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Why There Are No Hit Indie Games
Slate is running an article on why indie games are still such small potatoes in today's game industry. From the article: "In today's movie business, it's possible for an indie film like Napoleon Dynamite to become a sensation. Saw, which cost a mere $1.2 million, grossed 100 times that amount. That just doesn't happen in video games. The average PlayStation 2 game costs about $8 million. Studios often need large development teams--usually 40 or more people--to meet their tight deadlines. They spend money to license everything from comic book heroes to graphics engines. They record A-list actors. And if they burn their own CDs or do their own marketing, costs can really soar."
Whats the definition of a 'hit' game anyways? Besides the Napoleon reference The article only talks about how much money is spent on games, not if they make money or anythin gelse, doesn't that get to the whole problem we're having now of games just looking good but (most) playing like crap?
StepMania seems to be a very popular game. There's an active modding community and a multiplayer add-on. Haven't played it myself but looking at some of the clips on youtube.com it looks very polished.
Must be great fun at a party.
We can't rate hit indie games by their fiscal gross alone. Some of the most popular games out there (Continuum, anyone?) are free.
Its not because you don't hear about a game in the mainstream game review site that they aren't hits. Its just a question of exposure. Take Hexic or Crystal Cave on XBox Live. They fare pretty well for games with 0$ in marketing budget.
Some games have a niche market and are quite recognized among players. Cave story, Tumiki Fighter or even some *band variant comes to mind.
In the end its only a question of marketing. Just like Open Source, suffers from a lack of "Open Source Marketing", Indie suffer from a lack of "Indie Marketing". But things are picking up IMHO.
The natural market for indie games is the PC, the structure of console gaming assumes large publishers; back in the day console games were either first party titles or arcade ports. In the 80s and 90s the majority of PC games were "indie" studios like Maxis, Id, and Sierra: small-staff affiars that occasionally produced mega-hit games, but also subsited quit well on sleepers and more nich titles.
This all changed after the indroduction of dedicated graphics processing and of online gaming, and the resulting arms race for whiz-bang excite-the-fanboys-with-screenshots features. The arcade culture moved online and onto PC gaming, and the idea of PC games being something that an adult might want to play on their office machine began to die. Megapublishers moved in, purchased the formerly independant studios, and homoginized the industry.
And now you have an absurd situation where Nintendo is seen as being some sort of guiding visionary for thinking that video games could be intertainment for people who aren't hard-core gamers, when, in fact, before recently, PC gaming had been serving a diverse audience for over 20 years.
Anyway, I'm of the opinion that video games have become much more narrow and catering to a specific audience, one that no longer includes me. I'm no luddite. I appreciate good graphics and advances in technology, however games that use all these new features in ways that actually interest me are few and far between, and I find myself looking toward abandonware for new (to me) games.
I have a kind of generic critique of capitalism as a mode of cultural production that relates to this. It seems that commercial art is best when it is part of an immature market. The genre of the summer blockbuster saw a lot more creativity and inventiveness in the 70s and 80s, while the parameters were still being explored. Once Hollywood figured out the basic formulas of that game (e.g. "Die Hard" is a reproducable success, "E.T." is not, etc.) creativity dropped through the floor and you start seeing more and more sequels, licensed adaptations, and such. I'm not saying that profit is incompatible with art, just that it doesn't scale infinitely, when the producers get too greedy and refuse to accept the risk of not having a hit, the fun dies out.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
The indie movies that are successful are those that manage to reach a wide audience. They get picked up for distribution (art house or even multiplex), advertised, reviewed, and otherwise get very similar treatment to studio movies. There are lots of indie movies that aren't successful and don't get this treatment, but it is a possibility. There are movies out there that everyone has seen and never realized that they were indie.
This is not true at all for indie games. There is no getting picked up by a distributor, getting reviewed, advertising or anything of the kind. They're either available for free from some site filled with indie games of dubious quality or they try to get sold by some new method (electronic delivery, serialized gaming, etc.). Its hard enough to be successful going against the flow in one aspect (indie vs large developer), and its even harder when you add a new distribution/payment scheme to that.
How am I supposed to find out which indie games are good? Without totally immersing myself into the scene, its next to impossible. Advertising, reviews and utilizing the existing distribution medium let people find independently produced things in the way that they're accustomed to finding establishment things.
Also: the game world does not have a clearly defined establishment in the same way that the movie world does. Just because EA is the behemoth now doesn't mean that they have the same kind of history as MGM (used to), and so being independent of them doesn't carry the same connotations in the consumer's mind.
I'd speculate that the indie scene is far, far larger than it ever has been at any point up to now. In the 'good old days' a one-man bedroom project could rock the industry, but the industry was very very small at that time.
