Why Many Indie Games Struggle: An Infrastructure-First Case Study

THREAD: Why many indie games struggle (it's not what you think) and how 2 years away taught me to build gaming infrastructure correctly

In 2023, Karitha collapsed. I stepped back for 2 years. Today I'm back with NextGame launching on Solana. This isn't a comeback story - it's a case study in infrastructure-first development timing.

The Breaking Point

September 2023: Lead developer walked away with the source code. The real problem wasn't losing the project - it was that I was building a game for a broken discovery ecosystem. Traditional platforms struggle with semantic accuracy for indie games.

The reality that broke me: Steam receives thousands of game submissions annually. Many never reach meaningful revenue. Not because they're bad games - because discovery algorithms prioritize engagement metrics that favor established publishers over quality indie content.

Strategic Withdrawal

I made a counterintuitive decision: complete strategic withdrawal. While others adapted to market volatility, I stepped back to study what actually needed to be built. Web3 gaming was approaching the problem backwards - tokenization before infrastructure.

The Discovery Pattern

During my 2-year absence, I studied indie game launches and noticed a pattern: semantic search may work better than category-based discovery for long-tail games. My hypothesis is that players often search for feelings and experiences, not just genres.

Players don't search for "platformer" - they search for "games where you can mess up and still contribute" or "exploration that feels like abandoned places."

The AI Development Inflection Point

September 2025: AI development democratization hit an inflection point. Development cycles that used to take months can now be compressed significantly with proper AI tooling. The non-technical founder bottleneck that hurt projects like Karitha is becoming less of a barrier.

From Personal Favor to Platform

My former team member started a new project. I wanted to help with discovery, so I built NextGame prototype. Started as "Product Hunt for games" but quickly revealed the real infrastructure gap: semantic search for game mechanics.

Technical Breakthrough

Vector embedding models for game description-to-gameplay mapping. This enables searching the way players actually think about games - by mechanics, feelings, and experiences rather than rigid categories.

Why Solana Infrastructure

Solana infrastructure convergence became obvious: Processing high-volume searches with real-time creator compensation requires low transaction costs. Higher fee blockchains make discovery micropayments economically challenging.

Solana Australia team has been demonstrating gaming infrastructure capabilities: fast transaction times, state compression for game indexing, and ecosystem support for production applications. Real infrastructure for utility, not just DeFi experiments.

Technical Implementation

NextGame launches with:

• Semantic search architecture
• Fast query response times
• Cross-platform game aggregation (Steam + itch.io + web3)
• Creator-direct monetization with minimal platform fees

The Strategic Approach

Instead of launching Karitha into broken discovery (2023 mistake), build the discovery infrastructure first. Every indie game needs discovery; many developers struggle with marketing budgets trying to solve this manually.

Platform NFT Utility

Platform NFT passes = infrastructure access tokens. Not collectibles - actual utility:

• Advanced search API access
• Creator analytics
• Algorithm influence
• Revenue sharing from discovery-driven sales

Infrastructure-First Timeline

• November 2025: Core search
• December: Creator monetization
• Q1 2026: Karitha integration showcase
• Q2 2026: Third-party API licensing

Building the ecosystem that makes games discoverable.

The Convergence

October 2025 convergence: AI development tools + Solana gaming infrastructure + semantic search technology. The infrastructure can finally be built correctly.