Game Dev

Dev making MILLIONS with simple strategy

What I'm going to write here might seem repetitive if you follow a lot of my stuff since I'm going to, once again, praise the benefits of making small games.

This is actually a case study on a developer (Rogue Duck Interactive) that I discovered that is using the small games strategy to massive success! In the past year they have published 12 games that have made over $4 million!

And let me very quickly address a comment that I always get when I talk about small games, it's always something like "small games equal slop! You can't make something good in 3-6 months!", that comment is just 100% false. It's all dependent on the devs skills (and team size). With a skilled group of devs you can absolutely make an excellent game in 3-6 months. Case in point, this studio is pumping out lots of games AND they all have Very Positive reviews, players love these games! These are made quickly but they are definitely NOT slop.

There's not much public info about this studio, on LinkedIn it appears they have 20 employees so this is why they can publish lots of games in such a short timeframe, I would guess they have multiple teams working on multiple games at the same time.

Some of their Games:

• Cardboard Town -> Aug 2023, $1.2m

• Dice & Fold -> Jun 2024, $990k

• Lost but Found -> Nov 2024, $880k

• Stellar Settlers -> Feb 2025, $250k

• Kingdom's Deck -> Apr 2025, $195k

• Ship, Inc. -> Jun 2025, $550k

Naturally not every game is a hit, some games only sell a couple hundred or low thousand copies, but still since they make so many unique games so quickly they don't need every game to be a hit. Each game gives you another chance at finding success and with more games published per year (by being small games) you have more shots on goal and more hits over time, that’s a core part of the small games strategy.

The reason why I discovered this developer is because I regularly check the Steam new releases to make my Top New Steam Games lists every month, and I noticed something interesting, several games across several months seemed to have both interesting concepts and similar artwork. I was researching the top new releases of June and found Ship, Inc. which I thought looked gorgeous and similar to another game from a few months ago called Lost but Found.

And yup this is another part of this strategy that this dev is doing very successfully, reusing assets (and I'm guessing tools/code) from previous games to make the next game faster.

So this is why I will keep singing the praises of small games until the end of time, not only is it an excellent strategy for learning very quickly, it is also a very profitable strategy if you combine it with good marketing and good game ideas.

In terms of marketing, like I said they have basically 0 social media presence so it's all based on organic Steam traffic from what I can tell. The store page is launched and 3 months later the game is published. This strategy works if you have a good hooky idea and nice visuals, like Lost but Found and Ship, Inc. which are both very visually interesting games and interesting unique game ideas.

Ship, Inc. gathered 15k wishlists in 3 months, Lost but Found got about 10k in 3 months. Their Upcoming Releases list already has about 20 games, several of which I am confident will be hits.

Another studio making a similar strategy that has been going on for years is the Sokpop Collective, they've been making unique games, one per month, for literally years. They have 111 published games on Steam with $11.4 million in lifetime gross revenue. Although in this case one month does feel like it is too small, I believe they would have a lot more hits with a 3-6 month dev cycle which would allow for more polished/complex games and longer marketing lead time, but they're clearly doing great!

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Tech

AWS CEO says replacing juniors with AI is "dumb"

AI hype has been very high for a very long time. There's billions of dollars being spent, lots of executives talking about how it will change the world, make everyone more efficient and replace lots of workers. And then there are people like myself that see AI as a tool to work with you, rather than replace you. CEOs say things like "you can just tell AI to make my Netflix and it does! Why do I need engineers?" and yet any decent programmer will tell you that's not reality.

So it was interesting to read an interview that the Amazon Web Services CEO did with a big AI investor where he says how replacing all junior developers at a company is "the dumbest thing I've ever heard". He mentions how junior devs are the least expensive and the most engaged with AI tools and how if you replace them with AI then in 10 years you won't have senior devs. He also mentions how it's very dumb to measure how good AI is by the percentage of code it contributes, which of course is really dumb since Lines of Code is always a terrible metric and not a proxy for productivity at all. Fewer lines of code is often better than more.

This is a surprisingly level-headed take from a big tech company CEO which is great to see! He still recommends you learn about AI but (like I say) to use it as a tool to help you rather than replace you.

Also recent news related to AI hype is Meta is freezing all AI hiring due to fears of being in a bubble. And a recent study found that 95% of companies saw zero return on $30 billion of AI investment.

Is the AI bubble finally popping?

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Gaming

Silksong finally has a release date!

Team Cherry has emerged from the shadows after literally years of silence and Hollow Knight: Silksong finally has a release date! It will be launching on all platforms on September 4th including day one on Xbox Game Pass!

This is possibly the most anticipated Indie Game of all time. In just 2 days they have 4 million views on the release trailer! That's insane! And on Steam they have around 4 million wishlists, this will undoubtedly be one of the most successful indie games of all time.

The trailer is very gameplay heavy (always awesome!) and showcases a ton of content, lots of areas and literally hundreds of bosses, this is a huge game.

There's also an interview on Bloomberg where they talk about development and explain how despite the supposedly long dev cycle it didn't really go through "development hell". It's really just a case of a small team with big ambitions and making those a reality just takes a long time.

Another game also published some big news, Escape from Tarkov is hitting 1.0 on the 15th of November.

Fun

Steam page opening ceremony!

Launching the Steam page for your game is a big step! That's when the game finally goes public and the big challenge of gathering wishlists begins, so this is something you should celebrate and promote!

One dev did a really clever thing to promote it, made a fun video cutting a ribbon for their store page.

It's very silly but very fun and got hundreds of upvotes and a couple hundred wishlists.

Now I don't necessarily think you should copy this, it's a gimmick that likely only works once, but this is a reminder that you can be creative with marketing even on simple things like announcing your Steam store page.