Jeff Vogel Soapbox Thread

[Abelian]

The AAAs came from a time where people still happily accepted to pay $50+ for a quality game instead of waiting for it to be included with 8 other games in a $6 bundle. How are these upstarts supposed to feed their families, pay for equipment, and rent an office?

They aren't. It's like asking why an unfunny comic doesn't get a million dollar sitcom deal. If you suck at your job -- in this case making a quality video game -- you aren't going to earn a living from it, and rightfully so.

That's only partially true. If there are too many games competing for attention, some good ones are bound to slip through the cracks. If the gaming public had more refined tastes, I doubt we'd see so many narrative shooters with quick-time events.

Edit: for HHR:

I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all.

 

[Metro]

Vogel, like Blow, benefited from being on the first wave. He's made one or two good games. Rest are shit/carbon copies.

That's only partially true. If there are too many games competing for attention, some good ones are bound to slip through the cracks. If the gaming public had more refined tastes, I doubt we'd see so many narrative shooters with quick-time events.

A fair point. Marketing plays a role but that isn't excessively hard in this day of social media.

 

[DalekFlay]

It's funny when industry people act like Gone Home selling 100,000 copies is somehow more important than random AAA titles selling ten million. I remember a particularly funny Leigh Alexander article on Gamasutra where she went on and on about how indies are the new biggest thing. One of the first comments was about how all the games she used as an example combined sold less than Assassin's Creed does in a single day a month after release.

Of course it's all relative. On the Codex Project Eternity is a ten times bigger deal than Dragon Age Inquisition. Perspective is a funny thing.

 

[Infinitron]

Big believers in the digital marketplace like Metro always bring up the "GOOD GAMES WILL ALWAYS SELL" argument in response to complaints like these. And for the most part I believe that's true, too.

But I think they're missing the point. See, there's a gray area here between "good game that sells" and "bad game that tanks". When there's not a lot of supply, the second or third-tier games tend to earn more. You can see this in Kickstarter, where in the early period back in 2012, many relatively obscure games (like Dead State, for instance) earned sums of money that they never would have earned today. Not huge sums in the millions, but large enough sums. The difference between 200k-300k and 20k-30k dollars may not be much in the larger scheme of things, but to them it's a huge difference.

 

[Metro]

Gotta market! Especially if you want people to give you money for what is essentially nothing at the time of the transaction.

 

[Daemongar]

I'd like to slap whoever taught Jeff Vogel how to compose paragraphs.

Also, look, it's now easier than ever to create a game where in the past, it took an incredible amount of specialized knowledge. Personally, I think Vogel is more annoyed that anyone can get into the "game developer" club rather than it being a closed group of filthy nerds. Greenlight, Unity, SDK's available for free for almost any platform, and all the tools out now are helping regular slobs produce some fair quality games. Look, it's so f-ing easy to produce a game, even Cleve released one (in less than 18 years!)

 

[Peter]

When people stop being able to make money, be it via Kickstarter or Steam, they'll bail. I like the whole indie game movement, but the fact of the matter is that a lot of it really is pretty horrible nowadays. Most indies don't have any business selling their half-baked, borderline shovelware stuff. They're riding the wave for now, and hey, good for them. But I don't think we have to worry about losing devs truly worth our attention, as shown by the success of countless indie games after that initial, super hyped up Braid-World of Goo-Super Meat Boy wave. The situation is gonna regulate itself sooner or later.

It's kind of like the music industry more than anything, if you think about it: ridiculously low barrier of entry, ridiculously high ratio of crap, and the good (or profitable, or whatever) stuff inevitably rises to the top. I think right now everyone's just still so enamored by the romantic idea of indie game development that the video game industry hasn't come to terms with how brutal indie fields in other mediums have always been. I don't think that's necessarily a problem. Creative/entertainment fields are extremely competitive. Tough shit.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Remember when they dug up that landfill with all the Atari titles of E.T. a month ago? Many MANY people will be making a connection to that event, and what it symbolizes, and to the upcoming "crash" in the Indie market.

 

[Machocruz]

When was the last time someone released a decent and successful indie game that they worked on in their spare time? Is it still possible, or does it require 12 hours a day and tens of thousands of dollars?

 

[Peter]

Gunpoint maybe? That was largely a spare time project, I'm pretty sure, and did well for the dev. Almost everyone worth their salt goes full-time at some point, though.

 

[Machocruz]

Yeah, at some point, but I think that it is less risky to do so after they've built up some cred and experience/workflow and have some capital from their previous game to roll into their next. Jumping in feet first into the world of full-time game development with no other means of survival strikes me as a gamble.

 

[Roguey]

Poor Vogel, been supporting himself by making slam dunk sequels for people who absolutely have to play a "new" turn-based RPG for two decades, and now they're back in a big way and he's still the same and looking a lot less appealing. Sink or swim, Jeff.

 

[Average Manatee]

TL;DR Boom/Bust cycle, now with video games. It's simple economics. If the indie bubble isn't bursting today then it's expanding for a bigger burst tomorrow.

