The Warring States of NPF - The indie guys making smaller, successful companies.

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- - The indie guys making smaller, successful companies. (http://www.nuklearforums.com/showthread.php?t=40630)

The indie guys making smaller, successful companies.

Quote:

People go into the business of making video games because they're passionate. Hours are long, competition is fierce, and pay can be low. Still, if you work hard enough, one day you can get a job working for one of your favorite companies making your favorite games. Or at least that's the dream.

But increasingly, the thought of working for yet another studio has become stifling for many professional developers. The gaming industry used to rely on developers learning to create games on their own before they would get hired, but the situation is now reversed: developers increasingly spend a few years inside studios and publishers to gain experience, then drop out of the system to make their own independent games.

The main reason is simple: big-name games have never offered less job security, and with the rise of digital distribution, devs who want to sate their hunger for something more than just another wargame have viable ways to sell their own dream projects.

I find this to be an interesting article...

You have a lot of people that are having great success without big name companies(I've heard of the Space Pirates and Zombies game, might buy it later...) and nowadays, it's doubtful that you even need to make AAA games that take up a lot of time and money.

It's always good to have smaller companies than just a few large ones. Seeing as how EA's probably going to lay off a number of people after Origin fails (Yeah, I snuck that in there...) it's good to see that the smaller companies will do a pretty good job of creating their own games that are even more fun to play.

The industry could definitely use a revival of independent developers. Graphics quality will suffer a little bit, but it'll be a lot better to get some innovative (or at least fun) gameplay with average or unconventional graphics than yet another FPS worth 10 hours of gameplay that requires a top of the line PC to play.

Unfortunately, lost somewhere between the two extremes are the meaningful games that still require a hefty investment, just not in the graphics. An independent probably isn't going to write Planescape:Torment, Baldur's Gate 2, or Deus Ex, but hopefully the success of independents will move the industry away from fancy, flashy, super realism. But, hopefully, not to the other extreme, a 'social' game that you either grind or pay into to win.

its nice to see consumers recognize quality doesn't take multi-million dollar production values.

My only concern is if there isn't some form of sifting through the shovelware the market might grow over saturated.

Over saturating...

The digital market...

-_-;

Yeah... It's a thing?

If there is a huge number of games online, most of which are terrible, then the ones that are good are going to be drowned out.

Also, a given consumer's money and time are finite resources.