The "Indiepocalypse" is now a thing

[Infinitron]

The Indiepocalypse is strictly about the impending doom of indie gaming on PC.

The mobile gaming bust is old news.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

There is certain overlap between indiepocalypse and mobile bust.
Developers who don't get attention on mobile will then do PC ports, put those on Steam, where to every ones surprise they get hardly any attention at all.
Thus contributing to flood.

For example: Bugbyte and their game Battlestation: Harbringer. They released that game during this summer for mobile, didn't sell enough to recoup its developing expenses (still over 10 000 copies sold according to kickstarter page). Now PC version is in Kickstarter (actually this is 3rd time they seek kickstarter funding for Battlestation game) and this time they probably reach their (considerably lower than prior) funding goal. And they are trying to release it january 2016 on Steam.

Thus contributing to flood.

 

[Spectacle]

Mobile gaming was good before smartphones. I remember many fun hours spent with my PSP on long train rides. The games sold at around half the price of a PC game so devs didn't need to sell millions to have a big enough budget, so there were a good number of games and decent variety too.

Now we have smartphones with better graphics and more processing power than a full size console from 10 years ago, but the games we get are all free to play mass market crap, designed to be playable even with imprecise touchscreen controls.

 

[HobGoblin42]

Once upon, there was a "Golden Age of Mobile Gaming" starting in 2009 but it only lasted about 2 years. At this time, games as "Tiny Wings", "Fruit Ninja", "Doodle Jump", "Angry Birds", "Ragdoll Blaster" or "Temple Run" made millions of dollars through regular sales. Then, those free2play abominations entered the scene and destroyed that market once and for all.

 

[KK1001]

Console games: Rehased AAA schlock running on underpowered hardware; can barely achieve 30 fps most of the time.
Mobile games: Flood of pay2notwait trash when there are plenty of neat ideas that could work really well on mobile phones.
PC games: flood of indie pixel shit on the one hand, with Dota 2/CS:GO/LoL/Hearthstone juggernaut on the other.

Evidence if any that the free market is shit and consumers can't be trusted to make good or right decisions.

 

[jimmy_pvish]

"Bad" Mobile game isn't sale?

"Bad" Indie PC game isn't sale?

Good, let them rot in hell.

 

[Davaris]

This kind of thing always happens with portals.

 

[Neckbeard Shitlord]

There were almost never any good indy games to start with.

 

[Excidium II]

There were almost never any good indy games to start with.

My favourite being Fate of Atlantis.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

https://archive.is/nmynC

Spoiler

Don't trust indie publisher Black Shell Media (my story) ( self.gamedev )
submitted 2 hours ago by AnonJan2016
I'm an indie game developer with a couple games under my belt. As I was about to release my second game on Steam, I decided to look into a partner to help me with the thing I'm terrible at - marketing.
I came across Black Shell Media, a self-proclaimed indie game publisher. Their website looked very nice and professional, and I thought they knew what they were doing. I contacted them, and we arranged a video chat. They claimed to be marketing experts that were super-connected with the games media, and that they would have a team devoted to making sure my game was a financial success. They claimed that they really liked the build of the pre-release build of the game I sent (I later realized this probably wasn't true, because I had accidentally sent them a broken link.)
They offered to take a percentage of my revenue in exchange for handling all marketing and PR aspects. I asked that, since they'd be taking a cut of my revenue, if they'd be investing anything into the game itself (like many publishers do). They claimed that they don't do this, and that I should essentially take them on faith - that the marketing they do will more than pay for the revenue they take. At this point, the person I talked to was very friendly and responsive to calls and emails. I felt like they'd be a good company to have in my corner, so I went ahead and signed their contract. I know realize what a mistake I made. Basically their “marketing” is a complete joke. They have no apparent traction with any of the game media sites, and I have no evidence that they did much marketing at all. The only youtubers that posted videos of my game were small ones that I contacted personally. I had zero coverage on any gaming news site. I didn't even get a story on the smaller sites that had covered my previous title. One person live streamed my game on Twitch, for about an hour. Again, this was someone that I personally contacted. I would have been better off doing the marketing myself, rather than relying on them.
I looked into other games that they published (something I should have done at the outset had I been smart), and noticed the exact same pattern. Basically Black Shell Media's “great marketing insights” boiled down to sending out thousands of tweets to people who probably don't really exist.
As you can imagine, without any exposure, my launch did not go well, from a financial standpoint. It briefly appeared on the Steam “All New Releases” list and then slipped away. The next day, I emailed Black Shell Media asking about their continuing plan to market my game (since they were planning to take a portion of my revenue indefinitely), and they said they would continue to send out tweets and press releases. When I asked to see who they contacted in the media, they said they had no obligation to share this information with me, as this was their trade secret. They refused to tell me a single person who they actually sent a press release to, and as far as I know they didn't send any at all. When I mentioned how absurd it was that they wouldn't send me any evidence that they had marketed my game (other than the tweets), they said that this was stipulated in the contract.
After that, I didn't hear from them in over a month. They didn't respond to me on skype nor answer my emails. Extremely frustrated, I sent them an email threatening to take my case to the public, and they said that would be a violation of the contract I signed with them, and that I would be subject to legal action.
So I decided to post here anonymously so as not to be sued by my own publisher for speaking the truth. I'd like to share more information, so please PM me if you'd like. At this point, my game is a total commercial failure, though I'm extremely grateful for the few people who did purchase it, especially those who gave me good feedback that I can use on future games. I'm happy to say that this experience hasn't broken my spirit, and I'm planning to release another title in July without Black Shell Media's “help”.

