This game made $500 in 6 months ... BUT!

[@Ironroc]

This is a really cool look at the long term of Indie Games. It's actually very inspiring to see how the long tail of some of these games played out. Well done and thanks for the look into how that played out!

[@orangepixelgames]

It's fun being able to share such stuff. Not many devs have so many games or years under their belt 😉

[@CappicheGames]

Thanks for the insight. It's awesome that you have so many games out there still bringing in some cash. I really hope to get to the point you're at one day with all those games out there in the world!

[@orangepixelgames]

Takes a long breath! 😉

[@philbennett6032]

Partly I think the classic old school looking games you make, like gun slugs age really well. Can’t beat cool graphics and game play

[@orangepixelgames]

As long as their are enough people liking such games, I should be able to continue 😁🤞

[@Ichbinhamma]

I love your insights. It's the most down-to-earth gamedev channel on youtube. You inspire.

[@orangepixelgames]

Yay, inspire goal achieved 😁

[@sam65261]

Great info once again, really interesting to get some long term data. Thank you and see you next week!

[@MysticRiverGames]

good luck with the release! and I hope you tail grows even longer :)

[@orangepixelgames]

🤞 I hope so too!

[@mandisaw]

14:45 So make more games, get more "tail" got it LOL (Maybe it means smth different in Dutch? 😆) Thanks for this one, I was very curious about how the various multi-platforms & multiple games add up over the years. And yes, Steam is not the end-all, be-all. So many indie devs have this myth that mobile (even console) are full of non-gamers, or non-payers, when something like 75% of people who play games do so on mobile devices. Not to mention all those oddball devices that use mobile SDKs, like Kindle tablets & Firestick. If you're a fisherman, you go where the fish are. Maybe it's the starving-artist thing, or maybe just fear, idk. Good luck with Next fest & subsequent launch! Maybe it's subliminal marketing, but now I kinda want to play Gauntlet of Power [on Switch!!] even though I *know* I don't have the twitch-reflexes for it anymore 😅 Reminds me of playing Centipede at the arcade as a kid.

[@orangepixelgames]

It's not a Dutch saying, and I was aware of the English version of it 😜. I'll keep hammering on it: release on everything, and design for everything (as good as possible). Releasing the same game but on different platforms just has way more upsides than downsides

[@dancingdoormanable]

Having a 10 to 20k yearly income is a lot more then I expected. Games being dead after 6 months is clearly not true. For a company employing a group of people it may be a drop in the revenue needed, but for a solo gamedev it moves the percentage meter a lot more. Maybe the most important thing is having some certainty as going at it alone seems fragile. Although past successes don't guaranty a good outcome (not do failures), they do give experience that makes it more likely to have a good outcome. When you have a library full of experience that still pays, it has to count for something.

[@orangepixelgames]

Games only die after 6 months if developers don't look after them 🙃

[@mandisaw]

NewZoo had a study on PC/console that made the rounds in April (or early May??). It was kind of Western-market focused, but basically something like 80-90% of playtime was spent on a mix of older games (6+ years) and "annual" release games (CoD and EA Sports like FIFA, Madden, NBA2K, etc). Even on Nintendo, which mostly doesn't do live-service/MTX, Zelda:TotK and Mario Wonder (and Hogwarts) were the only 2023 games in the top 10. That idea of games being dead after a few months isn't really true for AAA, let alone indies. Especially during lulls where not a lot of new stuff is coming out, ppl will reach for their old favorites (or find new "old faves"). I think it's more that the online chatter will mostly move on after a week or so, and some folks on Steam will be like "dead game" if you're not updating every couple weeks. But that's not really representative of most of the market.

[@spacepantsgames8475]

Gotta get Heroes Of Loot on to Genesis cartridge too!

[@orangepixelgames]

Agreed! for those wanting to beta test it -> spacepantsgames.itch.io/heroes-of-loot

[@timmygilbert4102]

Congrats on the integral of the sales

[@orangepixelgames]

Thanks! 😎

[@liquidik]

I can definitely see you kind of game on a platform like Poki. If you've released on Chrome OS this should be doable?

[@orangepixelgames]

Should be, altho it's old html5 code, but I should dig it up someday and see if it still runs!

[@philbennett6032]

I look forward to your next games, back in the day I remember looking forward to Team 17 games

[@orangepixelgames]

And they are still around!

[@philbennett6032]

@@orangepixelgames so glad as have worms the board game on order from kickstarter:)

[@golongself]

Talking about different platforms. How do you deal with all the different capsule sizes and ratios? Currently I just scale and crop, but I should have made a bigger image to start with, I guess.

[@tymondabrowski12]

Having stuff on different layers to arrange differently for different ratios helps too.

[@orangepixelgames]

Yeah make sure you have high quality high resolution artwork to begin with. And then it's just tedious work to make the various sizes for all the required platforms. But worth the time!

[@mandisaw]

If you have Illustrator (or Inkscape or similar) then you can look up how to use artboards to create different sizes/aspect ratios out of the same base art. Depending on your artstyle, you could consider using vector art for some things that need to be resized often - particularly text, banners, etc. - as vectors handle lossless resizing. And yeah, for anything that's raster/pixel based, you want the highest possible resolution for your source. Having some common compositions that can be reused and just tweaked slightly is very handy as well - e.g. horizontal/landscape and vertical/portrait in a few key aspect ratios.

[@PomuLeafEveryday]

Would you say you've reached a point where you could relax? Like the games you have out now make a decent passive income? Like if you just focused on getting your games in bundles, deals and new platforms, and not having to focus on making a new game, would you be able to survive?

[@orangepixelgames]

No, that would be great, and they do nice after so many years, but not THAT nice! 😁

[@mandisaw]

If you look at some "long tail" charts, there's usually a big bump at the start, maybe with some smaller bumps at key points (sales, releases of DLC/ports & later games), but generally the line does go down over time. But cost of living goes up 😅

[@SynDragon-xe1xb]

In today's economy, that's a profit of $5 Dollars

[@nursultannazarov8379]

Old Orange Chicken

[@_nickthered]

Makes me feel bad for wanting to abandon my games, even though their not finished.

[@orangepixelgames]

Will be hard to release on multiple platforms if it's not done at all tho 😜

[@_nickthered]

​​@@orangepixelgamesI mean they are playable, just may be not content complete. Or polished or like perhaps ready for prime time I suppose.