After The Goldrush
Playhaus presents Punk Provocation 07
”*There was a shopping mall. Now it’s all covered with flowers.
If this is paradise. I wish I had a lawnmower.”
The demise of the traditional publisher model, the democratization of making and an increasingly over-saturated market has left the game sector in a state of flux. To remain relevant, game makers must re-evaluate and re-imagine the cultural inputs and creative outputs that shape their experiences and the experiences they create.
The Age of Abundance
It has never been easier to make a game. There are currently more than 7,500 indie games on Steam alone1. And it has never been easier to turn professional game maker. Even in a relatively small country like the United Kingdom, there are over 2,000 active video game companies [as of 2016]2.
The Age of Uncertainty
In the 12 months between April 2015 and April 2016, the number of indie-tagged games on Steam increased by over 50%3. In the same period, the median average number of copies sold per ‘indie’ game fell by roughly the same amount. There might well be more indie games but each game is selling less. Much less.
According to a report by trade association TIGA, 65% of game studios in the UK are ‘micro-studios’ employing four or fewer people [as of 2016]4. The same report revealed that these micro-studios are currently closing down at a rate of nearly one hundred per year.
It is not just micro-studios that are feeling the squeeze. A sector survey revealed that the average salary for a solo independent game developer was just $11,812 – around $7,000 less than the mean annual wage of a US fast food worker5. The same survey – published by Gamasutra – revealed that 57% of indie game developers (both solo and collectives) recoup less than $500 in game sales6.
Heads You Don’t Win, Tails You Lose
The Long Tail theory7 asserts that the cultural and economic shifts of the past two decades have dramatically altered the shape of the demand curve, reducing the importance of the mass market – and mass marketed – hits at the head of the curve and amplifying the commercial potential of the infinite number of low-demand niches at the tail.
By solving the distribution problem for creative enterprises, the long tail introduced a new one: discovery. The “tyranny of limited inventory” still exists but with eyeballs and attention replacing physical retail space as the limiting constraint8. For game makers, this issue is compounded not just by an extremely oversaturated, low-barrier-to-entry ecosystem; but also by a lack of differentiation regarding genres, mechanics and audio-visual aesthetics among self-identifying ‘indie games’.
Independents lacking an established fanbase who launch work into Long Tail ecosystems, cede control of their destiny. Their choices are to wait patiently – possibly forever – to be picked and promoted by the platform holder, hope to be the ‘needle in the haystack’ that is discovered organically by enough customers, or partner with a traditional publisher and outsource their hopes and dreams to an intermediary. Each option is a game of chance with the odds stacked against the maker.
The alternative is to stop playing by the rules and instead, cultivate a meaningful direct relationship with a small-but-passionate fanbase. As Wired founder, Kevin Kelly, astutely observes in his cult essay, 1,000 True Fans, publishers, studios, labels, aggregators and intermediaries are very much a 20th century phenomenon – a consequence of industrialization and the retail trends of the era9 . In contrast, patronage and direct audience relationships are timeless concepts.
Don’t Quit The Day Job
Digital distribution – and the subsequent rise of Long Tail economics and its dominant centralized aggregators – has radically changed the rules of game making. In contrast to previous eras, independent game developers are overabundant and ever-increasing. Similarly, games themselves are no longer scarce or ephemeral. Instead, they exist forever on an overcrowded virtual shelf. Daniel Cook, Spry Fox co-founder, asks: “What happens when demand is fixed and supply is high?”10. In his view, a fallow period of consolidation and conservatism that precipitates standardized demand, heightened competition, winner-takes-all markets, escalating development costs and a culture of risk aversion across the games sector. Sound familiar?
According to Cook, to survive as an independent in this harsh new reality game makers must do one of three things: become a genre king, dominate a niche market, or develop and manage a brand. But “not everyone can stay independent” – unsustainable game making enterprises will be left with the choice of becoming either hobbyists with day jobs who make games for love not money, externally-funded ‘independent’ game makers who get paid to make their games for the profit of others, or hired guns who perform specialized labor for mega studios and publishers. The only other alternative is extinction.
Of those three options, becoming a hobbyist is undoubtedly the most appealing to the truly independent of mind. And it’s in step with Kelly’s 1,000 True Fans hypothesis. Being a hobbyist is not about quitting game making but rejecting an over-supplied mainstream marketplace and the institutionalized assumption that independent game making is a right rather than a privilege. Cook’s advice to up-and-coming creators is to “expect a situation closer to what we see with writers, painters and musicians”.
Punk Provocations are thin slices from the archives of Punk Playthings: Provocations for 21st Century Game Makers by Chris Lowthorpe and Sean Taylor. Original cover art by Louie Isaaman-Jones.
Steam Spy. (2017). Genre Search: Indie. [Internet]. [Accessed 8 March 2017].
UKIE (2016). UK Video Games Fact Sheet. [Internet]. UKIE, 04 November 2016. [Accessed 20 November 2016].
Jarvis, M (2016). Average indie game Steam sales halve year-on-year. [Internet]. Develop Magazine, 28 April 2016. [Accessed 28 November 2016].
Tiga. (2016). March of the Micro-Studios. [Internet]. TIGA, 22 August 2016. [Accessed 20 November 2016].
Chalabi, M. (2014). What Do McDonald’s Workers Really Make Per Hour?[Internet]. FiveThirtyFive, 22 May 2014. [Accessed 8 March 2017]
Gamasutra. (2014). Gamasutra Salary Survey 2014. [Internet]. [Accessed 28 November 2016].
Anderson, C. (2004). The Long Tail. Wired Magazine, 01 October 2004. https://ailab-ua.github.io/courses/MIS510/5_longtail.pdf
Koster, R. (2009). Great article on indie biz. [Internet]. Available from: https://goo.gl/vZLWKm [Accessed 29 November 2016].
Kelly, K. (2016). 1,000 True Fans. [Internet]. Available from: http://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans/ [Accessed 10 December 2016].
Cook, D. (2016). Autumn for Indie Game Markets. [Internet]. Gamasutra, 16 October 2016. Available from: https://goo.gl/9i1CjI [Accessed 13 March 2017].