Indie Game Dev: Assessing Risk | Hacker News Reader

Indie Game Dev: Assessing Risk

derekyu.com

49 pointsgenerichuman35 comments

The biggest risk for an indie game dev is not the chosen theme or genre or style, but the team, the funding and even more importantly the motivation of all the parties involved.

Talent is mostly sustained hard work, usually over years, decades or even a life.

And there is also luck. People always underestimate luck.

I don’t know why your comment was downvoted but as someone working on a game with some commercial success this is 100% accurate. From my experience game dev requires a large amount of effort from a few motivated people to succeed. Having money to physically sustain those people is a big factor in ensuring they have the time to succeed in completing the project.

Back in the early-mid 2010s there were alot of kickstarters that were funding alot of pretty ambitious projects with millions. But out of possibly hundreds of attempts, I can really only name a handful. Some are still in development today way past the average length of a dev cycle like Star Citizen.

So I do think the motivation is the most important part, after all alot of the most well and content rich indie games like Cave Story or Rogue Fortress were made with much less than some of those kickstarters.

That being said, motivation is often a function of one's own specialities. It's rare to find people with both the artistic and programming rigour to realize a vision. But a look at the Skyrim or Minecraft modding communities are good example of the sheer amount of content and creativity that is unleashed once a good platform is produced. Unity & Unreal has made steps, but their learning curves are still too steep I think before one can really get their hands in working.

To elaborate on luck which many people don't get: this is what's being mitigated with marketing / advertising and existing fanbase. Usually indies don't have the budget for the former, and don't have the latter, hence they are more reliant on luck than anything.

Among us is a nice example.

Among Us had a big existing fanbase; the creator was the creator of the Henry Stickmin flash games and had somewhat recently released all Henry Stickmin games with an extra, "Completing the Mission."

I think you're massively overvaluing the Henry Stickmin flash game fanbase.

Maybe, but I don't play video games, and I had heard of Henry Stickmin. The only reason I was interested in Among Us is because I knew it was the Henry Stickmin creator.

The funny thing about Among us is it didn't really blow up until 2 years after it was released. Talk about a lucky break!

This is not unusual -- it may take you years to get traction but you just need to keep with it and keep evolving until you do. But this means that making a game is more of a side-project than a full-time job (unless you're independently wealthy!)

I was quite shocked when a potential lead revealed to me that one of their recent games barely made $1k in sales and they were deep in the red. I feel the market is REALLY tough for indies at the moment. For every remotely successful indie title one can imagine there are probably 100 complete flops.

You need to build an audience for the game, but that often takes far more time than the runway available. If you're lucky, the zeitgeist will notice you before you go broke. But most aren't lucky.

Choosing the "wrong" genre is definitely a thing tho. Take an example: Pyre, from the developers who made Transistor and Hades.

Transistor was quite a big success among indies[1]. Hades was the indie game of the year[2]. Then why Pyre, the game between these two big boys, flopped[3]?

In my opinion it's mostly the genre. "Fantasy" + "Sport" didn't work so well, cause the main audience of sport games are mostly also fans of real-life sport teams.

[1]: https://steamdb.info/app/237930 says 1.08M ~ 2.66M owners.

[2]: https://steamdb.info/app/1145360 says 4.63M ~ 12.73M.

[3]: https://steamdb.info/app/462770 says 251.3k ~ 628.2k. It's not bad, but considering its astonishing quality and the track record of the devs, I'll say it's an disppointing number.

I'm a game developer/ contractor/ indie dev.

I've worked on huge unity games, and rebuilt entire unity education apps as a specialty contractor.

Indie games are dead, the videogame market is completely saturated. If you want to make games, make em but you need a "real job".

vr experiences and training apps can pay the bills ... For now.

Interesting take on the indie game development scene. i've always felt that while passion is vital, there's a tangible undercurrent of economic realities are often glossed over. the mention of "time travel" was cute, but it got me thinking. Perhaps, in a way, the game dev industry might be a few steps behind in leveraging some structured decision-making processes? but then again, can we truly quantify creativity and intuition, especially in such a dynamic industry?

I do appreciate the effort to build a risk assessment framework, even if it feels slightly oversimplified. I'm looking forward to seeing how this evolves and hopefully, this nudges the industry / idealistic indie devs towards more informed decisions. nice effort.

How is it different from a typical startup, except a startup can (in the US) potentially get much more funding before the product is profitable?

Define "typical".

Indie game development and startups share similarities in risk and reward dynamics. but i'd argue that the indie game scene often comes with a more personal touch and artistic expression, while startups primarily pivot around solving a specific problem or filling a market need. also, the feedback loop in gaming is more immediate and visceral, based on player experiences. still, the comparison is apt in many ways, and maybe there are lessons each side can glean from the other.

Most indie games don't have the advertising budget of the studios and can't afford digital advertising campaigns and so they have to rely on organic discovery via blogs, youtube and word of mouth.

But whether something is going to catch fire or not is often the domain of voodoo witches. The person who can figure out how to make the right game at the right time consistently will be rich, the one who doesn't will not.

Startups don't even have to be profitable, nowadays many get aquired or even go IPO while deep in the red. Games seem much harder.

> leveraging some structured decision-making processes?

i feel like there is no structured decision making that will produce a successful game. In the same way, there's no such a decision making process to painting a piece of artwork that will sell.

