Indie Post-Mortem Shows Developer Problems, Pitfalls

Thanks to Game Matters for its weblog post pointing to ex-id programmer Brian Hook's post-mortem on his indie developer, Pyrogon, discussing "a good time to sit back and reflect on what went right and what went wrong." With Pyrogon, particularly known for its Flash-based Web games like Candy Cruncher, "ceasing further development of new titles", some of the trials and tribulations of the independent developer are laid out, with headings including: "Publishers Never Say No, They Just Stop Answering E-Mails", "A Good Demo Is Not Enough -- It Must Be Jaw Dropping", and "Unless You Are Chocolate Covered God, Any Deals Offered Will Suck."

What was the sociology and psychology?

[Futurepower(R)]

It's obvious that Brian Hook is very intelligent, good at analysis, and a good writer. However, it seems he has made a common mistake. It appears to me he didn't give enough attention to the sociology of what he was doing.

He said, "Our (up until now) successful business plan went from looking perfect -- I mean perfect, with near flawless execution on our part, clear skies ahead, and nothing but open road as far as we could see -- to looking disastrous in the span of about six months total. During that time I also made the decision to relocate to Atlanta, Georgia from San Diego."

It's very common, I've found, that people mention the really big issue quickly, and then continue talking about things of less importance. This looks to me like one of those times. I find it surprising that he would move to another state while in the middle of trying to establish his company. Why? What were the real sociological and psychological factors that pushed him to move then, when he could have waited?

Was his wife jealous? Did she fear she would have less control over him if he became successful? I'm guessing something powerful was at work, and that had much more influence than was discussed.

Certainly his move would have caused his business partner, Rosie, to feel less confident in his commitment. He, arbitrarily, as far as we are told, chose to absent himself from the personal interaction of being physically present.

Now he alone owns the business. Maybe that is something he wanted.

So they produced puzzles..

[gl4ss]

that was easily made by almost anyone onto a market that was getting full, with a crew that was focused for something much bigger.. really titles like candy crusher don't really take that many fellas to produce(heck, I'm pretty sure I could clone it on series60, native or j2me, in just a week of 8 hour workdays. heck, I'm not that sure that i'm not going to do it since more or less it's already a clone of a gameboy game and the push for this year at school is already almost gone).

the final points are good, but they're good for any business(the first 3 at least - DON'T RUN OUT OF OPERATING MONEY IF YOU HAVE EXPENSES), at least some dotcoms could have read those points and not spent the money that would have kept the company running for YEARS in just a few months in something stupid(like new cars, outrageous salaries and shit like that).

Re:The View From 20,000mm

[Scorchio]

Thomas Warfield, the "another developer" mentioned above, notes the distribution of the games through third party portals and the reliance on this as a failure point. He goes on in another post to mention online shareware/software distributors such as Digital River [digitalriver.com], eSellerate [esellerate.net] and SWREG [swreg.org]. I'd be interested in hearing anyone's experiences of these services, especially involved with generating income from smaller games (ie. 1 or 2 person projects). Are there hidden costs that impose a break-even sales limit, and so on?

Re:So they produced puzzles..

[darkwing_bmf]

some dotcoms could have read those points and not spent the money that would have kept the company running for YEARS in just a few months in something stupid(like new cars, outrageous salaries and shit like that).

I think you misunderstand the intent of some of the dot coms. The founders started them not to make money for investors but rather to make money from investors. The new cars, outrageous salaries, etc... made perfect sense for these guys.