He then ran down a string of recent hits developed by independent devs and studios: Balatro, Baldur’s Gate 3, Helldivers 2, Clair Obscur—even the venerable Minecraft, an archetypal indie superhit before Mojang was sold into the Microsoft stable.
I mean, by that definition he’s not wrong.
It’s just that the way that works is indie devs become big enough to either become whatever the hell triple A means or get bought by whatever the hell triple A is.
Magicka was an indie game, I really struggle to fit Helldivers 2, a Sony-published sequel to a Sony-published game, into that same bucket. Ditto for Larian. Divinity OS? Sure. Hasbro-backed multi-studio Baldur’s Gate 3 with its hundreds of millions of budget? Myeaaaaah, I don’t know.
I think the real question is how you keep the principles that make indie games interesting in play when the big money comes in. I’m all for an indie-driven industry, but I’m a touch more queasy about a world in which major publishers use tiny devs as a million monkeys with typewriters taking on all the risk and step in at the very end (sometimes post-release) to scoop up the few moneymakers.
Indie is kind of a fraught term in whatever genre it’s used I feel like. It has too many connotations and too few clear definitions. How much big label backed mass produced “indie rock/pop” did we not get back in the early 00s music scene, for example. Same with gaming: see the whole Dave the Diver being nominated for best Indie Game despite being backed by NEXON debacle.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is tricky because while Hasbro was involved it was still self-published by Larian. It doesn’t feel right to me to call it an indie game, but… how exactly should we define them then? Is there a budget cutoff where a game is no longer allowed to be called an indie? If Sandfall uses their huge budget from the success of Expedition 33 to make a blockbuster sequel but stayed with Kepler as publisher would we refuse to call it an indie game?
This has been true for 15 years, but video game execs don’t care about the game itself, they only care about the money it makes
While I agree, listing successful games is just confirmation bias. For every indie darling, you’ve got hundreds of flops.
The reason triple a games are so mediocre is because it’s safe. You dont have to take a huge risk, and your chances of failing are smaller. Even if you do fail, the chances of recouping your investment are pretty decent.
Again, I think indie games are generally better than pretty much anything the triple a scene puts out. But that’s because they took a huge risk that happened to pay out.
And the reason it has to be safe is not just because of investors, but because they’re giant companies structured for making big games. You can’t use a full team of UI designers on a small indie game with a fast development cycle. You can’t really split those resources up among 100 tiny projects either. So if you want to make use of your big company and your in-house engine and all that, you have to make a billion dollar game and it has to earn back that money and it can’t take any risks.
Let’s say the ratio is 1/5. Rather investing in 5 diverse small - medium projects @ 2 million each or in one big 20 million project with a increased risk for bad management decisions and safe (boring) story & mechanics which leads to at best ok ratings? I would choose the former but i’m not a CEO type.
The problem is, it’s nowhere near 1:5. It’s more like 1:100 if we include only games with a decent amount of effort put in.
Ok let’s use those numbers:
Let’s say the ratio is 1/100. Rather investing in 100 diverse small - medium projects @ 2 million each or in one big 200 million project with a increased risk for bad management decisions and safe (boring) story & mechanics which leads to at best ok ratings? I would choose the former but i’m not a CEO type.
So what happened to Ion Storm, then? If Indies are the future, where are the Daikatana sequels that fans should obviously be clamoring for?
Compare that to the other IS office, which published through Eidos and created Deus Ex and Dominion: Storm Over Gift 3. They operated like a proper studio and worked professionally.
Small and efficient studios have always been the way. Hands-off publishing has always been the way. It’s not indie vs. AAA. It’s just professional development and support.
A couple of triple AAA studios are pretty good. But quality has dropped overall by a staggering amount. Indies are either the greatest or worst games ever made. It’s not even just in games, it’s in music, animation, everything. Capitalism trends culture towards mediocrity.
triple AAA
thats like, at least 8 A’s, that must be very good
