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Vault Dweller Soapbox: How to Survive the Indiepocalypse in 5 Easy Steps

Unwanted

Endlösung

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You people must be retarded.
Facts:
EA 1982
Blizzard 1991
Take 2 1993
Bioware 1995
Unreal 1998
Relic 1997

Those companies were indie devs for single player games once. They were created at the bestest of times. Your chance at becoming Blizz out of AoD is 0. Though you might strike gold with some shit like Minecraft or Pay to Win online garbage.
 
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HobGoblin42

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What did you guys expect from a German codexer called Endlösung?

But mentioning Ascaron in the context of good wages and successful indie developers made me laugh.
 
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But I'd bet you'd rather found Ascaron in 1993 than working on Spellforce 3 or the Chaos Something (and leeching tax money).
 
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HobGoblin42

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You people must be retarded.
Facts:
EA 1982
Blizzard 1991
Take 2 1993
Bioware 1995
Unreal 1998
Relic 1997

Those companies were indie devs for single player games once. They were created at the bestest of times. Your chance at becoming Blizz out of AoD is 0. Though you might strike gold with some shit like Minecraft or Pay to Win online garbage.

EA, Take 2, Blizzard, Bioware, Relic were indie devs once? :lol:


But I'd bet you'd rather found Ascaron in 1993 than working on Spellforce 3 or the Chaos Something (and leeching tax money).

I worked on "The Settlers II" and "Knights and Merchants" in the 90s. Latter made me quite rich back then, unfortunately the tax office took half of it.

And I know Holger Flöttmann in person and I definitely don't want to share his experience during those two insolvencies. Especially the time during the development disaster of "Sacred 2".
 
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Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
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These "real" wages were pitifully low
Source me. There are dozens of mismanaged game dev companies that payed good money to hacks, money that came from publishers. Those people were paid.
Sure, they were paid 40-60k a year in early 90s which was far less than what a capable person could earn elsewhere. Game development was always a grossly underpaid industry (passion vs money), if you wanted money you could take a programming job elsewhere and earn 20% more.

Putting words in my mouth again, you fucking jew. People who worked in the bestest of all game dev times could have made millions, like Blizzard, like ID, like Tim Sweeney. And your examples are dumber than you are. Avellone is a writer! He is worthless. And Tim Cain is seemingly a pathetic manager.
If you're talking about company founders, sure, but that's not what we're discussing. I'm not saying that now is the best time to make money (although Notch would definitely agree with this sentiment), I'm saying that now is the best time to be a game developer.

Who gives a fuck. You as a game dev never wasted your money. Grimrock devs are industry vets paying for dev themselves. You could form a Troika-like company in the best time of all time and become what Rockstar games is today. You think your or Grimrocks chances at a midsized studio today are better than in 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000? Fuck no.
Yeah, just ask MicroProse, Origin, Looking Glass and all them other Rockstar companies. Maybe they're just tired from all that fame and shut down to focus on spending their millions.

In the good old days you found a job that payed you if you wanted to be wageslave game dev.
In the good old days you founded a company and looked for a publisher. While today you are starving and selfpublishing and praying.
So easy you have to wonder why people even worked for wages in those days instead of founding companies left and right and making millions. I guess they were lazy or something.

Today is the worst of all time to be a small game dev. Yet THE BEST TIME OF ALL TIME according to a guy who worked 10 years for free.
I worked part-time for 8 years (meaning it was a hobby, no different than drinking, watching TV, and playing games; you were shitposting, I was working on a game). I switched full time when it made sense to do so.

So again, your focus is strictly on money as if it's the only thing that fucking matters. It's not. I'm talking about the freedom to make games, freedom guys like Styg or LoG developers or Pyke or my team didn't have before. You're talking about Blizzard and Rockstar and millions of dollars. Mind you, Darkest Dungeon sold over 700,000 at a decent price. If this isn't a great fucking success story, I don't know what is.

You people must be retarded.
Facts:
EA 1982
Blizzard 1991
Take 2 1993
Bioware 1995
Unreal 1998
Relic 1997

Those companies were indie devs for single player games once. They were created at the bestest of times. Your chance at becoming Blizz out of AoD is 0. Though you might strike gold with some shit like Minecraft or Pay to Win online garbage.
But I don't want to become the next Blizzard or Bioware. Maybe this is your dream but it's not mine. Companies that became that big went after the action market. Do you think MicroProse could have become Blizzard?

