Anybody know the Indie Game Business at all?

[Blackjack]

I'm not a game developer (nor will I ever be), I just get curious about things and have to find out, so I have a few questions. If anybody can increase my knowlege a little, I'd appreciate it.

 

 

(and I realize the answers will just have to be generalizations, as most of the answers would vary widely)

 

Concerning small, modern indie games like zuma, bejeweled, diner dash, etc. Games that are just downloaded and purchased.

 

1) What kind of development time are we talking..... weeks, months, a year?

 

2) What kind of sales figures 10k/100k?

 

3) I know some devs just sell their games off their own website, but a lot of them go through places like "Reflexive Arcade". Of the 20 bucks that most

of these games cost...... how much goes to the developer?

[dntoll]

1) What kind of development time are we talking..... weeks, months, a year?

2) What kind of sales figures 10k/100k?

3) I know some devs just sell their games off their own website, but a lot of them go through places like "Reflexive Arcade". Of the 20 bucks that most

of these games cost...... how much goes to the developer?

 

Development time much depends on how many games you have done before, our first game took 18 loong months http://www.alawar.com/games/time-breaker/

We worked around 3-4 hours a day beside our regular jobs...

 

I have worked around 12 months part time with Pirate Quest, but much less time a day since I got kids But you can create and release games much faster if you work full time. I estimate 2-3 months full time for Pirate Quest.

 

Sales figures are hard to estimate, but really successful games sell a lot.... unfortunately for us Time Breaker did not sell so much. We made an exclusive deal with a publisher for Time Breaker, and got a percent of their profit deal. (Normal deals are around 30-60% of the profit for the developer)

 

But we really would like to sell games ourselves this time around... It is so much more fun to develop the game when you have some connection with the customers and you can use their feedback to improve the game directly. But since you need a lot of downloads to get any sales you should really pitch the game to as many game-portals as possible. We have just started to pitch Pirate Quest, so hopefully you will find it on the portals soon... but (when spellofplay.com is up and running again) you can try or buy it from our page today...

[Blackjack]

Good info, thanks!

 

 

I don't suppose anybody has an idea of sales numbers for any of the popular games, do they? Or an educated guess even?

[Gemini]

As an indie developer who hasn't really broken the threshold yet, and probably won't for quite some time until I can get a serious, not-all-by-myself project going, I can field two of your three questions:

 

1) What kind of development time are we talking..... weeks, months, a year?

It depends primarily on the complexity of what you're doing and the number of people involved. If you're making something that requires a minimial amount of graphics, like Geometry Wars, that helps to cut development time down. The more people you work with the faster things happen too, even if you run into the occasional bout of disagreement. Very small projects can go as fast as a couple or three months. (I made Super Minesweeper in 2 1/2 months on my own.) However, medium sized projects can take several months to a year and large projects will almost certainly take at least 2 years, likely more.

 

2) What kind of sales figures 10k/100k?

There are a variety of factors which influence this, however, unless you get published you probably won't ever see more than 1k/year. Quality and quantity are equally important. The more games you have, the more you will sell, but the better your games are the longer they will sell for, so you really need both. Demographics are important, as the more people your game will appeal to the more copies you will sell. Publishing plays a HUGE role. If you get your game published, sure they take the bulk of the profits, but the sheer number of profits that come in will make up for that. The team that made the DOS game "Abuse" made over a million with their game... they didn't quite spend that money very wisely afterwards, but it can happen. Getting published is extremely difficult, but not impossible. It also depends on how you get published. Web-published games or bargain bin games don't see the same kind of attention and sales as full boxed products, plus sell for less which equates to even less profits. Publishers aren't going to publish something unless they predict it will net enough sales to make up for the cost of publishing it. Just like with books.

 

3) I know some devs just sell their games off their own website, but a lot of them go through places like "Reflexive Arcade". Of the 20 bucks that most of these games cost...... how much goes to the developer?

Internet-published games tend to see about 40% to 60% profits go back to the developer. Boxed games usually see smaller percentages since much more effort needs to go into releasing a boxed product, but the profitability of boxed games is far greater and thus that small percentage would quickly feel sufficient.

 

That's just my observations, some of which are a few years old now so they might not reflect the way things currently are. Still, it should give you a basic idea.