Indie games and developers

Quote from Sentura

My point was that I was absolving a large part of the blame from designers - or rather pointing their faults out as necessary. It is the venerable price of progress.

And yes, maturing the industry will fix this. Hollywood is known for its blockbusters, but there are also more sublime films coming from there. Film theory is widely used and respected. However, it seems like your ideal position would involve the removal of a capitalist economy - which is likely to never happen unless there's a total world collapse. In the golden ratio mentioned, I assume that the capitalist society will continue. It doesn't mean we'll get rid of the Call of Duties, in the same way that we won't get rid of blockbusters. But we'll get more nuance and more depth, perhaps so much so that even Call of Duty 46 will pick up a thing or two. Evolution is slow, but that doesn't mean it's not there.

This isn't so much a critique of capitalism on my part. That would be silly since i work for a living aswell in this industry.

But i mentioned a broken window fallacy earlier in this thread. And that's what it boils down to imo. People don't buy fewer sophisticated games because they prefer dumbed down games but because there are fewer sophisticated games and more and more dumbed down games. At least in the AAA sector. Case in point are the Mass Effect and Dragon Age franchises. The first games were great then the second games got dumbed down and the devs got a lot of shit for that. You can't explain that with a "new generation of players" since it happend within the same generation.

As far as hollywood goes you're right they not only produce superhero blockbusters but i also remember seeing a stat how the number of new ip's and movies with artistic merrits has gone down and down since the 1970's and how it got really bad over the last couple years. So i'm not really sharing your optimism that games industry will move in the opposite direction.

The only things that keeps me positive in that regard is that with new technology like the Rift on the horizon and indie games getting more market share the trend will be slowed down or come to a halt.

It's just a question of business model i think, look at what Paradox Interactive does; they a have an awful lot of games in their catalogue but almost all of them aren't dumbed down and are to be aimed at a faithful hardcore audience.

Square enix on the other end publishes a few costly games, so they have to get the largest audience possible, and thus dumb down the gameplay for that matter to avoid to frustrate the majority.

The thing is while SE are dumbing down their games, they are also facing massive losses. The head of Eidos Montreal quit a few months ago too.

Also, sequels to brilliant games are fine as long as you improve on them and don't make them worse. Thief 2 was a definite improvement on Thief 1 in many aspects: more tools, better AI, better engine, arguably better levels. Even if Thief 1 is my favorite game and I think it is vastly superior to Thief 2, Thief 2 is still a sequel to a brilliant game done damn right. See Splinter Cell too; both Pandora Tomorrow and Chaos Theory are amazing games, especially the latter. I seriously cannot say the same of Double Agent, Conviction and Blacklist. Let's take Hitman, too. The first one was not a very good game but it had a cool concept. Hitman 2 is a great game. Then came Contracts that I'm not that fond of but it's still a good game, and then speaking of 4th games you got the masterpiece Blood Money, that improved on everything and sent the whole thing sky high with awesomeness. But then we got Absolution to break it all down.

And don't get me started on reboots. Hey let's cash in on some old, loved franchise and beat a dead horse. Out of all the reboots I've played, the only one that's even decent (and it's actually good and fun) is Shadow Warrior 2013. The rest, nah.

Quote from 2d-chris

There will always be sequels, nothing wrong with them at all, as a gamer I enjoy them if done right. My problem is as a developer, not as a consumer.

If you get the chance to work on a new IP, or refine an old one, I'd know which one I'd go looking for

I think my biggest beef is when we make a newer version of a game, only to have less complexity and features than the original in hope that you attract a wider audience, this happens all the time, all over the industry. We have more experience, more tools, more powerful hardware, bigger teams with specialized positions and what do we do with it, simplify for the masses It's almost as if these days we think people are stupid, which is really disrespectful and not true at all.

Urg I'm sounding more like an indy developer everyday

PS: this has nothing to do with Thief 4, I've not played any of them D:

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That;s why I play more indie games these days. I still try out big games to see what their mechanics are like but only when they are on sale.

I wonder how it would look if people with decades of industry experience would come together and make an indie game with a large budget. No holds barred.

Would it be... the PERFECT game?

And oh yeah, about the discussion: I don't really have an opinion for what's going to happen with the industry... and it's getting increasingly harder for me to care. As long as I can do what I love the industry as a whole can do whatever the hell it pleases.

Quote from Sentura

I wonder how it would look if people with decades of industry experience would come together and make an indie game with a large budget. No holds barred.

Would it be... the PERFECT game?

I'm curious to see how Star Citizen will turn out. Certainly goes a bit in that direction.

20 mill budget with 40 people working on the project is hardly indie

By that definition Crytek is an indie dev. Which I completely don't consider it as one.

Well you got Project Eternity and Torment and Wasteland 2 that could fall into that category.

I suppose Star Citizen is in a new category of it's own

I wouldn't consider Crytek indie. One attribute of being indie is independence from big global players in the industry. Seeing as Crytek has partnerships with Ea, Ubi, Microsoft etc. i don't think that's the case.

But RSI at this point definitely are indie as they even self publish their product on their website.

On a side note: Maybe a moderator can split this topic. While the discussion is interesting i feel a bit sorry for the mapcore peeps working on T4 for shitting all over their thread. Especialy since much of my criticisms isn't directly aimed at their game but the industry at large and things got a little off-topic.

To follow this discussion of games dubbed down, sorry for thief4, i want to share a game completely unrelated, but shows that there exists games so hardcore and detailled that they are not even fun anymore; what's funny though is that the game is priced something around 70 euros, imagine a big publisher coming up with something like that. Would never happens. Although this is a shame, because a game like that with amazing graphics would be orgasmic to me.

It's so nerdy it makes you feel ashamed to play it, but still a great wargame, i recommend!!!

Quote from Thrik

Crytek is entirely self/crowd-funded? I didn't know that, but if it is that definitely counts as indie.

Double Fine is making their adventure game with a pretty big team, but it's entirely self/crowd-funded and very much 'indie-style'. Would you say that counts? What about Sony-funded games like Flower and Journey?

Crytek gets the vast majority of its money itself and is publishing several of its own games. So yeah.

I see Crytek as a major studio employing lots of veteran people. Indie? Not really

Now we're just arguing semantics on what indie really means.

Independent studio is one thing, "indie" is another, and you all know it, lol.

It should mean publisher and creative independence but if you're not a small team making emotionally empowering games they couldn't make at big studios like medieval toon shaded 4 player coop loot games or first person walk abouts sniffing your sisters underwear while shes gone you're just not fucking indie man