Why There Are No Hit Indie Games 267
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."
Very true (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:40 ppl (Score:1, Insightful)
Tight deadlines (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, but indie developers usually don't have 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.
Again, you don't need to do this to make an indie game. Games on CD? Thats so 1999.
If you spend next to nothing to make a game, its easier to make a profit.
Take this guy for example. [idevgames.com]
Indy software is far harder than indy films. (Score:1, Insightful)
First of all, even after one popular movie, the indy star will likely be able to make some money speaking at various events. They'll be able to star in theatre productions, even those running just a few weeks.
Second of all, it's far less costly for an individual actor or actress to make an indy film. That's why they can often star in four to five indy films per year! An indy game developer will often spend a year or two per game, if not more (for a larger project).
Those advantages rarely exist for a software developer. The individuals themselves are far less visible than indy actors or actresses. Nobody will want them to speak at events, let alone pay them to do so. Working part-time at other software firms to cover the expense of living while developing their indy title may be impossible (due to NDAs, etc.).
When you consider how much harder it is for an individual indy developer (or small group of developers) to get by financially, especially compared to indy actors or actresses, it's no wonder there are fewer popular indy games out there.
Re:Storyline maybe? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's simple (Score:2, Insightful)
That's called a "barrier to entry." It's a feature of the non-free market which is inaccessible to 99% of business in order to limit or abolish competition (see "insufficient huevos") and deny small business access to the capital markets.
Let's recap:
1. There is no free market
2. There is no competition
3. There is no access to capital
Not bad for a capitalistic free market based on competition, don't you think?
Cue Slashdot apologists for the Neo-Darwinian game show status-quo "get more marketable skills" economy.
Retailers are the key (Score:2, Insightful)
Small developers and small distributors do not have the capital to pay Walmart $8M for a national role-out. Therefore there is no shelf space for the games. Therefore they don't sell well.
A manager at Vivendi once told me that they could sell 50K units of an empty box at Christmas because the parents have no idea which games are good. They buy them randomly, and having and end-cap and a pretty box will result in more sales than any amount of game play quality.
The problems with electronic distribution have still not been overcome: Separating the good from the boring, handling payment, limited bandwidth, and game magazines won't review or publicize unless the publisher advertises.
Re:Distribution (Score:3, Insightful)
Well that would normally be a function of the gaming media...
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Re:No indie hits...?! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's all about the marketing (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Not many console games, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
This is telling us two things.
One, developers are continually reinveting the wheel.
Two, game engine licences still cost afr, far too much money.
I think it's only a matter of time before open source game engines and frameworks begin to replace overpriced and overrestrictive proprietary solutions. This will happen first in "basic" areas such as i/o, toolkits, small physics simulations and will work its way up to entire engines. It's in effect already happening with frameworks like OpenGL, OGRE, Wings3D and SDL.
Proprietary engine makers such as id or Valve will have the resources to keep somewhat ahead of the curve for a while, but as moores law outpaces their ability to overtake it, long established concepts and techniques will be all anyone needs to make a sellable game. But like a bulldozer, the open source engine will simply steam past them as they bog themselves down with restrictive licences and things like Steam.
No, but.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:PC Games (Score:5, Insightful)
The left is generally correct in the belief that allowing market forces to work unfettered creates excellent markets, but they will only be optimized along a limited number of parameters, and that business does need to be kept in check if values that don't easily translate into a bottom-line are to be preserved in our society. However, the recurring error of the left is to treat business as a criminal element merely for being business. Like it or not business is the cornerstone of our society. Nobody is employed without it. Food doesn't get grown without it, the internet doesn't exist without it (the internet mind you, the multi-trillion dollar communications infrastructure, not the web, a vague collection of data stored and transmitted on that network) etc. etc. etc. If you make yourself the enemy of business, you're making a pretty powerful enemy. The challenge for the left in the globalization era is to come up with creative approaches to dealing with modern problems that utilize the forces of capitalism without succumbing to their excesses. 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.
