Is It The End Of The Indie Game Industry (As We Know It)?

hello hello hello okay so that title might be a little bit it might be dramatic it might not be I don't think it's dramatic and let me know in the comments if you think it's dramatic um but uh yeah the indie game industry is just it's just different now things things are a little bit different um it's it's the end of the indie game industry as we know it um but actually in a weird strange way and we'll talk about this towards the end of the video in a strange weird way we're almost going back to the basics back to the early 2000s of how games were sold I don't know we we we'll talk all about it but the the premise of this video is that the Indie indie game industry is is it's just changing right right under our noses like everything's changes I mean I don't know if you saw the layoffs you've got Humble Bundle laying off people armor gam Studios that's one of my my Publishers for my game pinstripe that one of my first Publishers they had a major layoff right

my current publisher 3D Realms went through some layoffs and shifts as well in fact Publishers um and Studios across the world just it was like a seismic shift in 2023 and 2024 this is the postco era and Co is certainly responsible for a lot of this including just an influx of cash into the economy um but also people just staying home and people working remote and then you have ai art coming in AI everything and that changes just what's required for game studios to function suddenly you don't need certain people because well frankly you have ai that can do a lot of the backend stuff right so a lot changed a lot changed in 2023 and 2024 and on top of all of that on top of all of that we've got like 80 some thousand games being released on Steam in 2023 um it's certainly EXP itial the amount of games being

released so all that to said all that to say it's it's kind of scary right now but I'm here to tell you I'm here to tell you that I'm actually very very excited and very very encouraged about this new era of indie game development now this is just me sort of spitballing and riffing um I'm not sure if I'm right here no idea but I'm going to give you um a handful of ways wait look I'm looking at maybe four or five ways here I'm looking at my notepad by the way um four or five ways here on how you can survive this strange seismic shift some would call it the Indie apocalypse um I just so you know I do have some credibility here um a lot of indie game YouTubers they give a lot of advice and they they're not really making money off games I make money off my games Never song and pinstripe and I'm even currently making money off my game

Twisted Tower which is published by 3D realm so and by money I mean they're they're they're funding this entire massive project point being I've been in this industry for almost a decade um making money off of my Indie Games none of my indie games have been viral yet it still pays my bills and it does more than pay my bills um me and my family actually can build wealth from our games and that's really really cool right and now I have a studio and a team and people's salaries are paid all that said I'm just trying to give you some credibility here about what I'm about to say of how you can survive the indie game apocalypse because I really do want you to succeed and I don't want you guys to freak out um so anyway um there's this thing that Chris Sakowski this is number one the number one the first way to avoid the Indie apocalypse there's this uh this thing called the the the sandbox and Chris zakowski called um came up with this term and the sandbox is basically like I don't know something like 80% of

games are in the sandbox uh they're games that don't have a lot of reviews like they don't have let's say like 10 Steam Reviews and that's the majority of indie games being released on Steam so point being most of these indie games that we're competing with on Steam they don't even have 10 reviews and no offense to anybody who doesn't have 10 reviews but that just sort of puts you in the majority of games right and so you're not going to stand out so first rule here is to get out of the sandbox okay and the way to get out of the sandbox with your game is to get Steam Reviews if you can get 10 plus Steam Reviews something happens with the steam algorithm where you just get hit into a different sort of Stratosphere and there a different layer of the algorithm and then you start to get more noticed on Steam and you know by the way if you want to go deeper into all of this stuff on how to actually make six figures not only with your game but with just a demo there's a link Below on how to secure six figures with

just a demo I know that sounds gimmicky I believe me but this is what I do for all of my games I did it with these games and then I'm also I also did it with Twisted Tower as well I secured six figures in funding with just a demo before I even finish my game didn't have to freak out about selling copies of my game I already was making money off of my games and funding the game before I even finished it so click below to check that out so that's the first thing is just get 10 reviews and you might be wondering well how do I get 10 reviews and that brings me to my next point which is get wish lists right so you need to be building your wish lists before you launch your game so start a YouTube channel start posting content on Twitter do something post on Reddit do something to start getting wish list you should aim for at least 10,000 wish list and you can do it by the way um you can get 10,000 wish lists and I I did that without a YouTube channel and so you can

do it too you've just got to be focused and diligent and be thinking how do I get it out of a steam sandbox and actually get 10 plus reviews you do that with wish list and then here here's something that I I found really really interesting um this was from a buddy of mine his name is Jason Smith Jason Smith said um to me he said well I asked him what was wrong with the indie game industry and how how can indie game developers survive sort of this cancer that's sort of eating through the indie game industry right now and he said you know in a word um what's going on is oversaturation so it's super duper crowded in the indie game market and it's and it's been oversaturated for a long time but in my opinion it's getting worse now that you've got incredibly talented folks from the doublea and AAA scene who are tired of the state of the industry and are splintering off to make their own small Studios so now you've got industry professionals with more resources also competing with the devs who just quit their full-time jobs to

