作者：Daniel Fedor

上周发布独立游戏调查之后，我觉得自己有责任提供后续的调查结果。所有在今天的这篇文章中，我要讨论的就是这个问题。

结果

对于调查的大部分结果，每个能够上网的人都可以看到那些调查数据。所以，在这里我不再次发布调查结果。

在这篇文章中，我将探讨某些自己注意到的有趣的东西。这些东西是从数据研究中得来的。而且，所有观点都属于我的个人看法，所以在阅读时请注意本文的背景。

受访者

总得来说，调查的反响还是不错的。在1周的时间里，共有121个人做出回应（游戏邦注：包括作者自己）。56%的人目前受他人雇佣并考虑成为独立开发者。在这些人中，62%的人受雇于游戏工作室。令人感到惊奇的是，回应者中真正的独立开发者只占27%。

回想下这个过程，便不难得出以下结果。可能文章的读者中公司员工较多？或者调查在雇员中传播的速度较快，为更多人所知？或者雇员比独立开发者更愿意花时间来参与调查？我们不能给出确切的结论，但是这些有一定的可能性。

我还应该指出的是，调查出现的首个缺陷是“雇佣状况”问题。在这个问题上，我将开发者分为两个群体：

1、目前受公司雇佣但是利用闲暇时间兼职自己做游戏的独立开发者。

2、从学校毕业后直接走上独立之路，或者处在其他非雇佣状态的独立开发者。

尽管有些开发者属于这两个群体，但是各种特殊的工作状况使得这个问题对某些参与者来说很难抉择，该问题还应该有更多的选项。

转向独立的最大原因

毫无疑问，转向独立开发的最主要原因是“创意自由”。73%的调查参与者将此作为转向独立开发的理由。“将想法与全世界分享”位居第二，占58%，“改善工作时间”这个理由占49%。

有趣的是，有47%的人的原因是“有机会赚到比薪酬和福利更多的钱”。依我对独立游戏开发的认识，根本不会想到出现如此状况。因为迄今为止我读过的所有文章都表示，如果想要赚钱的话，独立开发应该是最后一个考虑的选项。

而且，游戏工作室员工的前4大理由和比例与非游戏工作室员工大体相同。我原本认为这两个群体的理由会存在些许差异。

我还对比了游戏工作室雇员与非游戏工作室雇员的另一项数据。我查看了游戏工作室雇员比非游戏工作室雇员引用频率更高的原因。以下是几个差异最大的方面：

1、对IP感到厌烦：4.7:1

2、对题材感到厌烦：4.4:1

3、对当前项目的质量表示担忧：3:1

4、对当前项目营销和发行支持表示担忧：2.8:1

5、好友被解雇：2.1:1

前两个原因很容易理解，但是第3和第4个原因就很有意思。与其他行业相比，难道游戏行业中的项目质量、营销和发布情况真的那么糟糕吗？而且，游戏工作室雇员被解雇的频率是否高于其他行业？以上数据或许说明这两个猜测属实。

不走独立之路的最大原因

无论游戏行业内外，提出相反问题总是能得到类似的结果。最大的原因是无法为游戏的开发提供长期的资金支持，这个原因占54%。而且，在行业内外，缺乏敏锐的运营头脑也是一大原因，比例占37%。

但是，仍然有两个不同之处。首先，“需要收入供养家庭”在行业外出现得比行业内更加频繁（游戏邦注：43%对比30%）。而且，游戏工作室雇员引用“喜欢与他人合作”的比例是34%，高于行业外的20%。

而且，“喜欢当前项目”这个理由在工作室雇员这边甚为强大。尽管如上面数据所示，工作室雇员对IP、题材和项目管理有明显的不满，但是似乎喜欢项目的游戏工作室雇员比非游戏行业的人要多出3倍。但是这似乎与上文有所矛盾，为何会出现这种差异呢？

结果显示，这部分人群在两种雇员群体中所占比例都很低。行业内为15%，行业外为5%。因而尽管工作室雇员对项目的喜欢超过非工作室雇员，但是他们的总体数量都很少。

总结

调查结果是否解决了我心中的疑问呢？可以说有，也可以说没有。许多回应的状况与我所预料的一样，所以我不确定自己直接通过数据能够学到多少东西。

但是，通过此次调查我的确得到了某些东西，包括那些因调查的失败而呈现出的东西：

1、独立工作者的雇佣状况比我的首个问题要复杂得多。

2、我所提供的人们转为独立工作者的理由较为完整（游戏邦注：选择“其他”选项的人的理由很少与所提供选项有很大出入）。

3、大约4%的独立工作者并不会对受他人雇佣感到恐惧。

对于游戏工作室而言，我想他们需要学习些重要的内容。内容如下：

1、寻找能够更好地激发雇员创造性灵感的方法，而且让他们表达出来并于他人分享。

2、做决策面临困难依然是行业内还未曾解决的问题。

3、考虑逐渐增加的盈利分享机制。固定的薪酬会让雇员感到烦闷。

4、为雇员选择的IP和题材提供更高的自由度，防止其对工作感到厌烦。

5、雇佣有抱负的员工。

提高项目质量也在回应中频繁出现，但是我却不能将其添加到以上列表中，因为这一点很难解释清楚。我确信，每个工作室都想要提高游戏的质量。不幸的是，这不是嘴上说说就能够做到的。但是，以下做法或许能够有所帮助：

