What Can an Average Indie Game Dev Expect to Gross

#21 The educational value of making a game can probably make you more money in other types of development other then making games.

What I mean is this:
You can get a lot of good experience programing games. I come from a VB background and although I had some off-colored experience with Object Orientated Programing, I didn't have a great grasp of OOP. After doing some scripting and learning C++, while messing with Torque and other game API's, I got enough experience to add to my resume and that has helped out a lot.

Another thing is that even though you may not make it big doing indie games, there is a good chance that you could be picked up by other studios. Think about how many people have made it big on something that they didn't really start out to make money on. Napster,BitTorrent?

On the side of making games for a living, If you look at Valves current list of employess, you will see that a good amount of them are people who started out modding the half life engine. The CS group mostly.

Personally, I just want to make a good game someday when I actually have the time to do it. If I make money great. If not, I at least hope some people will enjoy it.

There really is no better feeling then seeing tons of people use something that you created.

#22 www.gameproducer.net/category/sales-statistics/

#23 Can someone please list all the distribution methods for a game please - in detail.
For example, Could you please list the specific portals etc etc etc

#24 @suddysud--with all due respect, that's a task worth thousands of dollars to a deployment team. Expecting someone to dump all their research on you for free isn't probably a reasonable expectation.

#25 I recommend going to visit www.indiegamer.com. I'd also recommend doing a search and browsing the archive before you post, because a lot of your questions have been asked before (in some cases, MANY times). That is a relatively professional group, with many of the more vocal members supporting themselves selling indie games for many years.

Another great resource for starting out is www.indiewiki.org/tiki-index.php?page=Indie+Developers

I also talk about these very subjects a lot on my blog, The Tales of the Rampant Coyote. Obviously, I recommend checking it out :) One article addressing these kinds of issues that you bring up can be found here.

Very few of 'em are what most people would consider rich. But many of them do have a passion for games and love what they do. It's worthwhile to listen and learn.

As far as listing all distribution methods for a game.... this is impossible. Because THERE ARE NO LIMITS!!!!!

I'm learning of new distribution possibilities every day. Because I have a released game out on the market, I'm having people email me with new opportunities every month. It is AMAZING how many doors get opened up to you after you've actually got a game out and selling. There's a saying that "Nothing succeeds like success," and just releasing a complete, commercially viable game is a success in and of itself.

But the most common distribution methods include:
* Selling on your own website (a TON of work, really slow going, but ultimately the most rewarding IMO)
* Selling via a third-party game portal. Some of the more popular ones include:
- BigFish Games
- ArcadeTown
- RealArcade
- GarageGames
- Matrix Games
- Shrapnel Games
- Oberon (they service MSN's and Yahoo's game pages)
- for more portals & publishers, check out www.indiewiki.org/tiki-index.php?page_ref_id=23
* Finding a publisher willing to take your game to retail for you. (This is what people commonly think of, sometimes to the exclusion of anything else - yet it is rarely the most viable and often not the most profitable way to go)

Some other options that I've discovered:
* Non-mainstream CD-ROM deals, particularly in foreign markets. $0.25 or $0.50 royalty on a cheap CD-ROM may not seem like much, but if you sell 20,000 - 40,000 of them in Eastern Europe, it's a nice bit of supplemental income on a game you are already selling through other means.
* The Arcade In A Box guy is pushing a service for retro games for his old-style arcade emulation system
* I was contacted once about doing a version of Void War for a motion platform type simulator
* And if you are already an EXPERIENCED, PROFESSIONAL indie, there may be opportunities to do downloadable games for next-gen consoles (like XBox 360).
* There are possibilities with AdverGaming - customizing an existing game to advertise a particular product.
* Release free games on your website, and request donations
* Release free games on your website, and try to sponsor yourself with advertising links
* "Serious Games" - games that educate / simulate - there's a growing market there that is really exciting.
* Using a game as centerpiece of yet another book about writing games
* At least one company created a boardgame and a videogame version of a game, and cross-marketed the two.

And undoubtably there are hundreds - or even thousands - of opportunities that I don't know about, or perhaps that nobody has even considered.

The sky is the limit, man. But just because there are tons of awesome opportunities out there, don't delude yourself into believing that they are at all easy. Videogames is a stupid-hard way to earn money. But we do it because we love it.

