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"The indie bubble is popping": Jeff Vogel predicted indie game oversaturation in 2014
- Thread starter Alexandros
- Start date
Seems like the barriers for entry dropped, and supply increased.Gamers will continue buying games, and that will increase, say, along with everything else. But not enough to suck up all of the supply. So we will see more devs fail, creating the impression of doom. Its a bubble bursting, but the actual demand wont crater becuase its not necessarily artificial like in other bubbles.
Demand could crater if all of these stores get it in their heads that they dont have to use deep discounts anymore to attract sales. They have already trained us to expect them. If they go away, watch out. It will be really bad.
Demand could crater if all of these stores get it in their heads that they dont have to use deep discounts anymore to attract sales. They have already trained us to expect them. If they go away, watch out. It will be really bad.
I think the idea that "if your game is good, it will get noticed" is kind of lazy. There are a ton of "good" games that come out, barely make a splash or get any noticed.
One of the coolest games I played this year was a game called Underhero. I had never heard of it until Jim Sterling posted about it. Bought it immediately and had a great time with it but still haven't finished it. I have never seen anyone here ever talk about it. Don't you dare tell me "oh maybe it isn't good" when it 100% was. It's just REALLY fucking hard to get noticed these days even if you make a good product.
Quality in itself isn't enough for most games now.
One of the coolest games I played this year was a game called Underhero. I had never heard of it until Jim Sterling posted about it. Bought it immediately and had a great time with it but still haven't finished it. I have never seen anyone here ever talk about it. Don't you dare tell me "oh maybe it isn't good" when it 100% was. It's just REALLY fucking hard to get noticed these days even if you make a good product.
Quality in itself isn't enough for most games now.
Great article.
What I've noticed with all of this Epic shit is that people are arguing that an extra 12% cut means everybody makes more money, better games are magically made, and everyone lives happily ever after.
The harsh reality is there's a fuckton of competition out there. Just last night I visited the eShop after playing Smash to see what was on sale. My jaw dropped at the sheer amount of indie glut on the store. The majority of these indies are going to fail, regardless of exposure or percentage increases. There's just too much out there and only so much purchasing power among consumers. They can't all make it, and it's survival of the fittest.
What I've noticed with all of this Epic shit is that people are arguing that an extra 12% cut means everybody makes more money, better games are magically made, and everyone lives happily ever after.
The harsh reality is there's a fuckton of competition out there. Just last night I visited the eShop after playing Smash to see what was on sale. My jaw dropped at the sheer amount of indie glut on the store. The majority of these indies are going to fail, regardless of exposure or percentage increases. There's just too much out there and only so much purchasing power among consumers. They can't all make it, and it's survival of the fittest.
Like 75% of those AAA games want you to play them forever now. That is huge competition.
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Agreed. I was heavily involved in Steam Greenlight and I can say from first-hand experience sorting through tons of games that there is a staggering amount of professionally made and absolutely good games coming out. Few of them are all-time classics but so many of them are well-made, enjoyable titles that in my opinion could easily find a sizeable audience.
More great games are being released more often than ever before. This means people are going to be picky and buy the best of the best when it comes to their taste. To survive as an indie dev seems to be about excelling at doing something that can immediately capture an audience's attention in more ways than just one. There needs to be a hook that is noticeable and clear before people will be bothered to look at the game itself. I think the industry just demands more creativity and innovation than ever before.
People mocked randy Pitchford but hobby grade games are a thing now
Well, it's obviously not a 1:1 thing, but generally speaking I disagree.
Make a remarkable game and it will have to compete with other remarkable games. Which does not guarantee success but significantly increases your chances.
Make an unremarkable game (or, let's face it, even an openly bad one) and it will have to compete with EVERYTHING out there. Typically with poor results.