1、增加员工在项目决定中的参与度

2、避免项目有过于严格的时间和范围限制（游戏邦注：这会限制人们发挥创造性的空间）

3、允许公司内部创意性副项目的存在

4、允许公司外创造性副项目的存在

营销

通过这项调查，我还学到了某些有关营销的东西。我个人的互联网访问量很少，发布博客等方式只产生了数量有限的成果。很显然，如果要想获得有用的结果，我需要获得更多的曝光度。所以，我开始利用那些开展独立工作者讨论的社区。

最初，这项措施包括polycount.com上的帖子和gamasutra.com博客上的一个评论。前者可以显示在我的博客上，因为我可以将其链接到“独立新手”上。后者是在与我的调查有关的文章评论。

随后，我决定使用gamasutra的博文版块来发表我的首篇文章。结果证明，这是个明智的做法。我的文章被作为“专家博客”推荐在首页上，使得流量大幅增长。那一周，polycount和gamastura上都涌入了大量的读者。indiegamer.com和tigsource.com论坛上的表现尽管也有所变化，但不像前面两个那样显著。

这让我知道了如何利用目标用户和用户规模。独立游戏玩家可能都是较为欣赏博文的读者，而gamasutra和polycount能够引发人们产生极大的兴趣。但是我还有个未曾解开的谜题，那就是从某个来源处参与调查的人群的比例是多少？换句话说，站点A的10的访问者全部参与了调查，还是站点B中100个访问者中的1%？至少我得到了一个经验：下次需要更好的度量。而现在，对于此次调查得到的结果，我感到较为满意。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Indie Game Developer Motivations: Survey Results

Daniel Fedor

After putting together the indie survey last week, I feel obligated to both my readers and other respondents to provide a follow-up with the results of that survey. So in today’s post, I’m going to do just that.

The Results

For the most part, everyone with a web browser can see the same data that I can. So I’m not going to re-post the survey results directly.

Instead, I’m going to call out some of the more interesting things I noted. Some of it is based on some data crunching and slicing. And all of it is based on my personal bias, so please apply the appropriate context when reading.

Who Responded?

All told, it had a pretty good response rate. In one week of activity, it collected responses from 121 people (myself included). The lion’s share (56%) went to those currently employed and considering becoming an indie. And of those, 62% were employed by a game studio. Surprisingly, indies only made up 27% of the respondents.

In retrospect, it isn’t impossible to imagine such an outcome. Perhaps the readership is skewed accordingly? Maybe word of the survey spreads faster among employee pools? Maybe employees are more willing to take time for surveys than indies? We can’t say for sure, but those are some likely candidates.

I should also point out that my survey’s first shortcoming turned up in the “employment situation” question. I left out two key groups in the survey, based on the phrasing:

indies who are currently employed but working on games part-time.

indies who became indies directly from school or other unemployed status.

Even with those accounted for, the variety of specific working conditions made that question contentious for some. It’s safe to say that there is no small number of optional responses to that question that would satisfy all respondents.

What Are the Biggest Reasons People Go Indie?

Not surprisingly, the most popular reason for going indie was “creative freedom.” 73% of all respondents cited that as a reason. “Sharing one’s ideas with the world” is in second, with 58%, and “improved working hours” was 49%.

Interestingly, 47% of respondents cited “the chance to earn more than a salary and/or benefits.” That’s one I didn’t expect, given my perceptions of the indie scene. Everything I’ve read to-date has suggested that if one is seeking money, indie is the last thing one should try.

Also, game studio employees had roughly the same top 4 reasons and percentages as non-game studio employees. I had expected a slightly different set of reasons between those two groups.

I did one other data slice to compare game industry employees to non-game industry employees. I checked which reasons game studio employees cite more often than non-game studio employees. Expressed as a ratio of game studio employees to non-game studio employees, here are the biggest discrepancies:

Tired of the IP: 4.7:1

Tired of the genre: 4.4:1

Concerns with current project quality: 3:1

Concerns with current project marketing/publishing support: 2.8:1

Friends laid off: 2.1:1

The first two are probably to be expected. IP and genre probably don’t figure into non-game employees’ decisions if they work in an industry without a game IP or genre. #s 3 and 4 are interesting, though. Is project quality and marketing/publishing effort really that bad in the games industry, compared to other industries? Also, do game studio employees see more frequent layoffs than other industries? The above numbers may suggest just that.

