I think this issue is bigger than just video games. Creative work, overall, is very hard to do independently these days - the entire market is saturated. I do writing, art and light coding, so...
I think this issue is bigger than just video games. Creative work, overall, is very hard to do independently these days - the entire market is saturated. I do writing, art and light coding, so I've been exploring feasibility and profit in releasing a game, a book and selling handmade art. All of these will be a huge struggle. Quality alone can't carry you - you need attention, which is basically taking on a second marketing job.
Local markets and faires seem to be one of the best options to make a profit with art. There is a resurgence of interest in handmade products, supporting local art, etc. Booth fees aren't cheap, but the attendees are there to spend money on handmade baubles. Sadly, that means catering what I make to that shopping mindset, so I spend more time making cheaper impulse buys instead of large pieces. The mindset of "oh, I can find it online for cheaper" also discourages artists from investing time and materials in large pieces, especially because a creative new concept will be copied rather quickly once it makes the rounds on social media.
Writing is similar. Erotica is actually the most profitable field for churning out work - short stories and novellas priced at $.99 are quick and dirty (hehe) buys that people churn through because the cover looks sexy, whereas you basically need to give away a prose novel for pennies (such as by offering it on prime reading) to get exposure.
The overall result seems to be pushing creative types into mass producing lower quality products designed for much less interaction time. The numbers in the article are really depressing - why invest a ton of time when the game might not sell at all? It's a frustrating, depressing and paralyzing effect on the creative mindset.
On the flip side, you can make reliable money doing creative work at a large company. You won't be doing unharnessed creation, you won't have creative control, your works may even be used in ways you won't like...but at least you will be able to afford rent.
Honestly, I think something needs to change, but I don't have any great ideas. The free market and capitalism put such an emphasis on profit - and you need money to live, you can't just ignore this focus - that daring and risky creative work is inherently discouraged.
Universal basic income would be a huge gain for independent creatives, but it's a hard sell in the political sense. How the hell are we supposed to persuade the average person that universal...
Honestly, I think something needs to change, but I don't have any great ideas.
Universal basic income would be a huge gain for independent creatives, but it's a hard sell in the political sense. How the hell are we supposed to persuade the average person that universal economic suffrage is as important as universal political suffrage in a capitalist economy?
By which I mean: under capitalism, you're supposed to vote with your money. But if you're broke, you don't get a vote.
The conflation of profit with art is something that will never stop upsetting me. I've long since accepted that under the current system I will never make a living through creative pursuits, but I...
The conflation of profit with art is something that will never stop upsetting me. I've long since accepted that under the current system I will never make a living through creative pursuits, but I see others who still try, or even worse think that artistic success is predicated upon financial success. They change their work to make it more marketable, worry constantly about how to sell it, etc. The profit motive pollutes and ultimately completely consumes the original creative intent.
I remember on comment on tildes from a while ago, I think in relation to piracy, where someone purporting to be artist asked "why should I share my work if people aren't going to pay for it?" I got very angry at that person, I don't want to wax on about my personal philosophy but it was really an affront to everything I believe in. I only calmed down once I realized that it was a consequence of the economic mode and that I could not lay too much blame on them.
It's worth reading @nothis comment because they're partially right. Almost everything they say is true under the current system but that doesn't mean creative works are doomed. The issue is just...
It's worth reading @nothis comment because they're partially right. Almost everything they say is true under the current system but that doesn't mean creative works are doomed. The issue is just with the distribution of information. There are people interested in all types of creative works. But the systems we have in place prioritize popularity and lead to a convergence of attention to only a few products. That's probably why local markets even work, is because your stuff hasn't been sorted into oblivion.
I think several factors are combining to create a perfect storm of epic fail: Steam's algorithm sucks Most game developers have lousy marketing There are too many games coming out Gamers are at...
I think several factors are combining to create a perfect storm of epic fail:
Steam's algorithm sucks
Most game developers have lousy marketing
There are too many games coming out
Gamers are at the limit of available time, attention, interest, and money
I've seen the same thing happen to hundreds of indie authors who are better and more prolific writers than I am, and better about marketing their work besides. The entertainment market is absolutely fucked.
Probably six of one, and half a dozen of the other. There's something else as well: as I get older every new game seems to remind me of older games that seem superior in hindsight because they...
Is it just because I am older/more busy now than I was a decade ago, or are games actually demanding more time and effort from us before we get burnt out on them?
Probably six of one, and half a dozen of the other. There's something else as well: as I get older every new game seems to remind me of older games that seem superior in hindsight because they were the first of their genre.
There's something else, as well: I suspect that the PS4 will be the last console I buy; video games just aren't as much fun nowadays. It's always the same old shit in the end.
