10 ms·
There actually are a ton of gaming companies right now. The indie game space seems to be much healthier and accessible than say, the indie movie business. I ha
by enkid 5y ago
There actually are a ton of gaming companies right now. The indie game space seems to be much healthier and accessible than say, the indie movie business. I hardly buy AAA titles anymore because you can get so many good games for under $20 dollars made by independent studios. Of course, this is based on mostly staying on PC and Steam. I would suspect consoles are not as indie friendly, but it does seem like they have some market access
- tempest_ 5y agoThe Nintendo Switch has a pretty healthy indie offering. Though there is the switch tax where games that are 10$ on steam are 30 on switch.
- mcphage 5y agoOr how many $5/month (for all of them) Apple arcade games are $15+ on the Switch.
- jbverschoor 5y agoI hear nobody complaining about nintendotax
- johnchristopher 5y agoWell, I complain about it by not buying a switch. Game prices on the switch is why I haven't gave in to the temptation yet.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y agoYou say that like games aren't already kind of absurdly cheap for how much work goes into them. People used to pay $60 of 1980s money for, frankly, pretty shit[0] NES games. That's ~$150 worth of money today. $30 games are downright cheap and I'm continually impressed by how entitled gamers can be when they complain about modern game prices. People pay $30 for a decent meal at a restaurant FFS. Which isn't to say that you should by a switch. If you don't think it's a good value then obviously you shouldn't. I'm just saying that not buying it because 'the games are too expensive' seems like a pretty unjustified complaint to me. [0] Not all of them were shit of course, but the catalogue is 90% shit and people did buy a lot of shit games.
- lnxg33k1 5y agoWell, consider that you could buy any kind of game first hand for $60, then after finishing it, you could be able to sell if and get some money back. Today you pay $30 (for some games, but a lot are still $60, $80, etc.) Plus the DLC, credits, extensions, registration to an account no ability to sell it or buy second hand. Game industry got pretty bad, I've enjoyed it in the past, and I have the ability to just move on and ignore anything game related, what I am upset about is that today's kids are squeezed and coerced in order to play anything, and that is why I wish we had governments trying to put a stop to the current gaming companies greed
- eropple 5y ago$60 was also worth quite a bit more in the heyday of GameStop et al. What you characterize as "greed" is more reflective of general consumer desires (physical media is pretty dead, and I say this having a paper library of around 500 books) and that games are ever-more-expensive to make. For the preposterous number of person-hours that go into an AAA title, $100 isn't unrealistic. But there's price anchoring dating back to the nineties now, and that as much as anything is why games upsell the way they do. (The "complete edition" prices are probably more representative of what a sustainable price for a player really is.) Or we can do microtransactions until our souls bleed and go back to single-use codes in the game case. That's a thing too.
- krageon 5y ago> What you characterize as "greed" is more reflective of general consumer desires While it is hilarious that you imply that vendor lockin, half finished games, arbitrary difficulty curves meant to stimulate mtx and a lack of ownership is a "general consumer desire" I think it is more reasonable to say that the consumer has no choice. They (or we) clearly still desire to buy videogames, so folks end up buying what is essentially trash.
- lnxg33k1 5y agoYes i forgot about half finished games, that's another perk of modern gaming world
- krumpet 5y agoConsider the total hours games like BotW offer and divide that into the price. That might alter your feelings that game prices are too high. I know it did for me.
- jbverschoor 5y agoIt was about the nintendotax, not the games.. Just like 'AppleTax' of 30%.
- mcphage 5y agoI grumble about it, but I buy them anyway, because they're worth it.
- erikpukinskis 5y agoIt’s better than the Apple tax where devs have to silently pay whatever fee Apple demands because of the gag order.
- jbverschoor 5y agoDo you really think Nintendo doesn't require an NDA? And that they take less than the 30% from Apple?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- yaomtc 5y agoDon't you have to continue paying the subscription to continue to be able to access those games?
- mcphage 5y agoYou do—so if I like a game enough, I'll pick it up elsewhere, too. But digital games as a whole get harder to play over time. I've moved my DSi games to my 3DS, and I've got a Wii with a whole bunch of titles.
- ryanbrunner 5y agoThe economics of game passes are like this with nearly all of them. The XBox game pass has several games (on both PC and XBox) where their price is multiples of the monthly price.
- toyg 5y agoBut one is forever and one is only for as long as you maintain indentured servitude to the richest company on the planet.
