Why 96% of Indie Games Fail

Only about 4% of games turn a profit. So how do you succeed as an indie game developer?

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📃 Research Links
Only 4% of games turn a profit, According to the Electronic Entertainment Design and Research institute
Production Point by Benjamin Anderson @uheartbeast
Sokpop games
75% of the developers on Steam have only released 1 game
Doom Guy by John Romero
John Romero quotes
Match-3 details
Dunkey JRPG video

[GoingIndie]

What's the hardest part of game development?

🟥 Grow your indie studio and support the channel!

[smb]

TLDR: game dev is more like opening a startup than simply making a game

[katlicks]

Something I always keep in mind is that Scott Cawthon made 72 games before FNAF, and FNAF was his first big success.

It wasn't even the biggest thing he made or was most excited about. But the guy kept going, kept making games, he'd been making games for 18 years at that point and was working at a dollar store when he made it. It was made in response to feedback calling his stuff creepy and animatronic like.

[DarkReaperK]

Solo Indie devs don't make games because of money. I mean yeah the money is a bonus to look forward to. But they do it mainly for passion. They want their art out there.

[luisgentil]

I've heard similar advice coming from several areas of software development.

1 - Find intrinsic motivation in what you do. Don't think you can wear yourself out until you find success, because you're more likely to collapse before that. Development doesn't get easier, there's always new problems. You better like the process of solving them.

2 - Get feedback. It doesn't matter how long or hard you worked on something, it will break on sometime else's hand. The sooner you can get others to test your product the better.

3 - You always get something out of every project you deliver in the form of growth and experience that can't be measured. Don't get attached to your creations and ideas. Many people don't even start because they fear their idea will be stolen and they won't get credit. Think that the real value is in you and not what you create, and always give your best because it's the kind of stuff that the more you give, the more you have.

[xanmal]

See, I am making a game I WANT. not to sell, not to make money, not to succeed to others. I am making the game I have always wanted and never found. it might take years or even centuries. its my hobby and I enjoy it. I will iterate over it millions of times to get it the way I WANT it. I have no reason to give up, nothing to stop me or slow me.

[Wenedi]

Let's be honest. There are usually 2 reasons for games failing:

- No marketing
- The game is trash/boring

Tis the truth

[itsmeruka]

11:43 a recent indie dev that made great marketing was VA Proxy ''you can parry a nuke''

[stevenmaswabi-zzkt]

"The riches are in the niches"

-Alex Hormozi.

[minze]

It's easy to see why most indie devs stop after 1 game. I mean, many spend several years on a game and they probably think it's hard to justify another commitment like that with the risk of another failure.

[inaridefucc]

I feel like this is good advice on paper, but pretty bad advice in practice. You basically pinpoint a roadmap to create a relatively successful average game that will make, in the best realistic outcome, significantly less than an average job in any other fields. In other words, you're saying "just create another gatcha/coc clone". As another person in the comment section put it "if you want to make money, do something else". You're greatly underestimating the sheer importance of creative vision, what you said about the market doesn't actually resonate with the player-base or with the recent history of game titles. "Why do AAA games succeed while indie games fail?" well because they can rely on a much stronger infrastructure both economically and practically, but while that is true in terms of sole numbers, in the last 20 years triple AAA titles ALWAYS LOST in terms of relative cost of production (compared to financial success) against the most liked indie games of the year, most of which come from anonymous, single developers hungry for innovation. From the Binding of Isaac, to Terraria, to Minecraft, to Lethal Company or Among Us, indie titles made by small studios have completely eclipsed huge game developers that, precisely by following marketing trends like you suggest, create corporate slob gaming experiences that people only like so much. If you genuinely believe titles like modern Pokemon games are better than the average fad indie game of the month because they make more money (and they only do because once again they can rely on unsinkable corporate ships, not because they actually create good products) than you're not really in the position to give advice. While yes, I agree that you should research your market and be more pragmatical on your developing process, at the same time you should remember that if you don't have a personal vision that allows for the creation of something new and worthwhile, then you're just better off getting another job.

[zejugames]

Felt like this video didn't really distinguish between continuous and discontinuous innovation. The Henry Ford quote refers to discontinuous change, like how Apple launched the iPod and iPhone. Along those lines, genre innovation or mashups can see outsized success for a small gamedev team.

Continuous change means a much more competitive and incremental market.

[AzadB]

We are 2 devs, we made $150k on our first game (Bonding Ambivalence on Steam) by filling a niche. Indeed it's very important to analyze your sub-market! In our case, we started with an idea that our friends liked, then broadened the execution by mixing game styles that we liked (Dead Space, We Were Here, Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes etc.).

We're trying to develop a second one, but we don't know if we'll be able to go through with it, we feel like we're starting from scratch against giants who occupy people's full attention. This is the most difficult and psychologically exhausting experience of our lives. On the other hand, the feeling of being in steam's top 400 for a few hours is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Let's see where it goes!

[CodeMonkeyUnity]

Really great video! The commercial stats are indeed a bit depressing but being able to build and play something you built yourself is a magical feeling!

[ThomasStewartDev]

This is my favorite video of yours yet! (And not just because you highlighted my game 😅)
I’ve fallen in love with the development process of game creation - I hadn’t thought of it in those terms before, but it’s such a good point that the process is more valuable than the singular game I may be working on at the time.
Thanks for the awesome video!

[Drakuba]

counterpoint:
If you make something thats actually new and fresh you can ignore half of the vid
you still need to market yourself and talk about your game tho, its strong points and what distinguishes you from all the other peasants

if you make a game for sole purpose of selling as many copies as possible by making a copy of a game thats already a copy of different game, you need to do all that extra crap as well, because people already played the original so why should they play your watered down version?

So dont make Match 3 Puzzle, dont make another Vampire Survivor, dont make next Jump King because theres so many copies of those games floating around your "spin" will just get lost in all the garbage, make something original, something new and different and market those differences

[kopfdertoten]

"Only 4% of games turn a profit" with all of the trash on steam these days, I'm surprised that it's even that high...

[seraphin]

ego is a big part of everyone's problems.. and we ALL do that mistake. We've worked SO hard on a project, spent days researching, working etc just to get a random schmuk telling us we're doing something wrong.. and we can't take the critic and just dismiss it.
we're all guilty of that at one point, overcoming this will change your life

[CodingAbroad]

My steam game just barely made all the money back. But the vicious comments I got was brutal and stomped my passion to want to make another

[wimu]

been thinking of making a indie game m a web dev and didnt study game dev but its a hobby of mine to learn how game dev works nice having videos like this