it looked like in your head.
Movie writers spend months just creating a "concept" for what they are gonna spend months writing after.

So that's why I think your "small games that we pump out 5 per year" sounds really bad.
Even small games should take a lot of work.

[TechnoGoth]

It's not good to spend too much time working on your GDD as the game design should and will change during development. The artists and programmers on the team will have ideas and those will turn into parts of the design. Technical hurdles will be hit that requiring watering down aspects or abandoning features. The Testers will find parts that don't work well and concepts that are small but are also the most fun that may requiring potentially large changes to the game design.

A movie script changes constantly its really more of a starting point and guidline then anything else. The actors will adlib lines of dialogue everyone one and there dog will have changes that need to be incorporated.

I'll go back to the popular game angry birds. The first version of which was nothing like the current game. There were no pigs, no flinging birds across the screen, no special abilities, and even some pokemon style elements with collectable eggs to increase your flock.

Most of the elements that make up the core game weren't even in the original design. But they worked at it refining it, changing and once they had a good solid game with 63 levels they released it. Over the next two years they added new platforms, abilities, and 282 more levels all for free.


All projects will take a lot of work. The advantage of that small games give the indie developer is that it they are achievable with limited resources and time. Let you build up a reusable set of tools, mechanics and art assets. Once you have those your next project can either be completed faster or be bigger. Also small games afford you the ability to cut your losses without losing too much. Some times things don't work. Key people might leave the team, the prototype won't be fun enough, or you'll hit a cost or technical block that you can't surpass. Its at that point any business person needs to know when to pull the plug and decided if there is anything salvageable that can be taken in a new direction or go back to the drawing board.

You can either come up with a design and say it takes as long as it takes. Or you can say what can we realistically build in 3 or 6 months aim to make the best possible game you can in that time.

[aattss]

Anything that involves servers is too complicated for someone to consider with little experience with servers and little to low funding, not to mention that they will be more successful if you're already a bit "popular".

Anyway, I do know that if you have low funding, you should work on procedurally generated gameplay, emergent gameplay, and/or user-generated gameplay, as then you yourself don't have to design and make everything. Although Mojang didn't make a lot of structues, the userbase has built massive structures of, for example, the entire Middle Earth.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/171273/Make_games_for_yourself__and_nobody_else.php

Edited by aattss, 30 May 2012 - 06:40 AM.

[Yrjö P.]

It's not good to spend too much time working on your GDD as the game design should and will change during development. The artists and programmers on the team will have ideas and those will turn into parts of the design. Technical hurdles will be hit that requiring watering down aspects or abandoning features. The Testers will find parts that don't work well and concepts that are small but are also the most fun that may requiring potentially large changes to the game design.

But glhf has no use for that kind of flawed and wasteful production process. He has made it clear that he's going to produce a perfect GDD that requires no alteration after the fact, then recruit skilled programmers, artists and project managers willing to work for a share of the inevitable future profits (presumably convinced by the obvious strength of the GDD). And then, as long as the peons will execute the GDD faithfully, the result will be a quality game.

[jbadams]

But glhf has no use for that kind of flawed and wasteful production process. He has made it clear that he's going to produce a perfect GDD that requires no alteration after the fact, then recruit skilled programmers, artists and project managers willing to work for a share of the inevitable future profits (presumably convinced by the obvious strength of the GDD). And then, as long as the peons will execute the GDD faithfully, the result will be a quality game.

I don't think we need a repetition of that topic (as on-point as the reference may be) -- it would be appreciated if no one were to continue that particular line of discussion -- thanks!