I talked about my game developer friend in a previous piece, and I have learned a lot about the game development market since then. The trends in gaming are shifting massively as AI continues to advance. We all know there are games that cost enormous budgets to develop. Most of the famous titles we know come from countless employees, huge development costs, and a staggering amount of time. Sometimes those expensive games succeed, but these days, there are many cases where they cannot even recover their development costs. On the flip side, we have solo indie game developers who invest only their time and build at a very low cost. Yet some of them end up selling millions of copies and thoroughly outsell the biggest titles.
 |
| Vampire Survivors, built in JavaScript, became one of the biggest indie hits of all time. Source: Vampire Survivors, poncle |
It seems like more people are dreaming of hitting the jackpot with indie game development lately. My friend who is developing a game told me that countless non developers, including himself, are now using AI to build games. You can write code without knowing how to code anymore. Unity even got AI features, so now you can make games in Unity without actually knowing how to use it. They even added MCP support, so you can control Unity directly from Claude or Cursor. If you do not have 3D models, you can just generate them with AI prompts. You do not even need to use well known frameworks, because plenty of people are making kids games on Roblox and earning real money. Some people are even taking on the challenge using JavaScript. Vampire Survivors itself is a perfect example of a massive hit built exactly that way.
If you are curious about the game developer friend I just mentioned and how he turned his whole approach around you should read the full story in My Developer Friend Wasted Three Years Chasing Perfection.
The Harsh Reality of the Indie Dream
 |
| Real Steam data. Most game categories land somewhere around 300 dollars in median revenue. Source: games-stats.com |
Because accessibility has become this easy, there are people who pay for a Claude Max subscription and try to pump out games to make a quick buck. But reality is never that forgiving. The median revenue for Steam games is hovering around 300 dollars, so if you just slap something together, you will not even cover your AI subscription fee. So I analyzed what you actually need to do if you want to create a hit indie game. I am obviously not a game developer myself, so I just unpacked this in a fun way, and I hope you enjoy the perspective. The bottom line, experts use a specific term called DDD, which stands for Dopamine Driven Development. Before we break that down, let us look at what kind of indie games have actually been hitting it big lately.
The Anatomy of a Viral Hit
 |
| Two developers, two months, over 10 million copies sold. Source: Meccha Chameleon |
There is a trending genre called prop hunt. Prop hunt is originally a game where players transform into objects to hide, and a seeker tries to find them. But a game came out that twisted this concept in a totally absurd way. It is called MECCHA CHAMELEON. In this game, you cannot transform into objects. Instead, you have to physically paint a human model to blend in and hide. It is a slight variation from the original formula. Two developers made this game in just two months, and the UI is not even that sleek. Yet it sold over 10 million copies within its first month of release, which works out to roughly 60 million dollars in revenue.
 |
| Shoddy graphics, hilarious co op chaos, 10 million copies sold. Source: Lethal Company |
Then we have a game called LETHAL COMPANY. A former Roblox developer came in and made a co op game with pretty shoddy graphics. If I explain it simply, you just go into a scary place and pick up trash. But because it is a co op game, playing with friends creates a lot of hilarious situations. I actually played it briefly in the past and had a really fun experience. This game also managed to sell 10 million copies within a few months of its release.
Beyond co op games, there are naturally single player hits too. There is a game called Balatro, a poker style roguelike where you build a deck to increase your score. Some reviews say it is not very fun, but this was also developed solo, and it still managed to sell 5 million copies in less than a year.
The Dopamine Driven Engine
The one thing all these games share in common is that they have a massive amount of dopamine points. That brings us back to why Dopamine Driven Development matters so much right now. The way you do this is by first finding the dopamine release points in your game. The easiest route is the dopamine fueled fun you can extract from co op games. The unpredictable variables that happen when playing with friends you like provide far more dopamine than the actual core gameplay itself.
 |
| This is exactly the kind of chaos friends create together. Source: Chained Together |
Games that let people unleash their creativity are also fantastic. Just like how YouTube thrives not on its own videos but on people becoming creators who build an ecosystem, these games offer a brilliant alternative. The safest bet is simply throwing in horror elements, because that is the easiest to execute. Aside from that, there are many games that give you the dopamine rush of totally overwhelming your enemies by introducing characters or items that deliberately break the game balance.
