Whelp. Yep. It's Happening. Indie Genre is Dying. Or, at Least, the Fad is Ending.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I was about to type yet another long rant on MMO-C about the sadistic properties of the video games industries (in this particular instance; the indie genre), but I saved myself the 20 minutes of write up and found this blog that just about sums up everything I had to say. So I'm going to just go sulk in bedroom for the rest of the day while you read it.

http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.ca/2014/0...s-popping.html

P.S.: I think the Indie craze will actually last until the end of the decade, but we've just about reached it's apex, and are now falling back down to earth again.

[Pendulous]

Indie games won't go away as long as those gems exist, and as long as a lot of people are pissed at the current state of big market games. I imagine if Steam really wants to keep it up, they should have stronger restrictions on what games get greenlit. I don't how it works, but I don't see a problem in making it harder.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

...but I don't see a problem in making it harder.

Yeah. If Valve wants to help, they should probably start closing up the valve (no pun intended) on publishing games for everyone. Steam used to be a great store, but now it feels like it's turning into Itunes.

Speaking of which, it feels like the games industry is becoming just another music industry: first it was just a bunch of great producers making awesome products that were ridiculously high quality, now all the 12 year olds want to become a music star and are over saturating the market.

The dead of Indie games would mean the inevitable dead of the entire industry. So... no clue why anyone would want small independant developers to 'fail'. That is like wanting all lower and middle class to go bankrupt.

It's not the small devs were worried about. They'll always be around. So will the AAA companies. It's the middle-class devs were worried about. They can't survive off of 1$ games selling off of word of mouth advertising, and they can't possibly afford massive, AAA quality marketing campaigns to sell their products.

[Nirawen]

I can see actual indie games continuing heathily for a very long time but I do see the 'Indie Game' tag dying off soon now that the majority of people see how inane it's become, 'Have you seen that new Indie Game released by EA?'.

[Zython]

It's not the small devs were worried about. They'll always be around. So will the AAA companies. It's the middle-class devs were worried about. They can't survive off of 1$ games selling off of word of mouth advertising, and they can't possibly afford massive, AAA quality marketing campaigns to sell their products.

The middle market has been a rotting corpse for the better part of 5 years now.

[Aitch]

The natural state of an indie company is to struggle. Crowd-sourcing has made that struggle a bit less painful over the past years, but I don't think it was ever a sustainable business model. Regardless, indie games will never die as long as creative people are alive.

[shokter]

Indie isn't a genre, and no...I don't think it's going away. Perhaps there is a slowdown, but after seeing the proliferation of kind of 'meh' indie games, and the many games that get Steam greenlit only to have development slow to a crawl or stop entirely, it's clear that perhaps this slowdown can be a good thing.

But yeah, as Aitch said above...as long as talented and creative people love games Indie games will never die. There are plenty of Indie gems that have come in the past few years...no cause for alarm.

[Lynarii]

It's cyclical, just like so many other things are. Right now, everything mentioned in that article is true. There are too many games, too many developers, it can't sustain itself. It WILL bust.

And that won't be a bad thing.

We saw this before, in 1983. Too many games, too little quality control, people threw their hands up and said to hell with it. And right after that bust it really kinda sucked... but then along came companies like Nintendo (with their Seal of Approval) and IPs like Legend of Zelda and we got a lot of games that people still remember almost 30 years later. Those games would have had a hard time getting an audience and making a name for themselves in the pre-83 flood, it took a cleaning out of the industry to allow new gems a chance to be found by people.

That will happen again. The indie scene will crash and burn, most of the people who weren't invested in it or weren't very good at it will move on. We'll lose a few good developers, and that sucks, but as long as there's a group of people who enjoy making games and a group of people who enjoy playing games, there will still be games made.

[Gumboy]

I would play a game like "Hotline: Miami" or "FTL" over another CoD or something like Watch dogs any day of the week <.<

[RoninaThorstone]

It's been a few years since looking at the new indie games went from, "Ooh! Let's see what treats await me today!" to "Aaaahhh! So much stuff! I am stressed out now!"

Wait... do people actually feel this?

[Azrile]

To me, the biggest culprit is just online payment systems that allow prepayments and crowdfunding.

