Fantastic Indie sales stats

A recent thread on Indie gamer called "The end of Indie" got turned around when people started posting sales stats, check out my summary here, it's important reading if you want to go pro:

http://greyaliengames.com/blog/some-fantastic-indie-sales-stats/

WOW, there great sales figures...

With my two games Ive released (1 sold at BFG, the other sold direct from my site), I've made a tidy sum of a 5 figure amount :-)

Not bad as I only do games programming as a hobby after work (J2EE/PL SQL developer ATM) in the evenings and weekends...

Of course the BFG portals sales out way my direct sales... but its a start :-)

5 uk figures too (6 in 'kronor'! :)

part-time 'indie' work (not just b3d stuff though) has paid for the deposit on a 6 bedroom / 2 bathroom apartment in sweden (half of which is sealed off with separate entrance and rented out :) and 3 holidays.

Hey thanks for sharing Grey, I'm trying to see if I can get my foot in the door and success stories such as these really help keep me motivated...

My goal is just to have a portal accept my game, and to prove myself capable of consumer-quality work as opposed to the myriads of small text based games I do.

Thanks!

therevills, that's great! (which currency)

Yeah same here.

D4NM4N: Good for you dude!

Sauer: You're welcome. Keep going! Determination is one of the requirements of success.

Yen... ;-)

Only kidding... US $

Put me down for a "Wow". This is very inspiring. I have about 18 months before I retire. Once I retire, I plan to supplement my pension by writing and selling my own 2d games. It is nice to know there is still a market for it.

There will be a market for quality games for a long time yet.

Interesting to see that the games i seem to like the most out of those sell the worst. :O)

I would be interested to know how the figures for Eschalon look like. I suspect, although this is a game i like, it's also selling well (hopefully).

Thanks Jake!

This has really encouraged me to push on with my own games :)

I can't give numbers, but Book 1 has been relatively successful. I say relatively because we are successful for a small studio with low overhead. If Book 1 had cost more to make, or if Basilisk Games had higher monthly expenses, we would not be here working on Book 2.

The problem with making RPGs is the length of time it takes to produce one. We are looking at an 18-24 month window between Book 1 and Book 2, so we have to plan that out from a financial aspect.

hey Tachyon I always wondered if you sold many units on linux

@Tachyon
How many people are working in your studio? You're located in the usa right? Well, unless you don't make Book2 a MMORPG you at least can count on one sold copy. As i wrote already beside of Gridwars 2 this is the best example for a proper usage of BlitzMax. I wish i could say the same for max3d at some point...*insert a dramatic whining scene here* ;O)

@Jeremy
I once asked Tachyon about how sales split up on the different platforms, it might help searching for it in the showcase section if i remember correctly.

Eschalon has had good exposure and is great so I'm glad to hear it's done well. 2nd sale is coming from me.

I agree "Indie games" are dead... those games being sold nowadays as Indies have lot's of funding (comparatively speaking with older ones, and to for ex. most of *professional* titles developed here in Brazil) - and their quality is so high, it's tough for a small team (less than 3 people, heh) to compete just with their spare time.

But for download games to be dead... whoever said it, is crazy. Common, just look at Steam. Wii have downloadable games, so does XBox 360 and PS3. More and more download of games is the future (maybe down the line they get replaced by Flash... maybe)

what is the difference between 'download software' and 'indie software'? one inherits the other, download software can be anything, major or minor commercial, free or OS unless i need a major terminology lecture :/

indie means independent. Anyone who works for themselves are independent, even if under a contract (although you wouldnt say that was an indie product :).

EA also work for themselves! ;) Therefore I think indie gaming is about having the freedom to make something that is either freeware or doesn't sell well.

On second thought, EA also have that freedom. I guess what is really indie then is to make use of that freedom.

Oh wait Wikipedia says "Independent video game development is the process of creating video games without the the financial support of a video game publisher."

Yeah exactly it just means making a game without working with EA or whatever. The question is how big does a company have to get before you stop calling them Indie?

Anyway this thread is not really a "what is Indie" debate as they are endless and somewhat pointless, it's a sales stats thread :-)

Wow, i saw that thread on indiegamer forums and i got scared to even look at it, because such pessimistic comments could affect me negatively, thank God the reality is different :D and thank you for posting that!.

Lol, haha i meant solo or as a small scale collaboration of financially independent 'solos' where you decide what you want to do and how to do it.

By contract i meant where a company may approach you and ask for a one off, pay per project where you stay in control of the (original) source, support, licensing etc. For example where another 'indie' or small company might pay me to make an inventory system or something where we both keep the code. I still class this as independent work because nobody owns your butt.

I just noticed this thread here :)
Here's my sales stats (only direct): $21.650,09

http://anawiki.com/sellmoregames/2009/01/08/so-i-made-how-many-in-2008/

Now I need to beat that in 2009.

cheers
Roman

Thanks for posting Roman. Good luck with 2009.

Any more sales stats?