Rampant Games - The Indie Apocalypse

Myrthos

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Jay has turned into a doomsayer and proclaims that the indie apocalypse is nigh. He warned us of this before in his previous blogs, so perhaps he even knows what he is talking about.

Now the talk lately is about the “indiepocalypse.” The mobile markets are far beyond saturation, and now that’s happening to Steam, too. The hardest hit are the ones who enjoyed the most success when Steam was still all about curation by a tiny number of overworked individuals who couldn’t keep up with the releases already.

And now the bubble is bursting. Oh, noes!

I’ve seen this many times before. I’ve talked about it many times before. Half the folks freaking out about it weren’t even in this industry the last time we had a major indie bubble burst (in the casual games arena). Indeed, it seems that about half the commentary on the “indiepocalypse” has been more mocking it, or planning for survival.

One approach is, of course, to turn indie game development into bigger-budget, winner-take-all mentality, or “Triple-I” gaming. To this, I say, “It’s been done, it’s been happening for decades.” I mean, back when I started, that pretty much WAS Triple-A game development with a big team. And afterwards? That was… um… non-Triple-A mainstream game development. There’s nothing new there. The only thing remotely interesting is that they’ve been able to bill themselves as “indie.” I call them “big indies” and they’ve got the same problem as everybody else, from the massive publishing houses down to the lone-wolf developers: they have to make a reasonable return on their investment, or it’s curtains for them. And since many of them are asking for only a fraction of their budget on Kickstarter, it’s not like they have unlimited funds.
More information.
 
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I hate to say this, but I agree with Rampant Coyote. I look at Steamspy a lot, and it seems that the sales from recent releases from small developers just aren't what they were. What started me looking was when I saw the Legends of Eisenwald developer saying their sales were disappointing (or was it worse than expected?) I'm not quoting directly. On Steamspy it estimates between 35-40k owners. That's actually not all that bad when compared to other small studio releases like Avernum 2 and Serpents in the Staglands. It completely overshadows many rpgmaker releases and other cheap games, most of which have far less than 1,000 owners. Compare this though to say the much older and technically dated Avernum 4, 5, 6 (around 75k owners each), and 35,000 owners doesn't look that good. It looks pathetic compared to the number of owners of Legends of Grimrock I (900,000 owners). Legend of Grimrock game out at a very good time, as there wasn't much competition at that time. The the one year old LoG2, for example only has a little more than 100k owners on Steam.
 
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I agree, it's probably going to be something like the console crash of 83. Huge amount of crappy games making finding the good games harder and harder until people just won't bother.
 
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Yeah, I included a link to Ryan's article in mine, too. Although making an assumption that I know what I'm talking about might be taking things too far...

Also, an excellent perspective by Jeff Vogel:

The Indie Bubble Revisited (or, Are We All Totally-Doomed, or Just Regular-Doomed?)

The thing is, I'm always making the wrong freaking game. I have been working on the wrong games to take advantage of the bubble. Ditto for the casual bubble. I'm hoping - in spite of the SCADS of competition in the RPG realm right now - that I'm making the wrong game to really get burned by it collapsing, too. I dunno. We'll see.

I really wish I was fast enough to put out a game every six months. Then I could switch gears, turn on a dime, and all that. But I'm not. But on the positive side - being only a part-time dev means I can afford to keep making the kind of games I want to make.
 
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I agree, it's probably going to be something like the console crash of 83. Huge amount of crappy games making finding the good games harder and harder until people just won't bother.

Something will happen, surely. I think it best to follow the rubric about history though:

History Does Not Repeat Itself, But It Rhymes - attr. to Mark Twain

I have to agree with Rampant that we won't see an '83 style crash. The demand side of the gaming market is too well entrenched--including a desire for good indie games--for that to happen. That's something that the crash didn't have when people who were unused to gaming had the scales removed from their eyes and realized that half the Atari carts were rubbish.

He (and Jeff and others) are right that there will be either a flattening or a decline on the supply side. Although I'd contend that money isn't the limiting factor; it's the gamer's time. The former is what a game maker wants to continue developing for a living. However I'll bet money that the real limitation is time available to play. There's only so much gaming one can do, even given a life of leisure, and far too many demands on that time from games. 300 hour sandbox games are amazing, but good grief. How can a developer expect me to juggle 5 of those titles?

If you as an indie think that you're offering me a marginal benefit with a 300 hour game or a repeatable roguelike that I'll love and repeat for hours on end and you think that it's really the money I'm thinking about? No way man. I can't afford your game because it's the hours. You're making implicit demands on my time that are just too expensive. I don't care that it's $2, $5, or $20. It simply costs too many hours to get into. Honestly your best shot is to convince me that you're a good charity case and worth supporting even if I don't play your game. That sounds really harsh, but honestly I'm just human. I have a life with many demands on time.

That, I bet, is the biggest driver of an indie sales studio decline; the realization that we simply can't play All The Games.
 
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Bedwyr - very insightful, and that makes me stop and think. I mean, money IS an issue, for me, but it's not that any game is too expensive like it was when I was a kid. It's more of a case of "is it worth buying the game now at this price when I KNOW I'm not going to have time to play it?"

Usually, the answer is no. It's usually a steep sale that convinces me to take advantage of the limited-time opportunity to pick up a game for cheap that I MIGHT have time to play in the future.

But with each bundle I buy, and each massive Steam & GOG.COM sale that goes by, I just look at my unplayed game list and think, "This is getting ridiculous."
 
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There won't be any crash. Like in every market- some will die some will survive and some will thrive.
It's all about what is in this days. Zombies were popular and now it's survival games.
Ofc there are the very niche products. The good ones will set the bar. If you can't keep up in the long run then you are fucked.
 
