Subscription services could be death for Indie games

[Goldenroad]

Then you won't see any more games like Control, Brothers Tale of Two Sons, Inside, Plague Tale of Innocence... That can impact you more than Ubisoft 200h grinding game.

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I gotta take issue with this.

These kinds of subscription services are opening up smaller indie games to audiences that never would have played them.

If you were an indie developer, would you rather have 200,000 people play your game and each pay you $0.75, or have 500 people play your game and each pay you $20 (and that is a stretch. most indie games will never make that kind of money)? The curation, or lack there of, on online store fronts is horrible for indie developers. Any amount of curation, like a subscription service, is going to lead to more discovery than just putting your game up on the Google Play store and hoping like hell someone finds it.

If anything this will lead to more and better indie games because they want to be chosen for services like Game Pass and Apple Arcade.

 

[bad poster]

as a consumer, i love content almost as i love iconic brands

 

[dodo]

I gotta take issue with this.

These kinds of subscription services are opening up smaller indie games to audiences that never would have played them.

If you were an indie developer, would you rather have 200,000 people play your game and each pay you $0.75, or have 500 people play your game and each pay you $20 (and that is a stretch. most indie games will never make that kind of money)? The curation, or lack there of, on online store fronts is horrible for indie developers. Any amount curation, like a subscription service, is going to lead to more discovery than just putting your game up on the Google Play store and hoping like hell someone finds it.

If anything this will lead to more and better indie games because they want to be chosen for services like Game Pass and Apple Arcade.

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It will lead to indie games catering to wider and wider demographics to hit sustainable audiences for subscription payments, sure. I don't think that's a good thing.

 

[Raijinto]

I just think there's just a glut of options at this point that it's hard, very hard even, to stand out even if a particular game is good by any objective standard. Just this month there's been Gears, a Zelda remake, Borderlands 3, MHW Iceborne, PvZ BfN and even smaller scale things have to complete with the aforementioned Untitled Goose Game which is one of the 'lucky' ones I guess. I'm also already subscribed to GP Ultimate and PS+ and Switch Online so any additional services are a tough sell- I have to draw the line somewhere. I can't say that there no downsides to this situation and one of those is definitely that some games are going to be undeservedly unsuccessful.

Though I can't say I'm dead against subscription services in general- if it wasn't for GP I wouldn't have given Slay the Spire and Yoku's Island Express a go and they're like amazing and I've since bought both of them elsewhere. I don't like the idea of games needing alternative avenues for success other than revenue generated from sales but as I mentioned above it's kinda inevitable when it's so easy to be overlooked.

 

[Weltall Zero]

Then they die. Consumer habits change, if you cannot adapt to it, why should consumers change how they experience media and entertainment to do it in the way that most benefits the developers instead of themselves?

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Even framing it in an entirely consumer-selfish way, if they enjoy a variety of indie games and would rather not see them all die (and be forced to either play AAA or nothing), this is still relevant to them. However there's another layer to it, and that's the fact that a lot of users on Era are indie developers (this includes me), so our livelihood is actually at stake here.

I understand you don't want to be shamed for using a service that is more convenient to you than buying games. This is not about this, because, frankly, raising awareness for a handful of people while the vast majority outside enthusiast forums keeps subscribing to them isn't going to fix anything. A more reasonable solution would be for streaming services to offer revenue to indie developers based on some metric other than hours spent. Again, even an entirely selfish consumer should push for this, because otherwise you're going to see games become more and more padded. Forcing developers to keep users playing for as long as possible, no matter how, will make every game feel like an MMO.

Well, Indie developers, I've got your back. I'll keep buying your games on the platforms that you support.

That's my plan for the foreseeable future, honestly.

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This warms my heart. Thank you. :)

 

[dex3108]

I didn't. But I also doubt it would be anywhere near the hit it has become if it hadn't been on Plus.

