Do you have a plan for how you will make a profit on your independent game? Beyond, “Make it, and sell a million copies!”

If you don’t, just save yourself the time and energy and scoot on over to the “Frustrated & Starving Artist” queue and/or check out the “Help Wanted” ads.

Of course, if you’re making indie games “just for the love”, then whether you make a profit or not doesn’t concern you. Or me. So just sod off. Oh, and good luck with that.

First, let’s cover the basics: “What is profit?”

In its simplest form, profit is the amount you made that exceeds the amount you spent to make it. Or, if you spent $100 and earned $200, you’ve just made a profit. A 100% profit, even. Congratulations.

Profit is the basis of every successful business. A lack of profit, sometimes called “breaking even” (earning what you spent) though usually known as a “loss” (earning less than you spent), will bring down any business sooner or later.

So, how does an indie make a profit?

The first step to making a profit on independent games is to get them finished. Unfinished games generate Web pages, screenshots, maybe a little bit of “indie game dev street cred”…but almost never any actual revenue. And without revenue, there can be no profit. Without a game in a salable state, you have nothing.

The trick to finishing games is to only start games you can finish. Which means having realistic expectations of what you can and can’t do, either on your own or with a small team.

Second, while you’re finishing the game, keep your expenses down. Never try to solve a development problem with a lot of money if there’s a good solution available for a little money–or for no money at all. In the last half-decade a huge number of inexpensive and even free solutions to many of the issues faced in development have been made available.

One expense you should strive to keep as low as possible is your own time. Sure, your time is essentially “free” for this project, either because you’re doing the project in your off hours or because you would be doing it anyway. But time is something you can never get back. And the longer any project takes to complete, the less likely it is to ever reach a salable state.

Third, price and market the game in such a way that it makes enough money to earn back in a reasonable timeframe whatever was spent to create it. Pricing is a topic that can take up a lot of space, so we’ll keep it brief. If you don’t want to think about it much, hover around the “indie standard” price of $20. If you have reasons you trust for going further away from that number, either up or down, go for it.

Whatever price you set, how you market the game is usually even more important to its ultimate success. Marketing is another of those staggeringly huge topics, but boils down to communicating to the players how much they’ll enjoy your game and convincing them to buy it, whatever the price. Sounds simple, neh?

Fourth, reinvest your early earnings back into the game. As you were hewing to the second point and keeping your expenses down, you probably took some shortcuts that should be shored up. Take the opportunity now to do just that. And while you’re at it, incorporate the feedback and suggestions you’ve been getting from your first players. Though you might be champing at the bit to enjoy the fruits of your labor, reinvestment at this stage will pay for itself quickly.

Finally, do it all over again.

You can make a profit on just about any game you make if you keep the following in mind:

Many businesses consider an investment that earns itself back in 2 years or less as a good one. Since good indie games have an “Internet shelf life” that is considerably longer than 2 years, this metric could work. Of course, you probably want it to earn back faster.

As indies, we can turn our low (or lack of) budgets to our advantage if we understand that making a profit only requires earning more on a game than we spent making it. To take the best advantage of that, though, we need to:

And then again. And again.

-David

Last week as I was continuing my research into a low-cost, near-professional-quality digital SLR camera body for use in a Bizarre Indie Project that some of you may be aware of, I came across this blog article by photographer Ken Rockwell:

Like any good geek, as I continued my quest I found myself getting caught up in the specs proffered by the marketing departments of the various camera manufacturers. Megapixels, video capture, zoom capabilities, etc. Ken’s post reminded me that being feature-packed is less important than many other considerations, such as:

I particularly appreciated this part of the article:

I can relate. In the first years after college, and to some extent even during college, I spent too much time being frustrated by the lack of what I considered adequate tools and too little time just doing the work.

Game design and development is an art. There is no One Right Way to do it, and no Ultimate Perfect Tool to do it with.

Finishing your projects is more important than the tools you use to build them.

-David

Today’s exercise, should you choose to accept it, is to come up with a way you can earn an extra $10,000 in the next 30 days.

