00:00 what is up guys fire here from awesome
00:02 toots dot-com and while searching for a
00:05 topic that I'm going to create for this
00:06 video I'll stumble upon a really nice
00:08 post and I'm going to well not read the
00:11 full post but I'm going to read the main
00:12 points and I'm going to give my comments
00:14 because the post as you can see it talks
00:16 about can you be a full time solo indie
00:19 developer meaning can you make a living
00:22 out of creating games which is what all
00:25 we want you're on this channel because
00:27 you want to learn how to create games
00:29 you want to make a living out of game
00:30 development and you want to well do that
00:33 your whole life so let's see the actual
00:36 numbers let's see the actual statistics
00:38 that this guy Karl contests I'm hoping
00:41 that I'm not butchering his name has
00:43 laid out in this post and by the way I
00:45 will put a link to this post it will be
00:47 in the description below so as you can
00:49 see here it says can you be a full-time
00:51 solo indie developer and he introduces
00:54 himself he's Carl so on and so forth he
00:57 creates or created a research platform
00:59 video game insights yada yada yada so
01:01 what he is talking about is and he's
01:04 looking by the way on Steam only so he's
01:06 researching the steam app store the game
01:09 store and he is giving the numbers the
01:13 download numbers the revenue numbers and
01:15 let's see that so let's start by looking
01:18 at Steam games lifetime gross sales and
01:21 here he has this nice little chart that
01:24 shows from 0% up to 99 percent and it
01:27 goes up to 30,000 or actually 3 million
01:30 dollars but ifs you can see this graphs
01:33 looks at 41,000 games on Steam and racks
01:36 them into percentiles by estimated sales
01:40 now in this initial insights he says old
01:44 50% of games on Steam have never made
01:48 more than $5,000 so over 50% the games
01:52 you put or you see on Steam don't make
01:55 more than 5 thousand dollars now
01:57 depending on where you live especially
01:58 if you live in the United States because
02:01 this also depends on the place where you
02:03 live in the United States the salaries
02:05 needs to be high because the cost of
02:07 living is high and the taxes are high so
02:09 with 5 K you cannot even die in the
02:12 in a third-world country you can
02:14 probably live nicely with $5,000 but
02:17 again let's move forward so this is over
02:19 50% of games only 23% of the games have
02:23 made over $50,000 an average annual
02:27 salary for a full-time game developer in
02:29 the United States are only 23% and as
02:33 you can see that doesn't sound promising
02:35 as he says in the next line but you need
02:38 to know one thing so when people talk
02:39 about steam and when people say oh my
02:41 game reached this number on Steam it got
02:44 this many downloads on Steam and you
02:45 know how many how many games there are
02:48 on Steam you need to know that as he
02:52 points out here the majority of the
02:54 games on Steam are hobby projects and I
02:58 want to just take a moment and say a few
03:01 words about this so as you can see the
03:03 majority of games on Steam are hobby
03:05 projects hobby what just what does that
03:08 mean that means that I don't know I have
03:09 a full-time job I work as an accountant
03:11 somewhere but I also love game
03:13 development that's my hobby i watch a
03:15 few tutorials on youtube and yada yada
03:17 yada and I learned how to create the
03:19 games and I created small games and I
03:20 put them on Steam that's a hobby project
03:22 but not only that I want to point out
03:24 that there are a lot of copy-paste games
03:28 on Steam there are a lot of asset Flip
03:31 games on Steam and I even have on when I
03:34 say I have on I have a guy that copied
03:36 one of my tutorials the one with the 3d
03:39 fight game or you fight you know each
03:42 you saw that game it's on my youtube
03:44 channel so he basically followed that
03:46 tutorial or simply downloaded the
03:48 project and he put that game on Steam
03:50 for $200 and he named it super fighters
03:54 something like that so steam is full of
03:57 those games and there are a lot of
03:58 templates on asset stores on unity on
04:00 Unreal Engine marketplace where people
04:02 can just download that template and
04:05 literally just plug it into the engine
04:07 and it's a playable game and people just
04:09 use that and they publish that on Steam
04:12 trying to I don't know probably earn
04:14 some money or impress a girl or maybe
04:17 impress I don't know their grandmother
04:20 whatever the case might be you will see
04:23 a lot of games on Steam
04:25 that are like that so you can put aside
04:28 probably a couple of tens of percents of
04:32 games on Steam I don't want to say fifty
04:35 percent of the games but you can
04:37 probably do like forty percent of the
04:38 games on Steam are like that just
04:41 garbage so you cannot count them in so
04:44 he says that same thing over here but
04:46 then again the majority of games on
04:48 Steam are hobby projects and twenty
04:50 percent of the games are free to begin