I notice you haven't really responded to the posts pointing out that services that Netflix have led to an explosion of new content. I don't think there's literally no negatives around these services, but I don't see any reason to think it will eradicate indie games.



OK. Devs can decide which service makes the most sense to them. One service having crappy terms doesn't mean indie devs are doomed.

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You wouldn't be able to play Rocket League on PS4 if Psyonix wasn't able to pay for servers.

And regarding Netflix, I think that Netflix is bad example, for every good show on Netflix there are dozens of bad ones. Because Netflix is going for quantity not quality. HBO would be better example but then we come to second issue that Netflix caused and that is binging. HBO takes their time with their shows to achieve quality but consumers are not patient these days, they want constant stream of content and to achieve that you need either to spend tons of money to hire top people and have a lots of teams or lower the quality.

One way or another I wouldn't say that Netflix caused that much positive things, they are in a lot of debt after all. And I am saying this as person who can only access Netflix from all streaming services out there (yay regional restrictions).

 

[JaxiPup]

Even if sub services become more widespread, it's still a matter of value proposition and exclusivity/availability. The metaphor used in the tweets goes under the assumption that the game become exclusive to a sub service. If paying full price for the game remains the only option, the comparison is null, i.e. If subscriptions offer a poor value proposition to indie devs, then they'll keep selling their games as they do now. My netflix subscription doesn't stop me from going to the movies.

 

[RedOnePunch]

Yeah, it's a real issue.

Our subscription-based future is going to have a ton of impact on what games get made, and what game mechanics thrive.

Some of the change will be good, some will be very bad.

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Yeah it's interesting how the business model and the way the content is consumed has an effect on game design. For service providers it's either longer games or a large volume of games. It'll still be dictated by what people like to play.

We can't really compare to how things are now because publishers are competing for your $60 so we end up with open world games that are padded out to offer "value". When you no longer pay for individual games, does that matter as much since you just move on to the next game when you're done.

 

[bcatwilly]

Obviously there are currently and will be further industry changes over the next however many years with subscription services, and we can't know all of the possible things that will occur one way or another. However, Xbox Game Pass has been amazing for giving exposure and a platform to indies so far. In fact it is one of the reasons that I love the service currently because it has exposed me to different genres and games that I quite honestly wouldn't have likely tried out before. Swimming upstream by yourself with an indie on PlayStation for example even with a large install base is almost impossible when you are constantly fighting the next Sony exclusive constant marketing or COD launch and so on where nobody even knows your game exists or has the money/time to try it out.

 

[Clay]

You wouldn't be able to play Rocket League on PS4 if Psyonix wasn't able to pay for servers.

And regarding Netflix, I think that Netflix is bad example, for every good show on Netflix there are dozens of bad ones. Because Netflix is going for quantity not quality. HBO would be better example but then we come to second issue that Netflix caused and that is binging. HBO takes their time with their shows to achieve quality but consumers are not patient these days, they want constant stream of content and to achieve that you need either to spend tons of money to hire top people and have a lots of teams or lower the quality.

One way or another I wouldn't say that Netflix caused that much positive things, they are in a lot of debt after all. And I am saying this as person who can only access Netflix from all streaming services out there (yay regional restrictions).

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Why would gaming services be any different? For me What the Golf is far and away the standout title of Apple Arcade. Grindstone is alright, Impossible Road is neat, the new Rayman seems like it will be fun, but WtG would easily justify a month's sub for me. On the other hand if I look through all the game's currently on the service a clear majority are of no interest to me.

 

[bad poster]

If you were an indie developer, would you rather have 200,000 people play your game and each pay you $0.75, or have 500 people play your game and each pay you $20 (and that is a stretch. most indie games will never make that kind of money)? The curation, or lack there of, on online store fronts is horrible for indie developers. Any amount of curation, like a subscription service, is going to lead to more discovery than just putting your game up on the Google Play store and hoping like hell someone finds it.

