Results of an Indie Developer Survey

[JLauri]

I'm a student from the Helsinki School of Economics who's been conducting survey research on independent online-based game developers for the past few months, which will be used as a basis for my Master's Thesis. I sent out a summary of preliminary results (derived from 62 responses) to the people who had answered the survey a week back, and indicated I'd post it on this forum as well if no-one objected, since a few people had requested it.

Note that I was going to post this on Wednesday, but I'd neglected to register before then, so I can only post it now. Below is the full text of what I sent the people in the survey, things have changed a bit since I'm now up to 73 responses, but the general observations remain about the same. I'll also post a link to my completed thesis once it's published some time in the second quarter, in case someone's interested (though it'll contain a lot of the academic gobbledygook that few people actually will get anything out of from reading and which I certainly didn't enjoy writing).





I won’t bury the lead, so I’ll start with the financial and sales data, and then move onto some of the more esoteric items that you’ll likely find less interesting (as I do, but is necessary to include for academic reasons). I’ll finish off with some qualitative observations I’ve gathered throughout this survey along with reading an awful lot of independent gaming news, previews, reviews and forums.

Financials

-The total sales figures ranged from a little over a hundred to hundreds of thousands of games sold. The mean (i.e. average) figure was 17,000 units, with a standard deviation of 27,000 (68.27% of all companies were in the range of 0-44,000). The median (middle number in the data set) of units sold was 7,500, which shows how a few big-selling companies pulled up the sales number for a large number of smaller companies.

- Yearly sales in US$ were equally varied. The mean sales figure was $67,000, which sounds alright as a level of income, but again the big sellers were the ones pulling up the average. The median figure was a less impressive $20,000, which goes to show that for most people this industry really isn’t very viable as a primary means of income.

- 43% of respondents either refused to answer or said they did not know these figures. Qualitatively speaking, it seems that those most likely to answer this question were those doing the best and the worst, which obviously will skew the data, so take this all with a grain of salt.

- Pretty much everyone went with the casual/indie standard of pricing (about $20). A few tried to game the system with lower prices, but that didn’t seem to have much of an impact on either the sales or income.

- There’s not enough data really to state it conclusively, but getting distribution through a large portal like Big Fish Games tended to have a huge impact – to the tune of tripling or quadrupling sales (though again, the small sample size makes this open to debate, and I’m sure people’s experiences have varied).

Business Areas

- As expected, the United States was by far the largest market area – even more so than with mainstream games. Almost without fail, the US was responsible for between 50% and 90% of a given company’s sales, regardless of the firm’s location. The only real exceptions were those companies that had achieved local distribution contracts, or had games that appealed to a certain non-US demographic (obviously games based on, for example, cricket, won’t be as popular there).

- Also, I thought I should mention here that although women were in the clear minority among the people running the companies I surveyed, their games tended to do better than average in their categories. The sub-sample in this area was way too small to say anything definitive, but I would hazard to guess that if you’re making games designed to appeal to women with certain interests, it helps to be one.

Demographics

- Half the companies in the sample were composed of only one or two people, with about 40% being 3 to 10 and the remaining ten being larger than that.

- The range of founding dates for the companies ranged from 1991 to 2008, with a mean of 2003.

- Approximately 35% of the companies were from North America, 30% from the UK and about 10% each from Northern and Eastern Europe, respectively (the rest were a mix from other locations around the world). It surprised me that I wasn’t able to contact or even find that many companies from Western Europe. My hypothesis is that the game developers in those countries tend to only make versions in their home language, meaning that I wasn’t able to find or contact them. Also, although there are a number of Russian developers, most of the indie game distribution in other languages seems to be handled by a few companies, so reaching the developers is hard or impossible for non-Russians.

- The people (mostly the entrepreneurs) responding to the survey tended to be fairly young at the time they started at the (28 years on average, range of 14 to 47). The respondents in general were very highly educated in comparison to the general population – 30% had completed some college at the time, 30% had an undergraduate degree and about 25% had a graduate degree. About 2/3 of the people with degrees had them in computer-related fields. At the undergraduate level, the remainder had a wide mix of majors, while the graduate degree holders in the minority tended to have them in business-related fields of study.

- Although it couldn’t be a primary means of income for most of the people in this survey, only 16% of the sample considered their game making activities to be more of a hobby than a job (and many of those that were mostly hobbyists expressed that they would like to make their hobby into a sustainable job).

[Continued in next post]

[JLauri]

Qualitative Observations

Again, these are mostly just my own personal, mostly subjective observations, so take them even less seriously than what’s written above. I know a lot of you will respond to many of these points by thinking, “Well, duh!”, but looking around the indie community they might not be as apparent to everyone.

- Casual games seem to be the big money makers in the market. Although I personally liked the ‘console RPG’ and more complex card and/or tile-based games, all the best sellers and most successful companies tended to make casual games with mass appeal. Many of what could be called ‘classic’ genres like platformers and arcade-style shoot ‘em ups tended to do pretty poorly (probably because there are so many of them these days – the few standouts like Braid just prove to be the exceptions to the rule).

