THIS is Why Most Indie Games Fail

Unless you go digging into why other games aren't getting wishlisted, you're only getting about 30% of the story on how to make your game succeed. You need to look at failures and mids as well.

Considering your audience, it’s too bad you didn’t showcase some more ‘scrappy’ looking indie games, even if you had to go lower on the list to find them. It’s no surprise, but all the games (you showcased) that are on the top wishlisted just look amazing. They have great art and art direction and look appealing. This is very hard to emulate for most game devs who are not already artists. So this video may be a bit discouraging. Then again, a top 10 wishlisted game is no small feat and not a realistic goal for most devs. That said, I’m not sure what you meant for the takeaway of this video to be for a solo dev except something like ‘try your hardest to make your game extremely visually appealing’.

There is useful information here, but I would say, do not get discouraged by looking at this video if its going to be your first game, some of these game's dev team already released games before or have experience. If you are a solo game dev or releasing your first game, just keep up with the motivation and learn as you go!

Marketing is probably the hardest thing for me personally. It's much easier to make a game than to market it. And it's even harder if the game you are working on is not really marketable, like in my case. But I'm doing my best to learn...

Going to take a before video guess and my thoughts: marketing is important but the main reason is quality. A lot of indies copy other indies, so they're competing against each other, use minimal innovation or new ideas, and don't make something worth playing. Why should I play your farming simulator or roguelite deck builder over the other 500 indie games of those genres?

Many years ago I wrote a post mortem on a mid sized game that had done ok-ish in the market. Our conclusion then, and I believe this is true still, is that if anything in your game isn't excellent, leave it out. Every part has to be top notch. If you can't afford/don't have the skills to make an element look excellent, you should leave it out. Your graphic shapes should be properly anti-aliased. Your fonts should be professional. Your music should not be from the local elevator. If you include an element that is just so-so and think 'this is a peripheral thing, nobody will care' you are wrong. It will stick out, the players will focus on it, and it will hurt you badly.

I feel like this video is just a less specific and less useful version of the video made by Eastshade studios "Marketing is NOT Why Most Indie Games Fail". It's just some examples of top wishlisted games picked in no order in particular to get some abstract conclusion that "uhhhh, polish matters". Yeah, no shit. Saying that a lot of indies are "not going to get where they want to go", and then exclusively analysing the tippity top of wishlisted games just seems like handing another recipe for failure to small indie teams. Eastshade studios has a really nice introductory video on the topic of analysing a genre that you wish to make a game for and then identifying the revenue bracket for which you would like to make the game, analysing the genre's deep cuts and top-sellers, what the standards are in the different brackets. Some of the presentation of this video just seems straight up ripped off but without the substance. I don't think that abstract content like this serves anyone.

Marketing as a multiplier: If you multiply zero, you get zero. :)

I think most fail because the devs are beginning and when you start out you make generic cookie cutter games. We don't need more pixel platforms, we need innovative and risky games, unfortunately most indie devs like myself don't have the knowledge or resources to pull it off, but i have hope.

I honestly think the best thing you can do for your game and for your sanity is to keep the scope small. Think less about making your dream game and more about making your dream mechanic

I've been making my first 2D metroidvania game for more than a year now, good luck to everyone!

I think you have to define success here. Is success earning a living wage from development or is it earning enough money to retire from a single game? Of the ~60K games on Steam with the "indie" tag, nearly 1000 have revenue of more than a million and about 3500 have revenue over $100K. On the flip side, roughly 50K made less then $10K. But you have to ask yourself, how many of those 50K games are hidden gems, great games that should have a big audience but don't. I set out to figure that a few years ago and contrary to what you might think, at least based on my criteria, there is no such thing as a "hidden" gem. Sure, there are always one or two outliers, games with a devoted fanbase and very low sales, but in the vast majority of cases, good games get purchased and played. The question going forward is about genre saturation, competing against past successes, and to what height the bar of entry will be raised to as the space gets increasingly crowded, but the takeaway should be that original ideas and polished execution will almost always lead to some kind of "success" (see the first sentence).

Most of us won't be able to make a top 0.1% game, so looking at what they are doing is useless. I would say, look for games that make the amount of revenue you need and compare your work to these games. It will still be hard enough to compete with them, but you will be happier 🙂.

"Why most indie games fail - because they're bad/unpolished". Boom 7 minutes saved. Some of your videos are useful and informative but this is just not it...

6:22 which game is this?

These are so called "self promoting games", and if after release their gameplay is as good or almost good as the visuals, then this self promoting will continue because of word of mouth effect and will profit for longer period, if not, then will flop like some emblematic failures we saw already. You can pack a sh*t in a golden foil (make great marketing), but after customers unpack it and taste it, it still will be a sh*t and end of story (big decrease of sales after publishing). So, for me the question "Is the game quality more important than marketing?" is rhetorical. Why are you wasting time to learn marketing and market researching instead learn how to make better games? The answer is, because it's much easier and satisfying to browse statistics and dream for big profits.

Tiny Glade is definitely wave function collapse. My first impression was that it's a lot like Townscaper, which also uses that algorithm. Solar Punk reminds of the art style and gameplay mechanics from My Time At Portia.

Was confused since I thought I had already seen this video, but apparently Eastshade Studios just made a video with the exact same title and thumbnail a few days ago. I thought for sure I had seen the thumbnail with CotL though, but guess that's just dejavu

i actually would of love to play cult of the lamb but its too satanic for me and im not down to cross those lines i fear God

I don't think you should have used the top 10 games as examples as most are teams or are industry veterans and will/could be discouraging. Eastshade studios recently released a video like this and everyone should watch it as they have released a successful game. I think these games are great for breaking down elements like lighting, sounds, thumbnails, capsule art etc