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curation is great for indie developers because it lessens your chance of making any money from your game at all

 

[bad poster]

i'm just kidding you just have to make your game better (have a bigger budget and don't fall afoul of any of apple or google's policies)

 

[Goldenroad]

curation is great for indie developers because it lessens your chance of making any money from your game at all

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Right....nobody hearing about your game increases your chance of making money. I forgot.

 

[Era of not Yakuza]

Tô think that I have many, many games that I bought and never played. How many devs would go bankrupt with this ?

 

[bad poster]

Right....nobody hearing about your game increases your chance of making money. I forgot.

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as we all know, existing curation systems only filter out those games made by robots

 

[Sanka]

If payment is based on playtume I feel like all games will suffer because they would be designed to disrespect your time as much as possible. In the same way Songs got shorter and shorter to increase the number of plays on streaming services. Games would go into the other direction, artificially increasing the playtime of games.

 

[J 0 E]

I wonder if the we'll reach a time which the devs skip the XBX entirely because of the game pass mentality, why bother developing for the this platform if the gamers will wait for it on game pass eventually?

 

[Cyanity]

All these streaming services HAVE to be unsustainable long-term, right?...right? Otherwise the future of gaming is bleak as hell

 

[gblues]

This isn't the indie-pocalypse by any means, but it does mean that indie-scale games aren't going to turn a profit if "time played" is the only metric--Google's service is going to be full of F2P-style skinner boxes with "daily rewards" and shit because it keeps people playing longer under the guise of PlAyEr eNgaGeMeNt. Of course there's no reason an indie can't produce such a game, but they're more likely as a group to not want to make that kind of game.

 

[DoubleTake]

If payment is based on playtume I feel like all games will suffer because they would be designed to disrespect your time as much as possible. In the same way Songs got shorter and shorter to increase the number of plays on streaming services. Games would go into the other direction, artificially increasing the playtime of games.

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Exactly. I mean we already see this with the growth of GAAS and those arent even tied to a pay per amount of playtime model.

 

[Crayon]

The service is only host so many games at once, so there can only be so many Indies on there at once. Could maybe be a good deal for them.

 

[Seesaw15]

Reminds me of how youtube killed indie animation.

 

[ThereAreFourNaan]

If payment is based on playtume I feel like all games will suffer because they would be designed to disrespect your time as much as possible. In the same way Songs got shorter and shorter to increase the number of plays on streaming services. Games would go into the other direction, artificially increasing the playtime of games.

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Big budget games are already like that these days, with an increase in filler content to pad runtimes and a focus on maintaining player engagement for as long as possible with both larger / longer games and with postgame updates designed to bring people back in and expose them to more monetization opportunities.

Even single player games without explicit MTX are getting longer because audience tastes changing to expect bigger games, open worlds, rpg mechanics in everything, blah blah.

 

[Deleted member 48897]

steam will always be around to act as "bandcamp" for indie games on pc I guess

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That's not how itch.io is spelled

 

[headspawn]

Are they being forced to put their games on the service or something?

 

[StudioTan]

And regarding Netflix, I think that Netflix is bad example, for every good show on Netflix there are dozens of bad ones. Because Netflix is going for quantity not quality. HBO would be better example

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It's called Netflix not Dexflix. They don't only make shows that match your tastes, they make shows for the various tastes their 150+ million subs have. Just because you don't like every show they make doesn't mean others don't. I loved Sens8 for example but some people despised it. HBO is different because they are a cable network so they only have so much time to fill on the schedule, if they were a streaming only service they would have a lot more shows and probably a lot that you would say are "bad" because they aren't to your tastes.

Game services are the same, they are going to have a wide variety of games to appeal to as many gamers as possible, and that includes indie games like Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons which is already on Game Pass with a good chance games like Control and A Plague Tale join at some point as well.

 

[PianoBlack]

I wonder if the we'll reach a time which the devs skip the XBX entirely because of the game pass mentality, why bother developing for the this platform if the gamers will wait for it on game pass eventually?