Anyway, here is your post in a nutshell:

Yeahh-I-Like-Money-Though.jpg
 
Unwanted

Endlösung

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Well, not indie in the independent from publisher sense. They were small game devs.
 
Unwanted

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I'm not saying that now is the best time to make money (although Notch would definitely agree with this sentiment), I'm saying that now is the best time to be a game developer.
Wow. I dont even. There is not much to say. Its like a meaning of life flip flop. Whats a game developer? A hippie artist? Who cant write code? I hear Cleve Blakemore has made more than 100 games!

But I don't want to become the next Blizzard or Bioware. Maybe this is your dream but it's not mine.
My dream is global domination but I thought you wanted a studio. And in 1990 you would have had one.

edit2

Let me engage again on the BEST of game dev time. Its today because you have an engine and a small audience?
 
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Mustawd

Guest
Ask yourself a couple of things shitlord:

-What time is easier to reach millions of people at once?
-What time is easier to get free publicity?
-What time would have been harder for ITS to exist as a tiny team? In other words, would AoD back then require more people because they needed to make their own engine? Hmm...
-What time would be more expensive in terms of physical goods and distribution?
-What time would have been easier to get money in advance as you were making your product?
-What time would it have been easier to get game testers?

Answer to all these questions is NOW. Not back then. That's what VD is referring to.
 
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HobGoblin42

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See VD, poor Hobgoblin was a dev with a publisher. He was even rich! IN THE GOOD OLD DAYS.

And now look at the today's devs without publishers:

"Minecraft" - one guy: > $2 billion USD
"Prison Architect" - 3 guys: > $20 million USD
"Braid" - 2 guys: > $4 million USD
"Castle Crushers" - 3 guys: > $10 million USD
"Banished" - one guy: > $6 million USD
"Terraria" - 4-5 guys: > $10 million USD
"Darkest Dungeon" - 4 guys: > $6 million USD
"Spelunky" - 2 guys: > $6 million USD
"Limbo" - 4 guys (?): > $12 million USD

Just a few indie game devs whose success wouldn't have been possible without digital distribution (like 10-15 years ago).
 

Vault Dweller

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But I don't want to become the next Blizzard or Bioware. Maybe this is your dream but it's not mine.
My dream is global domination but I thought you wanted a studio. And in 1990 you would have had one.
I want to make games and now I can (yes, because I have a team, an engine, and a small audience). It doesn't mean anything to you but it means something to me.

Let me engage again on the BEST of game dev time. Its today because you have an engine and a small audience?
Today is the best time to be a game developer because:

See VD, poor Hobgoblin was a dev with a publisher. He was even rich! IN THE GOOD OLD DAYS.

And now look at the today's devs without publishers:

"Minecraft" - one guy: > $2 billion USD
"Prison Architect" - 3 guys: > $20 million USD
"Braid" - 2 guys: > $10 million USD
"Castle Crushers" - 3 guys: > $10 million USD
"Banished" - one guy: > $6 million USD
"Terraria" - 4-5 guys: > $10 million USD
"Darkest Dungeon" - 4 guys: > $6 million USD
"Spelunky" - 2 guys: > $6 million USD

Just a few indie game devs whose success wouldn't have been possible without digital distribution (like 10-15 years ago).
 

Archibald

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The only sense in which Endlosung is correct is that there was more low-hanging fruit in the old days - major types of games that hadn't been popularized yet, technologies that hadn't been exploited yet - allowing pioneer developers who would be seen as "indie" today to grab them and become empires. For example, there were no first person shooters, so "indie" id Software invented them and became giants.

But we're not living in that age anymore and haven't been since the late 90s. The frontier is closed, the borders have been drawn.

Well 10 years ago we didn't have Minecraft and Moba genre existed only as some fun W3 custom map to kill time. There are also complete popamole things that Codex doesn't care about like touch screens, VR, casual games like Match-3, guitar hero craze, energy based rpgs and shit like that. So I think its not that new things aren't made any more, its just moving into direction that Codex doesn't care about.
 
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Just a few indie game devs whose success wouldn't have been possible without digital distribution.
See, I dont buy that. The publisher-free hits today are just that, hits. Their success doesnt depend on distribution. A hit would have been as profitable to the founders of the company in the past, as it is today, in fact it would have been even better as all the iconic names today show. In the good old days the highs were higher and the lows were not as bad because you still got paid.
 

