IndieGameBusiness Sessions September 2025
2025-09-17..2025-09-18
-- online --
who it's for
indie game developers, indie studio founders, game publishers, remote studio managers, game producers, community managers, legal advisors
topics
remote distributed studio management; crowdfunding with Kickstarter metrics; free and open source toolchain (Godot, Blender); playtesting and iterative production; prelaunch checklist and QA; analytics for retention and wishlists; publisher-for-hire commercial model; grants and incubation funding routes; four-day week and async workflows; dlc and indie game legal compliance
| title | author | length |
|---|---|---|
| The Adventure of Building an Indie Studio: Key Lessons from the Inside | Juan Pablo Guzmán Fernández | 58m |
Infinite Thread Games forms from a university master project into a remote studio using gathertown virtual office, public grants (Creative Europe, regional and… | ||
| How to Build a Team That Gives a Sh*t (and Thrives) | Max Louis | 01h 00m |
MLC Studio reports 98%+ retention across ~50 people and a GI Biz Best Place to Work award, and explains how that comes from concrete systems: weekly mandatory… | ||
| Surviving the Dragon's Den | Dan Wiseman | 57m |
A small company builds digital‑hybrid tabletop games that weave printed boxes, fake websites, WhatsApp/text interactions and phone calls into escape‑room… | ||
| Open Sourcing Your Tech Stack - How I Saved $5000 and Still Made a Game | Danny Silvers | 01h 02m |
Claims a practical switch to FOSS tools that save ~$5,000 for a small indie team by replacing subscriptions with LibreOffice, GIMP/Krita, Inkscape, Blender… | ||
| 10 Not So Obvious Ways to Improve Your Launch | Shawn Alexander Allen | 57m |
Checklist includes exact checks: boot on multiple OS and machines, confirm launcher runs, build redundant backup saves, and test controller mappings so UI… | ||
| The Problem with Publishing | Jen Corbett, Chris Klimecky | 01h 02m |
Midwest Games argues traditional publishing is breaking: Steam sees ~25,000 releases a year with less than 2% of Steam games have publishers and 80% of 2024… | ||
| Passion, Paychecks & Parenthood: Balancing Life to Make Games | Marius Cotora | 57m |
Builds two released games since 2023: a simple Space Moonlander prototype and the commercial 2D RTS Cosmic Resistance (planned 6 months, took ~1 year), now… | ||
| How to Bootstrap an Indie Startup | Pendragon Wachtel | 01h 24m |
Bootstrapping moves from prototype to funding by proving traction: a studio that stays 21 months bootstrapped and ships polished prototypes runs closed NDA… | ||
| From Hobby to Business: Embracing the Business Side of Game Development | Deloryan Hommers | 01h 01m |
A browser game called Horse Reality grows from a solo hobby project into a running business: a realistic horse-breeding simulator with a genetic system… | ||
| Proving Your Game’s Potential: Data-Driven Paths to Publishing | Pejman Mirza-Babaei | 01h 01m |
Shows concrete metrics publishers care about: market research from Steam/app store sales and review trends, wish‑list growth tied to promos, and playtest… | ||
| Remote, but Unstoppable: Unlocking the Power of a Fully Distributed Studio | Noname Studios | 59m |
Nine-person studio (one full-time in Egypt) runs a four-day week and unlimited holidays, released Wordless in Nov 2023, and credits specific workflows and… | ||
| Skyrocketing Game Dev Costs! What Can We Do? | Jason Harris | 01h 03m |
Data-driven rundown: global games revenue peaks at $184B in 2021 then falls to $173B in 2022; average US weekly play drops from 16.5 to about eight hours by… | ||
| Play To Win —DLC Edition: A Legal Update to How Indie Devs Can Succeed | Daphne Benford-Smith | 56m |
Practical legal takeaways: file trademarks early and register copyrights before enforcement, require clear IP clauses in service and publishing contracts and… | ||
| You Did What?! A Game Dev Legal Bingo Experience | Veda Cruz | 01h 00m |
Interactive bingo walks through 25 legal pitfalls indie teams actually hit, calling out specific mistakes: no collaborator contract, fuzzy ownership, copied… | ||
| Current State of Crowdfunding and How to Build A Community | Nicole Amato | 01h 01m |
Kickstarter reports 43,500 successful games and $2.6B pledged overall, with 2024 as the biggest year for successes (500+ funded games, ~$26M) and 2025… | ||
| nothing matches | ||