Are there any other examples of successful games made by one person? I was going to say Fez, but two people created it. Successful single dev games are exceptionally rare
Depends on your definition of success. Personally, I think if the developer is making hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars, that's a yes; but I've met people who think if the game isn't a household name, it's not really successful.
Anyway, most people have this mental model of the video game industry where there's a measurable, comprehensible number of games, but the actual volume of released games is insane.
Anecdotally, one of the most impressive devs I've ever talked with had a full time day job and did solo dev on mobile games on the side. He released 3-4 games within 2 years, 2016-2018 and they all earned around $200k+. But again, you never would have heard of any of these games, just like you don't hear about whatever current hypercasual game has 20 million players (unless you're an addict or monitor App Annie / Steamcharts / whatever else on a daily basis).
I think single-dev games start, similarly to startups, and gradually pick up small teams as they go. Minecraft fits that bill to a tee, I'm sure there are younger, more informed people here who could point to other examples.
The totality of direction that one solo person has over a project isn't actually all that important, in reality. Having one or two or three team members to rely on, delegate to, bounce ideas off, is way more effective towards getting things done, and especially on a schedule.
Yeah there are a bunch of 1 person (or more useful, less than 5 people) teams who find a good amount of success still.
I personally prefer “band-sized” teams (mid single-digit) over solo, I find it a lot easier to stay motivated and easier to achieve high productivity due to more chances for specializations while still being small enough to maintain an “indie feel”.
I believe supercell (hardly an indie) maintain game teams at around 8 during dev and increase up to 17 when live, which is also sorta similar to the size you see in indie teams(f2p/GaaS need a lot more manpower for liveops). They just have a lot of such teams.
Depends on how tightly you are applying that definition. Nothing exists in a vacuum. Games will pretty much always use something created by someone else.
For example: If I pay an artist to do most of the art for my game, did I still make it by myself? What if I pay for music? What about the engine?
Here's some highly successful games that one might argue were created by one person (to varying degrees):
- Minecraft
- Dwarf Fortress
- Kenshi
- Banished
On top of those there's probably an endless list of successful browser and flash games.
