So Here's How Many Games I Sell - Indie Game Developer Story | Hacker News Reader

So Here's How Many Games I Sell - Indie Game Developer Story

jeff-vogel.blogspot.com

118 pointsmkuhn34 comments

Covering a salary for yourself is no mean feat, particularly for selling games.

In general, when folks with no business experience tell me they want to start selling games, I tell them "It is a black hole of time and talent". There are exceptions towards the top end (and $100k+ of sales is, if not stratospheric, probably still in the top 1% of indie developers), but more typical games either are never completed or end up profiting less than $1k per man month invested (i.e. not covering reasonable imputed salaries of founders).

You can see a whole bunch of case studies here:

http://www.gameproducer.net/category/sales-statistics/

From what I've followed with gaming, is that modding and level design is generally the best way to get into a game development.

I believe there are a lot of indie developers who do make money, but if you want a real career you can't go it alone unless you really want to invest time into a truly unique idea. I believe the classic example is Chris Sawyer with Transport Tycoon and RollerCoaster Tycoon, both of which IIRC were programmed solely by him. If you do that and sell it to a publisher, you've got gold, but unless you do that I doubt there'll ever be an indie developer earning a large amount.

If you sell big like Sawyer did, then it doesn't matter if it takes another two years before your next game, because your only company expense is your own house!

> Some of you might ask, "Why would anyone pay money for a game that looks like that?" The answer is, "I don't know, but they do."

Some people really enjoy gameplay a lot more than pretty pictures. We've built a webgame (a tennis manager game: http://rockingrackets.com/) where our website didn't even had a decent layout for the first six months after making the website public, but a lot of people were playing it because of the game play.

We're not breaking even on the time part yet, but our other costs were covered after only two months. Currently we're close to being feature complete, after which we'll fix bugs and refactor some code for a short period. After that, we'll be moving the game into a maintenance mode and we'll start developing a new game.

Rocking Rackets' expected shelve life is long enough to cover our time investment quite well even at the current rate of making money. The game is still growing though...

Geneforge, and Avernum servies of games are extremely good. If you are an RPG fan and havent played them, you are missing something. (though I am pretty sure if Jeff did not make these games, my GPA in college would have been much higher)

It's really cool that he's able to make a successful living making indie games, but it definitely is a labor of love. So far, he hasn't broken even on it, and it's a two year old game. He spent around 120k, and made around 116k.

It really looks like it needs some more promotion though. He said that the original game sold a lot of copies on other sites. But this one was just released on his site, and mainly marketed by word of mouth.

Most of the 120K was his salary, so just breaking even is a significant accomplishment.

I think I am confused. Did he work on the game for one year, and thus the game is judged based on paying back one year's salary? He says his other games have done better and worse, not having looked at the game catalog his company offers, it seems to me that this game has probably more than covered the part of his salary he spent working on it. Am I confused?

Think of it this way: the game cost his company 120K to build, and his company has pretty much made that back, so his company has broken even(1). While developing the game he paid himself a decent salary, so he personally has done well (and that's the part that actually matters).

(1) Leaving out the time value of money, etc

I agree with you. He's been doing this since 1994, so I'd hope he is able to pay himself a livable wage. But that 120k includes business expenses, and partial salaries for two other full time employees.

He says he has been unusually successful, and I believe him. I just thought that there was more money in indie games. So I was expecting his company to be making money on this game.

I would be interested in finding out how long his games continue to sell a decent number of copies. He did say that he expected this game to be quite profitable, so maybe he is expecting to make another 100k in the next few years.

It really looks like it needs some more promotion though.

That problem is being solved. I just learned about it! From this nifty blog post that someone just put up! ;)

Costs for this particular kind of game are mostly content costs: Writing, gameplay scripting, art. The engineering effort doesn't carry over a great deal from one game to another. As well, downloadables get lower market penetration than browser-based games. All those factors go a long way to explain why he's only breaking even.

If you want a hope of success in games, either do a low-asset kind of game, do a game where big assets are matched with big marketing, or involve the users in creating content. I think there's still lots and lots of room for the third.

Interesting read - I was wondering myself [1] how to get into that field, it seems so unlikely that one can make money in that space (even only enough to make a modest living out of it).

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=521475

Can someone explain to me --- and I never even play games (Hacker News is my computer game), let alone write them --- why any indie game developer would sink $120k into a title and not design it so they could collect recurring revenue from online multiplayer subscriptions?

1. Developing multilayer games requires more work than developing single player games. You have to look at the cost/profit ratios, not just the profit.

2. The work can be qualitatively different - multilayer games are not designed the same way as single payer ones, you have a whole new can of worms to worry about.

3. Maybe he likes single player games (or making them) better than multilayer ones.

as a side note - 120k usd is not that much money, considering most of that money is the author's salary.

Considering the other expenses in that budget, 120k gross expenditures sounds more like a 60k salary for him.

Obviously it's trickier to develop a multiplayer game, but the economics seem so compelling; in a 15 year career, he's never broken out into multiplayer? Or is there something I'm missing about those economics?

He mentioned in the comments that the reason why he has not made a multiplayer game is because he is only a so-so programmer and lacks the skills to do so.

You're forgetting, he has many other games already out that bring in recurring revenue. Even if he's taking a 60k salary while building this game it doesn't mean he's not making much more from the other recurring income.

