Taking a look at big-cash high profile releases like Redfall and Starfield…is “guaranteed failure” what they’re going for? Because those indie games were pretty much the main reason I kept subscribing to game pass.
Because the indie space is also a graveyard. Investors are increasingly wary of funding anything but a “guarantee” and plenty of studios have had to shutter because the funding they were promised was rescinded.
The major publishers are at least a paycheck that can keep a studio going for another year or two.
Katana314@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Carighan@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Maybe gaming has become too bloated as a concept if no company can ever produce a product with their own money any more, instead always listening entirely to investor cash.
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
So… only independently wealthy people should make games?
Game dev takes time. The way you shrink that time is to do it full time instead of working on it in your spare time for a decade or so. Because of increased cost of living, the ability to just take a few months off and burn your savings is increasingly not viable.
That is where investors come in. Whether it is a kickstarter campaign (NEVER PRE-ORDER!! RAWR!!!), a venture capitalist, or a major publisher. And all of those have consequences.
But, increasingly, it is only the major publishers who are even trying. And they are increasingly selective of who they try it with. NoClip have been making an indie game as a way to better understand the market and they have a SPECTACULAR video where Danny O’Dwyer talks about his experience pitching the game to publishers and what kinds of responses they get. And it is really telling that he gushes over how nice one publisher (I think it was Humble?) were in that they actually responded and said they couldn’t move forward rather than just ghosting him.
Serinus@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Universal healthcare would help here.
bobs_monkey@lemm.ee 1 month ago
Sure but that’s only a piece of the puzzle. Housing, food, and general living costs are so insane now that any decent savings would be obliterated much more quickly. UBI would be a better solution here, but that’s almost a pipedream at this point.
ExfilBravo@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I think AI will help in this space and allow smaller teams to compete with larger companies. At least until those companies do the same thing.