• Ouroboros612BEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    Here’s the perspective of someone who wanted to make an indie game and gave up.

    • (skip this part if you want it’s just the basic game idea) I had a brilliant idea for a simple digital boardgame, that uses cards for combat. It’s a 4-player strategy wargame where everyone starts in each corner. The inspiration came from the map WARLORDS from Heroes of Might and 3. Where you play on a modular 9 piece board, each with different biomes which gives different bonuses/penalties depending on which race you play. Basically a mix of Dota 2 and HOMM3. The dream game I always wanted to make but no one else made.

    • Design wise it should be easy to create. It’s just a digital board game consisting of simple elements. A board, game pieces that you move around, cards, 4 different resources you can harvest, and the game pieces representing your armies (in the form of cards).

    • However despite the simplicity. You need a programmer, an artist, and various other roles. But even one of these, if you want a professional game dev, takes like 50k a year in salary. And though the game shouldn’t take more than a year to make, a +6M safety net in terms of time is needed to make sure the project is completed. So that’s like 300k in salaray at the least, but realistically more like 500k because you need a safety net not just in time, but in money to complete the project.

    • w/o money. You need an investor. But no one is willing to pour that amount of money into an indie project even with a solid financial plan. When you’re a “nobody”.

    • If you get the funding for the game and it “only” sold 25k copies at a 30$ price it would net 750k. What this means is that with the inherent risk of a small indie game. It’s simply not worth the risk for investors.

    • Also add in that you have to make a company and learn all that legal and financial stuff. In addition to leading the devs in terms of work assignments, work distribution, milestones etc.

    • My conclusion is that even if you have the best idea in the world for an indie game. And 100% believe it will sell well. The only REAL option you have is simply making it yourself. Like Valheim, Rimworld, and other big indie game successes. These were made mostly by people doing it themselves.

    So the only realistic option left is to learn programming, outsource artwork, and basically do 90% of the work personally.

    In an age where AAA gaming industry titans waste billions on shitty and soulless games. They are still unwilling to invest “pocket change” in great indie game ideas.

    I’m still sitting on this indie game I still believe in, and genuinely think would be a viral success, even after a decade. I also sit on hundreds of ideas that I gave up on, because with time I realized they were bad or too cost-inefficient to make. But even my Magnum Opus idea - I realize it’s simply impossible to make without investment or learning everything myself.