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For those of us that don't care for the latest FPS or Battle Royale, the games industry is going perfectly fine. Never before has it been so easy for someone t

For those of us that don't care for the latest FPS or Battle Royale, the games industry is going perfectly fine. Never before has it been so easy for someone to get their game into the hands of millions. Games like Factorio, made by people who are passionate about games. With modern distribution platforms, companies like Paradox Interactive find it viable to continue adding content to their games many years after they were released. Couldn't give two hoots about what EA and Activision are up to. They don't make games for me.

Lowkeyloki 7y ago
I agree 100%. However, people like us are the minority somehow.
- Iv 7y ago
  People who enjoyed video games used to be a weird minority as well. If a niche is sane it can grow to become the majority way of doing things.
- thecatspaw 7y ago
  Maybe we're the minority. Still, wube (factorio developers) seem to be living comfortably, they don't seem to be hurting for cash. There is enough money in niche communities if your product is good
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    Getting there is more challenging than it used to be. Plenty of non-AAA hits seem to come with tales of development almost breaking them, or running out of Kickstarter funds. Including two of my favourites: Pillars of Eternity and Divinity Original Sin. I'm sure there's plenty that didn't make it too.
  - UncleMeat 7y ago
    Survivor bias. How many great indie games never got the exposure and died on steam making basically nothing. The fact that some people can do alright is not evidence of a healthy market.
samplatt 7y ago
EA and Activision don't give two hoots about you, either; you're especially hard to get money out of, as far as they're concerned.
Iv 7y ago
The picture illustrating the article is of Mortal Kombat 11 11. I had no idea they did more than 2. When do you stop beating a dead horse?
- sgift 7y ago
  When people stop buying it.
- Tade0 7y ago
  Don't knock it until you try it. There are so many cutscenes that it's essentially a somewhat interactive movie.
- dgellow 7y ago
  Why would you stop if people like it? I would continue to buy new version of Mario Kart, I still enjoy playing new Pokémon games and hope they will continue to release new ones.
- nfoz 7y ago
  The horse perhaps has never been healthier. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortal_Kombat_11 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortal_Kombat_11 "Mortal Kombat 11 proceeded to be the best selling video game software in North America for the following month of May, for both Xbox One and PlayStation 4. The sales of the game is nearly doubled comparably to previous entries of the series."
  - agent008t 7y ago
    This baffles me. Who are these people that buy games like MK11, a new FIFA game every year(?), go watch obviously purely commercial 'blockbusters' at the cinema, etc.? Do some people genuinely find these things really enjoyable?
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - kuroikyu 7y ago
Mathnerd314 7y ago
At least for the genre I've been following (indie horror) it seems like the recently-released games are all low budget one-man-studio cash grabs or else quick Game Jam games that have been polished up a bit. There don't seem to be a lot of medium-sized indie studios doing games anymore. It would be interesting to see some statistics on firm sizes or game budgets.
- ido 7y ago
  why does is being low-budget and "one-man-studio" mean it's a cash grab? I would say it's actually more likely these are a fruit of the developer's passion than something made by a larger studio.
  - jdietrich 7y ago
    Jim Sterling coined the term "asset flip" to describe cheap, rushed, barely-playable games cobbled together with Unity and pre-bought art assets. These games are a shameless attempt to cash in on the latest fad with an absolute minimum of effort. A substantial proportion of indie releases on Steam (and a majority on Android) fall into this category. https://youtu.be/5svAoQ7D38k?t=48 https://youtu.be/5svAoQ7D38k?t=48 (strong profanity)
    - pixelrevision 7y ago
      Maybe. There’s also prolly a ton of teenagers who are very excited about being able to make a game with tools and stores available to them.
    - Mirioron 7y ago
      The funny thing about calling it "asset flip" is that at the same time they were adamant that what matters is gameplay rather than the graphics.
      - daemin 7y ago
        If you've seen some of the videos of people playing these "asset flips" you would have seen that they have very little in terms of gameplay. They are also full of bugs and appear mostly unfinished.
fulafel 7y ago
For indie games, you need a bit of effort, to look past the survivor bias. Lots of people putting in their savings / personal debt and crashing.
- Roritharr 7y ago
  But isn't that the case for all types of ventures?
  - fulafel 7y ago
    I think it happens more in games because it's what many people really want to do. A bit like music bands. Except bands are a lot more side gig friendly and consequently can work without salaries and risk of personal bankruptcy. Also for other types of ventures it's easier to get bootstrap funding. And you can get to cash flow or fail faster. Etc.
