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Ask Indies: Do Indie Games Make Money?
In this month’s Ask Indies we asked our dev community another burning question about indie games development – Do indie games make money?
It’s a tough question to ask, as for many indie games players and developers, making money is perhaps not the main focus of a project. But it stands to reason, the hard work of indie devs should be rewarded and they should be able to make a career of making games. So we asked the people in the know, devs themselves, do indie games make money? ALAN ABBADESSA-GREEN, DEVELOPER, CURRENTLY WORKING ON LITTLE GHOST “It is undoubtedly an uphill battle for sure, and we’ve only seen small glimmers of breakthru titles, but I think if we scale back our expectations there is plenty of potential for success. Just as we work with smaller budgets and teams, we can’t think in terms of AAA numbers. Plenty of folks I know have had Kickstarters and launches that took their projects to the next level. However, as my own Kickstarter is still somewhat slogging along with an uncertain future, maybe ask me again in 2 weeks what I really think about indie finances lol.”
MARIO NEMEC, DEVELOPER/PUBLSIHER, CURRENTLY WORKING ON AQUATICO
“I guess that depends on many things; what state your game is in, the price, how much did someone spend making the game, genre and a ton of other stuff… Our Aquatico game is certainly not making any money right now, will it make some in the future? Well, I certainly hope it will because if it doesn’t, we’ll be toast 🙂 . A lot of time and hours went into making it, and you can’t expect devs to work for free, so yeah, the final product must generate some revenue.”
“On a bit more serious note, I’d definitely say that Indie games can make money, and they should strive to make some. In nothing else, then because it is a requirement if you want to continue making games, and I’m sure all indie developers are in this line of work because they wanted it. At some point the entire production process will have to become self-sustaining system, otherwise it won’t work for long. Ofcourse, if you have a secret billionaire uncle funding everything, then it’s a different story and I’m completely wrong :).”
“Now, will your FIRST indie game make money? In my opinion it doesn’t really matter. “Surviving” the first complete development cycle is a very complicated thing where you’ll go through undiscovered country. I believe goal with first game should be to simply make it to the finish line. Amount of experience you’ll gather by finishing all the production steps for a videogame is immense and cannot be translated to money. With every next endeavour you can then build further and make sure your game is generating enough to cover for each project coming after current one.”
JULIA NOLAN, DEVELOPER, INTEGRAL STUDIOS, CURRENTLY WORKING ON EIDOLON
“Most do not. There are the few that are huge commercial successes, but the vast majority of dev logs I’ve seen note that the games don’t earn back their costs – even when many of the assets are free or created (without cost) by the game developers.”
JAY CAMERON, GAME DIRECTOR, DRAGONFLY GAMES. CURRENTLY WORKING ON: BEYOND THE OAKS
“Indie games can and do make money! Keep this in mind everyone, even the AAA giant developers are all fighting for the same pot of money, there are only so many people and only so much money to go around. The more important question is how do you create a community around your project! Good quality projects, with big thriving communities will last the test of time.”
SOFI, DEVELOPER, HAPPY DOGGO STUDIOS, CURRENTLY WORKING ON A SHORT LOVE STORY
“It depends what you want as an indie dev. If an indie dev sets a goal to make money on the game and chooses a popular genre, builds a community around their work, constantly updates their game and posts news then I’m sure it will be a success in making money. Regarding myself, I do my games for fun & experience (to try out some new ideas etc), post not so regularly, as I should, and all my games are free, still I get donations from time to time. So, according to my experience, the answer is YESSS :-)”
HARRY COLE, EDITOR, INTO INDIE GAMES. CURRENTLY WORKING ON: CREATING A COMMUNITY FOR INDIE GAMES
“There a huge assortment of factors that go into making an indie game to make a profit. There have been some huge success stories over the years – Untitled Goose Game and Cupheads are two that instantly spring to my mind. But though I am sure not every indie game turns a sizeable profit, I hope many indie devs can make a career our of making indie games. There are no guarantees but being original and raising the quality benchmark, are surely factors in making money from indie titles.”
Thanks for reading Do Indie Games Make Money? For more interesting articles on the indie games industry, check out the links below.
INDIE DEV INTERVIEW: BLADE CEO, EMMANUEL FREUND
SOMERVILLE WALKTHROUGH – PART 1
THE FLOWER COLLECTORS – REVIEW