The "Indiepocalypse" is now a thing

[Zarniwoop]

I was okay with "mid-core".

Where else would a core be? It's kind of in the middle of things by definition.

Dumb term is dumb.

 

[Zarniwoop]

No sympathy after hacks bitched about Steam's long overdue refund policy. Burn the good with the bad - I don't care.

Yep, hard to forget that episode.

Personally I would be ok with 90%+ of the indie crap currently clogging up Steam to disappear completely. There are some good ones out there, they can stay. Like Ziggurat for example. But the rest have just declined Steam. Out of 15 games on my Steam frontpage, only 2 are actual professionally done games. Ditto for Good Old Games, which first stopped releasing only Old games, and then stopped releasing Good games as well.

Just like the videogame crash in the 80's, this is the long overdue Indiegame Crash and it's happening for exactly the same reason - advancing technology, new investments and reducing costs mean every moron who can put 2 pixels together is now suddenly a vidyagaem developer, flooding the market with absolute bullshit. And the customers are getting fed up. I only wish the same would happen to EA and Actiblizz with their "annuallized franchises".

 

[Lyric Suite]

There are still a few solid indie games but the problem now is with Greenlight, all of these bundles, and the retards who 'collect' entries on their Steam list are responsible for flooding the market with crap. I remember first stumbling on to Torchlight 1 in the 'upcoming' games section on Steam. I don't even bother checking that anymore since 95% of it is shovelware 'Look, ma, I'm a developer' crap. That said, if you make a good game, it will still stand out -- word of mouth spreads quickly on the internet.

Most of the 'developers' bemoaning their inability to make money is based on the fact they're making shitty games.

I don't go to GoG anymore precisely for this reason, and i just monitor the Codex GoG thread for news. The retards didn't even have the foresight to keep that shit separate.

 

[potatojohn]

I don't go to GoG anymore precisely for this reason, and i just monitor the Codex GoG thread for news. The retards didn't even have the foresight to keep that shit separate.

If even scrolling by a couple of games that took years of man power to create is too much, maybe you just don't like games any more?

Between the Codex circlejerking about the same ten games over and over and the gamergate middle-school drama thread having more activity than the rest of the forum, I have to wonder how many people here are left that actually enjoy playing games rather than just stay here because they played some games 15 years ago and just can't let it go.

But I'm here to tell you that it's okay to let go.

I'm sure we'll miss such illustrious personas as Lyric Suite, but in the end I believe we'll be better off without fa... people like you

 

[Delbaeth]

Just like the videogame crash in the 80's, this is the long overdue Indiegame Crash and it's happening for exactly the same reason - advancing technology, new investments and reducing costs mean every moron who can put 2 pixels together is now suddenly a vidyagaem developer, flooding the market with absolute bullshit. And the customers are getting fed up. I only wish the same would happen to EA and Actiblizz with their "annuallized franchises".

The big difference with the crash in the 80's is that you can have blind faith'd crowds (legitimate or illegitimate depending of your view point) which will 'save' a game, a series, a dev or a pub, no matter what could happen to the industry. People's behaviour, even of the 'youth', is like the one of very old people. I can understand that from people 30+ who have played video games for decades (even though I am still discovering new games and genres, but sadly most of them have been released many years ago).

But teens, too? Even them are afraid of novelty. Afraid of trying other things than what they have 'experienced' (mostly GTA, sports games, TF2, WoW or any F2P). Few of them became hipsters hyping few indie games. At least they tried something, but let's face it, they did not because it was 'new', but it was similar to what they experienced in the very early years of their gaming life, like so called 'metroidvanias' or a sub genre of action platformers.

Beyond that? Nothing. It is really depressing to see that the youth isn't really interested in new things compared to their 'always the same' gaming life, only to say 'all of this is old', because the AAA industry stopped doing anything else. It's a damn shame that it is us, the old ones (man, I'm not old!), who are in charge of diversity. We have now neo cons in gaming. Sure there was always some of them in each era. But now the AAA biz isn't doing its job. And since they are too big, and they mostly have big crowds, they won't change.

Indiepocalypse won't change the state of the industry. Sadly.

 

[Lyric Suite]

If even scrolling by a couple of games that took years of man power to create is too much, maybe you just don't like games any more?

That's right, i don't give a shit about gaymes. More specifically, i don't give a shit about indie games, especially on a place devoted to old games in the first place.

Between the Codex circlejerking about the same ten games over and over and the gamergate middle-school drama thread having more activity than the rest of the forum, I have to wonder how many people here are left that actually enjoy playing games rather than just stay here because they played some games 15 years ago and just can't let it go.

Ho go fuck yourself with that bullshit dude. If you retards could make a game that was even remotely as good as those of we had in former times the Codex would burst out in praise. Instead, all you are capable of producing is shallow pixel art "ironic" shit or political propaganda masquerading as a game.

