作者：Nicholas Lister（英国独立工作室Playhouse Games创始人）

独立游戏开发者的生意是相当个人化的。所以，在分析游戏是否能成功时，通常会把个人对成功的渴望掺杂在其中。

我最近得出一个结论，理性地说，继续把独立游戏开发当成唯一的商业机会，可能是件有勇而无谋的事。

我仍然在独立地做游戏，但我不再把维持这种努力当成主要的目标。为什么？

从银行家的角度评估项目

当我有一个商业想法时，我会做一个小小的思维转换。

我想象自己是一个银行经理，有人带着他的想法来找我，要我投资。我的职责是确保银行的投资不会打水漂。

我要对眼前这个处境困难的人保持冷漠，我手头上还有很多其他投资项目，最稳妥的做法就是把钱投给已经比较成熟的商业。借创业金给小公司可能与小公司本身一样有风险。

问题是，我是否支持拿钱把我眼前的这个想法做起来。

自从我把独立开发和销售手机游戏的想法摆在想象自己就是银行经理的我自己面前，我发现，我总是建设自己想象自己可能面临的风险，建议自己最好把钱投到更稳妥的行业。

当然也有一些明显的例外。我举一个例子，如果管理良好，把其他平台的热门游戏做成手机版，获得投资的可能性就会大很多。

然而，重点是，如果我的银行经理自己不觉得这个计划有赢利前景，那么我也不应该那么觉得。

打破独立开发者的神话

这是一种简单的做法，但当我运用它时，我开始明白曾经激励了许多独立开发者前时的神话到底是什么。

使用高明的赢利模式也是有风险的；即使它是被反复验证过的，当你自己运用它时，它所开拓出来的生态圈可能已经饱和了。

通过更多更小的游戏，并全部采用这些被验证过的策略来分散风险，是一个明智的选择，但这仍然不足以使我相信：它们的表现会好到让我眼前的这家小工作室的风险-奖励保持平衡。

我见过许多手机独立开发者把工作时间花在制作甚至没有被银行经理评估过的商业游戏上。

他们当中有些人确实是冲着财富去的——例如，他们想到《愤怒的小鸟》，奢望自己也能获得同样的成功。

有些人一开始只想做游戏，却发现挣不了钱，于是转向制作越来越商业化的项目，以便维持独立事业。结果却是，他们在商业化道路上越走越远，终于只会做商业化项目了。

那没什么不好的。那些人可能对自己所做的事很满意。他们可能挣了一些钱，即使日渐饱和的市场意味着大成本的游戏正在衰弱，他们的商业策略会越来越无效。但想到走那条路就会把我吓得不轻。

在我看来，游戏的前景似乎很大很美，到处是奇迹；游戏行业像一座矿山，矿商正在迅速开采着中间越来越稀薄的矿脉。

我不是说探矿者再也找不到成功了。他们确实会找到。他们会在最不可能的地方找到丰富的矿产。有些人可能比别人更懂得找矿，在资源越来越少的情况下找到一点点矿，会导致狂热的掏金潮。

然而，我做游戏是为了探索广阔而美丽的风景的，所以在这个行业中惨淡的生存环境让我对独立游戏的未来非常悲观。我想，我应该转去经营大农场，那样的营收至少能让我每隔一段时间就能去探索野外。

回归现实

我说这样的比喻是为了说明，一般情况下，把经营独立游戏开发的商业与制作独立精神的游戏的渴望结合起来，是不可能的；如果要我选择，我会选择独立精神。

我的选择给我带来什么？开发游戏成变我的爱好，一种基本上只赔不赚的爱好。

支持这种损失需要商业风投，我指的是银行经理肯定会接受的那种真正的商业风投。

Playhouse首款游戏《imp paired》(from pocketgamer)

那可能是任何实实在在的项目。我个人的情况是，成立Playhouse，这是一家根据其他团体机构的要求设计和制作实体和数字游戏的公司，帮助他们用游戏和人文的方式处理内部组织问题。

那种生意利用我作为游戏开发者的技能和我建筑专业出身的知识。额外的好处是，它继续充实我对于游戏的思考，但更重要的是，经营那家公司使我可以不考虑商业，单纯地做游戏。

也就是，允许我做赔钱的游戏，事实上是，一分钱都收不回来的游戏。

它允许我制作那些不是为了发行而是出于个人兴趣的游戏。

把游戏工作室分成给客户做游戏的和给自己做游戏的，是很普遍的。但我认为我的想法代表了我在其他独立开发者身上看到的一小部分思维转换。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Why indie mobile game development is no longer a worthwhile commercial prospect

by Nicholas Lister

Running a business as an independent game developer is a pretty personal process. It’s often very difficult to dissociate your desire for an idea to succeed from a rational analysis of whether it actually will.