    - crispyambulance 7y ago
      If someone blows all their money on a long-shot chasing the dream of video game success-story, that's their prerogative. I wish them good luck and hope they're able to at least turn out something innovative. It sort of reminds me of the music industry. I used to DJ in a college radio station, and remember the boxes upon boxes of dreck we used to get from record labels. For every successful pop-band, rapper, alt-rock, or electronic-music act you can think of there are dozens of dullard derivative wannabe copycats who utterly lack the imagination to put out something novel and stimulating. I think the same dynamic applies to computer games. The good news is that the truly innovative stuff will never die, regardless of how many AAAA games flop. People want to do this stuff. It's OK if most fail, it's OK if most can't make a living out of it.
      - seventhtiger 7y ago
        A music minimum viable product is much more accessible than a video game. It's just as ruthless to get ahead, but at least getting started isn't so hard. My friends who are hobbyist musicians regularly play at pubs or small concerts. Most people who jump into indie development are gamers themselves, and as gamers their product ideas are not always possible even with years of full time solo development. Realistically what one person with 2 years savings can make is very very small. So it is a pipe dream. After spending some years in corporate hating it, thinking about your game designs every night, you have the capital, you have the motivation, you jump, and you sink. It's very sad.
raxxorrax 7y ago
That is partly due to fragmentation in my opinon. There are just so many games I want to play but there just isn't enough time. Even games that are a perfect fit for my personal tastes can go unnoticed this way. And the amount of games being released is so astonishing that even fans have difficulties to keep up with major releases. That said, I don't consume many AAA-titles, I think game developer conferences are boring because they are 98% marketing vehicles and I just look up some streamers to get to the good stuff. Factorio just offers more than call of mortal combat fantasy 85. If this market and especially the mobile segment has problems, I wouldn't really mind. Sure, there are indie developers with good games that will feel this fragmentation. But I don't think anything can be done about it. Developing games is just a popular idea right now. Since gamers started to finance development themselves, the result has mostly been awesome.
- de_watcher 7y ago
  > and I just look up some streamers to get to the good stuff. They're on payroll too now...
  - Mirioron 7y ago
    Many of them aren't, especially the smaller ones. You can always pop into their chats and ask them. You can also just look at the gameplay and determine whether you like it or not.
deadbunny 7y ago
While I do like a good FPS the only thing I've really played in the last year on my stupidly expensive gaming machine (and super high spec monitor) is Rimworld, a £25 indie game. Hundreds of hours vs. maybe a dozen in games that might actually need that power.
duxup 7y ago
The fracturing of video games is really interesting. I used to game...a lot... constantly. But times have changed and a career, family, and I now play with my kids. I'm quite happy to just be limited to the Nintendo Switch and for the most part Nintendo first party games, and some indie games. I don't even know if old devs and gaming companies I used to follow religiously are any good anymore, or exist. The gaming news outlets stink at providing information that isn't a hype train about what is next... that I can't play now.. and if you're not reading them all the time so I'm just out of the loop. Meanwhile Nintendo does a pretty good job telling me what is up in their ecosystem...
- ajmurmann 7y ago
  Kotaku to me is doing a pretty good job at discussing released and older games as well. This year I played Bloodborne which was released several years ago because they do frequently discussed it on their podcast and I'm glad I did.
  - duxup 7y ago
    When I did read a lot of those sites I remember giving up on Kotaku due to some rampant rumor stuff that ... often was nothing. Granted that was a long long time ago, but it sort of exemplified why I quit reading those sites.
noobiemcfoob 7y ago
Eh, Breath of the Wild notwithstanding, I haven't found a game, indie or AAA, that scratched that old itch in years. There is a glut of games, for sure, with no easy way to filter them and no promise of a game I will actually enjoy.
- larrydag 7y ago
  Steam has scratched my itch. I too used to game a lot but growing a family takes time and resources. Steam allows me to play on my time and play with my kids. There is a lot to offer from the Indie community.
- darepublic 7y ago
  You should play Cuphead
- Goronmon 7y ago
  There is a glut of games, for sure, with no easy way to filter them and no promise of a game I will actually enjoy. Has there ever been a time of the "promise of a game I will actually enjoy"? Back in the day all you had was rare magazine articles, and one wall of a Toys R Us with flaps consisting of the front of the box on one side and the back of the box on the other. I'm not sure I see that as preferable to the modern situation.
