Indie Bubble?
It's been a year and a bit since the last indie bubble discussion here: http://makegamessa.com/discussion/2060/jeff-vogel-the-indie-bubble-is-popping
I'm wondering what data has come to light since then.
My impression is that things have carried on as they were in 2014. In that there are still a lot of indies being very successful, and becoming very successful continues to require a much more exceptional or well positioned game than it did at the start of the growth of independent games around 2008. The mobile space continues to look scary (but I have very little insight there, so of course it looks scary to me).
I think there may be a market shift away from traditional indie game niches, like retro games. It seems to me that games that share attributes with Minecraft, and games that result in Youtube phenomenon, are still killing it. I think that there is a little bit of a swell in narrative heavy experiences, possibly with indie games eating into some of the time that non-traditional gamers were spending on books.
But there are definitely still indies talking about an indiepocalypse. I'm wondering if they see anything I don't?
Ryan Clark (of Crypt of the Necrodancer) recently wrote an article describing the indiepocalypse as a myth. He focuses on attacking the reasoning of the doom-predictors, so the article is light on counter evidence. You can read his points here: http://gamasutra.com/blogs/RyanClark/20150908/253087/The_5_Myths_of_the_Indiepocalypse.php
I'm wondering what data has come to light since then.
My impression is that things have carried on as they were in 2014. In that there are still a lot of indies being very successful, and becoming very successful continues to require a much more exceptional or well positioned game than it did at the start of the growth of independent games around 2008. The mobile space continues to look scary (but I have very little insight there, so of course it looks scary to me).
I think there may be a market shift away from traditional indie game niches, like retro games. It seems to me that games that share attributes with Minecraft, and games that result in Youtube phenomenon, are still killing it. I think that there is a little bit of a swell in narrative heavy experiences, possibly with indie games eating into some of the time that non-traditional gamers were spending on books.
But there are definitely still indies talking about an indiepocalypse. I'm wondering if they see anything I don't?
Ryan Clark (of Crypt of the Necrodancer) recently wrote an article describing the indiepocalypse as a myth. He focuses on attacking the reasoning of the doom-predictors, so the article is light on counter evidence. You can read his points here: http://gamasutra.com/blogs/RyanClark/20150908/253087/The_5_Myths_of_the_Indiepocalypse.php
Comments
Don't be ignorant, just apply the same scepticism to bad news you do to good news.
Doesn't fit very well into any particular category/genre. Gameplay is akin to visual novels, but since the art style is painterly with 3D and cheese instead of anime, it's less likely to find an audience there. It also is technically a "Twine game" but not likely to find an audience there because those are generally more popular in the "personal game" scene or more artsy, whereas TME is rather light in tone (no seriously, there's full on slapstick in act 2). There are elements of point & click adventures in it, but it's not exactly that either, plus indie adventure games tend to do better if the graphics are third-person, with pixel-art and done in a LucasArts throwback style.
It's short. The full game, all three parts, is basically around 5 hours worth of game. Node-based movement means not much padding due to walking and light/casual puzzles means it's friction-free.
It's episodic. Unless you're Telltale, people generally hate that.
Yet it found an audience. Not enough to make a living off, but that was never the point. If it were a full time project, we could have rolled out the full thing in a few short months, and the earnings so far is far above what has been put in.
Point? Probably none. But even focusing on all the reasons it should not have worked, it still did, even when adding the supposed bubblepopalypse to the mix.
Some games succeed, others fail. Some do well immediately, others take time. Some don't make money, but serve towards building an audience that you can count on for future releases. Some really phenomenal games will never sell more than 100 copies. Sure, the market is changing, tastes change, stores change, audiences change, but when has this ever not been true?
If you think this market is harsh, try going back to the mid-early 1980s.
I also wrote something on that SteamSpy graph all the Indiepocalypse articles refer to.
In that, he chooses the point of "We are going to have another 1983 American video game crash" to argue against. But the people talking about the indiepocalypse (like Jeff Vogel) are not expecting anything nearly as dramatic.
I mean Jeff Vogel's logic of "X dollar market divided by Y developers, with the Y constantly increasing" isn't really a message of doom, but of increased hardship.
I'm not saying Jeff Vogel (and his ilk) are necessarily right. But they are far more moderate in their assessment than Retro Remakes characterizes them (many of the pessimists are talking more about an App Store situation and not a crash at all).
I'm not saying Rob Fearon is wrong either. In fact I feel he's right. Just he's arguing against a straw man.
