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You're including all the zero-effort garbage that floods the app store in your speculative figures. And even those might break even because the budget was proba
by TillE 12y ago
You're including all the zero-effort garbage that floods the app store in your speculative figures. And even those might break even because the budget was probably $12.
Look at the "real" indie games market (for the sake of argument, exclude anything not sold on Steam or GOG), and things look much more favorable.
- Chronic30 12y agoSorry, let's correct that then. <2% have successes at the scale of angry birds and minecraft, 8% do decently, and 90% never make cost. But we all are above average right? We all will be ultra successful.
- learc83 12y agoExactly. Every time I see a discussion about this someone brings up "There are 10,000 new games a month. Making money is pure luck." When you remove all the student games, the angry birds clones, the board-game clones, and the just plain terrible games, you're left with a much smaller pool of competitors. Being an indie developer is like being an actor. Everyone thinks that it's all about luck, but they forget that 99 out of a 100 people who move to California to make it in Hollywood, can't act their way out of a paper bag. If you move to LA, and you have actual acting talent and the looks to match, chances are you can make money--maybe you won't be a huge star, but you've got a good chance at earning a living.
- _random_ 12y agoGood analogy. One can also become a "porn" actor: producing lots of poor-quality ad-driven Android games (which is most of Android games).