Indie cindy

Far summer of 2004, June. I am passing through Voronezh; A fresh issue of Game.EXE is not released all day, and an accidentally seen rack with pirated discs, completely filled with Half-Life 2 boxes, which someone thoughtfully (and obviously hastily) drew a gray cover, crashes into memory. do not forget to stick on top of the good old lambda. Then I still do not know that this is just a beta version, or that we will meet with this game only in December ... And I don’t know anything at all about Steam, which immediately after the release of Half-Life 2 It seems that all who can can use it, and last but not least, not everybody has an Internet connection, and the code for the game just bought risks being stolen by someone right out of the box in the store.

It will be ten years. They will not survive Game.EXE, or, by and large, CDs. But Steam ... Steam overcomes the "abyss", will overcome all childhood diseases and become big. At first, it will step by step become the de facto platform for the distribution of “big” games, and then - also a ticket to the future for indie developers - already thanks to the Greenlight service. But did not Steam Greenlight for indie their own grave? Indeed, in just the first four months of 2014, Steam missed as many games as there were in it for the entire 2013 (if you do not believe, then here is a funny and frightening schedule ).

It’s useless to talk about Half-Life 3 for the time being - now Valve and Gabe Newell are personally interested primarily in Steam - and the game itself, according to the latest rumors, has just started and is at the concept art stage. Therefore, we talk about Steam and indie.

Soap bubble

In 2008, large development companies felt quite comfortable. The thing was that over the past years they felt financially profitable game genres and all that was now required of them was not to turn off the selected track, exchanging for different "small things", to which the publishers then attributed the classic RPG, 2D platformers , jigsaw puzzles and other wonderful, but not so commercially attractive genres as Call-of-Duty . This directly relates to the question of why we still could not wait, for example, the appearance of the new Might & Magic from the purchaser of the Ubisoft series, and other sequels of the wonderful games from the past. A niche product for a very narrow target audience - and the point.
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The place did not remain empty for long - “young and impudent” authors of games such as Braid, Minecraft and World of Goo entered the game. Although, of course, Braid with its $ 180K budget and vast experience of its creator Jonathan Blow deserves a separate discussion, but for today's topic this is not so important. Another thing is important - the initiatives of the developers of these games were taken by the players with a bang, and the games themselves turned out to be wonderful and deservedly made their authors millionaires.

Soon after that, the rest of them ... and the rest ... their games were not so perfect. Albeit very bad, but there were no millions anymore. However, the gold rush has already begun. Thousands of developers rushed to quit their boring work, to "go to the dream" and get incredibly rich. There were, as usual, a lot of people ... no, not so - there were a lot of them.

So we quietly came to today.

How to make a disaster 101

Take the player who bought a new indie developer game on Steam. Imagine that it is of disgusting quality - I don’t know how it is for you, but it will be quite easy for me to do this! At best, the buyer will launch it once - if at all. This is not so important. But! It is possible that this person will not buy any indie games anymore. For a month, or for a year. Or never.

It turns out that the first indie developers started making their games simply because they could not but make them. They loved the game. They were the pioneers of new genres and reanimations of old ones. They discovered new types of gameplay and prompted big players in the market to resurrect long-forgotten franchises - again, remember Might and Magic X, for which the publisher gave a small bag of money, only seeing the success of a completely different game made with completely incomparable means.

Now it has become fashionable to make a shitty game and sell it for a penny. To buy it was not so insulting - because it is also cheap. No, well, what, in fact? .. Well, and since with such an approach nobody wants to buy their game, they begin to blame for this App Store, Steam - but anyone. But, as the inquisitive reader has already guessed, it is not at all a fact that the devastation is in the venues, and not in the heads.

A bit of math for first grade. All together, gamers spend on games X dollars a year, which are divided among Y developers. Let's assume that X is a constant, which differs only by a small error from year to year ... but Y definitely creeps upwards! And cake X has to be divided into more and more hungry mouths. Competition is only hardened by the fact that you have to fight on equal terms with your own “idols” - Notch and his ilk. But who can endure such a fight?

All other problems - in the head of the developer. The incredible cruelty of Steam, the inability to stand out without visiting any GDC or the next Game Jam - all this is just an attempt to escape from these simple, cruel numbers.

No, I certainly don’t expect the riveters of all the vile apparitions to cry at this moment, make a ritual burning of the unreleased source code and sit down to read books on game design . I myself have come to terms with the fact that without marketing it is now impossible to survive. But the more I look around me, the more surprised - how much are people able to ruin their own lives? ..

Do not misunderstand me. Among the new indie games there are wonderful games - and many of them are forged by the companies that were born thanks to the commercial success of the very “original” indie games made by them. If only every day there were no new companies that are trying to act in the old ways - and all because they do not understand that those methods no longer work.

After all, there is a way out. The following will work: not endless attempts to make another clone in an attempt to catch up with the trend (and endlessly behind him by the time of release), but an attempt to answer the question - is your approach unique? Is game design all right? Are you interested in playing your own game? Have you found "nooks and crannies", that niche where no one has ever been - and everyone is just waiting for you - and not just another clone? If your answer is yes, then you are on the right track. If “no” - do not waste your time. Go and make a completely different game. An indie game has no right to be non-original simply by definition.

If these questions seem like a waste of time to someone, then I will give advice to the aforementioned Jonathan Blow (he gave it back in 2006 at one of the conferences). Look at the old games. No, not Diablo and Fallout - for those games that everyone has forgotten about today. For those who, quite likely, had original and fascinating mechanics beating inside instead of their hearts. Your game may not be at all about that and not at all, but the feeling that it will cause the player during the game is your goal.

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For inquisitive readers: I wanted to write a lot of this before, but the reason for finally uncovering the pen and keyboard was that recently my thoughts were confirmed in Jeff Vogel’s recent May article “The Growing Indy Bubble Bubble” (he is not well known to us , but his games are little known - Avadon and Avernum) and “Reflections on the future of indie games” by Taiga Kelly (responsible for OUYA and a regular contributor to Gamasutra). For my post, I borrowed some interesting calculations from them. If you have enough time, then I advise you to read these articles.