What NOT to do when starting as an indie

game developer
by Roger Paffrath on 11/15/13 09:10:00 am

This text was originally posted on my personal blog.

A while ago I stumbled upon a talk submission form for an event called The Developers' Conference. It's a
gathering of people who want to learn a little bit more about topics like architecture, digital marketing, Arduino and
others. Sure enough, games were going to be discussed there too.
The event was close to at least four universities that have game courses, so I thought many young faces would
show up. Right after I saw the submission form, I started thinking what I could tell those people that want to be a
part of the game developing scene here in Brazil. It didn't take long before I realized I wanted to share with them
the things I messed up on the past two years and maybe help them be more aware of some of the tricks you can
fall for when you are too eager or too optimistic to do something.
When my talk got accepted I wanted to validate my arguments with other people's own experience. That was
something I didn't have time to do and this post is an attempt to fix that. What this post is not, however, is a
receipt to follow blindly. Feel free to disagree with me and bring your ideas to the table.
Here's what I've come up with:

1. Do not fall for survivorship bias.

For those who may not know, survivorship bias is the tendency to consider only successful cases
when analyzing market data, behavior, etc. It even influences warfare.
How does that apply to game development then? Well, when I started, I remember being really
optimistic and enthusiastic about building an iPhone game. I was reading article after article of
developers that were making good money out of the App Store and I thought maybe I could get
some bucks myself. I didn't stop to think things through and it did not go well.
"Resistance outwits the amateur with the oldest trick in the book: it uses his own enthusiasm
against him." - Steven Pressfield, The War of Art
Take your time. Think of the obstacles ahead. Talk to people and ask for advice. Analyze every
option. Then take some more time. Only after that make a choice and never look back.
To know more about survivorship bias I strongly recommend reading this.

2. Do not start with a complex idea.

I see a lot of guys that want to start out doing things like an FPS. They seriously want to start
doing that. They have only the basic skills, but that's what they want to do.
When these guys sit down to actually do the job, they are easily defeated. That's because they
don't realize the amount of energy you need to put into a project and they have even less idea of
their own professional capabilities.
I am not saying your first game cannot be an FPS, but you have to consider all the things ahead. If
you choose an FPS, it will take really long before it is finished and it will be on the market
alongside Call of Duty. Isn't it better to start with a smaller project to get under the radar of the
press and fellow developers earlier?
For me, the smaller the better. But, no matter the size of the project, I like to read this piece by
Tommy Refenes every once in a while. You have to divide your project in parts, tackle those parts
individually and every now and them step back and enjoy the progress you made.
3. Do not make a simple idea complex.
Do not overcomplicate things. This happened with Little Red Running Hood. If you start thinking
about adding stuff, stop and evaluate if those things are really going to improve player experience
and if they sit well with the core mechanics.
I found that the two next items on the list are important agents on avoiding adding useless stuff to
a game you've been working on for months. You can also read more about this here.
4. Do not skip the prototype phase of development.
So, how do you keep from adding useless things to your game? You do this kind of thing on a
prototype. That's why it is important not to skip prototyping, specially when you're really eager to
start making something. It's an opportunity to let your big creative brain run on overdrive.
By making a prototype, you can find out if the mechanics created really work by their own. You can
also get folks to play your idea and get decent feedback to improve it. Yes, you will probably need
to improve it.
Discover if your game, in its simplest form, is fun before investing months of your time developing
it.
5. Do not forget to make a GDD or write your ideas down somehow.
Ideas have this weird behavior. Sometimes they run away and are lost forever. Other times they
mutate... it can be to something better - which is cool -, but they can also transform into
something nastier than their original version. Writing them down is a way to avoid such messy
scenario.
When working with teams there is also this strange thing that happens sometimes. You can try to
explain your idea to me and I can choose what to listen or twist it somehow. Or maybe your
explanation isn't clear enough. When the time comes to actually implement it, it won't turn out as
you expected. Hopefully, a well documented idea can solve this situation.

A GDD also makes things easier when there is need to bring someone new to the team, specially if
the person is working remotely. It gives a full perspective on the game.
6. Do not underestimate the power of good planning.
Deadlines are awesome. Most of the things done on this planet have only been accomplished
because of them. Without them, we feel too comfortable and a comfortable creative mind starts
wandering. Before you realize, you're taking double the time to complete simple tasks.
Other positive aspect of good project planning is that you are able to focus on one thing at a time.
You don't have to worry about those awful bugs, because you will have the proper time to deal
with them later.
Some people might think that's only for larger teams or projects. That's OK. In the end, if you sit
down every day and do the work you need to do, it all falls into place. Me? I like a good old
fashioned deadline.
7. Do not leave marketing to the last months of development.
Legend has it that when Brazilian cartoonist Maurcio de Sousa started drawing, his father told
him that there was no problem with that, as long as he learned how to sell his creation too.
Thankfully, he listened.
Here is something I see most of indie game developers around me doing: they focus exclusively on
the technical aspect of making a game, without even thinking about how to get it in front of larger
audiences. Not even to play test the things they make. They worry about it much later, when the
project is near the finish line. Alexander Bruce has some great insights on how that can lead
to obscurity.
Hopefully, as the industry matures, beginner indie developers will become more aware of that and
will start getting word out earlier and saving bigger budgets for marketing.
8. Do not play test only by the end of the project and/or only with friends.
Like stated before: it is best to have large groups of people playing your game as soon as possible.
You followed the advice provided here and built a prototype? Show them to strangers on the
street. Go to events with the latest build of the game and get as much feedback as possible. After
that, make some adjustments and go to the next festival.
9. Do not start on the mobile market.
This one is the one I get most of people disagreeing with me. It's the first item on this list making
young developers see everything optimistically. The real truth is: the good things on mobile are far
less numerous than the bad things going on on the platform.
Seriously, if you are starting, with no fans, no press awareness and no big money to invest on
marketing, forget the mobile market. This is something I learned the hard way. I saw months of
hard work fall into the limbo of the App Store. Obscurity is a bitch.
Even if you forget the discoverability of games on the mobile market being all messed up, I really
don't think you should start there. There are easier and faster ways to make and distribute games.
Part of the reason we didn't play tested Little Red Running Hood accordingly was the fact that it
was hard for us to send the app to people outside of our friend circles.

I realize there are two sides for that discussion and that there are down sides to any market, but I
will remain encouraging people to start reading more about the problems of mobile and all the
stories of other developers who fell for the mermaid's song.
10. Do not forget the budget for attending events and festivals.
Hands down, this is the best way to show your game to other people and starting networking with
other developers and press. These are creative minds that gather on the same place at the same
time because they love games. That's inspirational. At least I heard. I was stupid enough to
consider only submitting my game to these festivals, but never thought of showing up in person.
When I realized the benefits of attending these events, I had no money to do so.
11. Do not ignore the fact that you are part of an industry.
Starting out on any industry is hard. It is even harder if you are blind to all the topics and people
that are relevant in the business. Luckily, this is the easiest tip on the list to follow. Just check this
list Rami Ismail wrote with some interesting twitter accounts on the gaming world (don't forget to
follow @tha_rami himself). Don't have a twitter account? Fix that now, it's free!
12. Do not wait for a diploma to start making things.
You are not studying to be a doctor, lawyer or engineer. Maybe if you were you would have
realized something most of my colleagues at university don't.
You want to work in a certain field? Start thinking of your career early.
Stop throwing that unfinished project away at the end of the semester. Stop doing things for
grades. Stop doing things for love, too. Do it for your career. Love your career itself. Become a
professional and finish things!
13. Do not hide those things.
I know for a fact that there are a lot of people around me doing things related to game
development. However, I know very few of those people and even less of their games. Why is
that?
If you are working on a game and you hide it from people, you are being selfish. You are keeping
them from having fun. You are also overconfident. Before spending more time working on the
awesome idea you had, how about you let us play it and them we can give you feedback?
I am currently trying to organize meetings with developers to get something going. If you are a
local indie working on a game, please get in touch. It isn't hard to find me. If you made it this far
on the post you are truly persistent, therefore I would like, not only to play your games, but
also to personally high five you.

Bonus for Brazilian developers:

This consist of only one tip, but it can make all the difference for people with tight budgets. Maybe
it applies to other countries too, but for now I only know how this works in Brazil.
14. Do not open a company.

You are just starting out. You don't need to pay taxes, you don't need to have an accountant and
you don't need fancy paperwork (and believe me, there is a lot of paperwork).
Focus on building something first. Make some games, get some word out and try to find your
voice. Partner up with different people and get informed about their experiences. There are many
other ways to start out other than opening a company right away.
Actually, those who encouraged me to start a business were the ones who were interested on
doing the accounting for us. Coincidence? I think not.
The damage wasn't that much, but the money we put into the company could've been used to
show our game on events. International ones.
Now, I only see a point on going through all the paperwork to register a business here if you are
aiming to get a deal with an investor, join government programs or sign a contract with Sony or
Microsoft. You have to really trust your gut to go for those things as a beginner. But, if you decide
to do it nonetheless, let me know how it turns out.

