Is it too late for small game development companies?

[Soap360]

With all these big multi-million dollar companies shutting down the smaller guy, it seems all we could these days is make a few indie games before we get bought out. That's how I see it, I may be wrong. My question is, what are the chances for small indie developers to someday rise up to be as big as Infinity Ward. With and without the support of a publisher? Starting from the point you release an small Indie game on let's say the Xbox 360? Im not familiar with the average income of all the indie games on Xbox, but it can't be over $50,000 right? What do you guys think? Sorry if I sound like a depressed tart, just trying to get some facts down.

[kamokow]

Okay, well, first off. Getting bought out is a choice; if EA Games were to contact you and say they want to publish your games you could say no, but depending on how big you already are you could be saying no to a lot of money. The chances of some people starting out in a garage and rising up to being as big as IW (whose games I don't much like, but I'll use them to keep the example the same) are pretty slim, but they have pretty much always been.

Of course, don't take my word for it. I know virtually nothing about how the commercial game development process.

-Zach

[EccentricDuck]

With all these big multi-million dollar companies shutting down the smaller guy, it seems all we could these days is make a few indie games before we get bought out. That's how I see it, I may be wrong. My question is, what are the chances for small indie developers to someday rise up to be as big as Infinity Ward. With and without the support of a publisher? Starting from the point you release an small Indie game on let's say the Xbox 360? Im not familiar with the average income of all the indie games on Xbox, but it can't be over $50,000 right? What do you guys think? Sorry if I sound like a depressed tart, just trying to get some facts down.

It's interesting how our perspectives differ. I see this trend where indie developers are able to distribute their games far easier than they used to be able to. There's a plethora of electronic venues to publish your title to. In many such cases, the only fee that a developer "pays" is a percentage of the download profit (meaning no sunken costs aside from their time).

I came back from PAX at the beginning of September and was inspired by the large numbers of Indie developers, both in the panels and on the floor. While the big showcases (apparently) keep getting bigger every year, this year being no exception, there were plenty of small developers with their own booths - especially Xbox Live Arcade developers. There were also speakers at various panels who talked about indie games. I went to one (well several, but I'm referring now to this one) about the Humble Indie Bundle which was very cool. They were adamant on being multi-platform and running with an open platform like OpenGL. All the games in the bundle were Linux, Mac, and Windows (and being a pay-what-you-want deal, the size of payments/donations went in that order with Linux users paying the most and Windows users paying the least, on average).

There was also a ton of talk on board games and tabletop RPGs which focused a lot on concepts like "fun", "emotional engagement", "narrative", etc. and one of the big themes I noticed was that a lot of the games that the speakers really liked and played themselves were made by relatively small game-makers.

You're definitely right that the average income on an Xbox Live Indie game isn't over $50,000 (it's much lower than that), but the vast majority of them are tiny first-time projects or re-hashed massage/zombie/avatar games. The ones that do well generally aren't or at least don't make that a core part of the experience, and several titles did make over $50,000 (and there continues to be new and innovative titles, they're just the minority). Both Xbox Live Indie & Arcade are places where you find old game concepts re-done with polish and slight tweaks to the gameplay that really adds a new dimension to them. I think it's cool that those can do well, even if it is unfortunate that they sometimes get out-shined by some truly poor massage/zombie/avatar games. And there are tons of venues for well-polished and completely innovative Indie games. Sometimes it just takes a bit of creativity to get them "out there".

One of my favorite examples of an ultra-successful Indie game in Minecraft. It was distributed on "Notch's" homemade website. He's well over 200,000 downloads at 10 euros apiece and the game is not even out of alpha yet. I think it's also becoming one of the most iconic sandbox games out there (along with titles like GMod).

I think there's a lot of potential for Indie developers AND innovation in games - and I think that the two often coincide.

[animangaman690]

You can still make a ton of money in the indie game business. The 1 guy who made minecraft has made over 2.7 mil from this one game. That's a lot of money for a one person indie team for his first game.

[eatcomics]

You can still make a ton of money in the indie game business. The 1 guy who made minecraft has made over 2.7 mil from this one game. That's a lot of money for a one person indie team for his first game.

and sadly he'll lose half of it to taxes...