Mustawd

Guest
Their success doesnt depend on distribution.

:retarded:


Success back then DID depend on distribution. Jesus, it's not like you can make game in your basement and people will just come give you money. And distribution was a lot harder back then.

It was either get a publisher to help you get it on shelves or you posted download links like Vogel and hoped the internet gave a fuck. Even Vogel has said that his sales have been much higher since Steam.

Oh Neckbeard Shitlord, you are my favorite troll, lol.

EDIT: I'm sorry, I forgot other forms of distribution like Shareware that ended up on the 1000 GAMES!! CDs along with 15 different version of chess and mah jong.
 

hivemind

Guest
So the super-popularity of certain games has literally nothing to do with how easily accessible they are to the consumer and with how easy it is for tiny studious to put their game out there?

what a retard, lmao
 

Vault Dweller

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http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=130

Why Steam... the reason Steam is so fantastic, is because the game can be developed and distributed without any publisher involvement. Laidback will get to keep the IP, which means that the idea and world the game takes place in will still be ours. Laidback can make a great title, put it up there and people can download it for less than they'd pay in the stores. On top of that, Laid Back will only need to sell a very small number of copies to recoup its cost and keep the company going.

To help everyone better understand, I will explain Publisher funding vs. Developer return process. I'm going to simplify it a lot, but this is more or less how it works.... and it's really quite amazing...

After they agree to fund your game for 6 million, you begin production. They give you 500k a month upon receiving, reviewing, and approving your milestone. They are basically checking every month to make sure the game is actually being made and going in a good direction Fair enough. To keep things easy, let's say the game ships on time and they've given you a clean 6 million bucks.

Ready?.... You get 10% of the royalties of the game! So like if the game sells 1 million units at Electronics Boutique for 50 bucks a piece, you get 5 million dollars coming back at you right?!??!

WRONG

EB bought the game for 40 dollars and sells it for 50. Now the publisher takes away their expenses of producing the full color manual and the pretty box and such which we'll say is 10 bucks (usually more like 7, but let's keep the math easy). So now we are down to 30 bucks, and you get 10% of that... 3 bucks.... but WAIT!!! Your 3 dollars doesn't go into your pocket, your 3 bucks goes to pay back the publisher what you borrowed to make the game. They did give you 6 million dollars. So before the developer see's a check in the mail, you would have to sell 2 million units!!!!! So the developer before the developer gets a check, the publisher gets 30 million dollars coming in.

Crazy huh?

So why choose Steam? I have chosen Steam because if you buy Valves engine to make your game with, you get to keep 100% of what you sell on Steam. That's right 100%. So using our math from above, if I can sell the game on Steam for 30 bucks and cost 6 million to make, I'll be seeing a check after the game sells 200k units instead of 2 million. AND the check I get for the units I sell will be 10 times more than it would be from a publisher AND after all this wonderfulness, you guys all get the game for 30 bucks instead of 50....

It's an all around winner.

If Troika was able to sell the games they made through Steam and sold only a 1/4 of the units they did, they'd be thriving today and everyone would have really cool RPG's to play.
 

BlackGoat

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The guy who made Stardew Valley sold over a million copies in less than 2 months earlier this year. At $12.99 a pop. No way that happens before the here and now. No way that game gets made, no way it sells that many copies, no way the developer keeps as much of that profit.
 
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Make a dev only section of the dex so ya'll can share tips and anecdotes in private. A gentleman's club for the independent and indentured.
No such a space exists right?
 

Goral

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^This interview is the reason I registered to the Codex, it's the best RPG-related interview I've ever read.

My favourite part:
Regular game idea:
What the player experiences: You were told that the wealthy owner of the Inn can help you find the buried treasure. You walk into a bar. The bartender greets you with a fine "Hello Stranger! Come and enjoy a pint of ale on the house!" You will notice that you when you click on anyone else in the room you get a generic "good day sir", you certainly can't attack anyone, and if the game let you fire off an explosive spell, it wouldn't do any damage in room and no one would notice that anything had happened. You talk to the inn keeper and he says if you give him 10 gold, he'll give you the map to the secret treasure! So you do.

