Posted December 14, 2022 by PIZZAPRANKS
So closes another (calendar) year of Indiepocalypse and I find myself with another year-in-review trying to figure out what this year meant to me.
This year more than any other affirmed that I don't know how to stop publishing Indiepocalypse each month and frankly don't want to. What would I even do with the time! But more on all that all later, first comes the very exciting numbers.
If you are reading this and aren't quite sure what Indiepocalypse is, there's a starter guide. The short version is that it's a monthly anthology of alternative games. I use "alternative" as my current descriptor for "art", "non-commercial", "bedroom dev", or whatever word makes the most sense to you. I also prefer the term "zine", as I find it to be more aesthetically in line with Indiepocalypse, but know that this is in fact a collection of games you can download and play.
(also, everyone involved gets paid for their work and game developers get royalties)
Total itch stats
Up first are my overall stats from itch. It doesn't really say much about 2022 but so far as I can tell there's no easy what to get these numbers on a date-range basis. Plus, I just have zero sense of what are "good" or even "typical" numbers on itch so I hope in talking more about it, people will get the urge to share theirs.
2022 Views
Last 30 day referrals
In the last 30 days the main traffic comes from itch's main page. Like any other storefront being on the front page helps! It's much harder to tell if sales come from those views or from a more dedicated newsletter/social media/whatever audience, but there's no way all that extra traffic can hurt. But how does that actually break down into a per issue basis?
Issues by views
The top issue again is #4, most certainly because it was included in the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality. The next highest is the very first(?) "Indiepocalypse Presents" issue, Indie Tsushin. And that makes sense because it easily packages games that are much harder to come across outside of Japan (a "unique selling point", as they say) and that issue is real cool! Indie Tsushin is the first guest edited issue of Indiepocalypse, organized by Nice Gear Games and showing off a collection of Japanese indie games. The goal was to help someone else through this indie game zine process (and cover the contributor costs) and show that if I can do this, surely anyone else can. It's even spawned two offshoots, Indie Tsushin and douZINE. It's everything I could have ever wanted.
Issues by sales
On the sales side, Indie Tsushin ranks a bit lower but Indiepocalypse is never strictly about sales (though they're nice to have). I don't accidentally link from the Indiepocalypse store pages to each individual developer's pages where you can often play the games for free. Indiepocalypse is meant to be a library as much as it is a storefront.
The top issue (I'll get to the pledge bundles in a second) is Indiepocalypse #34, the issue that in fact cost me $0 to produce. Indiepocalypse #34 was sponsored in full by Ranged Touch, making it, by default, the first profitable issue. Greedy of it that is also the highest selling issue imo. But in all seriousness it shows the strength of giving people a platform and the power of the "active" endorsement (actively saying "i like this" as opposed to just sharing something). Perhaps the first case of money ever trickling down.
I cannot understate the Sylvie Bump™ either. Regular promotion from Indiepocalypse #34's commissioned contributor sylvie brought people to not only buy the issue but also subscribe to the patreon. You can even see up above that the prelease "game isn't out yet but you can get it in Indiepocalypse" store page for Sylvie Lime (which you can play for free now and should) is one of the highest ranking referrers!
Now back to the pledge drives. Every 10 issues on the 10's (starting with Indiepocalypse #20) I've been hosting an 8 hour pledge drive/livestream. The first ran for approximately the length of the show and the second, for the whole month. That the second did worse than the first with ~30x the running time is something that I don't have a clear explanation for, though I think it has to do with both an itch sale and my "airline lost my luggage" sale happening relatively close to it.
But this is all money coming in, what does it look like with money going out?
2020
2021
2022 (up to December 12th)
Much worse. But you can't say those numbers aren't going up! But again! If you turn them into percentages (459.01%, 177.88%, 150.95%) I am losing less money each year. But where does this money come from and where does it all go?
2022 Income
Before talking about the obvious sources I want to talk more about consignment and event sales. This year (I think? What is time really?) I started the Pizza Pranks Consignment Shop where, for a one time buy-in (to cover print costs), I would sell people's games on consignment at every event I attend. I still don't know if there exists the zine-fair/indie comics show equivalent for games where alternative games could thrive, but I think there could be! (There is also your local art market, but then you have the problem of the dreaded and all too common "I don't play video games", with your cries of "these aren't games like you think they are!" falling on an uncaring audience)
That aside, most of the money for Indiepocalypse comes from itch (makes sense, since it's the only place I sell it) but Patreon provides a steadier income for each individual issue. And since I count patreon as 'sales' it also provides each issue with a steady bit of royalties regardless of how well they actually sell.
