Interesting Article : Make, Market, And Sell Your Game In 3 Months Or Fewer ..... Thoughts?

I'm always digging around looking for the little Indies. By that I mean the normal folks that people rarely hear about because they haven't made a smash hit and became an overnight success (which we know is a load of crock but anyway...).

Here is an interesting article by Zack Bell of ZackBellGames titled Make, Market and Sell Your Game In 3 Months or Fewer (which also has some interesting tidbits about how he gets around being a programmer with little artistic skill).

And here is an interview with Zack where he describes what happened with his game named INK.

Zack also publishes income reports from time to time. Or at least he used to.

I like things like this because to me they represent the normal Indies. As in the most common Indie game devs who are actually making some money. Of course, I also like it because I believe in short development cycles and small projects.

I had never come across his game INK before reading the articles above. Yet it exists not only on itch.io but also Steam where it seems to be doing well.


Anyway, just thought some of you might find it interesting. Give those two articles a read if you're interested and I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts. I know it goes against the grain of what many around here are striving for (huge or otherwise epic games of one kind or another).

I post and write these kinds of things more out of motivation to say you don't need to compete with AAAs more than anything else. Honest. It's not about trying to bash dreams and such. lol

It's more about finding someone closer to the majority and then you can basically model their success. Different results will happen for each of course, YMMV and so forth. But overall it is a sound plan.

 

Still reading the articles etc, but initial comment - INK looks like a pretty awesome game. Will have to pick that up on Steam.

 

Interesting read, I have INK as source for Gamemaker. It is also interesting to note that at the bottom of the article someone comments he had pulled the sourcecode because the game was cloned. The game was also brought out in 2015, yet on steam he only has the one product. This is another one of those articles written to promote the game and laid out as if these are definitive rules that can be followed. Repeat the process several times then make articles stating this is how it is done. He had this experience with Steam and with the marketing. This is basically the Flash game business model, now the HTML 5 game business model. The only problem with this as he has laid it out is the platform he is using. It works for Open web publishing because it is possible to clone game after game after game and sell it to the big European open web publishers, Steam not so much. Then you have to look at the game itself - it is a fun game and gives really good player feedback, it's fun to see an explosion of colour. It is a clever idea and a fun game that has been successful. Now replicate it time and time again with the same success. Then come back and lecture me about it.

 

That's the trick for sure. Something which many successful Indies haven't been able to do.

 

Sounds like a good marketing tactic to me. It got us to read about it, right? And it wasn't just clickbait fluff, either.

 

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I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that he is recommending to clone games. He surely was inspired by that splatter paint game whatever it was when he prototyped INK for a game jam and then went ahead and developed it into a full game released successfully. But I wouldn't compare that to dumping out clones of games on the Flash or HTML5 portals.

As far as marketing... ALL content is marketing but that doesn't mean the content itself has no value in it. Any time a person does a dev log (such as he has on the site), writes articles about game dev, their experiences, experiments, etc (again such as he has on his website) it always serves as marketing. Providing eventually you get people to visit the site so they can see it. Quality content does that. People link to interesting & quality information marketing it for the creators.

After INK he was experimenting with another tiny game a bit more ambitious called HackyZack. That was then shelved to work on larger game Fara something or other. And finally this past summer at some point with Fara taking so long they put it on hold and had the team focus on HackyZack which should be coming to Steam soon or maybe already is there. The important bit there was pausing the larger project that was dragging on to focus once again on a smaller project so the new larger team could actually get a game done and out there making money.

The progression is interesting. The team is larger now. And just a couple of months ago they became publishers of Indie games. So this is also another option people may want to consider. Having a publisher who actually worked their way up as an Indie game developers and are still Indie game developers may be quite appealing to some.

 

It seems like some folks are becoming cynical more & more in game dev. I'm not sure if that is due to frustration from feeling a lack of success or any kind of progress, a dislike for a person or team to focus on and find success with simpler tiny games instead of more complex larger games or what.

Anyway there is a lot of good information to check out at his website for anyone open to it.

Beyond that it is valuable to discuss such things from what actionable information can we get out of it. Also just focusing in general on how to streamline projects to minimize the cost and maximize the potential ROI.

I've always tried to look for the ways to work smarter vs working harder. Working harder is easy. We can just do it. Working smarter on the other hand takes a focused effort.

My 2 cents anyway.

 

I think it's the bubble starting to pop. Or sink a bit, maybe.

During the Rise of the Engines, the amateur game development community was sold on the idea that "It's never been easier to make your dream game!" Which is absolutely true! But it's still hard work, people have way too ambitious ideas, and the market is more competitive than ever.

Yet people love to buy into hype, and when it doesn't pan out, love to be bitter that they were deceived. Even more reasonable people (as I believe myself to be) still suffer from it to a degree. I've only finished one game, which I released for free so have made no money from, and yet a part of me still believes that some day I'll release a great game that will be popular and make me some cash and I'll drive a BMW.

Another possibility is that it's always easier to hate on other people's success, even if it's only poking holes in their measure of what that means. It's safer to do that than to question your own success.

