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

Is indie game dev even viable as a business in 2025?

Posted on November 8, 2025

I do not recall much of the 2000 movie ‘Gladiator’, but I did like this bit:

[As the barbarian calls out his cry, his mangy band of barbarians emerge from the forest, shaking and waving their spears and shields, ready to fight.]

QUINTUS: People should know when they’re conquered.
MAXIMUS: Would you, Quintus? Would I?

And I think its pretty insightful. Here is another segment from a movie. In this case ‘Other People’s money’

You know, at one time, there must have been dozens of companies making buggy whips. And I’ll bet the last company around was the one that made the best goddamn buggy whip you ever saw.

My point? That people are very very bad at working out when the industry they are in, whether its staying independent from the Roman Empire, or making ‘Buggy Whips’ is about to become unviable. The trouble with being in the games industry, is that the overwhelming majority of people doing it REALLY love video games. And if you have decided to risk everything by creating your OWN video game company with your own money, then that means you probably REALLY REALLY love video games, or at least the process of making them. And sadly, that means you probably lack the required perspective to evaluate how viable it is as a business.

But to outsiders, its often obvious. When a new cafe or restaurant is clearly doomed, and is in the wrong place, or has the misfortune to witness the opening of a starbucks next door, pretty much everyone walking past the place can go ‘yeah thats not going to last’, but the owners? its amazing how much hopium you can generate if the alternative is to see your dreams completely crushed.

Is indie video gaming in that situation now? Maybe. Its not clear. But it does not look good. True, there are an endless parade of indie games that make a bazillion dollars and become super huge. I’m sure the vampire survivors and balatro devs have a very healthy bank balance. But the percentage of indie game developers actually making a living? There is no real data on it, but anecdotally it looks pretty bad. And although its very common for EVERY indie dev to think that they are the chosen ones in that one percent that will be balatro, not an also-ran, its worth knowing the odds. I have always maintained that knowing how bad the odds are is not defeatism, its much needed data when you decide IF to attempt something, and how much effort will be required.

I recently saw mention of a game about running a medieval style tavern. It caught my interest because I have played that game. Its called Tavern Master. I played it a lot, and really enjoyed it. It was a good idea and well executed. But no, this was not that game. It was another game about running a tavern. Already that is bad news, because that means the market for tavern master is already split in half. Can the devs really get enough sales with TWO games about a medieval tavern? Behold…

958 results. This is, surely, absolutely insanely unviable. I do not recall tavern master even being a big indie hit. It did ok, sure, but not enough to explain so many competing games on steam. All of these games are commercial attempts, on steam, paying the $100 fee in hopes of taking some of Tavern Master’s audience. How many of them will be financially viable? 2? 3? surely not more than 10% of them. Surely not.

And note that 99% of this titles were shipped BEFORE AI art generation became a thing. How difficult is it to make a game about running a medieval tavern? Well when I started making games in 1997, it was very very hard. But then came Unity, and everything got way easier. Then comes the Unity Asset store and its easier still. Now we have AI art generation for 2D and 3D art, and its becoming almost laughably easy.

But Lo! You are true artiste, and capable of incredible game design feats of awesomeness, and the general public will SEE that, and they will chose your *one true quality tavern sim* over all the other tavern sims that are clearly low quality shovelware, or if you want to be trendy ‘slop’. So everything will be ok, and you will be drinking champagne in your sports car before Christmas, right?

No. Its incredibly, incredibly hard to get noticed in the entertainment industry. Its incredibly hard to get noticed in any industry, anywhere. The reason ‘When I leave school I’m going to be an influencer’ is such a rim-shot comedy line, is that we all know that discoverability is practically impossible without amazing luck, a huge PR budget or some magical X factor.

Oh and BTW, ‘tavern simulation game’ is pretty niche. Take a look at how many ‘roguelike deckbuilders’ are available. Its insane.

At this point, blogposts by me normally pivot into what I hope is some sort of insightful and helpful comment about how you can still make it work by doing X or just working REALLY hard. But I think its worth noting that this might no longer be the case. We might be looking at the end game here. We might be relegating indie game dev to the same zone as ‘fiction writer’, as a career which absolutely everyone knows is financial suicide.

Now sure, there are a lot of books written each year, and a LOT of writers, so clearly it works out ok in the end right? NO. The overwhelming majority (I’m guessing over 99%) of people who are writing fiction are either doing it in their spare time, or are financially supported by someone else. The REALLY scary stuff is that even published authors, with books in stores, are often in the same position. Competition is so intense, and the supply of writers so high, that even people with ‘successful’ books probably cannot make a proper living from it.

