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[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

These are the results of an old survey from 2003 on the Dexterity forums that someone conducted (for those of you who don't remember them, they were the main indie game forums back then):

How much do you make yearly (before taxes) from your indie products?
43%   < $1,000
14%   $1,000 - $10,000
8%   $10,001 - $50,000
6%   $50,001 - $100,000
2%   $100,000+
27%   Undisclosed

I thought it'd be interesting to do this survey again, now that five years have passed. Of course the sample will probably be too small, and self-selecting, so it's just for entertainment purposes rather than scientific and shouldn't be used to predict what the average is.

[isaac]

I've made about $5000 this year from selling sponsorship on two flash games. Could certainly pull in a lot more if I wasn't just making games as a hobby.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

I made less than that selling Immortal Defense (during its first year, anyway). ID in total made more than that but its profits are split among all the creators, so my share itself was less than $5000. But not much less, I don't know the exact figure but I'd say around $4000.

I should probably learn Flash one day. That seems to be the most realistic way of making a living through indie games nowadays (that and the consoles). I think it was different back in 2003 for a number of reasons, for instance torrents didn't exist back then so it was much harder to pirate a game, and back then there were no real "portals" (like Big Fish Games and Steam) dominating the downloadable shareware market like we have today.

[Noel Berry]

I currently don't make any money from any game I have ever created. I haven't been at indie development that long though - only just under three years. I currently don't have any games good enough (or long enough) to sell.

Prehaps in a few more years of game creation and coding, I may attempt a larger project that could make some income.

[Skofo]

Zero.

I look to change that.

[Don Andy]

Zero.

I look to change that.

[Inane]

Zero.

I look to change that.

I got a feelin' moustache man is gonna get quoted a lot here

[Akhel]

Wouldn't this poll make more sense if the question was "How much do you make yearly from your commercial indie games?"?

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

Do you mean the title of this thread itself, or the question on the poll? Because what you wrote is fairly close to the question on the poll.

[Akhel]

What I mean is that right now the poll seems to include people who only make freeware games. It would be more meaningful if it excluded those people, because obviously all of them make no money from those games.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

Ah, that's a good point. But I know people like to participate, so half the people wouldn't reply to the poll at all if I didn't have 0$. It's also better to have more data than less data, and you can always cut out the freeware percent out and recalculate the percents based on the others if you're curious about how much people make when they attempt to make something.

[muku]

Also, you can theoretically make money from freeware games by placing ads on your web site, or perhaps donations.

[isaac]

I should probably learn Flash one day. That seems to be the most realistic way of making a living through indie games nowadays (that and the consoles).

Yeh, I think it's probably the most realistic way of making money from games, but personally I'm slowly moving in the other direction. Money earned from advertising always feels kinda tainted to me.

Of course, a game like Immortal Defense would have been played by a bazillion people if it was a flash game. Flash game players do seem to love those defense games (not so much the complex storylines though -- you would probably have to get rid of them ).

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

My impression is that Flash games also make money from sponsorship, and many make more from sponsorship than from ads. Would sponsorship feel less tainted than ads would?

Also, you can be selective about which ads you use. I wouldn't feel tainted advertising a product that I believed in or thought highly of. I'd only feel that way if it were a product I thought was stupid, harmful, or useless.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

Also, there are Flash games with extensive stories, so I wouldn't necessarily have to had gotten rid of that. The only things I would have had to lose are:

- Most of the fancy visual effects (like blurring). The frame rate also would have had to be lower, as would the resolution (and hence the detail level of the portraits and sprites).

- I couldn't have used as much music or as high quality music, because the game is a 40mb download (for the full version) and (correct me if I'm wrong) people don't want to play 40mb Flash games, since they'd be sitting there ages for it to load. So I'd have to have used *way* less music, and the music was one of the high points of the game for me and for many of the players.

But yes, it'd probably have made way more money in Flash, and that might have been worth the lower quality music and slightly worse graphics it'd require, since the core of the game itself wouldn't have been too affected.

But Tim W has actually (repeatedly) suggested to me that I either port Immortal Defense to Flash or create its sequel in Flash. I'd consider doing the second, if I ever learn Flash, and (especially) if Flash is ever upgraded to use hardware acceleration.

I don't want to just port it because there'd be a lot of time involved in doing that, and if it were free in Flash there'd no longer be as much incentive to buy it. Though if any of you who know Flash want to port it for half the ad money or something (I'd help as far as I could, but I don't know Flash at all), that'd be an interesting project.

[Farbs]

Also, you can theoretically make money from freeware games by placing ads on your web site, or perhaps donations.

It's also possible to license out a freeware game's IP.

[isaac]

My impression is that Flash games also make money from sponsorship, and many make more from sponsorship than from ads. Would sponsorship feel less tainted than ads would?

Also, you can be selective about which ads you use. I wouldn't feel tainted advertising a product that I believed in or thought highly of. I'd only feel that way if it were a product I thought was stupid, harmful, or useless.

I see sponsorship as advertising -- you're putting an ad for a flash portal in front of your game in exchange for money. You're just passing on the burden of building enough traffic for selling individual adwords or whatever to be effective to the portal.

Certainly I don't really mind advocating for various flash portals with my games, and I still do it... it's just that selling a product, rather than selling advertising space seems more honest to me. It's more of a philosophical difference than a practical one.

Also, there are Flash games with extensive stories, so I wouldn't necessarily have to had gotten rid of that.

Yeh, that was mostly sarcastic. My last released game has an extensive storyline, which also happens to be extremely stupid, with very few nudges and winks to show that I intended it to be so. So people mostly hated it.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

I thought sponsorship was a Flash portal buying the right to put your game on their portal? I didn't think it was changing the logo for your game on your own site too?

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

Also, I don't see why someone would hate a story provided it can be easily skipped. The story in ID can be easily skipped, it's just two clicks to do it.

[isaac]

I thought sponsorship was a Flash portal buying the right to put your game on their portal? I didn't think it was changing the logo for your game on your own site too?

Mostly once a flash game is on a single portal, it's considered fair game spread freely to everywhere. There is of course different kinds of agreements you can make with portals -- I've always gone with an exclusive agreement, which means they just pay you a chunk of cash, and you promise to never release the game without their logo, since it's simplest and means I can get back to doing more interesting things.

Under most agreements, you don't need to kill off your own logo & links -- some portals, like I think Big Fish or the other big casual game portal, demand you get rid of your logo & links. To which I say "I'm in this game/for the fame".