Today's indie scene is probably far larger than the whole computer games scene of 20 years ago. (I have no figures to back that up, BTW)
Do you think it is possible that one day in the not too distant future there will be a point where graphics and physics engines cannot be advanced further, and at that point these engines will become available for a low cost. This is when any small team of programmars can grab a script and start working on the game, because the API will not change, and they will already have the skills required to efficiently make it. A good example of this is the SOURCE engine, it was designed to be used by indie developers so they do not have to build their own engines, but focus on the actual story telling.
How many copies do you need to turn over, or dollars do you need to make to be call "a hit". The http://www.liveforspeed.net/ racing game is an excellent sim, and pretty damn popular and uses a fairly unique bit-by-bit sales model.
Initially they produced Section 1, sold it cheaply which allowed further development, then produced Section 2... etc. etc.
By the time they finish, the racing public will have paid a total price similar to todays mass market games, but spread out over a year or two.
Umm... I think that game is a "truly interesting and original game concept" that has come out recently.
Other games that I find to be fun and amusing are games that move away from the conventional console controller. (Nintendo realizes this, and thus the Wii controller was designed)
Samba De Amigo, DDR, Guitar Hero, Donkey Konga... games like that have a very bright future.
With the new systems all having some sort of network for gameplay the doors are wide open for possibilities. I always thought that a team puzzle games would do very well, MMORPG's for the PC have that element, but on a gigantic scale. Something smaller and simpler could produce the same addicted frenzy.
"Seriously, when was the latest "new idea" you saw with regards to gameplay?"
:D"
Super Monkey Ball - inspired the much lauded Katamari Damacy in obvious ways.
Pikmin
Donkey Konga
THE FREAKIN NINTENDO DS FOR CRYING OUT LOUD! Nintendogs, Brain Training, Pac Pix, Kirby DS, Yoshi Touch and Go... *sigh*
The Sony EyeToy
The Nintendo Wii
Goldeneye 007
Metroid Prime
Eternal Darkness' sanity meter
WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2006's GM Mode - it's a freakin marketing video game!
Are you even paying attention to anything out in the last 10 years? Looked at Nintendo lately? What do you think their point is? It's basically: "Something new has to be done soon or else no new gamers will ever be created, and the market will be even more stale from the latest cars'n'guns'n'thugz game."
"Everything I can think of these days is a variation on the same general idea (other than flight/driving "sims" of course). The last truly interesting and original game concept was over 10 years ago..."
It's true that in 1996, 10 years ago, original game concepts were very common, it's because Nintendo released the analog joystick on the N64 controller and Sony promptly stuck 2 onto the PlayStation. Noone had done something like Twisted Metal or 1080 Snowboarding or Tony Hawk's Pro Skater or Mario 64 before. The problem with this gen is that there's no massive gap like there was between 2D and 3D, so Sony and MS have invented the theory that HD picture is the next big step, and Nintendo is saying "wait, if it's HD that's the next big thing, what will that change in terms of gameplay? I think you guys are wrong on this... lets make a better controller so everyone can play, not just geeks and college guys"
"Given that, the only real way to distinguish yourself as far as marketing goes, when limited to a fixed number of game themes, is by graphical or audio superiority. This costs money."
Or, you know, create new forms of control like a touch screen or a camera or a microphone or a controller that detects its position in 3D space, or a bongo drum set, or fucking DDR!
"Sad really... if someone was to come up with an original (or even, not flogged to death in the past 5 years), entertaining gameplay idea, they'd do well..."
Yeah, well tell that to all the people who DIDN'T buy Alien Homonid or Katamary Damacy or Eternal Darkness or Pikmin or LEGO Star Wars or Goblin Commander...
"Me? I'm waiting for a decent new 2d platformer to come out
Umm... there is one. It's called "New Super Mario Bros." and it kicks nine kinds of ass... not to mention Kirby on the DS, and well, maybe you just really need to buy a DS and quit analyzing an industry you haven't been a part of in 10 years...
Born to Play
"Seven-times watered down Marxism isn't really serving us very well, and the public rightly finds little resonance in a class debate cloaked in the language of the Industrial Revolution."
You're right in this, however alternatives are being explored, though not widely spoken of in the main much in the West (in particular the United States). Look to South America and the anarcho-syndicalist movement, the workers reclaiming abandoned factories, and so forth. Of course people will always need to do "business" and will always need to organize. But will it always be done in the same manner? Is it not arrogant and naive to assume history has stopped with late (psuedo) capitalism and a corrupt and deceptive version of representative democracy?
Katamari Damacy.
Wario Ware.
Dance Dance Revolution.
Donkey Kong Jungle Beat.
Animal Crossing.
The games are there, if you look around.