04:53 with so he or in this post he needs to
04:58 apply some filters to our criteria but
04:59 we'll get back to that so again when you
05:02 publish your game on Steam and it's not
05:04 like what the majority people says you
05:07 need to compete with a lot of games no
05:08 you're competing with a lot of flip
05:10 asset games a lot of copy paste games a
05:13 lot of tutorial based games and free
05:17 games as well so it's not all rains and
05:21 darkness and whatnot but let's go over
05:24 earnings potential of a full time solo
05:26 developer so he is narrowing down the
05:29 Lisbon looking at self-published
05:30 single-player indie games that are fully
05:33 released so he is looking at the games
05:35 that a single person like you and me we
05:39 can also put in here a small team I
05:42 don't know a team of like three people
05:44 or five people we can count that as an
05:46 indie team but when I say we can count
05:49 it as an indie team I mean like you me
05:51 you get a couple of your friends you
05:53 team up together to create a game that's
05:54 what I mean so they have to have at
05:56 least five ratings in order to remove
05:58 the really low end games on Steam now I
06:01 want to also say a few words about this
06:03 if you plan to live off of game
06:06 development live off of putting out
06:09 games out there on the market and
06:11 selling them your games they need to be
06:14 good they need to be playable I'm not
06:16 saying they need to be Grand Theft Auto
06:18 5 level I'm not saying they need to be
06:20 destiny level I'm not saying they need
06:22 to be four type level but they need to
06:23 be a playable level because if your game
06:26 is not playable to begin with then you
06:29 don't have anything to you know search
06:31 for in game development if you don't put
06:34 the time and effort to create a game
06:36 that's engaging that's fun to play
06:38 that will make your players come back to
06:42 play it again then that's the main thing
06:45 that you need to think about in the
06:47 beginning so don't just start typing on
06:49 the keyboard throwing off code and you
06:51 know what not just first think about the
06:55 mechanics of your game what will make it
06:57 playable why should i as your player
07:00 play your game why should I buy it on
07:02 Steam and play it so this is what you
07:04 need to take into account so the price
07:07 range also needs to be from $5 to $20
07:10 there is not much to talk about this
07:13 there are a lot of youtubers who you
07:14 know talked about pricing your game but
07:16 basically indie games are in the range
07:18 from Fri from five to twenty dollars
07:20 depending on how good your game is
07:22 and I say depending on how good your
07:25 game is that's one thing but also
07:26 depending on how engaged your audience
07:29 is with you and it will come back to
07:31 this later on because there are a lot of
07:33 points that he didn't clear up here that
07:36 he didn't even mention so I'm going to
07:38 add a few things with my comments as
07:40 well so I'm also I'm also only looking
07:44 at games released after 2018 so only
07:47 games released in the past two years he
07:49 has narrowed the number of games down
07:51 for forty-one thousand to three hundred
07:53 and three hundred so when he takes all
07:56 this into consideration as he said so
07:58 applying these filters that we just read
08:01 that you can also read later on he
08:03 narrowed that down from forty-one
08:04 thousand to three thousand and three
08:06 hundred so that's about the number in
08:08 the - in the past few years of indie
08:10 games that are released so it's not like
08:12 millions of games that a lot of people
08:14 talk about and make you believe so
08:17 that's better but we also remove the
08:19 Triple A games with hundreds of millions
08:21 of dollars of sales so that's normal so
08:24 we are not comparing ourselves to you
08:26 know Ubisoft EA Sports and so on and so
08:28 forth so where does that leave us as you
08:30 can see here he has a new graph it goes
08:32 from 0 to 90 so to 100% of the games but
08:36 what's important here the bottom
08:38 quartile I don't know how this is read
08:40 but anyways the bottom line of those
08:43 games they make less than 5 K from the
08:46 game so less than 5 K these are at the
08:49 bottom ones and I'm going to talk about
08:51 this as well don't worry
08:51 about that so the median is 13k per game
08:56 so that's like a median value the top
08:59 games so the top ones they earn about
09:02 forty four thousand dollars per game
09:05 this is on a yearly basis this is on a
09:07 yearly basis the top 15 percent earned
09:10 more than 108 thousand dollars in the
09:13 top five percent earned more than half a
09:15 million or five hundred and fifty five
09:18 thousand dollars as you can see over
09:20 here he adds a comment only 50 percent
09:23 of indie games make more than one
09:25 hundred thousand dollars scanning
09:27 through games in that scale we find
09:28 examples like my Croton and horizon gate
09:30 games with the beautiful but simple art
09:32 and refined look this looks like the
09:35 kind of target an ambiguous solo dev
