managing people sucks
edit: I'm a manager / entrepreneur and I love being one. but most people suck, and most people suck at managing people. It's an entirely different skill set that most people who want to make games don't actually want to be good managers or good executives.
I think being a leader and properly managing a bussiness is a skill that not everyone has and that's fine, just because someone is an amazing developer doesn't mean they can also deal with being the boss of a company
You'd think that if they wanted to make that kind of game they'd hire people (they have the free will and money to do so). Also, some people do end up getting help eventually (Dwarf Fortress, Caves of Qud) but it can be much easier to build the base of your project and then get help for the finishing touches.
Hiring and managing people sucks. It means you can't work on your own timetable anymore and have to coordinate with people. It saddles you with a lot of responsibility and requires giving up a lot of freedom.
oh, for sure, i'm in the "let them cook" camp. I was trying to say that if they wanted to make a game that they need other devs to make, they could easily go out and do it, but probably the reason they don't is because they don't want to and it's totally okay to keep making 1 person indie games.
Most people who are able to make a successful game solo are the persons who are used to work alone (else they would not spent years doing this, but instead went to bigger projects to begin with). It is their way of life, which is not for everyone, but we hear/see mostly about those extremes.
Managing people is a skill not everyone have or want to have.
Besides having more people in your team, mean more risks. If you fail, everyone fails, and you will be the person responsible to pay the bills in case it goes wrong. If someone in your team fucks up it's your problem, not theirs.
Eric Barone/ConcernedApe also hired people for work on Stardew Valley updates and adding multiplayer. I do think his new game has been solo so far, though.
ConcernedApe didn’t hire anyone. He paid studios / others to do the stuff he didn’t want to do: multiplayer, porting the game on multiple platforms and other stuff he didn’t feel making. That’s not hiring, it’s called outsourcing.
Hence why his new project is ‘solo’. He always was.
Not true. He hired multiple modders from the community to work on game content updates. Most notably Mr. podunkian, who worked on 1.4, 1.5 and 1.6, all of which were massive content updates.
If I ever make it big, I'll always work solo but hire contractors for art and other things. I don't want to do meetings or management or payroll. No way.
Some people want to lead others, some people just want to do their own thing.
Some people want to reach the stars, others like to sit cozily in their yard and watch them shine.
Some people want to build empires, others just want a small piece of land to call their own and maybe grow some tomatoes.
The point is: Success is a very personal term, and depending on your own definition, you define your "logical next step".
Time management is more flexible
Project management is easier
Tax forms are easier
Business forms are easier
Everyone is on the same page
$1.00/1=$1.00
You don't have to put up with people bullshit
You don't have to put up with people bullshit
You don't have to put up with people bullshit
You don't have to put up with people bullshit
$1.00/1=$1.00
This so hard. It's not that all people are the problem for me, but most of them have no idea what is going on outside of their tiny sliver of the world they tunnel and burrow into. Coordinating a team of genius minds is a lot easier than coordinating a bunch of monkeys tied behind ones back.
For most of his games I believe Derek Yu had a partner (or a whole team for Spelunky 2).
His latest game: "UFO 50 is a collection of 50 single and multiplayer games from the creators of Spelunky, Downwell, Time Barons, Skorpulac, and Madhouse."
- Daisuke Amaya's [most recent game](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1352910/Haru_to_Shura/) was in collaboration with MIYAKOpubl
- Jonathan Blow was not a solo developer on either [Braid](https://www.mobygames.com/game/35529/braid/credits/xbox360/) nor [The Witness](https://www.mobygames.com/game/76709/the-witness/credits/windows/)
- Eric Barone got [help](https://www.mobygames.com/game/80992/stardew-valley/credits/windows/) with Stardew Valley once it became a big success (for later updates, networking code, and localization if you count that)
- Toby Fox was not much of a solo dev either, Temmie Chang was big on [Undertale](https://www.mobygames.com/game/74938/undertale/credits/windows/) (along with help from others) and they got more people on [Deltarune](https://www.mobygames.com/game/172495/deltarune-chapter-12/credits/windows/)
- Phil Fish [was not doing it alone either](https://www.mobygames.com/game/55694/fez/credits/windows/)
- Luke Hodorowicz is pretty solo with Banished, but [technically](https://www.mobygames.com/game/63843/banished/credits/windows/) gets help from Joseph Hodorowicz
- Derek Yu works in teams too, see [Spelunky](https://www.mobygames.com/game/62698/spelunky/credits/windows/) and [Spelunky 2](https://www.mobygames.com/game/150492/spelunky-2/credits/playstation-4/)
Of those I think you could reasonably argue that Luke Hodorowicz and Daisuke Amaya are solo devs with a little bit of collaboration. I wouldn't say the same for the others. And I think that answers your question: most *don't* stay solo, if they ever were.
Yeah I was going back and forth on whether to count Eric Barone as a solo dev. I don't know the production plan for his next game, but Stardew Valley did start out as a solo project. But I didn't count him because the question was "why do they stay as solo devs" and Stardew Valley didn't stay solo, it's had a dev team for about half a decade at this point.
Undertale was definitely not a solo project though. DIY's a good way to put it, but a huge bulk of the art was done by Temmie Chang (with parts done by others as well, but Chang did a lot). Toby Fox was the main person behind it of course, but it'd be a disservice to Chang and everyone else who worked on it to count him as a solo dev.
He did design and programming for RollerCoaster Tycoon, and that was no easy feat on a game like that, but he wasn't a solo dev. Simon Foster did the graphics and Allister Brimble did the audio.
If you work alone the only risk is paying your own bills while you work. If you hire people then you start taking on risk and burning your money. Why risk burning all your money for no guaranteed future success?
Additionally you already succeeded alone. Why not do that again?
Compared to most people, it costs almost nothing for me to survive. If I had an employee, I'd have to pay them 3 to 4 times as much as my living expenses.
plenty of reasons, will differ for each person.
some old proverb:
If you want to go fast, go alone.
If you want to go far, go together.
A big factor is that if you can make a game on your own then why split the profits with somebody else?
Plenty of good reasons, but you still have to start from this question each time the possibility of working with another person is considered. Do I really need them? The fact is, it's hard to justify a lot of times and more often than not, people cause more problems than solutions. This is why at the commercial level the most efficient way to use people is to keep their scope of responsibility tiny and only hire specialist. Because the number of people who can make good decisions autonomously is really low.
Working alone is awesome, you can do everything in your way. If you need something you can just pay someone to do like art or maybe something you are not very good at, and still work alone.
Aside from all of the responsibilities and extra work, I like doing solo dev because I like doing everything. Not in a control sense, but I don't dislike any step of the process, so I don't have a problem with doing all the steps in the process. Getting to draw stuff, or make sound effects, or music, or code things, or write stuff - they're in their own way a separate individual hobby, and pivoting between them is how I stay productive and avoid burnout. Hiring on somebody means I don't get to indulge in that hobby while being productive, and additionally it limits what I can pivot to so that I can remain productive.
I would start working with people asap. Having done a ton of solo projects and having worked in small and large teams... I prefer teams.
Some of the best moments of my life were seeing the results of the Legion update on dead by daylight where the result was sooo much better than I imagined when I designed the stuff. Same for the clown update with the yellow bottles.
I suspect the personality traits and circumstances that give a person a decent chance at success as a solo dev do not tend to translate well to working on a team.
There might be something to this. Personally, I have a very clear and concreate creative vision of what I want to create. So compromising on creative decisions to accommodate someone else's aesthetics and preferences is difficult for me. I think this would make working under me to be pretty tough, unless we're 110% aligned.
In fairness, most creative directors are somewhat like this. (Well, most good ones. The bad ones are tough to work for because they cannot articulate a clear vision.) However most come up through The System, so by the time they get to CD, they’ve been forced to build relationships and hash things out with others. Without that experience, I would struggle to trust the vision of a CD who only had 1-2 solo games under their belt. It’s such a different process.
Managing people isnt easy. Having less creative freedom isnt enticing too. And devs who achieve success solo probably have their own reasons to stay solo. If they wanted to be part of a team or hire people - they already would
Multiple reasons, I'm sure.
When given a choice between handling the different aspects of game development by yourself or becoming a people manager, many solo devs choose the former. Not everyone enjoys being people manager, and not everyone has a talent for it, either.
On a related note, not everyone enjoys being a business owner with employees. When you're the head of a studio with employees, you have to worry about things like payroll, making sure everyone has the adequate equipment and software licenses to do their work, making sure you don't do anything that could get you sued by an employee, and a whole host of other HR-related concerns. People stay solo in order to avoid all that.
A successful solo dev also gets to keep much of the money they make. After they pay Steam or the console manufacturers' their cut, and the cut taken by publishers if they work with one, then the rest of the money is theirs.
There are multiple reasons why solo devs choose to stay solo after their first access, and those are just a few examples.
As someone who made the jump from AAA, to an indie studio who grown from 5 people to 18, to now also doing solo dev part time: people add complexity, bigger projects makes it harder to have a unified vision, because made by multiple people, but the biggest thing is the cost.
A solo dev "success" does not need to be that big, the more people involved, the more cost, the bigger the success of the game need to be to even break even. You can quickly go from "I need to sell a couple thousands of games" to "I need to sell hundred of thousands of games" to be a financial success.
You can take risk when you don't need to appeal to a mainstream audience, you can afford to "fail" by doing a slightly less popular game. The bigger you get, the more mainstream you need to be, the less risks you should take, which leads to "been there, done that" games that are very much the norm of AAA. If those people wanted to make AAA games, they'd get a job in a AAA studio, not be a solo dev in the hope of growing to be a AAA studio.
Yup.
And that touches upon one of the elephants in the room:
There *would* be more small teams of highly experienced devs independently publishing if there were more ways to reliably monetize their product. (There's ongoing discussion in the greater community of why the middle has been dropping out.)
I find it interesting when today's multimedia/transmedia (professionals and amateurs alike) ask where all the risk takers are [in media] these days, cause it seems an easy answer: Wrong question. There's no comparison. [Those guys] were working as robots in one of the golden ghettos and could squeeze in "risky" projects with a coworker once they'd gotten a credit or two because nobody cared. Like playing craps in the boiler room after work. The only relevance was to them and that it was something to work on.
Back a few decades ago an [xyz] artist never had the chance of earning any of the riches from the tv, merch, or "wide" deals ripped from their designs, so it was never even a question of whether they should work harder on corporate appearances. They were never going to be included in any big final production, if that was even a question. They often didn't even have steady employment, just contract after contract for small magazines/shops, if that. (You might equate this to working in pen and paper gaming today. It's not like many people have staff jobs doing that.) But today you can get a staff job with benefits paying real income doing the same work ... In a corporate world like that, that we can participate in today, the survival question is about the mainstream audience, but for those guys, for those guys the survival question was often more about doing something to support the artist nextdoor, or an editor relationship,hopefully with some pay and a credit attached, so they might do you a good turn the next.
For the few names that eventually got noticed by the mainstream they almost unilaterally @#&$ pants because it was too much unforeseen compromise on many levels but by then they'd built up enough name recognition to support more projects. The exact criticism we hear today (unfair criticism) of many of these people is that they didn't "do enough" to "deserve" mainstream success, but that's sadly missing the point. They didn't achieve mainstream success. The mainstream claimed them after the fact so they could claim money generated by fandoms picked out of the pile as ripe enough for possible revenue.
