Long-time GameDev.net member and indie developer @cliffski32 of Positech Games has posted in his latest blog a very direct message to aspiring indie developers: you will flop and lose money.
While not the message most aspiring developers want to hear, @cliffski32 discusses the challenges for an indie from a financial perspective with all the costs and revenue losses that developers incur when you factor in staff, legal, and investors.
Using data from player unknown: battlegrounds as an example of the high end and assessing the mean game in 348 pages of "Top Sellers" of Indie games on Steam, @cliffski32 makes the point that game development is a tough business.
QuoteYes…these figures are very very rough, but I didn’t deliberately pick something bad, in fact I picked half way through the indie top sellers. Are we really thinking they sound so out of whack? This is a WINNER TAKES ALL market. You are either in the top 0.1% of indie game developers, or you are unemployed, with an expensive hobby where you make effectively free games.
This is nobodies ‘fault’. Steam didn’t cause it, Unity didn’t cause it. games got easier to make, and more people got access to PCs, development kits, computer skills and broadband. Its really no different from waiting tables whilst pretending to be an actress, or avoiding admitting you are unemployed by claiming to be a writer. There is virtually nothing I can do about this, and nothing you can do about this, but there is something we can collectively do to at least minimize the collateral damage:
Lets admit that the default position for an indie game developer is pretty much poverty. If you want to make money, maybe one day buy a house, start a family, have a pension, why are you making indie games? You KNOW you are almost certainly screwed right?
Read the full blog post at http://positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2017/06/23/your-indie-game-will-flop-and-you-will-lose-money/.
