[baobabKoodaa]

The reason why I mentioned Flappy Bird is that it originally wasn't a massive viral hit. It was on the app store for like a year with basically no-one playing it. And then it became a viral hit. So it's a good example of how a good game with no marketing doesn't get picked up (until it gets lucky and eventually does get picked up; you can imagine a timeline where that never happens).

[kibbi]

I think that extreme outliers like Flappy Bird (which the developer developed over a couple of days and probably didn't expect any significant return) just muddle these discussions. They're irrelevant if you want to suss out what happens in the usual case.

[johnnyanmac]

I agree, but when talking with these "where the hidden gems" audience, any example I point out will be "an exception". it makes the entire conversation a bit tiring, no matter how much you research the market these kinds of people have their opiions set, with no skin in the game.

[baobabKoodaa]

The usual case of good games which fail commercially because of bad marketing? How would I prove to someone that a failed game is "good"? The reason I talked about Flappy Bird is that the game's late success proves that its early failure was due to bad marketing. If you only want to talk about games which never succeeded commercially, then I have no way of proving to you that any of those were "good" games.

[somenameforme]

> How would I prove to someone that a failed game is "good"?

Steam reviews are a great way. Lots of folks, including myself, try or tried to seek out these hidden gems on Steam. And Steam provides some great tools to try to find them. [1] It just turns out that there simply aren't many games at all with genuinely high reviews, but very low player numbers.

There's a whole bunch of great games in the ~200 reviews category with high reviews, but I'd generally consider that successful. The average game gets something like 60:1 sales:reviews, so 200 reviews is around 12,000 copies sold. You're not going to be getting rich off those numbers, but that's more than enough to live an extremely comfortable life in the overwhelming majority of the world.

[1] - https://store.steampowered.com/recommender/0

[johnnyanmac]

>You're not going to be getting rich off those numbers, but that's more than enough to live an extremely comfortable life in the overwhelming majority of the world.

I guess you don't live in the US or Canada these days. Even if the game was $20, 12k copies sold is $168k raw revenue, after steam's cut. if you have 2 people working on it, you make above average revenue, for one year.

If you have 3 people working on the game, that is below median income for the US. And it gets worse for any assets you buy or contractors you need.

Even with 2 people, you have to remember that you don't get benefits from being a full time indie. so even 80k in this situation if it's a true 2 person team may not be so much much better off than flipping burgers with healthcare/dental built in. It's a rough economy right now.

[somenameforme]

No I don't, and this is one of the reasons why. When you can work online and get paid in $, that dollar goes so much further in the other 95% of the world. What people who don't travel much may not understand is that it's not just the exchange rate. What really matters is PPP - purchasing power parity. $100 might translate to e.g. 8000 rupees, but those 8000 rupees go far further in India than $100 would in America. I also find that even official PPP figures often understate the "real" difference. So by living outside of America and getting paid in USD you basically just multiply every dollar you make, by a very large amount. That $168k easily becomes a $million+ in the overwhelming majority of the world.

Medicine and other stuff is similarly reasonable. I had the first cavity in my life fairly recently. A dentist trip, cleaning, filling, and related care cost a bit more than $10. And that was at a private provider, so nowhere near the cheapest. And then on top of this taxes are way lower, and the first $250k (for a couple whose earnings are split) are US tax free - the US has the distinction of being literally the only country in the world that insists expats continue to pay US taxes.

So you have this thing where an indie developer living in San Francisco is probably going to end up homeless, whereas on the exact same income they could be living an extremely comfortable life in the overwhelming majority of the world - 'Asia', India, Eastern Europe, South America, even some places in Africa are starting to develop pretty reasonably. Wherever, there's something for basically every taste and desire somewhere.

[johnnyanmac]

>So by living outside of America and getting paid in USD you basically just multiply every dollar you make, by a very large amount. That $168k easily becomes a $million+ in the overwhelming majority of the world

That's a nice sentiment for those who live in the not-US. But sadly most game development is in fact located in the US and Japan. For the US, many of the developer scene is in fact in higher cost of living areas like California, for the same reasons those areas have top tech companies and universities.

So I'm not just speaking for myself when I say that your estimates do not compare to most minimum wage work, which has itself already ceased to be a "living wage". It could certainly shift, but those are the current breaks. Your favorite indie games are likely made by North Americans as of now, and their survival depends on their ability to survive in North America. The one exception I can think off the top of my head is Team Cherry in Australia, which is not in a much better CoL situation if they are in the cities.

American or not, I don't think the solution to finances for online development is to emigrate out of your home country, away from your community, life cultures, and overall lifestyle. Tech is a big enough part of the US economy that everyone doing it would weaken the dollar itself, and then everyone loses given the current way the world economy works.