Jay Barnson
Rampant Games
Tales of the Rampant Coyote

#26 Heres a usful resource with all the shareware sites etc:
www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=8109

#27 Sigh.. in two months the only thing anyone will successfully produce is a lot of gray hair and an ulcer.

I forget who said your first few games will be bad, but it's true. Every iteration brings knowledge only experience produces - you can read books, blogs, and websites until your eyes fall out but it's not the same as being in the trenches and actually *doing*. Reading just helps you make new mistakes instead of repeating old ones (lol).

There's a lot to learn if you're not just a programmer or artist - the best game in the world with lousy/non-existent marketing can be slaughtered by a middle-of-the-road title with decent marketing. It's very much not a case of "build it and they will come".

As for game graphics: well, I'm going to the community college on weekends and taking art and graphic design classes. If I had the money I'd hire someone, but (a) I'm broke and (b) I don't believe in asking for free help with the "you get money when I do" caveat since there's no guarantee you'll move even a single unit. Thankfully what I'm working on doesn't require a lot of character animation (read:none) so it's better suited to my current skill level (or lack thereof).

I doubt if, once I finish this thing I'm working on, I'll sell a single copy. I'm not planning on it, this is mainly an "exploratory effort" to see if I can actually go concept-to-ship on my own. Yes, I know I'm crazy, it's OK. Thankfully my day gig as an embedded systems programmer keeps me in rent and beer money!

I could make more money selling my music on audio CDs in the short term. Ugh.

#28 I'm actually aiming for a playable alpha in two months (of coding). I'm taking everything in baby steps, and not even worrying about anything better than programmer-art until I get to that stage. (Maybe not even until I'm at the feature-complete, bug-hunting, beta stage.)

Of course, I've also intentionally picked a simple concept for my first game, and I've already had my fair share of questions, but no dead-ends so far. My personal goal is to make a game my friends will enjoy playing. I'll be extatic if this one actually pays for itself.

#29 $0-$250,000...

#30

Quote:Pffft! There's a reason why the words "starving" and "artist" are often consecutive. =)

There's also a reason that there is a steaming pile of "programmer art" in a number of projects. ;)

#31 I checked back on this very important thread and I noticed I didn't give you all a Big Thanks for helping me put together the information. Especially Jay Barnson. Thanks for the leads. I'm getting closer.

I took 6 weeks off to take a summer class in C++ semester 2. Got an A. So now i'm back on track to getting this game out. It will hopefully still take me 2 months unless i get stuck with this speech recognition part and text to speech part. but it's a really really simple game. Cause I'm not a genius to try to make a game that will take me 2 years to make.


If anyone has more special strategies on how to distribute indie video games, I'm all ears.

Thanks again, I'll post an update on progress in this area.

#32 Sweet. Congratulations on the work you've done! And the grades!

#33 What kind of percentage do you think is fair for a distributor to take from a game that you have created.

realnetworks seems to be taking 70 percent - based on an email I got from them. they said the royalty rate is 30%

that seems very very unfair.
Is that the norm?

#34 For a larger portal, these days, the scuttlebutt seems to be so.

The mid- and lower-tier portals offer a better rate. For example, an affiliate site might only take 25% - 40%, but you might only sell a dozen or so games through them. GarageGames offers about 50%, and I think other mid-tier portals are probably around 45% - 60% as well. Assuming you have a game of high enough quality to even be accepted by these portals.

The thing to remember is that building a site and a customer base is in many ways just as hard if not harder than making a game. I didn't know that, 2 years ago. I had no freaking idea. 50% is not unreasonable IMO.

However, if Real wanted to sell my game, I'd probably not say "no." Now, I'd try to sell it through any other avenues I could, FIRST - then I'd know that Real is only selling to customers I couldn't get otherwise. Then that 30% would be "free money."

#35 Wha? You mean there is a chance to make money with this stuff ;)

O'rly?

Great thread, both inspirational and depressing. I liked that blog link. It seemed like a realistic expectation to have. Nice to know that things are NOT being glazed over like some infomercial. From my vantage point, I really like how GG has totally made game development so accessible. There is just so much packed into that $100 purchase I made for TGE. Man, what a deal!

I for one, at this time, have no real goal to make money off this, tho I definitely prefer it over my day job. I just like to think that one day I will push out a game. It doesn't even have to be good, I just want to lay claim to a game that *I* (with help from friends) made/produced.

...sip...