Topic: Because You're Worthless: The Dark Side Of Indie PR

[idolminds]

Worth contemplating.

A post by an indie dev that covers trolls, mob mentality, and the race for the bottom of game pricing.

You are worthless to us.

Where once you were worth $20, and then you might have become a fan and bought another 4 games off of us for $20, you were worth $100. We only had to fix your computer for you once, as well, so the next four games amortised the cost of the initial support. If we were lucky you were a gamer and already had drivers and liked our stuff and bought the lot. Sometimes you’d tell your friends and maybe one of them would buy a game from us.

But now?

Now you’re worth $1 to us. If you buy every one of our games, you’re worth $5. After Valve and the tax man and the bank take their cuts, you’re not even worth half a cup of coffee. So, while we’re obsequiously polite and helpful when you do contact us for support, even if it’s just the same old “please install some actual video drivers” response, you really should be aware that you are a dead loss. Even if you buy everything we ever make again. Even if all your friends buy everything we ever make again. You just cost us money. Not just fictitious, huge-piles-of-filthy-lucre indie-game-developer who made-it-big money. All our money. We barely scratch a living, like most indie game developers. You quite literally cost us lunch because the shop sold you a computer with broken software on it.

I don't know what a solution would be. The race for the bottom is seemingly unintentional. We just have so many games to choose from that we can all afford to wait for a sale.

Anyway, read the whole thing. I found it interesting. And if you want something a little lighter, I bring you this:

[Quemaqua]

Sounds about right. Depressingly so. The state of this industry, man. Too much art, but you have to give it away because there's too much of it.

[gpw11]

You should sell your $10 games for $5.

THERE, I FIXED YOUR FUCKING PROBLEM FOR YOU.

I absolutely get what he's saying and it's a shitty situation for smaller indie developers (but great for the rest of us), but he also seems to think that Phil Fish made a lot of money because he was an asshole.  He didn't.  He made a lot of money because FEZ was a great game that caught people's attention from the start.  Before people knew who Phil Fish was, people knew about Fez.  Less people, sure, but enough people to make FEZ sell 20,000 copies in the first day.    No one is going to read this blog and go out and buy Revenge of the Titans.  If anything, they'll google it, see that it's a mostly generic tower defense game and move on.  No one is going to buy Titan Attacks because they saw this post - they'll google it and see it's a clone of Space Invaders Extreme.  In both cases, they'll maybe pick it up on sale because it's worth about a dollar to them.  There, that's the business model of your generic game making company.

*Note, I own Revenge of the Titans.  It was worth about a dollar.  I'm not saying that to be spiteful or because of this post, I'm saying that because I bought it in a bundle for about five dollars and played it for about 30 minutes. It had been out for years and I never heard of it.  Supergiant games isn't making posts like this because Supergiant Games releases games that people get excited about.

[Cobra951]

Let me see if I got this straight.  This guy is advocating arguments with trolls, praising Phil Fish's public persona, and calling his customers and prospective customers worthless.  He's calling me nasty ("statistically"), sanctimonious, spiteful and insignificant like an ant.  And he wants me to consider his position, have some sympathy for his plight?  Haha!  I know when I have been trolled.

[Quemaqua]

Regardless of every detail you may or may not agree with, I think that's missing the point. Do we value our indie developers? The answer is no. And they can't afford to value us either as a result. I think idol quoted the portion that matters here.

[Cobra951]

I find the whole piece quite cohesive, including idol's quote.  I get it.  I'm worthless to him.  I hope he doesn't resent me for returning the favor.

[PyroMenace]

I'm mostly in agreement with what gpw said, people knew about Fez before they knew about Phil Fish. If you want the attention and money, then make good games.

I know that's oversimplifying it and some really good ones can go by unnoticed but it is still a big factor of actually making it. And it's hard, I get what he saying, but there's a shit ton of games out there and I'm really sorry he had a rough time, but I'm not all that sorry he's sour by it all. Maybe find something else to do?

[Xessive]

It's all about publicity. With cases like Phil Fish it's almost as though any publicity is good publicity.

[gpw11]

Sure, because in most any article which mentions Fish's grating personality, it also mentions his talent as a game developer and his success with FEZ. But it's still the same, he's making those sales because he made a great game.  These guys didn't and they won't get those sales.  The game of theirs I played wasn't bad by any means, it was just not very fun or interesting - it gets lost in the sea of indie games that aren't very fun or interesting. Which is also why this article isn't a story in the same way Phil Fish's article isn't.  No one cares about these guys - they didn't make FEZ, and that's why we started caring about Phil Fish.

[PyroMenace]

[gpw11]

That is AMAZING

[idolminds]

hahaha