Rampant Games - The Indiepocalyps Continues

[Myrthos]

The Rampant Coyote takes what happened at Arcen recently as an example of what is currently happening in the Indie development world, where sales on a game with good reviews, are so low that a large chunk of an indie development team have to be laid off.

This sucks.

So Arcen has a critical success that is a commercial flop, for various reasons, and this small indie team is going to have to be gutted as a result.

I was talking to a friend on Facebook today, and I mentioned that when the market gets like this, when supply totally outgrows demand by such a huge factor, suppliers / makers start slitting their own throats to earn their customers, and the market begins to perceive this as normal. And so you get comments like the ones in the PC Gamer article about this.

While many of them are behaving like asses, many of them (even the jerks) have a point. I mean, at this point, I’ve got way more games than I’ve got time to play them, so I really need to be sold on a game to consider forking out even a little money for it. But I still get new ones – especially indie games – that interest me because I understand the dev side of things too, and realize that I can’t demand that a developer spend a million dollars to make me happy enough to give them $15. That’s silly.

But that’s also the market we’re in now. Until the “Indiepocalypse” runs its full course, it’ll be the “new normal.” Maybe one day people will say, “Remember back in the mid 2010s when companies were falling over backwards and running at huge losses to make us more games than we could possibly play, and selling them to us for only $5? Good times, good times…”

The gold rush is playing out like it always has. As a gamer, enjoy it. As a developer… well, decide what you really want to do. If it’s to make games, I guess the answer is to buckle down and ride out the storm. It won’t be over quickly. And it won’t ever be easy.

Check out the link above for details.

More information.

 

[Bedwyr]

I noticed a while back that the essential unit of exchange in the games market, and maybe the entire entertainment market given the avalanche of books, music, television, and movies, is no longer the dollar or the euro. It is the minute. A fundamentally limited unit of exchange, the indie dev should really understand that this is the size of the market distortion.

 

[luj1]

what is currently happening in the Indie development world, where sales on a game with good reviews, are so low that a large chunk of an indie development team have to be laid off.

\

its very true

there are good indie games that are underrated gems

its because big AAA developers ruined the standard by feeding trash to casuals

 

[Bedwyr]

\

its very true

there are good indie games that are underrated gems

its because big AAA developers ruined the standard by feeding trash to casuals

Nope. The AAA trash increased the size of the market and brought more "casuals" as you say into the game playing fold. This is a different problem.

This is about the tools and access becoming sufficintly simple and the barriers to market entry dropping like a rock combined with the romance and creativity of game making. It is absolutely compelling. But it's increased the supply of games both good and bad beyond what the market can digest. It is essentially the result of technological change, not big studio practices. If you want to point the finger at any catalyst, point it at Microsoft (XBLA), Valve (steam), Apple (app store), Unity, the internet generally (communication).

 

[Jaguar]

The part of the original PC Gamer article that mentioned that 9,000 people had wishlisted Starward Rogue was interesting. There is really very little incentive to pay more than $5 for any game now. My backlog is 1300+ games, and with patience it is easy to add a few more games a week for less than $5 each. I would have to burn through a number of years of backlog before I would buy a game on release for full price. I have to imagine many others take a similar approach. There really isn't a solution other than releasing something so radically innovative (and also good) that the gaming community stands up and takes notice. Probably hard for the same studio to do that repeatedly.

 

[GothicGothicness]

Well, this is a sad story, but I am not sure it is part of some Indiepocalyps, the guy mentions that he had been in similiar situations before in 2010, and that 2014 was the best year ever.

 

[azarhal]

Games sales numbers are proportional to how much they are visible. You know, the concept of "people only check the first page" and "it's a catchy logo".

More visibility means more people are pre-ordering/buying the games so they show up higher on "upcoming/popular" lists which in turn means they are more visible to people visiting the digital retailer.

If the game has "cult" appeal, people will talk about it everywhere, which again makes them more visible. See the recent success of Undertale.

If a game is made by a known entity (company, designer, etc) or is from a known series, that also increase the game visibility.

And finally, big publishers have the money to get their games plastered everywhere, small indies don't have that luxury and their game usually get drown by the rest.

From what I've seen recently, game initial cost isn't that much of a deterrent. The Witness is considered by many to be overpriced, yet it is selling very well for an indie. It released 4 days after Starward Rogue. I remember seeing The Witness on Steam store main page before it released, I don't remember seeing Starward Rogue at all…

 

[screeg]

I can’t demand that a developer spend a million dollars to make me happy enough to give them $15. That’s silly.

