Re: [FSFLA] LibreJam - FSF* should host a Libre Game development tournament!

[Dennis Payne]

On Wed, 2022-01-05 at 16:10 +0100, Ismael Luceno wrote:
> Making it attractive would mean the prizes and frequency of the
> contests
> need to yield an average much higher than what would be possible by
> selling
> the game, which sounds unrealistic to me.
> 
> A single top game can easily gross tens of millions, I don't think
> you can
> compete with the privative models this way; and even the average
> good-ish
> games makes 20k-25k USD on their first year.
> 
> Making it work would require a different approach.

I think you are misinformed. According to a 2020 study, over 50% of
indie games on Steam make less than $4000.

https://vginsights.com/insights/article/infographic-indie-game-revenues-on-steam

You could argue whether those were "average good-ish" but that is a lot
of games. Steam requires a $100 fee just to be listed.

$2000 prize pool for weekend or even a week of work isn't bad. To sell
a game you need to do a lot more work. Take Celeste for example. It was
made for on pico-8 for a game jam. It was a "difficult platformer with
30 levels". The commercial game had "over 200 rooms spread between
eight chapters." That was a lot of work to make it a commercial
success.

A game jam game might lead to a bigger commercial game but the game jam
itself will not be a huge seller. Game jams require you to be able to
play the games of others to give ratings and comments. You are going to
get that if you have to buy them. On itch.io I believe the only thing
you can do is make it "pay what want".

-- 
Dennis Payne
dulsi@identicalsoftware.com
https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@dulsi