Well, there are. It's just that the games produced by those processes are FIFA and Call of Duty, and step 1 of the process is basically "be the publisher of FIFA or Call of Duty".

I think the question is more like could a great team produce the next FIFA AND the next Call of Duty due to some kind of process improvement? I don't know, maybe there are hugely inefficient processes right now, but the sorcery of the art, to find 'the fun' of a new game concept or formula still feels very mysterious and ambiguous. Of course most games are just building on existing formulas of fun, but then you need a fresh edge to fight the established incumbent of the genre.

And if you found this secret process or meta formula for coming up with new amazing game formulas, why not just keep it to yourself to build the most spectacularly successful game studio in history. (Maybe that's Nintendo? Blizzard at its best also has some magic touch on any new genre they touch, even where they mess up like Overwatch they end up making and taking down the entire genre with them.)

I dunno, maybe in ten years game development will be like some automated AI windtunnel/R&D lab remixing various game genres and formulas and spitting out new fun things. But I like that there is a sorcery to it for now that elevates human creativity over process.

This is of course very true, genuine creation in video games is still and perhaps always will be (and indeed arguably we should hope it will remain?) an unsolved problem! I was just being somewhat snarky due to the parent seeming to wholly disregard the idea of assembly line video games when they are very much a feature of the landscape :P

I've played a lot of Spelunky. I mean, I have played A LOT of Spelunky. I consider Derek Yu to be a great designer.

I also think Spelunky classic was the best version of his series on account that the aesthetics and soundtrack were so banger.

That's why I wanted to preface everything before I made this statement. Spelunky 2 is one of the "worst" games I have ever played. I mean this in a very nice way. However, I consider it incredibly disrespectful to the players.

In order to see the "true" ending of the game you have to do an insane number of really esoteric tasks to get to what is called The Cosmic ocean. And, in this Cosmic ocean you then spend 99 levels working in what is arguably arbitrary hell to complete it so that you can finally "beat" game.

https://youtu.be/UbTW3F2F4PI

What I find so disrespectful about Spelunky 2 is that the experience is frustrating as hell. And, that's intentional. He has designed the game in order to elicit that response, but that doesn't mean that's necessarily a good thing

And in one of his axes he lists broad appeal, however there is no way any person in the general population can even remotely approach the skill level required in order to enjoy this aspect of the game. And, some people might say "get good", or "you need to learn to play the game", but I don't find that to be a sufficient explanation or sympathetic response to those who really do enjoy the game, but are locked out of really interesting parts of it based on tedium that requires incredibly long playthroughs that require incredibly difficult tasks to be achieved in order to see it.

And, I get it as a designer he made the choice that this is how the game should be played, but I cannot really ever get over how the game has changed between Spelunky classic versus Spelunky 1 versus Spelunky 2. And, how much he made a point to enforce that experience through design decisions.

I'd also like to touch on the fact that each following iteration changed from interesting to an art style that felt more like McDonald's art instead of sticking close and cute like the original Sprite art that was created.

I have put so many hours into Spelunky and it's crazy because I would expect to have nice things to say about a game that I spent so much time playing, but for me I really wouldn't suggest Spelunky to anyone because of the design decisions from Derek Yu. In fact, it's my top choice for games that get in the way of themself to the detriment of the player.

So I guess all of this rambling is to articulate that Derek Yu does know some things, and he has been successful, but I don't consider his opinions to be very valid regarding what makes a good game for the general audience.

Yeah, so why did you put so many hours into it?

It's a roguelike with a high skill ceiling. You're not meant to win every run. Like most roguelikes.

tbh you don’t have to finish the Cosmic Ocean — by that point you’ve experienced the whole game. It’s your own expectation that you need to “finish” that’s causing you grief.

I won't buy a game I know I'll never finish. I absolutely despise not being able to finish an otherwise good game. It ruins it. I'm not sure why you think it's fine to just dismiss other people's motivations for wanting to play a game.

In a sense, aren't you dismissing other people's motivations for wanting to play a game?

Sure the general population "can't" complete Cosmic Ocean (and I have "can't" in quotes because in my experience, there is very little in the world of gaming that truly can't be done by the average person with some dedication). But what about those who can, and/or are motivated by the challenge? Why do you consider it "good design" to dismiss their motivations to satisfy your pickiness about finishing all your games?

I don't think the cosmic ocean is designed to be finished by a general audience.

> we're all familiar with the stories about indie game developers who spent many years turning an unproven idea into a big hit.

how many are there? and what would connoisseurs consider to be the indie games that were biggest 3 hits?

Minecraft, Factorio, Dwarf Fortress, Battlebit Remastered, Darkest Dungeon, Slay the Spire come to mind (I'm sure there are plenty more examples)

I'll add Stardew Valley, Celeste, and Hollow Knight as really popular examples (not quite on the scale of Minecraft, but more mainstream than DF).

None of these are "unproven ideas", except maybe Celeste.

Stardew Valley and Hollow Knight were so "proven" that they were cliche. Stardew Valley is the most typical example of porting a proven idea to a new platform I can think of.

When was this originally published?

The bottom of the page has an updated Dec 12 2022 on it. The main article talks about Elden Ring which was released in February 2022. So it must of been written sometime in 2022.

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