- There seemed to be two basic business models among the most successful companies. Either release a genuinely new/innovative and highly polished product every couple of years, or a half-dozen or so more derivative ones that make up for lesser sales each with sheer numbers. This is really a pretty basic business premise, so probably not too surprising for anyone.

- A lot of companies seem to be jumping into the arenas of mobile games (especially the iPhone) and games for XBOX Live. It’ll be interesting to see how these platforms develop and affect the indie game market in the long-term. Also, for anyone interested, I recommend the documentary ‘Riot On!’ about a company in the IT boom that was to make licensed mobile games that ended up getting $20 million in venture capital before crashing down due to not producing much of value. It’s a fascinating look at how a small company with some good ideas can be affected by business people looking for quick growth at any price (not to mention greed and stupidity on the part of many of those running the organization).

- I was surprised at how few Asian companies I was able to find and contact. I know that Japan is big on consoles and countries like South Korea and China are mostly into mainstream game and MMOs, but I still would have expected to find more. I know for a fact that indie scenes exist there, I’ve played and enjoyed games like Cave Story and Obake from Japan, but I’ll be damned if I can find indie games for sale from that region. Surely the must be some gems just waiting to be discovered from those areas, if due to nothing else than the sheer size of the populations.

- On a related note, a good number of the respondents in the survey said that they would like to localize, but haven’t gotten the opportunity to do so. It would be interesting to study just how big of an impact various localizations can have on a given game’s sales. Likewise, it seems to me like some quid pro quo arrangements might be in order for companies wishing to localize in each other’s languages (since this really cuts both ways, people trying to publish in English and those wishing to translate their games into other languages).

- On the topic of language - this is a pet peeve of mine, but it’s also one of the issues most mentioned in the thousand or so game reviews I’ve read over the past few months: the level of spelling and grammar in a lot of indie games is pretty bad. This isn’t an issue with only those made by people whose first language isn’t English either, you see a lot of it everywhere. I’m not sure how much of an impact this has, but I personally think that since people keeping pointing out instances of it without fail, it probably contributes to the overall feeling of a game’s level of polish/professionalism - which could have an impact on sales.

- And yes, I know that mentioning other people’s issues with spelling and grammar in the English language will inevitably mean that this document will also be riddled with errors.

- Speaking of common complaints, there are two other ones that spring instantly to mind. One is the lack of proper documentation/instructions – a game just isn’t fun for most people if you don’t know what you’re supposed to be doing, and in this day and age there’s really no excuse for having a decent manual. Similarly, I personally quite like guided tutorial, either in-game, in a graphical format in a manual/forum or in a video distributed on a site like YouTube.

- Another issue is that of difficulty. Specifically, a lot of people pride themselves on making aggressively hard games that harken back to the classic console/arcade games. There’s nothing wrong with that from a design/artistic point of view, but it’s rarely a recipe for financial success. It’s probably a good idea to let people select from a range of difficulties if you’re into the business side of things – and it’s not like this will make you a pariah, even I Wanna Be the Guy let’s players select their preferred difficulty level.

- The three abovementioned issues may seem like minor things, and they probably are, but competition among indie game makers is pretty tight – there’s plenty of similarly priced games just a click away – so every little thing counts. These issues as they appear in the demo/free version are especially important, since most people will make their buying decisions based essentially on the first few minutes of gameplay (meaning that every little bit helps tip the scales in your favor).

- It seems like a lot of indie game companies make one game, then if it’s not successful, they fold quickly. Going through the reviews of sites like GameTunnel or Bytten I was struck by how many companies no longer existed, whose games had just been reviewed a couple of years back.

- Speaking of which, the credo for new developers should apparently be, ‘If you build it, they won’t come.’ It seems like a lot of the abovementioned companies just stagnated and expired for the same reason that many other businesses do – they just couldn’t get the word out about their products and get customers. It looks to me that getting your game onto portals/affiliate networks/link sharing arrangement, etc. is almost a must these days just to get your name and game out into the market (unless you’ve got a truly revolutionary and inspiring product offering).

- On a personal level, I found it of interesting that when asked whether they had different prices for different markets, a number of people from western countries (particularly the US) went out of their way to proclaim that they did not in strong terms, whereas the rest of the world and those with business deals abroad were more pragmatic in adapting their pricing to different markets.

Finally, I’d like to thank all of those who participated in the survey for your help and kindness towards me. For my final word, I’d like to encourage all the makers of independent games to continue making great games and to make themselves known in the community and through their games – especially in the case of people who exclusively release their games through portals and distributors, which can sometimes make it hard to figure out who exactly made what game (which is a shame, because I like giving credit where it’s due and kudos to the creators).

