Million Dollar Indie Game Phenomenon
In this article I wanted to share my observations on a matter of concern to every indie developer - "What is the secret of single-player millionaire games?" As an object of observation, I have chosen a relatively fresh game - Undertale. This game is noteworthy in that it violates the canons of the generally accepted gaming industry and causes hellish toothache among “professionals”, showing such financial results.
NB All of the following is true for Steam platform-oriented developers. For mobile, social and "portal" games, the approaches are somewhat different.
Chronicle
Few well-known composer Toby Fox announced the game of his dreams in May 2013, presenting to the public a demo version of Undertale. As befits the beginning of a good fairy tale, he did not know how to program and draw, but really wanted to create his own game. He drew graphics in Paint, collected the game in Game Maker.
A month after the appearance of the demo version of the game, the project goes on a kickstarter, where it collects $ 51,000 (planned to raise from $ 5000-45000). After a successful fundraising, talking about the plans, Toby Fox announced that he would try to make the game in a year, but did it in two (Phil Fishu hello!).
September 15, 2015 release in steam, a little over a month sold almost 200 thousand copies of the game with a base price of ten (9.99) dollars. Even taking into account regional prices, revenue has already exceeded one million. At the same time, looking at the sales schedule, there is no feeling of reaching a peak.
Undertale becomes the game of the month on many gaming portals.
About project quality
After downloading the demo version of Undertale in the very first game location, I was faced with the incorrect display of the level, how I could get it, I could understand only by watching the video of the game passing (it turns out I had to go through the wall).
Optimization is poor. The game is not much different from the games of the "386s" era (20 MHz) and loads the CPU (2.9 GHz) at 50%. The CPU frequency recommended by the developer is 2 GHz + (DOOM 3 had fewer requests). Weilard
will probably be able to give an expert opinion on the schedule, but the artist in our studio, while looking at it briefly , noted very “poor-quality” pixel art. The perception of graphics partly saves a lot of simple shapes built from horizontal and vertical lines.
The asset of the project can be attributed musical accompaniment, not for nothing that the creator of the game is a composer.
Retreat number 1
I am from the generation that caught the dawn of the gaming industry of the 80s and the “golden era” of the 90s. At that time, games were closer to books than to cinema. Poor visualization led to the fact that the player had to complete the virtual world in fantasy. Text quests, in general, were not much different from books. The secret of a good book, like the secret of a good game, was the ability of the authors to create a world / event that leaves an indelible imprint in their memory, and this is impossible without vivid “experiences”. For example, after almost 30 years, such games for ZX Spectrum as Elite, Nether Earth, Sim Sity, Dictator, Zombi, Lode Runner (the arcade to which I devoted the most time) were well imprinted in my memory.
In the balance
And how did it happen that a poorly drawn game with very impressive system requirements and even with errors became a millionaire?
The answer, as can be assumed, is obvious: all these factors are secondary. The main thing in the game is the degree of emotional immersion in the game world. This is not about the melodramatic component (touching moments), but about the “truth of characters”, as one very clever polisher used to say ( excerpt from the film: “I am walking in Moscow” ).
Retreat No. 2
Do any of the players remember the Bitterman soldier? But he is only one year older than Gordon Freeman. Bitterman is the main character of Quake II. After 18 years, I personally can’t say anything about the plot of Quake II, but I remember the first “trolley” of Half-Life, as if it were yesterday, and there’s no need to talk about the plot.
Half-Life, a kind of, marked the end of the era of shooters with a nominal plot: Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Heretic, Quake, Duke Nukem 3D, etc. It is worth noting that Valve's approach to creating a first-person shooter for single-player passing has become a reference. With a naked eye, you can see that all subsequent successful games of this genre are Medal of Honor (2002+), Call of Duty (2003+), etc. used the same techniques as Valve: a lot of secondary characters, dialogs during the game, tasks to save other characters, etc. In a word, the player is led to the idea that he is part of a large "living world", and not a lone corridor runner.
If to summarize all the reviews on Undertale, then they come down to one thought that the full passage of the game caused strong emotional feelings. In the memory of people who liked it, for many years there will be an imprint of these emotions, and in this case it is connected with the plot and characters, and not at all with graphics or mini-games. It is safe to say that Toriel (the name of the “goat”) will definitely take its place in the pantheon of immortal game heroes.
Retreat No. 3
The gray-haired players are nostalgic for the game Elite I (80s) not at all because of “beautiful graphics”, music, etc., but to those feelings that they experienced in those days, plowing the vastness of the universe. Playing on these feelings, Elite: Dangerous at one time on kickstarter raised 1.58 million pounds.
There are no effective teaching aids on how to write a perfect book or perfect script. They are not for games. Otherwise, everyone could become the owner of a “golden ticket”.
Speaking of games, I would probably highlight a number of significant features that may indicate that you most likely chose the wrong path.
1. If, telling about your game, you single out in it: 2bit graphics, 100 thousand hours of the artist’s work on the background, 1 million polygons per model, etc., then you clearly do not really understand the principle of success of an indie game.
2. If the plot of your game can be understood only by referring to the annotation or by watching the introductory video, you formally approached the plot.
3. Making a player survive emotional immersion only through original game mechanics or good music / graphics, without a plot is possible, but very difficult. The likelihood that you will succeed tends to zero. Most likely, interest in such a game will disappear very quickly, because the player is not interested in completing the entire game, there is no plot string, etc. In other words, it is difficult to get a person to read a book to the end, if the emphasis is strictly on the "beauty of speech." The time when not very good games went through completely, because there are simply no other games (very few or not available) long gone.
Retreat No. 4
Games of the top-down shooter genre existed as long as I remember. They were always unforgettable arcades with a conditional plot. All flash portals are clogged with games of this genre. The success of the Hotline Miami game (sold over 1.7 million copies) is by no means in the methods of killing or pixel graphics (not always good), but in the plot, which can “force” the player to complete the game. Music and graphics here are just an additional tool.
Total
Personally, I did not even like the demo version of Undertale, but as they say, this is a matter of taste. I am interested in it more, as an excellent object of study. In my opinion, Undertale is a game from the distant past, where the quality of games was determined not by the number of polygons per model.
Most likely, if this game were made by people who can program and draw, then it would be of interest to a wider audience with the ensuing commercial success.
