Expenses
We decided that we want to do this independently rather than trying to find a publisher or investor because… well, that’s how we roll. We like the idea of our games belonging to us, not having debt to anyone, and being able to make our own decisions. There’s a great sense of freedom with that, but unfortunately there’s a certain degree of reality as well that “things cost dollars”.
As you may have seen on Friday, we have applied to be a part of the Indie Megabooth at PAX Prime. Getting accepted to that would be be mega-wicked-awesome, there’s no doubt in my mind about that. But unfortunately things do cost money. We’re looking at incorporating right now, and should we get to go to PAX (I already have hotel and plane booked as I intend on attending for kicks even if we end up not being presentors) it’s going to cost us a bunch more in booth fees as well. The domain name just was renewed, and we’ll have to renew web space later this year too.
Here are a few articles on the return to expect on an indie game:
- http://hitboxteam.com/dustforce-sales-figures
- http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/186940/defenders_quest_by_the_numbers_.php
- http://joostdevblog.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/proun-is-big-success-pay-what-you-want.html
It varies from “hmm, we could actually see a return on this” to “wow… that was not a financially wise decision. But I think the thing that keeps me going on this is the comments like:
“Without a doubt, yes, it was worth it. It is true that the final earnings, spread out among four people to account for almost 2 years of development is not particularly impressive, considering that more money could have been made at normal jobs without taking the considerable risks that we took. However, it’s important to note that the entire time we were doing what we loved, not for the goal of a monetary reward, but in order to make something beautiful come into existence.”
Which, is the heart of what I believe Matt and I both have in our minds moving forward. I’m still on the fence every day as to whether I should go back to working on Super Hematoma in my spare time while working a job for some cash-money… but wow would it be great if we could make indie game dev a viable way to support ourselves.