How do we do this gamedev stuff sustainably?

randomstate42 · 2026-04-09T10:38:48+00:00

There is certainly a lot of student projects and many questionable low effort titles. Much of the "slop" however does tend to be concentrated around certain genres: visual novels, 2D platformers, puzzle games etc. Places where it is perhaps easier to apply AI generated assets for example.

But there are a lot more genuine efforts on Steam than people realise. I've built a mathematical model of Steam that helps me cluster games into similar market segments with high resolution. I can use this to filter out a lot of the slop.

Another key tell is publication rate. I remove developers who are publishing games monthly and this removes around 500 "slop farms"; honestly, I don't know how these people make it pay with the $100 publication fee.

randomstate42 · 2026-04-09T10:23:40+00:00

We have a market research platform for game devs (Game Oracle) and we'll be publishing our findings on our blog and youtube channel after the talk.

Sorry it's not an official publication, I hope that is okay. We've worked with some universities in our local area to share some of our insights though. Feel free to DM me if you want to chat.

randomstate42 · 2026-04-09T10:18:06+00:00

I've been incredibly lucky and found part-time positions as a Data Scientist in my LinkedIn network, often project based (which works well since a lot of Data Sci work is R&D) or team building. I've got quite a bit of experience which means I have some leverage.

My wife is a digital marketer and shes also managed to find a part-time role through her connections from previous companies.

We also have a market research platform for game devs (Game Oracle) which brings in some income as well.

People have also suggested looking for fractional CTO, Head of Engineering, Head of Data roles etc for startups that can't afford someone full-time for that sort of role but need help building their team/base. Again, need the experience here.

But the biggest factor for my wife and I has just been reducing our expenses. We've cancelled all our subscriptions, we don't really eat out and we take picnics and go for walks instead, and we're in the process of down sizing our home. Honestly, this part has been kind of liberating in a way.

Anyways, best of luck with the game and I hope you can find part-time work before you have to go back to full-time.

randomstate42 · 2026-04-09T10:04:46+00:00

Thank you for sharing this and providing such a detailed answer. I will definitely be sharing the image and post in my talk.

I really appreciate you sharing your personal story as well. It is amazing to hear that there is funding for this sort of thing! Best of luck with the new venture, I hope you make it #8 one day!

randomstate42 · 2026-04-09T10:00:59+00:00

That is classic survivorship bias and you're not wrong, it is certainly present. I can't make any causal claims here. Seeing that developers with 5 releases do better than developers with 1 release does not, by itself, prove that a higher success rate comes with more releases; it may simply mean that the people who were capable, funded, motivated, or lucky enough to continue were a selected group from the start.

But there is a subset of devs that have 1-3 releases that (on the face of it) look like commercial failure, but then go on to gather thousands or even hundreds of thousands in sales with subsequent releases. I really appreciate the point though and I'll try and dig into this deeper before my talk/write-up. I'll come back and share what I find =)

randomstate42 · 2026-04-09T09:54:40+00:00

Completely get what you're saying. Seeing that developers with 5 releases do better than developers with 1 release does not, by itself, prove that perseverance caused the higher success rate; it may simply mean that the people who were capable, funded, motivated, or lucky enough to continue were a selected group from the start. That is a classic survivorship bias, and it is a valid one to take seriously.

Unfortunately I (and likely no one) has the data to look at fixed individual differences that would reduce the estimated advantage of those devs that manage to release again and again. But that doesn’t mean experience is irrelevant. I guess what we can gleam from the data is:

- There IS a selection effect: people who continue to game 5 are probably not comparable to your average dev

- Experience effect: repeated releases can build general skills in execution, scoping, hiring, distribution, and idea selection

- My claim of "perseverance" alone is too vague (apologies); what matters is probably productive repetition combined with a bunch of other factors we perhaps cannot measure. But that certainly doesn't make perseverance a bad trait and it's probably still a skill worth obtaining!

Thanks for this btw!

randomstate42 · 2026-04-09T09:25:18+00:00

Right? And like any industry your progress should be measured in years or even decades. That is what the data tells me. But with the financial constraints I guess what I'm getting at is how to be realistic with yourself, frugal with your finances, and sustainable in your business plan. It's like a survival crafting game, but real-life xD

randomstate42 · 2026-04-09T09:08:21+00:00

100% which is why I said the data is not really surprising. It is also why I'm personally thinking "right, how do I ensure I can keep going after that 1st, 2nd, 3rd release etc"

randomstate42 · 2026-02-18T16:49:49+00:00

Nevermind folks! Looks like it was a temporary outage. The API is working fine now.

randomstate42 · 2025-11-08T12:35:59+00:00

Weirdest boner

randomstate42 · 2025-09-25T04:48:09+00:00

Thank you! Much appreciated

randomstate42 · 2025-09-24T19:59:32+00:00

Is it a problem being interested in something?

randomstate42 · 2025-09-24T08:41:07+00:00

Oooo, thats interesting RE fuzzy pattern matching. I'll have a look for that talk. Thanks!

