Indie: Idea is the driving force behind game development. What are indie games and where to find a publisher? Making indie games where to start

If you've wandered in here, you may be puzzled about finding a publisher for your indie masterpiece. Or someone whispered to you that all games need a publisher, or something like that. So the publisher you don't need.

What is Indy?

Start over. What is the word " indie"? Of course, it came from the word " independent", that is, "independent". And the essence of the "indie" trend was that a product was released without a publisher, directly from the author, and without his financing. This applies to games, music and other cultural phenomena.

What does such a scheme give the buyer? Of course, a lower price, due to the fact that the publisher does not need to pay any royalties. And most importantly - the likelihood of having more recent conceptual ideas, as some say, such games have "soul". At least that's how it was in the early days of indie games, before everyone (including me) started indie games.

Games for the masses

But as time went on, the phenomenon of indie culture grew. Greenlight was opened, which allowed thousands of game developers to realize all their wet fantasies, and sitting at home, drinking beer, receive thousands of dollars. Is it good or bad? The question is moot. I believe that no one is forcing anyone to buy anything, but really good projects still make their way through thousands of crafts and become successful.

Something went wrong

At the present time, the indie industry has reached its apogee of absurdity. Since the essence of the word "indie" is completely forgotten, and this word refers to any game with two-dimensional graphics or just a low budget. More than once I noticed how in any indie public they post art on the game Child of Light, which was published by Ubisoft. But the most interesting thing is to watch indie games that create projects on kickstarter and raise money for their games. That is, if the game has a budget from the outside - can it be called independent? After all, it directly depends on the money that people throw in.

Do you need help?

Well, now let's get back to the original topic. Why do indie developers need publishers? But you probably already got the idea. The bottom line is that for indie developers, the indie developer must be the publisher. If you think that your game needs a publisher, then you are deeply mistaken.

If you have an almost finished game that you plan to publish in Greenlight, or your project is already at the stage of getting a green light, all sorts of smart people will probably start writing to you with an offer to become publishers. What do such people usually offer?
- 100% guarantee for the passage of Greenlight;
- PR games in various publications;
- translation of the game into English;
- they will ask for only a modest 30-40% of your earnings.

Okay, what's wrong here? Of course, I want to say that if you are too lazy to develop your game and don’t feel sorry for the money at all, then you can agree. But if you believe in yourself, then I will tell you a secret: all this can be done easily. by ourselves.

"Publishers"

About green light already well painted. All that is required from you is 3200 rubles for Greenlight (or $100 if you are not from Russia).

About PR . If this "PR company" has a couple of thousand subscribers on VK (or even less), a dubious website, no office, or even more scary, no banal contract (and this happens, oh yes), send such people to hell. At best, they will throw the keys of your game into all sorts of popular sites with game critics, at worst, they will wind up reposts through some left cheat services.

In fact, nothing prevents you from sending pre-release keys of your game to anyone. If you send 100 keys to 100 different sites with game reviews, then you don’t lose anything anyway, and if you get a dozen reviews, you will have the opportunity to insert quotes from reviews into the description of your game, and also get their readers as your own audience.

About the translation . If you need it (there are a lot of lines in the game that you can't translate), then that's bad :) In fact, it's very difficult to find good translators into English. Almost every translation of an indie game will be accompanied by reviews about poor translation into English, and all because most translators write sentences in English, but with Russian meaning. And it sounds, to put it mildly, bad. Thus, if you are playing for the first time, I strongly advise you to limit the amount of text in the game.

But most importantly, all these "publishers" will most likely hire some school English teacher for a couple of thousand rubles for your translation. Accordingly, the quality of the translation will be far from the best.

About deductions. The whole point is that they are the publishers, which means they have full access to your money, they will receive it directly from Steam, and give you the cores. They can endlessly lie, invent, and at some point completely disappear, and you will not receive a penny from them. An interesting story happened this week with a game on Steam made in China. The publisher just threw the developer, and in order for the developer to prove to Steam that the game really belongs to him, a court is needed. IN THE USA. Hire a lawyer in the USA. Can you afford it? Are you willing to take that risk?

Steam is indie?

By the way, here you can raise another philosophical topic. Since "independence" implies no publishers, then... isn't Steam a publisher? Of course, if you want to sell through Steam, then Valve will be your publisher. Will your game be indie at the same time? The question is moot. But the fact is that without this publisher, everyone would have a hard time right now, and it is he who is driving this wave of amateur developers. Then ... what do these "publishers" who ask for a percentage offer us? But nothing. These are just hucksters who want to get a percentage of your share without doing anything. Such people have always been and will be, and oddly enough, almost all business in Russia and the CIS is based on such huckstering.

Don't rely on this. Better make games. If you have a good game, then people will not pass by it. Peace for everyone.

Petya, returning from school, again took up a large volume on the art of programming - the parents were very surprised when their son asked not for a new game for his birthday, but for several large books on programs.

Petya is a young programmer, designer and screenwriter rolled into one. For a month now, he has been wearing the concept of his future game - original, cool, with a big twist in the middle which no one has thought of yet. He writes down his wonderful ideas in a thick notebook during the lessons, and then transfers them to an electronic version, creating a design document. Petya does not particularly think about the future: before his eyes there is only the prospect of huge success, big money and worldwide recognition.

But the opportunities for young Petya are not enough, huge books on advanced programming have not yet given knowledge on how to make good games. Therefore, Petya, with a notebook in his hands, driven by blind enthusiasm, sets off in search of his game publishing house. There is only one goal - to get the required resources: a team of developers, designers, money for the project and a lot of time. Petya does not think about the success of his offspring - he is sure of it.

Alas, Petya's plan did not work out - the publisher does not need ideas, as well as enthusiasts attracted only by the original concept. The golden window for the authors of ideas has long been closed - this is a fact.

And the point is in the current gaming industry: the creation of a game today is a business in which there is not only success, but also risk. The price of Petya's innovation can cost a publisher dearly.

This is a business, Petya.

The bitter truth is that with an original idea, Petya is of absolutely no value to the industry - everyone has ideas, they are not in short supply. In the book for novice coders, which the parents gave to our hero, it is written: the presence of a concept does not yet guarantee success, but only provides its prerequisites.

And no one needs originality now - as previously written, because of the high risk. To secure its budget, the publisher creates a common routine, proven and profitable. All Battlefields, Cheats, Mobs and the like are created in the process of studying the market and the desires of the players themselves. There is an entire game mod that the publisher is targeting. It would seem that this approach - the rejection of originality - is not aimed at success, but in reality, such a company turns out to be the most profitable.