Indie games always meant to me some guys who absolutely loved what they were doing and were sure they could convince others to buy their game when it was finished. They bled, they suffered, they ate ramon noodles for months, they designed...in their spare time, without payments.

The problem now is that there are so many easy ways for ´indie´ devs to get paid before they release anything that they aren´t bleeding for their games enough. Because they already have money in their pocket, they no longer have as much vested interest in their own game.

Indie developers (because of kickstarter and pre-purchase options) have about as much passion for the launch of their game as a walmart checkout girl does for her job. Who cares, got my paycheck, all that counts. For Indie developers, the entire process now is to develop hype for your KS, rather than launching an awesome game and developing hype because of it´s gameplay and reviews.

[Edge-]

Wait... do people actually feel this?

That's what it feels like sifting through the "New Releases" tab on Steam. I used to be genuinely excited/interested in the prospect of some cool games popping up that I'd never heard of. Now it's obnoxious as hell to sift through through the thousands of RPG Maker games and low budget shovelware in the hopes that there might be something remotely interesting : /

- - - Updated - - -

To me, the biggest culprit is just online payment systems that allow prepayments and crowdfunding.

Indie games always meant to me some guys who absolutely loved what they were doing and were sure they could convince others to buy their game when it was finished. They bled, they suffered, they ate ramon noodles for months, they designed...in their spare time, without payments.

The problem now is that there are so many easy ways for ´indie´ devs to get paid before they release anything that they aren´t bleeding for their games enough. Because they already have money in their pocket, they no longer have as much vested interest in their own game.

Indie developers (because of kickstarter and pre-purchase options) have about as much passion for the launch of their game as a walmart checkout girl does for her job. Who cares, got my paycheck, all that counts. For Indie developers, the entire process now is to develop hype for your KS, rather than launching an awesome game and developing hype because of it´s gameplay and reviews.

Some take advantage of it, you're right. But others don't.

I mean, how dare indie devs be able to work on their game as a full time job instead of needing to do it when they weren't working other jobs. And how dare they be able to eat like normal people and have what amounts to normal non-work lives because they actually have time outside of work to do something other than work on their game.

If the "who cares, got my paycheck, and that counts" mentality you mention was so prevalent, we'd have far more failed Kickstarters that never delivered. But as it stands, the vast majority of Kickstarters have either delivered projects as promised (close to, in terms of overall functionality), or are still making progress and updating backers.

[Bathory]

Everything is "dying" around here.

[Post]

Everything is "dying" around here.

Yup. Everything is dying and then it never does.

[Yingyang]

I don't think so. I just think that the big push of them is over for now and there will soon be a big push of high developer games for a few years.

I kinda expect there to be cycles starting up that will switch off once one gets boring or is around to long.

[MetroStratics]

Nice, hopefully people will stop talking about WoW dieing now and can focus on an entire genre. Really excited about this, especially with WoD around the corner. Sucks to see them go though

[Axaron]

Indie isn't a genre, and no...I don't think it's going away.

As with music and film, yes, Indie is both a genre and shorthand for independent. Sometimes it's one or the other, sometimes it's both, sometimes it's neither and just uses the name as a stylistic descriptor.

Also I can't be arsed to read OP's article, they've said the indie game is dying since games have been called "indie" Indie, in the sense of small scale, independent game development is doing quite well, Steam utilization/marketing or not.

[barackopala]

Remember dust: an elysian tail? man what a gem, same with bastion, FTL, hotline miami... all good games, no, it's not dying.

[Jester Joe]

So...you mean it's going right back to what it was originally?

That's not really dying, it just got over-popular, returning to normal doesn't mean dying.

[Deleted]

Now it's obnoxious as hell to sift through through the thousands of RPG Maker games and low budget shovelware in the hopes that there might be something remotely interesting : /

Oh god so much this. Valve has done a really shitty job lately at making sure only actual new, playable-state games are being featured. So sick of seeing old as hell or completely broken games going up as "new" and pushing real new releases out of the feature.

Indie games aren't going anywhere though. Nothing is going to "die". Eventually the scene will shrink back down by itself, that's all. Devs that prove themselves to be competent and passionate with a vision (such as Supergiant) will be able to sell games or get funding on their reputation, and those that were churning out a shitty product trying to make a quick buck will die off as they should.