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"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,

"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.

Eridrus 12y ago
> Many developers would be happy if their game pulled down $10K. That seems unlikely.
- kevingadd 12y ago
  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.
- astrodust 12y ago
  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/ 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.
User9812 12y ago
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.
- mcherm 12y ago
  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.

Eridrus 12y ago

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

kevingadd 12y ago
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.
astrodust 12y ago
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/ 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.

User9812 12y ago

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.

mcherm 12y ago
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.