- bzzzt 5y agoForever seems like a stretch. When Switch is succeeded, how long before Nintendo shuts the Switch shop down? You can't legally move downloaded games between consoles.
- colejohnson66 5y agoThis was a big issue with WiiWare when Nintendo shut down the Wii Shop. People could keep what they had downloaded, but once the Shop shut down, you couldn't redownload anything.
- mcphage 5y ago> People could keep what they had downloaded, but once the Shop shut down, you couldn't redownload anything You can still redownload things. Nintendo says at some point they'll turn that off, but they haven't said when yet.
- colejohnson66 5y agoAh. My mistake. My point still stands: you're at the whims of Nintendo.
- toyg 5y agoDownload is only one way to buy Switch games, and at least I'll still be able to use one console - compared to zero as soon as I stop paying my feudal obligations to Apple.
- colejohnson66 5y agoNot every game on the Switch Store is available on cartridge
- salicideblock 5y agoI've noticed :/ I'm hoping the Steam Deck will provide a more open portable console.
- Zhyl 5y agoIf the Deck takes off, we will see lots of other handhelds following the same blueprint too.
- officeplant 5y agoWe already have piles of handheld PC's taking off with or without the Deck at this point. I'd love an AYA NEO if the prices weren't so high.
- schmorptron 5y agoI wouldn't be too sure to be honest, only companies with a big game platorm can compete with Valve being able to subsidize these and sell them at cost or less, because most game purchases one them will be through steam.
- bluescrn 5y agoA wide range of indie games being available doesn't mean it's a viable business for the indies. Many are loss-making passion projects.
- JAlexoid 5y agoPassion projects cannot be described as "loss making". When passion projects become "loss making", then people loose their passion for it.
- The-Bus 5y agoStadia also has a lot of indie games but thanks to their sales, you end up with a comparable price to Steam sales. Disco Elysium, for example, went on sale for US$18 vs. ~$23 on Switch. Steam's sale price was ~$20.
- docmars 5y agoThis is the sole reason why I don't play Switch games unless I can get them on sale, or they're exclusive like BotW. I have a 14" gaming notebook (ASUS G14 2021) that's portable enough and offers decent battery life especially for lighter games with access to my Steam library offline, and plenty of key shops to find games for uber cheap when there's no demo available for me to vet the value of a title first. Win-wins all around!
- fnord123 5y ago> Win-wins all around! Do devs get more money from Steam than Switch on a per unit basis? If not, using Steam means the dev is not winning as much as they could.
- cinntaile 5y agoYou assume that the Steam users are willing to pay the same price as Switch users, but that's not necessarily the case. Volume matters as well, maybe the number of Steam users is way more than the number of Switch users so they can make up for the lower price by selling more.
- docmars 5y agoExactly this — and devs selling on Steam have the choice to participate in sales or not.
- Cthulhu_ 5y agoUnfortunately, physical copies of games are not depreciating; BotW, despite being five years old, is still selling at full price. Good for them though, I mean it's a great game, and it means the games don't depreciate much on the secondhand market either. Although I'm confident people don't want to sell physical Switch games, a lot of them have a lot of life in them and become prized possessions.
- galangalalgol 5y agoWhat is a good way to discover these?
- tootie 5y agoGo browse itch.io for some inspiration. There's thousands of indie games there. A lot are no more than student projects and demos, but some are really polished and inventive.
- behnamoh 5y agoI found some of them on Apple Arcade.
- bocytron 5y agoYou can use the indie tag on steam, or search games under $20, or you can directly ask Google, or Reddit https://store.steampowered.com/tags/en/Indie/#p=0&tab=TopRated https://store.steampowered.com/tags/en/Indie/#p=0&tab=TopRat...
- lelandfe 5y agoI like to follow RPS' reviews page, it introduces me to a lot of PC indie games I'd generally miss in my filter bubble: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/topics/wot-i-think https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/topics/wot-i-think
- password54321 5y agoThe indie scene is great for people who like roguelikes and platformers. If you are looking for much outside of that space, you won't find much.
- muzani 5y agoThere's tycoon games and strategy too. Stardew Valley and Rimworld are at the top of their genres. And games like Dominions, Telltale games. Horror might be up there. Do we count mods? DotA and CS would be indie if so, but are now quite commercial.
