Interesting article on the pop of the "indie bubble"

[BadMinotaur]

The Indie Bubble is Popping.

It's kind of a long read, but I feel it's well worth it. Jeff Vogel is an indie that most closely matches what I think us commercial RPG Maker users aspire to -- a long-lasting business selling low-budget niche games to a niche audience. He's been around since the early- to mid-90s, so he's had some experience with booms and busts of the industry.

While some of the more established commercial developers here might not feel so threatened by what he says in the article, it's us newer developers who really have to take his words to heart. As he says, all of the easy money is essentially gone. It's only going to get more difficult for us from here on out.

I'm interested to hear what all of you think about what he's saying here, both established and new developers.

 

[Solo]

I have a book wherein Jeff Vogel was interviewed. And if I recall correctly, I may have even played one of his games... though I can't remember what it was. It came on "The World's Largest Collection of Windows Software," a collection of shareware games and such from the early 90's (if I'm even right and haven't got my memories mixed up).


I would like to remain optimistic, however...


EDIT: Read the article.


"Suppose you are a super low-budget micro-developer like me. It's not super-hard to survive, because I can get enough sales to get by with a little cheap marketing and word of mouth advertising. I'll be all right."


Wouldn't a lot of us fit into this category? It's the middle-tier, Vogel says, who will have the problems.


My game really had no "budget" (unless you count the cost of RPG Maker) because I created all the resources myself. It's the people who actually have to spend a lot of money on commissions and so on. The only significant investment in the creation of my own game was in the time it took for me to develop it... which, I guess, is actually rather significant after all.


Again, optimism!!

 

[BadMinotaur]

^ Yes, I think we will be fine if that's what we aspire to. However, it's still good to keep an eye on the industry, because what happens out there can still affect us in our little niche goldfish bowl =)

Also, and this is a little more depressing, I think it's a good idea to temper expectations when dealing with indies and their games. What Jeff can write is heartbreaking, it's a good warning that a lot of us new developers should heed, and it essentially boils down to "don't quit your day job."

EDIT: Added a very small clarification that I'm one of those "new developers." Don't want to sound like I'm trying to be wise or anything, heh.

 

[EternalShadow]

I have a book wherein Jeff Vogel was interviewed. And if I recall correctly, I may have even played one of his games... though I can't remember what it was. It came on "The World's Largest Collection of Windows Software," a collection of shareware games and such from the early 90's (if I'm even right and haven't got my memories mixed up).

Would this perchance be Games, Games and More Games or something like that?

 

[Solo]

Would this perchance be Games, Games and More Games or something like that?

The book, you mean? It's Game Design: Secrets of the Sages. (second edition)

EDIT: Unless you meant the shareware compilation? In that case, it was actually called The World's Largest Collection of Windows Software. XD

 

[EternalShadow]

The book, you mean? It's Game Design: Secrets of the Sages. (second edition)


EDIT: Unless you meant the shareware compilation? In that case, it was actually called The World's Largest Collection of Windows Software. XD

Lol, I wondered because Google isn't turning up anything, and G,G and more G sounded like it was the same thing as I have 3 CDs of that sort of thing. I lost them ages ago though, but they were in that same shareware era.


I have heard of that book though.

 

[Mouser]

Meh. It's common sense stuff.

I've said since I started seriously looking into this there are two types of games making money: big AAA titles, and the HOPA's on BFG (and I'm honestly not sure which gets more more money at the end of each day). 

'Traditional' RPG Maker games are nice in that there is a dedicated group of players who enjoy this type of game, and the 'big guys' aren't really touching it (except Nintendo on its handhelds). Even here though, there's the problem of too many games coming out. Want to blame people? Here's some other factors that are killing this niche:

1) Resources being released free for non-commercial use. This encourages the creation of "free" games, which will always win in a price war against commercially priced games. This is a huge factor in what's going on. Lock up the resources, and you'd see fewer free games being made (or you would if so many hadn't already been released into 'the wild'). (Edit: I think this is by far, the biggest problem - and not just within the RPG Maker community. Unity has the same issues).