So scamming publishers are preying indie devs.
Truly everything that is old is new again.

 

[HanoverF]

Guy is an idiot, took me 20 seconds to go to black shell site, see that I'd never heard of any of their crappy looking games, google a few randomly and see the only mention of the games is it's steam store page.

 

[kangaroodev]

I think the biggest problem with indie games is that people see a bunch of normal people get instantly rich (super meat boy, undertale, minecraft, angry birds, flappy shits etc.) and so these new indie devs without any passion for games think "hey I can do this too!", "I'm gonna be rich in the future!".

And then they go and make the most generic game on mobile and when they fail they call gaming dead. Alternatively they make a very low effort game on PC that they finish under a few months, without ANY innovative/new features at all and they expect people to care about it, people tend to forget that all the indies are basically competing with everyone else in the entire world. And with all the tools that we have now to make games, it only makes standing out harder.

So almost all indie games will continue to fall down in sales in my opinion, and the ones that are truly good and had some effort will be the ones making money, so only a few games out of the thousands really. It's quite something to see an online store have a new game every 10 minutes or so...

 

[Machocruz]

Democratization is always the death of an art. When it stops being the province of well practiced and skilled artisans, and without a monocled aristocracy to support it from above and an informed and appreciative public to support from below , the floodgates open and rivers of shit pour into the craft.

 

[pippin]

I don't know if "aristocracy" is the right word, but there's a sense of normalization that always have a negative effect in every art imo. In the 20th century this became strongly apparent when social pressure led to self-censoring institutions in almost every art form which knew its apex during these years, like cinema, comics, music, etc.

 

[kangaroodev]

I remember games like Shadow of Colossus taking almost 4 years to complete, and the team size was like 35 people (from my 10 second research). Just imagine, all that effort by such a big team. And now people are not willing to put even a year of effort to make something they are proud of, especially if they are just one person making that game. We've seen plenty of indie companies releasing games like it's not a big deal.

It's going to keep going downhill from now, I don't know what to say. Good games will either have an easier time standing out because there isn't a lot of quality around, or the other way around where you must search through all the bad games just to hopefully find a good one. But either way the bars are set high now, which is good.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Too many low effort survival sandbox games that will never get finished and walking simulators that try to inject "muh feels" with emotionally engaging dialogue and/or presentation about impactful topics which are really just mundane 3rd world problems.

 

[kangaroodev]

survival sandbox games

Yeah, that's the big thing now apparently. Survival sandbox games, randomly generated games, and pretentious walking simulators. It's kinda funny when people say that indies are innovating and they are copy pasting two successful games or copy AAA studios and make some pretentious shit out of that.

 

[Farage]

As much as i agree with you kangaroo (that rhymed) i don't think that time is a good measure for how good a game is.
e.g: FEZ, The Witness... and this aberration:

 

[kangaroodev]

Well, you are right Farage, time is not usually a good measure for how good a game can be, but I think it depends a lot on the team. A bad team/company can spend a decade (see duke nukem forever) making something and it will still turn out bad. The Witness for example was made like in what, 6 years or so? With some 3-4 million $ budget and in my opinion it's really not a good game.

But I think that when a company is actually putting effort into things and taking time, then it will be a good measure of effort. SoC is a good example of this, they were able to achieve a lot of things for the old ps2 thanks to their effort. Also didn't WoW take like 5 years to be developed? It was/is the most successful mmorpg now. Cave story also took like 5 years but it turned out to be much better than most indie games today, same as IJI.

Another example is dwarf fortress, after all these years new features are still being added and it's becoming better and better, I can't imagine this game to be completed in a short time at all.

I'm sure that I may not be totally correct on this, but I just want to say that it takes more than a few months to make something good. And all I see today is flash tier games made in a few months that are actually sold, more of the same.

Also, I remember that video! And I played that game just because I wanted to see what that guy came up with from all these years (was it 13?). And damn that game totally shouldn't take 13 years to make, I'm glad that he's proud of it and it's not totally bad but come on, after all those years he should had improved at drawing at least...

