4 ms·
Sure, but it's all independent now. They used to be small game studios with the resources to push out high quality games at a pretty rapid pace. I'm not saying
by just2n 14y ago
Sure, but it's all independent now. They used to be small game studios with the resources to push out high quality games at a pretty rapid pace. I'm not saying the people building indie games today aren't talented, but some of them spend years polishing a single title, only to have it make a few hundred K, with a few massive outliers (Braid, Minecraft, Binding of Isaac, etc).
I remember playing crappy games back then, too, but so much more of it felt like today's indie scene. It's like some big business machine marched in and bought all the "pro" talent to produce the same few games over and over again on different engines, while everyone who gives a shit about actually building fun, innovative games just started their own few-person ventures.
- zanny 14y agoI think you touch on a major problem. There are two extremes now - the ultra-publisher umbrellas that push out AAA market products, and the indies composed of 5 guys in a basement. There are very few companies with 50 - 100 people in the mid-range making mid-tier games with good gameplay (not revolutionary) good graphics (not Crysis 3 here) and fill in an industry gap. They all get acquired by big publishers. In the 80's, even when Nintendo was practically the only publisher on the block, development studios contracted to publish games with them, they weren't owned by them. Up until the mid 2000's studios weren't owned by the publishers like they are now. Look at how Blizzard / Bioware / Epic / id etc all got bought and brought under big publisher umbrellas.