The idea itself is a formless thing. Its main property is change. No matter how much young Petya would like, his innovation will not be the way he intended it - the idea will lose its original form. The implementation process should be blamed for this: all tasks and their solutions, all alternatives will lead the conceived ideal to the release product. This change can affect the structure of the concept, both positively and negatively. A long-term transformation of an idea can lead to a fiasco - a cool game that Petya plans has a chance of failing on release only because the player does not accept the idea.

But Petya did not give up and decided to develop his own game. Reading tons of literature, watching thousands of video tutorials, drawing and practicing, he came to the moment of realization. Taking an idea in his right hand, and enthusiasm in his left, Petya set about a long and exhausting work. Perhaps he created the game on a phone or on a PC - it does not change the essence: Petya worked 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so that his idea took shape.

Release moment. Petya's game turned out to be not bad at all - maybe not what was originally intended, but the result inspired the creator. The work is finished, all the finishing touches are done - it's time to release the game to the general public. This is where the moment of disappointment comes: no one downloads the game, it is not in the tops, it does not bring fame and money. With tears in his eyes, Petya asks a dumb question: "Why?".

It's simple, Petya. Nobody is interested in your game, and it's not about its quality. The idea, fading into the background, is inferior to the banal principle “What can you offer”. Separating from the gray mass of all fresh (and not so) games will not lead to success only because of the lack of a unique offer. In other words, due to the lack of proper presentation in Advertising. It would seem that advertising is a secondary thing and does not require attention at the development stages. But this is not so - the project from the very beginning of implementation should focus on the market, create a unique offer for the player. - the developer is obliged to organize a worthy place in the proposals for his future game.

Marketing is a complicated thing, alien to Petya. It is not his fault that his idea did not find its fan and did not endow the author with a mountain of money. An independent developer is one thing. And what do major gaming publications do? A specific document is being prepared for the development team with all the wishes, requirements and restrictions. In response, the studio agrees to all the nuances, stipulates the number of people working on the game, and the price of the issue. The main theme in the document is, of course, the game. All managers, analysts, marketers give rise to the basis of the project - they give a genre, a theme. Everything that is interesting and will be interesting to the player is taken into account and converted into a plan, which is eventually sent to the future creator - the developer. He is already thinking about the implementation of the project: about the plot, about the aspects.

Without leaving the dream of fame, Petya started a new job. This time he was more than serious. Asking classmates what they would like to see in the game, Petya analyzed and created a whole system of options for transforming his idea. He was at the most difficult stage of development - at the preparatory stage.

During preparation, the developer, under the guidance of the publisher, is working on a description of the benefits and features of the future game. As a rule, the idea of ​​the project is developed collectively - by all members of the studio. Each designer, coder, sound engineer, screenwriter contributes his own idea of ​​the final result. In this case, the initial intention is blurred beyond recognition. Preparation for development is the very moment when the studio tries not only to keep the original idea, but also to improve it.

The result of the preparatory work inside the studio is a whole document, which expresses all ideas about the future game, all its features, all aspects. Such a document is sent to the publisher and is considered the end goal of the work to which the developer should strive.

This document should also be available to an indie creator - it will help ensure the integrity of the idea and increase the chance of success. Usually independent enthusiasts with a similar plan are looking for help in the implementation - either trying to push the document to the publisher, or looking for help from the same independent developers. But our Petya does not have the money to pay for a hired designer, and his age does not inspire confidence in potential sponsors - so he started developing alone.

Today, an independent developer has every chance of becoming successful - crowdfunding, various communities of testers and developers, digital distributors can help any project. For example, the Early Access program on Steam has already provided many developers with the right coin, thanks to which their programs reach the finish line in development. Or groups of novice testers and coders who are ready to work for an idea. All the opportunities offered on the Internet give a huge chance for people to embody their ideas materially, in digital form. Sooner or later, the range of all available services will expand, as will the availability in implementation.

After some thought, Peter decided to involve a group of players to test the game. The project has reached the Alpha stage and is able to show all its main features. Which, by the way, relished the testers. But not everything is so optimistic: the tester is a critical person, his task is to find all the flaws and report them to the creator. At the same time, he is able to bring something of his own into the game by offering ideas at an early stage of testing. So, to Petya's headache, a lot of suggestions and problems were added that could unsettle any developer.

In general, a game at the testing stage requires a huge amount of resources, time and effort, which any independent developer lacks. An alpha test obliges the creator to experiment, introduce something new, sometimes even follow the lead of the testers without deviating from the intended result. It is at this stage that the further fate of the project is determined and a choice is made - the developer either gives up or goes to the end, despite all the tons of criticism. as if saying to the creator: “Why are you doing this? Stop all this nonsense." The developer must briefly and firmly answer “No”, and then continue the grueling work. The project at the beta stage is entering the finish line, which is not as easy as it seems.

And here again - the end of development. The finished game, as a result of long months of hard work, lies in front of Peter and humbly awaits the release. Petya is in thought: what if it doesn’t work out? Again to transform the idea into a new image? An independent creator asks this question every time before a release, just like any other playwright fears failure before going on stage. Such worries are foreign to large studios, but quite familiar to single developers.

The reality is this: the idea today is not the main thing. Originality is replaced by proven solutions, something new is rejected not by game developers, but by the community of gamers. The very idea is capable of moving mountains, but behind these mountains there may be a conservative who does not want the new, he needs the old. An independent developer just needs to put up with it and do what is accepted by the people in order to succeed.

What happened to Petya? Maybe his game still broke into the tops, and people liked the idea. Or maybe vice versa - something was not enough for success. Generally speaking, an indie creator should be well aware of one simple truth: without bitter experience, one cannot hold on to victory. His work must be to create many variations and make a great number of attempts. His essential qualities are patience and diligence. Its main engine is an idea.

Zero budget indie game.

How to develop it, how to sell it and why it is needed at all.

We bring to your attention an expanded and updated version of the report, which was presented at the KRI 2012, as well as at the Scream School of Computer Graphics (British Higher School of Design).

It takes three things to make a great game: a great idea, an experienced team, and a lot of money.

These are the words of Daniel Vavra - the man who once created the game Mafia, and now holds the post of creative director of the Warhorse studio. In the case of indie projects, as a rule, there is neither an experienced team nor money. What remains? Just an idea!

Why is now the best time to develop indie games?

The answer is simple - now they are “in trend”. Players have paid attention to projects from novice developers, they like to play them and they are ready to pay for them, albeit small, but money.

The first step in this direction was taken in 2003, when Valve introduced the STEAM service. Games started moving off the shelves towards the internet and that had a big impact on the indie movement. If earlier the players did not consider a serious game until the publisher packs it in a box, now AAA class projects are on the same virtual shelf with indies in the same STEAM. To publish games digitally, you can do without large budgets and any developer can act as a publisher himself.

Interest in indie fueled the incredible success of Markus Persson with his Minecraft. Even at the beta stage, the unfinished game made the developers millionaires. Around the same time, Braid, Super Meat Boy came out - for sure, these are not empty sounds for you.

