I suppose you all know and heard about a Single game developer that has made great successes having many followers/subscribers/donations
after having a great success over the years why they still work alone why not expand try open a game studio hire people or even contact publishers why stay alone limited to their own capability's?
increasing the size of the team doesn't necessarily mean you will be able to make better games or faster 🤔
if you are not an idea man and you can dev by yourself (and do the majority of the work anyway)
then it's a better idea to buy assets or pay people to make assets for you
because in the end it's the graphics that costs the most and takes the most time on a project
and you just don't get any real benefit from hiring someone full time or having office space
it's an old school practice but times changed: you no longer need a publisher now,
the internet got good enough you can work with people all over the world etc.
(so to sum it up: growing doesn't bring enough benefits to be worth it)
marketing seems to have the only trick publishers have left
but the thing is marketing changed as well
how would you market a game nowadays? 🤔
especially a smaller game? (anything non AAA)
there are no gaming magazines, gaming sites are not really trusted anymore,
people don't watch tv, everyone is using ad blockers etc.
apart from hoping that your game goes viral by getting endorsed by some big time youtuber influencer
or building on band recognition - I guess a publisher that has a track record of publishing
great games previously might help - apart from that I just don't see what they can do 🤔
that would be the ideal situation
but in practice as a solo dev you usually have very small development costs
so with a publisher you essentially just paying a bunch of people
that tell you that your ideas suck and you should implement theirs
and then somehow end up shipping your game prematurely
because they also set the publishing date 🙄
I guess I'm a bit cynical about the whole thing .. 🤔
Money
Games don’t necessarily make enough money to pay a team. If you look at the speech of the small studio that won an award in the UK, they mentioned that they didn’t make enough money from the first game to make a second game.
Control
In the game I wrote most recently, I didn’t like one of the puzzle games. I decided to change it, thought of a new idea, implemented it, tested it and was happy with the change. This took me perhaps 5 hours. Now imagine a team member had written the puzzle game and was proud of it and unhappy that I wanted to change it. We would need more testing, input, and in the end one of us would be unhappy. It would slow down the game by several days and create conflict.
Empire building
I make a good entrepreneur because I’m a self-starter, motivated to get things done and have many ideas. Simultaneously, I make a bad entrepreneur because I just want “enough.” I would be really happy if my game sold 3,000 copies. Others would keep going for more sales – if they sold 3,000, they’d want 30,000. If they sold 30,000, they’d want 300,000 sales etc. The latter group will get more people onboard, start a studio and grow it. People like me, will outsource the parts we don’t enjoy and keep doing the rest ourselves.
Career choice
I’m passionate about developing games – it’s fun for me. If one of my games became successful and I built a team the nature of my job would change. I’d become a manager and would no longer be a hands-on game developer. Alternatively, I’d have to appoint project managers and then the whole process would slow down. If it took me 3 months to deliver the next game, it would then take me 6 months because of the extra communication, documentation and collaboration processes.
And then it goes back to the money – if the game made enough money to sustain me for 3 months, would it make enough money to sustain an entire team for 6 months?
Money
I know that it is an obstacle but I'm Talking about success projects(I mean a project that give a good amount of revenue achieved an player base community and can stand in the market)as long as you invest the money in good way you get more profit.
Control
I Agree working alone make decisions fast since you are the manager/project manager/programmers/etc.. at the same time but that doesn't mean it's the right decision you could be wrong but you won't know cause no one told you "No" and with a team each member will take role
and do it's job without interfering with other members, Yes it may slow down the game progress but at least it will improve quality.
Empire Building
this is what I'm talking about I'm kind of guys i want to success and grow more for bigger success example: currently my target is to have 100 followers Next 200 Next 500 etc... and in future release on steam, not an easy task but i want to build myself an empire
Career choice
Again agree, Mainly i like programming and problem solving if i have a team it's not necessary to sit back and work as the manager only i can be the Programmer and the manager. Managing people is hard especially if you have lack of communication or others working remotely and for the game progress Set a Deadline having one is better than not having it.
