How To Avoid Making Money Making Indie Games
So I'm not much of an expert on making money making indie games, though I have it on good authority that it's possible. But between my own mistakes and learning from others, I know a bit about how to NOT make money at this. I was really good at that one without even trying!

So if you want to AVOID making money making games, here's a bunch of tricks to doing just that. There are no guarantees, of course.... it's certainly possible that you might accidentally generate some revenue this way. But it's less likely.

#1 - Don't Complete A Game
Once you get your game to a level that "looks" 80% done (which means it's really closer to 20% complete), it's time to abandon that project and move on to bigger and better things. Rinse and repeat!

#2 - Wait For the Perfect Moment to Start
One day you'll have a team, or that awesome publisher contract, and THEN you can get started on your killer game.

#3 - Make a Generic Clone In a Crowded Genre
Because what the world needs now isn't love, sweet lovel. It's yet another generic WWII shooter! Yeah! Or a vanilla Aquanoid clone! Yeah! Or, hey, Bejewelled - but with gumdrops instead of jewels! Watch 'em flock to your door to buy something that's no better and no different from a hundred other competing products.

#4 - Don't Polish It
Players don't care about polish or consistent interfaces or minor irritating bugs or cruddy programmer art - they just want the gameplay. Hey, that was Ed Wood's attitude about movies, and he made some CLASSICS!

#5 - Don't Market It! If You Build It They Will Come!
Don't market or try to INFORM people of your product. Don't go out to everywhere potential customers might be and give them the message that there's something they might actually enjoy playing out there for them to try. Let them figure it out by divine inspiration or Googling the exact name of your product and stumbling across your website.

#6 - Ignore Player and Reviewer Feedback
Who cares what they players or reviewers say? If they don't get it, it's because they just lack the mental capacity to appreciate the artistic genius of the designer!

#7 - Don't Try To Sell The Full Version In The Demo
You don't want to be seen as pushy or money-grubbing. So don't even MENTION that the player can buy the full version of the game in the demo. If they really wanted it, they'd scour your website for hours trying to find a way to send you money.

#8 - Don't Package Your Game With An Installer And Uninstaller
All your game needs to have is a zip file, and players can just drop it and run it from the directory of their choice - they are all expert computer users, right? And they should be able to figure out how to uninstall it. It was good enough for the DOS days, it should be good enough for today.

#9 - Don't Show Off the Game's Best Features in the Demo!
Don't let those freeloaders experience the best your game has to offer! You worked hard for that - they should PAY to see what they are missing!

#10 - It's Okay That the Game Takes Forty-Five Minutes to Get Into
Gamers have nothing better to do with their time than to struggle through a half-hour or more of frustrating tutorials and opaque interfaces ... because by THEN the game really starts to get fun, and they'll be hooked!

#11 - Ignore New Opportunities, Just Do It the Way It's Always Been Done
It worked for those guys back in 1998 when the Internet was new and technology was different - you should be able to copy exactly what they did and take it to the bank, right? Lightning always strikes multiple times in the same place.

#12 - If At First You Don't Succeed, QUIT! (And don't take up parachuting!)
Okay, so your first game sold a total of TWO copies, and both of those were to relatives who felt sorry for you. Maybe it was because you followed some of the advice in this blog article. It's okay - you didn't do anything wrong, it's just that the market is totally different from how it was five years ago, and now it's impossible for indies to succeed. Forget everything you learned from this experience, don't try to improve, just call it quits and move on to a less time-consuming hobby.

Okay, that about does it for my week of posting lists of stuff for indie developers to work on. I hope it's been amusing, and possibly even informative! And if you are a game-player and not a game developer, I hope it has been an entertaining insight into the world of game design and development.

Labels: Biz

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 11:18 PM (Permalink)