Vogel is a really smart guy, he makes great games and I think he mentioned something that most people itt are missing. Yes, more great games are being released more often than ever before, but neither Steam, nor other platforms really changed to help the customers with that. Valve claimed there was an algorithm but that's BS, my discovery queue is still bestsellers and online games even though I hate online gaming. That's not going to help me find a great niche title in any way.
tl;dr: the indie market expanded but the stores (especially Steam) didn't accomodate for it. Browsing through them feels like swimming in garbage.
tl;dr: the indie market expanded but the stores (especially Steam) didn't accomodate for it. Browsing through them feels like swimming in garbage.
Making your game great is just step one. If you make a bad game, you most likely won't make money (though some early accesss successes make me think that's not true either), It's just incredibly reductive to say if your game sold badly, it wasn't good.
It ignores so many factors and the reality of the current market. It's hard to make games and it's hard to sell them.
I mean this all makes sense, isn't surprising, but isn't really a bad thing either. A decade ago getting an indie game on consoles was rare, and even back then I remember developers giving away game codes for free to make some money on their title due to draconian ways indie devs were paid. Part of the so called indiepocapypse is that some much completely garbage indie games flood the market in a get rich snake oil salesman way. I don't really lose sleep if the % of successful indies is down because the flood of people who don't even try and are classified as indie has gone way up. I'd say for the most part it seems every month we here some amazing indie success story be it a game that goes viral like Celeste or The Messenger, or a game that gets a second life on a console port like Hollow Knight or Blossom Tales. Of course some amazing games fall through the cracks and barely break even or lose money for indie developers, but that happens with game developers/publishers of all shapes and sizes. As more people enter the gaming market more companies will find success but many others will fail as with literally any form of anything.
Well... I see quite a few indie devs who make games that aren't targeting the mass-market at all and once they release them, they're surprised that they only sell a few thousand units. I see this all the time - Well, what did you think would happen? Just cause you released a game doesn't mean that everyone's gonna flock to it. It's up to you to provide an entertaining experience that many, many people would enjoy if you want your products to pay for themselves. If you actively make a game that's extremely niche, expect sales to also not be enough to fund your next game or make you rich. After Ori became a smash hit, a lot of smaller indie devs reached out to me to ask for advice, they show me their games and it's often instantly clear that there's a million games like that already out there or that they'll just never find a big audience, even though the devs think for some reason that their title should sell millions of copies just cause they managed to make a game. That's just not good enough. It's not a one-way street, you need to be aware of your fanbase and make games that they'd actually enjoy and the quality of what you're producing needs to be all the way up there if you want attention. If you make a 7/10 game these days, you're already dead in the water.
I wholeheartedly agree with that. But it's the same with all entertainment - How many millions of 'professional musicians' are out there who are kinda alright, but never hit it big? When was the last time you bought an album from some indie musician who nobody knows?
If you look at the previous couple of years, if you actually make a damn good game, I think there's a lot of evidence there that you'll find your audience. Look at the Undertales, the Stardew Valleys, the Hollow Knights, the Cupheads, the Shovel Knights, the Celste's, etc. -> That's what you're competing against. Games that are objectively great that got exposure exactly because of their quality, not because of millions of dollars put into marketing.
Now name me some 9/10 amazing indie game that completely failed to attract an audience. I don't really know that many that are truly amazing and yet didn't make it.
No, it's not simple or easy AT ALL. I'ts horribly hard to make a great game and there's a ton of indie devs out there who haven't understood yet how to make a truly great game, not just something that's 'pretty good' and to those devs it's super frustrating that their stuff doesn't sell or that they haven't found their audience yet. I might look at this a bit naively, but I've been through this with lots and lots of developers and usually if you have something great, either your audience will find you or some publisher will pick you up and get you going. If that's not the case, then you probably haven't made a product that has a wide enough appeal.
Well, hence why there's so much indie title failing to attract an audience. The competition is harsh af. Productions value exploded. Prices remains the same.
The sector is growing its not stagnant, and AAA games are losing share to indies as well, its not a case of indies vs indies its a case of 7/10 games vs 9/10 games.