Anyway,
Even if you don't take any of my advice, you are probably here because you are interested on
game development. So, I wish you keep making great games. Maybe someday I'll get to play
them.

Survivorship Bias
The Misconception: You should focus on the successful if you wish to become
successful.
The Truth: When failure becomes invisible, the difference between failure and
success may also become invisible.

Illustration by Brad Clark at http://www.plus3video.com

In New York City, in an apartment a dozen blocks west of Harlem, above trees
reaching out over sidewalks and dogs pulling at leashes and conversations cut short
to avoid parking tickets, a group of professional thinkers once gathered and
completed equations that would both snuff and spare several hundred thousand
human lives.
People walking by the apartment at the time had no idea that four stories above them
some of the most important work in applied mathematics was tilting the scales of a
global conflict as secret agents of the United States armed forces, arithmetical
soldiers, engaged in statistical combat. Nor could people today know as they open
umbrellas and twist heels on cigarettes, that nearby, in an apartment overlooking
Morningside Heights, one of those soldiers once effortlessly prevented the United
States military from doing something incredibly stupid, something that could have
changed the flags now flying in capitals around the world had he not caught
it, something you do every day.
These masters of math moved their families across the country, some across an

ocean, so they could work together. As they unpacked, the theaters in their new
hometowns replaced posters for Citizen Kane with those for Casablanca, and the
newspapers they unwrapped from photo frames and plates featured stories still
unraveling the events at Pearl Harbor. Many still held positions at universities. Others
left those sorts of jobs to think deeply in one of the many groups that worked for the
armed forces, free of any other obligations aside from checking in on their families at
night and feeding their brains during the day. All paused their careers and rushed to
enlist so they could help crush Hitler, not with guns and brawn, but with integers and
exponents.
The official name for the people inside the apartment was the Statistical Research
Group, a cabal of geniuses assembled at the request of the White House and made up
of people who would go on to compete for and win Nobel Prizes. The SRG was an
extension of Columbia University, and they dealt mainly with statistical analysis. The
Philadelphia Computing Section, another group made up entirely of women
mathematicians, worked six days a week at the University of Pennsylvania on
ballistics tables. Other groups with different specialties were tied to Harvard,
Princeton, Brown and others, 11 in all, each a leaf at the end of a new branch of the
government created to help defeat the Axis the Department of War Math.
Actuallyno. They were never officially known by such a deliciously sexy title. They
were instead called the Applied Mathematics Panel, but they operated as if they were
a department of war math.
The Department, ahem, the Panel, was created because the United States needed
help. A surge of new technology had flooded into daily life, and the same wonders
that years earlier drove ticket sales to the Worlds Fair were now cracking open cities.
Numbers and variables now massed into scenarios far too complex to solve with maps
and binoculars. The military realized it faced problems that no soldier had ever
confronted. No best practices yet existed for things like rockets and radar stations and
aircraft carriers. The most advanced computational devices available were clunky
experiments made of telephone switches or vacuum tubes. A calculator still looked
like the mutant child of an old-fashioned cash register and a mechanical typewriter. If
you wanted solutions to the newly unfathomable problems of modern combat you
needed powerful number crunchers, and in 1941 the worlds most powerful number
crunchers ran on toast and coffee.
Here is how it worked: Somewhere inside the vast machinery of war a commander
would stumble into a problem. That commander would then send a request to the
head of the Panel who would then assign the task to the group he thought would best
be able to resolve the issue. Scientists in that group would then travel to Washington
and meet with top military personnel and advisors and explain to them how they
might go about solving the problem. It was like calling technical support, except you
called a computational genius who then invented a new way of understanding the
world through math in an effort to win a global conflict for control of the planet.

Illustration by Brad Clark athttp://www.plus3video.com/

For instance, the Navy desperately needed to know what was the best possible
pattern, or spread, of torpedoes to launch against large enemy ships. All they had to
go on were a series of hastily taken, blurry, black-and-white photographs of turning
Japanese war vessels. The Panel handed over the photos to one of its meat-based
mainframes and asked it to report back when it had a solution. The warrior
mathematicians solved the problem almost as soon as they saw it. Lord Kelvin, they
told the Navy, had already worked out the calculations in 1887. Just look at the
patterns in the waves, they explained, see how they fan out in curves like an unfurling
fern? The spaces tell you everything; they give it all away. Work out the distance
between the cusps of the bow waves and youll know how fast the ship is going. Lord
Kelvin hadnt worked out what to do if the ship was turning, but no problem, they said.
The mathematicians scribbled on notepads and clacked on blackboards until they had
both advanced the field and created a solution. They then measured wavelets on real
ships and saw their math was sound. The Navy added a new weapon to its arsenal
the ability to accurately send a barrage of torpedoes into a turning ship based only on
what you could divine from the patterns in the waves.
The devotion of the mathematical soldiers grew stronger as the war grew bloodier and
they learned that the things they etched on hidden blackboards and jotted on guarded
scraps of paper determined who would and would not return home to their families
once the war was over. Leading brains in every scientific discipline had eagerly joined
the fight, and although textbooks would eventually devote chapters to the work of the
code breakers and the creators of the atomic bomb, there were many groups whose
stories never made headlines that produced nothing more than weaponized
equations. One story in particular was nearly lost forever. In it, a brilliant statistician

named Abraham Wald saved countless lives by preventing a group of military

commanders from committing a common human error, a mistake that you probably
make every single day.
Colleagues described Wald as gentle and kind, and as a genius unsurpassed in his
areas of expertise. His contributions, said one peer, had produced a decisive turn in
method and purpose in the social sciences. Born in Hungary in 1902, the son of a
Jewish baker, Wald spent his childhood studying equations, eventually working his way
up through academia to become a graduate student at the University of Vienna where
the great mathematician Karl Menger mentored him. He was the sort of student who
offered suggestions on how to improve the books he was reading, and then saw to it
those suggestions were incorporated into later editions. His mentor would introduce
Wald to problems that made experts in the field rub their beards, the sort of things
with names like stochastic difference equations and the betweenness among the
ternary relations in metric space. Wald would not only return within a month or so
with the solution to such a problem but politely ask for another to solve. As he
advanced the science of probability and statistics, his name became familiar to
mathematicians in the United States where he eventually fled in 1938, reluctantly, as
the Nazi threat grew. His family, all but a single brother, would later die in the
extermination camp known as Auschwitz.
Soon after Wald arrived in the United States he joined the Applied Mathematics Panel
and went to work with the team at Columbia stuffed in the secret apartment. His
group looked for patterns and applied statistics to problems and situations too large
and unwieldy for commanders to get their arms around. They turned the geometry of
air combat into graphs and charts and they plotted the success rates of bomb sights
and various tactics. As the war progressed, their efforts became focused on the most
pressing problem of the war keeping airplanes in the sky.

A B-24 is shot down over an island in the Pacific

Source: http://www.britishpathe.com/
In some years of World War II, the chances of a member of a bomber crew making it
through a tour of duty were about the same as calling heads in a coin toss and
winning. As a member of a World War II bomber crew, you flew for hours above an
entire nation that was hoping to murder you while you were suspended in the air,

huge, visible from far away, and vulnerable from every direction above and below as
bullets and flak streamed out to puncture you. Ghosts already, thats how historian
Kevin Wilson described World War II airmen. They expected to die because it always
felt like the chances of surviving the next bombing run were about the same as
running shirtless across a football field swarming with angry hornets and making it
unharmed to the other side. You might make it across once, but if you kept running
back and forth, eventually your luck would run out. Any advantage the
mathematicians could provide, even a very small one, would make a big difference
day after day, mission after mission.
As with the torpedo problem, the top brass explained what they knew, and the Panel
presented the problem to Wald and his group. How, the Army Air Force asked, could
they improve the odds of a bomber making it home? Military engineers explained to
the statistician that they already knew the allied bombers needed more armor, but the
ground crews couldnt just cover the planes like tanks, not if they wanted them to take
off. The operational commanders asked for help figuring out the best places to add
what little protection they could. It was here that Wald prevented the military from
falling prey to survivorship bias, an error in perception that could have turned the tide
of the war if left unnoticed and uncorrected. See if you can spot it.
The military looked at the bombers that had returned from enemy territory. They
recorded where those planes had taken the most damage. Over and over again, they
saw that the bullet holes tended to accumulate along the wings, around the tail
gunner, and down the center of the body. Wings. Body. Tail gunner. Considering this
information, where would you put the extra armor? Naturally, the commanders
wanted to put the thicker protection where they could clearly see the most damage,
where the holes clustered. But Wald said no, that would be precisely the wrong
decision. Putting the armor there wouldnt improve their chances at all.
Do you understand why it was a foolish idea? The mistake, which Wald saw instantly,
was that the holes showed where the planes were strongest. The holes showed where
a bomber could be shot and still survive the flight home, Wald explained. After all,
here they were, holes and all. It was the planes that werent there that needed extra
protection, and they had needed it in places that these planes had not. The holes in
the surviving planes actually revealed the locations that needed the least additional
armor. Look at where the survivors are unharmed, he said, and thats where these
bombers are most vulnerable; thats where the planes that didnt make it back were
hit.
Taking survivorship bias into account, Wald went ahead and worked out how much
damage each individual part of an airplane could take before it was destroyed
engine, ailerons, pilot, stabilizers, etc. and then through a tangle of complicated
equations he showed the commanders how likely it was that the average plane would
get shot in those places in any given bombing run depending on the amount of
resistance it faced. Those calculations are still in use today.