 

[Destroid]

Spoiler

https://archive.is/nmynC

Spoiler

Don't trust indie publisher Black Shell Media (my story) ( self.gamedev )
submitted 2 hours ago by AnonJan2016
I'm an indie game developer with a couple games under my belt. As I was about to release my second game on Steam, I decided to look into a partner to help me with the thing I'm terrible at - marketing.
I came across Black Shell Media, a self-proclaimed indie game publisher. Their website looked very nice and professional, and I thought they knew what they were doing. I contacted them, and we arranged a video chat. They claimed to be marketing experts that were super-connected with the games media, and that they would have a team devoted to making sure my game was a financial success. They claimed that they really liked the build of the pre-release build of the game I sent (I later realized this probably wasn't true, because I had accidentally sent them a broken link.)
They offered to take a percentage of my revenue in exchange for handling all marketing and PR aspects. I asked that, since they'd be taking a cut of my revenue, if they'd be investing anything into the game itself (like many publishers do). They claimed that they don't do this, and that I should essentially take them on faith - that the marketing they do will more than pay for the revenue they take. At this point, the person I talked to was very friendly and responsive to calls and emails. I felt like they'd be a good company to have in my corner, so I went ahead and signed their contract. I know realize what a mistake I made. Basically their “marketing” is a complete joke. They have no apparent traction with any of the game media sites, and I have no evidence that they did much marketing at all. The only youtubers that posted videos of my game were small ones that I contacted personally. I had zero coverage on any gaming news site. I didn't even get a story on the smaller sites that had covered my previous title. One person live streamed my game on Twitch, for about an hour. Again, this was someone that I personally contacted. I would have been better off doing the marketing myself, rather than relying on them.
I looked into other games that they published (something I should have done at the outset had I been smart), and noticed the exact same pattern. Basically Black Shell Media's “great marketing insights” boiled down to sending out thousands of tweets to people who probably don't really exist.
As you can imagine, without any exposure, my launch did not go well, from a financial standpoint. It briefly appeared on the Steam “All New Releases” list and then slipped away. The next day, I emailed Black Shell Media asking about their continuing plan to market my game (since they were planning to take a portion of my revenue indefinitely), and they said they would continue to send out tweets and press releases. When I asked to see who they contacted in the media, they said they had no obligation to share this information with me, as this was their trade secret. They refused to tell me a single person who they actually sent a press release to, and as far as I know they didn't send any at all. When I mentioned how absurd it was that they wouldn't send me any evidence that they had marketed my game (other than the tweets), they said that this was stipulated in the contract.
After that, I didn't hear from them in over a month. They didn't respond to me on skype nor answer my emails. Extremely frustrated, I sent them an email threatening to take my case to the public, and they said that would be a violation of the contract I signed with them, and that I would be subject to legal action.
So I decided to post here anonymously so as not to be sued by my own publisher for speaking the truth. I'd like to share more information, so please PM me if you'd like. At this point, my game is a total commercial failure, though I'm extremely grateful for the few people who did purchase it, especially those who gave me good feedback that I can use on future games. I'm happy to say that this experience hasn't broken my spirit, and I'm planning to release another title in July without Black Shell Media's “help”.

So scamming publishers are preying indie devs.
Truly everything that is old is new again.

I know someone signed with Black Shell Media, they are worse than useless for promoting your game and improving sales.

I remember games like Shadow of Colossus taking almost 4 years to complete, and the team size was like 35 people (from my 10 second research). Just imagine, all that effort by such a big team. And now people are not willing to put even a year of effort to make something they are proud of, especially if they are just one person making that game. We've seen plenty of indie companies releasing games like it's not a big deal.

It's going to keep going downhill from now, I don't know what to say. Good games will either have an easier time standing out because there isn't a lot of quality around, or the other way around where you must search through all the bad games just to hopefully find a good one. But either way the bars are set high now, which is good.

It's a little harder to justify taking a 4 year gamble when it's your own money instead of a publisher's.

 

[Machocruz]

Haven't played all of those survival games, but from what I keep reading, Don't Starve (of which I only played a bit. It seemed super polished) is supposed to be the best*. And what do you know, it's made by actually good developers. Klei are pretty much the (old) Nintendo/Blizzard** of indie development right now. Invisible Inc. was my GoTY last year.

I've watched a couple playthroughs of The Long Dark, and it looks like its up there in terms of professionalism.

I won't begrudge people their enjoyment of Ark, which looks hilarious, or The Forest or Stranded, but the jank is real in those.

*Cataclysm: DDA is the actual best

**In terms of professional quality. Looking Glass and Bullfrog made more interesting PC games.

 

[Harpsichord]

it's not gonna happen.

Two million dollars later...

 

[Mozg]

They cheated by extending the fund time by half a month, October me did not know that was an option (nor did anyone else - I remember reading the devs sounding bummed as fuck like it was a done deal before somehow the extension got negotiated)

 

[Delbaeth]

Many recent successful indie games are made not to be played but to be watched on Youtube.
They are done with the idea to be viral with LPs.

In the end, it is easier to believe in the "end of gaming", since those games don't suggest customers to actually play them, but to watch others playing instead. The gaming essence ends here.
One doesn't play a console game if a console is set on her TV while watching on TV someone else playing the game. It is basically watching TV. Same happens with computers and watching Youtube. Microsoft could have been right with their TV focus during the XboxOne conference few years ago.

 

[pippin]

Most games, even AAA ones, are relying on youtube for their "structure". If something interesting doesn't happen in the first 10 or 20 minutes of the game people won't make good videos and that means you're losing customers. However, this is not a new tactic, remember how the level(s) contained in demos or shareware versions were more detailed than other stuff in the same game. Still, it feels as if devs are begging for money these days.