Could you please name those amazing 9/10 indie games that just didn't do well at all?
Exposure is super important since there's a ton of games being released all the time, but that only means that you'll need to work even harder to release a quality product. I truly, deeply believe that quality is the deciding factor here. If you make a game that makes everyone go bananas, you'll do just fine.
See, to me, Underhero is a good example of a game that's kinda like a 7 or 8 out of 10 and that's just not good enough anymore. It's fine if you enjoyed the hell out of it, but is it a product that's made for the mass market? I'd say no. It's decently made, there's fun to be had, but there's plenty of similar'ish games out there and it's not really a looker, so if people see a trailer of it, they'll probably just go 'meh, not another one of those!'.
Everyone of us has much less time than we used to, there's tons of ways of how to waste a little bit of time and I think people value their time more nowadays than to spend it with something that's 'just kinda okay'. If you wanna make it in the indie market, your game's quality needs to be all the way up there with the games I mentioned in my previous post and yeah, that's super hard to achieve, but that's what it takes in todays market.
Nex Machina, Rktcr, TSIOQUE, plenty more.
e: Just because you don't know them doesn't mean they don't exist. It's like saying only the most popular musicians can make the best albums of the year. Everyone knows it's not the case.
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Isnt his entire argument kind of flawed when he claims the amount of money is more or less the same? The game industry have seen explosive growth since forever. Todays midtier are equivalent to past generations AAA classics.
OT: I used to play the shit out of his games on my mac back when I was in school.
OT: I used to play the shit out of his games on my mac back when I was in school.
I fail to understand your analogy, sorry.
Let's go through the titles you mentioned for a second:
Nex Machina: Fun Twin Stick Bullet Hell Shooter, but Twin-Stick shooters traditionally don't have a huge audience. Shmups in general have a very small, but very dedicated fan base, but that might not be enough for a smash hit, unless your game has some insane hook that really attracts attention.
Rktcr: Very niche, not really a mass-market game at all and the trailer isn't necessarily something you'd show to your friends and have them go 'Oh my god, that looks amazing, I've been waiting for something like that!'. This kinda strengthens my case of: Good game, but made for a niche audience, hence the sales are probably not amazing.
TSIOQUE: Point and Click Adventures traditionally never sold all that well and Tsioque didn't even appeal all that much to its core fanbase. It has a 69 Metacritic rating and if you read what the outlets that usually like Point and Click Adventures say about it, even they're lukewarm on it.
Again, just because YOU think a game is a 9/10 doesn't mean millions of players out there will agree and will buy those games. If you want to make it as a developer, you're forced to make products that appeal to a larger audience and if you fail to see what the market or a specific fanbase wants, you're probably not gonna reach your goal.
How is Hollow Knight a "AA title under the disguise of an indie title"? The factors you listed don't make something a AA game.
What I mean basically is that you find production values in that 15 bucks games that you would find in a 40 bucks title.
Well I'm not going to argue on the full quality of the game (I'd probably give it an 8 out of 10 as well), it's the type of game I think would have been bigger a couple of years ago. The market has changed much like the article said.
Trying to determine what will be a mass market hit though is part of the problem. Like if Undertale didn't blow up, you would be saying "look at it, there is no mass market appeal to it. An RPG that looks like it came out of the NES era?" Same for Stardew Valley. I didn't expect either of those games to get as big as they did. I doubt their creators did as well. Mass market appeal just seems like "did the game happen to sell well?"
Yeah with BC on the rise, no more console launch droughts and a constant, never ending stream of new AAA content... it's going to get tougher for indies to make their mark. Switch still lacks third party engagement at the moment so indies can catch on if they release on a good week, but soon even that well may dry up once the pubs decide to start pumping out Switch games. And Steam is overcrowded as it is, where you need something more than a good game. Unless you have good marketing or happen to snag some time as a zeitgeist then you might struggle to find an audience.
