don't go indie, 5 years of gamedev will kill you

This is me, at the start and finish of making my first game. As things look right now, it's also going to be my only game.

My big brother and I started our company in 2011, and along with 2 programmers fresh out of college like me (but really good as we found out) set out to make a game from scratch. New engine, new type of game.

He and I both have been big on game design for a while now, though only he properly documented it with a design blog for a few years: http://tinyurl.com/htdnmsv

So with just the four of us, starting full time in 2012 we went on to build Brigador, a real-time isometric mech game with tactical combat and fully destructible environments. Aka a kool-aid man simulator.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/274500

Want to pilot a 100-ton behemoth while doing your best impersonation of the kool-aid man? You can do that.

Want to sneak around in a light mech with a stealth field, assassinating lone targets? You can do that too...

...or you can just blast the whole place apart, all up to you. Part of the reason we wrote our own engine was so that we could realize the game world this way. Real destructibility, not just lip service.

Our players have likened Brigador to Desert Strike, Future Cop LAPD, Syndicate, Crusader: No Remorse, Mech Warrior 3050, and Walker, if that's any indication. Here's a proper trailer if you want to see more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPnjH8a-W1U

Our goal with the game was to make something that respected players' time and gave them a large variety of ways to play the game, and I think we did that. But it turns out it's much harder to get reviewers to look at your game if there's any kind of barrier to entry-- which in our case was tank controls and challenging gameplay.

Press coverage is all about critical mass, and it's a horrible horrible catch-22. If your game has any of those barriers, you have to either rely on a reputation you've already established, or find some reviewers you click with to go to bat for you. If you're lucky you'll get some momentum and be able to keep running that cycle until you build up enough of an audience to be sustainable.

[edit] To be clear, I've been attending and demoing at conventions for 2 years, have been working with a PR agency for over 1 year, and have flown out to San Francisco and New York to meet with press along with sending out hundreds of emails to both press and twitch/YT personalities. All told we've spent >$10k for marketing purposes.

In our case, 5 years of self-funded work to try and make a unique game, and we released v1.0 last week to resounding... silence.

Rock Paper Shotgun* gave us a nice review promptly after release, and PC Gamer** did a nice preview about all the extras we did and has a review in the pipe, but that's about it. Been 12 days since we released the game and there aren't even enough reviews to give us a metacritic score.

You need 4 reviews to get a metacritic score.

And I know the close timing to E3 is a factor here but there was still 2 weeks lead time, and I guarantee you it wouldn't be an issue if Brigador had ever been considered an "important" game.

*https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/06/03/brigador-review/
**http://www.pcgamer.com/brigador-is-releasing-in-june-with-an-unusual-extra/

Game development itself is great for the most part, but financial realities not so much. We didn't have a publisher, and didn't want to do a kickstarter on the very real possibility that we'd fail to finish. So that left us with being completely self-funded, code for spending what savings you might have had, relying on the generosity of your family and the frankly irrational confidence they have in you, and living frugally in a low cost college-town. This picture is what my life has been like for the last five years: living together with my coworkers, office instead of a living room, and being too exhausted to cook or clean up after ourselves. Most days we either eat at our desks or at that coffee table while watching Archer, Bob's Burgers, or Star Trek. By the last couple of months, eat/sleep/develop became our sole activities as it was the only way we could hit our "we're out of money/sanity" ship dates.

When schools out for summer

As an added bonus, the stress of that situation 5 years on, plus shipping the game has reduced me from a guy who boxed in college* to a 30lb heavier idiot who had to see a doctor for what I discovered were panic attacks (new horizons!). Also following bloodwork being done, the doctor was perplexed by how low my Vitamin D levels were until I explained to him that I literally never go outside anymore. He also asked if I had a stressful job, so I laughed.

*http://i.imgur.com/wHrIwXP.jpg

This is what selling an indie game is like if you're not one of the Specials. Every game has peaks in sales that decay, but normally those slide into a baseline rate that's higher than non-existent. Media coverage, both press and youtube/twitch, largely determines both how high your sales peaks are, as well as how quickly they decay. When all mention of you or your game disappears from the internet within a few days, you don't have momentum so much as a flatline.

The only time Brigador has ever actually been covered by major traffic is when, ironically, it wasn't being covered at all. Back in February I had the extraordinary fortune of writing a frustrated but humorous response to a pair of posters on our forums who were dutifully informing me that the game I'd spent 5 years building wasn't worth $20, but magically became so at $15.

That post* went viral, and for the first time (outside a buried paragraph snippet) got us covered by Kotaku** and various others. The ensuing sales spike, which you can see above on the right, sold more copies of the game than our Early Access launch. And before you say anything, our Early Access sales were so bad that GOG backed out of adding Brigador to their platform. I really enjoyed getting that email.

I'm glad the viral streak happened, and it gave us a little breathing room, but it also shows just how massive an impact simple visibility makes for sales. So as a developer, especially one of limited means, past a certain point your hands are simply tied. And that's terrifying. If the gaming gods don't favor you, it doesn't matter what you've made, you're just screwed. In our case, it would mean coming away with an ivy league education's worth of debt.

*#c405692224242982114">#c405692224242982114">#c405692224242982114">http://steamcommunity.com/app/274500/discussions/0/405691491102673468/?tscn=1456139312#c405692224242982114
**http://kotaku.com/steam-dev-fights-price-complaints-with-excellent-breakd-1760852068

This isn't an Indiepocalypse post. That would imply the market isn't large enough to support the breadth of games being made, which I don't believe to be the case. We know there's a market for Brigador, but you can't buy what you don't know exists.

So yeah, that's my spiel. If you made it this far, thanks for reading. I'm not asking for pity, and I only want you to buy the game if it actually interests you. I'm not saying we did everything right, I just want to be able to keep doing my job.

So if you feel like helping out, just tell people we exist. Share this post, or just send someone to our steam page. We love making games, I think we've made damn good one too. But that all ends if we don't get some kind of a bump soon.

And if you're someone seriously considering going into indie dev right now, my honest advice is don't. You might get lucky, but more than likely you'll just end up with a pile of debt and a handful of (admittedly wonderful) customers.

As an addendum, I'd be a huge jerk if I didn't mention the phenomenal work of some guys we collaborated with. Makeup and Vanity Set did 2 1/2 hours of original music for Brigador, the 1st half of which is available now while the rest will be ready by the end of the month. If you like John Carpenter synths, the Hotline Miami OST etc then you'll be at home with his music. I've been listening to it for years and I still love it. You can get it direct from him as well as a vinyl here: http://makeupandvanityset.com/

And last of all, you know how with some games you wonder "why didn't they just make a book/movie?" Well that's what we did. In Brad Buckmaster we found a keen writer with an extraordinary grasp for conveying action. We liked it so much we did an audiobook to accompany it. You can get both the audiobook* and the OST together as part of the DLC**, and you can find the book on amazon*** as well. Brad's similarly new to his industry and deserves any love you can send his way.

*https://soundcloud.com/gausswerks/sets/brigador-audiobook
**http://store.steampowered.com/app/468280/
***https://www.amazon.com/Brigador-Brad-Buckmaster-ebook/dp/B01G8UZZSW

Ok, I'm out. Enjoy E3 folks.