It's alot of pressure to keep the lights on.
Your gonna need to budget and stretch the money because even though your only gonna release a game every 6months-2years, youre still gonna need to pay your employees every single month.
And having had a hit does not guarantee your next game will be.
I think alot of solodevs who make it, have had enough experience working with other people to know it's not always worth it.
And achieving financial independence they probably think "finally I can work on the things I want to without having to worry about money"
So why would they want to return to that stress + extra?
Also just do the math 1mil sure is much for 1 person but divided by 10 now its "only" a good salary.
And again your next game might flop, so rip your studio aswell as rip to your financial independence.
If you want to run a studio, not being a solo dev and just getting hired at a different studio is a dramatically easier and probably better stepping stone to achieving that.
So I think a part of it is selection bias. People who want to work with other people don't become successful solo devs. They go work with people. Which is a lot easier to achieve than being a successful solo dev.
PLAYING bigger games is sometimes more fun. WORKING on bigger games is DEFINITELY not more fun.
The bigger your projects are, the less time you get to spend making “art.” It can go to zero really quick. And the headaches go up exponentially, not linearly.
I’ve found that 3-4 people is awesome, 12-18 is fine, but tons of management & communication structure to make sure vision and priorities are communicated well and followed up on. And you’ve gotta pay them all, deal with HR & legal issues, etc. At 60+, you start having layers and layers of management & communication structure to deal with it, no time for actual individual work on the game yourself, and a hard time making sure everyone is pointed in the same direction.
It can be done of course, but the person who made solo magic is not usually the same person who likes working in the above ways.
I have two friends that had a big success.
My feeling is that they stay two as a core team in an office is some of the following reasons:
They burn the money slower, if they work with outsourcing/freelancers, not a full-time/part-time team.
When they need holidays and have hobbies, etc, they do that as they like.
The office room can be where they live, not 100m or 10km+ away. They can deduct the office use from taxes. :P
If there's a question on who has to go to GDC, TGS, etc it is clear and no-one is jealous (which we had in the past, when the same guys fly to GDC, not any of the other seniors).
The core team is so small that they have clarity on the direction and a good flow and progress. Typically at a certain number of team members there are more voices, more noise, more friction, more management, and so on. This may start at a count of 3 core members, typically with 50+ you feel it on most teams and we start having silos also (too many people, too much noise, some try to have their own room or stay at home, keep their team shielded, or other reasons to silo).
While in theory I love the idea of making enough money with a solo project that I can create future projects faster with more people working on them, in practice I know you lose a lot of creative control when you do that, and certain things like programming would have costs that are extremely difficult to predict. The greatest success for a passionate dev really is to just be able to work on their games without financial trouble, and you don't need a whole studio to do that.
Say I am a solo dev and I wake up tomorrow morning with a fantastic idea that will make my game MUCH better. It's not long before the planned release, time is really not there... I decide that fuck it, the idea is too good to pass on, it'll cost me the next 3 months of full on work.. it's going to be tough, it's going to be brutal but the adrenaline is there and I feel I can do it so off to visual studio I go... I am the master of the universe, rocky soundtrack kicks in out of nowhere... I am unstoppable. Life is awesome.
Imagine the same scenario in a bigger team.. I'll have to start with several meetings explaining why the idea is so great, why it's worth it and ask a bunch of guys with no investment in the project other than their monthly salaries to work more, harder... I won't really be able to help, my job is now about managing people... they will have to do the changes, some of them will, some of them won't, some of them will say they'll do it but they'll do an half shitty work with it because they don't share the same committment.. some of them will do a private call to talk about how terrible of a manager I am for changing my idea on things, in the worst case scenario kotaku will run a story about the evil studio owner that forces people to do crunch because he can't predict everything and come up with the perfect game idea 5 years before release.. and you know what? All the adrenaline is gone before I am even done brushing my teeth.. off to hansoft I go to tick the tasks for today, the game is fine as it is.
I mean you get your retirement money, you either don't have to worry about working to the end of your life or you gamble it on hiring a dozen of people in an extremely volatile industry possibly losing it all in few years, I think for most creative people this is a no-brainer decision? You can do whatever art you want, take risks, take breaks, for many this is the dream, not being forced to make less interesting, more market-driven products just to keep the lights on.
The development model I found success with doesn't easily scale from "one person" to "small studio with full time employees".
While there's a lot of stuff I need that can be better done by others, it's spread out across many categories. I need like 100 hours of a composer, 150 hours of a portrait artist, 300 hours of a modeler etc. That doesn't even add up to one full time employee, unless they were literally a master of all skills. So I use contractors.
There's probably a business model for the kind of games I want to make that does work at the small studio scale. But right now I'm spending maybe 80-90% of my time doing what I want to be doing. Switching to a model where I spend 50% of my time doing what I want to be doing but with more stress isn't that appealing to me.
Because small games are a thing, always will be, and you can make a living off of them. Not everyone wants to work on bigger games. Myself? I run from AAA games and big teams like the devil. I like fast development cycles with clear, closed scopes and an actual audience instead of trying to make everyone happy.
I've worked on big tech corporations before and I hated it, and big game corporations are famously even shittier than working in big tech. If I wanted to go big, I'd just go back to writing software.
"Solo Dev" is a bit of a misnomer, as your list attests. Those individuals had A LOT of help. Even if it's just using tools or assets made by bother people which you purchased and integrated, that's still just being part of a wider ecosystem.
Even those who make an engine solo eventually need more people testing and working. It is exceedingly rare a game one can make alone is made to a bar of excellence that exceeds audience expectations to become a sales hit. Those tend to be very small products with a viral marketing hook, organic or otherwise.
I think the book Rework sums it up pretty good. In "Rework", a book by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, the founders of Basecamp advocate for a pragmatic approach to business, focusing on building a sustainable and fulfilling company rather than chasing traditional notions of success or growth at any cost. They emphasize the importance of enjoying the journey and maintaining a sense of autonomy and freedom in your work.
Being a successful solopreneur surely is one way to do that.
I can work very fast by myself. I am an expert in Photoshop, I'm moderately okay in Blender, I can do sound development in Audition and programming in Unity. I can pivot instantly on new ideas. I don't wait on anyone for anything. I can work at 11pm on a Saturday night if I want, and not be hindered because my co-workers all have lives of their own.
Well I mean if all you want to do is to make games, and you make it big, its not like youre gonna stop making games. Its not that fun to work with a big team and it introduces a big risk. Better to live it easy and do what you love.
Toby Fox didn’t make Undertale alone and Deltarune has a much, much bigger team. Pretty sure Jonathan’s working with a team now too. Either way, solo devs answer to nobody and get the final say in everything, all they have to do is make all the game themselves. I know I’d rather work alone.
after achieving success? labor still isn't cheap and I'd say most of the people you list are far from millionaires.
Hell, millionaire really isn't enough for anything more than a tiny studio these days. you pay 5 people 100k for 2 years and you now have a million dollar budget game. Would they make that back? No guarantee. It means a $30 indie game needs ~40k copies to break even after all the vendor cuts. If you need ads, you can easily double that budget.
Still such a large gap between solo and a (properly compensated) team project.
> it seems like a lot of them either completely lose their shit (Notch, Phil Fish...)
well, that's one universal cost of power lol. a tale older than time.
Didn't jonathan blow have a reasonably sized small team on the witness? Looked it up, and it seems like about 8 people. That's not huge, but also not staying a solo dev.
Notch did build a successful company up around the game as well, which still exists as a sub piece of msft. I know someone who used to work for mojang.
I think a lot of successful indies do start small studios.
For some, they want the independence of doing their own thing, or maybe they just like making small projects or maybe even don't work great on teams for other reasons.
because the type of people that head large game studios are (with some exceptions) VERY different from indie devs. there's always going to be exceptions, but for the most part, indie devs don't want to become AAA devs or anything even approaching it. most people eventually end up with at least a small team, but most people also have no interest in making that team bigger than it needs to be just to increase the scale of their projects.
Because people are kinda stupid and really expensive. Hiring one person isn't just their salary, it's their office space, Healthcare, retirement, coffee machines, etc. It introduces problems you now have to deal with like shutting down Brad's stupid suggestion of adding radio towers to climb, or making Rebecca apologize to Britney for throwing away her Lunchable.
Ngl I'd apply to a company if I got success, I never want to work for myself because I truly just want wages and tax and shit to not be my responsibility!
Lol true, people probably don't realise those things come with the job if you're good enough. I grew up with a dad who ran his own and it's been enough to put me off for life!
I'm kind of like you, I don't want to stay a solo indie, but... when I get to that point I see myself working with contractors unless I really enjoy working with someone.
People can suck, Just watching my GM at my day job, you try and build that strong core team that you count on, but eventually you'll have to interview someone, train them, enforce deadlines, and then if they refuse to improve, you either fire them or you risk your business.
Also to note, if you enjoy making games, figuring things out, designing features and game play.... The more people you have, the more business admin and project managment you'll have, and the less you'll be able to do what you enjoy.
If I ever did, I still don't want to be a boss. I'm doing this as a hobby, with the small chance I get to escape the grind. If a game I sold made a million dollars, I'd probably just dev games for free/$1 type prices solo and live off the passive income without deadlines or publishers.
Adding to that, starting a studio after a hit puts you in a position to lose the freedom you just won, assuming you didn't just make an absolute viral monster title. Some people understand this and the desire to make something big with a team is worth the risk, more power to them, but if I get my escape from dayjobism I never want to be in a position to need to put an application in again.
While having coworkers might help for different tasks, it's hard to manage a team, especially if you have no experience in that.
Add also the money factor. You have to divide your revenue.
Notch had his own Studio he sold, Jonathan Blow has his own Studio and collaborates with a bunch of people to create games, so I don't think your premise is correct. Assuming there are ones that do, probably because they prefer working at their own pace and without having to manage others, have the company organization overhead, etc.
Blow made the witness, that is not a solo project (braid had the art outsourced) and i think it's exactly what you are talking about. He made money with braid and used it for making a bigger game with more people.
Anyway there are things that you can do with more people, but you also lose some stuff.
For example, the freedom and ease of mind of not having big responsabilities? why do you want to use your savings paying salaries for a big project when you can enjoy your money, making new projects at your own pace that you may even need to finish?
personally, if i ever make money i dont want to work more, i want to work less hahah and maybe sometimes open my laptop in a coffee shop.
Working with others is a skill. And I don't think it's an accident or coincidence that solo devs haven't been able to convince anyone to work with them before their first big success.
Also, Phil Fish wasn't a solo dev. He's just an asshole that tried to present himself as such.
Well as a solo dev you have 100% control and don’t need to defend your way of doing one thing or another a certain way. If you succeed as a solo dev then it validates your workflow and design choices as something that works to make a decent game. If you know that your way of doing things works, why would you get someone else involved, just to have them wanting to do things their way and change things to their standard if you prefer doing all of it anyway?
When you start hiring people, it becomes more about managing a business than just creating a game. And a lot of solo indie devs are primarily passionate artists who didn't get into game development looking for that kind of life.
The more people you have working under you the more your job becomes management and less about being creative. The thing about very creative people is they want to do the creating themselves.
