Well, I am trying to fact check this article with more knowledgeable people than myself from a perspective of "so, can you actually make meaningful money making indie games" and the answers I am getting suggest yes, you can.
I am looking at this information as someone who wants to actually make a living doing things online. I don't need to become a millionaire. I just want a middle class income. I used to make $100/day at my corporate job (not $100/hour like a lot of programmers) and I started at above minimum wage. Plus, having that corporate job was incredibly expensive for me. So, I need less than $100/day to compete with my old corporate job.
I am actually looking for hard numbers of "can you reasonably support yourself doing things like this?" Maybe not with making games being the only thing, but as part of the picture.
This article is a little bit like saying "Actors are not capable of supporting themselves at all unless they are big Hollywood stars." Maybe that is true of acting, I don't know, but it isn't actually true of indie games. It can be done, though it no doubt is a tougher market than the one he entered however many years ago.
This isn't specifically targeted at indie apps but https://medium.com/@sm_app_intel/a-bunch-of-average-app-reve... gives a good overview. The main message is that there's such an immense skew to the top earning apps that the average earning can be above the 90th percentile earning; so if you want to earn average app income you have to be in the top 10% of apps.
I was surprised when the article was written they were estimating $2M a day income for the top earning game app (Clash Of Clans).
Thanks. Upon skim, this looks sort of like an app-specific re-hash of "How to lie with statistics" (an excellent book, btw).
Personally, I am more interested in finding some sort of meaningful info on how to make money on games or apps at all. Yes, I know it can be done. I am interested in figuring out how it is done.
I am looking at this information as someone who wants to actually make a living doing things online. I don't need to become a millionaire. I just want a middle class income. I used to make $100/day at my corporate job (not $100/hour like a lot of programmers) and I started at above minimum wage. Plus, having that corporate job was incredibly expensive for me. So, I need less than $100/day to compete with my old corporate job.
I am actually looking for hard numbers of "can you reasonably support yourself doing things like this?" Maybe not with making games being the only thing, but as part of the picture.
This article is a little bit like saying "Actors are not capable of supporting themselves at all unless they are big Hollywood stars." Maybe that is true of acting, I don't know, but it isn't actually true of indie games. It can be done, though it no doubt is a tougher market than the one he entered however many years ago.