[Hajo]

In case of Jeff Vogel/Spiderweb games I'm positive that he earns enough to live from it and run the company (I think there are two more people involved in Spiderweb games currently, so it pays enough for three).

The others I don't know. RampantCoyote might be able to answer that better and in more detail :)

I think at this point we must distinguish hobby projects and indie developers. Indie developers are like professionals, but, well, independant. Their goal is a business, though.

Hobbyist do their projects mostly for fun, or for educational purposes.

While there is much overlapping and a blurry middle area, I think we should at least have the ideas in mind when we talk about those two groups.

[Mattias Gustavsson]

It's also worth keeping in mind that how much money a product generates depends as much on how things like marketing, sales, support etc is done as it does on the product itself, and indies who are making a living off of their games usually make a lot of effort in those areas.
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www.mattiasgustavsson.com - My blog
www.rivtind.com - My Fantasy world and isometric RPG engine
www.pixieuniversity.com - Software 2D Game Engine

[Scrim]

[RedSlash]

I'm just interested to know. It's not that I've changed my position and have decided to go commercial. Although, it would be nice to make a living selling these games, I just want to seee if these options are viable in the future. Since I am a hobby developer, in the end it's no money for me :)

[RampantCoyote]

Well, Amanda (author of Aveyond) started out releasing her games freeware. With Aveyond, she decided to go commercial. And earlier this year (I think), she was able to go full-time as an indie.

This had a brilliant side-effect that she might not have planned initially. She built a community of fans with her free stuff. While I don't doubt several may have left in a huff when they found out she wasn't going to make her next RPG a freebie as well, I think it helped her a lot in the long run. People come for the free game, and that serves as a "demo" and introduction to encourage them to stay for the premium games.

The other thing you run into as a hobbyist is that if you do a commercial game, there is a LOT more work to do. The hobbyist side of things is littered with incomplete games, horrible installations, poor documentation, arcane downloading sites and instructions, and unlicensed content used without permission. That can get you in some trouble (especially unlicensed content) as a hobbyist, but it won't fly at all for a commercial game.

Also, when I first started out as an indie, I was warned that making a game was the easy part. I laughed. I don't laugh now. Now, my games tend to be a bit more on the complex side, so I wouldn't call them the "easy" part... but the truth of the matter is that the demands of running a business can easily consume half your time. And it can be a bit more expensive as well. And it puts different demands on how you create your game.

So it's not as easy as saying, "Gee, I think I'll charge money for my game, now." There's definitely a jump in not only quality but requirements if you go commercial. Or at least, if you want to be successful at it.

But I cling to the delusion that there IS a market out there for quality 2D "old-school" RPGs.
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Tales of the Rampant Coyote - Old-School Game Developer talks Indie Games, RPGs, and the Games Biz

[RedSlash]

Very informative. Nice to know about all the challenges for making games for a living.

For me, I guess I just want people to enjoy my game.. I personally do not want to end up suddenly deciding to go commercial and disappointing people. I hope to atleast stand by that thought for as long as I can. I want to give out stuff for free, but I know that I can't if I intend to work full time on my project, and if I do, I have to add on all the stress and extra hours of work of making my game commercial quality, which may not even sell at all.

[RampantCoyote]

What I'm saying is that I don't have enough first-hand experience. While I sell a few games at my site, I'm still basing a lot on anecdotal evidence (both good and bad), and faith.

So it's not blind faith, but its faith.
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Tales of the Rampant Coyote - Old-School Game Developer talks Indie Games, RPGs, and the Games Biz

[BadMrBox]

Maybe you should consider at getting a recompiled version of Aveyond at http://www.rampantgames.com/aveyond as my antivirus program found a trojan when I tried to install the demo.
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[RampantCoyote]

What AV program are you using? That sounds like a false positive, possibly caused by the installer. We've been using that executable for quite some time...

Nevetheless, I'll double-check it tonight just to make sure the binary is secure. (I'm using Symantec A/V at home).
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Tales of the Rampant Coyote - Old-School Game Developer talks Indie Games, RPGs, and the Games Biz

[BadMrBox]

I'm using AVG.

[RedSlash]

I can confirm this too. But recently I've been getting alot of false positives with AVG.

[RampantCoyote]

Well, the good news is that I did a binary diff on the downloaded file and my "original," straight from the author (which I've had and used for a while now). No differences. It's clean.

The bad news is AVG is apparently coming up with a false positive, which might explain why the game isn't selling like it used to... This actually happens a lot with self-extracting executables. It's very annoying.
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Tales of the Rampant Coyote - Old-School Game Developer talks Indie Games, RPGs, and the Games Biz

[BadMrBox]

It's good to know that the game is clean :) but it would be fun to know what makes AVG so triggerhappy in this case. I have at least installed ~10 games with self-extract since I started to use AVG and this is the first time it finds something. My experience with making self extracting games are quite limited (read: zero, nil).
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[cowgod]

The game I'm currently selling had the same problem with AVG, though it stopped happening as mysteriously as it started.

I had actually emailed them about it, but never received a reply.

[RampantCoyote]

I may just email them with the problem, and see if it goes away with a future patch.

I wonder if that's part of the reason sales have slowed down so much lately...
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Tales of the Rampant Coyote - Old-School Game Developer talks Indie Games, RPGs, and the Games Biz