3 ms·

This article is naive. First, most of the games they discuss that cost 40-60 bucks, the CoDs of the world, require enough capital outlay to deter any small ban

by zabuni 15y ago

This article is naive. First, most of the games they discuss that cost 40-60 bucks, the CoDs of the world, require enough capital outlay to deter any small band of developers. You need money for art assets, voice acting, advertising, sound design etc. etc. You can get by with the just a couple of developers on laptops, but you have to scale back your ambitions (see Minecraft, Dwarf Fortress, Spiderweb Software). The biggest pot of money is on consoles, even with the recent trend towards PC gaming that happens at the nadir of a console generation. You have to be a big boy (at least moderately big) to be on those. Large publishers can, and do, use Steam just as much as the little guy. And can afford an advertising budget. Don't get me wrong, I love me some steam. I love 2d shooters, and there never has been a better time for playing them. But pay-per-view didn't lead to the death of big budget movies, and this won't lead to the death of larger games.

angersock 15y ago
There's no excuse for not being able to make a game of at least Counterstrike quality anymore. Our tools have come so far, and our computers have become so cheap, that the barrier to entry to making a solid, fun, good-looking game is removed. Gone. Poof! All you need to do is be willing to learn and stubborn enough to execute, and you'll make it. And you know what else? We need this. We need hordes of little velociraptor indies to outbreed and outsell publishers. We need the bloated megacorp AbstractGameFactorys to die. We need to free up the IP, we need to encourage genuine risk-taking and technological progress, and we need to do our damnedest to kill off these fuckers before they irrecoverably damage the market and the gamers.
- res0nat0r 15y ago
  Why can't there be room for both? I want the next MegaCorp MMO from Blizzard, which isn't possible from someone like an indie shop.
  - zanny 15y ago
    League of Legends started out tiny and they are bigger in the "mmo" space than WoW is in terms of active players. Definitely not in terms of revenue, but they are definitely indie gone huge. And they now have the staff to add new characters to the game every two weeks. The WoW devs add new wireframe modeled mobs maybe a half dozen times an expansion.
- jay_kyburz 15y ago
  I don't know why you are getting downvoted angersock, I agree. An indie team that knows their stuff could give the big boys a run for their money. I've been a lead on several AAA games at 2K and without a doubt a team of 5-6 guys and the Unreal Engine can make a smash hit game. I cant image the teams for Portal or Team Fortress are very big.
- groby_b 15y ago
  The art assets for CS:S alone are quite a chunk of money to produce. Sure, we have great tools, and computers are cheap - but the artists working on assets aren't. And the number of assets, plus the work that goes into it, is _insane_. As for the "all you need part" - I've friends who've gone indie, and it's a _very_ painful route, with far from guaranteed success. Have you actually tried it?
  - angersock 15y ago
    So, notice that I said Counterstrike (the original Half-Life mod), not CS:S--mostly made by two dudes at the start. Note also that we need to solve the art asset production problem--look at sites like cgtextures or similar for stabs at this. Look at procedural content and better tools like Unity. Those are some examples of how we can make assets cheaper and artists' lives easier. As for trying to be an indie... job in progress (check my profile).
    - groby_b 15y ago
      Even those two dudes took about two years. And they had support from Valve from Beta4 on. As for cgtextures, it's a useless site for a high-polish game - the textures are inconsistent in style and quality. (And that's what causes the real cost, polish). Believe me, I've looked at procedural content for a long time, and it's still a far cry from ready. What we might see fairly soon is human-assisted procedural content, especially for all those areas of the game that are just there for ambience, not for actual gameplay. Even then, it's a large amount. But then again, you'll find out all that for yourself :) (Good luck with that venture!)
      - angersock 15y ago
        (Thanks! We're banking pretty heavily on assisted procedural content!) I'm genuinely curious how much "polish" is actually needed and required by gamers. My theory is that publishers have push the market to the point where games are very similar (not a bad thing in and of itself, but not inaccurate either) and so the differentiating factor for driving sales and advertising is visuals. That being the case, the increasingly far end of the tail of visual fidelity is being mined heavily, and "polish" is getting more and more and more expensive. So, I think that you can get by on pretty solid gameplay and alright polish without needing to get a publisher to fund you--after all, it was their business model that made it so expensive to start with. Does that seem like a reasonable conclusion?
kiba 15y ago
Having crappy graphics doesn't mean less ambition. Arugably, being free from having to provide fancy asset mean you can be more ambitious. To replicate the dwarffortress combat system is a whole project in itself, bordering on insanity. (I know, because I only implemented parts of it, but still not completed yet)

