Spiderweb Games - The Indie Bubble Is Popping

Jeff Vogel of Spiderweb Games has a new post on his blog about Indie games, and writes the bubble is popping due to the abundance of games released.

I can already sense people are unconvinced with my "proof" of why a shakeout is ahead, so I need to point out something else. It's the problem with being a middle-sized developer (a problem that extends to many fields, not just games).

Suppose you are a super low-budget micro-developer like me. It's not super-hard to survive, because I can get enough sales to get by with a little cheap marketing and word of mouth advertising. I'll be all right.

Suppose, alternately, you are a huge AAA developer with massive budgets. You can afford the massive marketing necessary to generate the big sales you need to pay for your expensive games. You'll be all right, until you're not.

But suppose you're a mid-tier (sometimes called AAA Indie) developer, with $500K-$2 million budgets. You have a problem. You need advertising to get sales, as word-of-mouth won't cover it. But you can't afford a big campaign. The only way you will turn a profit is if you get huge free marketing from Steam/iTunes placement and press articles. (Which is why going to big trade shows and cozying up to the press is so important.)

But when there are so many games competing for free marketing, you have a serious problem. According to their site, the Indie Megabooth at the last PAX had 104 games. 104! At one PAX! Just indies! The games industry doesn't need that many games this year, period. #mildexaggeration.

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More information.

The dude definitely survives (thrives?), but I think he could go big if he wanted. He has been working maybe 15 years with the same art, engine, and what passes for sound in his games. He won't be able to do that for another decade, if he is in it that long. He has the success behind him to take a risk, get some favorable funding for something stylish. I haven't read a thing resembling ambition from him in that regard.

He will be probably go down as the guy who made a living the longest single-handedly making RPGs.

what i have to say about this, is that its just like indie music. there are gems hidden in a pile of un-interesting(for me or you) music.

same with indie games. too many for the consumer to review and look for that gem.
its just too many. the only ones who can actually do the job for us are magazines, but they are all can be bought, and alot of reviews aren't objectives or worse, they can destroy a gem because of lack of depth in insight.

same as being a video game composer, too many out there, too many even that are good. and too few jobs. its there but its near impossible to actually make a living, as opposed to other professions.

The article mixes the selling side situation and the buying side situation. The conclusions come as dubious.

From the buying side, the outcome appeals: swimming through ten games to find one game at last is exhausting. It is also frustrating when the rest is mostly made of products that proudly earn the title of non games.
All this crowdfunding stuff is bringing down the average quality in gaming and keeps showing the importance of the publisher's work when screening efforts that should not make it to the market.

But that is from the buying side perspective.

The article states that X is not increasing, so Y must give. But it seems to me that the video game industry is a growth industry, meaning that X is increasing. Maybe other sectors in the global economy has to give so that video game industry grows but as it is, it is growing.

Selling a product that people do not use is a very good outcome for a selling side. It means that consumers never make their mind up based on the qualities of the product. The product does not have to be good or bad. It must sell.
How is this situation unsustainable?

Free advertising: he missed the new deal that has appeared between players who monetize their playtime and developpers. It is not free advertising but it is for sure cheap advertizing as it costs the price of a key sent to a player who is able to promote properly the game.

The deal is the following: developpers must design their game in a way they allow a platform for players who monetize their playtime and making views.
In return, as players monetizing their playtime are successful because the game allows them to perform their acting show, they attract a large crowd of viewers and incitate them to buy the game for various reasons (including those leading to the previous case, buying a product to not use it)

And the sector of players who monetize their playtime is growing, meaning that there is more and more room for games to be exhibited.

Maybe this developper missed that side of the industry because his own games are not used by players who monetize their playtime.

For a gamer, the reduction of the number of released products is a desirable outcome.
But it wont happen for the causes implied by the article. If it happens.

Burress said:

The dude definitely survives (thrives?), but I think he could go big if he wanted.

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What matters is what he thinks. He takes the decisions for his business.

It's the same as kickstarter, a few people do it successfully and the bandwagon follows. And in short time the market is oversaturated.
But that's human nature i guess.

I still rather wade through tons of indie averages to find the gems, than wade through the one colour mud that the AAA games are nowadays.

Maybe because he tried to sell Avadon the second time - Avadon 2 - and the presentation got old fast? Also lack of real character creation, dice rolls, point distribution, naming, selecting class, gender, star-signs and their effects, like in ADOM is missing?

Then what is he talking about? I could say:
- Hey dude, Jeff Vogel, get out of your stupor and do something original and different in play mechanics?

But the truth is Jeff and a whole lot of other developers are simply drained, exhausted, sucked dry by Life and can't find their rejuvenation wats / bath-tubes, from where they could climb out, reborn, healed, filled with new vigor and energy for life, minds refreshed and begin to create wonders in the RPG genre…

ChienAboyeur said:

What matters is what he thinks. He takes the decisions for his business.

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At the end of Avadon 2, the player is most likely rotting his flesh off and the whole world is bracing for civil war. You played 20+ hours in a story where everyone either is scared to death to challenge authority and break the rules, or waiting to slaughter the people who make the rules. There are no good endings, but there is a hanging plot thread about a chaotic deathscape and a woman who is encased solid in a prison of absolute agony.

I can see why the guy is getting in to remaking his old games. And constantly writing about the dangers of indie development.