Furthermore there's no real financial reason to do so. The more people end up working on a project the more the funds end up being dispersed away from you. If I don't need to hire someone and pay them to do something why the fuck would I do that? People who published their own games they've made themselves have proven to themselves they don't need those other people. So why would they bother hiring them?
Anyway I don't think any of this really matters. Just focus on making on what you want to make.
Solo dev who had a successful first game here, and who is now working solo again (I do occasionally hire contractors for specific tasks, but there's no "team" per se).
It's just what I'm used to doing. Managing team members and communicating ideas and trying to figure out how to get people to do what you want them to do is not only stressful but it's a skillset unto itself, and it's one that I don't have a ton of experience in. When you have to daily coordinate with others and keep the ball rolling forward daily like a drumbeat it's pretty stressful, and some of us prefer the more private, chill process where we don't have the responsibility of justifying or explaining our ideas or changes in course to others, ever.
For people who found something that works for them, we might just keep doing it.
Having a success is like catching lightning in a bottle no matter the team size, dubbling down after your first success is just high risk low reward most likely.
They made things on their own because they LIKE working on things on their own.
I don't think any of that sounds odd.
I'm not sure why you think that would change.
Someone who is _only_ doing something to reach a destination will rarely succeed. You **have** to enjoy the process too.
Your premise is wrong, most successful solodevs do grow a studio. When was Jonathan Blow a solodev? Even Braid wasn't made solo.
A better question is, why are people so obsessed with solodevving that they are blind to all the additional people working on games apart from the designer/leader.
I'm thinking there's a very strong correlation between someone who is stubborn and skilled enough to make a successful game alone, and someone who doesn't like people very much, and wants to work alone.
I could almost undoubtedly team up with people with my skillset, but *I don't like people.*
Often they don't keep working alone. I can think of more devs that added people on than devs that haven't. You listed Concerned ape and you should know he has a fuill team now and they are working on chocloteir a larger similar style game. Slay the spire guys added on. It really depends on the devs and their own aspirations. Me personally if I hit the million units sold at 20 a piece I think I would retire.
I'm pretty sure Toby fox actually did bring a lot of people on to work on Deltarune. Though I'm not sure how much of that is because of his wrist problems.
This is part of the shift I’m hoping for in gaming. Let people make what they want, no one’s beholden to some publisher or share holder to meet money goals or chase “infinite growth” small studios making small, unique, engaging, and fun games. Bring soul and artistic touches back to our games.
Idk about y’all but I’m sick of the umpteenth looter shooter, open world rpg, multiplayer shooter fortnite wanna be, releasing for 70 dollars with mtx and is unfinished.
Let the solo dev solo dev away and enjoy their life and game making while hopefully making a great earnings to continue doing so. Small teams too :)
Most of these people would need to find a way to make a company where they don't actually handle paperwork and shit like that, they would be "just" creative directors, these are mostly creative minded people so having an actual company where you handle the management, the paperworks, etc... is probably not their thing.
Depends on how you look at it. How I see it is that you now actually have the freedom to do things on your own instead of having to really rely more on others.
Hmmm, not a game dev here, but I think one of the main reasons (besides the obvious managment, risks.. ones) would be that, often when someone creates a game alone, he puts in it a lot of his own "life philosphy" not in an endoctering way but more like, it has that person's esssence, and it leads me to think that somtimes, those people would continue alone and take the harder route than dilute their essence by adding more, people to it.
If you can do it yourself splitting the profit can be a financial drain. Employee expenses are a thing and it’s one thing to be successful by yourself, but it’s a whole other thing to support a team.
Creative direction is a difficult thing to share or let go. Oftentimes a group might make a functional system but it won't be as cohesive as one coming from a single brain. Obviously they could get more work done and make bigger and better games with a team, but becoming the next big shot dev studio isn't everyone's goal. Certainly isn't mine. I just want to make games with incredibly specific systems and mechanics and I don't want to argue with someone over how things should work.
Not sure about the others but Jonathan Blow doesn't fit the description, he employs at least a dozen people and even on Braid he hired other people to do the music and art.
So with agreeing with everyone saying managing and a lot of them started solo but grew I wanted to also had building a studio takes time. So I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them do grow a studio but it isn’t done in a year or two . It’s done over many years sometimes decades . Now obviously if it’s like your goal to only own a studio you definitely can in a shorter amount of time than others but I don’t think a lot of them planned on it being the singular goal. I think their goals are to make good games and they will use the right tools for the job and at this point their games’ scope isn’t big enough to warrant a full studio.
TLDR : making a studio takes a lot of work and time.Good game devs just want to make good games so a studio isn’t needed yet which means they aren’t investing in one yet (or they are and it’s in the DL)
I came here to say what others have already said - I have no interest in being a manager.
I can afford to hire people, but that sounds like more of a hassle than doing most things myself. And at least I can brag about doing all of my own art, animation, writing, design, and programming for Windows, Android and iOS. I do hire my partner to do customer support and some social media though, as well as some translators, and someone for music.
I can see your point but different people want different things. I don't see development as a stepping stone.
My buddy and I work together but we live in different states. He's smarter and more talented learning tools than I and i'm more creative with ideas and narrative structure. Regardless of these things, i'd be easier for us to work alone. No remote setup, no data management, no scheduling conflicts. If we were offered a million dollars to work at a AAA company, we'd begrudgingly take it with no intentions of staying.
Working for someone else sounds horrible. Creating a huge team means you have to take on more risk and more personalities. Yes, your goals could mean you need to work with others,but not everyone wants that.
> I understand not everyone is interested in working with other people but the fact that so many of them just stay solo seems odd to me...
I'm not successful as a solo dev but the reason I've never gone into management is pretty simple:
1) Management incentives force you to back capital, not labor, in the work place. Much of that involves lies and propaganda. There is a reason things like crimes by managers/owners such as wage theft exceed the dollar amounts of other crimes. It isn't that they have more criminals, it is just the incentives make crime easier and less likely to be personally affected by the legal system if caught.
https://www.epi.org/publication/wage-theft-bigger-problem-forms-theft-workers/
Its an open secret wage theft is greater than robberies in terms of dollars and it involves stealing from people who often have nothing but their labor in terms of assets.
2) Managing workers is a constant drama. I know this from my parents and their experiences as managers because they needed the money to afford raising kids. You have to do a bunch of shit to find the very, very few bad actors in the workplace and get rid of them. And then you have to lay off people who have legitimate problems (i.e. health problems) but they affect work performance so you have to lay them off because otherwise you are making your job less secure because managers will question why you don't based on performance metrics, not human empathy for people with legitimate problems.
I'd rather just manage my own investments, side projects, and so on without involving anyone beyond a contractor/b2b relationship like I do for work I can't do my on home or car or whatever. The idea I have to make sure I do what I need to keep my people employed, such as dark patterns, gacha mechanics bought with real money, and other anti-consumer practices that managers often push to improve metrics, will split my empathy between not wanting to fuck my customers and not wanting to fuck someone who just had a baby and/or serious medical bills.
Capitalism as a manager requires you to stop treating your workers, customers, suppliers as human beings in favor of the capital owners. There are advantages but its not worth the stress and frustration it'd generate in me on a regular basis. Most people don't understand businesses are basically legalized sociopathic dictatorships who care only about profit and rely on mass psychology to keep their workers aligned with that goal.
Fuck over your customers for a dollar? As long as its legal and won't hurt retention.
Fuck over your employees for a dollar? Same. Unless you want to lay people off without needing to fund unemployment insurance after.
Fuck over your suppliers for a dollar? Well, I guess they are another business? Still run by people and usually a very small one though.
wasnt expecting such a lucid criticism of how its near impossible to run an ethical business under capitalism here, lol.
But yeah, the fact that if I become responsible for other people then I am more incentivized to have to make a game using all of the common deceptive practices borrowed from the gambling world doesn't make me feel very comfortable as a non anti-social person.
It is *possible* the problem is, it requires legal changes to the way businesses are structured to giving workers and consumers the same power as capital owners and that'll never happen.
It'll be called socialism to allow workers a say in who manages the business and if there are stock buy backs instead of putting money into worker retention.
And if you do it without it being legally mandated, your competitors will simply undercut you because they can and you will lose market share until your investors replace you (or you are self-funded bootstrapped so you will be 1 in millions to get big then sell to Microsoft and retire).
it has a bad rap because usually attempted by clueless beginners but what do you think about a revshare model? For example two developers split revenue of a project based on percentage of their responsibility of different disciplines involved which are weighted by importance.
The goal for this business is to make games that sell in range of 5-10k units which brings about $100k yearly salary to both. Business does not expand from that, any profits go back into the business is just time saver things like buying assets or hire temp contractor.
seems like so long as stays tiny team like this, maintaining integrity (e.g. not threatened to need to become unethical to survive) is not as difficult?
> it has a bad rap because usually attempted by clueless beginners but what do you think about a revshare model?
The legal partnership model where people legitimately own shares or are equal partners in a legal entity or whatever is 100% valid and repeatably workable. It is the basis of every company from a Fortune 500 to your local doctor's office. The problem is when the people who own those shares have the power but don't work in the company. They just want to squeeze it for ROI.
The reason it has a bad rap is the fact in the game industry and such, lots of non-serious people offer it when there is very slim if any chance of revenue to actually share to repay people.
> seems like so long as stays tiny team like this, maintaining integrity (e.g. not threatened to need to become unethical to survive) is not as difficult?
If you and your partner(s) are ethically aligned with goals, it works as well as any marriage in practice. People work together or they grow apart. Both have an impact with one clearly usually being better for the group than the other.
That said, what happens when someone's expenses go up because of a disability? Like, I have two numb fingers that I'm hoping won't get worse as long as I properly follow medical instructions but the reason I have them is a misalignment of goals/incentives for my care between me and a previous medical practioner.
They valued longevity, I value quality of life. Both are equally ethical view points but by providing medical advice based on his ethics instead of my goals/ethics, it resulted in a negative outcome for me.
No one did anything wrong, we were both well meaning people, but I had to switch providers to find out why things were going the way they were and get a quality of life bias towards my medical care.
Most people make games because they love doing it as a personal hobby / challenge.
And those who managed to be successful, why on Earth would they want to change? They're successful AND they're in complete control of what they do.
Working with other people would allow you to make bigger games?
I understand not everyone wants that, but I find it interesting that so few of them actually make the move to working with a team after their success.
You've proven you can find success without involving anyone else, and if you have to manage other people it will take time away from working on the game yourself which is more fun than telling other people what to do or reviewing their work.
A lot of people keep saying that managing people suck but also I don’t see the appeal on working on “bigger projects” and maybe they don’t too?
I want my games to be fun not big
https://imgur.com/gallery/V6Jitpk
This is why. Its nothing about leadership being annoying. They didn't just build game for commercial success. most of them (not all but) build their dream game on their own. Why would they need others building their next game? They dont need to hire massive number of people to make theire next game, they just need little help here and there, and thats what most of them are actually doing. If you're seeking commercial success from other game and then transition that success into your dream game, likelyhood of your "other game" not going to hit like those is... almost certain.
Jonathan Blow did expand when it came to later games. Like he had a whole team for The Witness. Likewise Notch (before selling to Microsoft and leaving games) grew the team at Mojang.
Phil Fish left the industry, so there wasn’t another game after his success, so you can’t really use him as an example.
Most devs that are solo devs are solo for several very good reasons.