1944 War Dept US Army Air Forces Training Film Source: National Archives
The military had the best data available at the time, and the stakes could not have
been higher, yet the top commanders still failed to see the flaws in their logic. Those
planes would have been armored in vain had it not been for the intervention of a man
trained to spot human error.
A question should be forming in the front of your brain at this point. If the top brass of
the United States armed forces could make such a simple and dumb mistake while
focused on avoiding simple and dumb mistakes, thanks to survivorship bias, does that
mean survivorship bias is likely bungling many of your own day-to-day assumptions?
The answer is, of course, yes. All the time.
Simply put, survivorship bias is your tendency to focus on survivors instead of
whatever you would call a non-survivor depending on the situation. Sometimes that
means you tend to focus on the living instead of the dead, or on winners instead of
losers, or on successes instead of failures. In Walds problem, the military focused on
the planes that made it home and almost made a terrible decision because they
ignored the ones that got shot down.
It is easy to do. After any process that leaves behind survivors, the non-survivors are
often destroyed or muted or removed from your view. If failures becomes invisible,
then naturally you will pay more attention to successes. Not only do you fail to
recognize that what is missing might have held important information, you fail to
recognize that there is missing information at all.
You must remind yourself that when you start to pick apart winners and losers,
successes and failures, the living and dead, that by paying attention to one side of
that equation you are always neglecting the other. If you are thinking about opening a
restaurant because there are so many successful restaurants in your hometown, you
are ignoring the fact that only successful restaurants survive to become examples.
Maybe on average 90 percent of restaurants in your city fail in the first year. You cant
see all those failures because when they fail they also disappear from view. As Nassim
Taleb writes in his book The Black Swan, The cemetery of failed restaurants is very

silent. Of course the few that dont fail in that deadly of an environment are wildly
successful because only the very best and the very lucky can survive. All you are left
with are super successes, and looking at them day after day you might think its a
great business to get into when you are actually seeing evidence that you should
avoid it.

Googles Larry Page Source: Fortune Magazine

Survivorship bias pulls you toward bestselling diet gurus, celebrity CEOs, and
superstar athletes. Its an unavoidable tick, the desire to deconstruct success like a
thieving magpie and pull away the shimmering bits. You look to the successful for
clues about the hidden, about how to better live your life, about how you too can
survive similar forces against which you too struggle. Colleges and conferences prefer
speakers who shine as examples of making it through adversity, of struggling against
the odds and winning. The problem here is that you rarely take away from these
inspirational figures advice on what not to do, on what you should avoid, and thats
because they dont know. Information like that is lost along with the people who dont
make it out of bad situations or who dont make it on the cover of business magazines
people who dont get invited to speak at graduations and commencements and
inaugurations. The actors who traveled from Louisiana to Los Angeles only to return
to Louisiana after a few years dont get to sit next to James Lipton and watch clips of
their Oscar-winning performances as students eagerly gobble up their crumbs of
wisdom. In short, the advice business is a monopoly run by survivors. As the
psychologist Daniel Kahneman writes in his book Thinking Fast and Slow, A stupid
decision that works out well becomes a brilliant decision in hindsight. The things a
great company like Microsoft or Google or Apple did right are like the planes with
bullet holes in the wings. The companies that burned all the way to the ground after
taking massive damage fade from memory. Before you emulate the history of a
famous company, Kahneman says, you should imagine going back in time when that

company was just getting by and ask yourself if the outcome of its decisions were in
any way predictable. If not, you are probably seeing patterns in hindsight where there
was only chaos in the moment. He sums it up like so, If you group successes together
and look for what makes them similar, the only real answer will be luck.
If you see your struggle this way, as partly a game of chance, then as Google
Engineer Barnaby James writes on his blog, skill will allow you to place more bets on
the table, but its not a guarantee of success. Thus, he warns, beware advice from
the successful. Entrepreneur Jason Cohen, in writing about survivorship bias, points
out that since we cant go back in time and start 20 identical Starbucks across the
planet, we can never know if that business model is the source of the chains
immense popularity or if something completely random and out of the control of the
decision makers led to a Starbucks on just about every street corner in North America.
That means you should be skeptical of any book promising you the secrets of winning
at the game of life through following any particular example.
It might seem disheartening, the fact that successful people probably owe more to
luck than anything else, but only if you see luck as some sort of magic. Take off those
superstitious goggles for a moment, and consider this: the latest psychological
research indicates that luck is a long mislabeled phenomenon. It isnt a force, or grace
from the gods, or an enchantment from fairy folk, but the measurable output of a
group of predictable behaviors. Randomness, chance, and the noisy chaos of reality
may be mostly impossible to predict or tame, but luck is something else. According to
psychologist Richard Wiseman, luck bad or good is just what you call the results of
a human being consciously interacting with chance, and some people are better at
interacting with chance than others.

Over the course of 10 years, Wiseman followed the lives of 400 subjects of all ages
and professions. He found them after he placed ads in newspapers asking for people
who thought of themselves as very lucky or very unlucky. He had them keep diaries
and perform tests in addition to checking in on their lives with interviews and
observations. In one study, he asked subjects to look through a newspaper and count
the number of photographs inside. The people who labeled themselves as generally
unlucky took about two minutes to complete the task. The people who considered
themselves as generally lucky took an average of a few seconds. Wiseman had placed
a block of text printed in giant, bold letters on the second page of the newspaper that
read, Stop counting. There are 43 photographs in this newspaper. Deeper inside, he

placed a second block of text just as big that read, Stop counting, tell the
experimenter you have seen this and win $250. The people who believed they were
unlucky usually missed both.
Wiseman speculated that what we call luck is actually a pattern of behaviors that
coincide with a style of understanding and interacting with the events and people you
encounter throughout life. Unlucky people are narrowly focused, he observed. They
crave security and tend to be more anxious, and instead of wading into the sea of
random chance open to what may come, they remain fixated on controlling the
situation, on seeking a specific goal. As a result, they miss out on the thousands of
opportunities that may float by. Lucky people tend to constantly change routines and
seek out new experiences. Wiseman saw that the people who considered themselves
lucky, and who then did actually demonstrate luck was on their side over the course
of a decade, tended to place themselves into situations where anything could happen
more often and thus exposed themselves to more random chance than did unlucky
people. The lucky try more things, and fail more often, but when they fail they shrug it
off and try something else. Occasionally, things work out.
Wiseman told Skeptical Inquirer magazine that he likened it to setting loose two
people inside an apple orchard, each tasked with filling up their baskets as many
times as possible. The unlucky person tends to go to the same few spots over and
over again, the basket holding fewer apples each visit. The lucky person never visits
the same spot twice, and that persons basket is always full. Change those apples to
experiences, and imagine a small portion of those experiences lead to fame, fortune,
riches, or some other form of happiness material or otherwise, and you can see that
chance is not as terrifying as it first appears, you just need to learn how to approach
it.
The harder they looked, the less they saw. And so it is with luck unlucky
people miss chance opportunities because they are too focused on looking
for something else. They go to parties intent on finding their perfect partner
and so miss opportunities to make good friends. They look through
newspapers determined to find certain type of job advertisements and as a
result miss other types of jobs. Lucky people are more relaxed and open,
and therefore see what is there rather than just what they are looking for.
Richard Wiseman in an article written for Skeptical Inquirer
Survivorship bias also flash-freezes your brain into a state of ignorance from which
you believe success is more common than it truly is and therefore you leap to the
conclusion that it also must be easier to obtain. You develop a completely inaccurate
assessment of reality thanks to a prejudice that grants the tiny number of survivors
the privilege of representing the much larger group to which they originally belonged.
Here is an easy example. Many people believe old things represent a higher level of
craftsmanship than do new things. Its sort of a they dont make them like they used
to kind of assumption. Youve owned cars that only lasted a few years before you had
to start replacing them piece by piece, and, would you look at that, there goes
another Volkswagen Beetle buzzing along like it just rolled off an assembly line. Its

