You will lose money. That's it. There's no magic message here.
Source: an indie dev. I keep my passion for my project because it's something I truly want to do.
This isn't a problem unique to indie games. Every creative field has an overabundance of hopefuls, all chasing a tiny chance of turning it into a success. The problem, as Daniel Clowes observed back in 1991[1] is that everyone thinks that they'll be one of the lucky ones.
[1] https://artinfiction.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/asc-3.jpg
People who are super passionate about making indie games I'm going to do it regardless, so this is good advice.
Of course I agree that if they can do it because it's something they really want to create, and not worry about whether it makes money, then they'll be much better mentally (and financially!) prepared.
Likewise, if you are going to put your heart into something like this... do it because you want to...
if you win? great. but it'll be the exception to the rule.
I think such advice misunderstands the psychology of why people gamble on very long odds. The primary drive is emotional, not rational. The rational brain only has to be convinced that a theoretical possibility exists. After that, it's a matter of emotional appeal, and culture is very good at presenting seductive narratives based on rare occurrences.
Not 100% successfully, but of course it helps. Why don't you go around and ask some people why they don't play the lottery?
I think such advice misunderstands the psychology of why people gamble on very long odds.
It's why I don't gamble. It's why lots of people don't gamble. People aren't completely rational, but they're not completely irrational either.
Helping people put understand the true odds of what they're engaged in is a good thing.
What do you have against people knowing the facts?
The equivalent of lottery with video games would be spamming app markets with shitty games made in a week-end, hoping it catches up somehow. One day someone will make another Flappy Bird, but it will probably not be you.
You can gradually improve overall visibility of a regular software by working on SEO and sales. But if a game wasn't picked by the press or at least some YouTube celebrity – it's over.
This is even worse for mobile games where a few store curators decide your fate.
The people I've known (actors and writers, mostly) who deal with this most healthily get a lot from their craft other than either outward success or personal fulfillment. There's also a community around their craft that gives them companionship, love, visibility to day jobs etc. Does that exist in the same way or indy devs? It seems like the solitary aspects of coding would work against.
how so? how does the industry profit from people mis-assessing their own chances?
Then, when they are done, you get to skim big chunks of their revenue with app store, payment processing, etc. Don't forget to sell additional advertisements, to other game devs, on top of the places where you list their games!
All of the profit streams above scale with the number of devs and the total size of their market - not with the success of the average/median dev.
I’ve been a hobbyist and am increasingly exposed to professionals, people trying to make it and I feel sorry for them. Way more skilled at music than I will ever be at programming, yet struggling to keep a roof over their heads.
It's the same thing with other professions where people provide their own sense of mission and self-fulfillment: teachers, home health aides, VFX artists in hollywood... These are important, in-demand professions, yet they get paid poorly because their drive and passion is counted against their compensation.
> In our 1995 book, The Winner-Take-All Society, Philip Cook and I [=Herbert Frank] argued that top salaries have been growing sharply in virtually every labor market because of two factors – technological forces that greatly amplify small increments in performance and increased competition for the services of top performers.
That might combine with the "saliency" cognitive bias - it's easier to think of successful actors, writers, game authors, than of unsuccessful ones.
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2011/12/how_...
You might not be the next star musician, but even big artists need session players, there's teaching, arranging, etc
Artists and writers can find some work in commercial endeavours.
It might not be a big market but it exists.
And the fact is many people find making a game so intensely enjoyable that the net cost of making it is zero and they do it even when they're making no money or stand to lose money in expectation. Of course, there's huge variance in both directions, for every ten thousand indie game devs there's one Notch! And in reality I'm guessing being an indie game dev is at least slightly profitable in expectation. But the joy of doing it seems to drive their wages down to basically subsistence level.