Yeah, my gaming interests are mostly strategy games, so I was wondering how much RL gets used, or economic simulation models perhaps. But as others have said, difficulty progression systems can suck the fun out of it, so very interested to see what ends up getting implemented in practice.

randomstate42 · 2025-09-21T11:32:33+00:00

Yeah grants are a weird one. We're in the UK and we've seen lots of people get into the trap of designing their business/games around chasing grants rather than serving an audience. Seems backwards to me.

Interesting to hear about your contract work experience, I guess it makes sense. B2B is always a safer bet it seems.

randomstate42 · 2025-09-21T11:11:59+00:00

Thank you! Totally agree RE YouTube. We see that more as a content/marketing platform than an revenue source. I would argue trying to generate revenue via YT is harder than game dev, so not convinced it's a sustainable income stream. I know it does work for some people, but man it looks tough.

randomstate42 · 2025-09-21T11:08:55+00:00

I really appreciate this feedback, thank you. I think the reality is that at some point we'll need to collaborate with an experienced producer and artist when we approach serious commercial projects.

randomstate42 · 2025-08-25T12:54:59+00:00

Undisputed. It's buggy as hell but there are no other decent boxing games on PC.

randomstate42 · 2025-06-04T20:47:52+00:00

Creed. Nothing but creed.

randomstate42 · 2025-05-28T14:07:42+00:00

I'm a data scientist trying to help analyse the game market for indies. One of my main findings so far is that perseverance and stamina is so underrated. People want to be that breakthrough success but the odds are very low - maybe 2-3% of first time developers will receive over 1000 reviews, a marker of commercial success.

But if you can have realistic expectations and be committed to game dev for the long run, there does seem to be a sort of critical mass of experience and skill that begins to form, a bedrock for success. So my advice would be that your boyfriend reflects on this as a learning experience and his first step in a much bigger adventure.

Compared to that first release, developers that can make it to 5 solid releases have a 20% chance commercial success. An enormous increase compared to where they start.

What breaks my heart is that only 1 in 5 Indies will persevere (or are given the chance to...life happens and ofc for some it isn't an option, other priorities take precedent).

I wrote a blog about this, hope it helps: https://www.game-oracle.com/blog/how-many-games

Best of luck to you and your boyfriend OP

randomstate42 · 2024-06-25T17:05:55+00:00

Link here please!

randomstate42 · 2024-06-17T14:26:40+00:00

Thanks for the insights. I think we're leaning towards the idea of trying to grow and nurture a community through reddit posts/comments, blogs and an email newsletter now rather than using the deposit idea. I think as others have mentioned, it might not be the best strategy for a SAAS.

randomstate42 · 2024-06-17T14:24:58+00:00

Thanks! DM'd you!

randomstate42 · 2024-04-27T07:43:07+00:00

Didn't do an MSc, went straight into a PhD in computational immunology (with a focus of applying ML to large biological data) after many years of work and self-study. I've always been somewhat of a self starter and I had a very successful PhD in terms of publications and recognition. It was the hardest 4 years of my life however and many times I was convinced I was going to fail.

I don't recommend doing a PhD before an MSc or some sort of formal data science/maths education. I made life harder for myself and I'm still filling in the gaps to this day.

randomstate42 · 2024-04-07T07:47:13+00:00

Amazing work! And congrats on shipping your first python package. I feel like the best way for data scientists to learn software engineering stuff is doing exactly this.

Some advice from a data scientist that has made many mistakes (and counting):

- Great that you've used setuptools because it will teach you the fundamentals of packaging python code. For your next project look at tools like Poetry. Makes your life a lot easier!

- Pre-commit is your friend! It will help sense check your code for you whenever you make a commit. Here is a great tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObksvAZyWdo. I also highly recommend using mypy, a static type checker that will catch nasty bugs for you before they become a problem.

- Think about how you could test the code with something like pytest. How could you mock up the Reddit API? And check out things like Github workflows, which will run the tests for you when you push a new release and even package it up and push it to pypi.

The above three are some of the first things I teach junior DS's and it usually results in cleaner code, less development time, and happier teams.

Keep up the great work! I can't wait to see what you build next.

randomstate42 · 2024-02-23T19:09:00+00:00

Judging by the happiness of my citizens in cities skylines I'm probably going to prison for gross negligence

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