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Indie games developers - 28th October 2022

Video games are difficult to make. You need many people to create one game. It's expensive and takes time. Now, some video game makers are working alone.

Eric Barone created the video game Stardew Valley. It made $20 million. Video game makers are excited. They want to be rich and famous. Geraud Zucchini made Larceny Lazer.

Géraud Zucchini: "Yes, you can make money. It's very difficult, and the majority of people who go into indie games, with their first game anyway, generally they're going to make very little or no money at all."

Dan Beckerton made Spirittea. Many people gave him money to make it.

Dan Beckerton: "I think my goal is, like, if I could pay back all my funding, and then maybe make, like, $100,000 on top of that, which would give me a runway to work on my next game. That would be, I mean that's, that's an infinitely larger goal than my, my first game which made, like, 2,000 bucks total."

Big companies have lots of money to make games. Working with other people can give you lots of ideas. It's very hard to make a game alone. But some people think this makes the games special.

Mike Rose: "Whenever you move into relying on other people, it can go very different ways. And so yes, there's definitely that personal touch when you’ve got just a single developer making a game."

Dan Beckerton: "I don't have to like, OK that with anyone. I can just go ahead with any kind of creative idea I have."

Many video game makers want to build the next popular game. They know they'll be rich. The vice president of Indie Game Nation works with these game makers.

Alizee Veauvy Guilliams Janin: "All in all, we have to differentiate between success stories and indie games, which are very good and profitable for the creators. Indeed, when they manage to reach their target, to be inspiring, or simply fun for their public, and to be profitable, I think that's just brilliant."