You're making it into an economic question when it isn't one to the author. He likes making games like this, so this is what he's decided to do.

I bought one of the games recently and emailed him a bunch of usability/interface suggestions. He thanked me but mentioned that he's making a living so somebody must be enjoying the games. He's got a point.

It's a labor of love. I'm sure there are a million things he could do to add the potential to make more money (like an investment in better art or another programmer), but it looks like he's not interested in that kind of risk.

It doesn't seem like an ambitious plan, but he seems happy so what's wrong with not trying to experiment with business models and whatnot?

With the added complexity of making it mulitplayer you would also have to deal with the increased costs of keeping the game running. Right now when they finish a game the only recurring costs they pay is hosting,bandwidth,and support. If the game fails , except for hosting , those costs would go down (less people buying game means less support etc). But if a multiplayer game fails you have to keep the servers running or risk pissing off the people who bought the game

As other people have stated making a multiplayer game is a whole different kettle of fish. However if recurring revenue is what you're after then perhaps episodic content is more your thing.

Something like the recent Sam n Max releases.

It looks quite good if you view it as returning somewhere between 35-50% per year on invested capital. However, it's hard to guess what shelf life of the product will be.

It's hard for us to guess, but the Vogel has several other titles that have been available online for a number of years so I bet he can make a reasonably strong prediction.

I would be very surprised if Geneforge 1 (which I don't think is his earliest title, but is several years old) hasn't sold more than 5 copies this year. The tail for his products is very long. Pretty flat I'd guess, but very long and since they're distributed digitally there's no reason not to keep them available, gradually dropping prices or making bundles available. Once 5 is released he could sell a "box set of the entire series" and spike sales of the old titles again.

I'd love to see sub and renewal data like this for "indie" or small shops making an MMO or other on-going, recurring revenue games.

Agreed, I'd love to know if an indie game can accomplish a profitable MMO following.

I mean assuming you can keep roughly 1,000 people subscribed at $5 a month, then each year a game would pay out $60,000 dollars. If you get a loyal fan following then this would be a great revenue source. Once people are emotionally tied into a game then it can often keep them in the game for many, many years.

If you could keep a lot of the heavy work on client-side (not unreasonable for modern computers if you're producing a non-CPU intensive game by nature) so that your bandwidth and server needs stay low, then once you break-even you'd hopefully be able to keep a large chunk of that $60k.

Correctly done, I imagine an MMO could quite possibly be the best way an "indie" developer could make big money without a publisher taking a huge cut. I mean sure if you can get a publisher to sell the game for $20 or so and let them take most of it to help grow your users, but keep the monthly fees in your pocket.

http://www.prairiegames.com/

ed: the biggest issue with an "Indie MMO" is that maintenance costs can make it a non-indie kind of venture very quickly.

It's definitely possible. The company that made runescape started out as a small company. Now the company isn't so small, and the founders are worth tens of millions.

If you are including text based games, there is a lot of competition, but you can be successful. I played Kingdom of Loathing for a few months, and it was a profitable mmorpg. That was even entirely free. Donations were accepted, and got you special items, but those items were traded on the in game market for in game currency.

I want to see a major MMO start offering modding tools that let indie developers make mods that people can play for some small sum of money -- say, somewhere between free and a dollar. I think it could really take off if the modding tools were flexible enough and the mods cool enough. Small profit margins, large audiences, and tiny marginal costs are where it's at.

Installing new games and learning how to play them is work. Making a game you already like be bigger and better could be a profitable business.

> I want to see a major MMO start offering modding tools that let indie developers make mods that people can play for some small sum of money -- say, somewhere between free and a dollar.

Done. It's called 2nd life.

2nd life isn't a game, it's an online world, vastly different thing. There's nothing to play, there are no goals, nothing, it's just a world; you go there to socialize with others in the world.

There is lots to play. People make games. People play games, http://slgames.wordpress.com/ There are active RPG groups. Star Trek, Harry Potter I've heard about. Basically virtual world LARPing with kick-ass interactive props that don't need to obey laws of physics.

There is nothing stopping anyone from creating games in 2nd Life. It's exactly what you asked for mod tools. It's all mod tools. It's all up to you.

Games esp mmo's are mostly socializing.

It's just a world. Geez, only a world. Like saying its just reality there's only sticks and rocks here, no games. Pick up the damn rock and hit it with a damn stick.

Have a modicum of imagination.

$5 a month is extremely overpriced for small, low-budget indie game. $10/6mo or less is more like it.

The quality of Eve Online with it's dozens and dozens of devs/designers/artists/writers and multi-million budget only costs ~ $11/mo.

Micro indie's such as OA can't afford an MMO. MMO takes an order of magnitude or more resources to develop/maintain than single player one-shot. Old Ultima Online is the "level" I'd expect for an "indie" MMO and that took a lot more than an indie level effort to produce/run.

Would love to see sales numbers broken down by platform for a cross-platform game that's available for GNU/Linux.

My research has shown that, traditionally, an indie developer can get 40-50% of their sales on the Mac, and a 5% or lower share on Linux. There's a bit of a chicken-egg question over why Linux sales are so low - most game devs don't go for Linux because they hear they won't sell well, but low numbers of games for Linux may contribute to that trend.

Another issue might be that linux users are not used to paying for software.

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