The business of indie games (world of love talk) January 11, 2011 cliffski Here is the talk I gave last year about making money from indie games. Ignore my crappy powerpoint slides, I explain it all anyway. I hate the open document format. Proprietary software FTW :D World of Love: Cliff Harris from Mudlark on Vimeo.
Possibly the most useful talk ever for anyone who considers themselves an artist and thinks they are above the business side. No business = no art (or at the very best less art).
Great talk, very enlightening! I’m always interested to see the business side of gaming, it really opens my eyes to the relatively hidden side of the games industry. Keep up the good work, and I hope you can help and inspire others do as well as you’ve done! No doubt your new website will help, it’s certainly helped me see a few new games which otherwise I may not have heard of (although RPS does do quite well in that regard). A thriving indie community is why gaming on the PC will never die!
very good talk, that i think applies to pretty much all small businessmen, and not just indie developers. bottom line, if youre trying to make a go of a small business, youre doing it because you love whatever it is youre trying to sell… but love is not enough. youve got to run a BUSINESS or youll be back working for someone else. this is indeed a bitter pill to swallow… but swallow it you must.
Great stuff. The best bit was where you told everyone that you bought powerpoint to create an ODF. OpenOffice next time perhaps? Ok, that wasn’t the best bit.
Cliff you’ve been doing this stuff from the very beginning. I actually remember Rocky Racer from when I was 7 or some such years old. Very fancy looking compared to the other games, but I waved my hand at that and bought Asteroid Miner. That game was a glitchy PoS but I loved it to death until I’d gotten all the crazy upgrades, which was, of course, long enough to seal the deal. That was all because of one reason, that big panel with all of the upgrades you couldn’t get within the limited demo, right there in my face whenever I docked with a planet. Funny how that works out.
Really great talk, thanks for sharing. I agree — too many indies who deserve to be successful miss out just because of the business side of things.