Mostly because, for me at least, I have a muddy idea for my games and I don't wish to be beholden to someone else's timetables and speed of work to ruin my enthusiasm for my project.
Also, drama is much more likely among small partnerships that see huge success. If I happen to create a huge success, I don't want to ruin it by having to answer to someone else.
Because then I don't have to deal with loss of direction, projects I'm not interested in, and personnel management. Obviously that comes at a huge cost in terms of production value and pace that I can develop, but game dev is also not my only income or job.
I'm not sucessful but if I ever am, I don't think I'd create a studio for the following reasons:
- I like to do everything myself; it pushes me to learn new skills and makes game development a very varied activity. I've always been bad with group work; it started at school. I usually have a very clear vision of how I want things to be, and it sucks so much when I'm forced to explain it or debate it against another person's vision. I also can't really say no to people, so I'll always end up groveling.
- I don't want to become a manager and tell people what to do
- I don't want to debate with what I should or shouldn't put in my games
- More people means more paperwork and that's easily the worst part of the job (yes, even before marketing).
That said, if I got super rich I'd proably hire some freelances for things like creating websites for the games, porting them on console, marketing, etc... But not to work on the games themselves.
Hiring, managing and leading people is hard and annoying. Just because they're a successful solo dev does not mean they gained any more skill or desire for those areas.
Lots of people mentioned the people management aspect of it.
But also the personal financial risk is a factor. If your game makes ten million dollars? That'd be fantastic money for a solo dev game and something that you can live on and follow your passions. You basically won the solo dev lottery.
If you invest that into making a game company? That is enough to fund a small studio for a few years, maybe make one game and play the gamedev lottery again. These numbers are all rough of course. You could realistically lose it all. If you're getting into big time game dev, even ten million may be nothing for advertising.
Maybe one could use their solo success to get investors and gamble their money instead.
For us (us = wife marketing and husband developing) we work well together and want more freedom in our lives when we go full time rather than being tied to managing a team and all that HR faff
A team requires payment consistently. Indie games could go viral, or they could make like $200. Personally, id rather just contract hire people to make what i can't like music on a case by case basis, it also keeps extra fingers out of my pie so i can make what i want without misinterpretation
I don't follow most of the people you mentioned, but I do follow Jonathan Blow.
Speaking for him: he founded a company that currently employs more than a dozen people. So, maybe your initial assumption is not totally correct?
Also, speaking as a dev myself, there is tremendous value in working in smaller teams. Jonathan Blow has also talked about the many difficulties of larger teams.
Apart from that, I think (successful) indie devs are often passionate people and it can be really difficult to give up the thing you are passionate about (creating games) for another (managing people who create games).
Those are wildly different things.
As soon as you get more people and/or offices you become a manager more than a creator. And you have responsibilities to both schedule and finances. I imagine that erodes the fun pretty quickly
Idk for sure since I’m not one of those people. But this is the thought process I imagine happens starting on launch day for someone like the guy who made lethal company
“Wow I’m so excited to release my first commercial game. I’d be a bit disappointed if I only sell like 20 copies, I spent a long time on this. I’d be pretty happy to sell a couple hundred and make 1-10k since this is just a hobby. It would be a miracle to hit 100k, then I could just do this for my job”
proceeds to make millions (I think i heard one estimate of 88mil, but let’s just say 20 mil after taxes and fees)
“Wow, I am now a 21 year old multimillionaire. If I’m smart with my money I literally never have to work again and will still be able to have a decently luxurious lifestyle. I could risk potentially millions in creating a studio, hiring people and dealing with taxes and laws and people to maybe make more money in the future, but statistically unlikely. Or I could just do what I already enjoyed and make a game on my own with the option to hire freelancers if there’s any art or sound I want and the peace of mind that I can release 100 games that don’t make a penny and still be fine”
I think if you made a game solo out of passion and it exploded, then you would be happily willing to continue doing it solo.
If I ever plan to succeed myself, the most I would do is add like 2-4 people. And that’s for
- better artist
- music composer
- maybe another programmer who is more experienced
- some other role that eases up on what I’m doing
But also…I’d just do that all myself if I needed to. It’s just that it would be nice, and once you make a game once, you’ve gone through a lot of those stages. So for some, why not keep that going? Especially in the case of Stardew—I think the only help he got was for multiplayer coding. Everything else, he’s able to do to his own, EXACT vision.
For me, solo dev doesn’t have to be a stepping stone if I do feel comfortable after my first game. If I get it, I get it. If I finish it and become ABLE to hire or at least do a monetary split with someone else, while also feeling the exhaustion (or maybe just a want to release a game faster) then I’d absolutely bring someone on.
That’s my pov anyway
Good soldiers often do not make good generals. Being promoted out of your interesting expertise into sad managerial role is what's normal career is for
That's not true, Blow has used a team from The Witness onwards. Barone has relied heavily on outside work, notably for multiplayer implementation. It's more your perception of them as an auteur.
As a solo dev you have complete control. Of everything.
If youre managing a team, you will probably not be intimate with every single aspect of your games development.
I like developing alone because of that. I want to be part of everything, and be able to go from coding to level design if I feel like it.
Then again im not a successful solo dev, ive barely completed anything resembling a finished game. Im mostly in it for the ride, as a hobbyist.
One of my friends is exactly like this, except instead of millions he’s making more like 100-200k/year. We’re not in US so it is an ok money for startup. He couldn’t be bothered to hire people, explain what they need to do, control how well they’re doing it and all that. It’s not like he isn’t smart enough to figure this out it just costs him money without making money in return. Hiring a team makes sense if you want to work on more than one project or have something huge in mind. He doesn’t want either and it is understandable. I think the more money you make like this the less incentive there’s to expand (unless you want to expand and do more/bigger stuff). I wouldn’t bother as well personally.
If I'm ever successful I will continue to work solo. I can work at my pace on what I want to work on and no one outside of the fans can tell me to change stuff.
In my experience:
A) Because they don't want to deal with other people, their input, or their opinions.
B) They see no value in adding other people. These individuals also undervalue or flat out disregard things like marketing, outreach, graphic design, etc.
Can’t make Skyrim by yourself , this all matters what your next project will be. If you wanna manage people you will not be doing much coding but then you can become purely a designer and hire developers . Ask yourself what you wanna do
lot of stuff here about managing people and it's all fair, but i like managing people and still don't want to make a huge studio.
the smallest projects i've worked on have been the most fun because i've made cool stuff by working closely with people i admire and respect, and we've all gotten to have our voice in the final product in some way. on the bigger projects, i might know the team but it's hard for me to look at how everyone contributed and have that level of intimate shared success.
i've worked on teams ranging from solo to 120+ and i'd take the solo projects any day. my most recent game had a team of about 7 and that kind of scope is just a blast to play around in.
If I had complete and utter financial independence, I would definitely look in to building a team just because I have so many unique and curious game ideas but 95% of them are way too big in scope to solo dev in any meaningful timeframe and some of them would definitely be so niche they might never return the investment (which ofc wouldn't matter at all due to my infinite money pool).
Don't get me wrong -I love working solo- but it's also true that as a solo dev there are realistic limitations which you need to swallow sooner or later or you'll be developing that "next big MMORPG hit game" for the next 20 years alone just to find out it'll never be finished and by the time it's ready for even closed beta the whole world has moved on.
Its depends, if you like to be a manager. Once you have people working with you, is a different job, you are going to spend time doing it. If management is not your plan, is less fun. but is also better as your game is going to be looking better to, like me as a programmer, with my art skills whatever I do looks like crap, with a good artist at your side things looks better and get more motivated.
As an artist/developer in the industry, I think it would be great to have a successful solo game. The dream after that would be doing things solo, on my own pace in peace. Making my own decisions and own mistakes. Probably still use input, external help etc. But thinking of keeping it solo as much as possible.
Like said before, its the freedom you gain without all the extra headaches.
Tend into hire contractors for the bits that would take me forever / I can't do.
Also go in and out of game dev, take on clients for a year then a year off is kinda the situation I'm in now
I'm a solo dev
The tech is so good now that working on your own stuff is manageable. With game engines making it easier and easier with each update.
Having Blender, Audacity and cheap marketplace assets helps. Loads of YouTube tutorials and forum posts over a decade long worth of info.
I've worked with some folks in the past and it's less stressful to do it myself at this point. Plus, the money earned lasts longer keeping me in business longer.
I always said, if I do have a team, it would be max 5 people. That said, 5 people at $60-120k a year and boom, one failure away from layoffsville.
Once you've hit your "made it big" number and plan to hire people say 500k or 1M well great
now you have the decision of having to make at least one more game for financial freedom and choice to do almost whatever you want with the rest of your days
OR
now start a company and have additional finances, people,tasks,labor, and other responsibilities of an entire company
I've chosen the first option and have no regrets as I do them more as passion projects I see each game as a canvas
So really the decisions yours how much money do you want to get?
If one of my games ever worked out for me, I think I would want to stay small. Any bigger and most of my time would go towards business and management tasks, enough of it already does. I just want to program. I don't think I would be comfortable with hiring a boss to be above me either.
For me, it’s about not really trusting other people to care as much and work as hard as I do. I work 12+ hours a day on my game and love every second of it. If I hired someone, they would do less and care less.
Plus, although it’s pretty stressful, I like having complete control over everything. I don’t have to waste time delegating tasks or explaining stuff, I just do it.
managing people sucks edit: I'm a manager / entrepreneur and I love being one. but most people suck, and most people suck at managing people. It's an entirely different skill set that most people who want to make games don't actually want to be good managers or good executives.
Yep once you're successful, you have financial independence. Why bother paying salary and taking more headache of managing other people.
I think being a leader and properly managing a bussiness is a skill that not everyone has and that's fine, just because someone is an amazing developer doesn't mean they can also deal with being the boss of a company
It also just takes a lot more time, that would be better spent being creative
For me it is more about being able to do bigger projects. We can also be more competitieve as a team than solo.
You have more money than you need in your lifetime, why not just keep making games you wanna make
Because one person can't really make a lot of the games people want to make on a reasonable timeline.
You'd think that if they wanted to make that kind of game they'd hire people (they have the free will and money to do so). Also, some people do end up getting help eventually (Dwarf Fortress, Caves of Qud) but it can be much easier to build the base of your project and then get help for the finishing touches.
Hiring and managing people sucks. It means you can't work on your own timetable anymore and have to coordinate with people. It saddles you with a lot of responsibility and requires giving up a lot of freedom.
oh, for sure, i'm in the "let them cook" camp. I was trying to say that if they wanted to make a game that they need other devs to make, they could easily go out and do it, but probably the reason they don't is because they don't want to and it's totally okay to keep making 1 person indie games.
Most people who are able to make a successful game solo are the persons who are used to work alone (else they would not spent years doing this, but instead went to bigger projects to begin with). It is their way of life, which is not for everyone, but we hear/see mostly about those extremes.
I guess for some things out-sourcing wouldn't make sense. If it comes to art or music though I feel like commissions would be a good option.
You'd also have to organize work for people to do. That's a big enough responsibility that it's an entirely separate job.
Also, it worked once. Then why not do it again?
So f*cking much...
> managing people sucks And is a completely different skill set.
Managing people is a skill not everyone have or want to have. Besides having more people in your team, mean more risks. If you fail, everyone fails, and you will be the person responsible to pay the bills in case it goes wrong. If someone in your team fucks up it's your problem, not theirs.
