Why do we even bother making indie games?

If you go into something creative, you’re going to have to accept that you’ll have to play the marketing game. This studio sucks at marketing; their Reddit post, which may well have had tens or hundreds of thousands of views by now, doesn’t even have a link to the game’s steam page. It’s all about the acquisition funnel.<p>I went to GDC last month solely to attend business&#x2F;marketing talks as I have a couple game projects in early stages and I’ve been wondering whether I wanted to commit the effort and money to see them through production.<p>Everyone there seemed to be unanimous that as far as marketing goes, the only thing that matters right now is TikTok. Posting a 10 second video once a week - even if it’s just a silly recording of your dev process - can and will net you hundreds of thousands of views, all through the organic “For You” page. None of the marketing people who spoke had good things to say about Instagram&#x2F;Twitter and the general takeaway was to not waste your time with them.<p>So many indie game developers want to work on their project alone in a cave until they release it to the world and everyone unanimously declares it to be a work of genius and they sell 10 million companies. Every once in a blue moon that does happen, but if you’re investing years of your life into making a game, do you really want to take that gamble? There are people who have made it their specialty to figure out how to get your game in front of people, can you really afford to not listen to them?<p>Florent, if you’re reading this, hire a marketing person. (if you already have one, fire them). With 2 award winning games under your belt this is where your problem is.

I don&#x27;t think there is a single art form where you can expect to make a decent living, even working yourself to the bone and&#x2F;or &#x27;treating it as a business&#x27;. The successes we see are all outliers. Any medium where this turns out to be not the case (such as changes in technology or fashion) quickly gets swamped and supply again exceeds demand. The most reliable way of being a successful artist is to become financially stable some other way (get a job), allowing you to redefine what success means to you.

I&#x27;m glad that they&#x27;re continuing. I love indie games, I love passionate people and their output—but it&#x27;s a visual novel. What did they expect? Artistic merit et al don&#x27;t equal commercial success. The reason to make a very personal project that you&#x27;re passionate about is because you enjoy the process, not because you&#x27;re hoping for a return on investment of time. For many people, the joy itself is in the process.<p>VNs are niche enough, trying to compete with the established heavy-hitters is going to be an uphill struggle. That they saw previous success is a fluke and depends which way the wind is blowing on any given day. Now isn&#x27;t a great time to sell anything with economic uncertainty, especially as they self-published. Publishers frequently make or break indie games, and clearly it made previous attempts. Lesson learned is that maybe they need a publisher and don&#x27;t yet yield enough clout or budget to make something a success numbers-wise. Maybe reaching out to a publisher to do a remastered version in a few years might make sense to them, I&#x27;ve seen a few indies do well with a rerelease.

Reminds me why I went into boring SAAS instead of gaming in the early oughts: games are too hit driven and too many passionate people want to do it anyway. So there is no safe way to a balanced, financially stable life except grinding out sequels for big name publishers.<p>Still I do have regrets and keep promising myself I&#x27;ll make the time someday... once I&#x27;m financially secure. Props to them for taking risks on hard sell products. It enriches us all.

I&#x27;ve played this. It&#x27;s not spreading the way they want because it&#x27;s a boring, cheesy, overdramatic thing that does not fit the video game format.

Because you can&#x27;t help yourself but make games. As if you could stop. It&#x27;s unrequited love.

The Wreck is highly rated on Steam, but the negative reviews point to some practical problems. More than one mentions motion sickness. It sounds like they put an option in to try to mitigate that, but it didn&#x27;t work for everyone.