- bluefirebrand 5y agoYou're right that a lot of indie games are metroidvanias or roguelites. However, AAA games exist on an incredibly narrow scope these days too. You have shooters, sports, open-world action games, and that's basically it. Rarely do you see big studios deviate into unknown or experimental mechanics. Indie studios have produced a lot of games with varied mechanics that are just a huge breath of fresh air for me, personally. You'd never see a AAA studio making Factorio or Satisfactory, for instance. Probably unlikely to see them make a game like Darkest Dungeon, or Don't Starve, or Stardew Valley or Terraria or Starbound or.. the list goes on. You just might have to look a bit deeper to dig through the roguelikes and platformers.
- spmurrayzzz 5y agoThis isn't true, there are plenty of trivial examples to counter this notion. e.g. Annapurna Interactive has been publishing AAA-quality titles from indie devs for a long time. And most of those games don't fall into the roguelike or platformer vertical.
- Aunche 5y agoThere is no storage of indie RPGs and survival-style games either (e.g. Disco Elysium, No Man's Sky, Valheim)
- pdimitar 5y agoAnd shoot-em-ups and beat-em-ups. It's what I mainly buy on my Switch when there are sales. But yeah, not many games between AAA and indie. :(
- jtmetcalfe 5y agoI love indie games but I also wish there was a middle ground between the current generation of AAA titles (not typically my cup of tea) and the indie community
- sixothree 5y agoThere does seem to be a void in between the two. It's so rare I come across one that it's a surprise. Hell Let Loose was one of those surprises for me. It's definitely in the space of "AA but not AAA" games.
- Semaphor 5y agoFor RPGs, that middle-ground seems pretty healthy. No idea about shooters and other action games, as I don’t play those.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- soderfoo 5y agoThe group of truly indie studios is dwindling unfortunately. Tencent and Microsoft have both spread a lot of money around. Perhaps for varying reasons, namely MS needs to make up for the lack of titles developed for the Xbox Series, and add titles to Game Pass to make it more a more attractive offering.
- DrBazza 5y agoI can think of several recent releases without even searching: Melkhior's Mansion was released this week, Slipways earlier in the year, and Midnight Fight Express coming soon. I don't know if that's representative of indie games or not. There's so many platforms to build for, and on some (xbox/ps5) a high(er) barrier to entry, vs. low on the PC, or mobile. I'm not surprised that there's much indie action on the xbox/ps5.
- krajzeg 5y agoAs the author of Slipways, it warms my heart to see it mentioned randomly in a HN comment! As an indie game developer (hard to get more indie than me, I think, since I'm doing this mostly solo), I can attest that it's never been easier to get your game on Steam or a console platform. On Steam it's mostly a matter of a $100 fee and filling a form. Consoles are a bit harder, but still dramatically more open to indie titles than say a decade ago, and all of them are possible to get on even for small developers. I also wouldn't say that "the group of indie dev studios is dwindling". It's just a matter of the old indie studios "growing up" to become bigger enterprises, but there is tons of other people replacing them on the lowest rung, with teams of several people and true labor of love projects.
- karpierz 5y agoSlipways is an amazing game! It's so nice building little galactic empires without fussing with spreadsheets or war.
- DrBazza 5y agoUnfortunately, I'm not a gamer, and run a weird version of linux which I don't think you support anyway, but I have played Slipways (a friend purchased it) on the PC, and it's a great game!
- wodenokoto 5y agoI play almost exclusively Nintendo and indie games on my switch. There is quite a Nintendo tax on indie games though.
- campbel 5y agoThe last three games I fell in love with; Hollow Knight, Ori, Souls Series, have me believing this. You can build amazing games with a smaller team these days which is incredibly inspiring.
- baby 5y agoA short hike, celeste, katana zero, …
- docmars 5y agoThink of Valheim too — a team of 5 made one of the best selling titles of 2021 with a 95% rating on Steam to this day. That's freaking impressive!
- 1_player 5y agoAlso Outer Wilds, Subnautica. Small teams that have made Game of the Year winners.
- Hamuko 5y agoSouls is part of Kadokawa Corporation (which has investment from Tencent). Ori's studio is independent but they've had pretty close ties to Microsoft.
- Cthulhu_ 5y agoI've been playing Control on consoles, great game, independent studio. Not a small studio either. Hollow Knight was great; if I hadn't nearly fully completed it at the time I probably would have started another playthrough already.
- phkahler 5y ago>> There actually are a ton of gaming companies right now. Yeah, but from TFA: >> Upon close, Microsoft will have 30 internal game development studios, along with additional publishing and esports production capabilities. I don't see a need for this and agree with the notion that companies should not buy companies. There are cases where it makes sense, but I think another mechanism needs to be created because buying and selling companies is often too much like buying and selling people in addition to being anti-competitive.