and those indie companies will get bigger, become corporatized, and continue the cycle.
Just like the ones before them did, just like the ones after them will.
Indie games are booming lately, if you think you’re witnessing the fall of gaming you’re simply looking in the wrong place.
A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
Wildmimic@anarchist.nexus 3 hours ago
The good thing is that creating a game is a task a person or a small team can accomplish even with non-AAA money, and there are many people out there who want to create something. So even if some of those indies become corrupted, there will always be more people out there who want to build their vision.
And tbh, if from this moment on only crap came out, we already have decades of great games to play - i for my part would never run out of games until the day i die even if i stopped adding stuff to my library - i am sitting on ca. 37000 titles at the moment. If the average time to complete is around 20 hours, that’s around 83 years of continuous gaming, much more than my estimated remaining lifetime.
A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
yeah, anyone can make a game. that game will probably be a slop generic asset flip game, but still technically a game.
to make a good game takes years, and money, and either knowledge or time available to be spent pursuing that knowledge…while also working an actual job to actually pay for all the bills for everyday life, in addition to what the game needs.
Jesus_666@lemmy.world 49 minutes ago
Yes. That’s how art works.
Most musicians, including many bands that fill stadiums and go on world tours, pay the bills with regular full-time jobs and do all of their band stuff in their spare time. It’s similar for artists, authors, etc.
A really good game takes years of hard work. It can take surprisingly little money; a small team driven by passion can be very efficient. But it does take effort. And sure, not everyone can be Tynan Sylvester or ConcernedApe or Pixel or Team Cherry; most tiny indie games aren’t genre-shaping mega hits.
But they don’t have to. There’s plenty of small games out there that are just good and that’s good enough. The idea of even just a hundred people playing one’s game and being entertained is enticing enough for thousands of developers to sink hours and hours of their spare time into.
Will there be a bazillion lame asset flips in the future? Yes, just like there have always been lame derivative bands, shitty overhyped artists, terrible indie movies, and drivel-slinging hack authors.
Just like there have always been shitty AA and AAA games, for that matter. 90% of everything is crap. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t a lot of gems hiding in between all the chaff.
(And while I’m at it: While making a game does requires a lot of knowledge, that knowledge can be acquired along the way. The original Cave Story was a one-man project and Pixel certainly didn’t start out as a professional programmer/artist/composer/screenplay author. Learning how to do all that is part of the fun for some people.)
raze2012@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
Wealth doesn’t trickle down, but failure does. Sadly, AAA studios collapsing will affect indies’ abilities to get funding , so expect to feel some pain there too.
This is already being felt these last few years as many gaming publishers shifted to funding AI.
Guitar@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
I think it’s just the fall of the industry as we know it. I don’t think gaming is going away anytime soon. But I do think we are about to see a very different industry in a few years. It probably won’t look like it ever really has before. A massive indie space, with sparse few AAA titles.
thermal_shock@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
Both can be true