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Economic Climate Spurring Independent Game Success

Eurogamer is running an opinion piece suggesting that innovation and creativity have been on the decline for years within the games industry. Now, with the threat of the economic crisis looming, game publishers are shying further from new projects and ideas, instead choosing to rehash popular IP in order to minimize the risk of failure. The upside is that their reluctance, along with technological improvements that make game distribution easier, is allowing independent developers to gain exposure like never before. "This revolution will give us a new wave of developers who see games through very different eyes to those of their studio-bound compatriots. Forced to consider the financial bottom line, the technological bleeding edge and the whims of Metacritic at each turn, big studio development is by no means uncreative, but certainly has to follow certain set patterns. ... The studio system couldn't have created a game like Flower, the utterly beautiful PSN title which came out earlier this month; but more than that, it couldn't have created a persona like Jenova Chen, the mind behind Flower, who happily talks in interviews about evoking emotions, moving past primal feelings and 'maturing' the industry in ways that don't involve sex, blood and swearing. He talks about making games that don't empower gamers, but instead make them experience other things, other emotions. It's spine-tingling stuff. It's also commercial suicide — or would be, to a studio working in the traditional development context."

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  1. Deah knell for *BSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Whatever the differences a few of us might possess, we certainly can strive to find some common ground. No doubt all of us can easily acknowledge the plain truth that in the balance *BSD would have to be considered a failure. So why did *BSD fail? What is at the root of *BSD's colossal miscue?

    Once you get past the fact that *BSD is fragmented between a myriad of incompatible kernels, there is the historical record of failure and of failed operating systems. *BSD experienced moderate success about 15 years ago in academic circles. Since then it has been in steady decline. We all know *BSD keeps losing market share but why? Is it the problematic personalities of many of the key players? Or is it larger than their troubled personae?

    The record is clear on one thing: no operating system has ever come back from the grave. Efforts to resuscitate *BSD are one step away from spiritualists wishing to communicate with the dead. As the situation grows more desperate for the adherents of this doomed OS, the sorrow takes hold. An unremitting gloom hangs like a death shroud over a once hopeful *BSD community. The hope is gone; a mournful nostalgia has settled in. Now is the end time for *BSD.

  2. COMMUNISM NOW!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    this will create more gams. HOLY bog for SOCKS with poo on your shuoewskhfibbbmbKKBOIujbbfiqka