by zabuni 15y ago

angersock 15y ago

There's no excuse for not being able to make a game of at least Counterstrike quality anymore. Our tools have come so far, and our computers have become so cheap, that the barrier to entry to making a solid, fun, good-looking game is removed. Gone. Poof! All you need to do is be willing to learn and stubborn enough to execute, and you'll make it. And you know what else? We need this. We need hordes of little velociraptor indies to outbreed and outsell publishers. We need the bloated megacorp AbstractGameFactorys to die. We need to free up the IP, we need to encourage genuine risk-taking and technological progress, and we need to do our damnedest to kill off these fuckers before they irrecoverably damage the market and the gamers.

res0nat0r 15y ago
Why can't there be room for both? I want the next MegaCorp MMO from Blizzard, which isn't possible from someone like an indie shop.
- zanny 15y ago
  League of Legends started out tiny and they are bigger in the "mmo" space than WoW is in terms of active players. Definitely not in terms of revenue, but they are definitely indie gone huge. And they now have the staff to add new characters to the game every two weeks. The WoW devs add new wireframe modeled mobs maybe a half dozen times an expansion.
jay_kyburz 15y ago
I don't know why you are getting downvoted angersock, I agree. An indie team that knows their stuff could give the big boys a run for their money. I've been a lead on several AAA games at 2K and without a doubt a team of 5-6 guys and the Unreal Engine can make a smash hit game. I cant image the teams for Portal or Team Fortress are very big.
groby_b 15y ago
The art assets for CS:S alone are quite a chunk of money to produce. Sure, we have great tools, and computers are cheap - but the artists working on assets aren't. And the number of assets, plus the work that goes into it, is _insane_. As for the "all you need part" - I've friends who've gone indie, and it's a _very_ painful route, with far from guaranteed success. Have you actually tried it?
- angersock 15y ago
  So, notice that I said Counterstrike (the original Half-Life mod), not CS:S--mostly made by two dudes at the start. Note also that we need to solve the art asset production problem--look at sites like cgtextures or similar for stabs at this. Look at procedural content and better tools like Unity. Those are some examples of how we can make assets cheaper and artists' lives easier. As for trying to be an indie... job in progress (check my profile).
  - groby_b 15y ago
    Even those two dudes took about two years. And they had support from Valve from Beta4 on. As for cgtextures, it's a useless site for a high-polish game - the textures are inconsistent in style and quality. (And that's what causes the real cost, polish). Believe me, I've looked at procedural content for a long time, and it's still a far cry from ready. What we might see fairly soon is human-assisted procedural content, especially for all those areas of the game that are just there for ambience, not for actual gameplay. Even then, it's a large amount. But then again, you'll find out all that for yourself :) (Good luck with that venture!)
    - angersock 15y ago
      (Thanks! We're banking pretty heavily on assisted procedural content!) I'm genuinely curious how much "polish" is actually needed and required by gamers. My theory is that publishers have push the market to the point where games are very similar (not a bad thing in and of itself, but not inaccurate either) and so the differentiating factor for driving sales and advertising is visuals. That being the case, the increasingly far end of the tail of visual fidelity is being mined heavily, and "polish" is getting more and more and more expensive. So, I think that you can get by on pretty solid gameplay and alright polish without needing to get a publisher to fund you--after all, it was their business model that made it so expensive to start with. Does that seem like a reasonable conclusion?

kiba 15y ago

Having crappy graphics doesn't mean less ambition. Arugably, being free from having to provide fancy asset mean you can be more ambitious. To replicate the dwarffortress combat system is a whole project in itself, bordering on insanity. (I know, because I only implemented parts of it, but still not completed yet)