  - noobiemcfoob 7y ago
    It wasn't so much a promise however long ago as much as a lot of MBA-style thought had yet to be put into the monetization strategy. The games that were made tended to be made for artistic and entertainment motivations over a boardroom identified market niche that is somehow the exact same niche filled by every other game.
- criddell 7y ago
  Katamari and Portal are the last games that really had me thinking about playing even when I wasn't playing them. I wish those games had additional levels to buy.
taneq 7y ago
The VR space is really interesting in that it's almost entirely populated by small studios and indie developers. Most games (including many very highly rated games) seem to be made by teams of 1 - 10 people. It does show in the production values, you don't get the same level of polish in the artwork, presentation and quantity of content. But it also shows in the creativeness of many titles, which you just don't get from big studios.
vorpalhex 7y ago
Factorio is a marvel of an example of a game made by people who are genuinely very skilled and care a lot about what they're making. The networking code, the in-depth blog posts, even the attention to things like preserving mod contracts when introducing breaking changes. The team running Factorio is a great example of a well done gaming project.
- de_watcher 7y ago
  Factorio is more like a software library or framework - by programmers for programmers (but disguised as a game).
  - umvi 7y ago
    Seems like most Zachtronics games are like this too. I'll be deep into a puzzle and then I'll stop and realize I just basically spent an hour optimizing the critical path of a virtual program
- maushu 7y ago
  > Factorio is a marvel of an example of a game made by people who are genuinely very skilled and care a lot about what they're making. I'm have more admiration for the fact that they don't have sales. The only way to get a discount is to use a third party discount system like humble monthly.
  - klohto 7y ago
    Almost all indie devs don't have sale department (or people)
    - Dragonai 7y ago
      By "don't have sales" maushu meant the company doesn't run discounts on the game :)
    - dx87 7y ago
      They mean sales, like a 50% off discount, not a sales team.
huffmsa 7y ago
Here here. The only "big studio" I pay any attention to is Nintendo, because they make games like a midsize to indie firm: Fun gameplay Otherwise, I think all of the things a "big studio" does now, primarily the backend for online and p2p services is going to have it's open source / platform killer app soon. Valve almost did it with HL/Garry's Mod/ etc but they've stalled out recently. Whomever develops a truly plug and play infrastructure module, handling networking, server config, deployment, etc will own a big boat by 2029. As will the guy who figures out distributed PnP microtransactions. AI and ML will likely be capable of full service character design and modeling in the next 5 years. So things will change, and democratize like almost all of the rest of tech has as things become less human capital intensive.
- Pigo 7y ago
  I spend maybe $25 a year on games for myself, maybe seeing something at a re-seller at the mall. I spend hundreds on my son who just recently figured out why Garry's Mod is fun, and is finally able to play Mario by himself and not just operate the hat while I play Mario. I still don't think he can appreciate why the latest Zelda was amazing. But I've shelled out a lot to Nintendo, and he has to have the new Mario Maker. I don't know what the cool kids are into, but Steam and Nintendo are friends with my PayPal.
  - komali2 7y ago
    Just wait till he discovers minecraft...
- Qwertystop 7y ago
  Even Nintendo has been willing to lean back on its cash-cows lately -- Mario (platformers, Party, and Kart) and Pokemon get minimal-change frequent-releases, Kirby's been static even by its own standards for the last few years, lots of their other first-party stuff hasn't seen a release in ages. Zelda's looking good between BotW and an upcoming remake of a relatively-small and especially old game, Fire Emblem has something that looks like an interesting shift coming up, and Metroid... well, Metroid's been a mixed bag since Other M, but if they were willing to scrap and start over on Prime 4 then there's room to hope. So it's not all bad.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Dumblydorr 7y ago
I do care what Blizzard does. I want to see new features and balance updates and maps in starcraft 1 and 2, and I also want an SC3. Unless there are indie RTS games worthy of hundreds of hours of deep play, I'll stick with blizzard.
- EamonnMR 7y ago
  Well there's https://www.greybox.com/greygoo/en/info/ https://www.greybox.com/greygoo/en/info/, https://www.desertsofkharak.com/ https://www.desertsofkharak.com/, and https://planetaryannihilation.com/ https://planetaryannihilation.com/. Making an RTS game is just plain hard, without the Blizzard branding it's going to be difficult to get people to play it.
  - xemdetia 7y ago
