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More than one way to make it as an indy..

Name:	Corey Martin
Date Posted:	Dec 16, 2007
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I've recently gotten into what I can only describe as the best game evar. The name of it is Dwarf Fortress. The premise of the game is that you are the expedition leader of a group of dwarves, with the goal of building and maintaining a prosperous fortress outpost. You must rely on the resources of the land and the skills of your comrades to amass your fortunes and defend from hostile attacks by orcs and kobolds (as well as the odd wolf, elephant, killer carp, hydra, titan, megademon, etc.), all the while keeping your dwarves happy, productive and well fed. Honestly, the depth and detail of this game defies a simple summarized paragraph. Here's a (small) snippet from the 'Features' section of the home page:

Quote:

# Command your dwarves as they search for wealth in the mountain.

* Craft treasures and furniture from many materials and improve these objects with precious metals, jewels and more.
* Defend yourself against attacks from hostile civilizations, the wilderness and the depths.
* Support the nobility as they make demands of your populace.
* Keep your dwarves happy and read their thoughts as they work and relax.
* Z coordinate allows you to dig out fortresses with multiple levels. Build towers or conquer the depths.
* Build floodgates to divert water for farming or to drown your adversaries.

The entire game uses an ASCII interface (although fan made graphic tiles are available), and borrows much from the roguelike genre. In fact, the game includes an 'Adventurer' mode which plays like a straightforward roguelike, though the meat of the game is still the 'Fortress' mode.

What does this have to do with making it as an indy? Weelllll..

This game is easily one of the most detailed, complex games i've ever played. Given this, it is also one of the least buggy games i've ever played with its degree of depth. And it's only in 'Alpha phase' to boot! Oh, and did I mention it's free (as in beer)? That's right, this game has been in development for *years*, truly a labor of love, and yet its free for anyone to download and spend hours upon hours utterly enjoying. So how can the developer, Bay 12 Games (a one man show, might I add), be considered a successful indy? The game is so good, and so well liked by its fan base, the players are literally taking it upon themselves to organize donation pools which go directly to the developer. I know what you're thinking.. "Donations are great and all, but people aren't going to just cough up enough donations to make this sort of long term development worth while versus a casual game with a focused audience and a shortened development cycle". Well, lets take a look at some figures:

2007 Donations, July to November

November Donations: $4079.43
October Donations: $3360.12
September Donations: $1363.63
August Donations: $1823.48
July Donations: $1104.20

5 month Total: $11,730.86
Avg/Month: $2,346.17

Keep in mind, this is with no advertising or marketing, thats all done via word of mouth.

While I would not assert that this would be a viable route for other indy's, it is certainly an interesting case; This sort of success story relies entirely on the quality of the product.

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List:	12/16/07 - More than one way to make it as an indy.. 10/01/06 - The importance of reflection

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Tom Feni (Dec 16, 2007 at 17:56 GMT)

sounds like the plan I was thinking of, some sort of donation plan that helps keep the game development going and still let the game be freely distributed. can either be a boon or a bane depending on how people feel.

TomFeni

Tony Barnes (Dec 16, 2007 at 19:31 GMT)

Wow, that's better than some "released" games have done on the portals!

"Making it" in indie seems like such an unknown gamble, even more so than retail. I can always tell what my games are gonna do on the shelf, or at least have a pretty good idea, around the time of release, but in IndieLand, it all just seems so random.

Pesto126 (Dec 17, 2007 at 13:03 GMT)

Where did you get the donation info from? Sounds like you know the developer rather well.. but I'm still very skeptial of those numbers... especially for an ASCII based game. Highly skeptical!

Corey Martin (Dec 17, 2007 at 18:26 GMT)

The figures listed in this post were pulled directly from the public forums, I don't know the developer at all. More up to date figures are available from various threads in the 'General Discussion' forum from the users themselves, whom are the ones who actually organized the donation pool. Funny enough, I believe the latest pool was based on the release of the next version, which fixed a bunch of bugs and added some missing 'Siege AI'. Users pledged a certain amount of cash to donate upon the release of said update. Don't take my word for it, check out the forums to see for yourself!

Also, give the game a go. It has a very steep learning curve, but I think you'll find that its one of the most detailed, complex and finely crafted games you've ever played. The fact that its in ASCII merely means that the developer has been able to devote all of his time to the gameplay rather than tweaking graphics or fixing display related bugs.

Matt Kronyak (Dec 17, 2007 at 20:49 GMT)

I wouldn't be surprised if these numbers are accurate. I've run various MUDs and similar type of games over the years. I still have a highly customized persistent NWN server up and running that's been around for many years. Over the years the server hardware was simply not adequate enough to support the growing player base. On a few occasions I would put up a donation page to help supplement the cost of server hardware and would usually have the full amount needed (usually around $3000) within a few days.

The average donation amounts I recall seeing where in the $50-$100 range, but some donated as much as $400.

Someone also once sent me 600 euros, which I refunded to them, but they insisted on sending me anyway until I accepted.

One of the main reasons I started working with TGE / TGEA is that there are often restrictions on making any kind of profit from modding commercial games (as was the case with NWN). You'd be surprised how generous people are when it comes to supporting a game or community that they enjoy.
Edited on Dec 17, 2007 20:50 GMT

J Sears (Dec 19, 2007 at 01:21 GMT)

I'm not too shocked some of the figures people have paid for something like a Sword in WoW, or a lev 70 (which sadly only takes a month to get) is astounding. Some people enjoy their games so much, and have extra money kicking around so to them it's worth it.

One of my friends once spent hundreds of dollars on characters and gear in original EQ, and I asked him why he would bother doing something like that. His answer was that some people go out to the bar every weekend, some people go to clubs stuff like that. Average trip to a bar/club can easily be 15-40 bucks (or more for those insane clubs) so if a person does that 4 times a month that's easily 160 bucks. Well his hobby was to play EQ on weekends so to him he saw it as money well spent since that was his hobby.

Sometimes we forget there's people like that out there because there's people like me who have never donated a dime to any game anywhere and haven't spent money on the mmo's I've played. But not everyone is such a tight wad.

I do think if this guy brought a graphics engine programmer and artist on board he could ramp up the game to bring those donations a lot higher too. But some people do enjoy those good old fashioned text games.

Interesting note for Matt, a lot of people on here frequently mention the C4 engine too, which states $200 free upgrades for life, but if you read the license of that one it states that you can only produce <50 copies of your game for distribution with that license and all other license groups he won't put a public price on. So I agree a lot of the engines out there have an insane amount of restrictions. I can see if you have something like the ID or Unreal engine that you'd want to get your money out of the millions someone will make with it but most of these engines out there have a warped sense of their engines.
All my complaints I have made about GarageGames in the past I can freely admit their license is extremely fair.

Pesto126 (Dec 22, 2007 at 13:57 GMT)

Well... time to start creating something in DOS then! :) I could use $3000 a month as well... anyway - thx for the good detailed info to set me straight.. I had no idea!

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