I've been poundering on this one. How do you calculate a lifespan of a game anyway? Does a game with 1 year development time have a longer lifespan then one with a shorter development time (say 3 month?)
There is less correlation between the time a game takes to make and how long it is a viable product, than there is between who makes the game and the lifespan of the product. Besides - the lifespan of a game is really determined by the person who is selling it and how long they want to support it.
Yup... if the lifespan of an indie game was over when it stopped selling copies, ToW would have had a VERY VERY short lifespan, but it was my first game and I intend to support it (and eventually update it) for as long as my business is still kickin.
If it's a decent game, even when virtually obsolete you could still be selling it as some sort of a classic or part of a bundle. Really, a game would be dead when there is absolutely no reason at all to buy the game when you could buy other games that do the same thing, much better. As a freebie, it can make a nice extra incentive for more recent games. Buy one, get this free!
Two of The powers of Indie Development - Your shelf space is inexpensive and therefore you can keep all your titles on it with little expenses. - A product's development and improve doesn't have to stop just because it has been "shipped" or gone "Gold" These two things mean a title can continually be improved, marketed and sold. Therefore the life of an Indie title is only limited by you. There are always a handful of people out there that haven’t seen your game yet.
I personally would say that an Indie game could go on for about 5-6 years, it would really depend on you marketing it. Of course, after 5-6 years, the market would get exhausted, and even though there would remain some customers who haven't played the game, the cost of supporting, marketing the game would outweigh the revenue that you receive from it.
We made Swarm 7 years ago and it still sells 100 copies per month not counting sales in other companies’ portals. That’s the thing that is so great about owning your own game and having a distribution channel you control. A retail games gets to stay on the shelves for 6 month (if you are lucky). A downloadable game can sell on your website forever. I don‘t think the development time is related to the “shelf life†but here is some development info on Swarm in case you are interested. Swarm was made in about 3 months by 4 guys. It was our first game so we spend a lot of time on basics like how to do alpha blending or make Direct Sounds work. It is a simple space sooter that was based on Crystal Quest but look more like a modern Asteroids.
What does this mean? That everyone interested in games has seen it? I doubt that with millions and millions of people in the internet.
We're not talking about the millions of people on the net per se. We're more intersetd in the select few (maybe 100,000's) that are avid indie game fans or just gamers WILLING to buy indie games over AAA games. Now, don't take what I said as a hard and fast statement. It would ofcourse depend greatly on the type of game, and user's tastes after 5-6 years.
Don’t forget that there are new potential customers entering the market every day. Many of today’s customers never saw that games that were popular 5 years ago.
Once a game is stable, and needs little or no maintenance, it should remain available until it will literally not run on the typical PC. Why not? It's not costing you anything any more. Might as well keep it out there, even if it just picks up a sale once in a blue moon. These days, it's hard to say how long that will be. You can still run Windows 95 games, and occasionally DOS games on Windows XP. I don't own a Mac, but I understand that it has some capability to run pre-OSX software. At a guess...5-10 years, depending on the game genre. A lot of strategy games don't need top of the line graphics...I still play Diplomacy (the 1984 version) on my latest computer.
Like James pointed out, gamers five years from now probably wouldn't have even heard about the hit indie games that are racking big bucks today. So, in theory, it would be possible to market those old games to the new market. The cycle would then continue in the same way it left off. Nice theory, eh. I call it the Theory of the Perpetuality Of Indie Games.
Not directly on topic, but when I was in the store the other day I saw a game that I did 11 years ago in a bundle pack with a few other games. Some games can last for a very long time and others can disappear very quickly. And I don't think it has anything to do with the development budget - more to do with the type of game and what it's selling point is.
I can't speak to indie/casual, but for retail games, it all depends on genre, quality, and other factors. Many games are in and out of the retail channel in 2 months. Railroad Tycoon 2 came out in '98, and was available more or less continuously as a stand-alone product at one level or another until '03, and is still available as a bundled two-fer. It was selling 1000+ copies a month as late as '02, in North America alone.
You beat me to the punch Tom but I just wanted to drop your comment from the 10,000 copies sold - is it doable? thread in.
But Good Solitaire is not really a single game is it? It is being updated all of the time with new versions of Solitaire, etc. Your model is something that others have been thinking about as it is obviously quite successful. I think the question needs to be clarified - if you release a game and don't add anything new in terms of gameplay, how long could it last?
IMHO, that strategy is absolutely a mistake so why even consider it! The single best advantage to digital delivery of shareware is the interaction and feedback from customers. Use that to your advantage! Why on earth wouldn't you want to continually improve and add to a good game? Maybe, after every single person with a computer has tried your game, then maybe, you'd want to stop improving it - even then, until every one of them purchased your game I think you should continue the revision/improvement process. Tom's successful model is staring you plain in the face as are other identical strategies with dissimilar games! There's no need to re-create the wheel. -JPG Edited to fix wordiness.