As for oversaturation, yes I definitely see it. On PS4 a few months ago, we had like 5 bigger, good Metroidvania titles release within a few weeks of each other. Am I going to buy Hollow Knight, Dead Cells, Deaths Gambit, Castlevania, or Guacamelee?
As for oversaturation, yes I definitely see it. On PS4 a few months ago, we had like 5 bigger, good Metroidvania titles release within a few weeks of each other. Am I going to buy Hollow Knight, Dead Cells, Deaths Gambit, Castlevania, or Guacamelee?
Clearly. Let's go through it again then:
1. You say the market will sort itself out because the best games will become popular by themselves (or word of mouth, etc.).
2. I say not necessarily and give a handful of examples.
3. You say these games are too niche for their own good and only I think they're good (great argument btw).
Conclusion: you have to aim wide to succeed in indie games.
How's that work compared to a noted mass-market friendly game like Undertale?
Indie market is where you experiment, carve niches, explore unused ones. The stuff you talk about (aiming for the broadest audience possible) is for AA and AAA gaming, Microsoft or Sony money.
That doesn't make it a AA game though. It's just an insanely polished indie game. It was made by 3-4 people, the devs had a budget of around $90,000, they were crowd-sourced and self-published. AA generally refers to budget and team size, hence the older term of "mid-tier".
Hence why I said an AA title under the disguise of an indie title.
It has insane production values, yet is developed by a small team, on a tight budget. I think they didnt even knew how to code and relied heavily on Unity scripts and such ?
Yet they released such a game. Hence why the competition is hard.
You're conflating a game's quality with its mass appeal. Nex Machina is very much a 9/10 game. It failed to find an audience. It is a fantastic game but in a niche genre and ultimately that showed in sales. You've not proven your point at all - a game not selling well doesn't mean it isn't a 9/10 game. All you've said in reply is that an indie game has to target the mass market to succeed. They are two different issues entirely.
There are soo many games out there and people have less and less time to play games all day.
Then there is the explosion of GAAS meaning nearly everything is massive/open world and 100+ hour experiences taking up lots of time. One can argue whether the absolute junk quest writing and collectathon garbage in most games is worthwhile, but many consumers get stuck in a cycle believing if they don't complete everything they haven't got their money's worth.
I still haven't completed RDR2, let alone the other thousand games in my backlog going back to even PS3 titles. Add those to PS+ accruing games every single month.
It's a consumption nightmare.
I keep meaning to complete Undertale which I've owned for a while but I have soo many games to play it's just sheer madness.
Then there is the explosion of GAAS meaning nearly everything is massive/open world and 100+ hour experiences taking up lots of time. One can argue whether the absolute junk quest writing and collectathon garbage in most games is worthwhile, but many consumers get stuck in a cycle believing if they don't complete everything they haven't got their money's worth.
I still haven't completed RDR2, let alone the other thousand games in my backlog going back to even PS3 titles. Add those to PS+ accruing games every single month.
It's a consumption nightmare.
I keep meaning to complete Undertale which I've owned for a while but I have soo many games to play it's just sheer madness.
It's easier than ever to make games with the tools, frameworks, and publishing options available.
The only thing that could make it better right now is if storefronts actually cared about the quality of the games being submitted. PSN is filled with so much garbage.
The only thing that could make it better right now is if storefronts actually cared about the quality of the games being submitted. PSN is filled with so much garbage.
People should really try to fully read and understand what Vogel is saying.
I don't agree with formulating it as a bubble popping, since that implies some sort of spontaneous implosion, but the basic points are hard to deny. Yeah, maybe demand is also increasing to some extent, but the supply and availability of good indie games has increased massively, and that will obviously have consequences.
So yeah, basically this:
I don't agree with formulating it as a bubble popping, since that implies some sort of spontaneous implosion, but the basic points are hard to deny. Yeah, maybe demand is also increasing to some extent, but the supply and availability of good indie games has increased massively, and that will obviously have consequences.