survivorship bias at work. The Beetle or the Mustang or the El Camino or the VW
Minibus are among a handful of models that survived in large enough numbers to
become iconic classics. The hundreds of shitty car designs and millions of automobile
corpses in junkyards around the world far outnumber the popular, well-maintained,
successful, beloved survivors. According to Josh Clark at HowStuffWorks, most experts
say that cars from the last two decades are far more reliable and safer than the cars
of the 1950s and 60s, but plenty of people believe otherwise because of a few highprofile survivors. The examples that would disprove such assumptions are rusting out
of sight. Do you see how its the same as Walds bombers? The Beetle survived, like
the bombers that made it home, and it becomes a representative of 1960s cars
because it remains visible. All the other cars that werent made in the millions and
werent easy to maintain or were poorly designed are left out of the analysis because
they are now removed from view, like the bombers that didnt return.
Similarly, photographer Mike Johnston explains on his blog that the artwork that leaps
from memory when someone mentions a decade like the 1920s or a movement like
Baroque is usually made up of things that do not suck. Your sense of a past era tends
to be informed by paintings and literature and drama that are not crap, even though
at any given moment pop culture is filled with more crap than masterpieces. Why? It
isnt because people were better artists back in the day. It is because the good stuff
survives, and the bad stuff is forgotten. So over time, you end up with skewed ideas of
past eras. You think the artists of antiquity were amazing in the same way you
associate the music of past decades with the songs that survived long enough to get
into your ears. The movies about Vietnam never seem to include songs in their
soundtracks that sucked.
I have to chuckle whenever I read yet another description of American
frontier log cabins as having been well crafted or sturdily or beautifully
built. The much more likely truth is that 99% of frontier log cabins were
horribly builtits just that all of those fell down. The few that have
survived intact were the ones that were well made. That doesnt mean all of
them were. Mike Johnston at The Online Photographer
You succumb to survivorship bias because you are innately terrible with statistics. For
instance, if you seek advice from a very old person about how to become very old, the
only person who can provide you an answer is a person who is not dead. The people
who made the poor health choices you should avoid are now resting in the earth and
cant tell you about those bad choices anymore. Thats why its difficult not to furrow
your brow and wonder why you keep paying for a gym membership when Willard
Scott showcases the birthday of a 110-year-old woman who claims the source of her
longevity is a daily regimen of cigarillos, cheese sticks, and Wild Turkey cut with maple
syrup and Robitussin. You miss that people like her represent a very small number of
the living. They are on the thin end of a bell curve. There is a much larger pool of
people who basically drank bacon grease for breakfast and didnt live long enough to
appear on television. Most people cant chug bourbon and gravy for a lifetime and
expect to become an octogenarian, but the unusually lucky handful who can tend to
stand out precisely because they are alive and talking.

The mentalist Derren Brown once predicted he could flip a coin 10 times in a row and
have it come up heads every time. He then dazzled UK television audiences by doing
exactly that, flipping the coin into a bowl with only one cutaway shot for flair. How did
he do it? He filmed himself flipping coins for nine hours until he got the result he
wanted. He then edited out all the failures and presented the single success.
Advertisements for weight loss products and fitness regimens operate just like Derren
Browns magic trick, by hiding the failures and letting your survivorship bias do the
rest. Those always use the most positive claims, the most outrageous examples to
sell a product, Phil Plait, an astronomer and leading voice in the skeptical movement,
explained to me. When these things dont work for the vast majority of customers,
you never hear about it, at least not from the seller. The people who use the diet, or
the product, or the pill, and fail to lose weight dont get trotted out for photo shoots
only the successes do. That same phenomenon has become a problem in science
publications, especially among the younger sciences like psychology, but it is now
under repair. For far too long, studies that fizzled out or showed insignificant results
have not been submitted for publication at the same level as studies that end up with
positive results, or even worse, theyve been rejected by prominent journals. Left
unchecked, over time you end up with science journals that only present the survivors
of the journal process studies showing significance. Psychologists are calling it the
File Drawer Effect. The studies that disprove or weaken the hypotheses of high-profile
studies seem to get stuffed in the file drawer, so to speak. Many scientists are pushing
for the widespread publication of replication, failure, and insignificance. Only then,
they argue, will the science journals and the journalism that reports on them
accurately describe the world being explored. Science above all will need to root out
survivorship, but it wont be easy. This particular bias is especially pernicious, said
Plait, because it is almost invisible by definition. The only way you can spot it is to
always ask: what am I missing? Is what Im seeing all there is? What am I not seeing?
Those are incredibly difficult questions to answer, and not always answerable. But if
you dont ask them, then by definition you cant answer them. He added, Its a pain,
but reality can be a tough nut to crack.
Failure to look for what is missing is a common shortcoming, not just within yourself
but also within the institutions that surround you. A commenter at an Internet
watering hole for introverts called the INTJForum explained it with this example: when
a company performs a survey about job satisfaction the only people who can fill out
that survey are people who still work at the company. Everyone who might have quit

out of dissatisfaction is no longer around to explain why. Such data mining fails to
capture the only thing it is designed to measure, but unless management is aware of
survivorship bias things will continue to seem peachy on paper. In finance, this is a
common pitfall. The economist Mark Klinedinst explained to me that mutual funds,
companies that offer stock portfolios, routinely prune out underperforming
investments. When a mutual fund tells you, The last five years we had 10 percent on
average return, well, the companies that didnt have high returns folded or were
taken over by companies that were more lucky. The health of the companies they
offer isnt an indication of the mutual funds skill at picking stocks, said Klinedinst,
because theyve deleted failures from their offerings. All you ever see are the
successes. Thats true for many, many elements of life. Money experts who made
great guesses in the past are considered soothsayers because their counterparts who
made equally risky moves that failed nosedived into obscurity and are now no longer
playing the game. Whole nations left standing after wars and economic struggles
pump fists of nationalism assuming that their good outcomes resulted from wise
decisions, but they can never know for sure.
Let us suppose that a commander orders 20 men to invade an enemy
bunker. This invasion leads to a complete destruction of the bunker and only
one dead soldier from the 20 person team. An amazingly successful
endeavor. Unless you are the one soldier who was shot through the head
running up the hill. From his standpoint, rapidly ascending to the spirit
world, it seems like a gigantic waste and a terrible order, but we will never
hear his side of things. We will only hear from the guys who survived, how it
was tough going until they made it over the rise. How it was sad to lose one
guy, but they knew that they would make it. They just had a feeling. Of
course, that one guy had that feeling to, until he felt nothing. Unknown
author at spacetravelsacrime.blogspot.com
If you spend your life only learning from survivors, buying books about successful
people and poring over the history of companies that shook the planet, your
knowledge of the world will be strongly biased and enormously incomplete. As best I
can tell, here is the trick: When looking for advice, you should look for what not to do,
for what is missing as Phil Plait suggested, but dont expect to find it among the
quotes and biographical records of people whose signals rose above the noise. They
may have no idea how or if they lucked up. What you cant see, and what they cant
see, is that the successful tend to make it more probable that unlikely events will
happen to them while trying to steer themselves into the positive side of randomness.
They stick with it, remaining open to better opportunities that may require
abandoning their current paths, and thats something you can start doing right now
without reading a single self-help proverb, maxim, or aphorism. Also, keep in mind
that those who fail rarely get paid for advice on how not to fail, which is too bad
because despite how it may seem, success boils down to serially avoiding
catastrophic failure while routinely absorbing manageable damage.

Abraham Wald Source: Prof. Konrad Jacobs

Before we depart, Id like to mention Wald one more time. Like many of the others
who joined the armed services to fight Hitler with numbers, Abraham Wald went down
in history, but not for the bombers and bullet holes story. He is best remembered as
the inventor of sequential analysis, another achievement he earned while working in
the department of war math. He married Lucille Land in 1941. Two years later they
had their first child, Betty, followed four years later by another they named Robert.
Three years after that, at the top of his career and enjoying an exotic speaking tour,
after saving the lives of thousands of people he would never meet, he and Lucille died
in an airplane that crashed against the side of the Nilgiri mountains in India. Perhaps
there is an irony to that, something about airplanes and odds and chance and luck,
but it isnt the interesting part of Walds story. His contributions to science are what
survives his time on Earth and the parts of his tale that will endure.
In 1968, the National Academy of Sciences issued a report saying the application of
mathematics in World War II became recognized as an art, and the lessons learned
by the mathematicians were later applied to business, science, industry, and
management. They saved the world and then rebuilt it using the same tools each time
calculators and chalk.
In 1978, Allen Wallis, Director of SRG said of his team, This was surely the most
extraordinary group of statisticians ever organized. The bomber problem was just a
side story for them, a funny anecdote that only surfaced in the 1980s as they all
began to reminisce full time. When you think of how fascinating the story is, it makes
you wonder about the stories well never hear about those numerical soldiers because
they never made it out of the war and into a journal, magazine, or book, and how
thats true of so much thats important in life. All we know of the past passes through
a million, million filters, and a great deal is never recorded or is tossed aside to make

room for something more interesting or beautiful or audacious. All we will learn from
history reaches us from the stories that, for whatever reason, survived.