The actual process many non developers use to make games with AI is to throw in one of these diverse dopamine points and build a quick prototype. They immediately make a demo or a trailer and launch it fast to gauge the public reaction. If the response is worse than expected, they just throw it away and repeat the process. They keep spinning this feedback loop until something decent sticks. Once they find it, they quickly release it in Early Access to make money. If the reaction stays good, they manage it with updates, but the moment the reaction drops, they just abandon the players entirely. This is not just my personal theory. It is what my friend keeps telling me firsthand, and it lines up with what I have seen echoed across several indie developer interviews and postmortems I have watched recently.
I think DDD is becoming extremely popular when creating other forms of content beyond just games. I feel this same pull with my own blog, where a punchy, slightly provocative title almost always outperforms a more careful, nuanced one, even when the nuanced piece took far more work. Instead of spending a week researching a topic to upload one long, thoughtful YouTube video, making a highly stimulating Short gets way more views. Because that ultimately translates to money, the YouTube algorithm itself seems to have shifted to prefer fast, stimulating videos. So if you play a dopamine driven game and upload it to YouTube, your views will skyrocket. The viewers who watch that game footage will then want to play it themselves, which naturally increases the player base. That leads to even more videos of that game being uploaded to YouTube. It becomes an infinite power engine where everything interacts and feeds off each other. That is why my game developer acquaintance told me that when planning a game these days, they actively brainstorm what kind of Shorts they can extract from it.
The Friend Slop Epidemic
 |
| The tweet that put a name on this whole phenomenon. Source: @wooosaaaahhhhh via X |
The real problem is that we are now overflowing with these dopamine games. Because the co op genre became so popular and saturated, some people are now calling it friend slop. Since Vampire Survivors became a massive trend, we are seeing a sickening number of identical clones popping up everywhere. Meccha Chameleon is already drowning in copycat games too.
Because of this, even the sheer novelty of indie games is fading away. People rush development, which means we constantly see the same assets and the same systems we have seen a million times before. It is no surprise that more and more people are starting to feel exhausted by it.
If you want to avoid creating this kind of exhausting generic content and actually stand out from the crowd you should read my guide on How I Make My AI Work Look Human Made. It breaks down how to inject real soul and personality into your projects so people actually want to engage with them.
The Price of the Artist Mindset
In an era where content is overflowing thanks to AI, I think approaching this with an artist mindset will inevitably leave you as poor as a starving artist. You cannot just work hard to build a good product and assume people will naturally recognize it. I do not necessarily think this is a bad thing. If you need money right now, following a trend like DDD is not a terrible idea. Whether it is gaming or any other industry, you simply cannot fight the current flow. I recently visited a website and noticed a ton of gambling popup windows where you physically scratch a digital ticket to check your winnings.
 |
| Years later, I still come back to this one. Source: Red Dead Redemption 2, Rockstar Games |
But I still believe that beautifully crafted products can deliver true immersion, emotion, and a genuine sense of achievement without relying on cheap dopamine. DDD games ultimately hit like a flash in the pan and disappear just as fast, but there is a clear reason why GOTY winning games stay loved for years. For reference, I finished the ending of Red Dead Redemption 2 a long time ago, but I still have so much attachment to it that I play it to this day. I firmly believe that no matter how much AI advances, nobody can casually replicate that level of story, polish, and pure artistry. I think this is a big part of why the release of GTA6 is taking so long.
The game market is bending under the weight of AI right now. Cheap dopamine might get our money today, but it rarely gets us to come back.
For deeper reads on tech, business, and the shifting economy, follow The Techtonic for weekly breakdowns.
Latest Insight: [A Business Book Gave Me The Strangest Comfort]
Trending Insight: [Stop Learning and Just Start Copying in the AI Age]
Comment