So yeah, basically this:
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You didn't expect it, but I sure as hell did - Toby Fox has been active in the Earthbound community for a good long time and created something directly targeted towards that fanbase (let's not forget that Undertale is an extremely competently put together product here) and they then spread the word of mouth. Stardew Valley is basically an updated Harvest Moon for PCs and it's doing what it's doing better than any Harvest Moon ever did. Both of these games are prime examples of "Understand your audience and cater to them.".
That's very much a perception thing of a storefront where you can't sample or examine the goods. Movie and music storefronts let you watch or listen pretty much instantly. Game storefronts that let you sample the gameplay instantly just don't exist. The first storefront that achieves this will sell more, and more indies. The eshop is not teeming with garbage, but teeming with unreachable content.
But it's absurd to suggest that there was ever easy money to be made from indie games. When exactly was this period supposed to be? In the early days of Steam, most indie games were rejected from Steam. Those games had no way to make easy money.
Well, of course, like I said in previous posts, you also need to make a game that's not only liked by an extremely niche audience. Nex Machina is a Twin Stick Shooter - There's generally not that many people that seem to be into that kinda genre, so even if you make a great game, you might not find a large enough audience, especially given the production values they put into it. And I don't think Nex Machina is something that'd really stand out of the crowd. It's fun, sure, but if you'd sit your friends down with it, they probably wouldn't all go home and buy it. There's nothing mind-blowingly cool about it.
So yeah, if you're an indie and you want to make a living with what you're doing, you do need to find an audience that's large enough to support that wish and you need to make something that audience truly wants. I know all this sounds harsh when other devs read it, but that's kinda where the market is. Everyone fights for peoples time.
That's an important point and I think of it whenever an (unknown) indie dev is complaining about low/no sales.
I can understand that the person who spent a lot of time making a game thinks that it's one of the best out there and everyone should buy it. But you have to compete with so many great indie games that are already out there and new ones keep releasing. So you need more than a cute looking game or an interesting premise to gain traction these days.
Like the Blossom Tales dev and their sales on Steam. Complained that Steam is unfair etc. And tbh when I look at the game's store page I see a good but also pretty generic looking pixel game like one of the thousands already out there. Sure, it then sold well on Switch but only after it got quite a lot coverage because it didn't do well on Steam.
Which actually leads to another point: gaming media ignores most indie releases (and they don't have the capacity to keep up with all the new releases). And you can even see it on an enthusiast forum like Era. The majority doesn't care about indie games unless they've been made by already known names or have some kind of deal with Sony/MS/Nintendo. It's tough making a name for yourself nowadays. Tougher than it was some years ago when there weren't that many indie devs out there.
But there are some issues with that. A niche isn't exactly mass market appeal, going against what you just previously said. The Earthbound community isn't huge, it was called a cult classic for a reason. Other Earthbound like games like LISA have their cult status, but don't blow up to wider status. Harvest Moon was a successful series but again not huge. That definitely was a niche to be filled.
When I saw Underhero my thought was "finally a good looking Mario and Luigi/Paper Mario style game." I am that audience that the dev tried to reach and I was catered to. But I wouldn't have even known about the existence of the game if Jim Sterling didn't post about it. Partially to the fault of the dev, but it's so hard to get noticed. I don't crawl through the trenches of Steam to find gems.
I 100% agree with your "find your audience and cater to them" but your audience needs to know the game exists. That's the part that's totally different in today's current market. Quality is just part of your game selling well which you know.
I agree 100% that you have to make a game that has an audience. But that's very different from what you originally said, which was: "If any indie comes out and it's a 9/10ish game, in this day and age, it'd get the exposure it needs."
I'm glad you've walked back that initial post cause I find it a very dangerous and toxic line of thinking.
