A serious consideration for (indie) game developers is failure. Statistics show that something like less than 1% of games are successful enough to be sustainable. There are numerous stories of game developers that have put several years into the development of their baby, only to wind up a commercial failure/disaster/catastrophe. One notable example is: Where The Water Tastes Like Wine. The developer had put $140,000 of his own money into it, but it failed to recoup the development costs in sales.
Considering where the developer of WTWTLW has come from, I probably would have put in just as much time, money, and effort into it as he did. After all, if I had already created a successful game, and if I had the one and only Sting doing the voice acting, I’d probably give my current employer two weeks notice. It’s a very sad story indeed.
The martial arts imitates life, and it can teach you about how to approach things, how to react to things, how to live. As Bruce Lee used to say in his lifetime, “I’ve learned all of these things from the martial arts”.
Having studied martial arts, I take from it one philosophy, which is that I’m prepared to die, or in terms of business, I’m prepared to fail. Bruce Lee used to say, “the great mistake is to anticipate the outcome of the event”. If you’ve never studied the martial arts, it may be hard to relate to the notion that when a fighter is engaged in a life and death struggle, it is a mistake to anticipate winning or losing. “Just let nature take its course”, as Lee would say.
Cryo may fail, but if it does, it won’t be because of lack of trying–it’s self-funded, lots of time, energy, barely any sleep, tons of work to make Cryo come into being in this world of ours. It may fail because it winds up being a dog crappy experience, or it may fail to convey anything meaningful to gamers, but if that is the outcome, then life goes on. All effort into creating art, music, programming is done with the aim to reach self-expression.
Another aspect of why it’s OK for Cryo to fail is because statistically, 95% of all small businesses fail in their first year. In other words, the chances are already slim of making it, whether it be selling bagels in a bagel shop, selling guitars in a music shop, or cutting people’s hair for a living. If I fail, I want to fail at what I love and what I’m passionate about rather than something that I’d rather not do. I’d rather have to stay awake 19 hours a day in order to bring Cryo to life rather than stay awake 19 hours a day running a shop, selling some widget that I find boring.
On the other hand, many developers say do not even consider making games for a living. It’s very easy to see why they say this, and it seems reasonable. If you are aware of the odds, and if you approach it like you would approach running any other type of business, then why the heck not go for it. The thinking is that being a game developer is extremely hard but so is being an owner of a bagel shop, just in different ways, all kinds of ways.