But it seems to me his internal fear of change and fear of not changing is coming out creatively in his new work. I am wondering if he feels he like he will be the guy encased in time in the bottom of Avadon's dungeons for treason or the mad woman who wants to take down Avadon and suffers eternal agony in acid world if he breaks his model and does something exciting, or if he doesn't change he will be the Pact run amok by the graphics whores who finally have the freedom of 20 new RPGs a year while the reign of visual and audio squalor enforced by the Black Keep crumbles.

But forgive me for waxing Freudian there, I am sure that was just the kind of hellish, no-win struggle that interested him artistically.

Well I agree with one sentiment of his - too many games (and not enough quality).

The amount of new games being released is staggering, but that having been said there will always be a market for good or interesting games. The problem is for those making things neither good nor interesting. The other problem is that say I might have once bought games that were RPGs or semi RPGs that I will not buy now, because quite simply, I have lots of choices.

Jeff is basically describing the videogame crash of 1983. The specific reasons for market over-saturation is different this time around, but if he's right, the end result may be exactly the same.

I've been really happy about some of the things happening in the crowd-funding space. In the indie space, I've been less excited, but still more excited with indie projects than AAA development which seems interested in only cranking out FPS games for the last 15 years (for the most part).

But after reading this article, it does seem to have a ring of truth to it. If there is a big correction, hopefully it won't be as bad as 1983. Then again, if the correction were to primarily hit the mobile gaming space, I'd consider it a good thing for the entire industry. But I'm biased that way.

One can call this process maturity - everyone now has access to cheap or free software tools to enable independant game development, and had this dream idea of an 'awesome' game that they want to implement and show the world.

This is motivated by the success stories of some indies, and the possibilities of easy money through Steam's Green Light and Early Access.

That naturally leads to indie game saturation, with some of very poor quality games, which is not sustainable by the developers themselves (go back to your previous job and start making serious monies!) and the consumer (how many pixlated indie games can you tolerate!).

So you can say that the indie scene has 'matured' and have to think very hard and make 'serious' effort to be successfull.

104 games is too many for a gaming audience that numbers in the many tens of millions? That's a lot of potential niche markets; I'd probably find at most 10-15% of those games interesting, and likely so would many others. Game players tend to be a finicky lot and a wide variety can satisfy many tastes.

I would care more about what Vogel says if he could managed to release a game I could bring myself to play for more than 10 minutes. Of course lots of people like (love?) his games so maybe there is something wrong with me.

CrazyIrish said:

I would care more about what Vogel says if he could managed to release a game I could bring myself to play for more than 10 minutes. Of course lots of people like (love?) his games so maybe there is something wrong with me.

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I agree, I've never been able to get into his game either.

As for the bubble popping. I don't buy in to that. The cream will rise to the top. If the games are genuinely good they will sell.

TheMadGamer said:

I've been really happy about some of the things happening in the crowd-funding space. In the indie space, I've been less excited, but still more excited with indie projects than AAA development which seems interested in only cranking out FPS games for the last 15 years (for the most part).

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That is a serious reduction of the AAA scene. Since there is probably no official list of AAA games, games that might be produced in very different situations (for example, a game like TW3 might be thought as an AAA game because of its production quality, even though its production budget is nothing near some other AAA games, questioning TW3 as an AAA game), it is quite useless to refer to anything.

But there is a meaningful gap between games like TW3 and what the indie and crowdfunded scene offer. And what looking at both sides, crowdfunded and indie do not get the highest ground in originality. Far from it. This scene is crammed with the same old, same old as developpers go for the cheapest formula they can think of.

The other scene is diversity when the indie/crowdfunded scene is dull.

SpoonFULL said:

with some of very poor quality games, which is not sustainable by the developers themselves (go back to your previous job and start making serious monies!) and the consumer (how many pixlated indie games can you tolerate!).

So you can say that the indie scene has 'matured' and have to think very hard and make 'serious' effort to be successfull.

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sakichop said:

As for the bubble popping. I don't buy in to that. The cream will rise to the top. If the games are genuinely good they will sell.

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The article reminds it: a lot of games are sold without being played by the buying side.
Buyers who do buy games without playing them might have an opinion of the quality of the game but the opinion cant be based on the practice of the game.
Games that sell to players who dont play them are no indicators on how good the game is.

ChienAboyeur said:

But there is a meaningful gap between games like TW3 and what the indie and crowdfunded scene offer. And what looking at both sides, crowdfunded and indie do not get the highest ground in originality. Far from it. This scene is crammed with the same old, same old as developpers go for the cheapest formula they can think of.

The other scene is diversity when the indie/crowdfunded scene is dull.

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You can even switch this around a bit. For crowdfunding you need other people's money. But most people only spend money on stuff they know ...

sakichop said:

As for the bubble popping. I don't buy in to that. The cream will rise to the top. If the games are genuinely good they will sell.

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I don't believe in the "quality sells" theory. There are so many examples against it. Quality is one factor among several. It's easier to sell a game if it's good, but it's not necessary.

It is increasingly difficult to find the "good" games because of the increasing noise one is inundated by.

That's nothing new Drithius. Look at the internet or the modding scene (just for example). Most of it is noise but it's still possible to find what you (by "you" I don't mean you personally) are looking for if you are prepared to put some effort in.