You act like the storefront owns just don't want you to. What you're saying is impossible to standardize. Outside of storefronts hosting cloud versions of every game and a potentially endless number of instances that you can stream, what you're saying will never be the case. Even the potential solution I listed isn't feasible at any scale
I say this as someone who felt Ori was one of the best games of 2015, but do you think your experience is colored by your distribution deal with MS? That must buy you an enormous amount of marketing and mindshare.
EDIT: I see you're already addressing this.
If you're the AAA of indie games, a GTA of indie games if you will, of course it's going to sell.
But I have to agree with Jeff that for the average indie developer who makes an average game, there's way less of a chance of me buying his game now in 2018 (or even 2014) than say 2008.
I'll give a few examples.
1. When your game library is small, you'll buy anything to fill it up, people buy trash launch games on console all the time. I bought plants and zombies for $10 (full price) when I first started Steam. I'm pretty sure the me now would wait till it's free or very discounted.
2. When your library gets increasingly big, and the backlog get big, at some point buying additional games needs more justification than usual. Maybe you don't have that genre game in the library and it fills a particular niche. Or maybe the hype is too much and you impulse buy it but promise it's the last time you do so with a backlog over 100 titles deep. At some point for the average consumer, they'll play what they have over buying more of the same that hasn't been played in the library.
3. Hardcore steam fans vs average gamers - most of us in here are hardcore steam fans that continuously add games to the 'collection', but I'm wagering that most people with steam accounts are not the very hardcore. I doubt the typical average gamer has 100 games, they probably have one or two games that they continuously play and then have a few others as diversions to keep things fresh. At some point the average gamer has too many games.
4. Length of games - games have been getting longer, with bigger open worlds, with more stuff to do in them. Then there's the DLC released afterwards to keep people playing. All of this means, it's less likely I'm unoccupied and less likely to be desperate to buy something new.
Please clarify your argument.
You are talking about 9/10 games and criticize games for being too niche in the next breath. being niche has nothing to do with the number scoring of a game.
No-one scores Games on the number of potential players.
This is definitely the case for people like me who have multiple subscription services like Humble Bundle, Live gold, gamepass, and gamefly. There's just not enough hours in the day.
The indie market isn't collapsing. It's just that the initial boom is over.
There has still been plenty of successful Indies this year on Steam. Vermintide 2, SCUM, Frostpunk, Wreckfest, X4 Foundations, Return of the Obra Dinn, and others.
There has still been plenty of successful Indies this year on Steam. Vermintide 2, SCUM, Frostpunk, Wreckfest, X4 Foundations, Return of the Obra Dinn, and others.
That's not true, the Steam story came up when the Switch version was already doing really well for them.
The reason why it sold that much better on Switch is because it got more coverage in the News section (it was often recommended among top adventure games, or best Zelda-like games,...), and probably because the game itself speaks to the Nintendo audience.
The first part is key: the eShop is maybe getting filled with indie games of all sorts but Nintendo is doing the work to give them coverage (the community also does a great job on that), and that's what still shocks me the most about Valve.
Valve is making millions of dollars from Steam, there are thousands of people who live on their platform, but they spend very little to promote these games that are making them so rich.
I think Valve should make their own annual big event or even join E3 to show indie games and put these games in people's hands.
Blossom Tales is a good game and nobody knew it at the time, so even the narrative that only trash games fail is false.
I'm actually surprised Amazon or Google hasn't done it already, they now have both built or bought streaming services. I'm also surprised no major telecom has pushed to purchase Discord, you'd think with all the money in games they'd want more of a piece of the pie.
If the storefronts aren't cutting it for devs or consumers, imagine devs setting up their own storefronts like anyone selling goods, and leveraging the infrastructure of these companies to reach more people. Right now they seem to be in a situation where they may acquiesce to "storefront exclusivity" to a potentially lesser consumer-capable store in exchange for a 70%-or-larger cut. I may be misunderstanding how things currently work with storefronts, but even 88% or 90% of not-very-much is still not-very-much.