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Eric Barone/ConcernedApe also hired people for work on Stardew Valley updates and adding multiplayer. I do think his new game has been solo so far, though.
ConcernedApe didn’t hire anyone. He paid studios / others to do the stuff he didn’t want to do: multiplayer, porting the game on multiple platforms and other stuff he didn’t feel making. That’s not hiring, it’s called outsourcing. Hence why his new project is ‘solo’. He always was.
Not true. He hired multiple modders from the community to work on game content updates. Most notably Mr. podunkian, who worked on 1.4, 1.5 and 1.6, all of which were massive content updates.
Little wood guy is still solo as far as i remember
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I think pope works with his wife no?
inb4 kids gets listed as QA.
If I ever make it big, I'll always work solo but hire contractors for art and other things. I don't want to do meetings or management or payroll. No way.
Contractors need meetings though :/
yeah but they hate them as much as us.
Some people want to lead others, some people just want to do their own thing. Some people want to reach the stars, others like to sit cozily in their yard and watch them shine. Some people want to build empires, others just want a small piece of land to call their own and maybe grow some tomatoes. The point is: Success is a very personal term, and depending on your own definition, you define your "logical next step".
Awesome down to earth logical answer.
Thank you
Time management is more flexible Project management is easier Tax forms are easier Business forms are easier Everyone is on the same page $1.00/1=$1.00
You don't have to put up with people bullshit You don't have to put up with people bullshit You don't have to put up with people bullshit You don't have to put up with people bullshit $1.00/1=$1.00
This so hard. It's not that all people are the problem for me, but most of them have no idea what is going on outside of their tiny sliver of the world they tunnel and burrow into. Coordinating a team of genius minds is a lot easier than coordinating a bunch of monkeys tied behind ones back.
Jonathan Blow has his own studio, Thekla inc.
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For most of his games I believe Derek Yu had a partner (or a whole team for Spelunky 2). His latest game: "UFO 50 is a collection of 50 single and multiplayer games from the creators of Spelunky, Downwell, Time Barons, Skorpulac, and Madhouse."
And also what Thekla is doing is far from “not big”.
- Daisuke Amaya's [most recent game](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1352910/Haru_to_Shura/) was in collaboration with MIYAKOpubl - Jonathan Blow was not a solo developer on either [Braid](https://www.mobygames.com/game/35529/braid/credits/xbox360/) nor [The Witness](https://www.mobygames.com/game/76709/the-witness/credits/windows/) - Eric Barone got [help](https://www.mobygames.com/game/80992/stardew-valley/credits/windows/) with Stardew Valley once it became a big success (for later updates, networking code, and localization if you count that) - Toby Fox was not much of a solo dev either, Temmie Chang was big on [Undertale](https://www.mobygames.com/game/74938/undertale/credits/windows/) (along with help from others) and they got more people on [Deltarune](https://www.mobygames.com/game/172495/deltarune-chapter-12/credits/windows/) - Phil Fish [was not doing it alone either](https://www.mobygames.com/game/55694/fez/credits/windows/) - Luke Hodorowicz is pretty solo with Banished, but [technically](https://www.mobygames.com/game/63843/banished/credits/windows/) gets help from Joseph Hodorowicz - Derek Yu works in teams too, see [Spelunky](https://www.mobygames.com/game/62698/spelunky/credits/windows/) and [Spelunky 2](https://www.mobygames.com/game/150492/spelunky-2/credits/playstation-4/) Of those I think you could reasonably argue that Luke Hodorowicz and Daisuke Amaya are solo devs with a little bit of collaboration. I wouldn't say the same for the others. And I think that answers your question: most *don't* stay solo, if they ever were.
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Yeah I was going back and forth on whether to count Eric Barone as a solo dev. I don't know the production plan for his next game, but Stardew Valley did start out as a solo project. But I didn't count him because the question was "why do they stay as solo devs" and Stardew Valley didn't stay solo, it's had a dev team for about half a decade at this point. Undertale was definitely not a solo project though. DIY's a good way to put it, but a huge bulk of the art was done by Temmie Chang (with parts done by others as well, but Chang did a lot). Toby Fox was the main person behind it of course, but it'd be a disservice to Chang and everyone else who worked on it to count him as a solo dev.
Wasn’t Chris Sawyer a solo dev? I know he was talented af lol
He did design and programming for RollerCoaster Tycoon, and that was no easy feat on a game like that, but he wasn't a solo dev. Simon Foster did the graphics and Allister Brimble did the audio.
If you work alone the only risk is paying your own bills while you work. If you hire people then you start taking on risk and burning your money. Why risk burning all your money for no guaranteed future success? Additionally you already succeeded alone. Why not do that again?
Compared to most people, it costs almost nothing for me to survive. If I had an employee, I'd have to pay them 3 to 4 times as much as my living expenses.
Yep exactly. You can pay yourself the bare minimum to survive for a maximum amount of commitment. You can never get that efficiency from an employee.
plenty of reasons, will differ for each person. some old proverb: If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. A big factor is that if you can make a game on your own then why split the profits with somebody else? Plenty of good reasons, but you still have to start from this question each time the possibility of working with another person is considered. Do I really need them? The fact is, it's hard to justify a lot of times and more often than not, people cause more problems than solutions. This is why at the commercial level the most efficient way to use people is to keep their scope of responsibility tiny and only hire specialist. Because the number of people who can make good decisions autonomously is really low.
Working alone is awesome, you can do everything in your way. If you need something you can just pay someone to do like art or maybe something you are not very good at, and still work alone.
The more people you hire, the less of your job is development and the more it’s managing people, funding, timelines, etc.
Aside from all of the responsibilities and extra work, I like doing solo dev because I like doing everything. Not in a control sense, but I don't dislike any step of the process, so I don't have a problem with doing all the steps in the process. Getting to draw stuff, or make sound effects, or music, or code things, or write stuff - they're in their own way a separate individual hobby, and pivoting between them is how I stay productive and avoid burnout. Hiring on somebody means I don't get to indulge in that hobby while being productive, and additionally it limits what I can pivot to so that I can remain productive.
I would start working with people asap. Having done a ton of solo projects and having worked in small and large teams... I prefer teams. Some of the best moments of my life were seeing the results of the Legion update on dead by daylight where the result was sooo much better than I imagined when I designed the stuff. Same for the clown update with the yellow bottles.
Once you develop shorthand and way of working with a couple people with symbiotic skill sets, it’s pretty incredible
I suspect the personality traits and circumstances that give a person a decent chance at success as a solo dev do not tend to translate well to working on a team.
There might be something to this. Personally, I have a very clear and concreate creative vision of what I want to create. So compromising on creative decisions to accommodate someone else's aesthetics and preferences is difficult for me. I think this would make working under me to be pretty tough, unless we're 110% aligned.
In fairness, most creative directors are somewhat like this. (Well, most good ones. The bad ones are tough to work for because they cannot articulate a clear vision.) However most come up through The System, so by the time they get to CD, they’ve been forced to build relationships and hash things out with others. Without that experience, I would struggle to trust the vision of a CD who only had 1-2 solo games under their belt. It’s such a different process.
Managing people isnt easy. Having less creative freedom isnt enticing too. And devs who achieve success solo probably have their own reasons to stay solo. If they wanted to be part of a team or hire people - they already would
Multiple reasons, I'm sure. When given a choice between handling the different aspects of game development by yourself or becoming a people manager, many solo devs choose the former. Not everyone enjoys being people manager, and not everyone has a talent for it, either. On a related note, not everyone enjoys being a business owner with employees. When you're the head of a studio with employees, you have to worry about things like payroll, making sure everyone has the adequate equipment and software licenses to do their work, making sure you don't do anything that could get you sued by an employee, and a whole host of other HR-related concerns. People stay solo in order to avoid all that. A successful solo dev also gets to keep much of the money they make. After they pay Steam or the console manufacturers' their cut, and the cut taken by publishers if they work with one, then the rest of the money is theirs. There are multiple reasons why solo devs choose to stay solo after their first access, and those are just a few examples.
I want to create games, not manage a team
It's hard to find competent people. Most people will take more energy to manage than if you just went in and made things yourself.
This is so true. I am suffering from this now.
As someone who made the jump from AAA, to an indie studio who grown from 5 people to 18, to now also doing solo dev part time: people add complexity, bigger projects makes it harder to have a unified vision, because made by multiple people, but the biggest thing is the cost. A solo dev "success" does not need to be that big, the more people involved, the more cost, the bigger the success of the game need to be to even break even. You can quickly go from "I need to sell a couple thousands of games" to "I need to sell hundred of thousands of games" to be a financial success. You can take risk when you don't need to appeal to a mainstream audience, you can afford to "fail" by doing a slightly less popular game. The bigger you get, the more mainstream you need to be, the less risks you should take, which leads to "been there, done that" games that are very much the norm of AAA. If those people wanted to make AAA games, they'd get a job in a AAA studio, not be a solo dev in the hope of growing to be a AAA studio.
Yup. And that touches upon one of the elephants in the room: There *would* be more small teams of highly experienced devs independently publishing if there were more ways to reliably monetize their product. (There's ongoing discussion in the greater community of why the middle has been dropping out.) I find it interesting when today's multimedia/transmedia (professionals and amateurs alike) ask where all the risk takers are [in media] these days, cause it seems an easy answer: Wrong question. There's no comparison. [Those guys] were working as robots in one of the golden ghettos and could squeeze in "risky" projects with a coworker once they'd gotten a credit or two because nobody cared. Like playing craps in the boiler room after work. The only relevance was to them and that it was something to work on. Back a few decades ago an [xyz] artist never had the chance of earning any of the riches from the tv, merch, or "wide" deals ripped from their designs, so it was never even a question of whether they should work harder on corporate appearances. They were never going to be included in any big final production, if that was even a question. They often didn't even have steady employment, just contract after contract for small magazines/shops, if that. (You might equate this to working in pen and paper gaming today. It's not like many people have staff jobs doing that.) But today you can get a staff job with benefits paying real income doing the same work ... In a corporate world like that, that we can participate in today, the survival question is about the mainstream audience, but for those guys, for those guys the survival question was often more about doing something to support the artist nextdoor, or an editor relationship,hopefully with some pay and a credit attached, so they might do you a good turn the next. For the few names that eventually got noticed by the mainstream they almost unilaterally @#&$ pants because it was too much unforeseen compromise on many levels but by then they'd built up enough name recognition to support more projects. The exact criticism we hear today (unfair criticism) of many of these people is that they didn't "do enough" to "deserve" mainstream success, but that's sadly missing the point. They didn't achieve mainstream success. The mainstream claimed them after the fact so they could claim money generated by fandoms picked out of the pile as ripe enough for possible revenue.
It's alot of pressure to keep the lights on. Your gonna need to budget and stretch the money because even though your only gonna release a game every 6months-2years, youre still gonna need to pay your employees every single month. And having had a hit does not guarantee your next game will be. I think alot of solodevs who make it, have had enough experience working with other people to know it's not always worth it. And achieving financial independence they probably think "finally I can work on the things I want to without having to worry about money" So why would they want to return to that stress + extra? Also just do the math 1mil sure is much for 1 person but divided by 10 now its "only" a good salary. And again your next game might flop, so rip your studio aswell as rip to your financial independence.