Recently, the popularity of the Independent Games Festival, an annual indie festival that takes place as part of the Game Developers Conference, has been growing. The festival has been held since 1999, but if until 2005 projects like Fire And Darkness or Shattered Galaxy won there, then from 2005 onwards, quite well-known games take the Grand Prix. Gish, Darwinia, Crayon Physics Deluxe - most likely, you have already heard about them.

To submit your game to the IGF in the main standings, you need to pay the amount of $95. For students and schoolchildren there is an opportunity to perform in a separate category for free, but given the number of applications submitted, the competition there is much higher.

There are interesting competitions and on a smaller scale. For example, Ludum Dare, where developers make games on a given topic in a short time. Among the winners there are excellent works.
There is a Russian analogue of this contest - Gaminator, which is held on the portal gamin.ru. Everything is the same there, only the terms for development are freer - a little more than two weeks are given for the game. If you want to try your hand - here your project will be appreciated and commented on by the permanent community of the site.

Another argument in favor of the indie trend is the variety of Indie Bundles. Several developers unite and present a set of their games at a very favorable price, and the players unanimously support this initiative with a ruble. As a result, each of the developers receives a large amount of cash and, as a pleasant addition, good press coverage of the game. Players also get a good discount on well-known projects - thus, both parties benefit from bundles.

To give you a rough estimate, The Humble Indie Bundle V sold 599,003 bundles for a total of $5,108,509. 500-600 thousand dollars each
participating developers - agree, not bad.

An interesting movement has also begun on the KickStarter website, where they collectively raise funds for the implementation of various projects. The developers started to stir when Tim Schafer posted his new game Double Fine Adventure there at the beginning of 2012. Tim expected to raise $400,000, but ended up getting almost three and a half million. It was followed by inXile entertainment with Wasteland 2 and Stainless Games with Carmageddon: Reincarnation. Even the new part of Larry was sponsored! Novice developers should not count on such a technique, but it is quite possible to raise a small amount of money on KickStarter. The main thing is that you have a reliable friend in the US with access to Amazon Payments. The creators of KickStarter are already promising to remove this restriction, but so far nothing will work without such a friend.

The last argument concerns the players themselves. It's not for nothing that Diablo III is unanimously downvoted on Metacritic - over ten years of development, all new ideas in the game can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Among the players, of course, there are conservatives who even like it, but those who want something more interesting are likely to look towards new projects. And they will spend the next $60 not on one hyped game, but on a dozen indies.

STEAM green light

Decisive measures in favor of modern indie developers were promised to be taken in STEAM. On the last day of August, their Greenlight service finally launched. Now users can vote for their favorite games, and the best of them will appear on the STEAM shelves along with the usual assortment. It was possible to submit your game for consideration to STEAM earlier, but only winners of well-known competitions could really hope for publication. In the last year, most of the applications were completely left unanswered.

It's only been a couple of weeks since the launch of Greenlight, but a certain impression of the service has already been formed. For the first few days, any user could send a game to the database for free, and dozens of “trolls” immediately took advantage of this. Everything from Origin-exclusives with Half-Life 3 to porn simulators was put up for a vote. Valve quickly reassessed the situation, but instead of the logical introduction of pre-moderation, they cleaned up the garbage submissions and introduced a $100 fee for the right to place games on Greenlight. The collected money is promised to be sent to charity, but for some indie authors, even such an amount can become unbearable.

The top ten games that have been greenlit have already been determined - among them the excellent mod Cry of Fear, Project Zomboid, as well as several long-term projects that have been raising money for Desura for a long time - Kenshi and Towns. The modification of Black Mesa Source was also approved for publication, but while many have already downloaded it from the official site and passed it, the release on STEAM has not yet taken place.

It is very sad, but the service is far from showing the players themselves from the best side. Fans of action movies, for example, do not hesitate to downvote quests in Greenlight and make serious battles in the comments. It comes to outbursts of hatred in the spirit of "Fuck you all ...". It is problematic to talk about games as art against such a background ...

In general, the initiative from Valve was good, but while the service is still raw and ill-conceived, it remains to closely monitor its development and believe in a brighter future.

Do it yourself

Pick up a camera, shoot something. No matter how small and ridiculous, no matter who is in the frame. Write in the credits that you are the director. And that's it - you are the director. It remains only to bargain for the budget and fees.

James Cameron

What do you need to do to release your own game? Where to begin?

First, you need a development team. A typical game will require at least a programmer and an artist. Without a programmer, there will be nothing at all, and without an artist, you can only make a text roguelike. If you are counting on some promotion of the project in the press, it would be nice to take a PR manager with knowledge of English into the team.

Considering that the budget for the development of the game, as a rule, is zero, it is worth looking for future developers among your friends. Surely you have gifted acquaintances who are just thinking where to put their energy. A classmate solves programming problems in ten minutes? A familiar girl perfectly draws ponies flying in the clouds? Is your friend the best blues player? Great! Their talents can be mixed in one bottle and see what happens.

Decided with the team. Now it's worth gathering in one place and thinking about how your future game will look like. It is best to stock up on paper and pens and write down all the ideas that come up during a brainstorming session. Pixel art and retro styling? Time manipulation? A new genre that has no analogues? All this may well work. There are no prohibitions for indie, moreover - the more pretentious the idea, the more chances that you will be noticed. The main thing is to plan a real game, for the development of which you have enough strength. If the idea came to mind to make an mmorpg for all the inhabitants of the Earth at once - this, of course, is good, but even Blizzard is unlikely to take on a game of this magnitude.

Calculate your strength soberly - it is better to immediately agree on certain deadlines. One month for the first game should be enough. The artist will just draw a dozen characters and locations, and the programmer will have time to write a simple engine. Enthusiasm tends to end, and if it is usually enough for a month, then later someone has new things to do, another developer starts to be lazy ... As a result, the game runs the risk of not surviving to launch at all.

During development, try to show intermediate versions to all your friends - this way you will check the performance of the game on different computers, and you can better balance the project based on their feedback.

What else to pay attention to? If possible, try to release the game not only on PC, but also under Mac and Linux. There are many indie players on these platforms - by sharing your game with them, you can find true allies. In this regard, your programmer should pay attention to cross-platform engines like the growing popularity of Unity or the half-dead Flash.

Also among your potential audience are the owners of weak laptops with small screens. The latest hits on their computer do not start, but sometimes you still want to play. A person buys an indie that meets the system requirements, but here's a surprise - the screen resolution of 1024x600 is not enough for the game. If you do not want to read angry reviews in the comments to your project, it is better to work on this issue in advance and make support for the smallest screen resolutions.