It gives me zero pleasure to point this out. Its awful. Why do lawyers and accountants earn a fortune for doing *so little work* (in my experience), whereas creative people work like crazy for fuck-all? I have no solution. But I also think its well worth reminding people to check the financial reality. Even if it means you should NOT ‘quit your job to go indie’ and accept that its perhaps too hard now to justify that risk. Maybe.

Lastly a reminder: I am NOT an example of some plucky dreamer who quit his job and took a bank loan to start a games company and strike it rich. I made games at the weekends and evenings, and quit my job once to do it, FAILED, had to go get a job in AAA studios for 5 years, and only quit a second time when my part time indie earnings matched my day-time salary. And at the time, my wife was working and we had no kids. I was very very conservative. Do not fall for the Hollywood dream stories!

A solar farm after 6 months: Maintenance report

Posted on September 11, 2025

So…my site has actually been live for 11 months now, but there has been a bunch of stuff that needed fixing after initial energization, so the six monthly maintenance thing happened a bit later. If you are asking ‘does it really need maintenance every six months?’ the answer seems to be yes. I pushed back on this, as I thought it was overkill, but have been talked around. if I owned 10 solar farms, I’d totally let one have maintenance every year or 18 months to see if it was worth it, but with a single asset I likely shouldn’t risk it.

Anyway, I just got the first report. Its VERY long and detailed. Its a 90MB PDF file, if that helps contextualize it. Here are some highlights:

Firstly, google have updated their data and there is now a proper google maps image! They add little points on the image to tell me where stuff was spotted that might need fixing, or keeping an eye on:

In general the summary of the report is this: “The inspection of the site and inverters, and testing of the DC circuits, found generally positive results, although some minor issues were identified – details in the report.” – Which is very good news because frankly so much stuff stressed me out as it was built I really could do with a few long sustained periods of just simple revenue generation from it. I think I will be at least 68 years old before it breaks even, but as long as it eventually does, I’ll be ok with that. This was not a money making scheme for me.

The report has a huge number of photos, including some cool ones. Here are ones that might be interesting:

Checking for hotspots on some panels with a thermal camera:

Checking the DC cables going from strings to inverters still look ok:

You get before-and-after pictures showing that the fans on the inverters have been cleaned. I visited one hot day when the fans were really going for it. I could hear them from 30 feet away. Each inverter is 80-100kw output, so the fans are working pretty hard sometimes. I’m not sure these really need cleaning twice a year, but we have only had one winter so far. Maybe super stormy and muddy weather will be way worse.

There are pages and pages of testing data like this table, which makes sense if you are an electrician, but from my POV its just nice to have a historic benchmark for this stuff so if anything fails we can look back and see what went on:

You also get thermal pictures of all the isolating boxes for the inverters to check there is nothing scary going on inside them:

They also get taken apart and cleaned. I think that might be a bit overkill too. Its tricky. On the one hand, what do I know? on the other hand people who service stuff always have misaligned incentives with regards to what is ‘essential’. If I had a hundred million pounds, I’d buy my own solar farm installation and maintenance company and then I’d know…

There is a ton of other stuff but I will spare you thirty pages of before-and after pictures of plastic boxes that got cleaned, or the many pictures of slight patches of rust on the edges of some supporting frame struts. I guess its good evidence that it was done thoroughly, with a lot of time spent looking for problems. Rather annoying an inverter was left OFF for half a day by error during all this, which happened to be a fairly poor generation day anyway, but that was annoying…

In any case I’ve decided to stick with the same company for the medium term carrying out these checks. At some point we will have a full years of proper generation and I can look at stats and muse as to how well or badly things are doing. I *think* its performing about as expected, which is good enough for me. I just hope the price I can sell the power for does not collapse!

A side effect of a potential AI mega-bubble. Maybe do not buy a house?

