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How viable is indie game development these days?
With all the talk of layoffs and studio closures, I wanted to know what the opinions and general experience is like as an indie game dev. How viable is it, how successful can you really be with that career and what challenges can crop up?
I started making my own game a while back and got extremely discouraged by the layoffs and technical hurdles I was running into, to the point where someone told me maybe I wasn't cut out for it on discord. This really killed my drive, and it would be awesome to hear about some success stories or even some struggles that you may have overcome.
I don’t think layoffs should discourage you - if anything, that means it’s an advantageous time relatively speaking for an indie dev, since the big publishers are struggling with the cost of labor while the cost of your own labor being free is the X factor for indies.
That being said, it’s… just not viable? On average, that is. Gaming is a hyper competitive market, with lightning fast trends and extremely unstable income sources. 99.999% of indie dev hopefuls will not make their money back they invested into it, let alone making a living.
One of the biggest advantages of developing a game independently is that you may not have to invest any financial cost at all.* If you're pushing yourself to make a game with the end goal of making a ton of money, you're likely going to have a frustrating time. If you're making a game you would love to play and enjoy working on, then getting paid would just be a bonus. I don't think it's realistic to expect making a living off an indie game unless you release it (in any state - could be stable/complete or beta/early access) and get a huge surge of interest/purchases.
*There are things that cost minimal amounts of money, such as paying to have your game on Steam. I believe that cost is ~$100 though, which you could recoup in a few dozen sales, depending on how you price your game. An indie dev may also want to spend money on an artist if they don't have that skill set, but you can pay someone for 25 to 50 2D assets at a set price instead of hiring a full time artist. Hiring on anyone for your first game (if you have no prior successful experience) just sounds like a poor decision.
The biggest cost is the opportunity cost of your labor, especially if you’re some kind of unicorn polygot artist, musician, developer, and designer. Opportunity cost is just as real as the money you spend on groceries, in the end.
Of course, (labor) time is money. But if you're having fun with it and do it outside of work hours while you maintain a job with steady income, the "cost" doesn't fully equate to your hourly rate at your career.
I mean, that really depends on what your goal is. If your goal is to make a game, then it's not only viable, it's probably never been easier.
That being said, you're very right if the goal is to make a living off of it. It's possible, but we're not in the land of being able to do everything by yourself, and we haven't been for a long time. I would think it would be hard to get the sales you need without a dedicated marketer at this point.
OP’s specific question was
So of course it’s not viable in that context. Career implies making your living from it.
On the same token, if you’re treating it as a hobby, almost all hobbies are money sinks so the bar for “viable for a hobby” is pretty low.
Whoops, must have missed that part.
I don't think the layoffs and studio closures has much to do with the indie game sphere. The layoffs were a result of big game companies (and more generally tech companies) over hiring during covid and that coming back to bite them. Most indie companies are a pretty small, with not more than like 25 people, although I'm sure some were affected to some degree.
But anyway, "success" in indie games is really defined by you. Do you want to work for an actual indie studio? Do you want to develop a game all on your own? I've made a handful of game jam games and small projects solo that I'm really proud of. They are nothing special and nothing more came of them other than some people playing them and some really nice comments. The indie game market is extremely saturated with bland games. I think about 50 games are added to steam everyday, most are trash, if not straight up scams, but it does make it super hard to get noticed no matter how great your game is.
I've dipped my feet into a lot of creative mediums, and game development is by far the hardest. It's a constant battle to solve problems, whether its programming, art, sound, design, whatever. I think its the most rewarding time I've spent making stuff, but even a simple game can take weeks or months. The general consensus is to not leave your day job to pursue making a game. You could spend years making the greatest game ever, and it could still fail because of bad marketing or even luck. Also, "creating fun" is a whole nother thing that can get in the way, because its such a nebulous thing.
I think whether your goal is to work at a studio or develop your "dream game" solo, I would start with making something really small but interesting. You can put it in a portfolio to show to perspective employers and/or throw it up on itch.io and see what people think. I think this is important because you won't be wasting anyone's time (especially you're own.) You will see way too many stories of people spending years on their big action-RPG-survival-battle-royal-crafting-simulator for it to just not go anywhere.