“In the future, there will be two types of companies in the market: those who are on the Internet and those who have gone out of business”

Bill Gates

To advertise a game, first of all, you need to make a website for it. The website is a very important place where both the press and the players will go for information. It is not necessary to bother much with the design - the main thing is that the site is informative and understandable. The visitor should easily find a brief description of the game and a selection of demo screenshots with concept art. If you have a trailer (purely gameplay and / or just in the spirit of the game) - it should be placed in the most visible place. The video is great to showcase the main ideas of the game.

A press pack must be posted on the site. This is the logo, all screenshots and trailers of the game, packed in one archive. Don't forget to leave your contacts. It is best if this is an email address, and not a separate page with a contact form. If you want the press to speak well of you, at least make the job of journalists a little easier.

To keep in touch with the press, you need to competently prepare and send out your press releases. Ideally, you should contact one of the foreign PR agencies - spending a few hundred dollars, you will receive a competent mailing list for your project. If there is no money at all, you will have to write press releases yourself. Here are a few nuances:
1) Write well. If the press release is in English and it contains a bunch of errors, that's too bad.
2) Communicate politely. “Hello”, “Goodbye”, “Respectfully”, “We will answer all your questions”, “If you do not want to receive letters from us, we can remove your email from our list” - this is the way to write.
3) Brevity is the sister of talent. A journalist is unlikely to finish reading a three-page story about how you had breakfast, went for a walk with the dog, almost got hit by a car, and suddenly the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe game came to your mind. It is better to limit ourselves to listing the main features of the project and a brief retelling of the plot.
4) If possible, offer a working version for review (but only if the game more or less works and you don't have to blush for it). It is always more interesting for journalists to feel the project themselves than to fantasize about the game and rewrite the press release in their own words.
5) You can use graphics in the design of the letter, but do not go too far. One beautiful screenshot or art for a press release will be enough. Collect everything else in a press pack and add a download link at the end of the letter.
6) Keep in touch. If a journalist has responded to your letter and wants to know some details, you must fully satisfy his interest. The only thing - do not agree to any bribes. Rarely, but there are portals where they offer to write a good review about the game for money. Few people read such press, so it's better not to mess with them.

Where should I send the finished press release? Browse popular gaming sites and check out the contact section. As a rule, there is a form for your news or email for contact. If the game is interesting, and the press release presents it well - do not hesitate, they will definitely write about it.

How to get to the shops?

If you already have a working version of the game (preferably the final one) and a promo site is launched, then you can proceed to choosing a platform for publishing the project. If until this day you associated the game store only with STEAM, an unexpected discovery awaits you. In fact, there are more than a dozen such stores and each has its own audience.

The process of placing a game is almost identical everywhere. To begin with, you fill out a questionnaire where you tell about yourself, about the project, give all possible links to publications about it and to the working version, so that the online store employees can try your game themselves.

There are two possible scenarios for the development of events. First - your game is not liked or not suitable for this online store. As a rule, refusals are polite, logical and not offensive at all. For example, to a request to place “Retention” from one of the stores, we were answered: “The game is excellent, we enjoyed it, but we have 80% of the audience are women over 40 and they are more interested in playing poker with dogs.”

Surprisingly, the most rude rejections came from STEAM. If you don't like the game, you will receive a short text that they send to all developers with a carbon copy. “We don’t take the game. In accordance with our publication policy, we do not comment on our decisions. Thanks for understanding". What they did not like, and whether at least someone at Valve launched your brainchild - one can only guess.
On the Internet, you can find a story about how one company sent their game to STEAM and was rejected. They did not lose heart - they made contact with the publisher, released the game in boxes and made good money on sales. After that, they once again turned to STEAM with an already promoted project ... And received word for word the same letter in response. Here's a STEAM adamant.

The second option is positive. If you like the game, then they give you a green light. After that, you need to sign a contract, where all the conditions are discussed, and issue a game page in the store.
There are no special problems with the contract - you just print it on the printer, sign it, scan the signed version and send it by email. In response, a new version comes with already two signatures - from your side and from the side of the store. It is not required to contact paper mail and it pleases.
In most cases, all rights to the game remain with the developer and no exclusivity is required from you. By placing the game in one store, you can send it to ten more and collect the total profit. The main nuance is related to payment - in the Desura store, for example, the minimum transfer amount is $ 500. Until sales exceed this line, you will not receive any money. If the projects are not very promoted, it is quite possible that you will release two or even three games before you reach the required amount. Also, do not forget about the percentage that the store and PayPal take for themselves. As a rule, a little more than 30% go “past the cash register”.

The former specializes in indie projects and free mods, so it already has a suitable audience. Desura also has a good STEAM-type client, but, alas, from version to version, several annoying errors remain in it. Downloading games sometimes “freezes” at 99 percent and frustrated players immediately begin to share their emotions in the comments on your game. One of our projects “Inner Dream” Desura had its launch completely cancelled. For the first 24 hours, the downloaded game basically did not start due to an administrator error. As a result, about a thousand people could not play it, and some of them quickly sent the rating towards one with their votes.

This, of course, is sad, but still Desura remains one of the best analogues of STEAM, and we do not stop recommending it.

The second IndieVania store does without a separate client and overall looks simpler than Desura, but it has a couple of significant pluses for developers. The creators of the service are indie developers themselves - this is the company Alientrap, the authors of such games as Capsized and Nexuiz. They are well aware of the problems of indie, so they try to solve them with the help of IndieVania. Firstly, this store does not take any percentage of sales. All money minus PayPal tax (5% + $0.05) goes into your wallet in full. The transfer occurs instantly - as soon as the player has paid for the purchase, the money is immediately in your account.
Secondly, here you can play with prices in different ways. One of the available options is “pay what you want”. If you use it, then the players will be able to choose the price themselves. You can allow them to download the game for free, or set a minimum payment of $1. In this case, many will pay the same dollar, however, there are also players who transfer an amount 4-5 times the full cost of the game.

In general, both Desura and IndieVania often feature original projects that are practically not covered in the press. It makes sense to look there periodically when ordinary games have had time to get fed up.

Again, there are many other game stores: GamersGate, Impulse, BeamDog... You can send your project at least to all at once, but neither the players who are more comfortable storing their entire collection in one place, nor you yourself, having spent a lot of time by signing contracts. If your project is promised good advertising, a central place in the window and all kinds of support - then there is a point to think about, but publishing a game under normal conditions is difficult to count on something. But when the game is already out and you decide to fix the bugs by releasing a patch, uploading it to each of the 10 stores is a whole story. Somewhere files are transferred via the web interface, somewhere - through a separate program. Yes, and how to launch the patch synchronously, if one store will approve it tomorrow, and another only a week later. Such a headache - do you need it?

