Hits like Schedule 1 are a dangerous bar for indies, Steam expert says: "That top potential has completely warped people's brains about what they should be making"

Most everyone would love to be the next anomalous instant-hit game on par with drug dealing sim Schedule 1, but actively trying to find that kind of runaway success can be hugely counterproductive, warns marketing consultant and Steam expert Chris Zukowski.

Though he's made some personal games of his own, Zukowski focuses on marketing advice for indie developers. Given his PC focus, a big part of that stems from in-depth analysis of tools, trends, and data on Steam. I wanted to focus on his Steam findings in our recent interview, and when the perceived upper limit of success on Steam came up, Zukowski cautioned against getting hung up on the romanticized indie mega-hit.

"Yes, you can make infinite money. And so that makes devs feel like they should be making infinite money with their game releases," he begins. "But what I like to remind people is, 20 years ago, 15 years ago, if an indie dev made $20,000 off of their game, a game they made, it was a freakin' miracle. They were like, 'This is amazing! I made something in my room and it made $20,000!' That's the norm. That's what you should be expecting to make with your first couple games. It's when you get these games that can make millions of dollars over a week, like that Schedule 1 game, that becomes the expectation."

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Games like Schedule 1 are outliers that reinforce the much less grandiose norm. Zukowski reckons "that's why [some indie] games spend so long in development, because they're like, 'Well, I gotta make a million dollars. I gotta be a hit game. 'Your goal should be: get something out, make, like, $10,000 to $20,000, make your second one, then your third one, then your fourth one, and build up that backlog and learn how to make games.

"I just think that top potential has completely warped people's brains about what they should be making."

Palworld, as another fireball example, was not developer Pocketpair's first game. It was just the developer's first game to dominate conversations globally for weeks. The studio had previously hammered away at the survival crafting space with the likes of Overdungeon and Craftopia. Palworld doubled down on what those games did well and added in some creatures and features in a way that put Pocketpair in a position to get so lucky, and become so viral, that even communication director and publishing manager John Buckley told us the game's success is "unexplainable."

Importantly, Palworld could not have been Pocketpair's first game, and that sort of iterative growth reinforces the old advice that you have to make stuff before you can make it. Or to paraphrase Foo Fighter's Dave Grohl, make art however you can, and suck at it until you stop sucking.

"People only cover the hits," Zukowski says. "People's understanding is what's written about in the press, and the press only covers the hits they always say 'came out of nowhere.' And it's like, 'No, I've been making games for years. Where were you guys when I was making games for years?' And so devs just get this impression that, 'Oh, it was their first game. This is the first time I've heard of this company.'

"Even your Soulslikes, your FromSoftware. I remember I played that Otogi game on Xbox. That was FromSoftware. And it's like, nobody remembers Otogi... nobody really talks about that. Oh yeah, they just made Dark Souls, and it just came out, and Dark Souls was amazing."

Steam expert points to the games you never see quietly "making hundreds of thousands of dollars for small devs" as a key sign "Steam is doing okay."