Imagine that you have an opportunity suddenly appear. How do you take advantage of it? Or just decide that’s how much (extra) you want to pull in over the next 30 days. How would you do it?

Here are the rules:

That’s about it for rules. I like to keep things simple.

Some obvious options:

The trick about creating a new product is that you have to have a market waiting for you, with some pent up demand, to get a nice spike in sales right at the beginning.

Here’s a less obvious option:

Game development book advances range from  $3K-$10K, depending on your choice of publisher and negotiating skills. But to pitch the book, negotiate and sign the contract, and then write it can take 6-9 months. And the advance isn’t paid out all at once, but in milestones.

Going back to the “sell off some property” option, that covers a lot of possibilities. There are many types of property.

My own favorite types of property are all intellectual:

Maybe you don’t actually sell the intellectual property outright. Instead, you take something that you’ve been sitting on (like a novel) and you brush it up (quickly) and get it out there into the marketplace. Or maybe you do sell it outright. For example, you have a small game you built and have had only middling success with. It’s not outside the realm of possibility to think that a larger game development shop might be interested in buying the game, so long as it fits their business plan and current lineup of products.

Give it some thought.

If you’d like, post a comment with how you would go about it.

And then, if you come up with something that seems like it would work…well…go for it.

-David

Today in the New York Times (16 May 2005), “HDTV Is a New Reality for Game Developers”:

Impossible? I guess E3 really is a crazy place.

-David

My experience with online, multiplayer games goes back to 1989 when my brother, Dug, and I created our first BBS door game. In 1996 we launched the original Paintball Net, which we ran until 2000. In 1999 we launched Artifact, which is still online. I’ve also worked on a number of smaller multiplayer games.

I haven’t been associated with any huge-ass projects (“terminally indie” can be interpreted as a character flaw in some circles), but I have rather a decent depth of experience with designing, building, and (just as importantly) running multiplayer games. More than enough, I think, to justify most of my opinions.

Here’s an example opinion. I think any game designer who thinks that “permanent death” is a feature of any game should admit that:

I’m sure that the list of reasons why such a ridiculously morbid (and patently unprofitable) idea is proposed is both long and detailed. And I’m also sure it completely misses the point.

What point is that? That dying and staying dead is just not fun.

Are there exceptions? Games, for instance, where dying is damn fun? Certainly. Are there games where compelling content might not be “fun” in the traditional sense? Absolutely.

But these Gamer Goths aren’t trying to make the games more fun or more compelling. They’re trying to make them more significant.

And, of course, the rest of us are simply unable to understand the depths of their tortured souls…

-David

Doc Searles has an interesting article over at Linux Journal. He talks about Thomas Friedman’s new book, The World is Flat, and discusses how the new flat world is demonstrated with open source software (a point made in the book) and also discusses freefrom learning.

Read the entire article… (it’s a long-ish read, but worth it)

I think that the points discussed also apply to independent game development. Because, to paraphrase Friedman, I contend that “anyone with an idea, access to the Web, and a cheap laptop can build a game and sell it.”

I was planning to read that book, anyway. Now I definitely will.

-David

That champing sound you hear is me gnawing on the bit, ready to charge forward…but having to wait.

And that annoyed grumbling is me miserably pecking away at my other major project, The Evil Book from Hell That Just Won’t End.

Overall, though, things are proceeding apace. The new indie company I’m forming with my Mysterious Investor is coming together–if we can ever agree on a name. Negotiations with our project art director/lead artist have gone really well–but need the company to be formed so that we can write up the contract.

The design of the game has been tweaked and improved–I think. Decisions have been made–they might even be good decisions. Infrastructure has been put in place–mostly. Even The Damn Book has seen progress–one agonizing word at a time.

So…there’s been progress.

I just wish the progress were greater (and I wish The <censored> Book was <censored> finished).

Wish in one hand, though, and…eww…in the other and…blehk…forget it…that’s just disgusting. So let’s just sum it up by saying: Yes. I’m still here.

-David