Many have heard of the Good Old Games portal (gog.com), which has recently turned into an online gaming store. Alas, it’s quite difficult to get there “from the street” - the authors are more focused on the publication of the classics, which, when trying to offer their game, they immediately report. You won't be able to publish games from the 90s forever, so in the future they may open the doors to indies. True, most likely, only for games in the spirit of a bygone era.

The situation is similar with the Humble Store - the beginnings of an online store that can be found in the bowels of the Humble Indie Bundle website. With it, you can purchase some games from bundles, sometimes links from widgets on developer sites also lead here. There is a possibility that someday this project will work in full force, but so far its future is vague. In general, it is very strange to sell STEAM keys bypassing STEAM itself - it turns out to be a kind of mirror store. Does it make sense?
If you're wondering what the Humble Store looks like now, here's the BIT.TRIP RUNNER game page as an example: http://www.humblebundle.com/store/product/bittriprunner
It also sells the alpha version of Voxatron, which is still in development: http://www.lexaloffle.com/voxatron.php

Alpha funding

A separate word needs to be said about the Alpha funding scheme, which was used in the case of Minecraft. The idea is that even at the development stage, players are offered to pre-order the product at a reduced price with the opportunity to try early alpha versions right now. The scheme has spread to various bundles, KickStarter projects, and Desura even has a separate section for such games.

Alpha funding is primarily beneficial for the developers themselves, as it allows them to earn money even before the game is released. Alas, due to their fickleness, players are now suspicious of such projects. If Minecraft has reached version 1.0, then some of the alpha projects are either being carried out too slowly or even abandoned halfway through. The long-term construction of Cortex Command was sold on Humble Indie Bundle 2 in 2010, Voxatron on the bundle of the same name at the end of 2011, and these are far from the worst options - at least you can play these games more or less comfortably. Some alpha projects offer a player who has just donated $20 a couple of figurines running around in the desert and empty menu blanks when trying to do anything. Will the customer be satisfied with this? Hardly.

If you want to try alpha funding in your project, then it's better to have a more or less working version for players right away, as well as keep a detailed development blog with constant updates. In this case, people will have at least some confidence that they are not paying money for zilch. Well, some bonuses for buyers, like nominal thanks in the credits, also work as a plus.

Take us with you

If you want to participate in some kind of promotion like an indie bundle or a special sale, then keep a close eye on game announcements. As soon as you see that someone is planning a suitable event - immediately write to them and offer your project.

From our own experience - we managed to participate in the Because We May (http://www.becausewemay.com) campaign, which took place in May-June this year. The idea is that indie developers have been cutting prices on their games at the same time, simply because they can do it and are not affected by publisher policies. As a result of the action, we observed an increase in sales, but not as serious as that of the headliners of the sale. Nevertheless, such an experience can be called positive.

If you want to participate in an indie band, then a lot depends on the game itself. Moreover, not only from its quality - rather mediocre projects flicker in bundles, but from technical characteristics. If you look at past members of popular bundles, then a multi-platform project (PC + Mac + Linux) has more chances, which gets to the buyer in the form of a DRM-Free version and STEAM / Desura keys.

There are bundles that are handled by certain publishers. If they like your game, you will receive an offer to publish the project with subsequent participation in the bundle. Staying true to indie or signing this deal is up to you.

…Profit?

What is the result? You should not think from the first seconds of development that your debut game will become famous all over the world. One idea may not be enough for this - both budget and time will play their role. The same indie Amnesia was made for three years and spent $360,000 on development. This, for a moment, is an apartment in Moscow and a good sports car at the entrance.

Also, do not expect a game from an unknown developer to be supported by thousands of players on KickStarter. This Project Eternity from Obsidian raises over a million dollars in its first day. A beginner, on the other hand, can count on 10-20 thousand dollars, and even then, if he promises good gifts to sponsors, and also constantly advertises his project for a whole month.

Making millions on the first game is almost impossible, so you shouldn’t count on Notch’s fame right off the bat. Moreover, for him Minecraft was not the first or even the tenth game. The first project will definitely have a certain amount of sales, but money is far from the main thing here.

The most valuable thing you get is experience. It is one thing to read how other people describe the process, and quite another to try it out for yourself. If you don't stop, the second game will be head and shoulders better than the first. Instead of dealing with technical issues, you will put more effort into the game itself, and customer feedback will tell you what they want to see from you.

And the feeling that someone likes the project you created is great inspiration. If you haven't seen Indie Game the Movie yet, check it out. This film perfectly conveys the feelings of the developers about everything related to their games. Braid, Super Meat Boy or your own game, it doesn't matter. The intensity of passions will be the same.

Catch the wave and who knows, maybe the next project will become the headliner of a famous bundle, and Notch himself will write a tweet about you!

Box 1:
Retention - The first game Sometimes You

Our first Retention game is a small art project that takes only 10 minutes to complete from start to finish. We tried to give the player some new and unusual sensations during these minutes, and, according to the reviews in the press, we succeeded. In Retention, we have collected an unusual genre (interactive photo album), more than two hundred processed photos from personal albums and an atmospheric soundtrack, which was written before the start of development, but fit well into the overall picture. The main part of the development took a little over a month, and a couple more months were spent translating and advertising the game.

One of the most difficult moments of development was in August 2011, when Trauma was unexpectedly released on STEAM. Trauma and Retention have almost the same tie-ins, and both games rely on photographs. It was obvious that every second journalist would write about this similarity in his review. And if Trauma was already released in August, then Retention was still in the process of development - after all, they can be accused of plagiarism! Nevertheless, we were able to gather our strength and bring the game to release. We believed in the project too much to just drop it like that.

Here is one of the first screenshots of the game that eventually became Retention. Believe it or not, it was originally a 1D fantasy with wizards and dragons. That idea is still waiting in the wings.

Some experience about publishing on STEAM

Valve contacted me after the trailer and post on RPS (“Rock, Paper, Shotgun”, www.rockpapershotgun.com), just as I was about to submit the project to them. Then there was a long consideration, after which I signed an NDA, and I was given access to Steamgames and the Steam API (the api is very convenient, it comes with an example for all possible functions, you can connect to the project pretty quickly). Then for another two months the game lay ready-made on Steam (it looks like they have everything planned out for months in advance), towards the end of this period a distribution agreement was signed, and a specific release date was set. On the launch day, there were problems with downloading the video, the server was raised only in the evening, so the release was shifted by 1 day. I absolutely did not know what to expect from sales, in the first week it was earned 3 times more than in all the time before Steam.

Alexey Abramenko, the developer of “Intrusion 2”, shared his experience.

Called the role-playing strategy "the first indie hit" of the year. Punch Club was developed by the St. Petersburg studio Lazy Bear Games, consisting of three people: two developers and a designer. "Secret" met with partners and found out how the team made its first hit.

