I get the feel that green light will have broken that now as there is a tsunami of crap on steam now, most indie.

That's not relevant. It doesn't hurt anyone for those extra games to be on there because they're rarely making it to the front page at all.

Also, this makes the fallacious assumption that 'my' work is losing out due to 'other' people's crap; but obviously every developer thinks their work is deserving and the other stuff is not. So now we get a pattern where someone release ssomething that everyone else thinks is crap, but complain that other people's crap is what stopped it selling.

Formerly, only good stuff was on there, so it sold pretty well. Those developers did well because their games were good; not because of the absence of bad games on there.

I think it's not that there is lots of bad stuff, it's that there are lots of good and average games on there. It used to be really easy to get noticed. Make it to steam with a decent game, and you could expect sales. Now, that just doesn't cut it, one needs to make it to steam with a good game, preferably with an obviously unique hook, and loads of press to get noticed.

The team at Extra Creditz has some great videos about what it takes to go into game development. Two quotes from them that resonate with me: "Fail faster" and "You don't have a game until people are playing it"

https://www.youtube.com/user/ExtraCreditz

I think it's not that there is lots of bad stuff, it's that there are lots of good and average games on there. It used to be really easy to get noticed. Make it to steam with a decent game, and you could expect sales. Now, that just doesn't cut it, one needs to make it to steam with a good game, preferably with an obviously unique hook, and loads of press to get noticed.

Are the video game bloggers and journalists open to reviewing indie games? I've read an article of an indie developer sending a press releases out, but none of media outlets in the game industry responded. Is there's a bias against indie games or could it be the quality of the game isn't worth the time to review?

Let's take out of consideration games like Dust and The Dishwasher that Microsoft published on XBOX. Those will definitely grab the attention of the media. I'm talking about games released on steam or one of the app stores.

Are the video game bloggers and journalists open to reviewing indie games? I've read an article of an indie developer sending a press releases out, but none of media outlets in the game industry responded. Is there's a bias against indie games or could it be the quality of the game isn't worth the time to review?

Let's take out of consideration games like Dust and The Dishwasher that Microsoft published on XBOX. Those will definitely grab the attention of the media. I'm talking about games released on steam or one of the app stores.

Realistically it comes down to how important your game is. Blogging and game journalism isn't that different from real world news reporting and such, at any time there is a million things happening in the world(there are so many games just on steam and added to steam every day that it makes my head spin.) How do they choose what to write about or review? Either they review stuff that they know people are interested in and large numbers will play(AAA games are designed to be sold to a large audience) or it has to be an interesting niche game if it comes to indie stuff.

Which is why saying you're going to become an indie full time is a sketchy business at best. The market is saturated, there are a million games out there on every platform and more are coming out all the time, you have to make something really unusual to draw attention. Unlike working for a studio, you aren't guaranteed a paycheck, you're taking your fate into your own hands. Problem is even that is over saturated now. A few years ago the mobile game market was barely tapped, now there are literally tens of thousands of full on companies employing people that make small indie games for mobile and barely make enough to cover minimum wage.

There isn't any one size fits all for indie dev, games like goat simulator made a fortune just because they were a cheesy idea and all the livestreamers and youtube reviewers jumped on the bandwagon to promote it. You can't rely on that though, that's like winning the lottery in many ways, you should plan conservatively.

Did you think about the financial side of your venture? Going full time is a HUGE risk, when we are talking about full time Indie game dev.

Most games will never make enough money to make back the time invested. How do you plan to mitigate this risk? Are you ready to keep a day job, or work as freelancer for paid gigs? Do you have a large amount of savings to get you through the periods of failed products not making enough money?

Ideally, you would start the venture while still having a job. And ideally, you will not quit your job the day your first game becomes successfull, or at least plan ahead and have enough savings to survive years WITHOUT earnings from a successfull game in the market... that one success might not be repeatable.

Satharis mentioned the lottery. Its an apt imagery for game development. In the end, you need luck above everything else to be successfull in this industry. That holds true even for big AAA releases from comapnies with enough expierience to know what could or couldn't be successfull.

As such, plan accordingly. Don't jump in the deep end with savings covering you only for 2 years and wake up from your dream after 2 years with no success in the market and your savings gone.

Are the video game bloggers and journalists open to reviewing indie games?

Recommended reading: The Marketing Guide for Game Developers.

What is your backup plan, in case your project doesn't make any money?

Game development is a risky business investment, and chances are the first few projects you produce won't break even unless you're extremely lucky or a marketing genius. This being the case, do you have something to fall back on financially to keep you afloat during the bad times until you reach the good times?

^ this ^

For a while the holy grail was get you game on steam but even that is probably not what it used to be. I remember watching the film about indie games and the Super Meat Boy guys were saying most of their sales would come from when they were on the front page of steam after initial release. I get the feel that green light will have broken that now as there is a tsunami of crap on steam now, most indie. So unless you have a unique breakout game it will be hard to rise above the rest

I have some questions as I'm confused about this. What does it actually mean to be on Steam's front page? There's a Featured and Recommended Section, Special Offers, and then they have the new releases and top sellers at the bottom of the page. Am I assuming correctly that having your game on one of those sections people can cycle through without opening another page means you're on the front page?

If your game's not on the front page, what are you're chances of decent sales if you get positive reviews from featured curators?

Are the prospects for indie game sales any better on the Nintendo (Assuming Switch catches on ) or Playstation stores?

'Front page' just means 'front page'. As in, when you open Steam, the game is on your screen immediately without you having to click to see it. The section it's in doesn't matter so much.

What matters is exposure; positive reviews from curators matter if they in turn are popular. This applies to pretty much every app or game store because discoverability is poor and supply of non-AAA games is arguably too high for the actual demand for them.

One bit of advice I learned several years ago is to grow into this gradually.

Estimate what you can do in one month. Then set a date of 30 days away. Build your project for 30 days. When you get to the end of 30 days, stop.

Evaluate what you did in 30 days. DO NOT CONTINUE THAT PROJECT. It is done.

Based on your experience, estimate what you can do in one month. Then set another date for 30 days away. Build for 30 days. After 30 days, stop.

Again, evaluate what you did in 30 days. Do not continue that project. It is done.

Repeat this for about six months.

Now you will have a solid understanding of what you can do in a given amount of time. Now you can start yet another project. It is okay to plan this one a little bigger, maybe have aspirations for it to be four or six months big, but only plan out for the first month. Plan out that single month knowing what the last six months have taught you, then build for one month. Then build another one-month plan, build it out for a single month. Repeat.

For more than two years I was on a team that was building products for a major online store. Each programming team would launch a new set of online objects about every month, so we would have releases every two weeks. At any given time each programmer would have two projects in various states of completion. One might be in design while another is being polished. One might be in main development while the other is in final verification and testing. Since there was exactly one person of each discipline on the team, and we were responsible for our own estimates, we very quickly learned how much we could accomplish.

After a few months each of us were adept at estimating exactly how long a feature would take. At the end of two years, because were working with a stable code base doing variations on the same task every two weeks, we could typically estimate within a few hours how long a particular task would take.

It is the best way I know to learn how much you can accomplish in a given length of time.

Woah, this is just, AWESOME. I am going to have a go at the thing you were talking about with 30 days to complete. A bit like a "LONG LUDUM DARE"