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Well, because MS will pay you to put your game in Game Pass, which then gets you exposure to sell other games in the series, DLC, copies of the game, etc. You can't get any of that money if you don't develop for the platform...

 

[Barrel Cannon]

It's not the death. That's a huge stretch.

 

[Governergrimm]

So the better model is no subscriptions and status quo. What is the better option here? Adding MS hyperbole hurts your argument more than helping it

 

[Alastor3]

Discoverability will become an issue, definitely. It certainly is one for movie/tv streaming services, unless you can pick up a marketing deal or go viral it's much harder to break through

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Will? It's already is

 

[show me your skeleton]

weird to compare to Spotify, which is downright shit to both established and indie artists. the music industry comparison is flawed anyway, steam and the various console stores definitely take a bigger chunk of sales than the equivalent digital music stores, surely?

 

[Lant_War]

Are they being forced to put their games on the service or something?

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Haven't some indie devs talked about how their sales on Xbox bombed after Game Pass? If the consumers move in that way, the devs will have to follow.

 

[Nome]

I've long maintained that sub services are fantastic for the platform holder and risky for the developer.
Long term, indie games (and games in general) won't die, but they will drop in quality and scope.
There's less impetus to make something really great when all you need to do is making something good enough.

 

[FancyPants]

Look a bit around and you will already notice how many people are waiting for a game to hit GamePass. Then look how many people got Gears 5 on GamPass instead of buying it.

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Gamepass is literally Microsoft's subscription and the only games coming out there at launch are their own titles. The money goes to the same source as when people are buying the game. We've seen no evidence of game sales dropping off because people think the game might hit Game Pass later on so far.

 

[headspawn]

Haven't some indie devs talked about how their sales on Xbox bombed after Game Pass? If the consumers move in that way, the devs will have to follow.

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I dunno, do you have a link or something?

I definitely remember a few developers saying the opposite of that though.

 

[THEVOID]

Any new thing is the death of something.

Home video and streaming was the death of movie theaters!

 

[Ravage]

Subscription services (which tbh started all the way back with PS Plus) will slowly, but surely, train gamers to stop buying games. Just like how the aggressive discounting by storefronts like Steam drove up revenue in the short-term only to harm long-term profits as gamers are now trained to wait for sales. Sure there will always be hardcores around who will actually increase their ARPU (think those that still buys games like Tomb Raider day one) but they will always be a minority.

The average gamer might not care (and I don't know why they would), but the current landscape is terrifying for devs. The money pot is shrinking and the hyper-informed base has created a winners-take-all situation in most cases. Lots of people will lose their jobs/livelihood in the next few years as the industry matures into it's final resting state.

 

[dreamcast]

So there is some concern in this but the more I thought of it, this isn't gonna "kill" anything. It'll make it a wee bit more difficult to make money as the market's gonna be different but it's gonna be far from impossible. This is reminding me a lot of when indie authors on kindle believed that Kindle Unlimited would stifle their works and make it impossible for them to make a dime; that fear ended up not being worth anyone's time and the market for kindle authors didn't crash at all.

also unrelated but anyone notice how every year since like 2012 there's been this weird collective fear that there's gonna be a gaming crash any day now that has yet to happen?

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I remember that too. Reality is a lot of factors determine success. Some will make it others won't.

Like me, I stopped writing books but hey, I'm making 3 or 4 cents every six months or so...lol.

 

[Doctoglethorpe]

New things are scary

Equilibrium is never impossible and saying so is ridiculous paranoia.

 

[Arebours]

It's called Netflix not Dexflix. They don't only make shows that match your tastes, they make shows for the various tastes their 150+ million subs have. Just because you don't like every show they make doesn't mean others don't. I loved Sens8 for example but some people despised it. HBO is different because they are a cable network so they only have so much time to fill on the schedule, if they were a streaming only service they would have a lot more shows and probably a lot that you would say are "bad" because they aren't to your tastes.