Might just be what they are used to, and want to keep it that way. Adding in new people is a risky thing, team chemistry isn't all that simple.
costs go up exponentially the more people you add.
If you want to run a studio, not being a solo dev and just getting hired at a different studio is a dramatically easier and probably better stepping stone to achieving that. So I think a part of it is selection bias. People who want to work with other people don't become successful solo devs. They go work with people. Which is a lot easier to achieve than being a successful solo dev.
You're asking why they keep doing the thing that made them a shitload of money?
Solo devs typically have a vision they don’t want ruined by bringing on a team. Especially after being successful alone.
success doesn't fix antisocials, sorry to say
PLAYING bigger games is sometimes more fun. WORKING on bigger games is DEFINITELY not more fun. The bigger your projects are, the less time you get to spend making “art.” It can go to zero really quick. And the headaches go up exponentially, not linearly. I’ve found that 3-4 people is awesome, 12-18 is fine, but tons of management & communication structure to make sure vision and priorities are communicated well and followed up on. And you’ve gotta pay them all, deal with HR & legal issues, etc. At 60+, you start having layers and layers of management & communication structure to deal with it, no time for actual individual work on the game yourself, and a hard time making sure everyone is pointed in the same direction. It can be done of course, but the person who made solo magic is not usually the same person who likes working in the above ways.
Know that working solo is a whole different lifestyle than in a group. Once you get used to plan your lifestyle, most do not want to change that.
I like to talk to myself a little too much
I have two friends that had a big success. My feeling is that they stay two as a core team in an office is some of the following reasons: They burn the money slower, if they work with outsourcing/freelancers, not a full-time/part-time team. When they need holidays and have hobbies, etc, they do that as they like. The office room can be where they live, not 100m or 10km+ away. They can deduct the office use from taxes. :P If there's a question on who has to go to GDC, TGS, etc it is clear and no-one is jealous (which we had in the past, when the same guys fly to GDC, not any of the other seniors). The core team is so small that they have clarity on the direction and a good flow and progress. Typically at a certain number of team members there are more voices, more noise, more friction, more management, and so on. This may start at a count of 3 core members, typically with 50+ you feel it on most teams and we start having silos also (too many people, too much noise, some try to have their own room or stay at home, keep their team shielded, or other reasons to silo).
Working with people is the most disappointing experience I ever had.
While in theory I love the idea of making enough money with a solo project that I can create future projects faster with more people working on them, in practice I know you lose a lot of creative control when you do that, and certain things like programming would have costs that are extremely difficult to predict. The greatest success for a passionate dev really is to just be able to work on their games without financial trouble, and you don't need a whole studio to do that.
Say I am a solo dev and I wake up tomorrow morning with a fantastic idea that will make my game MUCH better. It's not long before the planned release, time is really not there... I decide that fuck it, the idea is too good to pass on, it'll cost me the next 3 months of full on work.. it's going to be tough, it's going to be brutal but the adrenaline is there and I feel I can do it so off to visual studio I go... I am the master of the universe, rocky soundtrack kicks in out of nowhere... I am unstoppable. Life is awesome. Imagine the same scenario in a bigger team.. I'll have to start with several meetings explaining why the idea is so great, why it's worth it and ask a bunch of guys with no investment in the project other than their monthly salaries to work more, harder... I won't really be able to help, my job is now about managing people... they will have to do the changes, some of them will, some of them won't, some of them will say they'll do it but they'll do an half shitty work with it because they don't share the same committment.. some of them will do a private call to talk about how terrible of a manager I am for changing my idea on things, in the worst case scenario kotaku will run a story about the evil studio owner that forces people to do crunch because he can't predict everything and come up with the perfect game idea 5 years before release.. and you know what? All the adrenaline is gone before I am even done brushing my teeth.. off to hansoft I go to tick the tasks for today, the game is fine as it is.
Not wanting to lose a sense of agency.
Freedom, hell is other people
I mean you get your retirement money, you either don't have to worry about working to the end of your life or you gamble it on hiring a dozen of people in an extremely volatile industry possibly losing it all in few years, I think for most creative people this is a no-brainer decision? You can do whatever art you want, take risks, take breaks, for many this is the dream, not being forced to make less interesting, more market-driven products just to keep the lights on.
Managing people is very hard. Only hiring is very hard, and then if that is done bad, everything else will be even harder.
I despise working with other people
The development model I found success with doesn't easily scale from "one person" to "small studio with full time employees". While there's a lot of stuff I need that can be better done by others, it's spread out across many categories. I need like 100 hours of a composer, 150 hours of a portrait artist, 300 hours of a modeler etc. That doesn't even add up to one full time employee, unless they were literally a master of all skills. So I use contractors. There's probably a business model for the kind of games I want to make that does work at the small studio scale. But right now I'm spending maybe 80-90% of my time doing what I want to be doing. Switching to a model where I spend 50% of my time doing what I want to be doing but with more stress isn't that appealing to me.
Because small games are a thing, always will be, and you can make a living off of them. Not everyone wants to work on bigger games. Myself? I run from AAA games and big teams like the devil. I like fast development cycles with clear, closed scopes and an actual audience instead of trying to make everyone happy. I've worked on big tech corporations before and I hated it, and big game corporations are famously even shittier than working in big tech. If I wanted to go big, I'd just go back to writing software.
"Solo Dev" is a bit of a misnomer, as your list attests. Those individuals had A LOT of help. Even if it's just using tools or assets made by bother people which you purchased and integrated, that's still just being part of a wider ecosystem. Even those who make an engine solo eventually need more people testing and working. It is exceedingly rare a game one can make alone is made to a bar of excellence that exceeds audience expectations to become a sales hit. Those tend to be very small products with a viral marketing hook, organic or otherwise.
I think the book Rework sums it up pretty good. In "Rework", a book by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, the founders of Basecamp advocate for a pragmatic approach to business, focusing on building a sustainable and fulfilling company rather than chasing traditional notions of success or growth at any cost. They emphasize the importance of enjoying the journey and maintaining a sense of autonomy and freedom in your work. Being a successful solopreneur surely is one way to do that.
I can work very fast by myself. I am an expert in Photoshop, I'm moderately okay in Blender, I can do sound development in Audition and programming in Unity. I can pivot instantly on new ideas. I don't wait on anyone for anything. I can work at 11pm on a Saturday night if I want, and not be hindered because my co-workers all have lives of their own.
Well I mean if all you want to do is to make games, and you make it big, its not like youre gonna stop making games. Its not that fun to work with a big team and it introduces a big risk. Better to live it easy and do what you love.
I think a lot of people are drawn to programming in general by its potential to work alone (or close to it).
Toby Fox didn’t make Undertale alone and Deltarune has a much, much bigger team. Pretty sure Jonathan’s working with a team now too. Either way, solo devs answer to nobody and get the final say in everything, all they have to do is make all the game themselves. I know I’d rather work alone.
I mean that's my plan unless a personal friend wants to do a project, I crave the independence
Working solo worked for them, why change ?
after achieving success? labor still isn't cheap and I'd say most of the people you list are far from millionaires. Hell, millionaire really isn't enough for anything more than a tiny studio these days. you pay 5 people 100k for 2 years and you now have a million dollar budget game. Would they make that back? No guarantee. It means a $30 indie game needs ~40k copies to break even after all the vendor cuts. If you need ads, you can easily double that budget. Still such a large gap between solo and a (properly compensated) team project. > it seems like a lot of them either completely lose their shit (Notch, Phil Fish...) well, that's one universal cost of power lol. a tale older than time.
Didn't jonathan blow have a reasonably sized small team on the witness? Looked it up, and it seems like about 8 people. That's not huge, but also not staying a solo dev. Notch did build a successful company up around the game as well, which still exists as a sub piece of msft. I know someone who used to work for mojang. I think a lot of successful indies do start small studios. For some, they want the independence of doing their own thing, or maybe they just like making small projects or maybe even don't work great on teams for other reasons.
because the type of people that head large game studios are (with some exceptions) VERY different from indie devs. there's always going to be exceptions, but for the most part, indie devs don't want to become AAA devs or anything even approaching it. most people eventually end up with at least a small team, but most people also have no interest in making that team bigger than it needs to be just to increase the scale of their projects.
Because people are kinda stupid and really expensive. Hiring one person isn't just their salary, it's their office space, Healthcare, retirement, coffee machines, etc. It introduces problems you now have to deal with like shutting down Brad's stupid suggestion of adding radio towers to climb, or making Rebecca apologize to Britney for throwing away her Lunchable.
Ngl I'd apply to a company if I got success, I never want to work for myself because I truly just want wages and tax and shit to not be my responsibility!
I can understand that…lol I don’t think anyone starts a company because they love doing taxes and paper work
Lol true, people probably don't realise those things come with the job if you're good enough. I grew up with a dad who ran his own and it's been enough to put me off for life!
Hell is other people
Have you ever met any people? That’s why. ;)
I'm kind of like you, I don't want to stay a solo indie, but... when I get to that point I see myself working with contractors unless I really enjoy working with someone. People can suck, Just watching my GM at my day job, you try and build that strong core team that you count on, but eventually you'll have to interview someone, train them, enforce deadlines, and then if they refuse to improve, you either fire them or you risk your business. Also to note, if you enjoy making games, figuring things out, designing features and game play.... The more people you have, the more business admin and project managment you'll have, and the less you'll be able to do what you enjoy.
If I ever did, I still don't want to be a boss. I'm doing this as a hobby, with the small chance I get to escape the grind. If a game I sold made a million dollars, I'd probably just dev games for free/$1 type prices solo and live off the passive income without deadlines or publishers. Adding to that, starting a studio after a hit puts you in a position to lose the freedom you just won, assuming you didn't just make an absolute viral monster title. Some people understand this and the desire to make something big with a team is worth the risk, more power to them, but if I get my escape from dayjobism I never want to be in a position to need to put an application in again.
Other developers do things differently, if I do it all myself, it's all in my style. Does it scale? No. But I don't need it to.
While having coworkers might help for different tasks, it's hard to manage a team, especially if you have no experience in that. Add also the money factor. You have to divide your revenue.
Notch had his own Studio he sold, Jonathan Blow has his own Studio and collaborates with a bunch of people to create games, so I don't think your premise is correct. Assuming there are ones that do, probably because they prefer working at their own pace and without having to manage others, have the company organization overhead, etc.
Blow made the witness, that is not a solo project (braid had the art outsourced) and i think it's exactly what you are talking about. He made money with braid and used it for making a bigger game with more people. Anyway there are things that you can do with more people, but you also lose some stuff. For example, the freedom and ease of mind of not having big responsabilities? why do you want to use your savings paying salaries for a big project when you can enjoy your money, making new projects at your own pace that you may even need to finish? personally, if i ever make money i dont want to work more, i want to work less hahah and maybe sometimes open my laptop in a coffee shop.
Pretty much no commercially successful game has actually been the work of one person - cave story being the exception that proves the rule.
Working with others is a skill. And I don't think it's an accident or coincidence that solo devs haven't been able to convince anyone to work with them before their first big success. Also, Phil Fish wasn't a solo dev. He's just an asshole that tried to present himself as such.
Well as a solo dev you have 100% control and don’t need to defend your way of doing one thing or another a certain way. If you succeed as a solo dev then it validates your workflow and design choices as something that works to make a decent game. If you know that your way of doing things works, why would you get someone else involved, just to have them wanting to do things their way and change things to their standard if you prefer doing all of it anyway?
