Can Indie Game Development be profitable?

[Bunkai]

Hello,

Probably everybody, who delveops an Indie game, asks this question hunderds of times: "Is it possible to be profitable with Indie game development, and can a person live well, creating Indie games? Or, is and will Indie games development be a hobby for free time?"

Are there any rumors saying how much and indie game developer can make yearly, and are there any famous and successful indie game developers known?

Thanks and with regards,

[Savant]

Of course it can be profitable. People certainly aren't doing it for their health.

[Bunkai]

Yeah,
I was thinking if mostly bellievers are not those developing indie games. People who dream of making big profits with computer games. Indeed, I will see after I finish my first project.

Thank you a lot, and have a nice day,
Rene.

[Anthony Flack]

I dunno, I think it's a bit like making music. It's probably better to assume you won't be making a lot of money, and if that's going to be a problem you shouldn't start. Certainly you can find success, but it might take a long time and it might never come.

So I would recommend you don't count on it for money, and you'll probably need some other motivation you to keep at it too. But if you can do that, then hey, maybe.

[Travis Dorschel]

Have you seen the gameproducer.net sales stats page?

http://www.gameproducer.net/category/sales-statistics/

I think these stats provide a pretty good overview of what can be made in indie games.

[Bunkai]

Thank you Anthony for clever advice.. You are probably right. However, I would like to know what are my choices in making money with computer games - you know if the time invested would be rewarded.

Hello Travis, what a great site.. I was looking for something like that, to see evidence of some indie game revenues. This motivation is good enough to me.

Have a nice day,

[electronicStar]

There have been many threads about that, use the search function you'll find lots of answers.

[Bunkai]

Hello Electronic,
Yeah, I will find some proper words to search for on this site. Have a nice day.

[Fost]

People certainly aren't doing it for their health.
Actually, I am. I've said loads of times before, I could have (and have done in the past) made a ton more cash doing pretty much anything else but this. 99% of the world measures success by how much money you earn, but I am, oddly enough, much happier and fulfilled now than I was in my previous job, despite earning far less than I used to. So I've learned, that for me at least, earning the freedom to express creativity is my personal measure of success.

It's best when I see old school friends and they talk to me about their incredibly dull office jobs. Then they ask me what I do; I tell them I make attack robots, space ships and killer monkeys. :)

Don't do this because you want to get rich, do it because you love it. If you want to get rich, start a portal or another way of exploiting the rest of us :) .

[KNau]

I wouldn't go by the stats you see on gameproducer.net. Generally for every success story you see on that site there are about a hundred games that never turned a profit. People don't tend to post their "failure" stories, so take the tales of wild success with a huge grain of salt.

[Bunkai]

Ah yeah Fost, I know what you mean.. Can you at least make enough money to have a car and pay for your appartment? Indeed, logically, if a person is patient enough, to make game looking as good as the best indie game ever created, it should promise success.. However, it would take much more time.. And quesion is if two lower quality games would not make more than one game of very good quality..

Have a nice day.

[Bunkai]

Fost, are you full time Indie?

[PoV]

I donno about you, but I don't see a lot of success stories on there. Given the time invested in games, number of team members, Democracy's 1 man team seems to be the only success that shows a situation where there's enough money to pay for the next game.

Not that I'm leaving the full time life or anything. ;)

[Sakura Games]

As said other times, depends where you live. Democracy 35k$ net income in a year is great but if you live in UK (as the author is) after taxes etc you can barely live. And is a SUCCESSFUL game :/

Fun how actually someone in a very cheap country can live with an average game, while someone from a richer european country (thanks to the astonishing USD to EUR/GBP conversion rate) can barely live with a masterpiece...!!

[Mark Fassett]

If your choice about spending time making indie games depends on a high chance of financial success - you should probably go do something else. If you would make games when it doesn't pay, even if you have to do other work to make money, then make games.

[Fost]

Can you at least make enough money to have a car and pay for your appartment?
Depends, can you live with a slightly rusty Honda Civic '93? (Actually not a bad car btw - surprisingly fast VTEC engine which I once managed to get up to 150 - although it did sound like an army of gnomes had moved into the engine compartment and started hitting it with a bag of spanners, but I digress...)