    Do any of those actually have a competitive scene? I think the thing I have missed most in the recent RTS was the lack of place to bump into people like you used to be able to. It's the same criticism I give to most of the modern FPS which have replaced the tools to allow a community to be born (lobby mostly) with matchmaking. While I follow SCR/SC2 fairly closely I haven't heard of any ladder/informal competitive arrangements for any of those other games. The problem with many RTS games from a longevity standpoint is that most RTS fans do find them at some point, they play through the single player campaign, and multiplayer is either stagnant/busted/a mere shadow of the actual singleplayer campaign/has lousy game cycle/no useful replay system. I feel like too many of the recent generation of RTS games have fallen down these paths. People always need to keep in mind when thinking about SCR/BW one of the tricks to making it competitive was running the game on the fastest speed to make it interesting and fix the game cycle. Most of the newer RTS's often do not expose such interesting knobs to help find the competitive mode in the stock game, or are missing map editors and other tools to help create new content for a game and fix perceived problems for multiplayer within the confines of the shipped game.
    - ssully 7y ago
      The actual problem with RTS games from a longevity standpoint are actually the same problems fighting games have: 1. It's a 1v1 game, so you either are playing alone, or if you want to play with a friend, you have to fight each other. That's fun for awhile, but typically one person will be better, and the other person will get tired of losing. 2. They are really hard to be good at. On paper, RTS games are really hard because you are managing a lot of things at once (simplified by saying macro and micro game), and you need to be good at everything. The difficulty of a game is magnified when it's 1v1 because you only have yourself to rely on. So if you are having an off day, you are going to keep losing. The reason MOBA games are popular is because they fix these issues by being a team game (very easy to play with a group of friends, and if you are not good or having a bad day, you can lean on your teammates to pick up the slack), and reducing your general focus to managing 1 hero (obviously, MOBAs have many layers and systems that make them more complicated, but at anytime you just need to focus on one hero).
HNisCurated 7y ago
Same. Pcmasterrace here. Gaming has never been cheaper or better. I think I spent 200$ in 3 years of modern Gaming. Consoles and AAA Games are all advertising/marketing.
deminature 7y ago
That's all very well to be uninterested in AAA games, but they're the largest segment of games produced and on the back of this growth, the games industry has grown larger than music and movies combined revenue [1]. The indie portion of the games industry that will be 'perfectly fine' is a tiny fraction of the overall landscape. It's wonderful to live in an age where independent games projects can flourish, but the vast majority of people involved in the industry are going to be working in gruelling conditions on AAA titles that are largely responsible for the enormous growth the industry is seeing. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-46746593 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-46746593
soneca 7y ago
> "For those of us that don't care for the latest FPS or Battle Royale, the games industry is going perfectly fine." As players, for those who care about these AAA games, it is perfectly fine too. Better than fine, it is great. The argument of the OP is that the industry is not fine. And I think that includes indie developers. It is not an easy industry to be in. Lots of stress, uncertainty, and failure for indie developers. Take a look at how hard is to make a good game after a successful Kickstarter campaign. If you, as a player, only care about the couple of indie games that are great and don't care what's going on behind the scenes with the thousand of indie developers that are struggling, that's fine. But that's not the point of the OP
- varelse 7y ago
  If you have a successful kickstarter campaign and you fail to deliver, that's on you. There's no Big Gaming conspiracy that caused you to fail. You did that all on your own. And people who continue to throw good money after bad ala Star Citizen deserve the outcome they get IMO. But hey, chin up, Microsoft just threw $1B at OpenAI to make "I am Mother" into a documentary because "we can't discount the possibility of a near-term AGI." And that's some serious #DukeNukemForever optimism IMO.
- UnpossibleJim 7y ago
  If you, as a player, only care about the couple of indie games that are great and don't care what's going on behind the scenes with the thousand of indie developers that are struggling, that's fine Can't this be said of any art form, really? If you look at people who tried to make indie comics in the '90's or 'zines I guess... whatever the title you wanted to give them. Painters, failed and prominent, from the 1200's to the present who had to trudge along and get jobs in coffee shops. Art is hard and people line up to take advantage of them (I say this as an art school graduate who now sits at a computer desk because, quite frankly, it's easier to make a living with code than art and I have a family who I love more than art). To be quite blunt, the gaming industry is a multiBILLION (with a B) dollar industry built on passion and artistry (and yes, coders can be artists, as well) which is being fed upon like any art industry gets fed upon.
  - 7y ago