@garethf Yeah! I think what you wrote makes a lot of sense.
What do you think that Free Lives has been doing that has contributed to an unhealthy bubble locally? Are you saying that making games in South Africa is unsustainable, and that we've been championing a treacherous path?
If we are harming the chances of other developers by stealing their spotlight, what should we do to sort this out?
People WANT to see them. We want to see what they're up to.
The fascinating thing is that the industry didn't die, it got bigger. It has become an entire area of subset expertise and you can even do a degree in 3D visualization! It has changed vastly since those early days, however it is still around and generates billions of dollars for the architectural industry. it didn't die; it changed.
I'm sure this surprises nobody. In another unsurprising reveal, their actual account is also known. Carry on with your lives :)
Sure, listening to concerns and the like is admirable, but all you're seeing there is @BlackShipsFilltheSky being really good at handling some massively hostile criticism. The troll doesn't deserve to be treated like they're valuable because our other members are awesome people.
Now, can we let this be the last off topic trollfood post please?
At no point did I say that person deserved to be treated like etc etc etc.
But that's moot since it's off-topic. Onwards to on-topic. Yay on-topic.
The basic argument of X income over Y developers feels to me like one of the core things people are worried about - I know it's something I've certainly thought about. I feel like this is kinda a tough one (assuming you want game dev to be financially sustainable). It feels like Y is currently just too big - there are too many people trying to make games and expecting to live off of it, and not enough X to go around.
It kinda feels like the spectrum of developers, from the "complete noobs" to the "elite veterans", is so "smooth" that it makes it difficult for anyone starting out to figure out where they stand and what it takes to get to a point where it's sustainable for them. My feeling (without much justification) is that this smoothness will fade away as people start to find "real jobs" and you'll end up with a bimodal distribution - concentrations of amateurs and professionals. We see this with the AAA scene of course, but the relatively recent improvement of tools has made it much easier to get into that upper concentration, so hoards of people are trying and smoothing things out.
I figure in a few years things will settle a bit and we'll end up with a stronger distinction, but obviously much "wider" at the upper side. This is all a super unsubstantiated opinion (and an effort to restart the discussion cause I'm interested in hearing other people's thoughts), so perhaps it sounds like nonsense to most (in which case it probably is), but perhaps it rings true with some...
On a somewhat related note, after the success of Braid I'm keen to see how The Witness fares. I feel like it'll be a good case study for this all.
I'm not certain how much can be drawn from that game, it's got a huge amount of fame behind it (which Braid didn't have to begin with) and it's going to have all the press attention and support from platform holders that goes along with that. Both the Witness and Braid have puzzles at the core of them, but one is a 2D platformer and one is a First Person experience.
I think releasing Braid today would be less successful than Braid was in 2008, but not massively less successful, because while the competition in 2015 is greater, so has the size of the audience (Fez performed similarly well to Braid in 2012, I suspect the big difference in 2015 would be if the new consoles are more hostile to indie platform-puzzle games, which I have no data on). At the same time First Person Puzzlers appear to be trending upwards in the second half of this decade, especially when both the writing and puzzles are excellent, so I'd expect The Witness to be landing in some quite fertile territory, assuming it hits the right notes.
I guess if The Witness did flop that'd surprise me. I don't think it'll have the impact of Braid, but I'd expect it to do substantially better than The Talos Principle (given all its advantages and that, as far as I can tell, it looks like an excellent game), which means it'd probably be making the same kind of sales figures as Braid did. I could be totally wrong of course, needless to say I'm watching it.
@francoisvn What are your predictions then? What would you be watching for?
And is it the case that you think this is an interesting case study because it compares two excellent games made 7-8 years apart? (I mean, a lot of the talk about the indiepocalypse is concerned with how many failures vs how many successes, and there doesn't seem to be much data on whether it's getting harder to create a successful game in the first place).
@Tuism Yeah, I would have loved to have learnt more. I understand the need for things not devolving into a pile of shit though.
I think The Witness will probably reach most of its market and a lot more than that. I think this could have a mixed outcome, with a lot of comparison likely being made with Braid. Where the comparison of Talos Principle and Serious Sam was more to highlight their difference, The Witness and Braid have very similar styles. I think this might work to the detriment of The Witness, especially if it doesn't deliver on the expectations, which is super difficult to do when you're also actively building up marketing hype. I not saying I disagree with their strategy, but I'm keen to see the reaction. Definitely this too. I agree that The Witness is unlikely to flop, but I think it could be a middling success if it's not as good as Braid was. I guess I'm gonna be watching to see how much it gets compared to Braid, and if that seems to impact sales. I also think the worst realistic outcome for The Witness will probably describe it as some sort of success, so it should confirm that things aren't as luck-based as some people make things out to be.
