Allow me to elaborate. An indie game can look nothing like an AAA game, it can feature squares or hexagons instead of characters. A better indie game, maybe like Fez, has even better graphics and is more like a professional game. But then if your indie game get’s too close to being like an AAA game then you enter the “uncanny valley of indie-game-ness” which is where instead of saying “That’s a great indie game.” people start saying “That’s not as good as Skyrim”.
In other words can an indie game look TOO good? (Just like a robot can look too like a human?) Because instead of being a GOOD indie game it now becomes a BAD AAA game. (Like a robot that is too realistic just becomes a BAD human?)
It will be criticized against its nearest peers. The point is you can get over a plateau where it looks good enough for that peer to be “real” or “AAA real-ish products”.
The alternative would be making a clearly stylized game which does not put you up against those extreme types of peers which will make the game look better against its relative peers.
//nitpicking
Uncanny valley does not mean “too human”. It refers to the situation when the robot is ALMOST human-like, but because it isn’t quite there yet, the robot provokes feeling of disgust (at the same time, people will feel sympathy towards bucket of bolts that has eyes painted on it).
Anyway, your initial question reminded me of Miasmata. I remember slightly-boxy-looking squirrels there.
There’s some truth in your idea. Because indie will have limited resources compared to a big studio, it means that if said indie goes after “skyrim” look, then some other aspect of the game will suffer, because there are not enough people. So, that might result in pretty and empty world. And then people will say “it is not as good as skyrim”.
I guess you have a point. I mean, people compare AAA games to the next major level - reality, and have the same kind of reactions when something tries to be real but doesn’t quite pull it off. This probably happens between any kind of major levels or even between genres. Something that isn’t quite a proper example of a game you’d expect in a genre can get ridiculed by the status quo.
For one, people compare things based on style. If something has a cartoony aesthetic, people are usually smart enough to compare it to other things with a similar aesthetic. If they go for a style–less, realistic art direction, then they get judged the same as others with that style.
Second, there is no “indie” grade of art. You either use an art style competently, or you don’t. If someone says the art is good for an indie, they still mean it sucks.
Thats probably why you see abstract, pixel and highly stylized games doing better then generic 3d art (which will look bad when compared to the 3d AAA art).
Yeah, there’s definitely a grey area where people start comparing your game with major titles. My game Steam Flyers is being compared with War Thunder. Even though its in a completely different league.
Theres probably a payoff as well because if you can make a reasonably good looking 3d game then you will get more of the mainstream audience and it will probably sell more units. http://steamspy.com/app/308420 http://steamspy.com/app/266110
Yeah, I got the same problem with my game being “not as good as Homeworld”. Of course, there’s some people that realize that an indie game made by one guy cannot be compared to the king of 3D space RTS but if you are like me and are not happy with making retro platformer 69000 as your first commercial project then we are basically asking for it and we’ll need to have thick skin to resist the critics.
At the end, a game is a game and there’s a limit to using being an indie as defense if you are asking people for their money.
It definitely is reasonable the games will be compared based on how they look. It just makes sense that when a player sees a game that looks reasonably close (at least in a reminiscent way) to a AAA title they will expect the game to also have a similar amount of content and so forth. Why? Because “obviously” the developers of this game are trying to make their version of the AAA title… their own take on it so to speak. Or at least it would be easy to think that since they put so much effort into making the graphics as close to the AAA games in the same genre as they could.
This is one of the things that bugs me about all of the focus on graphics so many people have. People say that gamers expect high quality graphics like AAA if possible and in my view the graphics themselves are setting expectations from the gamer. If you are laboring over the graphics trying to make it look as good or better than Skyrim than you should be putting as much content and so forth in the game as Skyrim. Perhaps all gamers don’t view it this way but it is certainly the way I see it. And actually for me when I see an Indie game that looks like something AAA would have made 10 years or more ago I am more inclined to try it out simply because I know they had more time to spend on the actual game itself. Now this view is probably different from the average gamer.
I think games should just be games. No indie. No AAA. Nothing in between. Just games compared to games. I think the more we talk about those pigeon holes the longer we support their existence, and they really shouldn’t be relevant. A good game should be “good” regardless of those other factors. Same goes for a “bad” game. If that makes sense.
To compete, your game needs to be the best in its class. No good trying to make a game that is half as good as the top product on the market. People will just buy the top product on the market instead.
Best in its class doesn’t always mean the best production values. But if the only difference between your game and a competitors game is that the competitor has better production values, then expect the competitor to win.
If we put aside the vocal minority, do people really give a toss about whether a game is “AAA” or “indie” or “garage”? (What does “indie” even mean?)
If your game is “not as good as Skyrim” then you’re doing something that’s too close to what Skyrim does and you’re not doing enough to differentiate it. Gamers aren’t going to look you up on Wikipedia and take your likely budget and resources and experience into account when deciding whether they like your game or not.
They see it, and they either want to buy it or they don.t They play it, and either they want to play more or they don’t. It’s up to you to figure out how you can maximise both of those things for your game with regard to the resources youhave available.
This is pretty much my thoughts too. Games have to be about the complete package feeling cohesive and successfully presenting the developer’s idea to the audience. There’s no reason why you couldn’t have a discussion with the title “Super Mario Bros. 3 vs Skyrim”. Within that discussion though, the second someone says “Skyrim’s graphics are better”, I believe the discussion has gone off topic and ceased to be about the VIDEO GAMES themselves.
I think short answer is yes. People can and will criticize something no matter how good it is. Indies are only let off the hook because there’s some romanticism in playing a game that’s different because it’s made by a few wild dreamers. But even if that happens it’s not a bad thing considering indie teams likely very small size. I mean, a “bad” AAA game’s profits that would be split between 200+ employees… translates to great profits if it’s shared only between 15 indie gamedevs.
Technically that you don’t have a publisher, but since publishing is cheap and easy these days, it’s kind of a wide net. AAA on the other hand don’t mean a damn thing.
I think “indie” means that it is a game made by a couple of people from their own money. Whereas AAA means it is done by 100 people employed by a company usually for a client. A grey area would be when a small 10 person company decides to create their own IP. Then I think it would just be called a “game from a small studio.”
But if those two people make a game 90% as good as Skyrim they will get bad reviews because people will say “this game is 10% worse than Skyrim”. Whereas if they make a game with rectangles and hexagons, people will say “Wow, that’s an amazing indie game and an imaginative use of graphics.”
But it’s true if you could make a game 90% good as Skyrim and only have to split the profits between two people it might be worth it. But would anyone buy it? And also, the bad reviews might hurt your feelings.
It means independent, as in independent from the typical corporate structures that normally are a part of an industry, and usually this comes in the form of funding and publishing. In theory a thousand man studio can be indie if there is no other company funding or publishing the game. It has absolutely nothing to do with the amount of money or number of people involved. It’s just that indie projects are typically done cheaply.