I recently came to a decision that, rationally speaking, it would be foolhardy to continue to pursue independent game development as a stand-alone commercial prospect.

I am still making games independently, but I am no longer doing so in a way that holds the sustainability of that endeavour up as a predominant aim. The question is, why?

Becoming a banker

There’s a little thought tool I use when coming up with a business idea.

I imagine I am a bank manager and someone is coming to me with this idea looking for a loan to fund it. It is my job to make sure that the bank doesn’t lose money on its investments.

I am indifferent to the plight of the individual in front of me and I have a day filled with other loan decisions, mostly safe prospects granting capital for equipment to already established businesses; lending start-up capital for a catering company might be about as risky as it gets.

The question is whether I would countenance the notion of lending money to fund this idea in front of me.

Since starting to do this, whenever I have put the idea of independently making and selling mobile games in front of myself-as-bank-manager, I find myself suggesting to the imaginary unfortunate in front of me that I could better invest my money by putting it all on Lucky Lad in the 3:20 at Chepstow.

There are some notable exceptions, of course. A mobile version of a recent and very popular game from another platform, for instance, given the right arrangements, is about as close to a surefire yes as you are likely to get.

However, the point is that if my bank manager self isn’t willing to consider the plan as a commercial prospect, then neither should I.

Meddling with myths

It’s a simple tool, but when I apply it I start to unravel some of the most common fantasies that mobile indie developers use to drive their work.

Applying a clever monetisation model looks risky; even if it’s tried and tested, the niche it’s exploiting may well be saturated around the time you get there.

Spreading the bet by making more, smaller games using these tried and tested techniques is a sensible option, but it’s still not enough to convince me that on average they will perform well enough to match the risk-reward balance of the catering start-up I just saw or the carpenter I’ve got coming in next.

Lister’s first iOS release Imp Paired

I have met a lot of mobile indie developers who spend their working days turning out commercial games that aren’t even, by the bank manager test, that commercial.

Some of them have always been chasing the big payout – looking at the likes of Angry Birds, for instance, and thinking they wanted a slice of that.

Some of them started out just wanting to make games, discovered they weren’t making money so jumped on to more and more commercial strategies to keep themselves going until they get to a point where they’re only making games that are commercial strategies.

Now that’s fine. Those people may all be happy with what they’re doing. They may well have managed to make some money, even if continuing market saturation has meant that the days of the big payout are fading and that their commercial strategies are becoming less and less effective. But the thought of going down that route scares the hell out of me.

It seems to me that the landscape of games is huge and beautiful and full of wonderful things and that the games industry’s commercial mines excavate, at a very great pace, a relatively narrow vein that runs down the middle.

That’s not to say that prospectors don’t find success elsewhere. They do. They discover rich mineral deposits in unlikely places. Some people have a better knack for finding them out than others and a serious find usually attracts a gold rush.

However, I got into making games to explore the huge and beautiful landscape, so scraping a living working in the commercial mines seems like a pretty dismal prospect to me. I think I would rather have a ranch that generates enough yield to allow me, every once in a while, to go on an exploratory expedition into the wilderness.

Getting real

What I am trying to say via what’s admittedly and over elaborate metaphor is that, in the general case, reconciling running a mobile game development business with the desire to make independently minded games is untenable, and if I have to choose one I am going to choose to be independently minded.

So where does that leave me? It leaves me with an independent game development habit that is almost certainly going to lose money.

Supporting this loss requires a commercial venture, and by that I mean an actual commercial venture that my bank manager would certainly entertain.

It could be any realistic prospect. In my case it is been founding Playhouse, a company that designs and implements physical and digital games for use within other organisations, helping them address intra-organisational issues in a playful and humane way.

That business draws on the skills I have developed as a game developer, as well as those from my architectural background. As a bonus, it continues to inform my thinking about games, but more importantly than that, running this enterprise allows me to make games outside of that core business.

Games that are allowed to lose money. Games that are allowed, in fact, to recoup not a single penny.

It allows me to make those games not because they will ship copies, but because they are interesting games to make.

Having this split in a studio between making games for clients and making games for yourself is far from unusual, but I think the tone in which I’m doing it here represents a small part of a shift in thinking that I see reflected among other independent developers.

When I first entered the games industry the dominant message was that studios were running a commercial arm until the games division could take over. Here, though, there’s a will to run a commercial arm so that the games division doesn’t have to take over.(source:pocketgamer)