I was very disappointed with Satellite reign because it hyped and promised to be the spiritual successor of Syndicate Wars. The video was very convincing... and so I bought it, downloaded it and was promptly disappointed . To me, it failed so hard on its promise that I haven't even bothered to play a second session.
That's a very personal perspective... but with that instance I can certainly appreciate the point you are making. Game already bought, but by the time I realize it fails, I've already played over the refund window.
It's clear though, to hype or not to hype isn't a "choice" really, it's not like you can decide on it like deciding on what to have for lunch :)
The music industry has constantly changed over the years and I think it's safe to assume our industry will do so too.
Just the other day I had to wiki what the hell an "idle" game was... :-) I love the way there's constantly new and fresh ideas and trends to be explored - seemingly more so by the indie than the AAA.
I have always been slow to pickup on the latest trends, so I find @BlackShipsFilltheSky comment about a possible "narrative" trend seeming likely and the reasons behind it fascinating.
So I think the indie bubble will burst then grow, then pop, then expand, then shrink...
Funny thing is that without subscribing to the hype, the game is actually pretty good, better than Syndicate Wars and in line with the original Syndicate, they were trying to go back to the roots and they nearly succeeded. Would the game be as good if I was following the dev and subscribed to the hype, not sure.
It might not even be possible to beat an original game in the eyes of the player, it's very psychological and personal attachment to a game that you spent many hours on in your youth.
You can form a narrative around any outcome (The Witness does better than/the same as/worse than Braid), but statistically it's meaningless. There's no real conclusion you can come to from so small a data set.
The best cricketer in the world will occasionally miss a pitch, only long term analysis can reveal whether a miss is noise or a trend.
And here ends my ability to form sports metaphors.
But a much bigger picture is needed to draw conclusions like whether there is an indie bubble. I'm not certain anyone actually has that data... The data released by Steamspy that has been fueling speculation is as meaningless (in this regard) as you pointed out in your blog...
So I noticed it wasn't posted here, but Jeff Vogel posted an update fairly recently: http://gamasutra.com/blogs/JeffVogel/20150910/253279/The_Indie_Bubble_Revisited_or_Are_We_All_TotallyDoomed_or_Just_RegularDoomed.php
I quite like Jeff's recent article, but perhaps that's mostly cause it aligns with my own thoughts. I like how he goes against some of the currently-repeated advice, like "focus more on PR." What are others' thought on this article?
There was also this follow-up article by Ryan Clark about how he picks designs: http://gamasutra.com/blogs/RyanClark/20150917/253842/What_Makes_an_Indie_Hit_How_to_Choose_the_Right_Design.php
Ryan's article is interesting, but I don't agree with everything he says there. I feel like he makes some things sound a bit too simple and puts perhaps a bit too much effort on very few factors where so many more factors also come into play. Nonetheless a good read.
I can accept the core of the Jeff Vogel article, that things might get tougher for indies. But I don't feel like I have data either for or against. I've been expecting the conditions for indie success to become more difficult for years, so Jeff's pessimism is similar to my own, but my pessimism is based off of different reasons to what Jeff is giving (and so my solutions are different).
Like @garethf wrote here, that Steamspy data that Jeff is drawing from probably doesn't mean what he thinks it does.
I doubt Jeff's prediction that indie ambitions and budgets will grow more modest, there's no sign of this yet as far as I am aware. But I think that indies will continue to survive at both ends of the spectrum, the small ones like Spiderweb Software, and the bigger ones like Klei. I also doubt there is going to be a reversal to the trend of indies spending money on PR (but again, this never included all indies).
Not sure if there were other takeaways from the Jeff Vogel article that you thought were pertinent that I might be missing?
On the other hand, I agree with everything that Ryan Clark wrote. He does adopt a bit of the language of an "ideas guy". But we know that he properly prototypes and tests his ideas, that he is cautious about investing into his ideas, and he's got 10+ years experience to execute on his ideas reliably (at which point it makes some sense to adopt the view that ideas themselves are valuable, even if I'd never phrase it like that).
