The 2005 Indie Developer Survey

[Gmicek]

I can never think of how to start post's. I suck.

Ok, so at DIY we're in the middle of planning our first of what we hope will be a yearly series, the Indie Developer Survey.

It's something I've been thinking about since last GDC and figured it was time to finally put into motion. The premise is that we'll invite as many independent game developers who have released products to a special web page to answer a series of questions concerning their work as developers. The plan is get information on individual developers, indie studios, and the games being released. It'd be nice if the questionnaire was no more than 50 questions on a wide range of topics. The individual section would have questions on things like age, race, sex, location and so on, while the company section would only be filled out by one person from the company and include things like number of titles released, most number of copies sold from all their published products, least number of copies sold from all their published products, average number of copies sold from all products, whether the team is internet or locally based, and so on.

For a time I was concerned with having the figures matching with individual's submissions, meaning that we would want to see who answered what. But based on some peoples suggestions, and some deeper thought on the subject, it seems that the integrity of the numbers won't be in any real danger provided we ensure that we don't have more submissions than invites.

Obviously I could go on in this post for a couple pages describing the intricacies of the survey, but I'd rather get everyone's feedback. So, thoughts?

[Reactor]

What's the point of the survey, other than a good read for developers?

[Gmicek]

The same as any industry survey really, to help determine the state of the industry.

[Reactor]

Ah, right. That would make sense :) It sounds like a great idea then. A couple of other questions- do you have an idea in mind about what makes a developer indie (so you can actually invite them as you've mentioned) and... what about developers who aren't selling at the time? I'm assuming, since they are developers, they should be invited, even if they have nothing at all to show.

[Gmicek]

Ah, right. That would make sense :) It sounds like a great idea then. A couple of other questions- do you have an idea in mind about what makes a developer indie (so you can actually invite them as you've mentioned) and... what about developers who aren't selling at the time? I'm assuming, since they are developers, they should be invited, even if they have nothing at all to show.

Good questions.

1: Our definition of indie at DIY Games is any developer that self funds their product and doesn't use the retail channel as their primary means of distribution. This means that a company like PopCap would technically be eligible for inclusion into the survey. Feedback on the criteria is welcome though. The idea is to include even the big boys like PopCap and when examining the number we'll do something like the following:

Of the developers surveyed the average individual developer made $40,000 in 2004 as a direct result of game sales. Excluding the top and bottom 10% reveals that the remaining 80% of developers surveyed made $30,000 in 2004 as a direct result of game sales.

So basically you can see we want to account for developers/titles that will skew the numbers dramatically, we'll still give the basic figures while digging a little deeper to help find truer meaning in them.

2: In my personal opinion developers that have not released any titles should be excluded. Not because they're lepers of some sort, but because their answers to many of the questions will adversely affect the numbers. If we asked the people at Octopus Motor, for example, to take part and they started answering questions like "How many games has your current studio released?" or "Taking into account all sales (direct, indirect, et al), what was the gross income of your best selling game with "best selling" meaning number of units sold?" we would see some extremely strange numbers.

It's a bummer though, because there are some great people making excellent games that have yet to be released, but including them would be like doing a salary survey on rocket scientists and including people still in college. If we do leave indies with no titles out we'll have to set a deadline of sorts, so that people who released games in late December don't interfere with numbers we start collecting in mid January. (hard to sell a decent number of titles in that time for most people, heh)

But once again, feedback on this is welcome. If there's good reason to include indies with no titles under their belts they should be included, but if it's to not make anyone feel bad I'm all for making' them feel bad, hehe.

[Reactor]

Thanks for the answers. It's good to see you've put some serious thought into the idea.

Okay, now for suggestion time :)

Maybe it shouldn't be called 'Indie Developer Survey', since, as you've rightly pointed out, some developers would be best not included in the survey. I'm not sure what else it could be called (Since 'Indie Publisher' cuts out guys making indie games and not self-publishing), and it is good ol' semantics worrying about it, but it doesn't seem like the right name for the survey, to me.

Other than that, I'm really looking forward to seeing this come together.

[Omega]

If the problem is, have you released any games or not, then..

JUST ASK the people to answer that question somewhere in the survey.

When you do the analysis, you can ignore those who said "none."

There is nothing bad to publicizing it and getting as large a response as possible. Even if you don't use/need half of it, the data will still be available for OTHERS to analyze.

[PoV]

Ah yes. Neato. I've been noting much about a so called indie game development sales rut. So other than perhaps Mr. Reflexive, Mr. Retro64 and a few select others, I suspect a question like "Are sales good for you?" will result in numerous half answers to pure negative ones. Just an observation. :p

[Gmicek]

There is nothing bad to publicizing it and getting as large a response as possible. Even if you don't use/need half of it, the data will still be available for OTHERS to analyze.

You make a good point. There could simply be a section for developers that have released a game before August 2004 or something (again, to make sure the sales figured don't represent sales too short a period of time). The good news with your suggestion, as you state, is that it will allow us to get a bigger cross section of the industry. The bad news is that we then have a larger pool of developers. For example, do we email every Tom, Dick, and Harry that posts to the GameDev forums saying they're developer the next best MMORPG? My thought on it would be that if we include indies without any games completed that we only include ones that have a website up (for example). otherwise the survey will have a high number of wannabes like myself who fancy themselves developers just because they wrote a game idea on a napkin.

Ah yes. Neato. I've been noting much about a so called indie game development sales rut. So other than perhaps Mr. Reflexive, Mr. Retro64 and a few select others, I suspect a question like "Are sales good for you?" will result in numerous half answers to pure negative ones. Just an observation.

No doubt. Such arbitrary questions will not on the portions of the survey dealing with sales, because, as you state, a question like "Are sales good?" leads to more questions than answers. The only questions we would include open to such personal interpretation would be "On a scale of 1 to 5 with 1 being Very Unhappy, 3 being Content, and 5 being Very Happy; how would you gague your satisfaction in being an independent developers." There would be a similar question dealing with whether or not they feel satisfied they're making enough money (which is their personal interpretation of another question asking them about their yearly salary as a result of indie development. Some people would be stoked to make something like $20,000 a year making indie games, while others would be miserable).

[NuriumGames]

Hi, I'll be happy to fill your survey :)

[stay]

This sounds very interesting, and we'd love to be involved, too. Our first indie title was released in September 2004, so we'd not be included in the stats. But that's fine - we'll just join in next year. :)

-- stay

[Coyote]

I'd love to participate, too, but our release was also in September.

I guess a lot depends on how many of the questions reflect post-release sales and feedback, versus development effort.