Anyway, the point being - can you survive off it early on? The answer here is yes, but I think you need to realise it's incredibly dangerous. There's a few times we made certain mistakes that could have stopped us in our tracks. Also, we buried redundancy money, savings, and even remortgaged houses to cover our initial development. In addition, you should take everything I say with a pinch of salt if you are looking into the casual market (as in, casual not indie) as I'm not as experienced there as many of the other board luminaries

Fost, are you full time Indie?
yup. :)

[Coyote]

Making a Profit?
Absolutely. If you make a game yourself, don't have any expenses, and don't charge for your own time --- you have made one for free and you can make a profit from your first sale. I have heard that less than 50% of indie games make a profit... but less than 10% of indie games are actually any good IMO.

Making a Living?
Many indies here on this board are doing it. So --- yes, it's possible. But it's also very hard. Attempt only if you love games.

Making a Fortune?
It has been done. But uh... don't count on it.

[Anthony Flack]

I think it's not unlikely that you could make a modest living off it, although it might not happen after your first game. The more games you have released the better your position is, so once you have several games out and they're all bringing in a bit of money every month you'll be in a better position to build a sustainable lifestyle out of it.

[Bunkai]

Uff, Anthony, what a sad story about Platypus. How could you get along with that. Those distributors were bastards. Could not you put Platypus somewhere on download as shareware and just to ignore them?

Indeed, are you better living off now? It appeared like the whole world was against you. I am sorry for that.

Rene.

[Bunkai]

Coyote,

Hello.. yeah, everybody starting a game wishes to make the game so shiny that it could be a hit, and make fortune on it. :-)

thanks, and bye.

[Anthony Flack]

Hey, I'm doing okay. I'm still not making money off games, but I'm making pretty good money as a teacher. But I don't have much time to make games any more...

It's just a matter of finding that balance between money and time I guess. Once I release the next one, I should be in a better position to devote more time to making games again. I'm saving money and hoping to go full-time again within a year.

[Chris Evans]

I think it's not unlikely that you could make a modest living off it, although it might not happen after your first game. The more games you have released the better your position is, so once you have several games out and they're all bringing in a bit of money every month you'll be in a better position to build a sustainable lifestyle out of it.


True, but often times even if you have several titles, they bring in a disproportionate amount of money. Your first 2 games could bring in only a couple of hundred dollars per month but your third game could bring in several thousand. Usually when you finally have a decent seller, it will outsell the rest by a margin 10:1 or more.

So even if you make 3-4 mediocre games the sales will rarely equal one good game. With each new game you need to make sure you're making evolutionary improvements so you can eventually make that quality game. The quality games you make will dwarf the sales of the rest.

[Raptisoft]

Indie development can be very profitable.

At the cost of your soul.

[Jamie Cheng]

Indie development can be very profitable.

At the cost of your soul.

Awesome. Just... awesome. :D

My humble opinion: if you just quit and do this full-time, with no help, your chances are very slim. In my experience, you really need to have someone you can lean on to help you survive -- just having a great game is more like a crap shoot, and having a mentor will help you *not* have to sell your soul.

And get a good lawyer :) One that understands you're just starting out, and won't charge you through the nose... until you make it.

[Fry Crayola]

As said other times, depends where you live. Democracy 35k$ net income in a year is great but if you live in UK (as the author is) after taxes etc you can barely live. And is a SUCCESSFUL game :/


This myth bugs me. Sure, if you choose to live in London, you'll be scraping by on $35k a year. Live further North or (shock) outside a city and you'll be doing fine. I currently make roughly that in my day job and have no other income source and things are going fine (rent, bills, juggling a relationship and all that jazz). Yet...


Fun how actually someone in a very cheap country can live with an average game, while someone from a richer european country (thanks to the astonishing USD to EUR/GBP conversion rate) can barely live with a masterpiece...!!

...This remains true. The cheaper you can live, the far better you'll do.

[Bunkai]

Chris,

Looking at your games, I would say, you can affor having everything - a new car, a new house in somewhere uptown location.

Games look fine, I hope, one day I will be able to make such games,

With regards,
Rene.

[mustardseed]

Where I live in good 'ole Louisiana, the cost of living is incredibly cheap. My wife and I just bought a nice 1500 square foot house ($54,000), and we have 2 cars that are paid off and our monthly bills amount to roughly $900. I make about $1000 a month part-time and my wife makes about $500 part-time and we are doing quite fine. God has definitely blessed us.

And now that summer is here I don't have class taking up my free time, my game will hopefully be ready in no time. I just want to pay off my house, get a MacBook, and then hopefully be able to sustain our quality of life on just indie deving.

