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(side note, get it? It is an Apple computer magazine called inCIDER? Get it?)įor early indie software distribution, magazines would literally reprint source code and people would retype that code into their computer to play the game. The magazine paid him $100 for it ($300 in 2023 dollars). In John Romero’s book Doom Guy, the first time he was paid for making a game was an Apple II game he published called Scout Search for inCider Magazine. Indies stopped developing “middle” games because the industry stopped directly paying for them. (Also Jeans & sandals was a thing we did in the 90s) Why did this happen? I did not have a chance to ask John whether this is a picture of Noel Stephens at Ion Storm laughing at John because he broke a table or because he has more denim below the waist. I believe the modern indie business model that skips over developing “middle games” is why 75% of studios on Steam have released 1 and only 1 game. To the modern indie dev business model, dedicating just 3 months (or less) to your first project is shocking and when I say that they react as if I am asking someone to perform a backflip to the moon or to change their blood type using transcendental meditation. Everyone expected $300,000 payouts to be the baseline rather than the exception.īut now, to the modern indie dev business model, (especially the ones hanging out on r/gamedev): earning $40,000 or less is considered a complete failure and should be mocked publicly (this is them speaking, not me). Unfortunately when games made by small teams started earning millions and people could buy as many jorts and race cars as they wanted. A “middle game” should only take 1 to 9 months to create and can be profitable (or at least not a money sink) because it is expected to earn in the range of $10,000 to $40,000. These are games that are bigger and more polished than a game jam game but are not huge, 30 hour epic triple-I indie game.

That mentality right there is the missing middle problem: These days, studios either make jam games that they hammer out in a weekend that they post to itch for free or they burn the ships, quit their job, and make multi-year mega projects that can only be profitable if they earn multiple hundred thousands of dollars. “We are a team of 3 developers and did a game jam, published it on itch.io, had fun, people seemed excited for our game, so we formed an LLC, signed with a publisher, and are planning to spend 3 years making our first game for which our goals are modest: we really only want to make $300,000.”

The modern indie game business model and development process has a missing middle problem.įor the last decade or so, the business model of first time indie studios goes something like this: (Also I wanted an excuse to write a post that included as many pictures of the Doom guys wearing jorts as possible) From John Romero’s Smug Mug account “Both Shawn Green and myself are big heavy metal maniacs!” My theory: The missing middle This has caused developers to have incorrect assumptions, wasted resources, and burnout. The industry has essentially stretched us to cut out one of the most important stepping stones between tiny games and multi-year projects. In today’s post I want to explore why new indie game developers plunge themselves into much longer game development cycles. My concern is that when I talk to first time game devs they almost always tell me they are 2 years deep into their 4 year project. IMPORTANT: this is not a lazy devs argument! Everyone is working their ass off these days. How is it that we have better tools which should make us more productive, and better communications that should increase collaboration, and digital distribution which has, essentially, 0 marginal cost, and yet games take longer to make? Indie game developers were supposed to be small, nimble, and quicker than the hulking, slow moving AAA goliaths.

Yet, despite all the limitations of the 1990s, the guys at id Software could make 13 games in 1 year. There was no widely accessible internet or cloud-based source-control or storage so you couldn’t work remotely. When John Romero was making games In the 1990s there was no digital distribution so you had to get a company like Softdisk to publish you and physically manufacture and distribute your games by mail! There was no Unity, Gamemaker, Godot, or Unreal so if you wanted to make a game you had to have a full-time person (in their case John Carmack) crafting your game engine from scratch (usually in C or machine code) every time. Other than he is my total hero, and he was born and he was raised in my hometown, I wanted to interview John Romero to try and solve the modern indie game development paradox.

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