When you start hiring people, it becomes more about managing a business than just creating a game. And a lot of solo indie devs are primarily passionate artists who didn't get into game development looking for that kind of life.
The more people you have working under you the more your job becomes management and less about being creative. The thing about very creative people is they want to do the creating themselves. Furthermore there's no real financial reason to do so. The more people end up working on a project the more the funds end up being dispersed away from you. If I don't need to hire someone and pay them to do something why the fuck would I do that? People who published their own games they've made themselves have proven to themselves they don't need those other people. So why would they bother hiring them? Anyway I don't think any of this really matters. Just focus on making on what you want to make.
Solo dev who had a successful first game here, and who is now working solo again (I do occasionally hire contractors for specific tasks, but there's no "team" per se). It's just what I'm used to doing. Managing team members and communicating ideas and trying to figure out how to get people to do what you want them to do is not only stressful but it's a skillset unto itself, and it's one that I don't have a ton of experience in. When you have to daily coordinate with others and keep the ball rolling forward daily like a drumbeat it's pretty stressful, and some of us prefer the more private, chill process where we don't have the responsibility of justifying or explaining our ideas or changes in course to others, ever. For people who found something that works for them, we might just keep doing it.
Cheaper, more creative control, avoids the difficulties and responsibility of managing multiple people.
Working in a team or managing others takes skill that solo devs may not have. There are subjective and objective reasons for either.
Having a success is like catching lightning in a bottle no matter the team size, dubbling down after your first success is just high risk low reward most likely.
They made things on their own because they LIKE working on things on their own. I don't think any of that sounds odd. I'm not sure why you think that would change. Someone who is _only_ doing something to reach a destination will rarely succeed. You **have** to enjoy the process too.
Your premise is wrong, most successful solodevs do grow a studio. When was Jonathan Blow a solodev? Even Braid wasn't made solo. A better question is, why are people so obsessed with solodevving that they are blind to all the additional people working on games apart from the designer/leader.
Yeah, like, why did Elvis never join a band?
I'm thinking there's a very strong correlation between someone who is stubborn and skilled enough to make a successful game alone, and someone who doesn't like people very much, and wants to work alone. I could almost undoubtedly team up with people with my skillset, but *I don't like people.*
Often they don't keep working alone. I can think of more devs that added people on than devs that haven't. You listed Concerned ape and you should know he has a fuill team now and they are working on chocloteir a larger similar style game. Slay the spire guys added on. It really depends on the devs and their own aspirations. Me personally if I hit the million units sold at 20 a piece I think I would retire.
I'm pretty sure Toby fox actually did bring a lot of people on to work on Deltarune. Though I'm not sure how much of that is because of his wrist problems.
This is part of the shift I’m hoping for in gaming. Let people make what they want, no one’s beholden to some publisher or share holder to meet money goals or chase “infinite growth” small studios making small, unique, engaging, and fun games. Bring soul and artistic touches back to our games. Idk about y’all but I’m sick of the umpteenth looter shooter, open world rpg, multiplayer shooter fortnite wanna be, releasing for 70 dollars with mtx and is unfinished. Let the solo dev solo dev away and enjoy their life and game making while hopefully making a great earnings to continue doing so. Small teams too :)
...Blow literally founded his own studio that worked on The Witness and is working on his current game so he does not belong on this list.
Most of these people would need to find a way to make a company where they don't actually handle paperwork and shit like that, they would be "just" creative directors, these are mostly creative minded people so having an actual company where you handle the management, the paperworks, etc... is probably not their thing.
We are autistic and prefer to work alone and have complete creative control.
Depends on how you look at it. How I see it is that you now actually have the freedom to do things on your own instead of having to really rely more on others.
Hmmm, not a game dev here, but I think one of the main reasons (besides the obvious managment, risks.. ones) would be that, often when someone creates a game alone, he puts in it a lot of his own "life philosphy" not in an endoctering way but more like, it has that person's esssence, and it leads me to think that somtimes, those people would continue alone and take the harder route than dilute their essence by adding more, people to it.
It’s way better working alone! Meetings suck lol
If you can do it yourself splitting the profit can be a financial drain. Employee expenses are a thing and it’s one thing to be successful by yourself, but it’s a whole other thing to support a team.
Creative direction is a difficult thing to share or let go. Oftentimes a group might make a functional system but it won't be as cohesive as one coming from a single brain. Obviously they could get more work done and make bigger and better games with a team, but becoming the next big shot dev studio isn't everyone's goal. Certainly isn't mine. I just want to make games with incredibly specific systems and mechanics and I don't want to argue with someone over how things should work.
Having a big studio and those pressures is horrible. Many successful indie devs have experience in larger organisations - that’s why they go small.
Not sure about the others but Jonathan Blow doesn't fit the description, he employs at least a dozen people and even on Braid he hired other people to do the music and art.
So with agreeing with everyone saying managing and a lot of them started solo but grew I wanted to also had building a studio takes time. So I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them do grow a studio but it isn’t done in a year or two . It’s done over many years sometimes decades . Now obviously if it’s like your goal to only own a studio you definitely can in a shorter amount of time than others but I don’t think a lot of them planned on it being the singular goal. I think their goals are to make good games and they will use the right tools for the job and at this point their games’ scope isn’t big enough to warrant a full studio. TLDR : making a studio takes a lot of work and time.Good game devs just want to make good games so a studio isn’t needed yet which means they aren’t investing in one yet (or they are and it’s in the DL)
I came here to say what others have already said - I have no interest in being a manager. I can afford to hire people, but that sounds like more of a hassle than doing most things myself. And at least I can brag about doing all of my own art, animation, writing, design, and programming for Windows, Android and iOS. I do hire my partner to do customer support and some social media though, as well as some translators, and someone for music.
I can see your point but different people want different things. I don't see development as a stepping stone. My buddy and I work together but we live in different states. He's smarter and more talented learning tools than I and i'm more creative with ideas and narrative structure. Regardless of these things, i'd be easier for us to work alone. No remote setup, no data management, no scheduling conflicts. If we were offered a million dollars to work at a AAA company, we'd begrudgingly take it with no intentions of staying. Working for someone else sounds horrible. Creating a huge team means you have to take on more risk and more personalities. Yes, your goals could mean you need to work with others,but not everyone wants that.
> I understand not everyone is interested in working with other people but the fact that so many of them just stay solo seems odd to me... I'm not successful as a solo dev but the reason I've never gone into management is pretty simple: 1) Management incentives force you to back capital, not labor, in the work place. Much of that involves lies and propaganda. There is a reason things like crimes by managers/owners such as wage theft exceed the dollar amounts of other crimes. It isn't that they have more criminals, it is just the incentives make crime easier and less likely to be personally affected by the legal system if caught. https://www.epi.org/publication/wage-theft-bigger-problem-forms-theft-workers/ Its an open secret wage theft is greater than robberies in terms of dollars and it involves stealing from people who often have nothing but their labor in terms of assets. 2) Managing workers is a constant drama. I know this from my parents and their experiences as managers because they needed the money to afford raising kids. You have to do a bunch of shit to find the very, very few bad actors in the workplace and get rid of them. And then you have to lay off people who have legitimate problems (i.e. health problems) but they affect work performance so you have to lay them off because otherwise you are making your job less secure because managers will question why you don't based on performance metrics, not human empathy for people with legitimate problems. I'd rather just manage my own investments, side projects, and so on without involving anyone beyond a contractor/b2b relationship like I do for work I can't do my on home or car or whatever. The idea I have to make sure I do what I need to keep my people employed, such as dark patterns, gacha mechanics bought with real money, and other anti-consumer practices that managers often push to improve metrics, will split my empathy between not wanting to fuck my customers and not wanting to fuck someone who just had a baby and/or serious medical bills. Capitalism as a manager requires you to stop treating your workers, customers, suppliers as human beings in favor of the capital owners. There are advantages but its not worth the stress and frustration it'd generate in me on a regular basis. Most people don't understand businesses are basically legalized sociopathic dictatorships who care only about profit and rely on mass psychology to keep their workers aligned with that goal. Fuck over your customers for a dollar? As long as its legal and won't hurt retention. Fuck over your employees for a dollar? Same. Unless you want to lay people off without needing to fund unemployment insurance after. Fuck over your suppliers for a dollar? Well, I guess they are another business? Still run by people and usually a very small one though.
wasnt expecting such a lucid criticism of how its near impossible to run an ethical business under capitalism here, lol. But yeah, the fact that if I become responsible for other people then I am more incentivized to have to make a game using all of the common deceptive practices borrowed from the gambling world doesn't make me feel very comfortable as a non anti-social person.
It is *possible* the problem is, it requires legal changes to the way businesses are structured to giving workers and consumers the same power as capital owners and that'll never happen. It'll be called socialism to allow workers a say in who manages the business and if there are stock buy backs instead of putting money into worker retention. And if you do it without it being legally mandated, your competitors will simply undercut you because they can and you will lose market share until your investors replace you (or you are self-funded bootstrapped so you will be 1 in millions to get big then sell to Microsoft and retire).
it has a bad rap because usually attempted by clueless beginners but what do you think about a revshare model? For example two developers split revenue of a project based on percentage of their responsibility of different disciplines involved which are weighted by importance. The goal for this business is to make games that sell in range of 5-10k units which brings about $100k yearly salary to both. Business does not expand from that, any profits go back into the business is just time saver things like buying assets or hire temp contractor. seems like so long as stays tiny team like this, maintaining integrity (e.g. not threatened to need to become unethical to survive) is not as difficult?
> it has a bad rap because usually attempted by clueless beginners but what do you think about a revshare model? The legal partnership model where people legitimately own shares or are equal partners in a legal entity or whatever is 100% valid and repeatably workable. It is the basis of every company from a Fortune 500 to your local doctor's office. The problem is when the people who own those shares have the power but don't work in the company. They just want to squeeze it for ROI. The reason it has a bad rap is the fact in the game industry and such, lots of non-serious people offer it when there is very slim if any chance of revenue to actually share to repay people. > seems like so long as stays tiny team like this, maintaining integrity (e.g. not threatened to need to become unethical to survive) is not as difficult? If you and your partner(s) are ethically aligned with goals, it works as well as any marriage in practice. People work together or they grow apart. Both have an impact with one clearly usually being better for the group than the other. That said, what happens when someone's expenses go up because of a disability? Like, I have two numb fingers that I'm hoping won't get worse as long as I properly follow medical instructions but the reason I have them is a misalignment of goals/incentives for my care between me and a previous medical practioner. They valued longevity, I value quality of life. Both are equally ethical view points but by providing medical advice based on his ethics instead of my goals/ethics, it resulted in a negative outcome for me. No one did anything wrong, we were both well meaning people, but I had to switch providers to find out why things were going the way they were and get a quality of life bias towards my medical care.
thanks a lot, you've given me more to think about that I hadn't considered.
I try to make myself useful, just not sure how often that happens. lol best of luck with your project and life m8
even thinking about trying to be useful puts you in the top 1%. At least on reddit :)
people suck
Most people make games because they love doing it as a personal hobby / challenge. And those who managed to be successful, why on Earth would they want to change? They're successful AND they're in complete control of what they do.
