Comment by mcherm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mcherm | Hacker News Reader

Much of what Jeff has to say in this article is true. Especially the part about how the cold, hard-hearted hand of Adam Smith will ensure that when X dollars are divided among Y game developers and Y increases, that the developer income will decrease.

That is why the only real hope of the developers is to change X. And that is possible. There are hundreds of thousands of 12-year-olds who are obsessed with Minecraft. (Seriously: last week when my son visited a new school wearing a Minecraft shirt, something like 60% of the male middleschoolers go out of their way to say something about it to him, and several teachers mentioned how obsessed they were.) That market didn't exist before Minecraft.

In a similar vein, I spend a certain number of hours per week watching shows on Netflix, and I am certain that I could be persuaded to spend a big chunk of that time playing a game (for which I would gladly pay money). But it isn't one of my habits -- someone would need to find the sort of game I would enjoy and manage to let me know about it.

Here are some hints: since I am not your normal market I don't own the latest console nor do I own a fancy controller (but I CAN run Steam). I am not that excited about first-person-shoot-em-ups (if I were then I would already have gotten involved), but I might be interested in something more strategic. I am not willing to pay much up-front (since I don't know for sure if I'll really be into doing this) but I would be willing to spend money once I know that I like it, so long as I don't feel like I am being cheated (mandatory in-game payments or play-to-win often leaves me feeling that way). And most important of all, I do not read the indy gaming press or attend indy gaming conferences (since I am a NOT the existing demographic), so you need to reach me some other way -- probably through my friends, using some form of viral marketing.

The market for independent video games is small, but the market for entertainment is astonishingly large. (Plus, maybe your game can be something ELSE... educational perhaps?) The route to profit is to find a new (bigger) niche.

"The market for independent video games is small..."

Says who? You?

When I look at how many bands are out there slaving away to write new music, then touring, and/or making albums it doesn't seem nearly as out of proportion. How many bands with finished albums have you never heard of? Compare with how many finished, polished games you've never even seen on Steam.

There might be a lot of games on Steam now compared to historical norms, but it's a tiny fraction of what you'd see with new books, new albums, or even new independent films.

The market for game-type entertainment is huge, and if people have an astonishing level of choice when it comes to how to spend their time, so much the better. We don't need indie games to hit the $100MM mark to be considered successful. Many developers would be happy if their game pulled down $10K.

We're used to games where you'd have to invest $50 and want dozens of hours of gameplay for it to be worthwhile. Now things are to the point where a $1 game only has to amuse you for a few hours and it's paid for itself.

The biggest problem in the indie game space is not the number of developers, but discoverability. The structure of stores, the methods used to promote them, they're all relics of when there was a handful of games that would get released any given month. These need to change to support a broader, more rich environment where you might have hundreds of them.

> Many developers would be happy if their game pulled down $10K.

That seems unlikely.

Yeah, it's blatantly false. $10k these days is barely enough to fund a few months of development for one person. If you're just building it for fun and you're taking donations, $10k is a lot, but it's not going to fund a game with any level of polish or seriousness unless it's just some sort of bejeweled or triple town clone.

Not every developer is trying to make a million dollar hit. Many have jobs that make pursuing games as a full-time thing impractical.

Game jams like Ludum Dare (http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/) show that there are a lot of people making games.

What I mean is there are some developers where if they make any money at all, it's a bonus. They're not in it for the money, and they're not doing it as a business.

For every developer that's serious and financially committed to making games there has to be at least a hundred that are far more casual.

Discoverability can't be solved to a certain extent. As a gamer, I have a limited amount of time to devote to reading about games, or discussing them with my friends. As the owner of a gaming website, I can only push so many games to my user base.

For example, let's say I own an indie gaming site, and my average user reads 2 reviews a week. 100 games are released each year. I can easily talk about them all on my site, and my users can consume that information and make informed choices. Now, if 1,000 games are released, we have a problem. My users only have time to read 100 reviews, and I can only display so many reviews on my homepage. Which ones do I choose? I pick the best 100 games to write about.

Everyone does this, Steam features games on their store, PCGamer has a limited amount of screen space above the fold, as does RockPaperShotgun. Only so many games hit the Reddit homepage, or get voted up on HN. Which games? The same 100 out of the 1,000 I mentioned earlier. 10% of the games, getting 100% of the media attention.

This isn't a problem you can solve. If I ask my friends what indie game I should buy this month, They'll recommend 2 or 3. It'll be the best ones. It doesn't matter if there are 10 games released, or 10,000 games released, I get 2 or 3 recommendations.

See the issue here? I have a limited amount of time, it doesn't scale up with the number of games released.

That is why the solution to discoverability is to use DIFFERENT channels. Steam, PCGamer, and RockPaperShotgun will all review the same 10% -- that's certainly true. The once-a-month conversation with your friends about what video games they recommend is also going to contain only 2 or 3 suggestions. But what about the conversation about the finale of Dancing with the Stars? Perhaps your dancing-themed game aimed at the general market can get mentioned there. And so on and so forth... the traditional market for video games is limited, but the market for entertainment is much larger.

I'm not sure why he's focused on indies. Budgets for AAA titles are growing to the point that they can't survive even on moderate successes (e.g. Irrational Studios and Bioshock Infinite). I expect between the deep discounts offered now on PC sales and the glut of games, consumers are going to push back more on price. The kind of deals that exist on pc via steam sales and the like don't exist in the console market. I'm not sure the AAA will be able to demand the same price.

There have been a number of indie titles that were released while still in development and use continuing sales to fund development (e.g. Minecraft.) But I think the force behind steams early access will shortly come to an end. A couple titles recently cancelled development and I think in coming months more will quit. Consumers will be turned off to early access when some of their titles go dark while still riddled with bugs and half developed.

My two cents for how to be successful, make something fun to watch. With the growth of twitch streaming, more then ever, games are being judged by watching someone play, rather then reviews or trailers.

X (the market) can also increase if people had more free time. (AKA: less working hours).

"the cold, hard-hearted hand of Adam Smith"

Adam Smith was a lovely fellow and a gentleman, you must be thinking of Thomas Malthus.

Perhaps. I associate Adam Smith with the recognition of the supply/demand curve and its implications, but that may be inaccurate. "cold, hard-hearted" was colorful hyperbole used intentionally for humorous effect.

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