Thread by @tha_rami

The worst thing about to race to the bottom is that most passionate young creatives already deeply undervalue their own work. So indies already wish to offer a low price for accessibility, but are then forced down into unsustainable prices by the market works.

https://twitter.com/NotBrunoAgain/status/1373784717737267200

For the other side of this equation, let me tell you about when I help indies budget, even the devs themselves are often shocked at how expensive their own game is to make. Let me try and illustrate the odds indie developers are working with for you.

I recently consulted for a self-described "shitty pixel game but it's an aesthetic" made in 4 months by a designer, two artists, and a programmer. The prototype was great, the art style funny. In today's market, I wager it could be a small hit. 4 people is a pretty standard team.

They wanted to take a year and finish it properly, but with little experience in doing so. I suggested a connected producer to make sure they hit timeline and budget, and so they have connections and information. Then they'd need music, QA, and localisation, and some margins.

Localisation is about ten cents per word per language usually, so let's say you're doing the bare minimum of EFIGS (English, French, Italian, German, Spanish) and your game has 25,000 words. That's 5*25,000*0.10 = $12500.

Let's say some music and some QA cost about the same.

After a game releases developers don't get money immediately - that takes a few months to arrive. And games frequently end up costing more time that the initial timeline, so that should be calculated in.

So before you know it, assuming the average salary worldwide ($1,488 - which is far below the salary you'd need in many places on Earth), you're looking at (5*16*1488)+(3*12,500)+7,500 = $164,040.

That's not counting the 4 months the developers already spent on the game for cheap or free, which is (3*4*1488) = $17,856.

Altogether, you're already looking at $200,000 for a game by a small team where everyone gets paid a weird salary, working on a game for a year.

You can cut costs, obviously. Indies will not take a salary above what they absolutely need. They'll do QA themselves, not localize, not hire an producer. That lowers the quality of their game, and more polished games are $10, so I guess now they're stuck under that.

A lot of young indies fail before this point already, because given all this, they'll sign a publisher deal or run a Kickstarter for $50,000 because they can't imagine getting more or are running out of money.

Now they're down 30% of revenue and $150K short of what they need.

So without marketing, assuming you're selling at $7 because these more polished games are sitting at the article's average price of $9, and assuming Steam's 30% cut, you'd need to sell 45,000 units to break even.

In case you're wondering why so many indies are going exclusive or doing "free" deals - it's because they can't survive any other way. 45,000 units at base price is a huge amount - it was found most indie games sell 1,500 copies (altho it averages at 32,000 because hit games).

So the most likely financial outcome on an indie game, assuming averages, is $250K investment and a $9*1,500 = 13,500 return. That's a loss of $236,500.

That's what every indie developer rolls the dice on, that they believe their game will be good enough to beat those odds.

Don't forget that by that time, it'll be mid-2022. The market, which I thought their game could be a small hit in right now, could've shifted entirely. So they're rolling a $250,000 die to only see the result of in a year and also every day the die might change up or down.

That's your 4 person indie game. Now consider the 6 person team for 2 years. Or the 1 person team for 7 years. Many of these folks are working full-time or part-time jobs to lower the risk, taking no salary, everything to get those numbers down - just to make these games.

(And so much of the unhealthy stuff you hear about in games happens in indies as much as in AAA. Self-imposed crunch to get things done cheaper? Getting no salary? Eating as cheap as you can? Not really anyone to tell on you if you & your friends are the only victims. I hate it.)

So if you ever wonder "how did this shit get made", well - generally some poor person rolled the dice on $250K with the full belief the game would turn out great and it didn't.

And if you ever wonder why "lazy devs" gets such a vehement response, here's why.