 

This is a good thing, yes?

 

Very good explanations... both of them.

The part where you said "and yet a part of me still believes that some day I'll release a great game that will be popular and make me some cash and I'll drive a BMW" ... that is interesting. Because there certainly is a legit reason for thinking this way. We can all see others out there who are making money and often from very simple game projects which I think makes it appear even easier to achieve.

I often wonder if truly making a game focused around simple solid rectangles or cubes is a more realistic way of actually achieving the level of Indie success needed to get your BMW. This morning I saw an example of such a game in the Made With Unity forum although the dev put more work into it than I typically think about (50 unique game modes, level editor and even the degree of polish on the presentation).

I think this is a very impressive game for not only one person (as in this case) but even for a small team. Yet compared to the kinds of things we see people working on around here looks like a modest ambition.

I could see such a game sitting on Steam with 100k+ owners. Mainly because I've seen similar games that are very popular. Meanwhile I see bigger games with what certainly appears to represent much bigger ambitions and a much bigger workload sit on Steam with about 1,000 owners or even less.

I don't know... I've always believed this to a good degree... but I think the more time that passes the more I think most Indies are almost trying too hard (maybe focusing too much on impressing other game devs with innovation, raw scope, graphics or technical complexity?) and that is why we read cases of disappointing sales and so forth.

Basically it almost seems like either people are working on something epic or they are simply using the existing game engine examples to respin into games. So either a herculean effort or virtually no effort with little cases in the middle although most Indies making money from game dev appear to be the folks in the middle. Just the news focuses on the rare times one of the no effort or herculean efforts is a smash hit.

And it is a good thing overall. Because while so many are focused on creating larger more impressive games (from the perspective of other game devs) or near zero effort respinning asset games it creates a space for tiny minimalistic games made with some actual real albeit tiny effort. If everyone was focused on minimalistic games it would then create a greater demand for larger more complicated games.

 

I don´t understand why people make ´clones´... you can take any game and add a decent twist to it and make it feel like a new game. Game designing is not a great paying business... constantly hacking out clones and then marketing them for a modest income doesn´t seem very fun to me.

We recently gave a new dev an opportunity, and I told her that her job interview was to make an asteroids-clone. After only a month, she is ready to release a full game that nobody but me would consider an asteroids clone. I don´t understand why those guys aren´t able to add their own design touch to a clone to make it feel better.

 

This is actually pretty accurate I think. With the number of people trying to break into the game development industry, there's probably a lot more success to be found in selling those people tools, rather than joining them.

 

People read articles like this one and start throwing their shovelware games, created in a couple of weeks/months into Steam, to see what sticks.
It already is bad enough IMO, if you look at all that trash, that gets submitted to Greenlight each day.

Usually a quality game that is worth selling takes not just a couple of months.

 

I used to think this was a truism, but now I'm not so sure. If you have skill enough to make a tool that sells well, you are probably far above the skill needed to make some fairly simple games that are already well above the average app/play store product. There are a number of benefits to selling your own finished products rather than tools:

• No support necessary, beyond some bugfixes, or occasional updates if you haven't already moved on;
• No need to make a user-friendly product in terms of code etc - just make it as fast as possible;
• There's room for many games of the same genre, whereas tools are very competitive and a similar product with better features will easily ruin you.
  
• Much more potential at the upper end of income, if you happen to make something very popular.
• Much more incentive to work, as you're working on your own vision.

Basically, gamedev itself generally takes more capital investment, but as long as you do it smartly it's actually a safer bet imo. It takes a while and a few tries but in the long term I think it pays off better.

 

Yeah, I tend to agree. Sure it would be nice to churn out a new game every few months so as to lower the risk when they're not financially successful, but the reality is that for most games, it takes much longer than that to produce a quality product.

 

Some good points, definitely. But I still think that the competition in games far outweighs the competition in tools. Especially when you're talking mobile gaming. And PC gaming I getting more crowded every day.

 

That's how I got mine. Had to give it up when my next game tanked. It's those ups and downs that will destroy you if you aren't the kind of person who can shrug it off and try again. And here I am again doing just that. Got my eye on an M series this time, haha.

 

I'm probably gonna write some sort of status report of my "entrepreneur" journey aswell that I'm starting this year and current plan is to have a game development time of 3-4 months for each game, so not so much different from what that guy suggested. Mostly i was thinking that i wanted a good balance between the games i like to play and games that are realistic for me to do as a single person and all of that in a timeframe that allows me to get alot of feedback in a short time to see if the games I make are well received or not and what I need to change to make them better (or future games).

 

I often think it'd be cool to do that also. I certainly enjoy reading the dev logs of other game developers. They're very interesting and inspiring.

So far it becomes one more thing to have to do... one more thing that takes time... so the best I do is just to show WIP updates.

I've been wrestling with the whole game dev thing a lot the past few months. I find it so crazy time consuming. As you know I've focused a lot on streamlining development first on the programming side and then the graphics side. Yet it still takes so much time.

