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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?
I have no idea how large Popcap Games was back when they released it, but Bejeweled was a hit. In fact, a lot of their games have proven to be popular. Obviously they can't be thought of as an indie game studio now. And then there was that old puzzle game before it that was a huge smash hit created by that Pazhitnov guy in Russia . . . what was that again? I forget.
Studios often need large development teams--usually 40 or more people--to meet their tight deadlines.
And Napoleon Dynamite was shot by 3 guys?
We can't rate hit indie games by their fiscal gross alone. Some of the most popular games out there (Continuum, anyone?) are free.
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!
End of discussion.
Most of today's hits are just new faces on existing game engines. They are only hits because companies spend a lot of money on marketing to convince people that the new game is really something better.
Sure, they may licence new comic book charecters. Or, for sports games, have the latest players names and stats. But, if the game play still is lousy, then ultimately the game is, too. Improving game play costs a lot of money. It's a lot cheaper to try and convince consumers that the product is better than to actually make it better.
This is no different than movie producers. Indie producers simply do not have the resources to market the film or pay high salaries for name recognition. Very often, their product, as an art form, is significantly better than what comes out of Hollywood, but without the marketing machine, it can't reach the critical mass need for public awareness.
Game producers are in the same boat. Just like indie film producers, all of the indie game producers resources go directly into improving the product and not the frills. So, indie game producers can and do produce games that are as good or better than what comes out of the commercial game houses, however, without the ability to market them, they can't reach critical mass, either.
It was probably shot in 3 to 5 weeks. Video games require you to carry those 40 people for months.
The real problem is not the number of people, but that there's no good way to make a low-budget video game. You can make a good movie for very little money by not spending $100 million on special effects and marketing. Video games don't work like that. If you don't spend the money on having good graphics artists, your game looks like crap.
You can sell a movie with a great story and no special effects. You can't sell a game with fantastic game play and crappy graphics and sound - those games were already sold 10-20 years ago.
paintball
Seriously, when was the latest "new idea" you saw with regards to gameplay?
Tetris? Lemmings? Command and Conquer? Sim City? Wolfenstein 3d? Elite?
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...
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.
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...
Me? I'm waiting for a decent new 2d platformer to come out :D
smash
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.