What the developers were thinking: Well, this has to be this way, right? I mean, the bartender has knowledge that keeps the quest moving along so we can't kill him. And what if we attacked someone else in the corner of the bar? We couldn't have that because it would look strange if the people just sat there! And I mean, c'mon, if you can kill this guy, wouldn't that mean you can kill the others too? Oh plus, our publisher informed us yesterday that we have to take out all the kids in the game because we can't sell the game in Germany if it has kid killing. Yeah..... killing people in a friendly town is out of the question.

Troika game:
What the player experiences: You walk into a bar. The bartender greets you with a fine "Hello Stranger! Come and enjoy a pint of ale on the house!" At this point, you shoot an arrow through his neck.... he drops dead, the bar maid and most of the patrons freak out and run for the door... You laugh maniacally until you notice some guy in the corner (who happens to be the bartenders' brother in law enjoying a pint himself) unsheathing his vorpal sword and coming after you with bloody vengeance in his eyes... You kill him too and take his sword. You search the inn and find a key underneath a bottle of whiskey behind the bar. The key opens a lockbox upstairs in his room where you find a map.

What Troika was thinking: Hey, what if I want to shoot the bartender? Yeah, I hate those stereo-typical jolly fat bartender guys. It'll be more trouble, but we'll make sure you can get the map some how. For the people in the room, we'll have them check against your faction and skills, if you attack anyone, they will determine if they are scared, hostile, or unmoved by your actions. If they are scared they'll run, hostile they'll attack, and unmoved they will just sit there drinking a beer while all hell breaks loose. Yeah, we should put at least on guy in the bar who's tough as nails. The tough quiet dude who calmly drinks his beer... The guy you DO NOT want to mess with. Yeah, and if you kill anyone in this inn, the cops in town will attack you on sight. The more neutral shopkeepers will still sell to you, but they will jack the prices up because even they think you are a cold blooded killer.
 

Orobis

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I worked on "The Settlers II"
Whaaaaat, i fucking love Settlers II, it was one of my first computer games on my old 486 compaq presario. I spent god knows how many hours playing Settlers 2 veni, vedi, vici, right into my early teens. Damn feeling pretty humbled here, thanks for making one of my all time favourite games. Still have the original disc but it's scratched to shit, too bad the settlers series went down the crapper.
 

ZagorTeNej

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It is curious that you are talking about this, because I was thinking about this topic these days. When we say that the past was best, what we are actually doing is a nostalgic reconstruction of the past in our heads and comparing it with the present in the most simplistic fashion.

Not really, nostalgia is a factor of course (can't be helped) but its relevance is way too often overstated. When I for example say past wast the best I mean just that, regardless of whether I compared best of the best, run-of-the-mill or just plain products of any genre, my preferred period of gaming (which is say mid-to-late 90s and early 2000s) is just gonna come out on top overall when it comes to my personal gaming preferences. Furthermore, in my experience whether I played them as a kid or an adult makes fuck all difference which only devalues the nostalgia argument further in my eyes.

I think it's a simpler matter than most people realize, the most productive (when it comes to quality, not quantity) period of gaming was basically basement dwelling, tabletop playing nerds making games for other nerds, there's not much more to it. Once the industry got too big and moved away from that and the quality of games predictably plumetted with a few indie gems here and there peeking out of a huge pile of mediocre garbage.
 
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Lurker King

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Not really, nostalgia is a factor of course (can't be helped) but its relevance is way too often overstated. When I for example say past wast the best I mean just that, regardless of whether I compared best of the best, run-of-the-mill or just plain products of any genre, my preferred period of gaming (which is say mid-to-late 90s and early 2000s) is just gonna come out on top overall when it comes to my personal gaming preferences. Furthermore, in my experience whether I played them as a kid or an adult makes fuck all difference which only devalues the nostalgia argument further in my eyes.

I’m talking about numbers here. What is the proportion of classics per period? Maybe we have three classics per decade? My point is that if you unintentionally compare the set of all classics from past decades with any recent crop of good games, things will always look like shit because the sample is too uneven. 10 years of game design cannot beat 40 years. That is what I’m trying to say.
 
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Mastermind

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
"but they will jack the prices up because even they think you are a cold blooded killer."

I know a normal shopkeeper's reaction to having a dangerous mass murderer in his store is to piss him off by jacking up prices. No wonder Troika went bankrupt.
 

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