chase a dream while living off of savings on top of that you got 50 new games coming out every day to compete with shovelware or not if you don't have wish list this is the key if you don't have wish lists you're going to get buried by 15 uh Corin games and eight asset flip with AI generated key art and never spend a second on new and trending finding success among all of that feels like playing the lottery and it shouldn't be that way so what do we get out of that from Jason and he made a game again called cultic and it was overwhelmingly positive and it's done really really well I even asked Edmund McMillan the creator of Super Meat Boy and Binding of Isaac about the state of the industry and he said I feel like the response is Universal at this point too many indie games are released daily it's still very flooded and he continued to mention that he feels like there's really only two solutions the only solution we have is to make better games design always wins

you can make a very simple design that shines very bright gameplay-wise I continue to ask him sort of my solution which is what do you think about making smaller scope Games with super tight and Unique Mechanics and Ed responded simply with it's what I'd like to be doing in the future if I'm able and more importantly it's to make something truly unique for an audience okay so this this right here is actually my biggest piece of advice to you to survive the apocalypse okay or it seems like an apocalypse be the indie game developer who has an audience that's built in okay and I've heard people say this to me Thomas you got lucky Thomas you're lucky you have an audience why would why would anyone assume that this is luck posting videos weekly twice a week live streaming all the time

frankly I work my butt off to keep this channel going right I'm building an audience and I have intention behind what I'm doing right I'm building an audience and I highly highly highly recommend you build an audience there is no greater asset in 2024 write this down there is no greater asset in 2024 than owning an audience because if you own an audience getting those 10 Steam Reviews I can do that in in an hour I can snap my fingers and in an hour I'll get 10 reviews okay and that's through an email list or a YouTube video or whatever and that's not me bragging that's me saying that hard work that I put in for the last I don't know six years of running this YouTube channel and creating content for this channel pays off every day because I can snap my fingers and certain things can happen and I want you to have that ability too I don't want you just to

make a game I want you to have a game that you can instantly shout through a megaphone and that megaphone is owning an audience okay the second thing here the second thing I want you to focus on uh to survive this indie game apocalypse is I want you to think about profit not gross revenue okay uh a lot of indie game developers they think I want to make a million dollar game what does that even mean right um I want to make a million games for my a million a million bucks for my game what does that even mean and I I I've thought that way and I I have even thought that way recently and it's kind of like saying I want a million subscribers on YouTube it's like for what for why like what's the point here instead I want you to be thinking about profit I want you thinking about how much money can you personally bring in from a game okay and if you set a reasonable goal

let's say even $50,000 maybe $100,000 of Revenue on Steam suddenly what you need to create to get there is much more feasible and it's not going to cost you half a million dollars to create and your life savings and three years of your life instead I want you to be thinking okay how do I get to 50 ,000 how many units do I need to sell to get to $50,000 how many wish lists do I need to get to $50,000 or maybe just $55,000 on launch which then would indicate that maybe you can get to $50,000 in a year so you need to be thinking about profit how do I get a certain amount of profit ultimately I think indie game studios that focus on on smaller tighter

games that have a truly unique mechanic that are maybe 2 hours long that are not as expensive maybe not 25 bucks maybe not 20 bucks maybe 15 bucks maybe 10 bucks maybe even five bucks those tight small games that you can release multiple times a year I think those Studios will Thrive now there's a caveat the only way they Thrive the only way they thrive is if they have a tiny budget I think we're in a season of game development where indie game developers need to almost be like I don't know protect themselves in their own little Homestead of I use the term Homestead it's like a a a a nestled cozy self- sustaining environment where it's just you and a few other developers or maybe it's just you making games like David

wayy right you're you you're in this tiny little Homestead and you're self-sufficient you're barely spending money and you're making small tight hyper unique I call them diamonds because they're small but they're very very profitable those kind of games if you can focus on doing that I think we can survive this Indie apocalypse so to review here there are two ways two ways that we survive this shifting seismic shift in the indie game industry number one get out of the sandbox that is just perform better than most Indies at the launch of your game and that is get 10 reviews 10 plus reviews have 10,000 wish lists for your game something like that build up your audience while you're making your game and make something truly unique and that brings me to the second point right to review here you want to make a hyper

focused tight game that's truly unique and you want to focus on profit not gross revenue don't be thinking about how to make the biggest game ever that makes millions of bucks be thinking how do I make a small tight focused game that brings in $50,000 to $100,000 and how can I do that multiple times a year now it's totally fine if you just want to do that one time a year and make 50 Grand if you can survive on that that's great right and frankly I could okay but even better why not try and make multiple games a year that bring in 50 to 100 maybe $200,000 in Revenue in in net revenue or profit right not gross so anyway those are the two things that I would really really focus on I hope you found this helpful and by the way if you want to learn how to make six figures with just a demo click the link below it's how to get revenue for your game before you even finish your game before you um finish the full game and all you have is a demo you can actually make money and I've done that with all of my

games and I want to show you how to do it too anyways really really I just want to say good luck I love you I know it's tough in the industry right now but um