2) Handheld gaming: There's something downright convenient in being able to pull something out of your pocket, flip it open, and start playing a game. Games like Radiant Historia and all the releases and re-releases and remakes of Final Fantasy are directly competing with RPG Maker games for gamer's time.

3) People have less time and money for leisure stuff. I think we all know this one and have for years. That's the 'other side' of the equation the article really didn't address. On one side you have X dollars going to Y developers, and on the other you have M gamers spending N dollars. N is definitely decreasing. M may or may not be depending on the genre and niche of game you're looking at.

4) All the game bundles and 'steady stream' publishers (Big Fish Games): Gamers now know that games cost either 6.99 or 13.99, that they all go on sale for half price at least once a month, and that most of the 6.99 titles become 2.99 titles for a day if you wait long enough. The article mentioned the Steam sales and bundles on that side.

If you want to sell a game for $19.99, you've got to convince your customers that your game is worth more than SIX 2.99 titles. Six times the playtime, six times the fun, six times the adventure, etc...

- Even after all that, I'm still optimistic. Epic released the source code for Unreal Engine (something I thought would never happen), Crytek changed it's licensing model to be much more Indie friendly. So the caliber of games Indie publishers are now capable of creating just shot up to the moon (reference intended). Brush up on your C++ or C#, learn how 3D graphics works:  models, meshes, splines, vector transforms and all that, and you can be part of the next rise of really good full scale 3D Indie games.

 

[whitesphere]

Disclaimer:  I didn't read the article.

However, with any creative undertaking --- whether it is writing a novel, making a song, writing an RPG, it's very important to realize there is a huge jump from "I'm doing this because I love it and don't care if I make money from it" to "I'm doing this because I love it AND must make enough money to pay my bills."

For example:  My mom, has 2 published novels.  She said, she spent a few thousand to get her first novel published.  That is standard in the industry for a first time author.  It took her probably hundreds of hours to write and edit her novel.  How much did she make in royalties for a published novel which has been out for over a year?  Around $100.  And that is for a novel which was accepted for publication and made available to bookstores.  Most of her royalties came from people she knew buying the book.

I think I can safely say nearly all of us who are in this community are passionate about classic 2-D overhead RPGs.  But, even though we might be creating the most amazing stories ever told, it's very few of us who will be able to live off the proceeds of our game.  Keep in mind we are asking people not only to spend their limited free time, but some of their limited entertainment budget on our games.  Since we are in a specialized niche, that dramatically limits the already narrow pool of people who might purchase our game.

So, it's fantastic to do something you love, and great to share the games within the community.  But, there is a good, solid reason for the term "starving artist."   And that's why it's always good to have a day job to pay the bills.

Even Issac Asimov (famous sci-fi author) took many years writing sci-fi as a side job until he could live off the royalties.  And Jim Butcher (Dresden Files fame) said it took him 9 years to get published.  So, even great authors have a long runway before they can live off their creative output.

 

[Lunarea]

@Mouser:

1) Resources being released free for non-commercial use. This encourages the creation of "free" games, which will always win in a price war against commercially priced games. This is a huge factor in what's going on. Lock up the resources, and you'd see fewer free games being made (or you would if so many hadn't already been released into 'the wild').

I feel that this is an unfair jab at people who provide resources for community to use. Majority of artists share things to encourage game creation in general, but when money is put into the equation, it's a whole different ball game. Then it's a matter of letting complete strangers profit from your work, and it's essentially the equivalent of a game portal publishing your game, but not giving you any income because the extra exposure and getting your name in the credits is enough. That said, there are still a lot of us that offer resources for commercial use - for free, even. And some of us are trying to make things more fair by offering cheap resource packs that the community can buy.

Free games will always have a lot of appeal, and not just because of the price. With a commercial game that is supposed to be your income, you can't exactly be efficient and spend 5 years making and polishing your game. You also can't take some of the risks free games can, but you are expected to put in more work and effort to stand out. When people pay for games, they tend to judge and criticize them a lot more harshly than when they download for free. With a free game, all the player loses out on is a little time. With a commercial game flop, they're out of time and money.

I think free games hurt the niche heck of a lot less than the poorly made fluff games that are just looking to make a quick buck.