 

[Telengard]

* News flash! * Most indie game have shit earnings, and when you add a bunch of shit earners to a pool of items, it drags the average down.

Wow. Who'd'a thunk averages worked that way, eh?

 

[Thane Solus]

This

Indie Devs from 3-4 years ago, had a huge advantage. They were very few games launched each month, steam was helping promoting new games back then on the home page, they also had some curation. But they also were less tools, so you actually had to be a good developer back then to create something, these days you have a lot of tools to speed up the development, or assets and scripts to buy(steal) and make a "game".

Not all games made it, but almost all made quite a good income, if were developed smart (as in not investing 200k for a runner....)

These days beside the meme games, and other garbage, if you want to be a indie dev, choose a niche you love, a small niche with smart players, and make the best games you can for that niche, you might succeed or fail miserable, the experience will help. This if you have a gaming culture, otherwise you will probably make another horror trash game, minecraft clone or whatever is popular at that time...Zombies in SPACEEEEEEEEEEEE

The crash is already here:

1) no curation : too many games released each month, even if they are good or bad, nobody makes any good income, unless they get some nice visibility or some viral because MEME, because.... fuck you...Youtube

2) mobile gold rush brought many non developers to the table, and now they are flooding the PC, because Valve, because reasons, because hipsters, because Gaben loves money

3) unity assets and script that are not controlled, moderated and produce shovelware each day, even if that engine can do much better than this if you want to.


Add a high moderation on Steam, just like GOG has, put back new releases on homepage, do not fucking accept meme games, unity default asssets/script games, mobile shitty ports, garbage games and the problem is fixed.

Does Valve, the new microsoft, cares? No, there you go then.

I think in time it might balance itself, but it will take one more year or so.

 

[Robert Jarzebina]

As a indie gamedev:

I think market is just normalizing and IT IS A GOOD THING!

I am making my own game for a year and I am regularly scanning Steam Greenlight and other sources for "is someone making similar stuff, god please no" and seriously only 1 game in 100 is interesting, only 1 game in 200 I want to really play, only 1 game in 500 is really awesome.

There is no such thing as oversaturated market with good games. There is oversaturated market with bad games.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Summary of OP:

Steam is finally tracking all the failed indie games that previously couldn't even get through Greenlight, so now a bunch of retards are shocked and pretending these games only now started to exist.

Newsflash: Indie development was always frought with failure and shit games. The only difference is now we have better information about their sales and price points, etc. This is not a bad thing.

 

[Mustawd]

Out of 150 games on my Steam frontpage, I've only played 2

Fixed post for accuracy.

 

[Alienman]

I welcome the indie-apocalypse. All useless devs will get purged and only the serious one will remain.

 

[Mustawd]

Serious ones like Cleve

 

[Cyberarmy]

I welcome the indie-apocalypse. All useless devs will get purged and only the serious one will remain.

Good riddance I say!

 

[Anthedon]

If only this would somehow stop the flood of crap clogging the Steam frontpage.

 

[Zarniwoop]

Fixed post for accuracy.

Who cares about you and your newfag problems? Go play some more then.

 

[potatojohn]

That's right, i don't give a shit about gaymes. More specifically, i don't give a shit about indie games, especially on a place devoted to old games in the first place.

You don't care about games period.

Ho go fuck yourself with that bullshit dude. If you retards could make a game that was even remotely as good as those of we had in former times the Codex would burst out in praise.

You are totally deluded if you think the average indie game with its 2 people working on it part time and a budget of -$50000 can have the production values of a something like Fallout.

Maybe you should take a look at the credits the next time you run a game, if that ever happens

https://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/fallout-2/credits

Instead, all you are capable of producing is shallow pixel art "ironic" shit or political propaganda masquerading as a game.

Are you ever going to stop whining about Sunset?

But I guess that's what you do when you don't care about games and get all of your information from "outrage porn" sites like KIA.

Weird though I never saw you types complaining about games like Ethnic Clensing or White Law - clearly political statements more than games. I guess it's only bad when it doesn't jive with your own fucked up views?

 

[Mustawd]

Who cares about you and your newfag problems? Go play some more then.

k'

 

[a Goat]

how many people here are left that actually enjoy playing games rather than just stay here because they played some games 15 years ago and just can't let it go

I know how to help it.

Make a requirement, where everybody who wants to post on GD has to post full, graphical let's play of some codex/tcancer/adventuredex related game!

Spoiler

I mean, if you want to kill GD that is

What the author of the article doesn't understand is that everything works as intended.

Lo-fi indie games were a thing because of basic supply and demand was working here.