Example: today I started making very simple enemy graphics in the style of the Barbarian character. After a couple of images I thought "geesh this is just too much work, too much time!" So I then did a set using rectangles. A rectangle with a weapon. And even that animation set probably took 20 minutes or more for idle, movement, attacking, injured and death images.

I suppose if I was 100% committed or at least as gung-ho about game dev as I used to be it would be different. But I find it just tedious & time consuming more than anything at this point. I think I spent about 10 to 12 days just exploring the best way to make animated characters look decent in minimal time. And here I am today still wrestling with this issue because they still take too much time.

Maybe I should just accept the only real option is to contract out all art work. OR just hang up this game dev thing... play games & do other things. At least until I find it calling me back so strongly that I simply must do it.

I think of all of the other things that I could be doing, things I could get done, in the amount of time I spend on game dev even with having it as highly streamlined as I currently do. It's like even 2 hours per day.... heck I could easily walk 60 miles per week in that amount of time. And that's fantastic exercise. Very good for a person with obvious short- and long term benefits. And that is just one example.

Whew! What a long ramble. lol It would be cool to read your dev logs. I hope you do it!

 

Yeah that indeed sounds a little like your lost your drive...on the other hand I know it's hard to press past the initial point when everything is still exciting, like the whole experimental phase...I love prototyping and designing out game ideas and although I always thought of me as an artist (that was some years ago) I did notice that I don't really enjoy drawing as much :/ it's tedious, alot of work and the results feel sometimes underwhelming...which might be just cause "taste" develops farther than skill. And I also struggle alot with 3D atm, but it's my goal to change that by having some solid projects running that I'm more or less forced to do by deadlines, even if they are just estimations.
But it feels always easier to work for something like a project, than just for the sake of learning.

And regarding the game dev logs, I'm already writing those, started about more than a year ago as a project to see if I'm able to stay with something and to track my progress for what I'm learning...and even though I'm not writing down every little detail, i managed to keep it running for all this time so it's just a matter of continuing the blog and "add" the parts that come from the entrepreneur side...which is slowly becoming very real and it's kind of scary cause I have no clue if I have everything that it takes to do even "just" fine and....yeah....it's kind of scary tbh...the good thing though is, that i get actual experience with prices, expectations from customers, what kind of game(s) I can do in the timeframe I set myself, publishing and marketing....all things I have some knowledge off and here and there experiences that are comparable but nothing exactly like it so it's a little scary place to be...but I hope that by writing it all down i can give some insight...atleast as one person and from my own view, what it means to be and become a game dev
and I'm curious...how it will be....and curious if someone can take something from my story at some point i feel determined to just continue writing it

 

Great stuff! Yep, you are in a very different place than I am. And that all sounds great. I can relate to it I really can. This is basically exactly how I used to feel except I never had the feeling it was scary. Just super exciting and fun.

And I appreciate you mentioning this part "although I always thought of me as an artist (that was some years ago) I did notice that I don't really enjoy drawing as much :/ it's tedious, alot of work and the results feel sometimes underwhelming"

Yeah that's it exactly. It is enjoyable when just done for the heck of it just completely for fun. At least for me it is. But in the context of game dev it is just work (lots of very time consuming work) that needs to be done. And it doesn't help that for me I view it as okay so I've spent x hours so far and I have these graphics done. But I still have no game not even a skeleton game project, tiny demo or anything.

Anyway I see now. The logs and your general thoughts are on your blog. Cool, I will head over and read for a while!

 

@Farelle I've enjoyed reading it so far. Great stuff! Also I played your Hatchling game again...

 

haha that game is/was a good example for me on how important feedback is and how "negative feedback" from a game can be outright disturbing (someone came at one point complaining to me how gross the dying part would be)

 

You know I was just thinking... maybe one solution to this game dev thing instead of hiring artists or simply contracting out the programming, art, sounds and music would be to find other games that people have already completed and thrown out on Mobile store or other places.

I mean any of the multitude of games that are out there just sitting basically completely unknown. If a person could find one of those that has much in common with the kind of game they want to make that could be a huge "jump start" if they could be bought.

 

You would need to make something like titan attacks, paladin, or gray blocks. A single screen game with a bunch of levels.

 

Those all look like excellent games and certainly superb scopes for solo indies I agree! That is basically what I was doing making tiny games such as Atlantic Crisis and Treasures of Ali-Gar. Difference is I didn't focus on graphics near to the degree the games above did.

I've thought about making a shmup out of nothing but rectangles. Something really jacked up with loads of action and FX. Like that Paladin game you showed. That looks intense and fun.

Basically I decided if I do another game I want it to be a much bigger scope game (not crazy big as some projects we see around here but much bigger than a tiny game). Despite common sense and experience telling me that is a crazy idea. But I don't need to literally just do it all start to finish. I think I will likely create several simpler games along the way that each represent one piece of the larger scope game. Then at the end I can plug it all together.

Like first maybe a Gauntlet/Endless Battle style game that is actually just the combat and leveling up portion for the larger game. Then maybe a platformer without any enemies just obstacles and such that is built for that piece of the larger game and so forth.