I must recommend not living in a big city. It's infinitely cheaper :D

[Anthony Flack]

By a strange coincidence, I was just this minute reading that Louisiana has the highest murder rate in the US (by quite a lot). Anyway, best of luck :)

[Hotwire]

A link to one of the many good presentations / talks about starting indie from Jeff Tunnell (Garage Games). Good reading (pay attention to 'right-sizing your life'):
http://www.rainfallstudios.com/Articles/TheFutureIsNow/summary.aspx

...and oddly enough, a talk titled: "Can I make money as an indie?":
http://www.rainfallstudios.com/Articles/CanIMakeMoneyAsAnIndie/summary.aspx

[Sakura Games]

From the article:
"You should pick a price that makes you slightly uncomfortable" David said, "You typically undersell yourself." David described how one of the best marketing practices he ever engaged in with his non-game product The Journal was raising the price. When The Journal came on the market it was around $10. After a year David raised the price $10 dollars and saw the number of sales spike noticeably. A little while later he raised it $10 dollars again and sure enough sales spiked again. Finally he raised it $5 dollars to it's current price of $39.95 and he observed another sales spike. David indicated that he would likely not be raising the price again because any more and consumers would start expecting a box, CD, and manual (all David's distribution is online).
Hmm so I should raise all my games price by $10? :D

[Savant]

Probably worth a shot. There's no reason to stick to established convention.

[Bunkai]

Mustardseed,

thanks for sharing this information. Apparently, you prove the fact, that making computer games can be not only funny but profitable.. Making app. $12.000net income on computer games production is very nice. I'll be glad, if I can make such money on computer games once.

Is there any chance to see your products? I would like to see what one man can make.

Regards,

[mustardseed]

By a strange coincidence, I was just this minute reading that Louisiana has the highest murder rate in the US (by quite a lot). Anyway, best of luck :)

Well I live in North Louisiana (which should a different state since it's so different), about 5 hours away from New Orleans which causes most of that crime. My quiet little town is quite safe :)



Apparently, you prove the fact, that making computer games can be not only funny but profitable.. Making app. $12.000net income on computer games production is very nice. I'll be glad, if I can make such money on computer games once.

Is there any chance to see your products? I would like to see what one man can make.

Sorry if I misled you. I make $1000 a month having making TV commercials for a truck suspension company (you can see a few of these on my site).

My first game is poised to come out within the next month. I'll be posting a demo pretty soon. I'm hoping it will be successful enough that I can quit my job and be indie full-time.

I'm praying i can make significantly more than $12,000 a year. My wife wants to have a baby soon so I want to provide well for my family.

[Teq]

Well I live in North Louisiana (which should a different state since it's so different), about 5 hours away from New Orleans which causes most of that crime. My quiet little town is quite safe :)





Sorry if I misled you. I make $1000 a month having making TV commercials for a truck suspension company (you can see a few of these on my site).

My first game is poised to come out within the next month. I'll be posting a demo pretty soon. I'm hoping it will be successful enough that I can quit my job and be indie full-time.

I'm praying i can make significantly more than $12,000 a year. My wife wants to have a baby soon so I want to provide well for my family.


I hope you have thought up a suitably geeky name for the baby - that will put her off for a few months ;) Am hoping that I can make at least enough for beer money and to outsource more art work next time around - I'm not really after silly profits (though I can concentrate on indie development fulltime then), I'm just in this for the coding and accomplishment of having a game reach a nice install base :)

[nikolas]

Well from the Uk, london living point of view, me and my faimly (with two children that is), we earn both of us (me and my wife that is), around 37,000 GBP. Take out rent, council tax, bills, nursery fees (OMG you won't believe that ammount if I told you), and we are left with NOTHING.

Now, I'm not a game developer (although I have ideas, blah blah)... I'm a composer, who works on a contract bases with indie games. And personally although I don't earn much from that kind of contracts (something like 4-5,000 GBP per year, which is rubbish), still this kind of job is really really part-time. I don't think I'm writting music for that particular game more than 10 hours a week on average. OF course there are peeks where I don't sleep at night, but this happens twice every month, not every day.

So my question:

All you indie game developers, I guess you're doing this part-time, and of course to earn money. But I guess you're taking back what you gave into the game, time wise. I mean had you invested fulltime 8 hours every day in your game, you would've completed the game, probably with better graphics or gameplay in half the time, thus in a year you could've earned twice the ammount you do now.

The above is the question. I could be wrong. I hope I'm not offending anyone...

So?

I believe that there is a huge risk at being a 'freelancer', meaning based on yourself and writting music, or games, or poetry, or art, or whatever. But in the end, if you have got what it takes (and I don't believe that what it takes is a lot of things), and are ready to devote yourself in that, then it's no different than teaching, or be a seller in a shop, or whatever else job.

