Game Design, Programming and running a one-man games business…

Random (but fun) indie game data sampling

cliffski

In a sudden fit of spreadsheet fun, I looked at steam spy data for 26 indie games that were released roughly a month ago. I then calculated their approximate revenue. Then, I looked at a recent game positech released (Big Pharma) and worked out what percentage of the last 7 months revenue was from month1. Using that, I extrapolated the final income for the first 6 months for each of those games. I assumed each game had cost $100,000 to make. (Possibly an over-reaction, but don’t forget the time involved). Anyway, the profits, and ROI are shown below…

stats1

So lets assume I was being crushingly silly here, and instead look at a very long tail of a game, such as Democracy 3, and use the stats from its month 1 vs total income and use that to calculate ‘lifetime’ income, assuming multiple patches, DLC releases, sales and so on, given month 1 income:

stats2So what non-scientific stats can be drawn from this? well… even if you are prepared to wait for two and a half years to see the money come in, 69% of indie games are going to lose money. Looking at those stats, the overall income was 13 million dollars so the ‘average’ game made a half-million dollars profit. WAHEY! But obviously thats bollocks, because the median game made a 55% loss. Without any mitigating factors, you are statistically likely to make a loss.

Here is another way to look at it. Chop off the top 3 selling ‘hits’ and the ‘average earned by the remaining games is a profit of $40k over two years. Thats actually not that bad a ROI.

Another way to look at it: there is a 34% chance that you will lose 75% of your money if you make an indie game.

Figures are fun.

 

edit: Forgot to take off steams percentage soo…. assume the figures are even less optimistic, or that your game costs $70k to make :D

4 thoughts on Random (but fun) indie game data sampling

  2. Where do you get the assumption of a typical development cost of 100k? If it represents opportunity cost of labor, and purchase of assets, that could easily fund two man years of development, plus all the assets you’ll ever need. Aren’t there a lot of games in this class that take considerably less than two man years to make? Are you including a significant marketing budget in this amount?

    1. I’d guess the majority of indie games ARE taking two man years (or more), plus they need unity license, website hosting, artwork, music, sound effects, etc. I doubt many non-hobbyist indie games cost less if the developers take a proper salary.

  3. That more or less confirms my math as well – typical game on Steam returns about half of its costs if you are working in developed economy.

    However, programmer’s time (the majority of costs for indie) in 3rd world countries is way cheaper.
    I we adjust for that I think Steam games still make profit.

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