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SOUL PARK (in early access), a themepark "at the gates of hell" management game, releases demo on Steam
(store.steampowered.com)
this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2024
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It is extremely hard. From what I've heard sales of ~10,000 units is considered a strong showing in the indie scene.
The whole market is extremely top heavy. You have have a few big winners that see runway success, a slightly larger group with modest "break even plus" type performance and 10,000 of thousands of indie devs that get no coverage whatsoever. In addition to having a well thought out and implemented concept (which is extremely difficult to do), you need a lot of luck.
IMO, the challenge lies in the lack of discoverability; an extremely difficult challenge for any consumer-facing marketplace. The major consumer stores (Steam, Apple, Google) don't have any real incentive to work on discoverability since it's so hard and they have a quasi-monopoly anyway. The topics-focused independent communities that were big drivers of discoverability (especially in mid-market and niche segments) in the 90s and 2000s are all dead or dying. You do have youtube which offers a modicum of coverage of niche segments, but then we are back to square one; discoverability of mid-market and niche channels. And Google is more focused on engagement ("the next quadrillion customers!1!11") and competing with TikTok, there is simply not enough competition for them to care.
I'm of the impression this is the same dynamics as seen in other competitive appealing activities where almost anybody can join and dream of becoming famous and rich, like starting a band or a YouTube channel, playing sports and - according to Freakonomics - drug dealing. The profit distribution is extremely skewed towards the top, leaving most of the participants with wages well below average.