Great article on indie biz
Jeff Ward has a great article on Gamasutra about the viability of the indie scene these days, which ties right back into the recent blog post on new bosses and old bosses. He analyzes iPhone, XBLA, and PC markets, as well as the alternative funding model of getting investors in advance for a title.
So at the largely standard rate of $1, a single developer needs to push 57,000 copies of a game per year in order to support himself, or to push multiple applications which can reach that number. With the number of iPhones on the market somewhere around 6 to 10 million, how many sales can you expect? Mac Rumors reports that four apps easily hit almost a million sales, but what’s the data like for games, and indie games at that?
The most telling post probably comes from the developer of Dapple, who wrote a very long post on how much money he actually made on the product; he has sold a total of about 500 copies. In addition, this post on the price of apps versus their popularity shows very few indie games in the list and very little money being made, Fieldrunners (essentially an App Store Launch Title) being the notable exception.
— Gamasutra – News – Analysis: Is There Money To Be Made In Indie Games?.
The limiting factor, in the end, is still poking up above the noise. Good games like Dapple may not rise above the sea of apps based on quality alone. What can turn a Dapple into something more viable is marketing muscle — which takes money.
Part of the reason why Flash is so attractive to many developers is the fact that it has potentially large distribution. But most consumers do not scour the Net looking for Flash titles; they find them on portals, who do have limited shelf space, and then we’re back in the tyranny of limited inventory. But “limited inventory” is commutative with “marketing.” They are the same thing: the process of singling out specific products in the consumers’ eyes.
The Long Tail idea in general is dependent on the notion of reaching large scale. It said that every niche product has someone out there who wants it, and it is now possible to connect product with that audience. But the Long Tail never promised a real income based on that. Niche products must either be intensely targeted and able to command a premium within their niche, or be basically donations to the commons.
8 Responses to “Great article on indie biz”
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Amen, Raph. I see so many indies eager to make iPhone games, and I just boggle at the craziness of jumping onto that bandwagon without a very strong marketing angle.
do we have an idea of what the ratio of noise/population is and how it scales? iow, right now getting 57k folks out of 10mil means catching the eye of %.57 of the market, more than half of one percent, which is imo still a large market share. 57k of 100mil (still a very small percentage of the total current world population) is %.057, a much smaller percentage of the market to grab.
the general conceit of the internet would seem to indicate that communicating with 10mil or 100mil isn’t all that different, and the likely hood that 57k viewers will stumble over your product is higher if there are 100mil potential customers than 10mil. but perhaps the accumulated noise from 100mil customers makes the problem the same or worse.
i don’t think we’ve seen the scale and robustness from the net yet that’s required to truly make the long tail a viable independent business option even for a single person. if it’s ever possible to create a product, tag it with accurate and helpful identifying information and get that description easily accessible to hundreds of millions – then it should work.
6-10 million iPhones on the market? Back in May Apple announced they’d sold 17 million iPhones and 13 million iPod Touch, and they’re predicted to sell 25 million+ between the two this year.
No question there’s a lot of noise and it’s difficult to rise above it, but the market is a lot bigger than 6-10 million devices.
There was a comment on the thread that pointed out that the addressable iPhone/iPod Touch market is more like 40m devices.
And yet most iPhone games sell in the *hundreds* of units.
http://www.slideshare.net/simoniker/independent-games-sales-stats-101
I recently heard (unconfirmed) that there are 130 iPhone games PER DAY being added to the app store. And that rate is double what it was three months ago. That, combined with the crappiness of the App Store’s interface and browsing, is exactly the kind of noise that can dilute a 40-million-device market.
More evidence that you should pursue a biz model a bit more creative than “sell game for a big one-time cost”, and a marketing plan more thoughtful than “put in on sale and hope people find it”.
For anyone still high on the iPhone rush, the Dapple posts are an excellent way to sober up quickly.
I found that article really shocking. My own experience as an indie developer has been far more positive. Yes, it is hard to make money, but not THAT hard.
Then again, perhaps that is because I have always explored alternate business and revenue models. I have never gone with the “one time, up front cost” model.
I think more indie gamers should explore some of these alternate models of revenue. They are superior in a lot of ways.
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