Rampant Games - Five harsh truths about working in a creative industry

Rampant Coyote blogged about 5 newbie mistakes indies should try to avoid:

#2 - It's about the audience experience, not yours

If you are in a creative industry, you may bleed for your product. You may put a lot of passion, craftsmanship, blood, sweat, tears, and artistry into what you do. But in the end... it's not about you. It's about them. The audience. The customer doesn't care how many late nights you had, how many stresses it put on your family, how much you spent on it. They simply want to know how much it will improve their lives, and how much that is worth to them in terms of their time and their cold, hard cash.

Yes, the pain and frustration and lost opportunities and all that part of your life may end up sitting in a bundle deal or in an Amazon sale for less than a dollar. Acknowledge. Move on. And focus on making your audience happy. Hopefully that mostly coincides with your own preferences.

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Not sure I agree with #2. If you focus on your audience but not yourself, you can end up miserable. Especially if the product bombs. Better to work on stuff you enjoy.

Well, I disagree, and I am sure DArt would too if he see this thread.

You should create something you love, the most successful products will be like that.

Minecraft is such an example, he never intended to do something to earn money, he did something he loved. I actually would go so far as to say that most of the greatest games are like that. They are not made for the audience, while trying to make the audience happy, you might just end up making a indie "Call of Duty" copy or something, which you'll never have any chance to compete with the real product since it is only focused on production values and not a unique labour of love.

That said, sometimes it might be worth listening to your fans good ideas, nothing wrong with that as long as it doesn't compromise the overall vision.

I agree with the thoughts posted above. In creative endeavors, you should pursue your vision, whatever makes you passionate. That's when you will do your best work. It's certainly true the audience will be the sole judge of your work and determine its success, but you just have to hope those two worlds collide, which is much more likely to happen when you're passionate in the creation of your art.

But nothing is entirely black or white. GG's caveat about keeping an open mind is also important. Every writer needs an editor.

On the whole I agree with those above, so I shan't repeat what has been said. I'm a huge proponent of the singular vision when it comes to projects which have an artistic angle (exceptions could be made for things like city centre artistic installations/building developments where the object of the art could widely effect surrounding people etc).

What I would like add to the conversation though is a caveat. When people make something they wish to sell, then there has to be an element of taking the customer into consideration, even when you're creating a singular vision. If someone has no requirement for money, then, yes, they will normally produce something of unknown popular taste. However, if the goal is to make money and the only way the art is sustainable then external considerations become valid. The artist themselves will often be thinking about this as they form their art even without external suggestion.

For example, if a Democrat individual lived in a predominantly Republican area (say, for the wife/husband's job - it's hypothetical, don't bother nitpicking), and they made their living from sculpting statues and figurines, then they might make an individual personal choice to make images of famous Republicans instead of famous Democrats, because their rational side dominates their emotional side - but whichever side they lean towards, they are still a great artist producing what they have chosen to produce regardless of outside suggestion.

So if you were going to make an RPG, and you relied on the money from that RPG to produce your next RPG and wanted to make RPGs by this system, then, yes, even without suggestion one would hope that aiming towards where the money is would be something the creator had considered. And, if not, it would not be outrageous for someone to give them pointers.

AAA games are often over-focused on the money and become over-paranoid about creating individualistic features, but indies are often not money focused enough, making everything so individualistic that no more than a handful of people can be bothered to learn the new language the game represents.

Where's the middle ground? Well, no-one knows for sure, and that's the magical vacuum that enables the Minecrafts of the world to appear.

"Button Awesome" is a great example of a development where the developer pursued the developer's vision without considering the customer's actual input. The developer was absolutely sure that the customers would fall in love with "button awesome" even though gamers gave major thumbs down on this development at multiple early showings. The rest is history.

Some people just have to learn the hard way. Ignore your customer at your own risk.

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Feel free to solely pursue your artistic vision, provided that you don't expect to make any kind of money doing so. There are very few games that can pull this off and make big bucks.