Lowkeyloki 7y ago

I agree 100%. However, people like us are the minority somehow.

Iv 7y ago
People who enjoyed video games used to be a weird minority as well. If a niche is sane it can grow to become the majority way of doing things.
thecatspaw 7y ago
Maybe we're the minority. Still, wube (factorio developers) seem to be living comfortably, they don't seem to be hurting for cash. There is enough money in niche communities if your product is good
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  Getting there is more challenging than it used to be. Plenty of non-AAA hits seem to come with tales of development almost breaking them, or running out of Kickstarter funds. Including two of my favourites: Pillars of Eternity and Divinity Original Sin. I'm sure there's plenty that didn't make it too.
- UncleMeat 7y ago
  Survivor bias. How many great indie games never got the exposure and died on steam making basically nothing. The fact that some people can do alright is not evidence of a healthy market.

samplatt 7y ago

EA and Activision don't give two hoots about you, either; you're especially hard to get money out of, as far as they're concerned.

Iv 7y ago

The picture illustrating the article is of Mortal Kombat 11 11. I had no idea they did more than 2. When do you stop beating a dead horse?

sgift 7y ago
When people stop buying it.
Tade0 7y ago
Don't knock it until you try it. There are so many cutscenes that it's essentially a somewhat interactive movie.
dgellow 7y ago
Why would you stop if people like it? I would continue to buy new version of Mario Kart, I still enjoy playing new Pokémon games and hope they will continue to release new ones.
nfoz 7y ago
The horse perhaps has never been healthier. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortal_Kombat_11 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortal_Kombat_11 "Mortal Kombat 11 proceeded to be the best selling video game software in North America for the following month of May, for both Xbox One and PlayStation 4. The sales of the game is nearly doubled comparably to previous entries of the series."
- agent008t 7y ago
  This baffles me. Who are these people that buy games like MK11, a new FIFA game every year(?), go watch obviously purely commercial 'blockbusters' at the cinema, etc.? Do some people genuinely find these things really enjoyable?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - kuroikyu 7y ago

Mathnerd314 7y ago

At least for the genre I've been following (indie horror) it seems like the recently-released games are all low budget one-man-studio cash grabs or else quick Game Jam games that have been polished up a bit. There don't seem to be a lot of medium-sized indie studios doing games anymore. It would be interesting to see some statistics on firm sizes or game budgets.

ido 7y ago
why does is being low-budget and "one-man-studio" mean it's a cash grab? I would say it's actually more likely these are a fruit of the developer's passion than something made by a larger studio.
- jdietrich 7y ago
  Jim Sterling coined the term "asset flip" to describe cheap, rushed, barely-playable games cobbled together with Unity and pre-bought art assets. These games are a shameless attempt to cash in on the latest fad with an absolute minimum of effort. A substantial proportion of indie releases on Steam (and a majority on Android) fall into this category. https://youtu.be/5svAoQ7D38k?t=48 https://youtu.be/5svAoQ7D38k?t=48 (strong profanity)
  - pixelrevision 7y ago
    Maybe. There’s also prolly a ton of teenagers who are very excited about being able to make a game with tools and stores available to them.
  - Mirioron 7y ago
    The funny thing about calling it "asset flip" is that at the same time they were adamant that what matters is gameplay rather than the graphics.
    - daemin 7y ago
      If you've seen some of the videos of people playing these "asset flips" you would have seen that they have very little in terms of gameplay. They are also full of bugs and appear mostly unfinished.

fulafel 7y ago

For indie games, you need a bit of effort, to look past the survivor bias. Lots of people putting in their savings / personal debt and crashing.