"Killing" the industry is a bad way to put it. I'll call it "cleansing".

 

[Metro]

The final solution?!?!

 

[Abelian]

When was the last time someone released a decent and successful indie game that they worked on in their spare time? Is it still possible, or does it require 12 hours a day and tens of thousands of dollars?

While it's still in Early Access, Styg developed the Underrail alpha in his spare time before switching to full time.

 

[Sceptic]

tl;dr clones exist, they proliferate, and then a crash happens. What a shocking revelation.

Well done Vogel, have a cookie.

 

[Telengard]

It's even funnier that Desura has been releasing way, way more games than that for years and years now, and nobody cared. It's only when the almighty Steam notches up a big number that it's suddenly a huge cause for concern.

Oh holy Gaben, why have you profaned yourself with this indie filth. It makes it so much harder for me to find Battlefield 5 Ultimate Mega Edition with Sniper Upgrade Pack for $180. I must wade through the cries of so many infidels before I can behold the true greatness of EA. For shame!

 

[ColCol]

Too bad Vogel already made a significant amount of money.

 

[Lyric Suite]

First, a brief history of the Indie bubble. In 2008, big budget developers were doing fine, but they had mostly abandoned a lot of genres many gamers loved (puzzle games, adventure games, 2-D platformers, classic-style RPGs, Roguelikes, etc.)

A few young, hungry developers stepped in and showed that classics can be written on low budgets by young, plucky people with unruly facial hair. (Braid. World of Goo. Castle Crashers. Minecraft. And so on.)

Lost me right here. How the fuck are any of the shit he mentioned "classics" in the sense he implied in the previous sentence?

The only "indie" game i can think of in recent memory that wasn't utter shit is Path of Exile, and that's only because that is a real game, the type we gamers "loved" but haven't been getting from big budget companies and pretentious indie developers.

 

[ColCol]

Yeah, none of those are really classic. Minecraft will be, but for a much younger generation.

 

[Markman]

The amount of shit games is increasing. Thats a fact. Make derpy platformer, add steam cards and achievements, put it into a bundle, make some money then make a mobile version where you slap on ads and feed of it while lying to cell phone retards they are playing a PC hit finally available for FREE on your device.
Meh. Fuck todays indies.

There are some good talented guys like Styg, but 90% of all indie releases are not worth buying nor playing.
When I see pixaled shit or cartoony "planned for mobile release" games I want to throw up.
Before I was thinking "hey, whats unique about this game" and now I go "fuck, not another clone".
Fuck steam cards, achievement whores and fuck F2P smartphone games.

 

[Jick Magger]

I think the growing controversy surrounding the quality of Steam access games (the abandonment of Towns and removal of Earth: Year 2066 in particular), along with people actually starting to take legal action on Kickstarters which fail to deliver a product at least indicates that people are starting to catch on to how easily abusable the system really is by scam artists and half-assed devs looking to cash in a quick buck. I hope that this trend will lead to more qualitative control being undertaken by both services, but I'm not expecting much.

 

[Metro]

First, a brief history of the Indie bubble. In 2008, big budget developers were doing fine, but they had mostly abandoned a lot of genres many gamers loved (puzzle games, adventure games, 2-D platformers, classic-style RPGs, Roguelikes, etc.)

A few young, hungry developers stepped in and showed that classics can be written on low budgets by young, plucky people with unruly facial hair. (Braid. World of Goo. Castle Crashers. Minecraft. And so on.)

Lost me right here. How the fuck are any of the shit he mentioned "classics" in the sense he implied in the previous sentence?

The only "indie" game i can think of in recent memory that wasn't utter shit is Path of Exile, and that's only because that is a real game, the type we gamers "loved" but haven't been getting from big budget companies and pretentious indie developers.

They're only 'classics' in his mind because they were ahead of the deluge. Can't speak for Minecraft (but I guess it did sort of start a sub-genre) but those other games are trash. Braid is just a shitty pretentious platformer with goofy time mechanics. World of Goo is a fairly generic iOS game. Castle Crashers is just a rip-off of Golden Axe and other 1980's beat-em-ups.

 

[Telengard]

Actually, release-wise, we're currently in a downward spiral. A spiral that began in 2008. (2008 -what a shocker)

Game databases show game release numbers trending down to now being nearly half what they were back then. With a constant drop year over year. Until 2013, which is fifteen hundred titles less than the high. Large scale release of indies is nothing new. Indies getting some of the spotlight is the only new thing. Rather, Greenlight, journos, and Kickstarter have simply thrust indies in your face, instead of leaving them to rot on private sites or indie collection sites, where they could be safely ignored by everyone.

There was even a fair number of indie RPGs released during the dark decade. Not that anybody cared about them. Since they were indie.

 

[Baron Dupek]

I don't care that much of indie condition (and if they crumble or not) but condition of B tier games is more worrying. I remember amount of games on PS2, then lower amount of games on next one (PS3) and pitiful number of games for PS4 I was suprised they didn't raised "PS haz no games" again. But that times passed...

Game databases show game release numbers trending down

and that sounds somewhat relevant.