I wrote a whole book full of articles like this one: You Are Now Less Dumb
Get it now!
Amazon | B&N | BAM | Indiebound | iTunes
Go deeper into understanding just how deluded you really are and learn how you can
use that knowledge to be more humble, better connected, and less dumb in the
sequel to the internationally bestselling You Are Not So Smart. Watch the beautiful
new trailer here.

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Postmortem: Little Red Running Hood

10/23/2013ROGER PAFFRATH6 COMMENTS

On the end of 2011, I was taking iOS development classes at college. I remember
being amazed by how easy it was for me to have a prototype running on the iOS
simulator, how little money I thought I would need to invest to have it up on the App
Store and how everybody was talking about the nice opportunities indie game
developers were having on the mobile market. I wanted that for me. I also remember
being unhappy with my job at a web agency, with no perspective on the horizon. So, I
partnered up with Eduardo Ribas, another unhappy co-worker and we set out to make
an iOS game.

After working on the project on my spare time for quite a while, I realized it would take
forever to finish it and I didnt want to lose themomentum. So, on the beginning of
2012, I quit my job and started coding full time. We also started talking to people that
understand how taxes here in Brazil work and they told us we needed a company to
share profits and those sorts of things. So, I wrote a simple business plan and we
started filling out paperwork to have our own indie company. We named
it Luckyfingers Interactive. It was around that time that Eduardo also quit and joined
me on the ranks of full time indie development.

It took a while, but we finally released our game, Little Red Running Hood. It
happened on July 31st, almost three months ago. On October 31st Luckyfingers
Interactive will be one year old.
This is a personal reflection on how we were unable to keep our company alive longer
than that. Its a warning to aspiring game developers out there to not be as naive as I
was and to not fall for survivorship bias as I have.
What We Did Right
This list of topics is short. This may be because Im extremely critical over the things I
do, but I tried really hard to find more aspects that were positive during the
development of the game.
1. The quality of our game
Considering that Little Red Running Hood was made by two guys with no previous
experience on making games, I believe we did really well. We took our time and
ended up building a game that has great graphics, great music (by Eirik Suhrke) and
is well executed. Most, people who played our game liked it.

We even got some awards at SBGames (Brazilian Symposium on Computer Games

and Digital Entertainment). We got Best Visuals,Best Sound/Music, second place on
Best Game and third on Best Game Design. All of those on the Mobile category.

2. Quit our jobs

It was only after both of us had quit our jobs that we were able to pour the amount of
energy needed to complete a project with the size of Little Red Running Hood.
What We Did Wrong
1. Starting with a pseudo-simple game
I like to believe that our game idea was indeed simple at first. It was an iOS runner,
like any other. As we started working on it, we changed, tweaked and experimented.
We realized we needed something to differ our game from the usual runner, so we
came up with having the scenerys luminosity change as the player progressed
through the level. I worked a long time on the code and when we finally were glueing
code and art together, the hardware on our iPhones could not handle the amount of
transparency and textures. It took us a while to fix it.
After that, we decided the game needed something more, but didnt know exactly
what. So we put some random things in. An elevator, a mine car, chains to jump on,
giant boulders chasing Reddie. I realize now, that all this things diluted the core
mechanics of the game.
To me, it seems we tried too hard to make Little Red Running Hood something it was
not. We transformed it into a pseudo-simple game.
2. No prototype
We never took the time to sit and say Okay, lets prototype this thing and see if the
gameplay is fun and can stand on its own!. Both of us jumped right into building a
game for iOS, with no clear view on the end goal and even less clue on what the core
of the game was.
We should have gathered a lot of feedback before even thinking of building a full
game.
3. Lack of a Game Design Document
Some of the problems described above could be avoided if we made a clear GDD
focused on the mechanics and what we expected the game to be. Sure, working
without one gives you the liberty to do what you want with the game, but thats what
prototypes are for. If your goal is to make a commercial game, something that people
would spend their money on, I believe everybody on the team should be on the same
page and understand clearly how the end product should turn out.
Having a design document doesnt mean you have to discard ideas or refuse trying
something different for the game if you realize it is not working halfway through
development, but it makes it better to navigate uncharted waters during the long

lifetime of the project. It also makes it easier to say no to those ideas that come late
at night and dont exactly fit.
4. Opening a company
Ok so, some people who understand about taxes here in Brazil told us we needed to
open a company. There were two main reasons for that. First, if I had published the
game on the App Store under my name, Eduardo wouldnt be able to prove his income
to the governement. Second, taxes over revenue are slightly smaller for companies
than they are for individuals.
The other side to it was that we would have a monthly cost to keep the company up
and running. That was acceptable, we did the math, decided to pay for one year,
made a business plan and signed some papers. Luckyfingers was born with an
expiration date.
I know now, that opening a company in an enviroment so unfriendly(specially to
tech), with no fan base, no finished product and no idea of the market and all its
possibilities was dumb.
Brazil is so unprepared for small game companies that, to open an account on the
bank, the young manager asked us for a list of clients we would be offering our
services. And another of companies that would supply raw materials to us.
5. Starting on the mobile market
This one I blame on naivety and survivorship bias. Back when we started working on
the project I was flooded with numbers about people buying iPhones and developers
who were excited to be on that market. This overconfidence and optimism clearly
influenced other decisions that were responsible for our financial failure.
Not being able to get our game noticed was the key point to really low sales numbers.
This is something most of the developers have to face on the App Store. For every
developer that can get their app on a feature list there are numerous others that see
their work fall into the limbo of the Store.
6. Lack of clear roles specifications
Following this one is tough for young teams to do, specially if youre dealing with
friends. Who is going to produce? Who is going to be the game designer? The sound
guy? Marketing?
There are a lot of pieces to glue together during the development of a game. If you
dont have those roles clearly set from the start, chances of chaos taking over are
increased.
7. Weak Planning

It was only on the final months of development that I tried to set deadlines and be
somewhat of a game producer. I failed to do this because of the problem I described
on the item above.
Planning is a crucial part on the early life of a large project. It helps you see the end
line and focus only on the task at hand, because you know you have time to worry
about the other things later on.
Dont forget to include marketing strategies on the first planning of the game. We
didnt include. Lesson learned.
8. Leaving testing for the last stages and doing it only among friends
I still dont know how we built a game with almost no player feedback. There was also
a rare crashing bug that lead to a player complaining on a TouchArcade forum. If we
had tested the game with a wider audience, it could have been solved before the App
Store launch.
9. Losing sight of the biggest goal
When we decided to open our company, we agreed to invest money to keep it up and
running for one year. Our business plan set a goal to make at least two small games
on that time. Personally, I would only be satisfied with three. We had one year to make
Luckyfingers sustainable. But we failed epically.
The reason that happened was: often times during the games development we
obcessed over minor details. We didnt respect deadlines enough. We didnt cut
enough things out. In fact, we kept adding things to the game to try to make it better.
Meanwhile, time kept going and we remained oblivious to the fact that there was
something bigger at stake other than the game itself.
If you have a company, someone needs to make sure everything is following the plan
to keep it alive.
Conclusion
In the end, we got caught up on our own creative struggles, overconfidence and
optimism. I ended up learning more about what not to do while trying to dent a corner
in the game industry. The best thing we can do is spread our story so that other
developers dont fall on the same pitfalls we did.
Data Box
Developer: Luckyfingers Interactive
Release Date: July 31st, 2013
Platform: iOS (iPhone app)

Size of the Team: 2

Length of Development: 6 months as part time project, then other 12 working full
time.

Indies: Market early and often or "sink into obscurity"

By Brendan Sinclair WED 30 OCT 2013 2:00PM GMT / 10:00AM EDT / 7:00AM PDT

Antichamber dev Alexander Bruce says exposure "is becoming more and
more the dominant problem" for indies to solve.
There are a few different ways to look at the explosive growth in the independent
gaming scene. But where one indie developer may look at the influx of talent and
attention to the market as a rising tide that will lift all ships, another may see new
challenges that must be overcome.
Antichamber creator Alexander Bruce is preparing to give a featured presentation this
Sunday at the Gamercamp Festival in Toronto, in which he will discuss the factors that
combined to make his game a breakthrough success. Speaking with GamesIndustry
International, Bruce stressed the increasingly difficult task independent developers
are facing in simply getting attention for their work, saying exposure "is becoming
more and more the dominant problem that people are having to solve."

Antichamber had a distinctive look without breaking the budget.

Just a few years ago, developers didn't need to worry so much about their relationship
with the end users. It was enough for them to have good agreements with publishers
or distributors, because those were the people handling the players in most cases.
These days, it's all about getting the attention of the end users instead of just a
platform holder, Bruce said. Even being featured in a coveted place like the Steam
Daily Deals doesn't mean as much as it used to. It's helpful, but Bruce said it only
serves as a multiplier on the awareness developers had already generated for their
games. And one problem a lot of developers don't seem to get just yet is that any
number multiplied by zero still equals zero.
"There are people who are very good at playing to this system," Bruce said, "and if
you don't do the same work to compete with them, you're going to sink into obscurity

and not be known...You're the one who has to prove to other people why they should
care about your game."
Bruce said marketing was a skill, just like programming or designing games, and one
that developers should start honing much earlier in the process than they currently
do.