The first million programmers from St. Petersburg Svyatoslav Cherkasov and Nikita Kulaga waited a long time - their studio Lazy Bear Games (first name - GameJam) did not earn money for four years and made several failed games. Punch Club is not only a victory for Cherkasov and Kulaga, small teams of Russian developers have made sure that what they love can bring a lot of income. “For a small Russian studio, this is a success, they often do not earn at all,” says Maxim Donskikh, president of the Game Insight gaming company. In the West, such cases are more common - for example, recently the game Dear Esther by the British studio thechineseroom paid for itself in the first five hours of sales on Steam, and The Witness puzzle by an American programmer brought $ 5 million to the creator and publisher in the first week.

Indie games are produced on a small budget and driven by the enthusiasm of the team. The creators only risk their time, so they can experiment and remake the game as much as they want. Experts argue that the definition of "indie" today is very arbitrary, because the goal of both mainstream and indie developers is to find their audience and make money. “In the paid games segment, there is only one chance - the game shoots right away, and then a slow decline begins,” says Donskikh. If you fail to excite the public right away, the game dies under the layer of new releases. For example, about ten games appear daily on Steam, hundreds in the App Store or Google Play.

Playful childhood

Cherkasov began programming in the sixth grade, went to courses at the Youth House, where they were forced to take reporting games once a year. “They instilled in me the habit of bringing the project to the final point. I see a lot of teams with good ideas, but they can take a very long time to release a game,” he says. I met Kulaga in 2008, both hardcore gamers, they played every night in World of Warcraft. Kulaga was 22 years old, he had just graduated from the Faculty of Information Security at the Electrotechnical University (SPbGETU) and got a job at a branch of a subsidiary of Gazprom. Cherkasov was 26, he developed the site wowdata.ru - Wikipedia for fans of World of Warcraft - where you could buy game currency and fan paraphernalia.

They talked in a game chat, and six months later they met in person at a meeting of gamers in St. Petersburg. Kulaga began to help Cherkasov: together they made electronic Warcraft guides, sent caps and T-shirts by mail all over Russia. Together we launched the ladata project, a Lineage II knowledge base with the same monetization as wowdata.ru - selling souvenirs and game money.

At first, the partners worked remotely, but quickly realized that discipline was required. We rented a room for 16,000 rubles a month in the Ekateringofsky business center, where Kulaga worked then. “Firstly, you pay for it and you already understand that this is not just pampering. Plus, you share energy: you relax at home, and you work at work, this is very important, ”the developer is sure. Every day, Kulaga finished his main work and went down to the neighboring office to work on his projects. His working day began at 8 am and ended at 11 am.

Photo: Photo: Dmitry Tsyrenshchikov/Secret Firmy

First attempts

One day, Cherkasov watched YouTube reports from the 2009 Game Developers Conference (GDC). Speakers talked about the boom of free to play games (access to the game is free, and additional features cost money) in social networks. In 2009, the game “Merry Farmer” appeared on VKontakte - a translation of the Chinese Happy Harvest, a year later more than 8 million people played it: they watered the garden, stole crops from friends, and raised pets.

“Everyone was crazy about how much money it could bring, we also wanted to become millionaires,” recalls Cherkasov. The partners decided to write a social game, although they themselves, like most real gamers, did not like free to play, and had a vague idea of ​​​​how free games work. They hired a freelance designer and spent eight months building Micronia, a mix of MyBrute and Spore sims where you train a virtual pet. It turned out that making a social game is not so easy: you need to calculate what users will pay for, think over their path, motivation to buy, and so on. The game was released in 2010, when social networks had already flooded thousands of applications, and the mechanics invented by Cherkasov and Kulaga did not seem unusual to users. It also turned out that promotion is not their forte: relationships with social networks required routine work and individual skills. Six months later, Micronia brought 5000-7000 rubles a month, I had to admit defeat. The game was sold to a friend for 50,000 rubles, the project still lives on VKontakte, according to social network statistics, 200,000 users played the first game of Cherkasov and Kulaga.

Cherkasov described the conclusions drawn from this experience in an article on Habré when they were already working on a new project. "Citybuilders" like Farmville were still successful, clones of the project grew like mushrooms. At Russian conferences they said: "If you want to survive, make a city builder." The partners created another copy of the social game, called it "New City" and even enlisted the support of a large publisher, Social Quantum (in the 2014 Forbes ranking - one of the richest companies in Runet).

The partners again missed the moment - in the year and a half that went into development, city builders went out of fashion and a large publisher disappeared. Kulaga recalls how, while working on the New City, he ate pasta with cheese sauce for several months in order to save money.

“We started making free to play because there was a boom in free to play, but we ourselves, firstly, didn’t play it, and secondly, we didn’t like it,” Cherkasov admits a global mistake. He again drew conclusions and designed them in the form of an instructive article on Habré called “What to do ???”, it was accompanied by a picture with the inscription “programming for food”.

Russian companies responded to the cry of the soul. The Moscow studio Game Garden offered the studio to jointly make a free mobile game "Kingdom of Fairy Tales" with kind gnomes and fairies. The partners agreed - after the "New City" their studio had to somehow survive. Moreover, the company took all the risks, promised a share in the profits and a decent salary to the hired workers. Working on the project, even if not close in spirit, helped to keep the office and relax, that is, to think about a new idea. The partners decided to make the game not for easy money, but for love.

New model

“They say the games are played by weird freaks, and that's true. The entire industry is inhabited by pronounced introverts, it is difficult for them to make contact with strangers. Slavik and I are like that too,” Kulaga says. Overcoming the reluctance to "shine", the partners participated in game jams - competitions for developers, for which they need to make a game on a certain topic in a short time. In 2014, at Games Jam Kanobu, the partners presented the nostalgic strategy VHS-Story and won the Grand Prix. This instilled confidence. Kulaga quit his job as an employee, and the partners focused on a new idea.

At one of the conferences, Alex Nichiporchik, founder of the European indie game publisher TinyBuild, noticed the game. He realized that "humor is well intertwined with history and the game will shoot for nostalgia." TinyBuild agreed to publish VHS Story, and at the same time offered to change the name to something more understandable for Western audiences - for example, Punch Club. Kulaga's wife Lilya offered to draw a logo in the form of a red cork.

“The game is thought up like this: you look at how the mechanics are implemented, what you like in other games. I look at how I feel when I play, when I get the most pleasure, where my heart rate rises, where I get frustrated. I try to form all these sensations and put them into my game,” Kulaga explains. He watched the movie Rocky one night, and the next day he came up with the idea. “I know what we will do!” he said to Cherkasov. For half an hour he waved his arms and showed how Stallone-style fights would take place. He envisioned street fighting with references to action movies from the 80s and 90s.

