As you know, indie games hit a major bright spot in the last few years. Some people made money. Most people did not. And the world, she keeps on turnin’.
Unless you were living under a rock, you also know that everybody is now an indie game developer.
We can skip the details, but it is now apparent that the old bubble has burst. Maybe even as long as a year or two or go. How long has Game of War been out? Somewhere around the time people figured out how to monopolize the marketplace, it all went to pot. Cue tiny violins. Pour a little drank for the homies. That horse is dead and buried and I, for one, am exhausted from beating it. (Also, why so violent, old timey sayings?)
I sense a difference in the enthusiasm level surrounding indie game development. I’m sure pockets of resistance remain, but in the end you can’t beat city hall. I think some people have already quit. Others are sure to follow. Trends happen like that. A little at first and then all at once everyone races to the next big thing. One day the kids are playing pogs, the next it’s the Pokemon.
This presents you, human reader, with a super special opportunity. You get to make a choice. Do you choose to continue making games, improving your skills while others quit? Or do you jump ship and move on with the herd, trying to be one of the early success stories? Either way, there are no guarantees.
Change is the only constant, right? I wonder who will be the ones that stick it out, and who will quietly shift their focus to other pursuits. Only time will tell.
It really wasn’t a bubble that burst. Usually that term refers to something that was unsustainably inflated in the first place, and the resulting burst wrecks the whole model. (Like the first web boom, ad sustained models or the housing market crash a little while ago.). With indies it was a gold rush. Indie developers and the market is much bigger than it was a while ago, and there are many more successful indie developers than ever before. (The whole game industry is still in a growth phase).
The main difference between now and then is the ubiquity of free or cheap powerful tools. Which now means that everyone and their dog thinks they can be a game developer. Even though most never actually make a game. It isn’t that the market “burst” and they missed their opportunity, it was that the simply never were going to succeed due to lack of ability/drive. Like pretty much ever other art form ever.
An indie today has plenty of opportunity to do very well, and tons are. Assuming they are actually good at it. There are rewards for participation. A decade or more ago, there was less competition, sure, but also a much smaller market and it much, much more complicated and required drastically more skill, knowledge and time just to even create a game.
So, yea it’s taken a couple of years for many to realize they don’t have the ability to make it, but the market it is growing and many are succeeding and some pretty sweet stuff is coming from those folks. Like every kid who picks up a guitar and dreams of being a rock star, most are going to have to terms with the fact that at best it is never going to more than a hobby and enjoy it for what it is, or put it away and move on.
Welcome to the competition that is every creative field ever.
Also, to be perfectly frank, anyone willing to give up and move on in a creative field because they haven’t succeed after only a few years, never really had their heart in it in the first place.
Well, all markets are subject to price correction (unless they’re rigged). I think in this case we see what a lot of these games are really worth. Virtually nothing, where before they were worth a dollar or so. In my mind that was a bubble. Demand was driving the price up because of the novelty of the app market. the amount of people wanting to make some of that money increased, which caused an increase in the number of games, which in turn dropped the value of games, I mean we get these things for free on flash website, now all of a sudden because it is on an iPhone its worth $5?
it’s actually very similar to what happened with the housing market. I bought at the bottom and sold my house when market value corrected up. the stuff is kind of complicated but you just have to remember that everything has a real value based on inflation. except for digital entertainment, which has no value. you’re asking people to pay for something that is literally just a collection of ones and zeros.
the marketplace is the next thing that’s going to correct itself. if steam and these app stores keep bombarding people with low quality shovel ware, people will just take their money elsewhere and then the droves of money hungry bottom feeders will follow the money.
it’ll get worse before it gets better but regardless of what we call it a gold rush or a bubble it’s in its twilight years
Probably. There’s been quite a few high quality air fighter games going around steam lately. Your game might get seen as ‘yet another clone’, but a handful of people will probably try it at least
Probably not. I don’t see any zombies or candy. And didn’t you get the memo? Pixel art is all that people want. All your beautiful high quality visuals aren’t popular anymore.
I don’t think gamers had much choice in the matter. If they want to play something fun and different, it’s not really the retro pixel art, it’s the fact they’ve no choice since it comes in one flavour: whatever the dev can poop out.
I definitely prefer good pixel art over vector art and even a lot of 3D art. Anyone who really thinks it is that easy to make a good looking pixel art game animating everything frame by frame has probably not done much of it. No matter which way you go pixel art or 3D graphics are work. I sometimes think the easiest way of all would actually be low poly 3d models. Very quick to make and with a simple rig they are way easy to animate compared to drawing new frames. Next year I want to get into 3D low poly and see how it goes. A lot of the interest in this stuff, at least for me (and I think many others), is just that it is different. Or was anyway. I mean all we have seen from AAA for years, like what close to 2 decades, have been 3D games. It’s cool and all but it just becomes all kind of the same after a while. So pixel art was seen as “new & different” even though it was around for a long time. Not the case anymore of course. We have vector art, fairly hd pixel art (this is probably the most rare), low res pixel art, hi def 3D, low poly 3D. There is just a lot of everything at this point. It might be best to just go with Battlezone style vectors for something different visually.
Looks primitive but at least it is something different.
Anyway @Master-Frog I think you are right. It had to happen sooner or later. All of these people flooding into games to make money and finding out they are making maybe 1/100th per hour of working at Mickey D’s I am sure many started looking for the “next big thing” this year. I’ve also noticed the rate of posts in the Showcase forum seems to have slowed down the past month or so. It might be my imagination but it definitely seems like there are less new releases there.
I think it is a great thing. Exactly what the industry needs. It will take a while for them to all filter out though because sooner or later there will be the next big hit the media covers. Eventually though the mainstream media will turn its attention to something else. Maybe they already have? And that will be a big turning point when they are no longer broadcasting about the huge amount of money Jane or John Doe made from their latest game.
@GarBenjamin - Yep. We’ve seen a lot of people come and go in the last couple years. Most don’t complete even one game, those who do quit after a single failure. What keeps people going, game after game, regardless of failure or rejection… that’s more than curiosity or wanting to make some cash. That’s a love affair.
No joke, I tried a semi-experiment like this (not with these forums and not with Visual Studio) and immediately struck a note of success I hadn’t previously considered. All it took was refocussing a little, tiny bit of effort.
I’ve reached the conclusion that on the bottom line I need to keep working on a game so that I have something productive that I can occupy my mind with. I’ve taken the monetization aspect out of my considerations for the time being, and I feel better for it.
I see your point but it doesn’t really work that way for most people. It is like saying “Why don’t you just work twice as much, you’ll have double the money.”. Most people just can’t do that. Sometimes when I’m posting here I’m too tired to even play a game. I couldn’t code anything in that state.
I’m doing that right now. Getting up at 6:30 for work coming home at 11 / 12 at night, making a little more than double pay. These forums are all I have time for haha.
I agree with you. It definitely takes way less energy to write a post here. I mean literally just writing down some words transferring thoughts to the post these posts take maybe 5 to 15 seconds depending on length. Throw in some edits and possibly the longest posts may represent 30 to 45 seconds of time.
There is no real thought needed for this stuff. Just type. A bit more focus needed for the actual dev stuff.