Game services are the same, they are going to have a wide variety of games to appeal to as many gamers as possible, and that includes indie games like Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons which is already on Game Pass with a good chance games like Control and A Plague Tale join at some point as well.

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I had access to more quality content through video rental stores in 1999 than I've got with all the streaming services available to me now in 2019. Today if I want to binge Tarkovskij or Bergman, really anything that isn't new or mainstream, my only option is to buy physical media. Netflix has a lot of stuff filling a lot of niches, but it absolutely is the dystopian streaming future. The fact that people don't realize it and are happy to sit in the Netflix bubble of mediocrity is proof in itself off that.

What I expected and dreamt about was the steam of video content where I can "permanently" buy movies and shows maybe get some extras as dlc. Yes I know prime and co also sell content but their catalog and software is abysmal, it's clearly not the focus of the service.

So far the streaming future is only good if you care about how much, not what, you are watching.

Purchase once keep forever will always be the best and most honest business model both for content quality and consumer fairness.

 

[PBalfredo]

Even beyond the topic of indie games, a model that pays out based on time spent in-game is just plain bad. It just invites the worst kind of bullshit to pad out play time.

 

[Cladyclad]

How much of my 1$ I gave MS for Gamepass is developers getting?

what's the splits on that shit? Lol

 

[RestEerie]

so what OP is saying is........

INDIE GAMES DIDN'T JUST DIED, IT WAS MURDERED?

 

[ThisIsBlitz21]

Cant say I agree with that. With gamepass Ive played little niche indie games that I ended up liking, otherwise wouldnt ever end up touching them.

while I dont see speak for everyone, I think I do speak for quite a few here when I say that.

 

[Governergrimm]

Subscription services (which tbh started all the way back with PS Plus) will slowly, but surely, train gamers to stop buying games. Just like how the aggressive discounting by storefronts like Steam drove up revenue in the short-term only to harm long-term profits as gamers are now trained to wait for sales. Sure there will always be hardcores around who will actually increase their ARPU (think those that still buys games like Tomb Raider day one) but they will always be a minority.

The average gamer might not care (and I don't know why they would), but the current landscape is terrifying for devs. The money pot is shrinking and the hyper-informed base has created a winners-take-all situation in most cases. Lots of people will lose their jobs/livelihood in the next few years as the industry matures into it's final resting state.

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But that won't be it's "final resting state" things evolve over time sometimes the way we don't want them to. Let's not pretend the entire industry will coalesce into a single unchanging state. It will continue to evolve as it always has.

 

[DntSpwnOnMe]

I dunno, do you have a link or something?

I definitely remember a few developers saying the opposite of that though.

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Got a source for that? and not a speculative one. One from a dev that has a game on game pass.

 

[Starlatine]

Got a source for that? and not a speculative one. One from a dev that has a game on game pass.

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Sure, five seconds google search

https://gamingbolt.com/being-on-game-pass-quadrupled-our-xbox-sales-descenders-developer

You turn for a link from a dev saying gamepass bombed their game now, its only fair

 

[Jintor]

Cant say I agree with that. With gamepass Ive played little niche indie games that I ended up liking, otherwise wouldnt ever end up touching them.

while I dont see speak for everyone, I think I do speak for quite a few here when I say that.

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I don't think anybody is arguing that it's not great for consumers. The issue is that despite greater spread and knowledge of indie games, what does that reach translate into for devs? If the reach expands significantly but the profit/returns remains stable or lowers or declines, or only profitable/longform games become viable - what then?

Thankfully so far gamepass and things like it are translating into increased sales or revivals for older games.

 

[Einbroch]

Gacha games to become exclusive to Google Play Pass.

 

[Cladyclad]

With subscription service I don't get how devs or even MS will ever make money. With music it takes like 1000 plays of one song to equal 1 album sale. I will never listen to 1 song that much through streaming.