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."

Comments

Not so much indie as low budget

[KDR_11k]

The current economic situation benefits developers who go for a lower budget since that way profit is easier to make. Indie games are low budget but many commercial games can have relatively small budgets too (Wii Fit anyone?). The current budgets needed to produce a so-called "AAA" title for the HD consoles has massively increased from the previous generation while revenue remained the same. The economic situation just accelerates what was inevitable: That these high cost epics fail to make enough money compared to their investment. I've read an analysis that this would happen and that was written before the crisis was even started.

The blame lies not with the economic situation, it lies with the companies themselves who throw gigantic amounts of cash at single games and then suffer when even one of them fails to live up to expectations. The economic situation is just a convenient excuse to make it look like this wasn't the fault of the people in charge.

Re:Open source

[meist3r]

I'd love to see a construction kit for SCUMM-type adventure games like the Monkey Island games. Perhaps open source to the rescue?

Something like this maybe? It was used to create "Zak McKracken 2" ... Linux version is in the works and set to be released later this year. It's not exactly open source but it seems to work pretty well.

Re:How low can you go?

[cliffski]

Forget the home office if you are mad enoguh to make console games.
Nintendo contacted me about making games for the wii. Then refused to let me do so because I had a home office.
I'd lvoe to make wii games. I'm not renting an office to just to keep the big N happy though. I *like* working with my fridge and kettle 10 feet away and my cats snoozing on the desk.