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[MattG]

This is the real issue. To me, it seems that the 'race to the bottom' devalutation of indie games (well, and games in general), via the App Store, Indie Bundles, relentless Steam Sales, and so on has done more harm than the economic mess we're in.

There are those like myself and a few others who fight this bullshit trend. Fuck the fat ass scumbots who try to milk off indies while they scumbots get all the bucks.

[Moczan]

Humble Indie Bundles earn few hundreds of thousand dollars in 2-week time frame for each developer, I wouldn't call it devaluation of indie games.

[Paul Eres]

yeah but the % of people who get into the humble indie game bundle are like 0.1% of indies. are you seriously suggesting that just because a couple of indie games are doing well that makes everything alright?

[Desert Dog]

I don't think I'll be able to recover.  I planned my game when $20 downloadables were the norm and they had production budgets in the tens of thousands.

So far I spent $15000 on contractors and while the end is in sight, I only plan to release my game, pat myself on the back, and be in the red.

I've been looking at Kickstarters and been kicking myself... "Hey look these guys just release a video and concept art, and people are giving them money even before they complete the game!"

So I'm feeling really, really stupid.

I also look at 8-bit funding and see people are asking for only a couple hundred bucks (or at most a thousand).  In my experience that doesn't even pay the wages of a professional contractor.  They're usually one-man operations so perhaps I should have just practiced so I can do the art myself.  It's kinda too late for me now.  Maybe I should be proud that I have given jobs, but so far only one dude mentioned that I was a lifesaver in giving him work to pay his rent... the rest seem to be doing pretty well by themselves.

It's a good thing that what I'm working on deserves to be made, if not by me than somebody...anybody... it's something that I haven't seen many people make in this market.

I'm just a hobbyist working on my first commercial product... expect it to be my last as well.  I'll stick to freeware from now on (and if I get desperate even charge for what used to pass for freeware).

Well, depends on how you look at it. (and how much you claw back). You might only claw back 10k on the game, so does that mean your 5k in the red? Technically, yes, but you've got 10k which can go towards your next project. In other words, that 15k you invested in your first game has (hopefully)set you up to create many other indie games. It'd be cool to get a hit like minecraft, or angry birds, but otherwise, doesn't real profit come from multiple games? Several games making $20-$100 a week each, is a fair base to work off, and 'hopefully' as your game base builds up, you'll get returning customers to try&buy your other games.

Obviously, a lot depends on your situation, whether you've got regular 'other' work, whether this game actually makes some decent cash, etc etc. But definitely all is not lost... until the game flops, badly, anyway, and then you can panic.

[dustin]

yeah but the % of people who get into the humble indie game bundle are like 0.1% of indies. are you seriously suggesting that just because a couple of indie games are doing well that makes everything alright?

I don't think he was saying that that shows indies are all doing ok I think he was just refuting this quote (I bolded the important bit)...

This is the real issue. To me, it seems that the 'race to the bottom' devalutation of indie games (well, and games in general), via the App Store, Indie Bundles, relentless Steam Sales, and so on has done more harm than the economic mess we're in.

He's just saying that the humble bundle isn't a devaluation of indie games like some of the others are...

[moi]

yes it is. that's exactly what it is.
Instead of selling one game for their rightful price of $10 or sthg, they're bundling like 6 games for a median price of $3.
The devs are doing a lot of money short term, but that's only short term. They're giving the audience the expectation that they should wait for the next bundle instead of actually buying games regularly. That is until the audience grows tired of bundles and they will probably stop buying games altogether because they'll have more games than they'll want to play.
also, as eres said, it's only a tiny minority of media darling devellopers that get into the bundle.
the media blitz is sucking all the PR air out of the room.
It's recession economy, except that it started outside of a recession.

[Paul Eres]

i agree with moi; devaluation doesn't mean 'doesn't make money' it means 'seen as lower value to customers'. if you sell 1 million copies of something at 10 cents each, you may make a lot of money, but it's still seen as a low-value item by the customers

[moi]

And now bundles are coming after bundles, like waves.

[Christian Knudsen]

The biggest example of the devaluation of indie games I can think of is Jeff Vogel. I don't think it's even a year ago that he wrote a blog post about how he would never lower the prices on his games and how the low-cost indie games are throwing the market into a downward spiral like the App Store. Now he's lowered the prices on all his games and are selling them at a price even lower than that on Steam.

[C.D Buckmaster]

I just realised that a large extent of my indie game collection was bought through ridiculous sales and bundles.

...I'm part of the problem.

[tametick]

This is the real issue. To me, it seems that the 'race to the bottom' devalutation of indie games (well, and games in general), via the App Store, Indie Bundles, relentless Steam Sales, and so on has done more harm than the economic mess we're in.

Whilst maybe 1% of indie devs do really well out of such things (with those running the stores/doing the bundles doing even better...), it's made things a whole lot harder for the other 99%.

I agree that that stuff mostly benefits the lucky few, but I still think we're better off today than a few years ago.

Overall the humble bundle and their ilk have also gotten a lot of people who never heard about indie games before to pay (albeit a small price) and play indie games & I think that contributed to making the overall market for indie games much bigger.

[PompiPompi]

The other day my brother saw Minecraft on the Android, he said "This game is very expensive", I was like "..."

[tametick]

The other day my brother saw Minecraft on the Android, he said "This game is very expensive", I was like "..."

How much does it cost?

[Triplefox]

The consumer is benefiting overall; a majority would not be buying any indie games, and now they're getting a sampling.

The issue is basically that most indies are in it for the "mak gam", not the "sell gam". To sell you have to achieve visibility and awareness, and that has become relatively harder because this is no longer an early-adopter field. But there are at least many avenues to getting the word out as there are mediums of communication - and even restricting yourself to Internet-based forms, that's a lot.

[Desert Dog]

The other day my brother saw Minecraft on the Android, he said "This game is very expensive", I was like "..."

How much does it cost?

About $6, google tells me. Which is pretty expensive for a mobile game.