2022 Expenses
And speaking of royalties, look at those things! About half of my total expenses! And another ~$9k goes into the production of the zine. If you exclude the trips and "airline lost my luggage" reprinting costs, 95~98% of my expenses are payments going to developers. Which is kind of the point of this whole thing! And "what is the point of this whole thing" is something I've really had to reconnect to in 2022
For about two years each release of Indiepocalypse was paired with a press release as one releasing a video game project often does. Aside from the important facts, these tended to be varied, ranging from following the exact advice of game press to dumb bullshit to entertain myself. I must emphasize that I'm fairly certain I mostly wrote these for myself. By the time I stopped sending press releases, of the 165 press/writers/anything-close-I-could-find, only 13 answered. (So far as my contact list shows, those some people that responded I believe predate that list) At the start, many of these were earnest attempts to find writers and outlets who I thought would be interested, but when plenty of places with "indie" in their site name or mission statement never respond to you, you just start trying everywhere and keep adding people to the more generic monthly press release.
The true death knell for Indiepocalypse's press life came in two parts. The first was a pondering on twitter (not from me) about "why don't more people cover Indiepocalypse" which led to a wider discussion (discourse, if you will) and entire article about indie coverage, both which shed any reference to Indiepocalypse. The second was a review that referenced experimental indie anthologies, which was surely Indiepocalypse's time to shine. (it was not)
For the first time I started thinking about why inso desperately needed Indiepocalypse to receive coverage, festival acceptances, or really any outside validation. And honestly it was really the beginning of me developing a healthier relationship with Indiepocalypse.
I've been quite negative about my realtionship to Indiepocalypse in the past. Though I mostly tried to focus that on my own perceived failings with selling Indiepocalypse to a wider audience, Indiepocalypse (and by extension, it's contributors) couldn't escape that negativity. Somewhere along the way I lost the point of why I was even releasing it.
From the outset, Indiepocalypse was scoped so that it would it could exist even if nobody bought it. But people did buy it and it got me thinking that it could actually be something. Truly, the worst thought that ever entered my brain was that Indiepocalypse had to be Something. Indiepocalypse went from a project that I was thrilled (and surprised) existed at all, to something that would never be good enough.
The games, the zine, and every other part of it has always been more than good enough, but I was letting this idea that it wasn't selling well enough, it wasn't getting enough coverage, wasn't Part of the Conversation, drag me down. But does it need to be The Indie Thing or even An Indie Thing? I don't think so!
Indiepocalypse doesn't need to be industry defining. It doesn't need to be front of mind. It doesn't even need to be a perfect or best version of the indie game zine/anthology! This year I've been reevaluating my relationship to art, or more accurately, realizing how much my relationship to art didn't match how I felt about Indiepocalypse. Mostly in terms of how I felt Indiepocalypse needed to be "successful" in the very traditional commercial sense.
For the last two year-in-reviews and in the ways I often talk about Indiepocalypse I've framed it as successful in existing/having good games but a failure financially, culturally, and it most other ways. But that's simply not true! (well, maybe financially it's true) So much of that sentiment relies on me constantly shifting my goals and metrics or reading things in the worst way so that I could justify perceiving my own failures.
If someone ever covered/talked about it, I could always just look to all the people who haven't and likely never will. There is always more space to undercut yourself and I am an expert at wriggling into that space. But I'm tired of that space and the bitterness and the frustration over my own imagined problems. And having other people to talk to this about has done wonders. (I tend to keep to myself which is great for ignoring the time/social toll would take but bad for getting out my own head)
As I was building the store pages to sell Indiepocalypse on my own site (soon?) and working through every game released in Indiepocalypse I was reminded how much I love these games. Indiepocalypse is and always has been the thing I wanted it to be, something that would fill me with the excitement I feel buying way too many comics at a show like MICE, or being a real bandcamp daily freak.
Indiepocalypse doesn't need to be some landmark release that game culture flocks around. If it helps any one person connect with any one of these games, I couldn't be happier. Any amount of money that goes to contributors is money more than well spent.
For the first time in a long time, I've stepped outside of Indiepocalypse, looked at everything I've helped put together in these three years and felt deeply, truly satisfied without reservation.
The "Why Doesn't it Connect" Addendum It didn't fit in and I generally didn't want to focus on this idea of why Indiepocalypse has caught on much because it doesn't need to have broad appeal and it doesn't matter if it doesn't. But, in the interest of this being more post-mortemy I have a couple ideas.
These reasons are at best pointless conjecture based on a feeling and at worst desperately looking for excuses. But if someone were to ask me "why do think the zine hasn't broadly, as they say, 'caught on'?" that's the best answer I've got? I really don't worry a out it too much anymore.