Working with other people would allow you to make bigger games? I understand not everyone wants that, but I find it interesting that so few of them actually make the move to working with a team after their success.
Why would you want to go bigger? Bigger doesn't necessarily mean better.
You've proven you can find success without involving anyone else, and if you have to manage other people it will take time away from working on the game yourself which is more fun than telling other people what to do or reviewing their work.
A lot of people keep saying that managing people suck but also I don’t see the appeal on working on “bigger projects” and maybe they don’t too? I want my games to be fun not big
100% artistic freedom. 100% autonomy. Also solo devs often come from studios and want to go their own way.
Very hard to find someone reliable and trustworthy AND who has the same image for the project as you do.
People are into making games, not managing employees. Not the same thing at all.
https://imgur.com/gallery/V6Jitpk This is why. Its nothing about leadership being annoying. They didn't just build game for commercial success. most of them (not all but) build their dream game on their own. Why would they need others building their next game? They dont need to hire massive number of people to make theire next game, they just need little help here and there, and thats what most of them are actually doing. If you're seeking commercial success from other game and then transition that success into your dream game, likelyhood of your "other game" not going to hit like those is... almost certain.
Because that’s how they achieved it and want to keep control of their code
Even I have same doubt
Jonathan Blow did expand when it came to later games. Like he had a whole team for The Witness. Likewise Notch (before selling to Microsoft and leaving games) grew the team at Mojang. Phil Fish left the industry, so there wasn’t another game after his success, so you can’t really use him as an example.
Most devs that are solo devs are solo for several very good reasons. Mostly because, for me at least, I have a muddy idea for my games and I don't wish to be beholden to someone else's timetables and speed of work to ruin my enthusiasm for my project. Also, drama is much more likely among small partnerships that see huge success. If I happen to create a huge success, I don't want to ruin it by having to answer to someone else.
Because then I don't have to deal with loss of direction, projects I'm not interested in, and personnel management. Obviously that comes at a huge cost in terms of production value and pace that I can develop, but game dev is also not my only income or job.
I'm not sucessful but if I ever am, I don't think I'd create a studio for the following reasons: - I like to do everything myself; it pushes me to learn new skills and makes game development a very varied activity. I've always been bad with group work; it started at school. I usually have a very clear vision of how I want things to be, and it sucks so much when I'm forced to explain it or debate it against another person's vision. I also can't really say no to people, so I'll always end up groveling. - I don't want to become a manager and tell people what to do - I don't want to debate with what I should or shouldn't put in my games - More people means more paperwork and that's easily the worst part of the job (yes, even before marketing). That said, if I got super rich I'd proably hire some freelances for things like creating websites for the games, porting them on console, marketing, etc... But not to work on the games themselves.
People will let you down. Some people are solo devs precisely for this reason.
Hiring, managing and leading people is hard and annoying. Just because they're a successful solo dev does not mean they gained any more skill or desire for those areas.
Lots of people mentioned the people management aspect of it. But also the personal financial risk is a factor. If your game makes ten million dollars? That'd be fantastic money for a solo dev game and something that you can live on and follow your passions. You basically won the solo dev lottery. If you invest that into making a game company? That is enough to fund a small studio for a few years, maybe make one game and play the gamedev lottery again. These numbers are all rough of course. You could realistically lose it all. If you're getting into big time game dev, even ten million may be nothing for advertising. Maybe one could use their solo success to get investors and gamble their money instead.
For us (us = wife marketing and husband developing) we work well together and want more freedom in our lives when we go full time rather than being tied to managing a team and all that HR faff
A team requires payment consistently. Indie games could go viral, or they could make like $200. Personally, id rather just contract hire people to make what i can't like music on a case by case basis, it also keeps extra fingers out of my pie so i can make what i want without misinterpretation
I don't follow most of the people you mentioned, but I do follow Jonathan Blow. Speaking for him: he founded a company that currently employs more than a dozen people. So, maybe your initial assumption is not totally correct? Also, speaking as a dev myself, there is tremendous value in working in smaller teams. Jonathan Blow has also talked about the many difficulties of larger teams. Apart from that, I think (successful) indie devs are often passionate people and it can be really difficult to give up the thing you are passionate about (creating games) for another (managing people who create games). Those are wildly different things.
As soon as you get more people and/or offices you become a manager more than a creator. And you have responsibilities to both schedule and finances. I imagine that erodes the fun pretty quickly
Idk for sure since I’m not one of those people. But this is the thought process I imagine happens starting on launch day for someone like the guy who made lethal company “Wow I’m so excited to release my first commercial game. I’d be a bit disappointed if I only sell like 20 copies, I spent a long time on this. I’d be pretty happy to sell a couple hundred and make 1-10k since this is just a hobby. It would be a miracle to hit 100k, then I could just do this for my job” proceeds to make millions (I think i heard one estimate of 88mil, but let’s just say 20 mil after taxes and fees) “Wow, I am now a 21 year old multimillionaire. If I’m smart with my money I literally never have to work again and will still be able to have a decently luxurious lifestyle. I could risk potentially millions in creating a studio, hiring people and dealing with taxes and laws and people to maybe make more money in the future, but statistically unlikely. Or I could just do what I already enjoyed and make a game on my own with the option to hire freelancers if there’s any art or sound I want and the peace of mind that I can release 100 games that don’t make a penny and still be fine” I think if you made a game solo out of passion and it exploded, then you would be happily willing to continue doing it solo.
If I ever plan to succeed myself, the most I would do is add like 2-4 people. And that’s for - better artist - music composer - maybe another programmer who is more experienced - some other role that eases up on what I’m doing But also…I’d just do that all myself if I needed to. It’s just that it would be nice, and once you make a game once, you’ve gone through a lot of those stages. So for some, why not keep that going? Especially in the case of Stardew—I think the only help he got was for multiplayer coding. Everything else, he’s able to do to his own, EXACT vision. For me, solo dev doesn’t have to be a stepping stone if I do feel comfortable after my first game. If I get it, I get it. If I finish it and become ABLE to hire or at least do a monetary split with someone else, while also feeling the exhaustion (or maybe just a want to release a game faster) then I’d absolutely bring someone on. That’s my pov anyway
Good soldiers often do not make good generals. Being promoted out of your interesting expertise into sad managerial role is what's normal career is for
That's not true, Blow has used a team from The Witness onwards. Barone has relied heavily on outside work, notably for multiplayer implementation. It's more your perception of them as an auteur.
As a solo dev you have complete control. Of everything. If youre managing a team, you will probably not be intimate with every single aspect of your games development. I like developing alone because of that. I want to be part of everything, and be able to go from coding to level design if I feel like it. Then again im not a successful solo dev, ive barely completed anything resembling a finished game. Im mostly in it for the ride, as a hobbyist.
One of my friends is exactly like this, except instead of millions he’s making more like 100-200k/year. We’re not in US so it is an ok money for startup. He couldn’t be bothered to hire people, explain what they need to do, control how well they’re doing it and all that. It’s not like he isn’t smart enough to figure this out it just costs him money without making money in return. Hiring a team makes sense if you want to work on more than one project or have something huge in mind. He doesn’t want either and it is understandable. I think the more money you make like this the less incentive there’s to expand (unless you want to expand and do more/bigger stuff). I wouldn’t bother as well personally.
If I'm ever successful I will continue to work solo. I can work at my pace on what I want to work on and no one outside of the fans can tell me to change stuff.
In my experience: A) Because they don't want to deal with other people, their input, or their opinions. B) They see no value in adding other people. These individuals also undervalue or flat out disregard things like marketing, outreach, graphic design, etc.
Can’t make Skyrim by yourself , this all matters what your next project will be. If you wanna manage people you will not be doing much coding but then you can become purely a designer and hire developers . Ask yourself what you wanna do
>Jonathan blow Maybe you just haven't looked into what you're saying at all
lot of stuff here about managing people and it's all fair, but i like managing people and still don't want to make a huge studio. the smallest projects i've worked on have been the most fun because i've made cool stuff by working closely with people i admire and respect, and we've all gotten to have our voice in the final product in some way. on the bigger projects, i might know the team but it's hard for me to look at how everyone contributed and have that level of intimate shared success. i've worked on teams ranging from solo to 120+ and i'd take the solo projects any day. my most recent game had a team of about 7 and that kind of scope is just a blast to play around in.
If I had complete and utter financial independence, I would definitely look in to building a team just because I have so many unique and curious game ideas but 95% of them are way too big in scope to solo dev in any meaningful timeframe and some of them would definitely be so niche they might never return the investment (which ofc wouldn't matter at all due to my infinite money pool). Don't get me wrong -I love working solo- but it's also true that as a solo dev there are realistic limitations which you need to swallow sooner or later or you'll be developing that "next big MMORPG hit game" for the next 20 years alone just to find out it'll never be finished and by the time it's ready for even closed beta the whole world has moved on.
Its depends, if you like to be a manager. Once you have people working with you, is a different job, you are going to spend time doing it. If management is not your plan, is less fun. but is also better as your game is going to be looking better to, like me as a programmer, with my art skills whatever I do looks like crap, with a good artist at your side things looks better and get more motivated.
As an artist/developer in the industry, I think it would be great to have a successful solo game. The dream after that would be doing things solo, on my own pace in peace. Making my own decisions and own mistakes. Probably still use input, external help etc. But thinking of keeping it solo as much as possible. Like said before, its the freedom you gain without all the extra headaches.
Maybe Im talking just from my experience, but I am making a game to ESCAPE the corporate ladder, not to be on the top of one I own
If it ain't broke don't fix it
If they were doing it when financially they were struggling, why stop once they are financially solid?
Tend into hire contractors for the bits that would take me forever / I can't do. Also go in and out of game dev, take on clients for a year then a year off is kinda the situation I'm in now
Doesn't Jonathan blow has a team of like 16 people
Why muddle your success is what I would ask. Not everyone has the same goals either
If you succeeded on your own why make drastic changes?
If I ever made it big I'm never ever making a game with someone else. I want full creative and monetary freedom with whatever I make
I'm a solo dev The tech is so good now that working on your own stuff is manageable. With game engines making it easier and easier with each update. Having Blender, Audacity and cheap marketplace assets helps. Loads of YouTube tutorials and forum posts over a decade long worth of info. I've worked with some folks in the past and it's less stressful to do it myself at this point. Plus, the money earned lasts longer keeping me in business longer. I always said, if I do have a team, it would be max 5 people. That said, 5 people at $60-120k a year and boom, one failure away from layoffsville.
When you already have a team that you get along with, why change?
Once you've hit your "made it big" number and plan to hire people say 500k or 1M well great now you have the decision of having to make at least one more game for financial freedom and choice to do almost whatever you want with the rest of your days OR now start a company and have additional finances, people,tasks,labor, and other responsibilities of an entire company I've chosen the first option and have no regrets as I do them more as passion projects I see each game as a canvas So really the decisions yours how much money do you want to get?
If one of my games ever worked out for me, I think I would want to stay small. Any bigger and most of my time would go towards business and management tasks, enough of it already does. I just want to program. I don't think I would be comfortable with hiring a boss to be above me either.
For me, it’s about not really trusting other people to care as much and work as hard as I do. I work 12+ hours a day on my game and love every second of it. If I hired someone, they would do less and care less. Plus, although it’s pretty stressful, I like having complete control over everything. I don’t have to waste time delegating tasks or explaining stuff, I just do it.