Dinofarm Games

This is something that I’ve been thinking about recently. I dont really have any kind of proper solution unfortunatly. As you say though it has highlighted the Indie game to the limlight, which is some small thing to be thankful for.

Prehaps a pick-and-mix approch for the likes of Indievania etc, that is all the indy games are in one place and the user can purchase a bundle of say 5 games for €5/10/what ever and then choose from the huge list what 5 games they want?

Again, its no solution but might even the playing field and allow buried gems to come to the surface? Thoughts?

Seriously, Steam isn’t the be-all end-all to sales. If all you can do is whine about sales, that basically means you aren’t either publicizing your game well, or your game is no good. Look at Minecraft, for example. Not on Steam, but still wildly successful. Don’t just rely on Steam or HiB, try publicizing it well, and if your game is good, sales will quickly come rolling in.

You are misdiagnosing the problem. It’s not about Steam or humble indie bundles; it’s about technology and economics.

Basically, making one more copy of an indie game costs nothing (or as close to nothing as makes no odds). So smart business people are looking for ways to make more money by selling the game at a lower price. When the cost of making one more copy is nothing, it costs you nothing to give the game away for free or at a very reduced price.

This issue isn’t going away. There is no mileage in worrying about how to keep prices up. They are trending to zero; now work out how to make money from that.

Indie Bundles may lower the price people are accustomed to paying for indie games, but they also make buying games in general a better option. It’s likely that someone would be an insensitive douche and believe that he’s entitled to games for less, but it’s just as likely that this person would believe he was entitled to them for free. If it’s Bundles vs. Piracy then I’ll choose bundles. And that’s just the pirates. If you even buy games on PC, you’re a considerate enough person to know that you should give developers their due, so I very much doubt you’re going to assume a sale means all games everywhere should be cheaper

Plus, on top of that, sales are not a novel concept by any stretch. They’re just a sales tactic. Every other business has them, it makes sense that indie will also have them at some stage.

As for Steam as a gatekeeper, I think we’re entitled to some numbers on such a claim. Yes, there are indies that aren’t on Steam but I think you have yet to establish that many of those indies didn’t want to go the steam route to begin with for one reason or another. I wouldn’t go as far as characterizing the indies that make steam sales the 1%, considering their recent fall sale had nearly 300 titles on it. Steam deserve credit for giving indie titles good placement alongside AAA titles ( there are 4 indies on their front page right now) and promoting titles that platforms like XBLIG neglect.

You have to admit at the end, that while bigger platforms aren’t as sweet as people make them out to be, they do offer chances for developers with smaller titles to make it big. A pretty sizeable amount of small developers, I imagine.

It’s funny to me to hear people pining for the golden age of 15 dollar indie games sales who (I imagine) also snicker at the record industry trying to protect their own hides with outdated business practices.

You can’t make niche games that only apply to a couple of people anymore if you want to make money. It’s not any bundle’s fault that it’s like that, in fact it’s the exact opposite.

The main flaw in your argument is how much easier it is to get exposure nowadays. BUY SOME ADVERTISING! You can get ads EVERYWHERE for much less money then ever before. (Incidentally, I bet most people who hold your point of view have adblock on 100 percent of the time).

The whole thing reeks to me of wanting to have your cake and eat it too. “I want to make ART! beautiful, unique, snowflake art that expresses my innermost feelings! And you know what, I ALSO want it to sell like crazy.”

To say that the humble indie bundle does anything but increase exposure for indie games as a whole (how many indie games were selling like crazy before it?) is nothing but sour grapes since your own game isn’t selling.

Buy some advertising, hype yourself up, make a great product and sell the shit out of it. If you want to make money in this or any industry you have to be a businessman. Successful businessmen don’t complain about the playing field, they figure out how to win the game.

Well, it’s obvious you can’t have people’s attention on ALL indies, even if it’s your job you’ll miss some of them. There’s so many people making indie games I don’t have the time to read about all of them – and playing them all is just plain impossible.

Oh, and a lot of indie games are just bad, or not funny, or not adapted to the current gamers/market (= are not fun for the audience of 2012).

Even with the best business model ever, the market for wargames or indie isometric-3D or 2D RPG will never grow that much, gamers’ pockets won’t suddenly be full of money, gamers’ minds won’t be full buying impulses, gamers’ free-time won’t suddenly grow.