"Even though I've got 250,000 sales in six months,

to get that, the game needed to be seen by tens of
millions of people."
Alexander Bruce
"Think about the first time you programmed a game," Bruce said. "Chances are, the
first thing you programmed was not very good. If you leave your marketing effort until
the very end, you're going to release your marketing materials and chances are
they're not going to be very good."
Bruce pointed to Super Meat Boy and Fez as two games that benefitted from that
approach. The developers began talking about those games well in advance of launch,
and that gave them time to grow awareness, shape their messages, and figure out
how best to garner the attention they needed to succeed. Bruce said Antichamber
was the same way; it took him nearly a year and a half of trying to get attention for
the title before the buzz finally started to snowball.
That protracted awareness campaign is crucial, Bruce explained, as people rarely
make a purchase decision about a game the first time they hear about it. It's typically
only by seeing a game come up on their favorite websites or Twitter feeds repeatedly
that people finally make the effort to find out more about the title and consider buying
it.
"When you look at things like Steam Greenlight and people complaining about
needing 80,000 votes to even get onto Steam, it's like, getting 80,000 people to click
a button that says yes first of all means you need to have an exponentially larger
number of people get to your page in the first place," Bruce said. "And clicking yes
takes a whole lot less energy and thought than the next step, which is actually taking
out a wallet and paying for things. So even though I've got 250,000 sales in six
months, to get that, the game needed to be seen by tens of millions of people. And
that's something people don't really understand or take seriously, that such a small
percentage of people who saw or heard about the game wound up buying it at the
end of the day."

"If you happen to have a couple hundred dollars,

I'd say that's your biggest problem. It's not that
you need to run a Kickstarter; it's that you need to
get more capital under your belt to begin with."
Alexander Bruce
Another thing Bruce said is frequently lost on independent developers is that they
don't have to break the bank to stand out. Despite the array of funding options

available--from Kickstarter to government grants to publishers--Bruce said it's

preferable to avoid taking any of them, calling himself "a very strong advocate of
working within your resources."
"If you happen to have a couple hundred dollars, I'd say that's your biggest problem,"
Bruce said. "It's not that you need to run a Kickstarter; it's that you need to get more
capital under your belt to begin with... If you're saying we need $10,000 in order to be
able to make this game, I would be asking why you're making this game that needs
money you don't have initially."
That focus on working within one's resources extends to ability as well as finances.
Bruce said he used to get asked what he would make if he'd been given $1 million.
"My answer was always, 'Probably make something terrible,'" Bruce said. "Because all
of the best decisions that were made in Antichamber were made because I didn't have
resources."

Antichamber spells out the desired reaction to one of its puzzles.

Bruce didn't have money to hire more people, and he didn't have the skill set to
accomplish whatever he could think of, so he was forced to make do with what he had
at hand. He arrived at the game's stark and stylistic art style after looking at the other
games in Epic's Make Something Unreal contest, and knew he couldn't compete with
what some of the bigger teams were putting out.
"My answer wasn't, 'Well I need to get the resources and hire a team and get the
skills,'" Bruce said. "My answer was acknowledging that I couldn't compete with it,
and so not competing with that, and then doing something completely different and
out of left field, but still very good in and of itself."
The end result, Bruce said, is that Antichamber's art style "looks like it was made by
someone who thought very deeply about what they were doing along a very different
axis than the resources problem" when in fact, it was thinking exactly along that axis
that inspired it. And despite the unconventional look of the game, Bruce reasoned it
was ultimately more conservative than the alternative.
"That was always less risky to me because when you do things different but do them
well, that's automatically something that people are interested in talking about,"
Bruce said. "But it's also less risky because I didn't have to invest $50,000 in trying to
make good art to compete with what else is available and ultimately end up with a
poor man's Call of Duty. It cost me nothing to make my art style."

Why one developer decided he was done with

the iOS App Store
October 29, 2013 | By Kris Ligman

In a postmortem of his game PWN: Combat Hacking printed on Pocket Tactics, mobile
developer Erik Asmussen says the iOS market has become too crowded for even a
successful title to pay dividends.
"Many things that used to work (press, Apple feature, free promotions) have lost
effectiveness," Asmussen writes. "Even when all these things fell miraculously into
place, the revenues simply weren't there."
To date, PWN has seen 50,000 downloads and a lifetime revenue of about $10,000.
Asmussen says that, at PWN's peak position within the top 200 on the Apple app
store, the game was earning about $300 to $400 a day.
"This would be great if sustained, but hanging on to these spots is nearly impossible
without an ongoing feature in the App Store or a huge install base," he explains. "The
scary thing is that these numbers are actually pretty good for an iOS title."
While the game garnered better-than-typical press attention upon release, middling
reviews and certain design quibbles caused PWN to drop off the radar shortly after
launch, and no amount of updates and free promotions could regain that lost ground.
"The free app market is [arguably] even tougher to compete in, because all the big
money players are now staked out there and it takes a massive ad spend to get
anywhere close to the number of players you might need to get decent revenue," says
Asmussen. "While [PWN's performance is] not a disaster, it's a pretty weak return
given a year's worth of time and my expectations for the game's potential."
As a result, Asmussen says he's now focusing his efforts elsewhere than the app store.
"iOS is just not a market that I think is viable for me to compete in any more, let alone
depend on as a sole source of income. Instead, I am developing games using Unity
and targeting several other platforms first."
"The most important benefit of this shift is that it opens up a ton of new avenues for
promotion and distribution that were unavailable to me as an iOS developer," he adds.
"I know these markets are still highly competitive and have their own problems and
obstacles, but they don't feel like the dead end that iOS appears to be now for
someone in my position."

Game devs ditching mobile in favor of

PC, console?
By James Brightman TUE 24 SEP 2013 2:11PM GMT / 10:11AM EDT / 7:11AM PDT

I wouldn't touch mobile with a ten foot pole - we chat with several devs
about the challenging mobile market
The mobile and tablet market has grown tremendously in the last several years. The
number of apps on Apple's App Store and Google Play is downright mind boggling, and
if you're an app developer... well, best of luck to you. As the new survey from App
Developer Conference organizers revealed this week, piracy and discoverability are
making it incredibly hard to succeed. Nearly half of the app developers surveyed
made no profit at all.
So the question has to be asked: after years of flocking to mobile, are developers
actually retreating to the PC and console space? DevsGamesIndustry
International spoke with were torn on this, but none would deny the massive
challenges of developing apps today.
"I speak with lots of mobile devs regularly and most are moving away or at least
thinking of it, either to other platforms or out of the trade completely," Paul Johnson,
managing director and co-founder of Rubicon, told us. "Having to give your game
away for 69 cents a throw (after Apple's and Google's cut) and then competing with
1000 new apps each day is hardly a draw for anybody. We've reached a point now
where even those slow on the uptake have realized the goldrush is over. It's actually
been over for a few years."
Jeffrey Lim, producer, Wicked Dog Games, agreed: "The mobile space offers certain
advantages, like having the largest customer base and relatively low development
costs. However, there's no doubt it is getting harder to be profitable with the ongoing
piracy and discoverability issues."

"We do think developers (especially indies) are

considering going back to develop for the PC - and
even game consoles"
Jeffrey Lim
"So yes, we do think developers (especially indies) are considering going back to
develop for the PC - and even game consoles. The cost of self-publishing on these
platforms has dropped significantly, and console makers are also making their
platforms more indie-friendly now," he added, alluding to efforts on next-gen systems
like Sony's PS4.