Posted on September 8, 2025

Nobody should take financial advice from a dude who often writes sarcastic nonsense about star trek, and whose financial background is… guitar teaching and boatbuilding, but on the other hand if you are here, and reading this, then you probably know a bit about me, and know I at least put some thought into these posts. Maybe this is all BS, but maybe it isn’t. Enjoy…

If you are someone who thinks AI is a bubble, and that it will pop soon, and its no different to NFTs, VR gaming or 3D TV, then you might as well quit reading now. This is not a blog post about how AI will change the world and usher in a star-trek like future of abundance and happiness. I actually think it MIGHT do that, but my main thrust here is the financial implications for somebody reading this in their twenties. If you are in your thirties, you might be in house-and-kids mode, and this advice might be useless for you. If you are older still, then it may be even less relevant. It also may sound insane, or scary, but at the least I hope it will be interesting.

I’m 55, I bought a house about 25 years ago. It was hard saving up the deposit for a house, and at the time, we thought house prices were insane, and stupid, and hated knowing we were probably buying at the top of the market. Ha ha. We were not. My first house was a 3-bed semi-detached house costing £98k. It wasn’t anywhere special, but it was ok. I think it had tripled in value when we sold it 10 years later. So far, a typical smug boomer story about how cheap houses were back in my day. Feel free to hate me.

People my age got used to the crazy certainty that house prices only went up. Many became ‘buy-to-let landlords’, and the default retirement plan was to buy a second home, rent it out to some poor young person who couldn’t afford the now much bigger deposit, and enjoy the fat easy profits. As someone who came from a pretty low income in my twenties (boatbuilder), I hated this and never did it, but I noted the phenomena with interest. Almost nobody ever revisited this core belief: that getting a mortgage was always an excellent investment. Nobody ever looked at a spreadsheet or did any maths. You just invested in property. Safe as houses.

I was recently chatting to friends about stock market investments. I do a lot of investing and trading. I love it, and have done well from it. I enjoy debating it and discussing it with people. I am however aware, that the advice you give people has to be tailored to their circumstances. I invest in some really risky stuff with money I can afford to lose, but many people cannot (obviously) afford to lose *anything*. How do you give advice to people in those circumstances? Its hard. But the very fact that you then find yourself recommending really ‘safe’ investments with really low returns (but little chance of financial ruin) is kind of depressing to me. I get WHY people do this, but on the other hand its just perpetuating inequality. People on low incomes pick safe investments and make bad returns, while the real mega-gains are effectively ‘reserved’ for people who already have enough money to take the risks.

In the UK we have official terms such as “self-certified sophisticated investor” and “high net worth individual”. These are terms used in financial services to basically fence-off some risky investments so that only people who are either very familiar with financial systems, or who have quite a lot of money, can invest in them. Sure, I get it. Nobody wants a system that robs people on low incomes of everything they have, but part of me hates how those amazing companies that go up 900% in a year only have investors who were already rich. Surely this is kind of fucked up?

Ok, so back to AI, and buying a house (or not). How is this relevant?

When I was saving a deposit for a house, I think we needed a minimum of £5,000 ($6k). That was between two of us. This seems laughably low now (it was 25 years ago remember). I did some research. In the SE of the UK, the average first-time-buyer house deposit now is £60,000, which is 110% of the average salary. This is huge. This is insane. Who can afford this without wealthy parents ‘helping them out’? Neither of us had wealthy relatives. We had to pay the rent AND save enough money. Who can save 110% of their salary? Thats salary, not take-home pay…

What I’m thinking… is that this might be a BAD idea anyway. Not just because its a ludicrously high amount, but because the return on investment from property might not be that great. In fact, in the SE UK over the last 3 years the average house price rise has been 1.9%. Yes ONE POINT NINE PERCENT. I think you can see where I am going here:

Nvidia stock over those 3 years rose 1,103%. If you were boring and just picked the S&P500 its up on average 19% per year. So even if you had NO idea what to invest in, and just picked a US stock fund tracking the biggest names, you would make ten times as much money than if you have bought a house. And to add to this, you can invest a small amount (probably you need $1k to avoid mad fees), and build from there, unlike a house, where you are either buying the whole damn thing or not. Oh and by the way, the interest on the rest of the house cost is WAY more than 1.9%.