@francoisvn What do you feel that Ryan Clark is oversimplifying?
I somehow missed @garethf's article, sorry! I had a look at it now, and I agree that those graphs don't mean the things people often directly attribute to them. I do still think some of the conclusions incorrectly drawn from those graphs are sensible though.
Considering the X/Y situation, that 2nd graph does show how Y is increasing (as mentioned, we already know this) and the first one kinda shows that X is remaining mostly constant. Of course this means that X/Y is gonna decrease, but as @garethf pointed out, does that make a difference? The skew towards the top games is definitely more, but is it enough to make the situation effectively the same? I'd argue that the situation is significantly different. I think if discovery was a solved problem the situations would be the same (and I'm all for that), but until that happens (if it does) I think it's a bit more tough to make games. Of course I think a bigger issue with using those graphs to draw conclusions is that they're only for Steam, but I don't have a better alternative to base things on.
If I go back to my thinking about the distribution of developers on the spectrum of success, I feel like a healthy situation is one where you have a fairly steep drop-off from the professional side to the amateur side of things (whereas now it's much more of a smooth drop-off, or none at all). I think this helps give people some guidance and direction because there is a semi-known quantity they can compare themselves with. I feel like the only way to survive at the start of the professional side will be with small lean teams, but that's where some of the more interesting work will be. This is really all speculation based on my very limited economic understanding, and I should probably draw a graph or two to explain myself a bit better. Might try find a moment to do that. but see my super awesome graph below for clarification.
On Jeff's first point, "More People Need To Abandon Their Dreams": I feel like this is something a lot of people are still woefully optimistic about. Even with the significantly reduced living costs in SA, making money from indie games is super tough. I shudder to think about trying to budget for a game in the US. If we have a move to a more bimodal distribution of developers on the spectrum of success, I feel like a lot of them will be more realistic about making games as amateurs. I think this will be a two-fold benefit: 1) fewer people will run out of money and 2) if amateurs are more realistic about not doing it for money, they might create more interesting games/work.
On PR: I do feel like the current trend of almost always telling failed projects they need to do PR better will change. Like Jeff pointed out, when people don't put much money into PR and they aren't successful, it's often said they need to do PR better even if it realistically wouldn't help, whereas a lot of people put a lot of money into PR and it doesn't pan out for them. I don't think there will be a complete reversal, but I think it'll become a bit more "researched" and people will be able to make some more educated decisions about how to spend on PR. Might be a bit optimistic here.
I think my main concern with Ryan's article was the notion that "ideas are valuable." I don't really disagree with what he said, more just the emphasis he placed on things.
EDIT: I created a super legit graph to explain my thought:
This shows what I think the current expectation of financial success is, vs how I predict things will look after the dust has settled. Obviously not to scale and other disclaimers apply ;)
I have heard anecdotal evidence that indies are doing okay on console, which of course is still a walled-garden and is only affecting platform-holder's choice indies.
By "bimodal distribution" are you talking about amateurs and professionals evaluating/receiving success differently? I might have lost you here.
I agree that PR for indies is currently very amateurish, full of superstitious nonsense and blaming the gods. I think some indies end up spending way too much on their marketing, and some indies not nearly enough. I'm optimistic like you about this, seems like a thing indies as a collective will eventually figure out.
I was a bit put off by Jeff Vogel bringing up the story of N++. The developers of N++ publicly complained about not knowing enough journalists to get articles written about their game, which is weirdly misguided (though I can understand their trauma of having their 5 years of development not panning out into the success they expected), and irresponsible seeing as they're spreading their misunderstandings about how PR works for indie games. And Jeff Vogel is further amplifying their message.
Yeah, I presumed that valuing ideas was the part that sounded off. I don't think I can agree that ideas are as valuable as he says until they've been tested. But he doesn't elaborate at all on how he generates ideas, or what he considers an idea (like was the first prototype of Crypt of the Necrodancer still an "idea"?), so I was giving him the benefit of the doubt.
What is happening in the middle of the prediction graph, where there are no developers expecting the success of the order of magnitude perfectly between amateur and professional?
I think what you've written about the graph, and what is written on the graph contradict each other... or at the very least confuse me.
Does "degree of success" indicate the candidate's previous success (and is related to their expectation of future financial success) or is the "degree of success" the degree of success that differing numbers of candidates expect?
Maybe I don't love graphs :/
I feel like the solution to this is another graph.