Roritharr 7y ago
But isn't that the case for all types of ventures?
- fulafel 7y ago
  I think it happens more in games because it's what many people really want to do. A bit like music bands. Except bands are a lot more side gig friendly and consequently can work without salaries and risk of personal bankruptcy. Also for other types of ventures it's easier to get bootstrap funding. And you can get to cash flow or fail faster. Etc.
  - crispyambulance 7y ago
    If someone blows all their money on a long-shot chasing the dream of video game success-story, that's their prerogative. I wish them good luck and hope they're able to at least turn out something innovative. It sort of reminds me of the music industry. I used to DJ in a college radio station, and remember the boxes upon boxes of dreck we used to get from record labels. For every successful pop-band, rapper, alt-rock, or electronic-music act you can think of there are dozens of dullard derivative wannabe copycats who utterly lack the imagination to put out something novel and stimulating. I think the same dynamic applies to computer games. The good news is that the truly innovative stuff will never die, regardless of how many AAAA games flop. People want to do this stuff. It's OK if most fail, it's OK if most can't make a living out of it.
    - seventhtiger 7y ago
      A music minimum viable product is much more accessible than a video game. It's just as ruthless to get ahead, but at least getting started isn't so hard. My friends who are hobbyist musicians regularly play at pubs or small concerts. Most people who jump into indie development are gamers themselves, and as gamers their product ideas are not always possible even with years of full time solo development. Realistically what one person with 2 years savings can make is very very small. So it is a pipe dream. After spending some years in corporate hating it, thinking about your game designs every night, you have the capital, you have the motivation, you jump, and you sink. It's very sad.

raxxorrax 7y ago

That is partly due to fragmentation in my opinon. There are just so many games I want to play but there just isn't enough time. Even games that are a perfect fit for my personal tastes can go unnoticed this way. And the amount of games being released is so astonishing that even fans have difficulties to keep up with major releases. That said, I don't consume many AAA-titles, I think game developer conferences are boring because they are 98% marketing vehicles and I just look up some streamers to get to the good stuff. Factorio just offers more than call of mortal combat fantasy 85. If this market and especially the mobile segment has problems, I wouldn't really mind. Sure, there are indie developers with good games that will feel this fragmentation. But I don't think anything can be done about it. Developing games is just a popular idea right now. Since gamers started to finance development themselves, the result has mostly been awesome.

de_watcher 7y ago
> and I just look up some streamers to get to the good stuff. They're on payroll too now...
- Mirioron 7y ago
  Many of them aren't, especially the smaller ones. You can always pop into their chats and ask them. You can also just look at the gameplay and determine whether you like it or not.

deadbunny 7y ago

While I do like a good FPS the only thing I've really played in the last year on my stupidly expensive gaming machine (and super high spec monitor) is Rimworld, a £25 indie game. Hundreds of hours vs. maybe a dozen in games that might actually need that power.

duxup 7y ago

The fracturing of video games is really interesting. I used to game...a lot... constantly. But times have changed and a career, family, and I now play with my kids. I'm quite happy to just be limited to the Nintendo Switch and for the most part Nintendo first party games, and some indie games. I don't even know if old devs and gaming companies I used to follow religiously are any good anymore, or exist. The gaming news outlets stink at providing information that isn't a hype train about what is next... that I can't play now.. and if you're not reading them all the time so I'm just out of the loop. Meanwhile Nintendo does a pretty good job telling me what is up in their ecosystem...

ajmurmann 7y ago
Kotaku to me is doing a pretty good job at discussing released and older games as well. This year I played Bloodborne which was released several years ago because they do frequently discussed it on their podcast and I'm glad I did.
- duxup 7y ago
  When I did read a lot of those sites I remember giving up on Kotaku due to some rampant rumor stuff that ... often was nothing. Granted that was a long long time ago, but it sort of exemplified why I quit reading those sites.

noobiemcfoob 7y ago

Eh, Breath of the Wild notwithstanding, I haven't found a game, indie or AAA, that scratched that old itch in years. There is a glut of games, for sure, with no easy way to filter them and no promise of a game I will actually enjoy.

larrydag 7y ago
Steam has scratched my itch. I too used to game a lot but growing a family takes time and resources. Steam allows me to play on my time and play with my kids. There is a lot to offer from the Indie community.
darepublic 7y ago
You should play Cuphead
Goronmon 7y ago
There is a glut of games, for sure, with no easy way to filter them and no promise of a game I will actually enjoy. Has there ever been a time of the "promise of a game I will actually enjoy"? Back in the day all you had was rare magazine articles, and one wall of a Toys R Us with flaps consisting of the front of the box on one side and the back of the box on the other. I'm not sure I see that as preferable to the modern situation.
- noobiemcfoob 7y ago
  It wasn't so much a promise however long ago as much as a lot of MBA-style thought had yet to be put into the monetization strategy. The games that were made tended to be made for artistic and entertainment motivations over a boardroom identified market niche that is somehow the exact same niche filled by every other game.
criddell 7y ago
Katamari and Portal are the last games that really had me thinking about playing even when I wasn't playing them. I wish those games had additional levels to buy.