09:37 could set now this is what I also like
09:39 that he mentions these games so we will
09:42 come back to this but what I want to say
09:44 is how you need to think about this
09:47 again this depends on where you live so
09:49 if you live in the United States earning
09:53 that's not much because their attack
09:55 says there's also steams cut and we will
09:57 talk about this in a moment
09:58 but if this is your hobby and if you can
10:01 make it so working on your day job and
10:04 you can manage to create a game in I
10:06 don't know every two years every one
10:08 year you can release a new game and
10:09 let's say that every game you release
10:11 earns on average $10,000 if you have ten
10:14 games that's $100,000 per year which is
10:18 a nice sum of money in the United States
10:20 as well if you live in a third world
10:22 country then you're probably gonna live
10:24 like a king you can buy whatever you
10:26 want with that kind of money this is if
10:28 your game is medium medium that means
10:31 you know the average game but if you are
10:34 a good game developer if you learned if
10:37 you if you're creative if you can create
10:41 or find assets that are appealing good
10:44 enough to create a game that's above
10:47 average you can even earn into the
10:49 50,000 100,000 and so on and so forth
10:53 but as you can see here what's important
10:55 what I want to talk about is this what
10:56 it means to be in the top 15 percent now
10:58 leaving aside that the solo developer
11:00 has to be good enough at art coding
11:02 marketing and the business side and I
11:05 this I will talk about this because he
11:07 only mentions this briefly and needs a
11:09 bit of luck on their side so luck
11:12 doesn't cut it so the days where you
11:14 have flappy bird games and I don't know
11:17 paya whatever piano tiles or whatever
11:20 you know the games where people just
11:22 publish them and they were like an
11:25 instant hit those days are over
11:27 you need to be smart about this and you
11:29 don't have to finish business calls and
11:31 attend Harvard or whatnot to be that
11:34 smart I will talk about this in a moment
11:36 let's have some faith and say we can get
11:39 there let's also assume that the
11:40 development time of such game can be one
11:43 year which is on the faster end but not
11:46 unheard of so let's say you need one
11:48 year and a half about two years to
11:50 finish your game you have achieved
11:51 greatness you've proven the doubters
11:53 wrong and made it to the top so low
11:55 demand food chain you made it to the top
11:57 50% in eve of indie games in terms of
11:59 earning a thing where is your 100k not
12:01 so fast now this is what I want to talk
12:04 about because what is left from those
12:08 100k that you earn this 108 K is the
12:12 grass Ravi not including steams cut
12:14 discounts chargebacks returns and so on
12:17 and so forth so let's see what you get
12:19 after all of this so let's say your game
12:22 earns $100,000 in a year
12:26 both discounts so a typical game like
12:29 this sells a fair amount of games at
12:31 discounts of over 50% so a typical game
12:34 sells more sells a lot of copies with
12:40 over 50% discounts so after playing
12:42 those get discounts you are not left
12:44 with 108 K you are left with 86.4 K on
12:49 average a good rule of thumb is to apply
12:52 a 20% discount to gross revenue so about
12:55 20% of your sales will come from
12:56 discount post returns and chargebacks
12:58 this will leave you at seventy seven
13:02 point eight K because typically 10% of
13:05 games are returned and chargebacks apply
13:07 so you can also count in 10% of your
13:10 sales to be charged back chargebacks
13:12 meaning people who are I don't want to
13:16 insult anyone but I want to say dumb
13:19 because you can simply ask for a refund
13:21 a chargeback is when you contact your
13:22 bank and you say hey somebody stole
13:24 money from my credit card this
13:26 transaction here was not authorized by
13:28 me even it even it was you authorized it
13:32 because you clicked purchase on Steam I
13:34 didn't click it you clicked it when I
13:36 say you I don't mean you watch the video
13:38 but hypothetically and then he calls a
13:40 bank he lies and then the person who is
13:44 selling something he receives a charge
13:45 back so that's a charge back so
13:48 typically 10% of games are returned and
13:50 chargebacks applied now net revenue
13:52 after that is 77k but after steams cut
13:57 which is 30% so 30% of your sales go to
14:00 steam you are left with fifty-four point
14:02 four K out of those 108 K so basically
14:08 you need to earn 100 K to have 50 K in
14:13 revenue that will go to you so if you
14:15 earn $10,000 you will take home $5,000
14:18 after all of this of course this is on
14:20 average it doesn't mean like that you
14:22 can earn 100 K and you can take home
14:24 like 60,000 or 65 maybe even $70,000 we
14:28 don't know but on average let's say half
14:30 of the money that half of the revenue
14:33 that your game makes you will take home
14:36 over here he says is this the death of
14:38 the dream and this is what I want to