Chillingo COO Ed Rumley isn't quite of the same mind as Johnson and Lim, but as a
publisher, Chillingo has noticed that too many developers simply are failing to make
high quality games, so it's no wonder that their titles are being ignored.
"The number of games being submitted is growing, as is the number of developers
contacting us. I'm not sure if some are being scared away, but we know from
experience that some developers underestimate the time and quality it takes to make
it in mobile now. Consumers are a savvy bunch and spot second rate games a mile off.
You can't just knock something together in your spare time, upload it and wait for the
money to roll in anymore," he warned.
Michael Schade, CEO, Fishlabs Entertainment, acknowledged the big challenge in
mobile, but he doesn't think developers are going to have to look elsewhere.
"Sure, mobile's not an easy market to breach into, but then again, which market really
is? No matter what business you're in or what product you're trying to sell, you'll
always have to work hard to gain your ground and make a name for yourself," he
noted. "So that alone shouldn't scare you away from mobile, especially when you keep
in mind that no other platform in the history of digital entertainment has ever evolved
faster and born more potential than mobile! With more than a billion smart connected
devices in use and hardware capabilities on par with current-gen gaming consoles,
today's smartphones and tablets constitute by far the most widespread, frequently
used and innovative gaming platform the world has ever seen."
Schade also remarked that the last few years of veteran developers getting into the
mobile scene has made things more difficult. "The fact that more and more
established PC and console veterans open new mobile gaming studios and more and
more traditional publishers port their titles to iOS and Android, doesn't make it easier
for one particular company or product to stick out. But that's not necessarily a bad
thing, as it clearly shows that the trend goes towards mobile, rather than away from
it," he said.
For every developer we spoke with, the discoverability issue reared its ugly head.
There's no doubt that this is a major concern. While building a high quality game can
help, it's simply not enough. In the world of apps, you cannot let the game do the
talking for you.
"I think many developers have the misconception that it's simply enough to release
the game and let it speak for itself. They underestimate the importance of a
marketing/PR campaign leading up to the game's launch," Lim stressed. "As a result
their games fail commercially; not because of the quality, but due to lack of visibility.
Hence the marketing/PR campaign should be seen as an integral part of the game's
development. An appropriate portion of the overall budget and effort should be
allocated to increasing the game's visibility, and if developers do not have the
experience or time in marketing/PR they should consider hiring professionals in this
area to lend a hand."
Gree vice president of marketing Sho Masuda concurred that marketing is becoming
crucial to mobile success. "They have to spend more time thinking about marketing
and post-launch efforts in addition to building the the games. Fortunately, there are a
lot of tools and services available for devs of all sizes to ensure that they can get the
direction and support they need in these areas. Additionally, the mobile dev
community is a very, very tight knit community and there is an amazing level of
information sharing and support," he said. "We encourage mobile devs of all sizes to

talk to their peers, take advantage of all the meet-ups and events, and get to know all
the services available to help get eyeballs on their games."
A number of devs also believe that platform holders have a larger responsibility that
they've been shirking so far. "For platform holders (e.g. Apple's App Store), they can
start to curate apps released on their store because there are too many clones of
existing games that are taking up the traffic. They could attempt something like
Steam Greenlight; although it is still an imperfect system, it's better than not having
any curation at all," Lim commented.
Paul Johnson agreed, telling us that he'd really like platform holders to have a much
more active role, as the discoverability issue has "about reached terminal" for
unknown devs.
"If Apple don't pick your game out for a feature, and you can't drum up enough
interest before launch yourself, then I'd say you're pretty much screwed. It doesn't
matter how good your game is if nobody ever sees it and downloads it. They can't tell
their friends about something they themselves don't know about!" he stated.

If Apple spotlights your game, you're golden

"The only thing I think the platform holders could do to help is stop allowing crap to be
released. There's only so much space for features and the end users only have so
much effort in them to look under all the categories all the time, so I really don't think
adding more of them would help much. Maybe more apps for shorter times, but this is
all a drop in the ocean really."
"The one thing I've come up with that would make a real difference is for the platform
owners to charge five grand for a developer license. All the utter crap would disappear
and there'd be less apps fighting for space," he continued. "And the end-users
wouldn't have to waste time downloading the crap as nobody who makes stuff they
don't believe in would dream of fronting that license fee. It's Draconian but it's really
the only thing I can see having any noticeable effect. Anything else is just lip service."
Discoverability issues aside, another major - and possibly growing - problem for devs
to contend with is piracy. The App Developer Conference survey showed that 26
percent of devs had their apps pirated and a similar amount even had in-app
purchases stolen.
James Vaughan told us, "Plague Inc. has a piracy rate of about 30-35 percent, which
equals millions and millions of copies, but I don't consider piracy to be a problem; it is
simply a fact of life and I don't get too worked up about it. Piracy is a byproduct of
success and I choose to focus on the success which has resulted in piracy rather than
the piracy itself. (The best way to stop your game from being pirated is to make a crap

game!) I focus on continually improving and updating Plague Inc. which makes the
game even more valuable to the people who have brought it (and encourages pirates
to buy it as well)."
For those devs who actually do lose sleep over piracy, there are some ways to combat
it, Lim said.

"If I was starting again now from a blank slate,

without an existing fan base, I wouldn't touch
mobile with a ten foot pole"
Paul Johnson
"There's no question that piracy is prevalent, and I think it will continue to be so for a
long time to come. In fact, with high-speed Internet access and the wide spread use of
file-sharing software nowadays I think this problem is going to get worse," he
observed.
"The first way to deal with piracy is to implement the appropriate business model, and
I think free-to-download with micro-transactions is the right way to go. Making the
game free for download can work to our advantage; it allows us to reach out a larger
customer base. And if players are hooked by the game, they can be enticed to buy
additional high-quality content for a minimal price."
"The second way would be to build a strong rapport with our customers - e.g. through
frequent interactions on social media, events or even email. Developers of notable
games (e.g. Hotline Miami and Game Dev Tycoon) have addressed piracy in this
manner. By having a loyal customer base which is appreciative of our efforts in
delivering quality content, they would empathize with us and be more willing to pay
for the games in support of our development efforts."
The good news for iOS devs, at least according to Schade, is that Apple's store is less
prone to piracy. "Having lived through the 'dark ages' of Java and made it out of there
with two black eyes rather than one, piracy has been a very delicate topic for us at
Fishlabs ever since. Based on our own experience, however, it is not as much of an
issue on the App Store as it is on other platforms," he noted. "I guess that's mostly
because Apple still has a lot of 'premium' customers willing to pay for high-quality
content. Of course, we're well aware of the fact that neither the closed iOS
environment nor the Free-2-Play model will ever be able to eradicate software piracy
entirely, but at least they are doing a comparatively good job at containing it as good
as possible."
If developers can effectively navigate the problems of discoverability and piracy,
there's no doubt that the potential is massive. One look at the overwhelming success
of Angry Birds, Temple Run, Clash of Clans and others proves what's possible. But for
the vast, vast majority of devs, that's a pipe dream.
"From the consumer angle, it's a golden age. The amount of good quality games that
can be bought for laughable prices is fantastic and there's a ton of money being spent
on this platform as a result. The problem for developers is that each individual cut is
tiny. This isn't even remotely sustainable and I don't know what the future is going to
look like. If I was starting again now from a blank slate, without an existing fan base, I
wouldn't touch mobile with a ten foot pole," said Johnson.

#FF Follow Friday

One of the nicer traditions of Twitter is #FF, or Follow Friday. Im terrible at slimming
lists down to a 140 characters, so instead I made a list of all my favorite sources for
the different aspects of videogames. The rules were simple people only (so
no Vlambeer), people that retweet and aggregate news preferred, people that spam a
lot excluded.
Obviously, this list is not final itll evolve and change over time. Its also most likely
not a complete list. I did compile the whole thing into an actual Twitter list that you
can follow, just for convenience.
Games:

@jwaaaap Jan Willem Nijman is my fellow Vlambeer. Good music, too.

@PTibz Phil Tibitoski is one of the minds behind Octodad & great insight /
perspectives on modern indie development.
@ADAMATOMIC Adam Saltsman, Canabalt, Hundreds, news, industry insights
and musings on the state of the medium.
@KellyWallick Kelly Wallick is the Indie MEGABOOTH Overlord.
@ZoeQuinnzel Zo Quinn of Depression Quest has great insights into the
gaming scene, also pyrotechnic.
@zoewi Zuraida Buter, organizer of many events and initiatives. Also Global
Game Jam.
@brandonnn Brandon Boyer, creator of Venus Patrol, IGF chairman and
Fantastic Arcade organizer. Wonderful curated culture in all sorts, often related to
games.
@terrycavanagh Terry Cavanagh of VVVVVV and Hexagon, creator of
freeindiegam.es, interesting insights and developer perspectives.
@AdriaandeJongh Adriaan de Jongh, creator of Fingle. Interesting perspectives
on social interaction, good postmortem writer.
@VideoDreaming Robin Arnott creator of Deep Sea. Interesting ramblings
about random things.
@HelloCakebread Davey Wreden, The Stanley Parable. Toughts, ramblings,
satire and game development.
@smestorp Michael Brough, Corrypt, Zaga-33 & GlitchTank, one of the best
game designers around.
@bfod Bennet Foddy, QWOP, CLOP, Super Pole Riders, interesting academic
perspective.
@doougle Douglas Wilson, Johann Sebastion Joust, interesting perspective on
games, academic, good taste of music.
@helvetica Zach Gage, Spelltower, Ridiculous Fishing, news, smart insights
and intersting conceptual questions and musings
@aeiowu Greg Wohlwend, Hundreds, Ridiculous Fishing, smart analysis of
many situations, great artist.
@notch Markus Persson Minecraft Industry perspectives and development.
@MikeBithell Mike Bithell, Thomas Was Alone, interesting opinions and
insights.
@shahidkamal Shahid Kamal Ahmed SCEE, interesting perspectives and
thoughts about indie game development.

