Recruitinggames / indie_games
The Indie Game Teardown
An indie game developer reflects on the development of a released game.
An indie game developer reflects on the development of a released game.
Problem to Solve
Most of what gets published about a game's release is either a launch announcement or marketing advice. The details other developers would find useful, the budget, the sales over time, the mistakes, are usually left out or kept private.
Unique Value
This book collects first-person write-ups from developers who released a game they built on their own, or close to it. Each chapter is written by one developer, about their own game. Where the developer is willing, the chapter includes the numbers that are usually left out.
What You'll Gain
A clearer picture of what releasing a small game involves: what the developer set out to make, how the release went, and what they would do differently. Some chapters include figures such as cost, sales, wishlists, and refunds; others stay with the story. The accounts are meant to be useful to compare your own work against.
After releasing a game, many indie developers write up how it went. These write-ups are spread across forums and blogs, and most are eventually lost. We'd like to bring some of them together into one book. If you've released a game you built mostly on your own, we'd be glad to include your account.
Many books on game development are about how to build a game. This one is about what happens after release, told by the developers themselves, one game per chapter.
This is an open anthology, so the outline is intentionally loose. We start the book; contributors write it. Each chapter is a developer’s own postmortem, in their own voice. There’s no fixed format. Slots fill as contributors join.
This is an open anthology, so the outline is intentionally loose. We start the book; contributors write it. Each chapter is a developer’s own postmortem, in their own voice. There’s no fixed format. Slots fill as contributors join.
This is an open anthology, so the outline is intentionally loose. We start the book; contributors write it. Each chapter is a developer’s own postmortem, in their own voice. There’s no fixed format. Slots fill as contributors join.
This is an open anthology, so the outline is intentionally loose. We start the book; contributors write it. Each chapter is a developer’s own postmortem, in their own voice. There’s no fixed format. Slots fill as contributors join.
You built and shipped a game mostly on your own, and you’re willing to tell the story honestly, whether it did well or barely sold. You don’t need to be a writer. You just need to have shipped something and be open about what happened. If you’re willing to share the numbers, even better. If writing isn’t your thing, someone on our team can help shape the piece.
You’ll shape the book as a whole: which postmortems make it in, how the chapters are ordered, and whether each piece stays honest. As you settle into the role, you become the lead for the book. We’ll hand over the reins, including the final call. You know this world well enough to tell a real postmortem from a victory lap.
You work with a developer to pull out what really happened and turn it into a clear, honest chapter. You’re good at interviewing, listening, and shaping a messy launch into a story people can follow.
This book was started by ThePeopleBook, a platform for collaborative nonfiction. We organize the project and bring contributors together; the stories are theirs. We’re not game developers or experts here. The goal is to collect honest postmortems from solo developers, written by the people who lived them. The book is looking for a lead. Once the team forms, full authority will pass to the right contributor. Interested? Write to [email protected].
Leader