Re:40 ppl (Score:5, Insightful)
Major Sudios trying to stick to what they know (Score:3, Insightful)
Small Indy devs are more interested in pushing the envelope and creating new things, things that are risky. If something takes off it gets noticed but if it flops...usually thats it..game over. Take Castle Wolfenstien and Doom that little indy company Id pushed a new way to interact in a game world that revolutionized the industry. Back then before the days of anti aliasing and pixel shading, a company could afford a couple of Jazz Jackrabbits and Commander Keens before they hit it big. Today you get one chance unless you develop it in you basement you arent going to get the infusion of capital to ever bring an original idea to fruition.
The flaw in the big studios logic is that for most people that play games regularly they care more about the game being fun and different more than if Joe Movie Star's voice is in it, or if its a licensed character. I cant remember the last really good game I played that had either a license or a popular voice, if it did it wasnt one that stood out enough to notice.
Still the notion that there are no hit indy games is just noise. You can look as small as bejeweled or as big as Homeworld or Freedom Force to see that small publishers do still exist, they just have to have a product thats good enough to drown out the noise around them trying to convince games that they dont exist. Of couse the ones that do break through usually get bought by the big fish so that they can pump out sequels while tying up the original developers to wallow in the stagnant waters they created.
Sadly, many of todays games could easily be made for 1/3rd their budgets if they would forget the voices (who cares) and forget the hours of lovely boring cut scenes that most games skip over in the first place. I love cinematics as much as anyone but give it a bit of a rest, if I wanted a freakin movie i'd buy a ticket and go see one.
Re:It's simple (Score:1, Insightful)
Perhaps it should be. Perhaps we should send people like you to that capitalist paradise in Somalia and let you live out your "life isn't fair" fantasies the way it should be lived out.
America doesn't need corporate lapdogs like you around any more.
obsession with eye candy... (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Re:Not many console games, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Commoditizing game engines is one of the ways that game developers recoup costs; the biggest expense isn't the voice talent, it isn't the artists, it isn't the modelers, it's starting from absolutely nothing and making a framework to create huge 3d environments and manage user-interaction. So yes, they cost a lot of money. But they cost a lot of money to produce and the field of potential buyers is small (for a lot of reasons, not only because the cost is high).
Your further ideas about open source game engine development taking the lead are not sensible. With high cost licenses from the major graphics card makers, constantly shifting APIs, extremely expensive computer hardware, the broad fields of expertise required to create an engine, and the knowledge that within two to three years the entire engine--from top to bottom--will be worthless in the context of new hardware and APIs, the very idea of open source engines taking off (especially in the context of all games looking alike) isn't feasible.
Game engines are not like operating systems. They're not like Window Managers. They're not like servers. They're highly specialized to use specific generational hardware implementations and have a short shelf life.
Your invocation of Moore's Law doesn't make any contextual sense. It's not even a law in the general sense you appear to be using it, and your example of id and Valve only furthers the idea I've been pushing all along here: game engines are not like operating systems. Windows is the cruft of Windows from 1995 until now. Linux is the cruft of Linux from 1999 until now. Source is the cruft of Source; Doom III is the cruft of Doom III; engines are constantly rebuilt from scratch, are very nimble, and don't thrive on the incremental change model of open source (or Windows).
Re:40 ppl (Score:3, Insightful)
Thats where modding comes in. Some of the biggest and most popular games out there were created as mods with teams of under 10 people, sometimes as few as 1 or 2.
3wave CTF, Team Fortress, Counter-Strike, etc.
The problem is most consoles just arnt accessible to third party developers-- It doesn't matter how capable they are, if they can't produce media that will play on the masses consoles, they can't compete. The only exception to this was the dreamcast which was so easy to write for there was an unofficial port of quake1 to it. Once you have a good open engine on it like quake, you can do whatever you want pretty rapidly.