Whether or not this is "silly" is irrelevant, because there are still only so many $15 games one can buy. Indie devs have to work within the parameters of the market as it is, not as it was, or as what we all agree is "fair". That's just math.

At some point the massive oversupply will force the market to change again, we can only hope for the better for both suffering devs and spoiled players (us).

 

[Bedwyr]

Well, this is a sad story, but I am not sure it is part of some Indiepocalyps, the guy mentions that he had been in similiar situations before in 2010, and that 2014 was the best year ever.

I think it is a "pocyclypse" (to borrow from Mad Max), but I think it presents itself differently than, say, the console collapse in 1982. The latter happened as the market itself collapsed (the demand curve) due to poor quality supply. This time what I think we're seeing is a natural organic supply glut depressing prices to almost absurd levels. So you'll have anecdotes like the guy above, but even the dates tell me he's an outlier. He got into the game early enough to gain sufficient fan base and visibility before things like the App Store and Steam Store started getting out of hand.

I don't think that we'll see a really visible "collapse" in part because there's a lot of indies trying to make it on a shoestring and trying to make a go of it if they even make pennies. To pull a number from nowhere, maybe getting $10,000 in a year is enough to spark sufficient hope that they'll keep making a go of it. It won't sustain a business, but it might sustain a hobby. It might even sustain a business if there's enough cash or in-kind support (spouse, family, etc) to keep pushing.

So I predict as a pretty wild guess that it'll act like a kind of malaise as discouraged developers slowly peter and drop out. Other starry eyed poor arthouse developers will replace them. It'll basically look like the starving artist model in movies, music, stand-up comedy, and other entertainment venues. It'll just muddle along, maybe with a shallow secular decline in the number of studios in existence.

 

[Swann]

Since I am not dev, I have nothing to argue with Rampant Coyote. But I am pretty sure that if I was one of them my only hope to sell some hundreds copies of my game would be new plataforms like Steam. Before Steam my hopes would be zero. This is best than try to beg for a trash job on a big company whose only goal is to produce cheapest possible and sell most expensive possible, ill-paying devs, cheating players and finally destroying game industry. I remember that between 2005-2010 I almost stop playing because there was almost no decent games in stores. Now I am buying and enjoying games like a mad -one of them, BTW, being Frayed Knights.
Another interesting article about the topic, with the author of Rogue between the commentators:
http://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com...-made-60000-from-my-indie-game--gamedev-12073

 

[forgottenlor]

I am part of the Indiepocalyse, and interestingly enough I buy a lot of indie games. But there are so many. My baglog is now so big and I didn't buy any games on the Steam Christmas sale for the first time since I installed Steam. I have 22 games on my wishlist and a massive number of unplayed games in my library. In 2013 that certainly wasn't the case.

 

[utergatuk]

this problem is nothing new. "indies" are just the modern form of starving artist. there will always penniless van goghs in the world, visionaries who will never be appreciated for the talent they have during their lifetime. doubt "indies" will ever be celebrated after they are gone, but the concept still sticks. all art is a matter of taste... and the masses don't have good taste.

 

[duder113]

the elephant in the room is "good reviews". I've got the feeling some 'indiedevs' still cling to old websites who've shown they've not have their readers interests at heart and then are supprised users of steam are no longer putting any trust into those reviews.

 

[fadedc]

Well a bigger issue is that Starward Rogue has not been reviewed on any gaming websites, not even by the gaming website that posted that news article. All of the positive reviews they are talking about are from users on Steam. The game has gotten no press or buzz at all, there is only 1 review on metacritic and that is mixed. So calling the game a critical success seems inaccurate.

In my experience when a game has positive reviews on Steam it usually means it's a competent game with no major issues or problems. But it doesn't necesarily mean it's a great game, and it's not enough to make me buy it on it's own.

 

[ChienAboyeur]

this problem is nothing new. "indies" are just the modern form of starving artist. there will always penniless van goghs in the world, visionaries who will never be appreciated for the talent they have during their lifetime. doubt "indies" will ever be celebrated after they are gone, but the concept still sticks. all art is a matter of taste… and the masses don't have good taste.

Van Goghs?

It reminds of the vision some have in football when their clubs sign a young unknown player from South America.
They somehow think that their club' scouts have seen what the thousands of other scouts failed to see, that they did not sign a fifth rate talent, the first, second, third, fourth rate talents being already shipped elsewhere as the SA territority is scrutinized, combed, screened, surveyed.

The video product market is the same: scrutinized, combed, screened by hundred thousands players who buzz over any discovery.

Releasing a game like undertale is enough to be turned into the new coming, the game of the century dev.

Van Goghs? They must be hiding well.