:)

[lennard]

If you look at the #'s that people are generously sharing then you can see that most people aren't making a living at indie game development. The primary barriers to profitability are:

1. Making something compelling enough that people are willing to spend money on. This is non-trivial when you consider that many of the big companies are willing to spend many millions of dollars per title with the expectation that most will lose money but that the hits will carry the rest. Every time we see a company go under it's because they failed to maintain this balancing act.

2. Having the budget to effectively market that product once completed. If you make something compelling then you can get into the large portals to 1. is much more important than #2. But if you don't fit into the mold of what they are looking for (both Democracy & Lux are successful indie titles but I haven't seen them on the big portals - maybe by author choice?)

If you are making 4-5K GBP per year then I would guess that puts you into the upper tier of indie profitability.

It still strikes me as an amazing opportunity - if you can somehow build a killer app. then just about the whole world can potentially purchase your product. You don't have to worry about all of the traditional barriers to entry - fighting for shelf space, manufacturing and freighting costs, monsters marketing budgets to ensure you get the shelf space... but it ain't easy.

[Applewood]

It's also based on how fast/good you are. Few people seem to mention this for fear of offending people. I've taken this stance before and been bemoaned for "not bringing on the new people", but I see it as "making sure the new people don't fuck themselves up really bad with unrealistic expectations".

If you take six months to develop a breakout clone, you aren't gonna make it *as a career* unless you have no overhead at all (living with parents etc). Even then, if you don't want to live with the folks your whole life, you got some decisions to make.

If you can do a really good breakout clone (or similar scoped game) in a month, every month, maybe you could but I still wouldn't fancy it. If you can do a really bonzer game by yourself in a year or less, every year (see some of Cliffskis or others work for a quality example) then you can probably make it too.

I'm not trying to crush anyones dreams here, I just urge people starting down this path to think about it very very carefully and be realistic. Money can be made selling your own programs over the net, but it pales into insignificance when compared to practically any other game related income streams (employment, freelance, etc) unless your stuff is *really* good.

What I always recommend to everyone, not that it suits everyone of course, is to do some feelance commercial work alongside. Spend 4 days a week on that and 3 on your own stuff and you'll get your games finished and still pay the bills. If you start making real money, bin the freelance work.

[lemmy101]

Hello,

Probably everybody, who delveops an Indie game, asks this question hunderds of times: "Is it possible to be profitable with Indie game development, and can a person live well, creating Indie games? Or, is and will Indie games development be a hobby for free time?"

Are there any rumors saying how much and indie game developer can make yearly, and are there any famous and successful indie game developers known?

Thanks and with regards,

Hi Bunkai,

the way I see it is that indie development can be very profitable, if you make something that appeals to people in a way that commercial games tend not to. You can be more risky in terms of writing a game that a publisher would deem a niche thing or without a wide enough demographic, or one that could be a huge success or a complete flop in marketting eyes.

So if you have something original, or something that taps into nostalgia, then it could be quite a success.

On the other hand, if you make a game with the intent of selling it, it is a bit harder to publicise it. Publicising a free game you do not have a problem as at the end of the day you're offering it for free, so people won't seeing you as plugging your stuff all over the place and will be much more willing to promote it for you.

There's a canny point-and-click called Captain Brawe, where the developer (one developer, quite impressive) has released the first part for free, with subsequent parts will not be free.

The develop can easily get people to support the game on sites, and such, as giving something away for free is always a good thing to do, but then the players will want to play the rest of the game, and of course the next games in the series do not need close to as much promotion.

The third option, which we've gone for, is just to do the lot for free. We aren't gonna make any money from it, but our goals are more for the reward of people playing the game, and of personal accomplishment... maybe if it is a success we would consider charging for the next game, who's to say.

I guess it all comes down to your own goals, and what you want to accomplish, but I would say giving away something for free, even if its just a nice functional demo (levels blocked out or something) but make whatever is free fun in its own right (think shareware doom)

Anyway good look with your indie endevours!!! :)

-----------------

lemmy101
The Forgotten Element (http://www.cgempire.com/showthread.php?t=302)

[Bunkai]

Hello Lemmy,

Yeah, I understood your three points. Thank you for your advices. Well, my priorities are to work on computer game development as much as I can, and still to have some free time. Therefore, I should gradually cut the time of my regular work, that projects into the need to make some money with game development.

The more money I can make on game development, the more time I can cut from the regular work. Giving something for free is great idea, and yeah, i know, that I will have to release at least free game demoversion.

Thank you again,
and have a nice day.
B.