The partners divided among themselves the films that need to be watched in order to collect material and quotes. For example, we decided to use the moment from the movie when the coach gave the hero a medallion in the shape of a glove. The project was considered for two months. The logo of the studio Lazy Bear Games - a sleeping bear. “It's not for nothing that we are called that,” Cherkasov laughs - the upcoming Jam Game Kanobu, for which a demo version had to be submitted, became a magical kick.

For the first year and a half, the partners worked on the mechanics, they did not write any dialogues. In the process, the project was constantly changing: the interface was redrawn several times, the impact system was reworked. After winning the competition, Kulaga took up the script: “I was looking for the most crazy turn and the most crazy event - the hero ate pizza with hallucinogenic mushrooms, started fighting crocodiles, met gangsters, ended up in prison, ended up in Russia, fought with a bear. It's a little crazy, but people are having fun... If you look at the action films that we refer to, there is also nonsense, so we had complete carte blanche.

To make the game interesting for a young international audience, references to more iconic films of the 2000s were inserted into it - Jay and Silent Bob were placed near the store, and Vincent Vega and Jules Winnfield from Pulp Fiction were placed at the table in a pizzeria. When they were drawing a new game scene, the three of us sat down and said: “We need a cafe, for example, from Pulp Fiction, let's have a ship in the back, put familiar characters at the table.” The synopsis came out like this: “As a child, you witnessed the bloody murder of your father and were separated from your brother. You promised your dying father that you could take care of yourself! Now you have to train hard, eat steaks and punch your way to the top of your fighting career. And, of course, to find the father's killer and take revenge.

The hero must first be sent to the refrigerator for a portion of food, then made to swing in the hall, go to work, on the way back to the store and back to the hall. In the reviews, users complain about the dynamic first part and the boring second - everything repeats. According to Donskikh, this is typical of many strategy games. “The trouble is that everything else, except for such homages to film classics, turned out to be banal and boring. The path to the heights of boxing glory is littered with primitive grind and farm,” noted one of the reviews.

The partners wanted to launch Punch Club several times - they had been making the game for two years and were pretty tired. Nichiporchik insisted on launching in January, when other publishers would just wake up after the New Year. In October 2015, January seemed unattainably far away: “We thought we couldn’t do better,” Kulaga recalls.

launch

On January 7, the collective mind played on the Twitch platform - 3300 users sent commands through the hashtag on the Punch Club channel in front of thousands of viewers, in 25 seconds they determined by a majority of votes what the hero would do. For this, the studio has developed a special program. In addition, the publisher stated that the game will be available on Steam only after the collective mind passes it on Twitch. Tinybuild had previously come up with new solutions to launch their games on this platform, and when they proposed such an unusual move to the PR team of the site, they agreed. This caused a big stir, users tore and threw - they pre-ordered on Steam, but could not start the game. Game forums were filled with negative reviews with a proposal to boycott the game. After 36 hours, the game became available for download, Punch Club set a record for the shortest pre-sale period in the history of Steam, the publisher received 25,000 pre-orders. For several days, Punch Club stayed in the top 10 on iOS and in the Steam rankings (today it ranks 17th), many media wrote about this. The game costs from 199 rubles (Android) to $9.99 (publisher's website), depending on the platform.

“The studio did the right thing by choosing a paid model, despite the fact that free to play is more viable. It is simply not possible for a small team to make it, such games need to be supported for years, all the time to provide an influx of new content, ”Donskoy believes. According to the co-founder of the Black Wing Foundation game developer Alexei Savchenko, retro gameplays are now extremely popular on Steam, which is why the creators have found their audience. In addition, "the game is made with great attention to detail, while without opportunistic thinking and the desire to do what you would like, and not "what the experts said on the Internet"".

At the end of January, the game was launched on Android, now it has been downloaded 5,000 times at a price of 199 rubles. Partners have been shutting down the ability to use Punch Club on phones that couldn't be tuned for (it needed to be adapted for 16,000 devices) all night to reduce the amount of negativity.

According to the Steam Spy analytical service, 25% of users buy the game in America, 24% in Germany, and 14% in Russia. Only on Steam bought 116,000 copies. Kulaga believes that victory came as soon as they did what they loved themselves. “When you put yourself in a rigid framework, you start working not to make a good game, but to fulfill the plan. In the case of indie games, when the game is interesting with original solutions and ideas, it kills. There are different rules in the assembly line games with budgets,” he explains. - Of course, we could earn more. But we work in such a way that we feel comfortable: we get enough sleep, rest, come to work by 12. There is some kind of plan, but it is needed for self-organization.”

prospects

“We develop in Russia for rubles, and we sell for dollars. Therefore, we are in a winning position. Now 100,000 rubles is $1,500. Developers in Holland or Germany now cost an average of 7,000 euros,” says Kulaga. They want to expand the staff a little, but they are not going to turn into a big company in order to maintain home comfort. The partners have ideas for future projects, but it is impossible to predict whether they will succeed.

In February, Punch Club will have the first update, while it's free, then there will be paid ones. Now they are thinking in which direction to develop the game further: release additional game content for money, make a sequel, release the game on consoles - PlayStation and Xbox.

“If now developers can count on, say, $300,000 in income, in the next few months the amount will reach $500,000 - 600,000,” says Valentin Merzlikin, evangelist of the Creative Mobile publishing direction (30% of the proceeds are kept by the platform, another 30% is taken by the publisher, the studio earns the rest. - Approx. "Secret"). - Punch Club became successful thanks to the original product and live marketing from the publisher. The hackneyed, cliched game captivates with humor and perfectly recreated with the help of the popular pixel art atmosphere of the 90s in the gaming environment. Despite good sales, the game is subject to fair criticism. Buyers are counting on updates - we expect the authors to improve the interfaces, make it easier to enter the game, introduce the player to the rules faster, adjust the length of the battle and get rid of the quickly boring 8-bit music. According to him, the funeral of premium games has been going on for several years, but now their sales on Steam are growing. Punch Club once again confirms that a quality game and competent promotion will always find its fans.

Cover photo: Dmitry Tsyrenshchikov / Sekret Firmy

We looked at where to start your journey in the gaming industry. At the same time, the majority of novice game developers are driven by the desire to start developing the same dream game. Today we will talk about how to do this if you are an indie developer. By the way, you can see the projects that indie developers started with us at the Higher School of Economics at the Higher School of Economics in the Game Project Management program in the Alumni Projects section. So, depending on the existing skills and not wanting to start with working in a game studio, a novice developer has a choice of two options for the development of events:

• Rely completely on your strength
• Assemble a team (usually, from the same enthusiasts)

Let's imagine that a decision has been made to cope on our own.

In this case, having assessed his skills, the game developer decided that he was quite capable of pulling the development of the game on his own. He has programming skills or, for example, has a high skill in graphic design and is able to bring the project to mind with the help of a constructor engine that does not involve writing code. If the project does not claim exorbitant ambitions and is built around certain mechanics, the task becomes quite feasible. All problems begin when building a pipeline and frequent omissions in individual stages.

