Post
Make the game you love, or make the game that pays rent -- the eternal indie dev tug-of-war.
Every indie developer eventually faces the tension between creative vision and financial reality. The dream is making your deeply personal narrative art game, but the market might only reward another roguelike deckbuilder. Some devs find a way to thread the needle -- Hollow Knight is both a passion project and a massive commercial hit. Others fund their art games by making commercial ones first, or find niches where passion and profit overlap. The healthiest approach is usually radical honesty about your goals: are you making art, building a business, or trying to do both?
Example
Lucas Pope made Papers, Please -- a game about checking passports at a dystopian border crossing -- which sounds uncommercial on paper but sold millions because the passion behind it created something genuinely unique that players had never experienced before.
Why it matters
Understanding this tension early saves developers from burnout and financial ruin. The best indie careers are built by people who find sustainable ways to fund the projects they care about most.
Related concepts