The Million Dollar Indie Steam Phenomenon

In this article, I would like to share my observations on the issue of each indie-developer that is of concern - “What is the secret of single-player million-plus games?”. As an object of observation, I chose a relatively fresh game - Undertale. This game is remarkable in that it violates the canons of the generally accepted gaming industry and causes a hell of a toothache among "professionals", showing such financial results.

NB All of the following is true for developers targeting the Steam "platform". For mobile, social and "portal" games, the approaches are somewhat different.

Chronicle

Few well-known composer Toby Fox announced his dream game in May 2013, presenting the demo version of Undertale to the public. As befits a good fairytale, he did not know how to program and draw, but he really wanted to create his own game. He drew graphics in Paint, collected the game in Game Maker.
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A month after the appearance of the demo version of the game, the project goes to Kickstar, where it collects $ 51,000 (planned to collect from $ 5000-45000). After a successful fundraising, speaking of plans, Toby Fox voiced that he would try to make the game in a year, but he did it in two (hello Phil Fish!).

September 15, 2015 release in steam, a little more than a month, sold almost 200 thousand copies of the game with a base price of ten (9.99) dollars. Even with regional prices, revenue has already exceeded one million. At the same time, looking at the sales schedule, there is no feeling of reaching the peak.

Undertale becomes the game of the month on many gaming portals.

About the quality of the project

After downloading the demo version of Undertale in the first game location, I ran into the wrong level display, I was able to understand how to get through it, just by watching the game play video (it turns out I had to go through the wall).

Optimization is poor. The game is not much different from the games of the era "386-x" (20 MHz) loads the CPU (2.9 GHz) by 50%. The recommended CPU frequency is 2 GHz + (DOOM 3 had smaller requests).

Weilard will probably be able to give an expert opinion on the graphics, but the artist in our studio, at a cursory review, noted a very “poor-quality” pixel art. The perception of graphics partly saves a lot of simple shapes, built from horizontal and vertical lines.

As an asset to the project can be attributed to music, not for nothing that the creator of the game composer.

Retreat number 1

I'm from the generation that caught the dawn of the gaming industry of the 80s and the “golden era” of the 90s. At that time, the games were closer to books than to cinema. Poor visualization led to the fact that the player had to finish building a virtual world in fantasy. Text quests, in general, were not much different from books. The secret of a good book, like the secret of a good game, was in the ability of authors to create a world / event that leaves an indelible imprint in their memory, and this is impossible without vivid “experiences”. For example, after almost 30 years, my memory for ZX Spectrum, such as Elite, Nether Earth, Sim Sity, Dictator, Zombi, Lode Runner, was well imprinted (the arcade to which I spent the most time).

In the rest

And how did it turn out that a poorly drawn game with very impressive system requirements and with errors also became a million?

The answer, as might be supposed, is obvious: all these factors are secondary. The main thing in the game is the degree of emotional immersion in the game world. The speech is not about the melodramatic component (touching moments), but about the “truth of characters”, as one very clever polisher used to say (a fragment from the movie: “I walk across Moscow” ).

Retreat number 2

Does any of the players remember the soldier Bitterman? But he is only one year older than Gordon Freeman. Bitterman is the protagonist of Quake II. After 18 years, I personally can’t say anything about the Quake II story, but I remember the first Half-Life “trolley” as if it were yesterday, and there’s no point in talking about the plot.

Half-Life, a kind of, marked the end of the era of shooters with a nominal plot: Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Heretic, Quake, Duke Nukem 3D, etc. It is worth noting that Valve's approach to creating a first-person shooter for single-player passing has become a reference. With the naked eye it can be seen that all subsequent successful games of this genre are Medal of Honor (2002+), Call of Duty (2003+), etc. used the same techniques as Valve: a lot of minor heroes, dialogues during the game, tasks to save other characters, etc. In short, the player is led to the idea that he is part of a large "living world", and not a lone corridor runner.

If we summarize all the reviews on Undertale, then they boil down to one thought that the complete passing of the game caused strong emotional experiences. In the memory of people who liked it, the imprint of these emotions will remain for many years, and in this case it is associated with the plot and characters of the characters, and not with graphics or mini-games. It is safe to say that Toriel (the name of "goat") will definitely take its place in the pantheon of immortal game characters.

Retreat number 3

Gray-haired players are nostalgic for Elite I (80s), not because of the “beautiful graphics”, music, etc., but for the feelings they experienced in those times, surfing the universe. Playing on these feelings, Elite: Dangerous collected £ 1.58 million on a kickstarter.

There are no effective teaching aids for how to write the perfect book or the perfect script. They are not for games. Otherwise, everyone could be the owner of the "golden ticket".

Speaking of games, I would probably single out a number of essential signs that may indicate that you most likely chose the wrong path.

1. If, talking about your game, you allocate in it: 2bit graphics, 100 thousand hours of work of the artist on the background, 1 million polygons per model, etc., then you clearly do not really understand the principle of the success of an indie game.

2. If the plot of your game can be understood only by referring to the annotations or by viewing the introductory video, you approached the plot formally.

3. Making the player experience an emotional immersion only at the expense of the original game mechanics or good music / graphics, without the plot - perhaps, but very difficult. The probability that you will succeed, tends to zero. Most likely, the interest in such a game will disappear very quickly, because the player is not interested in the passage of the entire game, there is no plot plot, etc. In other words, it is difficult to get a person to read the book to the end, if the emphasis is strictly on the "beauty of speech." A time when not very good games took place completely, because there are simply no other games (very few or not available) long gone.

Retreat number 4

Top-down shooter games have existed for as long as I can remember. They were always passing through memorable arcades with a conditional plot. All flash portals are crammed with games of this genre. The success of the Hotline Miami game (sold over 1.7 million copies) is not in the way of killing or pixel art (not always good), but in the plot that can “force” the player to complete the game. Music and graphics here are just an additional tool.

Total

Personally, I did not even like the demo version of Undertale, but, as they say, this is a matter of taste. I find it more interesting as an excellent object of study. In my opinion, Undertale is a game from the distant past, where the quality of games was not determined by the number of polygons per model.

Most likely, if this game were made by people who can program and draw, then it would be interesting to a wider audience with the resulting commercial success.