LocalThunk, developer of the phenomenally successful Balatro, has weighed in on a conversation about indie games, his unique place within the industry, and why "I really hate when people in my position don't see the absurd bias we have."
Mat Piscatella, an industry analyst at Circana posts on Bluesky that "it's impossible to selectively 'find' and fund the one next massive viral hit indie game." When a game like Balatro sells over 5 million copies, publishers obviously want to find the next one, but who would have predicted a poker roguelite would be nominated at The Game Awards?
"'Find the next Balatro' – c'mon now," Piscatella adds. "Fund a bunch of new games and hope to stumble upon the next big thing that the dumb money will chase after it's been released." I agree. I'm no CEO, but I think it makes more sense to fund lots of small games and hope one of them hits the big leagues rather than pumping all that money into one game that's just trying to capitalize on a trend.
- Balatro creator initially considered a Steam release in part to help "get a game developer job somewhere," and after 5 million sales I'd say he found one
- "I still have a job to do": Balatro creator says selling 5 million copies hasn't really changed his lifestyle, and he's focused on updates instead of new games
Indie dev Rami Ismail posts: "All advice is bad, but not meaningless," and claims people can look to others for inspiration, but "treating advice as dogma" isn't the way to succeed.
LocalThunk himself replies: "I really hate when people in my position don't see the absurd bias we have – it's useless for me to give out advice because all I have is one data point. I spoke about this in my first blog post. I'll share what I do/did, not preach that everyone should do it too."
The video game industry moves rapidly, and what worked for one developer or team one year isn't guaranteed to work for somebody else the next year.
The reverse is true too. Some games are ahead of their time. Think about Brink, the multiplayer parkour FPS that launched during the PS3 and Xbox 360 era, when online capabilities weren't as good as they are now. It bombed, but I bet it would kill it today.
While you're here, check out all the must-play indie games from 2024 and marvel at how different and wonderful they all are.
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I just watched the first 10 seconds of this indie roguelike’s trailer, and it's not even trying to be subtle about being an unlicensed 40K game
Balatro creator started "properly playing the game myself about a week before launch" and had "a pretty emotional moment" where he realized it's "actually fun"
