The likes of King, Supercell and GungHo Online may be dominating the headlines primarily because of the amount of money all three parties are amassing, but according to Mike Bithell the man behind the award-winning Thomas Was Alone it's okay not to care about getting rich.
"It's okay not to place wealth as your primary objective," said Bithell during his talk at the Develop conference in Brighton.
"I hear far too many people talking about monetisation talking about how we get as much money as possible from as many people as we can. I hear the word 'whale' a lot, and I hate that word. Whale is a gambling term, and we shouldn't be using it."
Money matters?
That said, Bithell dismissed the notion that it's impossible for indies to survive unless they score a massive hit.
"The industry has diversified, there are more and more people playing games these days, but that doesn't mean they all want casual games," add Bithell.
"An indie can make a really esoteric game that will find an audience the net is so wide now, you can make something niche that makes money. Whatever kind of game you want to make, there are probably 30,000 to 40,000 people who want to play it. We can live on that."
Bithell added that a one, two or three person teams can survive if they're getting the word out about their game. They don't have to reach the magic million sales mark to get by.
Indeed, Bithell revealed that Thomas Was Alone has "just hit 500,000 downloads."
"We're not a hit driven medium anymore those outside of the indie scene like to tell us that's not the case, but this is working. What we're doing is working," he added.
"If you make a good game and it looks good and that's more important than it should be and you tell people about it, which some of us aren't very good at, then it's working."
Impact
So, even if your audience is niche, how do you reach this select group of potential customers? According to Bithell, the power relationship between developers and the press has changed.
Developers working with each other to push games they like can now make a bigger impression on gamers than the press.
Thomas Was Alone
"We now have 'celebrities' like notch [Mojang's Markus Persson] and they can tweet about something, and that can have a big impact a bigger impact than having a front page spread on an industry magazines," commented Bithell.
"And that's really cool that's really important. The broadcasters have changed. Also, do not underestimate YouTubers and Twitch players they are massive. They've sold more copies fo Thomas Was Alone than all other websites combined."
You can read our Thomas Was Alone making of feature here.
