T w e n t y S i d e d

This post is probably going to be a little ramble-ific. This Kickstarter business has everyone talking, and I’m getting emails asking me what I think of it, if I’ll be joining in, and what it means for game development. So let’s talk about this.

It was almost exactly a year ago that I got home from PAX and began to get the itch to program a little something, which eventually became Project Frontier. Really, PAX should have the opposite effect. This is not a place to go to follow your dreams as an indie. This is a place to have cold, cruel truths pressed deep into your skull while eating the worst nine-dollar hamburger in existence.

At the indie booths, you’re looking at the super-rare 1% of indie developers who are lucky and tenacious enough to bring a product to market. For every indie showing off a game there are a hundred others who got bored and quit, encountered some insurmountable technology hurdle, realized the prototype wasn’t very fun, or ran out of time / money. A few were lucky enough to be able to see it through to completion, but there’s still quite a bit of culling to take place between this point and signpost labeled “success”. Many will languish and only sell a few units, resulting in a hefty net loss that sends them back to their day job. A few might do well, and sell enough units to pay the bills, although once they divide their profits by their hours worked they’ll end up making less than minimum wage. A couple of lucky ones – the 1% of the 1% – will bring in enough cash to enable them to self-finance another game.

That’s the way it goes. The same is true for a lot of other creative people. Musicians probably have it even worse. (Although thankfully the cost to write a song is a lot less than the cost to make a game.) Heck, I’m thrilled at how warmly my novel was received and I’d be a fool to complain, but nobody is calling me up and offering me $Rowling bucks for the thing. For every Neal Stephenson, Terry Pratchett, and Douglas Adams in the world, there are ten thousand people like me, writing novels while we do something else to pay the bills. It’s tough all over, is what I’m saying.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “This Kickstarter Business”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.