Here is a situation: you are a parent who knows how to make video games. You have a young child and you make a little computer game for them. And they love it! It is educational in nature, safe for kids, and they are excited to hang out with you. Continue Reading
Why am I not getting wishlists? A step by step solution
So here you are reading my blog every week and time after time I write about these games that are doing amazingly well! They earn 100 or even 300 PER DAY! They launch with 100,000 wishlists. Then, maybe you look at your own Steamworks stats and see a paltry 1 Continue Reading
Part 2: What games should former AAA developers make when they go indie
If you were laid off from your AAA job, are thinking of starting an indie studio, and are struggling to decide what type of game to make, I wrote today’s blog post just for you. In last week’s blog I explained how different the indie game space is from the Continue Reading
My advice to AAA-developers trying to make indie games
8 Quick Tips That Could Save Your Studio’s Life It is so sad to see all the AAA layoffs. I am so sorry if you were affected. If you need a slight bit of consolation, there was some research that the folks at Freakanomics did where they studied people who were Continue Reading
Deconstructing the underwhelming launch of a automation builder game
I write a lot about games that succeed. For example, you can read about the millions made by Peglin, Tape 2 Tape, Cosmoteer, Battlebit, and Dwarves here. But there is always that one guy that yells “SURVIVORSHIP BIAS!” because I never cover the games that don’t succeed. One of the Continue Reading
The other game that succeeded during the Starfield launch
Starfield Launched on September 6th, 2023. It will arguably be one of the biggest launches this year. I have written about how I think Indies over-emphasize their release date and are overly cautious when it comes to launching along side a AAA release. In today’s blog I want to look Continue Reading
What does it take to get in the Discovery Queue?
Intro In a previous blog post, I introduced you to the Discovery Queue (DQ). DQ is a very important widget which is how top tier games get lots of traffic (Read that post here.) In short, if you drive a TON of traffic from outside of Steam (like youtube, twitter, Continue Reading
14 Reasons why every indie game developer should make at least one horror game
Look, indie game development is hard. Really, really hard. We get 0 visibility and they are very hard to make. So I am making a plea to all indie game developers who want to do this full time, please please please make at least 1 horror game. I know! I Continue Reading
The missing middle in game development
What is the Missing Middle? 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. The paradox goes like this… When John Romero was making games Continue Reading
John Romero on his book Doom Guy and developing games at a small scale
I think the biggest reason so many indie games “fail” is that teams enter into making huge, overly ambitious projects that take years to release before they are ready. Indie teams do not spend enough time making smaller (and less profitable) games first before transitioning to multi-year projects. I know Continue Reading