Somehow, the Youtube algorithm popped this video into my feed. It is about the making of Stardew Valley. Let’s take a look:
That is one hell of a wife. She even watches Star Trek!
This guy seems so similar to me, it is uncanny. Examples:
-Made his game not because of vanity or ‘riches’, but because he found the modern incarnation to be unsatisfying.
-Embraced pixel art.
-Relaxed by playing old Final Fantasy games and 4x games like Civilization. Sometimes took ‘days off’ to do this.
-Workaholic.
-Feels like a loser because when someone asks, “What hobbies or what else do you do?” and you reply, “I am making a video game,” you DO feel like the ultimate loser. I know this because I experience this.
-Re-doing old work again and again as skills improved.
-Constantly thinking your work is shit and not showing it to people.
-Perfectionist. Got to do a part over again. And again. And again.
-Feeling you’re wasting your life on this shitty video game you’ve made.
-Skilled in both STEM side and artistic side. (This personality is more rare than people think…)
One of the major reasons for Stardew’s success is because of the wife but not her financial contributions. Their date nights were literally playing SNES Harvest Moon. This is how they bonded. What makes this indie project unusual is that it was a genre that had massive female interest in it (literally doubling the potential market).
Think about it. Most indie developers are ECCENTRIC and WEIRD LONERS. What games do they make? Rogue type games. Metroidvania type games. How many girls play those games? They don’t. The games girls want to play are rarely made by indie game developers.
One thing I like to talk about here is the Generation Zero Game Developers. These are the game developers that made the very first games. Shigeru Miyamoto would be one of them. Being a ‘game developer’ not only had no status, it had ANTI-STATUS. You were considered a major LOSER. Also, there was NO MONEY in it. Even if your game succeeded, there wasn’t that much money. He had to endure poverty and psychological abyss.
This is why I get so angry at modern ‘game developers’. They cry about ‘crunch time’ and working beyond 8 hours a day. Then they cry that they don’t make same amount of money as the finance and tech guys do. And then they cry that the market actually has a voice and will speak out about your game. The market will say, “Why are you wasting our time?” if you did something like leave in terrible bugs and all.
The Generation Zero game developers all wanted the same thing: to have their work be enjoyed by someone and to make enough money to not have to get a real job. They made games because they really, really loved doing it which is why they pushed through the poverty, the lack of status, and the hardships.
I have to laugh at Stardew Valley developer’s high sales hope for the game: 10,000-20,000 units at $15. Let’s do the math on this, reader using 20,000 as the max.
20,000 units sold at $15 equals $300,000 in revenue. Of that revenue…
Steam gets 30% of it. So Steam takes $90,000 and leaves $210,000 left.
Of the $300,000, the publisher would have taken 10%. The publisher would have taken $30,000.
After the publisher and Steam take their bites, the game developer would be left with $180,000. THIS DOES NOT INCLUDE TAXES.
But let us say the game developer was able to keep the $180,000 (haha). Over four years, that translates to $45,000 a year.
$45,000 is not that great of a wage. I am sure you can’t live on that amount today unless you live in poverty mode.
So even with the game developer’s highest expectations of 20,000 sold units, he would not have been making bank. This is the reality of game development.
The reason why Stardew Valley succeeded is because of three main factors:
-How ridiculously crafted the game was.
-It was a Blue Ocean. There was no competition in the ‘farming game’ space as even Harvest Moon franchise had lost its way. (of course, now it is red ocean as tons of competitors have appeared for the farming space)
-Expanded Market with women and all general ages. Stardew Valley is a game for everyone. But making a game that women also want to play DOUBLES your market potential. Pac-Man got big because it was designed to be appealing to women as well as men.
The reason why his Android game didn’t perform as well appears to be how red ocean that market was.
What I LOVE about the story of Stardew Valley’s success is that the developer stuck with his instincts as to why he loved the 16-bit style Harvest Moon game and created an alternative timeline of how a successor to Harvest Moon should be. This is what I am doing. It gives me hope that my instincts are right and that I am not completely wasting my life!
Seriously, I would be thrilled if my own game sold 20,000 copies.
Malstrom's Articles News 