Indie Game Developer Survey

Hey all. Was cleaning out the garage and I found a bunch of my old writing. One item was a piece that appeared in CGM discussing the results of a survey I did of indie game developers. Obviously this isn't relevant anymore, but it's a bit of a flashback.

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There's a commonly held belief that independent game developers are a bunch of kids pounding away on keyboards in their parents' basement, churning out an end¬less stream of knockoff games. In an effort to debunk this particular stereotype, DIY Games joined forces with author David Michael (joeindie.com) to put together one of the first surveys of independent game developers ever conducted.

While the survey was certainly not meant to be scientific, certain measures were taken to help ensure the integrity of the results. Developers could only take the 100+ question survey on an invite-only basis to help avoid crank submissions. Only those developers working on commercial products were asked to take part, so the freeware community was excluded. Finally, to help facilitate honest answers on some of the more sensitive questions, developers were given the option to participate on an anonymous basis once invited. Now, two months and hundreds of e-mails later, a clearer picture of Joe Indie developer appears.

As you might expect, the vast majority of indie game developers are male (93%) Caucasians (74%), who are approximately 30 years old. It's likely that the percentage of Caucasians is higher than the 74% indicated, but 18% of respondents declined to answer that question Just over half of all the indies surveyed currently reside in North America (54%), while a sizeable portion call Western Europe home (23%). Eastern Europe houses 16% of the indies surveyed, while the Pacific rim countries, including Australia, contain only 7%. Due to the fact that this was the first survey conducted it's impossible to tell with any degree of certainty what countries are becoming hotbeds of indie game development. But both Russia and Poland had a disproportionately higher number of indie developers than most other countries. Future editions of the survey will reveal whether the indie developer population is growing in these countries, or just higher than you might expect.

While a majority of indie developers have never worked in the big name game industry, 36% did at some point, and for an average length of 4.6 years. In addition to individuals that worked in the mainstream game industry previously, 9% said they currently have game industry jobs, which means that almost half of those surveyed have been professional game developers at some point in their careers. Another 36% stated that their primary source of income comes from their indie game development efforts. Former and current industry professionals described their overall satisfaction working in the game industry as being a 2.8 on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being very unhappy, and 5 being very happy. Using the same 1 to 5 scale respondents described their overall satisfaction with being indie developers a much happier 4.2.

Cutting down to the nitty gritty of things, we find that the average independent developer grossed anywhere
from $37,000 to $95,000 in 2004. If we take the highest earners out of the equation—those who grossed $500,000 or more—the average gross income drops to anywhere from $16,000 to $54,000. It should be noted that these figures represent individual developer gross income, not company income. A company like Reflexive, which has a large number of employees, most likely made much more than the figures being presented here, but that's something for a future survey.

Looking at sales figures we can see where things have either a silver lining or a dark cloud depending on one's
approach. Of all the products surveyed, the average game has sold 7000-9000 copies since its release. Several titles have worked their way into the 50,000 units sold range, although a significant number of games have sold in the 500 copy range. Selling over 50,000 copies may sound promising, but sales figures that high were certainly the exception. The actual income from each title in question was difficult for even the respondents to determine due to a complex network of affiliate, reseller, and non-exclusive publisher sales channels. The fact that the average developer has released 4 games since striking out on their own illustrates the fact that selling games even on the low-end of the sales spectrum could still lead to a profitable future, provided the average 15-month development cycle reported can be kept under control.