As for money to keep the Studio sustain itself you can make a contract with a Publishers or be honest with your employee and tell them that this is not working well and layoff before going bankrupt(it might depend on the contract between you and them).
This is my personal perspective correct me if I'm wrong
I disagree with your starting point, almost all successful games (that I know) tend to outsource, for example, if you are a programmer, you pay for the art, that way the game improves the quality, but you are not tied to paying salaries or assuming the game studio maintenance costs
Making a game is not the same as managing a studio. Just because you know how to make a game does not mean you have the necessary skills to be the leader of a game studio.
A studio with hired people has fixed monthly costs that are not minor. A single successful game is not capable of maintaining a studio over time.
Having a successful game does not mean that you are going to release a second or third that is successful, there are many, many studios that have had one or two successful games and then have closed because they have not been able to make enough money over time to maintain the costs of the studio.
There are several examples of successful games that have sold well, but if you analyze them, they would barely have been able to cover the costs of a small studio.
I would say you are wrong to undervalue the costs of a game studio. The video game market is a very complex and competitive market, creating better quality games does not mean that you will sell more. You can invest all your profits in a second game, which has a much higher quality than the first and still not sell even half of it.
There are a few examples of very successful games that have allowed successful game studios to be created over time. But there are many and I mean many more examples of the opposite.
You have to differentiate between something being possible and that something being easy or within reach of anyone.
Running a video game studio is not easy, especially in today's demanding market. That does not mean that it is impossible, but rather, that it is a field that requires a lot of skill and that is not available to everyone, it is not enough to say I will make a video game today and tomorrow I will have a video game studio, even if you have a very successful game.
People who have a moderately successful game do not invest in moving to a studio for two main reasons, personal decision and economic factors.
As I told you before, just because you like it or know how to make games (and have a successful one) does not qualify you to be the leader of a development team, there are different skills involved.
This does not mean that it cannot be done, but rather that it is not for everyone.
The economic factors, as I told you, the cost of keeping a video game studio operational, even a small one, is very different. VS the cost of creating your own video game without paying salaries, rent, etc.
A studio must function like a business, that is, it must produce enough product annually to pay its costs and make a profit. If a game is not successful, you still have to pay salaries, rent, additional staff, such as lawyers or marketing, etc.
Many people don't want to get into managing a company (with all the complications that that means), and are only interested in programming or creating art for a video game.
And you must be aware that creating a video game company, even if you already have one or two famous video games, will not be a guarantee that you will get more successes or that you will even be able to pay your costs.
Again, I'm not saying it's impossible, but it is something complex, requiring many different skills, and not something for everyone., and You're not asking how a video game company can survives, you're asking why a neighbor's son who managed to make a relatively successful game doesn't start his own company. Or so I understood from your question.
This one is.... Weird.
Mostly it's for money, other times it's because they can't really get any HELP on a project, sometimes in control and other time's, the team is just at each other's throats with piss, vinegar and enough rage to slaughter a field of.... I guess, just insert something to Slaughter here.
I knew a 2 man team working on a Horror game together, one was working on the art while the other was working on the coding. One of them use to be a roommate renting a room from me and he refused to get a real job outside of coding as his Teammate was paying him for the coding.
He got kicked out because he fought with the teammate over the direction of the game they worked on and got pissed it wasn't going to make him famous, just the artist who made the thing. When he bit the hand that fed his pockets to keep him in the house, he got kicked out and it became a tale of both Control and Power.
-=-
Trust me when I say NOONE in indie WANTS to work on a game SOLO; they do seek out others to HELP them; but everyone wants them greenbacks, cash, paid work and it boils down too 'who is willing to work until it make's it big and who want's all that money NOW' or 'Who is willing to work on the project and not throw a fit when nothing goes their way?'.... and very rarely 'Who just wants to help work on a passion project without pay?'