I could imagine that multiplayer games on average keep players engaged longer than single player RPGs, because there's more potential for interactions and the grinding takes longer, so could the rise of multiplayer games be a large contributor to the evaporation of players' personal time and attention that would otherwise be spread out across more titles?
Not in my case. I'm as antisocial as you can get without having antisocial personality disorder, and I tend to avoid multiplayer games. I have zero interest in playing with other people. If you're familiar with the Bartle taxonomy I'm mainly an explorer, with achiever and killer as auxiliary types. Socialization is right out.
I honestly don't think Steam's frickin' "algorithm" has anything to do with more indies failing. Who discovers games on Steam? You hear about them on twitter, on reddit, on youtube, on some gaming...
I honestly don't think Steam's frickin' "algorithm" has anything to do with more indies failing. Who discovers games on Steam? You hear about them on twitter, on reddit, on youtube, on some gaming website... and from your nerdy friends. What you need is a game interesting enough to generate word-of-mouth.
The reason so many indies fail now is that so many people try. It's literally a circular problem. Your game wasn't seen because there's literally thousands of releases a month? Well, guess who was one of those thousands of releases.
These kinds of post-mortems pop up all the time on gamasutra and such and they all have one thing in common: The games are not... very interesting? This is a post attached to a game blog for...
These kinds of post-mortems pop up all the time on gamasutra and such and they all have one thing in common: The games are not... very interesting? This is a post attached to a game blog for "Golden Krone Hotel", a "highly accessible turn-based roguelike". With pixel graphics. I'm sorry, but we don't really need any more of those. Maybe one phenomenal one but certainly not any more okay-ish ones.
Everything is considered to be the problem (marketing, release timing, platforms, pirates) but never the gameplay. "Some youtuber said he rather liked it", "my facebook friends left good reviews", "it got some friendly tweets"... I'm sorry, but that's just not enough. Humanity has enough creative output for maybe 20 indie games a year that really matter. That's been the case in 2008 and that is the case in 2018. Here we are, complaining about shovelware and the amount of games released every month but nobody wants to be the "shovelware", nobody wants to be the "white noise".
The front page of some gaming website has only space for so many indie game articles a day. Of course they reserve that only for the best of the best of the best. Look at the crazy amount of polish, depth and content a successful indie game has. Look at Hollow Knight, Cuphead, Inside, The Witness or Stardew Valley. These games stand out, are pretty damn perfect at what they try to do or do something that is unheard of in indie games. Most of them near-bankrupted or burned out the creators at some point with only sheer luck and survival instinct leading to them being released. Most of them took many years (5+) to create.
And interestingly, in something like 2010, the top indie games that actually made headlines are pretty much on the same quality level and got pretty much the same coverage as they do today (look at Limbo, Minecraft, Fez or Super Meat Boy). Back then, the barrier of entry was higher but the talent to make a great one was the same, so we only saw great indie games. Today, the barrier of entry is way lower, so we see tons of bad games but the talent needed to make a great one (that actually sells) is the same. I believe it was 100% as difficult to release a popular indie game back then as it is today. It's just that the only people trying, back then, were so insanely motivated and had so little chance to actually be heard, it was just accepted as the norm.
I do get slightly frustrated when the take is something like "we did everything right -- why is our game not a commercial success?!", because the examples given often seem so... debatable. This...
I do get slightly frustrated when the take is something like "we did everything right -- why is our game not a commercial success?!", because the examples given often seem so... debatable. This article talks about the underappreciation of another dev's Escape the Omnochronom, so I wanted to check it out. Click through, and it's a turn-based roguelike MOBA with a drab art style, and it's in Early Access? With not even a word given on how "MOBA elements" work in single-player? Is it a "BA"? What?
On the flip side, one of my favorite Indie Game Failures was Brigador. Beautiful, fun game with an awesome soundtrack, and they got coverage from places like PC Gamer, RPS, and Giant Bomb. And 943 steam reviews, so according to the topic article it should have been a success. But according to the creator, it's a failure because they spent five years making it, the bulk of which was spent coding their own engine so that they could make their game "perfectly".
I respect the hell out of both devs for pursuing their weird genre mash-up and doing their own engine (respectively) -- but I get a little resentful when these articles appear blaming "the market", or gamers directly, especially when you have smaller games like Yono and the Celestial Elephants doing okay (despite zero press) by being pretty good, pretty charming, and based on pretty readily-available underlying technologies. Demanding unchecked artistic expression and commercial success just seems... frustrating.
To be clear: In no way I want to downplay the amount of work that went into these games. It's just that everyone puts in that amount of work so the standards are insanely high. You can't really...
To be clear: In no way I want to downplay the amount of work that went into these games. It's just that everyone puts in that amount of work so the standards are insanely high.