Is this a bit like the Dunning-Kruger effect combined with market realities? i.e.
I mean this mixed with the fact that it is clear in all marketplaces that only a small percentage of games make most of the money.
As for the part in the middle where there is a void of developers (we can call this the "economic trough of games"): this might not be a realistic depiction (now or in the future), but it's about expectations. In my hopeful prediction, there are bunches of amateurs making games. Some of them are making some money and fall more to the right, while others aren't really making anything. Those on the right might be tempted to try move further to the right, but perhaps they don't have the time and hopefully they are aware of the hurdles to go "full-time". In reality, that gap should probably be much wider, but it's a rough non-linear not-to-scale graph ;)
Does that help, or should I try draw a better graph?
EDIT: missed your update with the graph. Yeah, I think "Dunning-Kruger effect combined with market realities" is not too far off from what I'm thinking. The one difference is I'm thinking more about people's view and expectations about the financial side of things, not necessarily their actual skills.
Game development is ONLY an international economy, but it can be a local hobby.
There is a bit of a different ecosystem in South Africa to the rest of the world. The sales all happen internationally, but the resources are all spent here. That's true of any country. I guess I'm saying it's possible for South Africa to have more of or less of an indie bubble than the rest of the world from a supply side. If it is less sustainable making games in South Africa then the bubble would be more pronounced, although I suspect the opposite is true.
@BlackShipsFilltheSky yes you have it correct, and I agree with you.
Locally our living costs are good compared to the rest of the world, but living is never cheap. Especially depending on your own life responsibilities, etc. and what others got dependent on you to provide. It seesm to me (a bit off topic) that even if you have a great game (for which you need mad skills, timing and opportunity on your side), you still need a rare skill of being able to build a community! Especially since we do not have the resources to (nor probably want to) buy users. Typical of mobile markets, with free to play strategies.
Locally we have a specific costs, but not much potential for revenue. Limited revenue is available in terms of contract work yes, but again more is internationally and you can earn better per hour with exchange rates.
Warning: Offtopic game business rant:
Selling an 'Indie" game, without a marketing budget and without a long list of PR contacts, you can only do so internationally - still very difficult. Steam is attractive for its 'premuim' market value. {PC players seem willing to pay for games} and it is easier to develop for PC. This is why I feel the need to test this next.
HTML5 wise there was absolutely a bubble end last year internationally, probably due to the disillusionment settling in:
Referring to the technology hype cycle curve. Where publishers where tired of all the same small sh... poor content, and realised they can just buy each other out and get all the content, without having to go to each indie developer and setup complex contracts with each one...
Gartner also says mobile games is fastest growing segment and in total size in game markets, and in contrast to what local indie game developers say (directly to me when I ask them), they predict PC games market to grow smaller and lose traction due to mobile platforms and popularity taking over households as new devices. Due to convenience, etc. See article here.
This is alarming to me as a new ignorant indie games developer (started march 2014), since I cannot compete in mobile the premium sales via Steam is attractive. Now Gartner basically says it is a fools game, to plan long term for PC. So maybe it depends on where we set our goals.
But it does seem that there is only 2 valid business cases at the moment:
1. Work and make prototypes part time while maintaining a solid day job, try and sell on PC. Build community buy giving away free games first on all platforms until you have a big enough community to launch to. Then launch a new IP to same people, and hope they are as loyal raging fans with wallets as you believe.
2. Do contract work, stay platform (hardware) agnostic, let clients pay you to learn (from their guesses) and improve your skills. This case has the dis-advantage of low income guaranteed, but could be sustainable depending on your lifestyle.
Probably why most people / companies are adopting both strategies, with ultimate goal to build their own IP.
I feel at a cross roads now. Yes of course do prototype, but should I aim for PC? I want to. Problem is nobody can time a market, and at the end with enough time if we have a great game we should test it on all platforms and try to keep the turn around time about 1/2 of what it takes to develop it. So go on, go do the impossible! "Wie is bang!"
But, yes if you want to make money for games, you will have to make it predominately internationally. However since we rely on word of mouth at the start, the local community needs to embrace you first and stand as a good testing ground for your ideas.
EDIT:
More recent Gartner statistics:
1. Slowdown in PC sales (more concerning check the low total volumes!)
..let us hope Steam can port all our PC games to mobile and still charge a premium...that is if you do place your hope in others.