Thats the last three years, and the stock market has done ‘fairly well’, but there is a good chance its about to go really bananas, if AI lives up to its promise, and results in huge economic growth. If you pick wisely, you could get way more for that ‘house-deposit’ money if invested in stocks than you could ever hope to get from house prices rising. Now I get it, this might sound like the idle musings of some arrogant ass who owns a house and is going all ‘let them eat cake’. I hope not, because its not like I do not understand the financial struggle when you want to buy a house. I totally remember paying rent for an AWFUL flat, which was freezing cold, and saving up our money to try and get enough to buy our first house. We searched for ages, and they were all awful, until we lucked into finding one that looked awful at first glance (someone had died, and the interior decor was….bad), but was easy to do-up. I have no idea how many houses we looked at…

But anyway, my point is aimed at people who SOMEHOW manage, through hard work and effort to scrape together the money for a deposit for a house whilst working and renting, just to say *actually this might be a really bad investment right now*. Now I understand that renting sucks, and you want to own a home, and are not thinking about investment but… make the right decisions now, before AI goes insane, and it might prove to be the best financial decision you ever make. Wait a few years, watch those investments outpace house-prices, and THEN buy…

I get that this might sound crazy.

But think about it unemotionally. Don’t think about emotive terms like ‘my own home’ and ‘what we have been saving for’. Just think about the numbers. You have the largest single sum of money you have ever accumulated. You saved it up for a house, whose value will accumulate at 1.9%. Or you can invest it (with careful research!) into the stock market just before AGI and humanoid robotics and self driving cars became popular. And obviously this assumes you already have somewhere to live (either rented, or with parents etc). Yes there is risk, but there is also no guarantee house prices will always rise.

Food for thought. But this is just a thought experiment. Do not blame me for any financial decisions you make! And think carefully and analyze everything, and discuss with friends & family! I will just point out that I am a game developer and solar farm developer. I’m not trying to sell you stock market advice, and have no financial interest in what you do. But do look at the numbers. Always look at the numbers.

New power-purchase agreement signed

Posted on August 24, 2025

I haven’t blogged about the solar farm for a little while because to be honest there has not been much to report (which is good! this is supposed to be a very stable low-maintenance project!) but I thought I would briefly update the blog to mention communications upgrades and a new PPA.

The site has multiple means of communication, because we need to be able to connect to, and monitor the CCTV cameras, we need reporting from the meter that actually determines how much we get paid (which is reported by a neutral 3rd party who charge a frankly comical amount just to read a single number every 30 minutes and report it), and we also need (or rather we like to have…) reporting from each inverter on the site to tell us the status of each inverter, and indeed each string. When I share the really cool charts and breakdowns with a ton of data, thats from the inverters. This measures DC power, at the inverters, before its converted and then sent some small but noticeable distance along underground cables to the site substation containing the site meter. Because some power is lost in conversion and transmission, the two meter readings are not the same.

Anyway… all of that stuff has to communicate off-site somehow, and its all routed through an aerial on the top of the substation. Its a bad aerial, and it uses a mobile phone connection which sucks. The site is somewhere quite remote and mobile phone coverage isn’t that good. As a result, often the signal is below 25% strength, and we get gaps in the data. The final generation readings are always there, but losing ‘sight’ of the plant is no fun, so we recently had all that comms stuff upgraded. The site now has a constant 48-49% signal strength which is good to see. This cost me unexpected money, but coincided with a maintenance check so the costs of sending people to site were not included.

In other news, we have signed a 2 year PPA (power purchase agreement) again with Ovo. That starts in November and runs out in November 2027. At that point we may stay with them, or switch if anyone offers a higher rate. One of the perverse things about owning a power station is that prices change every 30 minutes, but when you agree a price, it will then be fixed for years. Its tricky, because you are basically watching a fluctuating stock-ticker like price, but where you have to MANUALLY email people to ask for new quotes, and then pick your moment. There are services that offer more visibility into price trends, but I can’t afford them really… You can get 1 year, 2 or 3 year PPAs. I chose 2 years as the 3 year price looked pretty low :(.

And to be honest the actual ‘energy’ price part of it is only about 65-70% of what you get paid anyway. Some of it is benefits accrued through being a remote site, or a site where extra generation is beneficial, and some of it is discounts for having consumption near generation (so you put no strain on the distribution or transmission lines). Basically if you can find a site on some remote island with tons of local businesses and houses needing more power, then go for it. Anything to avoid upgrading the transmission network, apparently! How exactly you are supposed to guess those value pre-build is beyond me. There are probably expensive consultants, or you have to know who to ask and how to ask it.

Price-wise we are roughly the same as we were for our first year. Its… ok. Its not going to make some huge ROI, but its not losing us money either. I did actually pay out some actual company dividends for the first time (OMG), although it will be another few months until I can look at proper accounts and do a real analysis of whether or not we make enough in profits to make that an annual thing… I think larger sites have way better economics.