taneq 7y ago

The VR space is really interesting in that it's almost entirely populated by small studios and indie developers. Most games (including many very highly rated games) seem to be made by teams of 1 - 10 people. It does show in the production values, you don't get the same level of polish in the artwork, presentation and quantity of content. But it also shows in the creativeness of many titles, which you just don't get from big studios.

vorpalhex 7y ago

Factorio is a marvel of an example of a game made by people who are genuinely very skilled and care a lot about what they're making. The networking code, the in-depth blog posts, even the attention to things like preserving mod contracts when introducing breaking changes. The team running Factorio is a great example of a well done gaming project.

de_watcher 7y ago
Factorio is more like a software library or framework - by programmers for programmers (but disguised as a game).
- umvi 7y ago
  Seems like most Zachtronics games are like this too. I'll be deep into a puzzle and then I'll stop and realize I just basically spent an hour optimizing the critical path of a virtual program
maushu 7y ago
> Factorio is a marvel of an example of a game made by people who are genuinely very skilled and care a lot about what they're making. I'm have more admiration for the fact that they don't have sales. The only way to get a discount is to use a third party discount system like humble monthly.
- klohto 7y ago
  Almost all indie devs don't have sale department (or people)
  - Dragonai 7y ago
    By "don't have sales" maushu meant the company doesn't run discounts on the game :)
  - dx87 7y ago
    They mean sales, like a 50% off discount, not a sales team.

huffmsa 7y ago

Here here. The only "big studio" I pay any attention to is Nintendo, because they make games like a midsize to indie firm: Fun gameplay Otherwise, I think all of the things a "big studio" does now, primarily the backend for online and p2p services is going to have it's open source / platform killer app soon. Valve almost did it with HL/Garry's Mod/ etc but they've stalled out recently. Whomever develops a truly plug and play infrastructure module, handling networking, server config, deployment, etc will own a big boat by 2029. As will the guy who figures out distributed PnP microtransactions. AI and ML will likely be capable of full service character design and modeling in the next 5 years. So things will change, and democratize like almost all of the rest of tech has as things become less human capital intensive.

Pigo 7y ago
I spend maybe $25 a year on games for myself, maybe seeing something at a re-seller at the mall. I spend hundreds on my son who just recently figured out why Garry's Mod is fun, and is finally able to play Mario by himself and not just operate the hat while I play Mario. I still don't think he can appreciate why the latest Zelda was amazing. But I've shelled out a lot to Nintendo, and he has to have the new Mario Maker. I don't know what the cool kids are into, but Steam and Nintendo are friends with my PayPal.
- komali2 7y ago
  Just wait till he discovers minecraft...
Qwertystop 7y ago
Even Nintendo has been willing to lean back on its cash-cows lately -- Mario (platformers, Party, and Kart) and Pokemon get minimal-change frequent-releases, Kirby's been static even by its own standards for the last few years, lots of their other first-party stuff hasn't seen a release in ages. Zelda's looking good between BotW and an upcoming remake of a relatively-small and especially old game, Fire Emblem has something that looks like an interesting shift coming up, and Metroid... well, Metroid's been a mixed bag since Other M, but if they were willing to scrap and start over on Prime 4 then there's room to hope. So it's not all bad.

deleted 7y ago

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Dumblydorr 7y ago

I do care what Blizzard does. I want to see new features and balance updates and maps in starcraft 1 and 2, and I also want an SC3. Unless there are indie RTS games worthy of hundreds of hours of deep play, I'll stick with blizzard.