[Executrix]

Hi JLauri,

Very interesting, I wish you well on your Master's Thesis.

Do you have a site or contact information?

[JLauri]

Originally Posted by Executrix

Hi JLauri,

Very interesting, I wish you well on your Master's Thesis.

Do you have a site or contact information?

I tend to keep a low profile on the Internet on purpose, but if someone wants to contact me about this, you can PM me or leave a comment to this thread and I'll get back to you.

[Maupin]

Originally Posted by JLauri

On the topic of language - this is a pet peeve of mine, but it’s also one of the issues most mentioned in the thousand or so game reviews I’ve read over the past few months: the level of spelling and grammar in a lot of indie games is pretty bad. This isn’t an issue with only those made by people whose first language isn’t English either, you see a lot of it everywhere. I’m not sure how much of an impact this has, but I personally think that since people keeping pointing out instances of it without fail, it probably contributes to the overall feeling of a game’s level of polish/professionalism - which could have an impact on sales.

It's a pet peeve of mine as well, and a few times I've started composing a new topic for the casual game forum here, but never finished. Basically the QA at the large casual portals completely blows when it comes to spelling/grammar. In many cases it's because the developer is a non-native speaker, but getting a native speaker to glance over a game's text is trivial. From the absurdly embarassing and blatantly wrong text in games that come out of Big Fish Games and other portals, you'd think they just decided that QA wasn't worth the bother... as if all the game text was hard-coded as image data by the syllable and mapped into place with nested hash tables.

[papillon]

Also agreed that the language trouble frustrates. A lot of those same portals are busy hyping their family-friendliness and kid-acceptability... I'd think they'd want to set a good example for children's language skills!

[Maupin]

Good point. And you always hear that the average casual gamer is over thirty and female. I don't know if that's true, but I do know that my grandmother is over thirty and female. She likes puzzle games (sudoku, cryptograms, solitaire). If she downloaded a casual game with horrible English she'd delete it and probably ask me to run a virus scan on her computer. She associates broken English with scams or malware (not to mention general shoddiness).

[JLauri]

Originally Posted by Maupin

It's a pet peeve of mine as well, and a few times I've started composing a new topic for the casual game forum here, but never finished. Basically the QA at the large casual portals completely blows when it comes to spelling/grammar. In many cases it's because the developer is a non-native speaker, but getting a native speaker to glance over a game's text is trivial. From the absurdly embarassing and blatantly wrong text in games that come out of Big Fish Games and other portals, you'd think they just decided that QA wasn't worth the bother... as if all the game text was hard-coded as image data by the syllable and mapped into place with nested hash tables.

Also another thing for - if you revisit your earlier works, you'll tend to notice every single flaw and cringe that you'd let something like that into your work.

I'm doing it right now. I knew that there would be errors in this text, as I point out, but even in that paragraph? 'keeping pointing'? In my admittedly weak defense, if I were actually publishing or selling this, I'd definitely ask a friend to look over it, just to make sure that embarrassing things like that don't slip by (I'll certainly do that with my actual thesis).

People are almost always good at noticing and critiquing other people's mistakes while missing their own, which is why it's a good idea to good idea to get a buddy to check your work even if you think it looks perfect.

[undergrowth]

Great research and analysis. Thank you for sharing. Very useful for a budding indie dev like me.

[hddnobjcttmmngmntmtch3rlz]

Very cool. I get questions from developers all the time regarding this kind of thing. I think from now on I might point them to this thread!

[Game Producer]

Awesome research. Thanks for sharing.

[320x240]

Originally Posted by JLauri

I know for a fact that indie scenes exist there, I’ve played and enjoyed games like Cave Story and Obake from Japan, but I’ll be damned if I can find indie games for sale from that region. Surely the must be some gems just waiting to be discovered from those areas, if due to nothing else than the sheer size of the populations.

The Japanese seems to prefer hard-copies over downloads. It's part of the hardcore culture I guess. Indie developers usually sell their cd's/dvd's at certain gatherings, like comiket, but there are also online stores like paletweb.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comiket
http://www.paletweb.com/

Originally Posted by JLauri

Many of what could be called ‘classic’ genres like platformers and arcade-style shoot ‘em ups tended to do pretty poorly (probably because there are so many of them these days – the few standouts like Braid just prove to be the exceptions to the rule).

My take on this is that 99% of shmups and platformers on the market today are downright bad and fail to target a specific market. The market is there, especially for platformers, but there is noone around to cater to it. You have to remember that these are the two most popular genres for budding developers and this goes a long way into explaining the percentage mentioned above.

[papillon]

The Japanese seems to prefer hard-copies over downloads. It's part of the hardcore culture I guess.

While doujin circles often do hard copies, many are also quite happy to sell downloads. Try vector.co.jp (if you can read japanese) or eng.dlsite.com (if you can't). Warning, most of DLsite is really screwed-up hentai - but there's also music, shmups, and fun platformers like this one