What Are the Biggest Reasons NOT to Go Indie?

Asking the inverse question turned out to be similarly symmetric both in and out of the games industry, and equally unsurprising. The biggest reason? Inability to go without pay long enough to ship a game (54%). Lack of business acumen also figured in equally inside the industry vs. out, at 37%.

Two deviations did occur, however. First, “family depends on income” showed up more frequently outside the industry than in (43% outside vs. 30% inside). Also, game studio employees cited “liking coworkers” 34% of the time, compared to 20% outside the industry. It appears studios are hiring good people, and that matters to employees.

Also, one reason which was strong for studio employees vs. other employees was “liking current project.” Despite the apparent dissatisfaction with IP, genre, and project management cited above, it appears 3 times more game studio employees like their projects than those outside the games industry. Wait a minute, based on the data in the previous section, that sounds like a contradiction. Why the discrepancy?

As it turns out, it’s a very small fraction in both employee groups. 15% inside the industry vs. 5% out. So while more studio employees like their project than non-studio employees, they are both very low numbers overall.

What Did I Learn?

Did it answer any of my questions? Yes and no. Many of the responses are about what I expected, so I’m not sure how much I learned via the data directly.

However, I did learn some things, including some from the failures of my survey:

The employment situation of indies isn’t as clear-cut as my first question implies.

My provided reasons for becoming an indie are nearly complete. (very few “Other” responses were wholly different than a provided option)

Roughly 4% of indies had no fears or reasons not to become an indie. (as indicated by “Other” responses)

For a game studio, I think there are some useful lessons to be learned. If I were to list them, they would be (based on above data):

Find a way to better engage employees’ creative instincts, and let them express and share it with others. This can be creative input on the project, or on side projects. And my guess is there are as many non-content creators (e.g. programmers, QA) in group as there are traditional creative-types (e.g. artists, designers).

Crunch is not yet a solved problem in our industry. Get off the crunch crutch already!

Consider ramping-up profit-sharing alternatives. The fixed-ceiling compensation is stifling employees.

Provide a greater latitude in genres and IPs for employees to work on, to prevent burn-out.

Keep up the good work on hiring inspiring coworkers.

Improved project quality showed up frequently in responses as well, but I didn’t list it above because it’s a bit hard to interpret. Every studio’s leadership wants improved quality, I’m sure. Unfortunately, you can’t just pull the “improved project quality” lever. However, some things which might help include:

increasing employee input in project decisions (and therefore increasing employee buy-in)

avoiding projects with extreme constraints on time (e.g. movie tie-ins or financial quarter Hail Marys) or scope (e.g. sequels with little room for creativity/innovation)

allowing creative side projects on company time (e.g. Google Fridays, studio-wide Ludum Dare, etc.)

allowing creative side projects outside the company

Also, Marketing

I also learned a few things about marketing. For example, my personal internet reach is pretty small. Posting to the blog, twitter, Google+, and Facebook resulted in a limited number of results. It was pretty clear early on that I was going to need some more publicity to get useful results. So I started leveraging other communities where I saw indie discussions occurring.

Initially, that included a post on polycount.com, and a comment on a gamasutra.com blog. The former had shown up on my blog stats radar due to an “indie start-up” thread that linked to me, so I figured I’d give it a go. The latter was a comment on an article related to what made me put the survey together in the first place.

Later, I decided to use gamasutra’s blog feature to make my first post. As it turns out, that was a good move. My post got featured on the first page as an “Expert Blog,” resulting in a large increase in traffic. Both polycount and gamastura represented large influxes of readers for that week. Forum posts on indiegamer.com and tigsource.com made a difference too, but not quite to the degree of the former two.

It’s taught me a bit about juggling target audience vs. audience size. Both indiegamer and tigsource are probably well-defined groups of readers who would appreciate the blog, but gamasutra and polycount generated a larger volume of interest. One piece of the puzzle which is missing, though, is who filled out the survey from which source? In other words, did 100% of 10 visitors from site A fill out the survey, and 1% of 100 from site B? And that’s a big lesson learned: employ better metrics next time. For now, I’m satisfied knowing a bit about the reach I have, but I should’ve at least asked “how did you hear about this survey” in there somewhere.

So there you have it: The GDGR’s first indie survey! Will I do another? Perhaps, but not until some time has passed. And not without some much needed edits. Until next time! (Source: Gamasutra)