@Jonathan_Blow Jonathan Blow, Braid, The Witness industry perspectives

and development.
@PHIL_FISH Phil Fish, Fez Diplomatic tweeting, industry perspectives.
@TimOfLegend Tim Schafer Industry perspectives.
@infinite_ammo Alec Holowka industry perspectives, news.
@checker Chris Hecker, Spy Party, industry perspectives and development.
@zimmermaneric Eric Zimmerman Game design.
@flantz Frank Lantz Game design.
@nealen Andy Nealen Graphics, industry perspectives.
@grapefrukt Martin Jonasson Game development.
@kylepulver Kyle Pulver Offspring Fling, Snapshot Game design and
development.
@MaxTemkin Max Temkin, Cards Against Humanity
@pietepiet Paul Veer, pixel art and animation.
@ibogost Ian Bogost Academic perspectives, game design.
@ludist Tommy Rousse Academic perspectives.
@andreaszecher Andreas Zecher promoterapp, Spirits industry
perspectives, tools and opinion.
@avantgame Jane McGonigal industry perspectives, applied games.
@JoostDevBlog Joost van Dongen, industry perspectives and development,
great blog.
@Demruth Alexander Bruce, Antichamber industry perspectives.
@krispiotrowski Kris Piotrowski, Below, Sword & Sworcery, industry
perspectives, art.
@MsMinotaur Adriel Wallick Perspectives and satellites.
@Capy_Nathan Nathan Vella, Sword & Sworcery, industry perspectives,
business.
@c_hedborg Christoffer Hedborg industry perspectives, good music.
@auntiepixelante Anna Anthropy industry perspectives and game culture.
@S0phieH Sophie Houlden industry perspectives and jam culture.
@retroremakes Rob Fearon industry perspectives and jam culture.
@dom2d Dominique Ferland industry perspectives, art and interesting
games.
@jukiokallio Jukio Kallio, KOZILEK Game music.
@C418 Daniel Rosenfeld Game music.
@awintory Austin Wintory Game music.
@sosowski Sos Sosowski Game jam culture.
@McFunkypants Christer Kaitila Game jam culture.
@kertgartner Kert Gartner Game trailers and beautiful visual stuff.

Design:

@Chrisoshea Chris OShea, interaction designer, design thoughts and

musings.

@coffee_nat Natalie Hanke, designer of VOID and beautiful typography.

@mathewkumar Mathew Kumar, often intriguing perspectives, games as

counterculture.

@CorySchmitz Cory Schmitz, design and art.

@ScottBeale Scott Beale, design, weird things.

Press:

@TronKnotts Jonathan Holmes Sup Holmes.

@BenKuchera Ben Kuchera Penny Arcade Report
@RussPitts Russ Pitts Polygon
@JohnPolson John Polson IndieGames.com
@RussFrushtick Russ Frushtick Polygon
@ctplante Chris Plante Polygon
@BRKeogh Brendan Keogh EDGE
@JessConditt Jess Conditt Joystiq
@CPriestman Chris Priestman Indiestatik
@casskhaw Cassandra Khaw US Gamer
@LeighAlexander Leigh Alexander various
@jasonkill Jason Killingsworth various
@kirkhamilton Kirk Hamilton Kotaku
@bonzrat Alec Meer Rock, Paper, Shotgun
@hodapp Eli Hodapp TouchArcade

Top Indie Game Development Blogs

PUBLISHED ON 7TH MAY 2009 BY COLM | POST A COMMENT
Are you interested in game development? Are you just starting to make games (like
us) and want to find out as much as you can about how to design, build and promote
your game? Well then it's time to put on your reading pants and get stuck in!
Presenting my list of the very best game development blogs around:
The Best of the Best
Make It Big In Games
Top notch articles from Jeff Tunnell about the business of making & selling games.
Exceedingly high average quality of posts. A must-subscribe.
As an Indie game developer that is going to spend your own money to make a
game, it is extremely important to decide which market you want to tackle, and that
really comes down to what game you want to make. I believe it is incredibly important
to only make games that you are passionate about. All game development gets
hard, and when the going gets hard, the only thing that will get you through it is
passion. Read full post
Lost Garden
Superb writing on art & design in games, with the fantastic bonus of giving away
actual art resources you can use in your own games! Infrequent posts but totally
worthwhile.

Out of all this discussion about graphics, never lose sight of the big picture. The single
most important thing is for you to finish your game. Iterating towards completion is
the root of all practical knowledge about game development. Putting a complete
game in the hands of player is how you'll learn to make your future games shake the
world to its core.
If you are telling yourself "Oh, I can't complete my game because I don't have an
artist," be honest with yourself. You are making excuses. Graphics are not an
impediment to making a great game. Do what ever it takes to finish your game. Read
full post
The Bottom Feeder
Jeff Vogel has been making old-school single player RPGs since 1994 but only started
blogging this year. A treasure trove of insight for indie game developers already, and
will only get better.
I am going to give full sales results for our game Geneforge 4: Rebellion. I am not the
first Indie developer to reveal this sort of information. However, most public sales
figures come from projects that were either blockbusters or disastrous. But our games
have never landed in either pool. I have been doing this for a living for almost fifteen
years. I make good money, but I'm not a rich guy. At the same time, I have been
unusually successful in this business, if for nothing else that I HAVE done it for a living
for a long time. Read full post
The Forge
Interesting business-themed articles, particularly about charging models for MMOs,
microtransactions & virtual goods.
Despite my obvious affection for virtual asset sales in a free-to-play model, I dont
think the decision to go free-to-play or subscription (or one of a myriad of other
business models for MMOs) is that simple. Its not purely about whether youre
reaching a larger audience and I dont believe its a given that youll make more
money, overall, with the free-to-play model. I think its largely dependent on the game
you make and the audience that ends up developing for it. Read full post
Untold Entertainment Blog
Covers a variety of topics but what I really love are the rants (example below). Love
the epic rants. More please!
You wouldnt wax philosphical about how youll dilute the intellectual property or how
the fanbase will criticize you for selling out. Youre running an advertising-based world,
and as far as advertising goes, Coke is the holy grail. You will relax your muscles and
allow the Coca-Cola corporation to ram its fistfuls of hot, sweaty cash wherever it so
chooses.Read full post

game poetry
Great all-rounder blog covering business & technical advice with a slant towards Flash
games.
The ultimate question for a sponsor is, How much traffic will this game drive to my
site? The quality of your game is ultimately only important with regard to its potential
distribution/viral spread, and its viral spread is only important with regard to how
many clicks this will generate. But the CTR is crucial as well. A game with 1 million
plays and a 5% CTR is not as valuable to a sponsor as a game with 600,000 plays and
a 10% CTR.
So show your sponsor what kind of CTR your game can drive. Put in some placeholder
branding. Show where the links will be. If youre willing to offer some exclusive
content, show the sponsor make one version with the content unlocked, and
another version with it locked and what the link back to the sponsors site to play this
content will look like. Dont wait for a sponsor to request these things. Read full post
Worth A Look
MochiLand: Mochi Media run this community blog that showcases top flash games and
content written by game developers themselves. Example
DESIGNER NOTES: Writings by one of the designers on Civ 3 and 4 I particularly like
the longer posts. Example
Photon Storm: Focused on flash game development and marketing. Definitely check
out the example. Example
8-Bit Rocket: Covers a bit of a wide variety of things (from Atari retro to Flash to
Silverlight), perhaps too wide! Example
Flash Truth: Flash games, particularly the business side of things; some great
stuff.Example
Emanuele Feronato: Flash games & more. A little too much filler but I found the
'numbers' posts to be excellent. Example
Streaming Colour Dev Blog: Some great posts about (not) making money in the iPhone
space. Example
Ludus Novus: Really, really like the column he's writing for GameSetWatch, follow the
blog to find out when they are posted. Example
Freelance Flash Games News: A mixed bag of flash gamedev related stuff. Example
Gaming Your Way: Frequent gamedev tips & other nuggets. Example

Made That Cool Game

2D Boy Blog: Creators of World of Goo.
Kloonigames Blog: Creator of Crayon Physics Deluxe
Cliffski's Blog: Creator of Democracy / Kudos
Wolfire Blog: Creators of Lugaru / Overgrowth
Braid Blog: Creator of Braid
Suggest More!
I'm always on the lookout for quality game development blogs, so if you know some I
haven't covered please leave a comment! Any that make it into my RSS reader and
survive my next RSS-pruning massacre will be added into this post.
Update
Plenty of good gamedev blogs suggested in the comments. Check out these worthy
additions to the list:
Michael James Williams: Very focused blog with excellent AS3 tutorials, including a full
series showing how to make an avoider game.
Mr Sun Studios: Another blog focused on AS3 game tutorials, with a big backlog of
articles.
Trent Polack: Excellent game design blog, in particular check out the game design
round table posts.
Iain Lobb: Only just subscribed but it's pretty good so far- a mix of flash and general
game design.
Tales of the Rampant Coyote: Excellent blog covering design & development of RPGs
of all kind. Nicely focused!
Troy Gilbert: Another good one with plenty of reading in the archives.
That should satisfy your RSS cravings for a while!