14:40 talk about well know there are
14:41 successful solo developers out there and
14:43 there are many things that developer
14:45 could do to improve their chances I
14:47 would argue that most of these however
14:49 lie on the business and marketing side a
14:51 successful solo developer must realize
14:53 that they are a solo entrepreneur and
14:55 this is true that means making the right
14:57 pricing decisions devoting a lot of time
14:59 on marketing efforts and doing proper
15:01 research into the game space and
15:02 competitors before fully getting into
15:04 the game development phase now as you
15:08 can see he only talked about your
15:10 potential revenue earnings and if you
15:12 can live off of that but what I also
15:14 want to add is how you can make your
15:16 chances even higher how you can sell
15:18 games at $20 even as a indie developer
15:21 and that's the high pricing for indie
15:23 developers by making your own audience
15:26 and this is not the first time I've
15:27 talked about this and this will not be
15:28 the last time I'll talked about it
15:30 because this is really really
15:32 and your audience is everything you have
15:34 the people who buy from you are your
15:38 resources when I say resources I mean
15:40 they are the people who will push your
15:42 game forward if you don't have people
15:44 who will buy for you you can create the
15:47 best game in the world it will not go
15:49 anywhere so when you want to create a
15:53 game as I said the first thing that you
15:55 need to do you need to start thinking
15:56 about the gameplay mechanics to make
15:58 your game beautiful and so on and so for
16:00 playable as we already discussed a
16:02 moment ago but you also need to think
16:03 about your audience where they hang out
16:06 so you can start posting there don't
16:09 wait until you create your game and
16:11 publish it online believe me if you do
16:13 this if you create your game while
16:15 you're building your audience so that
16:17 goes like this that goes in line it
16:20 doesn't go create your game then find
16:23 out ends it goes in line like this if
16:25 you do it like that you will increase
16:27 your chances by 100 fold to get into the
16:32 top 15% where you will earn 100 well
16:35 your game will gross over $100,000 of
16:38 revenue and even more so in order to get
16:42 $100,000 you need to sell how many
16:45 copies if your game sells at $20 1,000
16:48 copy that's $20,000 you need to sell
16:51 5,000 copies in order to get to 100k in
16:55 a year now imagine this if you have a
16:57 youtube channel and let's say you grow
17:00 it to 100k subscribers and this is not
17:02 hard especially these days you know
17:05 people think oh how can I grow gameplay
17:08 videos gameplay dev logs are really
17:10 popular right now so they're popular so
17:13 just put them out there people who found
17:14 you share them on Facebook groups people
17:16 will find you and they will come to your
17:18 channel so let's say you have a YouTube
17:20 channel you post on a regular basis
17:22 that's one or two videos per week and
17:24 that's not hard to do and when I say not
17:27 hard in the beginning everything will be
17:29 hard when you start the game development
17:30 it's hard when you start creating videos
17:32 it's hard but when you get a grasp how
17:34 all of that works you can you know it's
17:37 very easy to do all of that
17:38 so anyways my point is and what I want
17:42 to say is when you create your audience
17:45 while you're creating your
17:46 game and let's say as I said you have a
17:48 youtube channel let's say you get three
17:50 million views per year and let's say out
17:54 of those three million people 1.5
17:55 million are unique people and that's
17:58 about right because I get like you know
18:00 half of half of the views I get or half
18:04 the views that I get divide that by 2
18:08 minus minus or plus 10 a few 10
18:12 thousands of people that's how many
18:13 unique people you have watching your
18:15 channel so let's say you get three
18:16 million views you have 1.5 million
18:19 people on your channel out of those 1.5
18:22 million you only need five thousand
18:24 people to buy your game that's like 0.0
18:28 I don't know how many percent so you see
18:29 how smart you also need to be when it
18:33 comes to this so that's your marketing
18:35 side anyways I'm going to leave you at
18:37 this you can think about it I have other
18:38 videos who talked about who talked about
18:40 this topic how you can create your
18:43 audience and so on and so forth then I
18:44 also leave a link to this post so you
18:46 can you know like read it yourself and
18:49 this is just my two cents on this topic
18:51 and I will also put a few links down in
18:55 description if you want help or need
18:57 help with learning game development
18:58 fixing bugs and so on and so forth you
19:01 can join my game development Academy for
19:02 all of that so make sure you check out
19:04 those links I don't know other than that
19:05 fire here for my sitcom thank you for
19:07 watching this video and I'll see you
19:08 guys in the next one
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