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Failing to Fail: The Spiderweb Software Way

GDC Festival of Gaming · 569.8K views · 2018-10-08 · 59:47

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Overview

Jeff Vogel of Spiderweb Software gives a GDC 2018 retrospective on surviving as an indie game maker since 1994, from shareware days through Steam. It covers business realities, costs and sustaining a comfortable living without chasing riches.

On Hacker News

HN keeps recommending it as an inspirational, funny talk on running a long-lived indie studio and what Steam provides for its 30% cut.

Recommended by 11 HN people across 8 months · HN mentions 2018–2025

Topics

Indie game developmentGame design
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indie gamesspiderweb softwaresteamgdcgame business

What people said

hu3 · 2023-05 · Strong recommendation

Speaking about GDC, if you're into game development or just curious, this talk is legendary and inspirational to aspiring game devs (and very intertaining to boot): [VIDEO] "In this GDC 2018 talk, Spiderweb Software's Jeff Vogel presents a retrospective on his company's history and how they've managed to stay in the game-making business since 1994."

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hartror · 2019-08 · Strong recommendation

Jeff is an enjoyable speaker, his latest GDC talk is fantastic (and a better version of this blog post). [VIDEO]

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cpeterso · 2018-12 · Strong recommendation

Jeff Vogel from Spiderweb Software have an awesome retrospective on his games and company at GDC 2018: "Failing to Fill: The Spiderweb Software Way" [VIDEO]

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Sources

Video by GDC Festival of Gaming, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

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HN Library: HackerTube export (2026-10-31) and open-index/hacker-news. Upstream summaries and classifications may contain AI errors.

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