EamonnMR 7y ago
Well there's https://www.greybox.com/greygoo/en/info/ https://www.greybox.com/greygoo/en/info/, https://www.desertsofkharak.com/ https://www.desertsofkharak.com/, and https://planetaryannihilation.com/ https://planetaryannihilation.com/. Making an RTS game is just plain hard, without the Blizzard branding it's going to be difficult to get people to play it.
- xemdetia 7y ago
  Do any of those actually have a competitive scene? I think the thing I have missed most in the recent RTS was the lack of place to bump into people like you used to be able to. It's the same criticism I give to most of the modern FPS which have replaced the tools to allow a community to be born (lobby mostly) with matchmaking. While I follow SCR/SC2 fairly closely I haven't heard of any ladder/informal competitive arrangements for any of those other games. The problem with many RTS games from a longevity standpoint is that most RTS fans do find them at some point, they play through the single player campaign, and multiplayer is either stagnant/busted/a mere shadow of the actual singleplayer campaign/has lousy game cycle/no useful replay system. I feel like too many of the recent generation of RTS games have fallen down these paths. People always need to keep in mind when thinking about SCR/BW one of the tricks to making it competitive was running the game on the fastest speed to make it interesting and fix the game cycle. Most of the newer RTS's often do not expose such interesting knobs to help find the competitive mode in the stock game, or are missing map editors and other tools to help create new content for a game and fix perceived problems for multiplayer within the confines of the shipped game.
  - ssully 7y ago
    The actual problem with RTS games from a longevity standpoint are actually the same problems fighting games have: 1. It's a 1v1 game, so you either are playing alone, or if you want to play with a friend, you have to fight each other. That's fun for awhile, but typically one person will be better, and the other person will get tired of losing. 2. They are really hard to be good at. On paper, RTS games are really hard because you are managing a lot of things at once (simplified by saying macro and micro game), and you need to be good at everything. The difficulty of a game is magnified when it's 1v1 because you only have yourself to rely on. So if you are having an off day, you are going to keep losing. The reason MOBA games are popular is because they fix these issues by being a team game (very easy to play with a group of friends, and if you are not good or having a bad day, you can lean on your teammates to pick up the slack), and reducing your general focus to managing 1 hero (obviously, MOBAs have many layers and systems that make them more complicated, but at anytime you just need to focus on one hero).

HNisCurated 7y ago

Same. Pcmasterrace here. Gaming has never been cheaper or better. I think I spent 200$ in 3 years of modern Gaming. Consoles and AAA Games are all advertising/marketing.

deminature 7y ago

That's all very well to be uninterested in AAA games, but they're the largest segment of games produced and on the back of this growth, the games industry has grown larger than music and movies combined revenue [1]. The indie portion of the games industry that will be 'perfectly fine' is a tiny fraction of the overall landscape. It's wonderful to live in an age where independent games projects can flourish, but the vast majority of people involved in the industry are going to be working in gruelling conditions on AAA titles that are largely responsible for the enormous growth the industry is seeing. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-46746593 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-46746593

soneca 7y ago

> "For those of us that don't care for the latest FPS or Battle Royale, the games industry is going perfectly fine." As players, for those who care about these AAA games, it is perfectly fine too. Better than fine, it is great. The argument of the OP is that the industry is not fine. And I think that includes indie developers. It is not an easy industry to be in. Lots of stress, uncertainty, and failure for indie developers. Take a look at how hard is to make a good game after a successful Kickstarter campaign. If you, as a player, only care about the couple of indie games that are great and don't care what's going on behind the scenes with the thousand of indie developers that are struggling, that's fine. But that's not the point of the OP

varelse 7y ago
If you have a successful kickstarter campaign and you fail to deliver, that's on you. There's no Big Gaming conspiracy that caused you to fail. You did that all on your own. And people who continue to throw good money after bad ala Star Citizen deserve the outcome they get IMO. But hey, chin up, Microsoft just threw $1B at OpenAI to make "I am Mother" into a documentary because "we can't discount the possibility of a near-term AGI." And that's some serious #DukeNukemForever optimism IMO.
UnpossibleJim 7y ago
If you, as a player, only care about the couple of indie games that are great and don't care what's going on behind the scenes with the thousand of indie developers that are struggling, that's fine Can't this be said of any art form, really? If you look at people who tried to make indie comics in the '90's or 'zines I guess... whatever the title you wanted to give them. Painters, failed and prominent, from the 1200's to the present who had to trudge along and get jobs in coffee shops. Art is hard and people line up to take advantage of them (I say this as an art school graduate who now sits at a computer desk because, quite frankly, it's easier to make a living with code than art and I have a family who I love more than art). To be quite blunt, the gaming industry is a multiBILLION (with a B) dollar industry built on passion and artistry (and yes, coders can be artists, as well) which is being fed upon like any art industry gets fed upon.
- 7y ago