 

[Solo]

With a commercial game that is supposed to be your income, you can't exactly be efficient and spend 5 years making and polishing your game.

I spent 7... *whistles* <_<

You also can't take some of the risks free games can

What do you mean?

When people pay for games, they tend to judge and criticize them a lot more harshly than when they download for free.

Unfortunately...

 

[Lunarea]

What do you mean?

You can't, for instance, decide to scrap your game entirely mid-way through and start all over. Especially if you have a deadline and publishers lined up and waiting for your project to be done. Or you might not be able to add all the features because they would mean an extra 6 months of development.

Mind you, this applies mostly to people who are using commercial games as their sole source of income. If you've got a different day job and are just doing a commercial game as an extra way to make a bit of money, you'd probably fit somewhere in between the two categories.

 

[Mouser]

@Mouser:

I feel that this is an unfair jab at people who provide resources for community to use.

<snip>

I think free games hurt the niche heck of a lot less than the poorly made fluff games that are just looking to make a quick buck.

It's not meant to be a "jab" any more than the things listed in the linked article are. I think it's an obvious fact.

If everyone had to pay for their models, art, and music (a la Daz 3D or whatever) there would be a lot fewer free games. To say that free alternatives don't negatively hurt commercial viability is more than a bit naive. If the Gimp or Audacity ever came really close to the features of their commercial counterparts, those markets would really start to feel it (Audacity already is making an impact, much moreso than the Gimp, anyway.

 

[Lunarea]

It's not meant to be a "jab" any more than the things listed in the linked article are. I think it's an obvious fact.

You can't think that something is a fact. It's either a fact or an opinion, and unless you can back up the obvious fact with proof, I'm going to assume that it's your opinion - and I will disagree with you.

The major difference between the article and your point about free resources is that the article places blame (so to speak) on developers. You, on the other hand, are blaming artists and resource contributors for ruining the market. I, personally, feel that this is a jab at people (intentional or not).

To say that free alternatives don't negatively hurt commercial viability is more than a bit naive.

Well, you snipped the part of my reply that agrees in part. Free games CAN hurt commercial viability, but it's not an issue that can be boiled down to less free games = better commercial viability. Quality pays a pretty big part in there, too. If all free games were absolute crap and a developer made a good game, he'd see sales rise in spite of the fact that there are many free games of the genre. Likewise, if all the free games were excellent and a crappy commercial game were released, it wouldn't sell.

I agree that more free or cheap games means more competition and more reasons to step up your game as a commercial developer, but I don't think the solution is to make game development less accessible to people.

 

[Solo]

I agree that more free or cheap games means more competition and more reasons to step up your game as a commercial developer, but I don't think the solution is to make game development less accessible to people.

That might prevent less-qualified people from churning out subpar commercial games, though...

 

[Lunarea]

That might prevent less-qualified people from churning out subpar commercial games, though...

Sure, but I think that taking accessibility away from the majority of indie devs will hurt the awesome and creative new people more than it will hurt people who are just jumping on the game dev bandwagon to make some money. People who are in it for the money alone will just turn around and find something new to do.

What I got out of the article is something I don't really consider news. Breaking into the game field is about to get harder. But this isn't some new never-before-seen development. Breaking into the game field has pretty much always been hard. What Indie games did was make the field more accessible to smaller developers - to people who wouldn't have considered game development as a viable source of income because they had a daytime job and weren't a part of the major game studios.

I've read several articles about early game devs and stories about how some of them had several studios practically fighting to hire them. Nowadays, you're lucky if you get a personalized "Thank you, but we don't have any openings" when you apply. Or, in case of professionals already in the industry, you're very lucky if your company isn't sold and your studio disbanded. Even some of the more popular studios have recently been closed because the head company didn't want to invest in them any longer.

But, really, this is not something that's unique to the game development field. Think about how many writers publish books and hope to become the next Stephen King, or all the bands/musicians that hope to have the next spot on the charts.

The industry is evolving. The needs of the customers are evolving, as are the business and marketing plans of people hoping to sell games. I take the article as an excellent reminder that you should do your research and take a good, hard look at how you should break (and stay) in the market. Know about your competition and use that knowledge to change your business strategy. Because the bottom line is that it's no longer just enough to make a game and send it to a publisher to sell.

