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 5 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 3 hours 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.)