Making things for a niche allows you to build things for very specific market segments, not the entire market that's using a particular device or whatever... If you're delivering something that segment can't get elsewhere (from AAA or other games that don't speak to them or service their needs as well) then you can afford to put less production time into the costlier parts of your development (whatever that might be for you personally).
The thing that made niche games profitable is global digital distribution: The number of hardcore text-based mystery players (for example) in any one geographical area is going to be pretty tiny, you'd starve if you tried to sell hardcore text-based mystery games for a living in plastic bags at the mall... But if you could collect all of those players together across the entire globe, then selling your game to even a fraction of them makes financial sense. The niche is going to buy things that service them whatever the platform might be - you shouldn't be trying to target something as nonsensical as "the PC owning niche of game players" because that's weaksauce, you're never going to be able to communicate strongly with any of them with such bland targeting.
It seems to me that the questions we should be asking about game development are: What under-served niches can I build great things for? (What gaps are other developers leaving?) How well does this game communicate with that niche? (Are people having strong reactions to this game?) How much of that niche can I currently reach? (If your niche is tree-dwelling pygmies that really like blowdart mechanics, maybe don't try to sell them a PS4 version of your game) And how much does that niche communicate amongst themselves about new things they like? (How likely are they to spread your game to each other)
The order that these questions get answered in is not important. Sometimes a game finds a niche by accident and then grows to service that market. Other times a dev is targeted firmly at a niche from day 1 and then grow their skills over multiple games to be able to service that audience. Still other times a game will simply happen, but build its own niche audience that didn't exist before... But if you look at every local game development success story, you see a game that occupies a niche and speaks passionately to an audience, not to the entire globe at large.
Identify your audience, then speak to them. Use whatever hardware your audience uses. Trying to guess what's going to happen with hardware in the future is looking at success the wrong way around, that's how you get these random bloatware games built for nobody in particular all over the app store, bought by nobody in particular.
Indies all over the world (not just in South Africa) are in the business of finding the people who will madly love their game. If you don't know who that is, well, that's a problem.
Also, the natural alternative to PC is not mobile. Different markets, generally different types of games with some overlap. (and Steam doesn't port games - unless I don't understand what ye be saying)
This talk scared the crap out of me. Does anyone have any positive news ?
When I was starting out learning game dev in Uni, back in the days when Dexterity was the big indie success everyone knew, there was the expectation that you'd likely fail and fail a lot, before you might stumble onto something that did kinda ok.
Nowadays, and maybe I'm being a bit of a curmudgeon here, it seems like a lot of devs finish their first game and have it sink unnoticed, or have a game that flops when they were expecting it to do well, and immediately take to Gamasutra to write about "what it all means" for the industry, usually some variant of the Indiepocalypse.
Maybe I'm just imagining it, but it seems like the expectation that it's going to be a struggle and you are going to face a lot of failure has been lost a bit.
Also, in my day, we had to walk uphill in the snow both ways to hear Rami Ismail talks. ;)
A few years ago I decided to become a game developer. I can't recall how hard I thought it would be, quite early on I knew it'd be an epic, but I've been working relentlessly since then in order to acquire the skills to make games I would consider a success. I feel like I have had some successes, but I don't feel confident that I can be successful reliably, nor do I know if I can be successful from my current position.
My solution to my uncertainties this is what it has always been: To keep on improving my process of game development while acquiring skills and knowledge.
I'd agree with Rami that whether or not developing games is more difficult than 5 years ago is irrelevant (personally I haven't seen convincing evidence of it becoming more difficult). What's important is that its definitely super difficult with only a fraction of devs succeeding (let alone devs releasing their first game).
Nevertheless I do think indie devs have it A LOT easier than many other creative professions (like fine artists, musicians or film makers).
For me, Dune had it right: "Fear is the Mind-Killer".
I find fear paralyzing, personally. So instead I try to (through self-talk, reframing etc) work from a place of happy zen. When you expect an outcome, you start being afraid of not achieving that outcome. So instead I try not to expect a positive outcome (though I'd like it to happen), instead focusing my mind on enjoying the process/being happy with my work.
So, for example, not expecting System Crash to sell well (because then I become anxious that it won't sell well), but taking my sense of fulfillment/joy from having built something cool and learning new stuff along the way.
That's what works for me. It's probably very dependent on the individual. I also don't know what will happen to that philosophy once I grow my company, go full time and have people relying on me. Can I not worry about the outcome when people are depending on me to feed them and their family? Eek!
Just not gonna worry about that right now. Zen. ;)