2d platformers were rare(if they even happened) so anything resembling quality was instantly successful. Horrors were rare, so anything semi-decent won the people quickly.

Where smarter devs started to pick up with quality/quantity(FNaF guy or Vogel are good examples of quantity approach) or used the initial success as a sort of kickstarter into the bigger studios, idiots thought that this will never end. Then of course there came some hipsters and retards but it's not the point - "small" indie games are "crashing" because they were overblown and some little-bit-bigger studios were formed that realised/decided that they can make money out of something nobody even considered financially viable few years before(imagine anybody funding and releasing Ori and the Blind Forest in 2008 - maybe as a CoD clone now with cover mechanics).
Untalented indies can't possibly survive the competition of actual devs with skills.

Basically what we are seeing is the normalisation of market. From AAA-only publishers and bloated number of very small-budget indie devs who somehow were able to survive on their games, and very little in-between to more normalised structures with normal low and mid tier studios being quite numerous. The rat race for making CoD successor seems to be over, especially after THQ went down. Which doesn't mean that it will be cool from now.

 

[CryptRat]

Yep, hard to forget that episode.

Personally I would be ok with 90%+ of the indie crap currently clogging up Steam to disappear completely. There are some good ones out there, they can stay. Like Ziggurat for example. But the rest have just declined Steam. Out of 15 games on my Steam frontpage, only 2 are actual professionally done games. Ditto for Good Old Games, which first stopped releasing only Old games, and then stopped releasing Good games as well.

Just like the videogame crash in the 80's, this is the long overdue Indiegame Crash and it's happening for exactly the same reason - advancing technology, new investments and reducing costs mean every moron who can put 2 pixels together is now suddenly a vidyagaem developer, flooding the market with absolute bullshit. And the customers are getting fed up. I only wish the same would happen to EA and Actiblizz with their "annuallized franchises".

Today you have many more ways to know if a game is shit before buying it, that was not really true in the 80's, so it's not so problematic.

More games are released and the average game sell less copies. OK. The real question is if they are many good games which are lost in the mass, which is not sure. I am sure that Serpent in the Staglands wouldn't sell better if there were less crap on Steam. I don't think that it's such a horrible thing that everything ressembling a game get some visibility and players must choose what to play (particularly if we talk about niche games). The important thing is that Neo Scavenger, Paper Sorcerer or Antharion can get released, they are indie RPGs so anyway they won't sell a lot.

 

[mastroego]

I recently bought Halfway and was VERY happy with it. Because it's good.

Just check (codexian) reviews, buy safely, and if you pir4te shit buy later those games that prove good.
Nothing's changed, stay cool.

 

[Mustawd]

I recently bought Halfway and was VERY happy with it. Because it's good.

Just check (codexian) reviews, buy safely, and if you pir4te shit buy later those games that prove good.
Nothing's changed, stay cool.

Good to hear. Just bought this game recently as well. Reviews on steam looked meh, but you can never trust those.

 

[Turjan]

Lo-fi indie games were a thing because of basic supply and demand was working here.

2d platformers were rare(if they even happened) so anything resembling quality was instantly successful. Horrors were rare, so anything semi-decent won the people quickly.

This. Whatever you may think about Braid, it had decent production values and was kind of unique when it was released. The Humble Bundles it got into the first time had quite a bunch of relatively unique and decent games. However, we now get the same kind of games over and over again.

When I look at bundles today, it's mostly the same kind of platformers, with some scrolling shooters mixed in, maybe some horror survival game, plus stupid hidden object games. 99% of the games flood consists of this shit. If I see any hint of these genres, I immediately click the "Next" button. Most bundles are quickly evaluated this way.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

TotalBiscuits thoughts about this

 

[Ninja Destroyer]

That said, if you make a good game, it will still stand out -- word of mouth spreads quickly on the internet.

That's the same thing I was thinking. The saturation of the market is visible when you see all those Steam titles or bundles scattered through the whole internet. Yeah, you get 5 games but let's not talk about their quality. For me it's like trying most of the android games. Nicely looking, simple, forgettable, nothing that can be distinguishable from others.

Early acess tends to make some games stay in beta state forever. Overgrown devs for example are just living off the money without making final release. I don't even remember when the game early build were made. But since everyone can say " I want to be a developer" it's just a matter of build the proper perspective on interesting projects and when you know it's solid, pay for it when the full version is released.

Some indie devs, like for example Frozenbyte recently will have too big ambitions, and with the money that they made on earlier projects they'll try to make so called Triple I game. Trine 3 has mostly crushing reviews and it will remain in the bundle fodder purchases for most of the people who didn't buy it on Day 1. Something to think about it when you want to be a bigger player.

Good games will always be made, even indie ones. It's just the number of really good that will stay in our memories is very small. But that goes for every title no matter how big is the fish in the pond.