Although I will admit that free/cheap games make it harder to sell, I really don't think it's the only factor that affects sales. So, a solution that only gets rid of the free/cheap games isn't going to fix things. In my opinion, we should focus on encouraging higher standards of quality. As customers, players and fellow developers, we should strive to support and create games that are creative and just plain good.

My 2 cents, anyway.

 

[Solo]

Lunarea, I would "Like" your post, but I have unfortunately "reached my quota of positive votes for the day".

 

[Mouser]

What I got out of the article is something I don't really consider news. Breaking into the game field is about to get harder.

I actually think this is going to be a great few years for indie development coming up. There won't be as many big titles, but what gets produced is going to be a whole lot better than almost anything we're seeing now.

The market is certainly evolving (moving cheese and all that). But from the developers that know how to code and work with models there are going to be some incredible titles coming out built on Unreal and Crysis that should give a lot of big name publishers a run for their money. That's going to be good for PC gaming as a whole - it raises the bar for everyone and makes anyone wanting to create a commercial game really make something special or else it won't leave the gate - including the major publishers.

Indie's now have complete access (almost complete in the case of Crysis) to the most powerful game engines on the planet. Yes, modelling software is a bit rougher: Blender and Gimp vs Maya and Photoshop - or you could use Daz Studio and Poser, and Audacity vs. ProTools/ProLogic on the audio side, but the core engine and editor are exactly the same.  You don't like the way the editor does things? Rewrite it to work the way you want it to.

TBH, it doesn't cost that much for licenses for quality commercial software that indies are just completely shut out (it's nothing compared to the cost of opening up just about any other kind of business). 5K can get you up and running - 10k can equip a team. Grab yourself a platinum membership to Daz if you don't do all your own modelling and make friends with the commercial distribution hubs on the web for art and music and you're good to go.

 

[orochii]

Put it into your todo list, so you make sure to like it tomorrow xD.

This is what I always hear from people that aren't into RPG Maker. All RPG Maker games look the same, in some way. And it is true. Resource packs are good, because it saves you some development time and are cheaper than making custom assets. But for a commercial game, where you NEED to stand out, I feel that using premade visual stuff is not an option. Or not much of it. You can use some characters and/or tiles. Retouch them a little (more than adding a bandanna or changing some colours, please). But at the end, making them unique in some way. I'm sorry, but I've seen too much copy-pasted games lately since the start of the RPG Maker era, mostly because of the character style which is vanilla VX/Ace, or Looseleaf, or Mack, RMXP, RM2k/3, or whatever.

AND NO. You can do A LOT WITH JUST a 32x32 square. I swear you. I know how to do pixel ****.

You can say that graphics aren't important, that good gameplay compensates. But please, think about it, what is the first thing anyone SEES?

Now, I have to say, audio is superb. I've seen that custom OSTs are now pretty common, and most of the time musicians behind it are STUPIDLY AWESOME!!1!. So my suggestion is, do the same with those graphics please.

And mechanics. I know that Yanfly scripts work SUPER nice. But please, vary a little more. I know there is an RPG archetype we all want to achieve, but there is nothing mandatory on it. Try to invest some time on research, on new mechanics outside of "this skill does moar damage to enemies with three fingers or less". Please, I want to see something new.

I'm a douche. But I love you all <3.

 

[BadMinotaur]

Some very interesting discussion here!
 

What I got out of the article is something I don't really consider news. Breaking into the game field is about to get harder. But this isn't some new never-before-seen development. Breaking into the game field has pretty much always been hard. What Indie games did was make the field more accessible to smaller developers - to people who wouldn't have considered game development as a viable source of income because they had a daytime job and weren't a part of the major game studios.

I agree and disagree with you. I agree that this isn't something that hasn't happened before, but I do feel it is actually news. Maybe not surprising news, but - like anything - the games industry and its sectors have ups and downs. It's good to keep tabs on when the downs are about to happen, even if you know they're eventually going to happen.

And if you haven't followed the industry closely for the past decade or two, you might not be keenly aware of the rises and the falls.