A lot of indie developers want the happy side of “doing what they want”, they want to forget these publishers, the “evil” old system preventing them from creating their games like they would like to. But these evil publishers are mainly the result of the market and the current generation of gamers. People are buying Activision/EA games because they want that kind of games, because they accept to be greatly influenced by marketing campaigns, because they do NOT want to make additional efforts when choosing their games, because they accept peer pressure as a valid factor in their choices.

SuperMeatBoy was at the right place, at the right time, contacted the right people in the media/blogosphere/etc, marketed the game to the right people. But suddenly, many indie developers thought “OMG OLD-SCHOOL PLATFORMERS ARE BACK” and even right now, there is hundreds of indie devs making their platformers. I’m not joking.

They just got it wrong : there WAS an opportunity for a hardcore platformer like SMB at that time.
What the indie had to do was : Why SMB worked ? How that opportunity showed up ? How did the SMB devs identified and targeted that opportunity ? And which opportunities are most likely to be open for us in the next 2-3-4-5 years ?

Same with the multiplayer indie games, requiring more than 10 players simultaneously to become playable/enjoyable. What were they thinking ?! gosh…

Thinking that your game will work only because it is good and/or original is totally missing the whole point of the entertainment market (“market” doesn’t mean “traditional retail/digit publishing market”, this is the whole market we’re talking about here), people have a specific and limited amount of money, time and buying impulse to spend, you have to accept it.

If your objective is making a living out of it (it implies a LOT of consequences), you have to do what the publishers are doing : calculating risks, evaluating opportunities and market trends. The only differences with the publishers are :
- you need a lower amount of benefits per project to be viable
- you have the ability to target smaller and more specific opportunities (= you have more flexibility)

But :
- you can’t get funds from shareholders and banks
- you can’t target bigger opportunities (both in terms of manpower and marketing power)
- you’re heavily dependant on the project benefits (= need to pay the rent)

You still need to sell licenses (aka “copies”) to earn money.

…

It’s like all the kids going to the art univ or dropping out, wanting to live out of their music/art.

At first they pretend “bah I don’t need money I’ll sleep on the couch and eat whatever I can find/people give me”. Noble intentions.

Then, for the music kids, they realize they need instruments, sounds equipment, a phone and the numbers/addresses to get gig opportunities (= they need a manager/to become their own manager), they need transport (car/van), they need a structure to record and sell their songs (recording CDs, burning them and selling them, and/or setting up a website + selling it on all platforms like itunes).

Then they realize they need to pay a lawyer, to negociate contracts and royalties rights, to be able to sue the big recording company when they’re not paying them or stealing their songs.

They also realize they need a steady flow of money to live decently, to get an access to culture, to have a partner, to have friends, to have kids, and so on.

Then they realize it’s extremely hard as an artist to get a steady flow of cash, so they need to either work for an agency, or pick up as much on-demand work as they can, or aim for project with a bigger pay. They’re now working like an employee, or like a slave.

Pretending you’ll only live off your “pure” art is pretty childish. You’re never free, you never do “what you want”. Society hates freedom, everyone have to deal with it.

People who think they’re really doing what they want, are simply accepting it needs to be your hobby.

But even then they only *think* they’re free, when they’re actually not free at all.

In fact, you’re greatly limited by yourself (=> you’re defining your own “market”) : you don’t have unlimited time, you’re only enjoying (since hobbies have to be enjoyable, or they become chores) specific things, you will get bored of the same activity overtime, and your tastes will change one day.

Many programmers making games for fun reported similar difficulties around their personal projects : some have a hard time starting their project, knowing what to do first, so they rarely even see “if it would work out good” ; while some others are always starting new projects, then dropping them halfway because they lost interest in it.

You never do what you want. Accept it.

continuously i used to read smaller articles or reviews which also clear their motive, and that
is also happening with this article which
I am reading at this place.

Just leaving me 2 cents here.

In my case, developers are not losinh sales. Steam got me out of piracy, the sales are cheaper than going out and buying the pirate CD. Pirate indie games can also be easily found if you know where to look too.

If wasn’t for the huge discounts and bundles, I just wouldn’t buy thes games. The only indie games I would buy full price are Minecraft and Reccetear, and I would never pay $30,00 or more for any game, even before Steam. The last big game I bought was Warcraft 3.

On the other hand, I don’t buy any game on Steam that isn’t at sale price (only 2 exceptions so far, both the Carpe Fulgur games). I also find myself avoiding to buying indie games because I know they may end up in a bundle some time soon.

It’s not actually a “lost sale”, if the game wasn’t cheap, I would not buy it.