You can't really expect your indie game to sell 100k copies (you never could) and so you have to plan your expectations/budget accordingly. If you do bet everything on 100k+ sales, you better have literally one of the best games in the world, and you better be the king of self-awareness when it comes to assessing that. Otherwise you should plan your life around selling 0 copies, a lot of devs do and a lot of today's indie-millionaires did for years before landing a hit.
IMO a big misunderstanding is that people want to play "a" game. Or "a rogue-like". That's not the case. They want to play an amazing game and honestly don't care so much about genres or what's popular. There's literally enough hours of gameplay available each year you have to pick which amazing games you want to play. On the other hand, I don't think it's unusual at all for game developers to fall for the "a" game trap. You want to be a game developer, period. The how and what and why becomes secondary. So you choose 2 random genres you like or that are currently popular, start programming. A year later, you have a "rogue-like platformer with retro pixel graphics set in a dystopian future".
I think this issue is bigger than just video games. Creative work, overall, is very hard to do independently these days - the entire market is saturated. I do writing, art and light coding, so I've been exploring feasibility and profit in releasing a game, a book and selling handmade art. All of these will be a huge struggle. Quality alone can't carry you - you need attention, which is basically taking on a second marketing job.
Local markets and faires seem to be one of the best options to make a profit with art. There is a resurgence of interest in handmade products, supporting local art, etc. Booth fees aren't cheap, but the attendees are there to spend money on handmade baubles. Sadly, that means catering what I make to that shopping mindset, so I spend more time making cheaper impulse buys instead of large pieces. The mindset of "oh, I can find it online for cheaper" also discourages artists from investing time and materials in large pieces, especially because a creative new concept will be copied rather quickly once it makes the rounds on social media.
Writing is similar. Erotica is actually the most profitable field for churning out work - short stories and novellas priced at $.99 are quick and dirty (hehe) buys that people churn through because the cover looks sexy, whereas you basically need to give away a prose novel for pennies (such as by offering it on prime reading) to get exposure.
The overall result seems to be pushing creative types into mass producing lower quality products designed for much less interaction time. The numbers in the article are really depressing - why invest a ton of time when the game might not sell at all? It's a frustrating, depressing and paralyzing effect on the creative mindset.
On the flip side, you can make reliable money doing creative work at a large company. You won't be doing unharnessed creation, you won't have creative control, your works may even be used in ways you won't like...but at least you will be able to afford rent.
Honestly, I think something needs to change, but I don't have any great ideas. The free market and capitalism put such an emphasis on profit - and you need money to live, you can't just ignore this focus - that daring and risky creative work is inherently discouraged.
Universal basic income would be a huge gain for independent creatives, but it's a hard sell in the political sense. How the hell are we supposed to persuade the average person that universal economic suffrage is as important as universal political suffrage in a capitalist economy?
By which I mean: under capitalism, you're supposed to vote with your money. But if you're broke, you don't get a vote.
Part of that convincing also relies on the belief that art and creativity are important, which, sadly, many people don't agree with.
I have some ideas for fixing that, but most of them are rather unreasonable.
Ever see any of the Human Centipede movies? Let's make a human millipede out of Congress and the executives of Wall Street investment banks.
The conflation of profit with art is something that will never stop upsetting me. I've long since accepted that under the current system I will never make a living through creative pursuits, but I see others who still try, or even worse think that artistic success is predicated upon financial success. They change their work to make it more marketable, worry constantly about how to sell it, etc. The profit motive pollutes and ultimately completely consumes the original creative intent.
I remember on comment on tildes from a while ago, I think in relation to piracy, where someone purporting to be artist asked "why should I share my work if people aren't going to pay for it?" I got very angry at that person, I don't want to wax on about my personal philosophy but it was really an affront to everything I believe in. I only calmed down once I realized that it was a consequence of the economic mode and that I could not lay too much blame on them.
It's worth reading @nothis comment because they're partially right. Almost everything they say is true under the current system but that doesn't mean creative works are doomed. The issue is just with the distribution of information. There are people interested in all types of creative works. But the systems we have in place prioritize popularity and lead to a convergence of attention to only a few products. That's probably why local markets even work, is because your stuff hasn't been sorted into oblivion.
I think several factors are combining to create a perfect storm of epic fail:
I've seen the same thing happen to hundreds of indie authors who are better and more prolific writers than I am, and better about marketing their work besides. The entertainment market is absolutely fucked.
Probably six of one, and half a dozen of the other. There's something else as well: as I get older every new game seems to remind me of older games that seem superior in hindsight because they were the first of their genre.
There's something else, as well: I suspect that the PS4 will be the last console I buy; video games just aren't as much fun nowadays. It's always the same old shit in the end.
