It is now more or less impossible to put a precise figure on the number of video games released each year. According to data published by the digital store Steam, almost 19,000 titles were released in 2024 – and that’s just on one platform. Hundreds more arrived on consoles and smartphones. In some ways this is the positive sign of a vibrant industry, but how on earth does a new project get noticed? When Triple A titles with multimillion dollar marketing budgets are finding it hard to gain attention (disappointing sales have been reported for Dragon Age: The Veilguard, the Final Fantasy VII remakes and EA Sports FC), what chance is there for a small team to break out?
And yet it does happen. Last year’s surprise hit Balatro has shifted more than 5m copies. Complex medieval strategy title Manor Lords sold 1m copies during its launch weekend. But what awaits a small developer after they achieve success? And what does success even mean in a continuously evolving industry?
James Carbutt and Will Todd of Coal Supper are still trying to make sense of it. Their acerbic satire Thank Goodness You’re Here!, in which players slap their way through bizarre quotidian scenarios in the fictional humble northern town of Barnsworth, is now an award-winning game. “It’s just not registered as a success in my head at all,” says Carbutt. “The numbers are going up on screen, and there have been YouTube playthroughs and some erotic fan art. Beyond that, it won’t register.”
After spending three years working on the project, the pair now find themselves in the confusing glare of the spotlight, fielding questions about what’s next. “It’s horrible,” Carbutt jokes. “But I don’t think we feel any sort of second-album syndrome. The space it gives you to be a bit introspective about what you want to do next is the interesting quirk of a successful indie game.”
Veteran indie developer Gabe Cuzzillo (Ape Out, Baby Steps) offered them sage wisdom. “He spoke about how you should focus not just on making something good – because how do you quantify that, it’s amorphous?” says Todd. “Instead we should look at what it is we want to explore and judge success intrinsically, based on whether we explored that thing. The pressure of speed to market doesn’t apply to us, because it’s never going to be possible to crank something out in six months to chase success anyway. It’s more like, in the wake of this being received well, what’s the next thing we want to explore? That’s something we’re interrogating at the moment.”
Australian developer Grace Bruxner has also redefined success after leaving behind a trilogy of Frog Detective games: bite-size adventures co-developed with Thomas Bowker that quickly became cult indie hits.
“Success in games has always been a bit of a lie, a bit of an illusion,” she says, pointing to typical markers such as cultural impact, player numbers and financial gain. “My measure of success is: did I make something I’m proud of, and has it impacted my life and other people’s lives in a positive way? And yes, it did, so thumbs up.”
Bruxner began working on the series during her final year at university as an experiment, to see whether she could produce a commercial game. After a relatively breezy first outing, the second Frog Detective game demanded that Bruxner and Bowker lock in, and spend most of their time on the project. By the third instalment, the hard work had paid off, though the pressure had begun to take its toll. Throw in the pandemic, as well as mental and physical health issues, and Bruxner was ready to take a break. “I wasn’t grinding super hard, but I also wasn’t having a great time,” she says. “It just was really nice to make that choice to stop.”
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Bruxner still has game ideas swirling in the back of her head, but she wanted to escape the endless production cycle that has swallowed up many of her peers, regardless of mounting exhaustion or burnout. “It’s not universal advice,” she says, “but if you’re a solo dev or a really small team, I don’t think there’s any shame in leaving it there. Unless you love making games. I’m not sure I love making games. I was quite young when we released the first Frog Detective, so it was like, ‘This is my entire identity for life. I don’t know how to be a separate person from that.”
Three years after the series’ swan song, she is on indefinite hiatus, exploring alternative creative paths – such as pottery. “I can’t imagine making games, because of the expectations on me as a creator,” she explains. “I don’t even know where I would go from here.”
Bruxner has been surprised by her ability to sustain herself on the modest amount of money provided by Frog Detective. “If your game continues to have a tail, and you can budget properly and live within your means, it is possible to have a passive income that isn’t tied to being a horrible landlord,” she explains. Even so, she knows how taboo it can be to talk plainly about money, especially in creative circles like the indie game scene. “I have the free time to chill and decide what I want to do, but I assume at some point I’ll probably need to have a career again. My biggest question is will this money last forever? Probably not, and then what happens when it runs out? I don’t know.”
It may seem as though more indies than ever have broken into the spotlight in recent years. But enduring games industry turbulence has made finding financial support for follow-ups and debuts more complicated. “The elephant in the room is everything that’s happened over the past couple of years, with mass layoffs, studio closures and evaporating funding opportunities,” explains AP Thomson, a developer of the forthcoming indie Consume Me with fellow NYU Game Center graduate Jenny Jiao Hsia. “Before that, there was a pretty major change around the mid-2010s when indie publishers and funders started rising in prominence. Everything we’ve heard suggests that the same opportunities no longer exist or are incredibly limited.”
Consume Me, the duo’s coming-of-age scheduling RPG doesn’t have a release date but has already been nominated for five gongs at the Independent Games Festival awards. As such, Jiao Hsia and Thomson are already under pressure to decide their next endeavour. “Multiple people have told us we should be moving forward once it launches,” says Thomson.
Even with growing expectations, the pair aren’t keen to get ahead of themselves. “Everything we’ve heard suggests that now is really not a great time to be pitching, so we’re going to focus our energy on the launch and then read the temperature of the room after that,” Thomson adds.
“I’m looking forward to finding enjoyment in making art again, instead of feeling like I have to show up to a job I never applied to,” explains Jiao Hsia. “The idea of making art for fun, without worrying about making money off it, is something I can’t wait to do.”