Everything else you say is exactly spot-on IMO.

You can say that graphics aren't important, that good gameplay compensates. But please, think about it, what is the first thing anyone SEES?

To counter, Minecraft at one point was very ugly. Thankfully they've hired an artist (or two? I haven't kept up with Mojang) but in the beginning Minecraft was really not great looking. I don't even mean the pixelated textures or anything, I love that; but the color selection and cohesion of everything was just fundamentally off.

That said, I will give you that Minecraft is really kind of the exception to every videogame rule ever written, so maybe it's not such a great example of "gameplay > graphics."

TBH, it doesn't cost that much for licenses for quality commercial software that indies are just completely shut out (it's nothing compared to the cost of opening up just about any other kind of business). 5K can get you up and running - 10k can equip a team. Grab yourself a platinum membership to Daz if you don't do all your own modelling and make friends with the commercial distribution hubs on the web for art and music and you're good to go.

I want to reply with two things:

1) I don't think $10k can actually equip a team; unless you're talking about tools only, and not their salary. If you think it can, then I'd like figures please. This isn't me being snarky, I am legitimately interested in how you think 10k can get a Crysis-engine game up-and-running with minimal investment.

2) I don't have $10k. I am working a full-time job with an unexpected car note, rent, electricity, and internet bills, as well as gas and food, which leaves me with next to no budget for anything else. I can't even save $10k in a reasonable amount of time, and I am too far into debt (see: unexpected car note, above) to consider a small business loan.

Not only that, but getting a small business loan anyway means I'd have to deliver a successful project. Making back the ~$2k I've spent over time on Runes and Dunes won't be the most difficult thing ever, but making back $10k? Even if I did a Kickstarter, who is to say that would be enough? And heck, who would spend $10k on an unproven indie? (yes, it has happened, and I believe those people are the exception, especially after many Kickstarter projects began failing even after meeting goals). It was difficult enough meeting our $1.1k goal, I'm not sure we'd hit $10k easily.

I feel you're underestimating the cost of making a game in the engines you're so enthusiastic about. I would love for you to prove me wrong, however.

EDIT:

And mechanics. I know that Yanfly scripts work SUPER nice. But please, vary a little more. I know there is an RPG archetype we all want to achieve, but there is nothing mandatory on it. Try to invest some time on research, on new mechanics outside of "this skill does moar damage to enemies with three fingers or less". Please, I want to see something new.

Are you a scripter? I ask because I kind of agree, but it's easy for me to say that, because I can script. For people who can't script, to them it's a choice between paying someone to mod their script or paying someone to make pretty graphics. It's another item on the budget, and you have to prioritize. Since we're told so much about selling indie games these days is PR, many people will prioritize graphics and just utilize Yanfly's scripts because they are working, free alternatives to the default.

 

[Mouser]

I want to reply with two things:

1) I don't think $10k can actually equip a team; unless you're talking about tools only, and not their salary. If you think it can, then I'd like figures please. This isn't me being snarky, I am legitimately interested in how you think 10k can get a Crysis-engine game up-and-running with minimal investment.

2) I don't have $10k. I am working a full-time job with an unexpected car note, rent, electricity, and internet bills, as well as gas and food, which leaves me with next to no budget for anything else. I can't even save $10k in a reasonable amount of time, and I am too far into debt (see: unexpected car note, above) to consider a small business loan.

I was referring to license costs only. 4K for Maya, you can pick up ProTools for sub 1K. For a team you'd want software with version control, or else one person is responsible for checking in all code and assets. A few other odds and ends would push it to 10k. Adobe Creative Cloud subscription (this may or may not eliminate the need for ProTools - I think you'd still want to go with Maya/Max, but CC can get a lot of other things done for you).

Most people don't have 10k. I would be part of "most people". But compare that 10K with the cost of opening a restaurant, or a retail store, or a cleaning service, or even a lawncare service (you might get that one under 10k of equipment if you shop smart and stay small). The old adage "It takes money to make money" comes quickly to mind.

Whatever way you look at it _as a business_ there's still a much lower barrier to entry than there is with most other fields.