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Something will happen, surely. I think it best to follow the rubric about history though:



I have to agree with Rampant that we won't see an '83 style crash. The demand side of the gaming market is too well entrenched--including a desire for good indie games--for that to happen. That's something that the crash didn't have when people who were unused to gaming had the scales removed from their eyes and realized that half the Atari carts were rubbish.

He (and Jeff and others) are right that there will be either a flattening or a decline on the supply side. Although I'd contend that money isn't the limiting factor; it's the gamer's time. The former is what a game maker wants to continue developing for a living. However I'll bet money that the real limitation is time available to play. There's only so much gaming one can do, even given a life of leisure, and far too many demands on that time from games. 300 hour sandbox games are amazing, but good grief. How can a developer expect me to juggle 5 of those titles?

If you as an indie think that you're offering me a marginal benefit with a 300 hour game or a repeatable roguelike that I'll love and repeat for hours on end and you think that it's really the money I'm thinking about? No way man. I can't afford your game because it's the hours. You're making implicit demands on my time that are just too expensive. I don't care that it's $2, $5, or $20. It simply costs too many hours to get into. Honestly your best shot is to convince me that you're a good charity case and worth supporting even if I don't play your game. That sounds really harsh, but honestly I'm just human. I have a life with many demands on time.

That, I bet, is the biggest driver of an indie sales studio decline; the realization that we simply can't play All The Games.



Yes, that is an excellent point, there are simply too many games being made and there is no way anyone could play all of them. Besides the people who have a lot of money usually also spends a lot of time working so they have even less time to play.

In my opinion I think that games should aim more at quality play-time and less at length. Sure it is hard to make a deep complex game with limited playing time, but instead of making 500 filler battles, perhaps 50 high quality ones are better? and instead of a huge wall of text about a random tombstone, perhaps a very well written and inspiring 5 rows of text is enough? I am taking this approach in my game at least.

Surely some people will not be happy, but not every game can please everyone.
 
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Cream will rise and crap will sink - and cream remains extremely rare.

That said, the best games are rarely the most successful. Most people prefer to buy what they know - and they're afraid of true evolution and new ideas. This is why so many of the greatest classics were modest hits, at best.

So, I don't really see how an explosion of mostly crap will change anything. The mediocre or "decent" games might struggle to be seen, but I really don't have much interest in them anyway.

For those who have real passion, talent and design insight - I trust there's always a way. That kind of developer never needed Steam. It's just easier now.
 
good indie games--
A good indie game is a crowdfunded game.
Although I'd contend that money isn't the limiting factor; it's the gamer's time.
Crowdfunded games, that are good indie games, are not expected to be played.
Steam profiles displaying situations like the following are far from rare.

20 crowdfunded products. Total hours:40 hours Average and mean times are around 2 hours spent on each product.
Products are rated 9 out of 10.

On the other hand, often one or more non indie type game played for hundreds of hours. Rated lower (7 or 8) the review is also less laudative.

Crowdfunded games are not expected to be played. Players buy them for other reasons.


Devs want to sell, they do not want to make good games. The crash on the horizon is on the gameplay quality that is going to plummet even more, as non indie devs work at reducing the distortion.

The distortion being that players might spend ten times more time on lower rated products than the time they spend on twenty highly rated products.
 
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When I browse the Games section of Kickstarter, it's a festival of mediocrity, with a couple of shining exceptions. A lot of this stuff would never have had much potential - before or after the KS boom.

If I were making an indie RPG, I would build a modest and manageable engine and toolset, recruit some talented writers, and iterate away. I think Harebrained Schemes has exactly the right idea (though the engine could be improved a bit.)
 
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I agree, it's probably going to be something like the console crash of 83. Huge amount of crappy games making finding the good games harder and harder until people just won't bother.
this! i've noticed a crapload flood of crap overpriced rpgmaker games on steam, crap gfx games euphemistically labelled retro or pixel gfx coupled with suspect gameplay, even more craploads of platformers/'metroidvania'/oops we forgot to tag our platformer a platformer but applied every other remotely applicable tag, visual novels, chose your own adventure, japanime up the wazoo(please keep it to consoles boys), toss a bunch of premade unity crap together, etc.

it's gotten pretty nauseating as you can only blacklist broad swaths on steam

serpents in staglands and even eisenwald i thnk are pretty niche games, and avernum, well jeff apparently doesn't have an original thought left in his head... you can only expect to remake the same games so many times imnho.
 
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I've said it in the beginning that pricing games next to nothing would come and bite everyone in the ass really bad. Now that people expect games to be almost free in bundles of course there is no way to make any money for most people. It was obvious from the start.
 
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Yeah, that's the "race to the bottom" that happens at the tail end of a boom - I've seen it happen many times. It's kind of the beginning of the end... the supply outpaces demand, and so the market won't sustain the old pricing anymore, so prices drop, and people compete by undercutting each other. But supply keeps growing, so prices keep getting slashed. At first, there's still enough demand to support many games at those prices, but eventually the bottom drops out.

Some of us (vaguely) remember how prices of Atari cartridges suddenly became deeply discounted circa 1982. More recently, the same thing happened with casual games, with portals cutting games from the "default" price of $20 down to ... well, eventually, super-cheap and "free" for memberships.
 
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It does not apply to crowdfunded projects, that are prepaid (in some proportion)

Beside, degressive pricing has been part of the model for years now (contrary to the 1980s period when developpers expected stable pricing for months or years)

These days, the product is sold full price during the pre-order period and for a month after release. Then prices are brought down to appeal to different customers up to the point it hits customers who consider buying a product on the price only. They feel the price is so low, it is such a bargain they buy the product. The product is not bought for itself, only for its price.

It is not a race to the bottom, it is an optimization of the market, saturating it up to customers who had no interest in the product.
 
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