Re:40 ppl (Score:5, Insightful)
They spend money to license everything from comic book heroes to graphics engines. They record A-list actor
First, indie films are generally somewhat original and mundane ideas. They do not depend on popularity of concept to compensate for lame writing. This measn that indie films do not spend money on licensing. Niether do they generally spend the millions on licensing books and then millions more on rewrites of the script. Often even music is not used due to costs.
Indie films also do not tend to have license technology. The creators use what can be had on the budget. This has become much more sophiticated, but still not what big studios have. As far as actors, many will cut thier pay to scale to work on a indie film. This has lead to some aggrivation when the film is really succesful, as the actors then kick themselves from not negotiating a part of the sales.
In the end an indie film has few if any big name actors, few if any popular characters, shots that are out of focus, lame special effects, and, except in the case where a big studio picks up the picture, no promotion budget.
An indie film is usually high concept, good script, and personal. Given that video games for the most part are about cool special effects, mass murder, and pushing technology, the two do not seem to be comparable.
So, why are they not indie games. Becuase indie films are possible because films can be produced on a low budget and there are a network of indie film houses that will show them, even though they is little money made. Console vendors want to sell games, so why bother with a game that is not going to be blockbuster? Stores want to sell games so why stock games that may not sell. Moviegoers will tolerate out of focus shots, unknown actors, and less than ideal theatres just for the hope to see something slightly original. Will gamers make the same compromises?
Re:Not many console games, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Surely you jest? For that to be the case the cs:source engine must have no configurable parameter (even in the source) for tweaking game physics, and the no ability to change weapon damage, viewpoint, etc.
Which i'm quite sure it does. The only excuse for the game playing "exactly like" any other source engine game is developer laziness.
Example: quake3 and urban terror both use the quake 3 engine. They play nothing alike. UT2k3 and Vampire: Bloodlines both use the UT2k3 engine and they play absolutely NOTHING alike. They're not even the same genre of game...
smash.
Re:Indy software is far harder than indy films. (Score:3, Insightful)
The actors are just one part of the creative pipeline for a film, and usually work on the film for about 1/10th of the total production time. I could just as easily say that indie games are easier because its easier for an artist to create assets for an indie game than it is for an indie filmmaker to write, cast, direct, produce, advertise and distribute a movie.
We should be comparing the indie game developer to an indie film director/producer; in which case, you see that they are about equivalent in difficulty, except that the indie filmmaker has to organize a lot of people whereas the indie game developer does not; indeed, he may be doing the entire game himself.
Indies who get megahits stop being indies (Score:4, Insightful)
Consider that id, Eidos, Blizzard, Bioware, etc. are, essentially successful indie developers. In some cases -- e.g. 989/Verant -- a big company gets involved to bring what essentially started as an indie game (EverQuest) successfully to market.
I note that Snood is available for Gameboy DS -- that's an indie game.
The big game companies are analogous to movie studios. They try to pick winners at various stages of development (with similar degrees of success). A no-name independent developer might become interesting to a studio when they have a compelling alpha, while a big-game developer might essentially get backing for any hare-brained idea.
An innovative smash hit game essentially becomes a game genre. E.g. Wolfenstein 3D / DOOM created the 3d first person shooter genre. Having decided you're making a game in this genre, given there's pretty much no "script" (even a comparatively plot-heavy FPS such as Half Life has a laughable plot) so it all comes down to production values.
Unless you're being truly original, you're only going to compete with the big guys on production values. Independent movies can compete on the basis of writing (which doesn't cost a lot of money), acting (which needn't cost a lot of money), subject matter (...). By and large, these aren't seriously useful options for indie game developers -- so unless they're very original they're limited to competing on production values, and they'll lose.
OK, rambling. Will shut up now.
Re:40 ppl (Score:1, Insightful)
ID and CounterStrike (Score:3, Insightful)
ID software defined Indie Hits. And if that is not recent enough for you...
CounterStrike redefined Indie Hit.
The premise of the article is wrong. Yes it is hard to make a hit indie. But it happens, and happens with a vengence.