Amnesia: The Dark Descent becomes a million seller
When is a game too successful to be considered indie? Frictional Games' indie horror game, Amnesia: The Dark Descent has become a million seller.
When is a game too successful to be considered indie? Frictional Games' indie horror game, Amnesia: The Dark Descent has become a million seller.
Oddly, figuring out the exact sales numbers actually takes some work due to the game's inclusion in the Humble Indie Bundle and Potato Sack. Without accounting for these bundles, the game has managed to sell over 700K units. Admitting that a number of bundle purchasers likely own Amnesia already, Frictional's Thomas Grip calculates that the game could have sold almost 1.4 million units.
"The figures themselves are far beyond any guesses we would have made two years ago," Grip explains in a blog post (via Joystiq). "It is also insane, because this number is actually higher than it was around three months after initial launch." Certainly, word of mouth has helped propel the game's status and sales well after its initial release.
Reaching a million sales is an accomplishment for any game, let alone a game that cost only $360,000 to make. "It has since earned more than ten times that. Take that investors we talked to in 2009!"
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Shacknews
replyAndrew Yoon posted a new article, Amnesia: The Dark Descent becomes a million seller.
When is a game too successful to be considered indie? Frictional Games' indie horror game, Amnesia: The Dark Descent has become a million seller.-
Never. Independent should mean independently developed and published, not unknown, unpopular, or unsuccessful.
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Yarp.
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I would say so. Definitely.
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As would be Unter Null
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FEhFCVgHfw
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Yep. Exactly. My first thoughts on reading Andrew's article... ??? hmmm.
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They have (had?) a publishing agreement on consoles. They were still indie, as EA had nothing to do or say about the content or direction of the games.
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I one of the people who thinks size is irrelevant for "indie" label. Indie is a state of mind, a will of making your own thing, your own way. Valve definitely fits the bill in that respect.
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yeah, I mean they're personally responsible for a publishing infrastructure that nigh singlehandedly rebuilt the 3rd pillar of gaming, so I can't think of them as indie, but sure, very very indie-esque. Like I said, it's splitting hairs, we agree that Valve is awesome and has freedom to do awesome stuff
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Yup.
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SEMANTICS!
In my opinion, "indie", by way of the cute abbreviation, implies a small developer, possibly only one person or a team of less than five (although it can be more, but I'd say having a hundred employees or more disqualifies you), and possibly doing this either on the side or not as your day job. Especially if your game falls under a nontraditional genre.
By this token, Valve is not indie, Valve is independent. Gearbox is independent. No one owns them but to put them in the same category as the small team that made Amnesia is not really fair. Not to say that one is better than the other - although if anything indie developers aim to become independent developers - but I'd say there's a difference.
Part of it also has to do with the origins of the company. Valve was founded by Microsoft millionares. Gearbox was formed as a traditional boxed product company whose creators' main claim to fame was being former 3DR employees. Not that this takes anything away from their success - look at Ion Storm for an example of a developer that had every advantage in the world and still screwed it up - but there's a big difference between a developer founded in the 90's who had to make a go of it in retail or else, and a developer who gets on Steam first or releases their game on their own website first and then gets in retail if successful.
In any case it's a great time to be a PC gamer.
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Mostly agree with this, although I'd qualify that it's not really necessary for the publishing component to be independent, in order for a game to be considered "indie." Just so long as the developer retains complete creative control over what the player ends up playing--without publisher or corporate moneyhat interference--it's "indie" in my book.
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Yeah, I agree. If development is independently funded then that's enough. Self publication is good for extra credit.
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I'm very happy for them! Incidentally, they are talking about >$3.6m revenue total. That's just a little more than we gave Tim Schafer to make us a new adventure game. If independent studios can do well at these kinds of revenue numbers, the next 5-10 years is going to be a very exciting time to be a gamer!
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They just need to make sure they always stay self published and not subject themselves to publisher constraints. You have proven you can take your time to make a game and make money doing it. Stick with what works.
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Something like that. Instead of wooden barrels and block & tackle, you'd get to deal with the navigation systems and ion thrusters of a derelict ship. I imagine the plot would be based around working to fix everything up so you can go to place X, but in the course of doing so you enable some kind of system as well, and then it's ON.
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