Why Most Indie Game Developers Don't Make Money

why is it that the majority of indie games out there make little to no money and what can you do to ensure your game is actually profitable I had the honor of chatting with Scott Miller the Mind behind what I would call the First Independent games Wolfenstein 3D and Duke Nukem stick around because Scott's going to tell us exactly what we can do to ensure our games are actually profitable I think you're working with some very talented developers um and they're in I guess the minority of developers meaning that thousands and thousands of games are released every year majority of them from any developers aren't profitable which you know is sad to say and I think you know a lot of effort is put into making games that don't well back to what we talked about earlier which is it doesn't return their investment I've been wanting to ask you why do you feel like you know the majority of any indie game developers out there failed to create a monetarily profitable indie game how can they stand

out well I mean the the cold truth is not every game can be profitable um you know the market is got a lot of games right now so not everyone can can make money it's it's like in the movie industry not every movie makes money in the TV industry not every TV show is making money there's TV shows canceled all the time so it's just a tough competitive business and um there's all sorts of factors that lead to success you know there's there's luck is a huge Factor there's persistence you know there's Talent there's networking there's putting together the right team there's all these different factors um you know I think probably it would most you know and then also you know you got to come with a great idea you got to be unique with that idea um so I don't know how to really guide people through this and and tell them some sort of secret from it like that will make their game be successful yeah marketing is another big factor you know um that's a that's a big Focus for us here at app cheek because you have to

really put in the money and effort and work with the right marketing team to make your game get noticed in this super competitive environment you know you have to like on Steam you have to build up your wish lists and uh you know get articles written about your game and get great trailers and demo uh you know get a demo out there and stuff like that so there's just so much to it um and sometimes you've got to have some some swings and misses before you make your hit also so you know uh you know in my case you know I made a lot of games before I made anything that was successful you got to be willing to to go through that learning curve and growth curve and all that kind of stuff and maybe find new partners if your current partners aren't working out yeah it's just a lot a lot of pieces to the puzzle there's no magic answer to it you know unfortunately otherwise we'd all be swimming in money I find it funny how you immediately brought up luck because how how can you juggle all of those things

um without being a talented person to begin with like I feel like you were it sounds like you were just born with instincts I mean you just have an instinct for selling games one of my one of the things I do really well I think is I as I sort of self-teach myself things you know I read about 100 books a year I'm constantly learning I'm constantly trying to grow as a person I never think I know it all um and I was this way back in the 90s I was just constantly reading books I was reading books on marketing and IT and it led me to create the 3D Realms label um because you wanted I wanted to position that label just for 3D games because I saw 3D games as the emerging you know Market within the game industry so we created to do anyway you just have to always be learning willing to listen to other people who who may have good advice for you and just always be in a growth mindset always improving your talents you know never you can never rest in this industry because other people will pass

you by if you do yeah but that was fun for you right like it's a joy yeah yeah I just I I have I guess maybe a Workaholics Personality yeah um and uh you know I I remember I remember many many many nights working on my text Adventure Games my very first big games uh called beyond the Titanic another one called Supernova many nights uh on weekends working on these games all my friends are out you know doing something fun hey Scott come join us well you know I I need to do this tonight so if you're busy making two hundred thousand dollars but back then I wasn't making that kind of money I was you know I was working at a local College in their computer Department you know oh okay so that was before you made the the hundred dollars while I was going to school yeah I was working in the computer lab you know probably making 15 000 a year or something so I mean dude that was the same for me in college um I spent the majority of my time in the library in the I would go I would go to the most anti-social spot of the

library all the way to the basement and I would open up my laptop and work on games and build my studio there and it comes down to like I I from what I can sort of the theme of what you've said here is like humility but also it's not work it's play right you just like reading books and learning and learning how to make games and asking for advice that's just fun for you right I mean I wish back then YouTube would existed and I could have watched your your your videos because you know I probably would have learned a lot you know um back then that didn't exist I was just you know reading my books and you know everything I could business books marketing books you name it and also playing a lot of games because you can learn a lot by playing other people's games too you know you can learn what's working with these games what's not working um you know as my kids were my two boys were growing up and I was always thinking maybe they'll get into this to my industry you know at some point um you know when they were like you know teenagers young teenagers and they would play some game I would say now

um tell me tell me three things you liked about that game and three things you didn't like and then they would you know they would come with some things then I would say now tell me three things that that you could improve with that game like what would you do to make that game even better and that really got them thinking that's just a good exercise for everyone I think you know that wants to be in the game industry any game you play think about you know the three things that you didn't like and and come up with some things that you that you can think of that would make that game even better you know always be thinking like that make that your standard mindset well you know I find it interesting