Also to your comment about someone telling you that you weren't cut out for game development, fuck them, do not listen to people on the internet. I've spent over half my life making stuff and putting it online and there will always be someone who is going to be a miserable idiot and try to bring you down. Just make stuff because its fun and you'll naturally get better.
Thank you, this is something I needed to read today. I just want to make cool stuff and if it makes money, then that's a bonus, if it doesn't that's okay too, at least I made something and put it up online.
I know you're not looking for dev help/advice, but I would recommend picking up this book, if you haven't already: Art of Game Design. It has nothing to do with coding or art or anything, but more game design from a bunch of higher level perspectives. It has helped me a lot and can be pretty inspiring at times.
Wanted to share my perspective, I'm a software dev that doesn't work in games, but I do game development on the side as a hobby. I recently created a small game in 2 weeks for a game jam and that helped me learn a ton! I wasn't starting from zero, I've definitely have a bunch of unfinished personal projects, but having to work under the pressure of a short deadline I think really helped me build skills I didn't know I was missing and also helped me accept that sometimes you need to compromise on perfection to get something done fast. When you only have 2 weeks to make an entire game, you can't waste time polishing tiny things, and the time I spent doing early optimization, I sort of regret not spending that time getting the core game complete. All that to say, those are the sorts of lessons you'll never learn until you make a game.
So, if you're interested in indie dev work, I'd highly recommend you keep making games! If you can build the skills to do art, game mechanics, and sound, then you can make a game for free today. All you have to lose is your time. And how do you build those skills? By making stuff!
Don't expect your first games to be great, or even good for that matter. It takes time, patience, and repetition to learn how to make great things. Game dev is just like any other art/skill. You wouldn't expect to be a great painter after making your first painting, you need to make many paintings to develop the skill. Game dev is exactly the same.
The best thing you can do is make a game. Enter a game jam, itch.io has them going on all the time. It can be a great way to challenge yourself to get something done fast, and a great way to get used to sharing your game/ideas with other people who enter the jam. Make a crappy flappy bird clone, or pong, or anything really! And then share it with people you know and with random people online!
And don't listen to people who say you "aren't cut out for it". The only competition you have is yourself. No one is expecting you to make a AAA game or the next Celeste/Minecraft/whatever. As long as you are building games for fun and to bring joy to others, the only measure of success is how much you learn and how much you improve each time you decide to make a game.
After the game jam was finished, I played dozens of people's released games. And so many of them were complete junk! But, these are games that were made in 2 weeks and I have to give credit where credit is due: these people made games and released them and I played them! And some of them were even pretty fun! Before this jam, I couldn't say that I ever released a game, but now I can and I'm looking forward to releasing more! Ask yourself if you want to look back in 10 years and see yourself as someone who gave it a real effort and made some cool stuff (regardless of commercial success) or someone who gave up because a person online told you you "weren't cut out for it". I want to be the person who gave it try!
Sorry, this got kind of rambly, but I really do hope you give game dev a try! We need more creative people in this world, we really do.
https://mastodon.social/@Defaced5960/111925460980966778 this is the game I was working on. I'm very proud of what I made, but I ran into issues with scene loading and people tried to tell me I had to learn how to do asset instancing when I didn't know what that was after I already got it working in another project, that's when I was told I might not be cut out for it.
Nice effort, I like the pixel art! Reminds me a little bit of Zelda on the NES. I'm curious about this scene-loading/asset-instancing issue you're talking about. I'm not sure how much I could help, but if it's something you're still trying to figure out, feel free to DM me, I'd be happy to help debug a little bit. I have a decent amount of Godot experience.
This is great advice, sounds like your background and experience are 1:1 with mine!
Definitely want to second your thoughts on game jams. I've done about four now, 3 times solo and 1 time on a small team. It's such good experience to get you in the mindset of having a deadline to actually finish something. They are generally low pressure and teach you a lot about time management and scope, not to mention all the actual game development stuff you learn along the way. And like you mentioned, it's such a good feeling saying you have "shipped" a game.