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Developing and launching an indie game is not an easy road to walk. While it’s true that you have the freedom to build the game you want without any pressure from higher-ups and deadlines, the numerous struggles along the way can make it hard to cross the finish line.
Let’s explore the top 5 challenges that you can expect to face during your indie game development journey, including how we can help with the biggest one.
1. Limited budget and resources
Indie games are a labor of love, typically undertaken by a single person or a small team of gamers. And a few individuals can only contribute so much in terms of finances, talent, and time. This means indie game developers have to work with what they've got, which can be severely limiting.
Here's an example. Let's say developer A is working on a game. He has a full-time job, which means he can only spend a certain number of hours on his game. He also needs to hire artists, sound engineers, and other talents. The money to hire them? Comes out of his own paycheck, which means he probably can't afford to hire the best talents.
All of this translates to a larger time frame for the development process and an end product that might not meet the high quality standards that gamers have come to expect.
2. Keeping the scope limited
Not having a boss telling you exactly how to make the game can also be a disadvantage. Because when you're free to do what you like, it's easy to let your ideas run wild. There's nothing stopping you from making the game bigger and bigger than you first intended. This can quickly lead to you becoming overwhelmed.
The solution is to set strict boundaries for yourself regarding the scope of the game and focus your efforts on finishing the game you set out to develop instead of adding new ideas and elements into the mix.
3. Facing burnout
As an indie game developer, you’ll wear many hats–even more so if you don’t have the resources to outsource certain aspects of the development process. This means you’ll be coding, doing the voice-overs, animating, fixing bugs, and conducting rigorous tests. All of this on top of a full-time job, which can get emotionally taxing pretty quickly.
To deal with this, it’s necessary to take breaks by stepping away from your project every once in a while. And when it feels like there’s no finish line in sight, remind yourself of why you started and keep going.
4. Standing out in the market
One of the main challenges with creating an indie game is that the market is incredibly saturated, which makes it hard to carve out a space for yourself. Think about it. There are thousands of indie games being released on Steam every year. So, for newbie indie game developers, standing out from the crowd and gaining recognition can pose quite a challenge.
One way of overcoming this by thinking of your unique value proposition. What is your game’s strongest selling point? What experience does it provide that players can’t get anywhere else? This is how you’ll be able to distinguish yourself from others.
5. Marketing and revenue generation
One of the biggest reasons that many indie games fail is because they don’t market themselves properly. This leads to lower visibility of your game, which means a handful of players at most and no significant revenue generation.
Even if making money isn’t your goal, you need to market your game so that people know it exists. This includes polishing your game with a stellar logo and title, optimizing your Steam page so that the algorithm loves you, creating a following on social media, and leveraging influencer marketing to create some buzz around your game.
But again, this is yet another area where budget and time constraints as well as lack of marketing knowledge come into play. So, what’s the solution? Working with an indie game marketing agency like Campaign Cooperative (hi, that’s us 👋) to get your game the love it deserves. Not only do we exclusively work with indie game developers like you, we are also affordable.
Ready to make some noise about your indie game? Let’s talk! [Contact us now]