[JaxDragon]

You can still make a ton of money in the indie game business. The 1 guy who made minecraft has made over 2.7 mil from this one game. That's a lot of money for a one person indie team for his first game.

and sadly he'll lose half of it to taxes...

Not in Sweden. At least, I don't think so.

[Soap360]

Well I was grossly misinformed. And how is it that I, one of the most fanatic Indie game fans have never heard of Minecraft o.O I'll look into this, thank's for the support guys!

[eatcomics]

You can still make a ton of money in the indie game business. The 1 guy who made minecraft has made over 2.7 mil from this one game. That's a lot of money for a one person indie team for his first game.

and sadly he'll lose half of it to taxes...

Not in Sweden. At least, I don't think so.

oh yeah, forgot he wasn't american xD

[EccentricDuck]

You can still make a ton of money in the indie game business. The 1 guy who made minecraft has made over 2.7 mil from this one game. That's a lot of money for a one person indie team for his first game.

and sadly he'll lose half of it to taxes...

Not in Sweden. At least, I don't think so.

oh yeah, forgot he wasn't american xD

Actually, Sweden has slightly higher personal income taxes than the US (though lower corporate on average - it's a flat tax which is a lot easier for businesses to deal with). He's expanding his company with the proceeds (he says that he hasn't hardly touched any of it). You've just got to know how to best make use of the money. If you pay out something like that in one lump sum then you'll get taxed through the ass - but use it to start a company, get office space, create a few jobs, and create a corporate goose egg to pay your ongoing salary and you'll get taxed significantly less. There's also usually loopholes for particular expenditures (like your own home in the US, etc) that encourage putting it somewhere other than a new Ferrari.

[davidthefat]

Well "innovate, don't imitate". That phrase first reached my ears last year, when I first joined the robotics team at my school. It is part of this big organization called FIRST, that is one of their main phrases. I believe that fits this situation perfectly. I am not sure how much the developers made from Plants VS Zombies, but I can assume a lot. Well I can say, the world is not just about money, true, money makes the world go around, but money will never make you happy. Personally, I find the process of making more fun than the product. All those constant problems and bug that I run into are temporarily frustrating, but that is what makes the experience fun. Personally I would not mind working at a giant corporation like Blizzard. The joy in working on things you dream of is fun. I am not at the working age yet, I am still a student. However, I hear from tons of people how working is a pain in the ass. I do not want to end up like those people, I want to do what I love, which is programming. I rather program than sleep sometimes. Hell I even program without any pay, I am used to that, being a student so I don't get paid. Hell I am getting awarded with the experience and knowledge gained from that process. Personally I am down to work for a small start up company that I can form great friendships

[eatcomics]

I for one... as probably awful as it is to say this, will be content with whatever job I end up with for a profession, as long as its secure (I won't be layed off first time the economy dips) it pays enough to live comfortably, I don't wanna be working round the clock to pay for utilities, and I have the weekends off to program :D

[Ginto8]

I for one... as probably awful as it is to say this, will be content with whatever job I end up with for a profession, as long as its secure (I won't be layed off first time the economy dips) it pays enough to live comfortably, I don't wanna be working round the clock to pay for utilities, and I have the weekends off to program :D

Agreed. I mean, I'll probly end up with programming as a job, but it won't be fun video game programming, it'll be that programming, the one that is devoid of interesting ideas. Video game programming will be my weekends tho

[eatcomics]

I for one... as probably awful as it is to say this, will be content with whatever job I end up with for a profession, as long as its secure (I won't be layed off first time the economy dips) it pays enough to live comfortably, I don't wanna be working round the clock to pay for utilities, and I have the weekends off to program :D

Agreed. I mean, I'll probly end up with programming as a job, but it won't be fun video game programming, it'll be that programming, the one that is devoid of interesting ideas. Video game programming will be my weekends tho

Exactly the same here. I'm going to go to school for computer science, but probably won't go into the game industry. Its just not what I wanna do. I mean, maybe if I get an offer at a smaller company or something. I just don't know. It would be cool to see my name on the credits of a highly popular game, but really that's not all I want from life.

[Falco Girgis]

I can't possibly see how in the day and age of the appstore, XBLA, prebuilt engines, and smartphones you can possibly think that it's too late for small game development companies.

There is a trend leaning towards a resurgence of more and more small game development companies these days...

[hurstshifter]

Is it too late for small game development companies?

No