Not in my case. I'm as antisocial as you can get without having antisocial personality disorder, and I tend to avoid multiplayer games. I have zero interest in playing with other people. If you're familiar with the Bartle taxonomy I'm mainly an explorer, with achiever and killer as auxiliary types. Socialization is right out.
I honestly don't think Steam's frickin' "algorithm" has anything to do with more indies failing. Who discovers games on Steam? You hear about them on twitter, on reddit, on youtube, on some gaming website... and from your nerdy friends. What you need is a game interesting enough to generate word-of-mouth.
The reason so many indies fail now is that so many people try. It's literally a circular problem. Your game wasn't seen because there's literally thousands of releases a month? Well, guess who was one of those thousands of releases.
These kinds of post-mortems pop up all the time on gamasutra and such and they all have one thing in common: The games are not... very interesting? This is a post attached to a game blog for "Golden Krone Hotel", a "highly accessible turn-based roguelike". With pixel graphics. I'm sorry, but we don't really need any more of those. Maybe one phenomenal one but certainly not any more okay-ish ones.
Everything is considered to be the problem (marketing, release timing, platforms, pirates) but never the gameplay. "Some youtuber said he rather liked it", "my facebook friends left good reviews", "it got some friendly tweets"... I'm sorry, but that's just not enough. Humanity has enough creative output for maybe 20 indie games a year that really matter. That's been the case in 2008 and that is the case in 2018. Here we are, complaining about shovelware and the amount of games released every month but nobody wants to be the "shovelware", nobody wants to be the "white noise".
The front page of some gaming website has only space for so many indie game articles a day. Of course they reserve that only for the best of the best of the best. Look at the crazy amount of polish, depth and content a successful indie game has. Look at Hollow Knight, Cuphead, Inside, The Witness or Stardew Valley. These games stand out, are pretty damn perfect at what they try to do or do something that is unheard of in indie games. Most of them near-bankrupted or burned out the creators at some point with only sheer luck and survival instinct leading to them being released. Most of them took many years (5+) to create.
And interestingly, in something like 2010, the top indie games that actually made headlines are pretty much on the same quality level and got pretty much the same coverage as they do today (look at Limbo, Minecraft, Fez or Super Meat Boy). Back then, the barrier of entry was higher but the talent to make a great one was the same, so we only saw great indie games. Today, the barrier of entry is way lower, so we see tons of bad games but the talent needed to make a great one (that actually sells) is the same. I believe it was 100% as difficult to release a popular indie game back then as it is today. It's just that the only people trying, back then, were so insanely motivated and had so little chance to actually be heard, it was just accepted as the norm.
I do get slightly frustrated when the take is something like "we did everything right -- why is our game not a commercial success?!", because the examples given often seem so... debatable. This article talks about the underappreciation of another dev's Escape the Omnochronom, so I wanted to check it out. Click through, and it's a turn-based roguelike MOBA with a drab art style, and it's in Early Access? With not even a word given on how "MOBA elements" work in single-player? Is it a "BA"? What?
On the flip side, one of my favorite Indie Game Failures was Brigador. Beautiful, fun game with an awesome soundtrack, and they got coverage from places like PC Gamer, RPS, and Giant Bomb. And 943 steam reviews, so according to the topic article it should have been a success. But according to the creator, it's a failure because they spent five years making it, the bulk of which was spent coding their own engine so that they could make their game "perfectly".
I respect the hell out of both devs for pursuing their weird genre mash-up and doing their own engine (respectively) -- but I get a little resentful when these articles appear blaming "the market", or gamers directly, especially when you have smaller games like Yono and the Celestial Elephants doing okay (despite zero press) by being pretty good, pretty charming, and based on pretty readily-available underlying technologies. Demanding unchecked artistic expression and commercial success just seems... frustrating.
To be clear: In no way I want to downplay the amount of work that went into these games. It's just that everyone puts in that amount of work so the standards are insanely high.
You can't really expect your indie game to sell 100k copies (you never could) and so you have to plan your expectations/budget accordingly. If you do bet everything on 100k+ sales, you better have literally one of the best games in the world, and you better be the king of self-awareness when it comes to assessing that. Otherwise you should plan your life around selling 0 copies, a lot of devs do and a lot of today's indie-millionaires did for years before landing a hit.
IMO a big misunderstanding is that people want to play "a" game. Or "a rogue-like". That's not the case. They want to play an amazing game and honestly don't care so much about genres or what's popular. There's literally enough hours of gameplay available each year you have to pick which amazing games you want to play. On the other hand, I don't think it's unusual at all for game developers to fall for the "a" game trap. You want to be a game developer, period. The how and what and why becomes secondary. So you choose 2 random genres you like or that are currently popular, start programming. A year later, you have a "rogue-like platformer with retro pixel graphics set in a dystopian future".