Where to start and what to look for

Firstly, the development of the project involves, first of all, time. Depending on the scale, this will be from about three months to infinity. To prevent this from happening, you need to clearly calculate the time that the developer can allocate to complete all the necessary tasks. If this is a game that is made in free evenings, it is obvious that the terms will increase several times. If not the most popular, but still periodically occurring decision was made - to focus only on the development of the game, you need to decide on the sources of income or immediately lay a budget, in the presence of which you will not have to deal with issues of your own survival.

To begin with, it is best to take care of scheduling - deadlines / necessary assets / tasks and budgets. Any free task manager like Wunderlist, Trello or OneNote can do this. You need to check with them every day and hammer in all the changes there. Thus, you can track the progress of the project and build the necessary forecasts in advance, optimizing and rebuilding processes. It will also help with motivation and self-control. Since it is much easier to build calculations and plan tasks for one person, budget optimization will be analyzed in more detail using the example of the following option.

The second solution is gathering an indie team

Let's say you have a clear understanding of the gaming industry, the organization of the development process, and, in general, a fairly tangible knowledge of game projects. At the same time, there is a catch - you do not fall into the number of completely applied specialists, such as programmers / artists / composers, etc. In order to become a specialist in any applied field, it will most likely take a huge amount of time, but even to organize the process, you will have to delve into everything at least at a certain level. You need a clear understanding of what exactly the people in your team are doing and what tasks will take how much time. As in the first case, you will need to calculate the timing and create a budget. With the exception of those funds that will be needed at least in order to ensure at least some more or less own existence. As with an indie loner, a project's budget may vary, or it may not exist at all. Then the team will consist of only enthusiasts. Similar projects have been published and virtually all unofficial localization teams work on such a system, but usually this is not the best scheme. Practice shows that people who work on enthusiasm either “burn out” within a few months, or, one way or another, always put their interests and problems in the foreground and are not ready to devote enough time to the project. It’s better to lay at least some kind of budget – it can be even lower than average, but it still motivates a lot and allows enthusiasm to live much longer.

With such budgets, you can only count on the same people - who will burn, like you, to make a project and try with all your might to bring it to release. The question is where to find such people? You should not expect that these will be highly qualified specialists, so you should focus only on those tasks that are needed specifically for this project. In the best case, the team will gradually grow, mastering new horizons, but most likely there will not be time for the constant development of new tasks. Before the formation of budgets and deadlines, it is necessary to draw up a clear technical task and a game design document. This is where the creation of any game project begins. When all tasks are known, budgets are allocated, and deadlines are calculated, team formation begins.

pre-production

The project has already defined a graphic style, a platform, possible engines, a genre are already known, and in general, a common vision has been formed. This means that you can already start looking for at least an artist, programmer and game designer. If the game promises to be thematic or aimed at a certain setting, it makes sense to go looking in all thematic communities: social networks, portals, thematic sites, fan groups for similar games - at least there is a section with fan art everywhere. You can select several decent works at once, look at the accounts of artists and designers (usually everyone who is serious about creating art has accounts on deviantart and behance). Programmers and game designers also come across in such communities, but much less often. The call to quit still makes sense, but it’s better to do it, including in groups related to the necessary engines, programming, and already directly to game development. Usually, these are still people who have already decided for themselves to go into this area, and there are many who also do not know where to start and are looking for a team - unite! At gamedev conferences, the likelihood of finding the right people also increases - you find yourself in the concentration of the gaming industry and it definitely makes sense to attend them for a number of reasons. Starting from the search for the right specialists and enthusiasts, ending with self-development.

Legal support can be very different, from opening an LLC to hiring through freelance platforms. If there is any project budget, the second option is easier and provides proof of your financial relationship in case of disputes. Our most famous sites are Fl.ru and Upwork.com. The first one has a larger segment of the Russian Federation and the CIS, the second one has specialists from all over the world. If the goal is to fix relationships, FL is quite suitable, Upwork has a more powerful platform, but the percentage of the site is higher and it makes sense to use it only if you need to find an outsourcer.

Optimizing Available Resources

When forming a budget in such circumstances, it is very important to use all opportunities to reduce costs, but only those that will not be to the detriment of the project itself. To write musical accompaniment, it is not necessary to contact individuals or companies. Sounds with a free license can be found on freesound.org, a full license to use ready-made tracks can be bought at fairly loyal prices on audiojungle (about $25-70 per track). Most of the graphical assets/packs and plugins for the necessary tasks are available in the store of the engine itself (Unity, Unreal) or on similar resources. If there is only one project, it does not involve a gigantic scale, and the team has less than 10 people, it makes little sense to purchase subscriptions to large-scale task trackers like Jira or Redmine. A standard set of Google docs, Trello, Slack and Telegram is enough. We are also considering the option when the whole team is “remote” and not sitting somewhere in the office - you don’t need a full-time working day, break down tasks by time. Who does what and when does not really matter if the work is done on time. The best thing to do is to focus on building the process in this way, and keep in mind that any free tools that are up to the task will not only be a solution, but will also help reduce the budget. Deadlines should always be laid with a margin - at least two months. Due to various circumstances, something can shift, even people on the project can change - this must also be taken into account. It will almost never be possible to take everything into account, but if most of the possible problems are calculated, and the roles in the project and related tasks are clearly distributed, the risks are significantly reduced.

What to do with the game on release is another story. Looking for a publisher, publishing on their own, attracting additional investments or going into crowdfunding - each team decides already due to too many circumstances. It also makes sense to think ahead, but sometimes the goal may be that the game just at least sees the light of day and serves as a start to more serious projects and new perspectives. Now marketing budgets vary too much depending on the platform and methods of promotion, but at a minimum, nothing prevents you from creating a project community and reporting all the news related to it, while maintaining the activity of a potential audience.

Papers, Please; Her Story, Stardew Valley, The Stanley Parable, Minecraft and Braid are games created by just 1 person.

Punch club was developed by a team of several people.

Blizzard Entertainment was founded by three UCLA alumni.

From all the examples it is clear that such cases occur and have the right to life. Everything is determined by the set goals, perseverance and the desire to let the project see the light. Most of the negative circumstances are solvable and it all depends on the readiness to reorganize in time and be able to quickly make a number of decisions depending on the situation. Virtually everything will depend on the team - these are people with whom you should have similar goals, mutual understanding and a similar attitude to what you are doing. Otherwise, you get a fable about a swan, a cancer and a pike, where even diligence with perseverance will not budge the cart. Set one direction is your main goal.

We wish you successful projects and invite you to join the Game Project Management program and launch new good games together!