Enjoy the indie craze, because it won't last...

konman

According to Peter Molyneux...

my response, how dare you sir!

..or Is he talking from a financial perspective? Because I've always thought that the lure of indie game development is more about the creative aspects, creating those games we've always wanted to play and exploring it as an art form firstly and secondly pursuing it financially.

Any thoughts?

Kobusvdwalt9

Despite what multiple people have told me I think we are reaching a climax. In the next year or two there will be an implosion. I think when enough people have failed (and they will, its getting really hard now) they will move on to something else, like stocks or something. I think about half of the people doing this is doing it for the wrong reasons and thats why the indie scene will fade. I mean with steam opening up, success will rely more and more on who can market the best and guess who is really good at that... the AAA scene.

But thats just whats in my head atm...

EvanGreenwood

@konman The ability to create a cool creative game all by yourself is only getting easier. I don't think Molyneux was talking about developers stifling their own creativity. I think he'd agree that wildly creative indie games are here to stay, I think the point he's making is about the prominence (rather than the existence) of those wildly creative indie games in the future.

The way I see his point is: With more investment in indie games, and bigger budgets, those companies working on bigger projects will be more risk averse (we've seen this in other industries and in our own one during the early 2000s and late 1990s).

More risk averse big budget indie games *might* be backed harder by distributors and publishers who *might* control the indie scene to a greater extent in the future. BUT I'm not sure whether there is evidence that this is happening.

Personally: I've been working under the assumption for the last couple years that budgets will increase for indie games as the scene becomes more competitive and the competitors gain better access to capital and marketing clout. It seems to me that the current system would naturally tend towards that (and Molyneux says that he sees evidence of this). BUT, as far as I can see, it isn't more difficult in 2014 to make a successful game by yourself on a small budget than it was in 2008.

So while I expect a trend like Molyneux is predicting (for similar reasons), I think there are other factors that are working against the trend, like massive improvements in the tools and distribution that developers have access to. (Though these advantages for smaller developers *might* trail off in the coming years).

I don't think consumers will stop demanding innovative indie games. I don't think there is an indie bubble. It seems to me that the demand for indie games is rising along with the quality of the games produced...

Though a few years of stale, safe, bigger budget indie games with publisher/distributor misinformation backing them could cause a consumer implosion O_O (but I don't think that has even begun and I'm not sure it will)

Though I think it's an interesting thing to watch out for (and my colleagues have had to put up with a lot of me talking about it).

brondin

Huh, it's really odd to hear such a pessimistic outlook from Peter Molyneux. Say what you will about the man's work, but he loves video games with every single particle of his being. At the same time, he self-identifies as an indie who escaped the AAA machine, so I wonder where he thinks he's going to be once the 'craze' ceases to be.

Maybe I'm overly optimistic about indie games, but I don't think Molyneux realises the extent of the industry's self-awareness. Some developers are going to fall to the allure of angel investors, to deny that would be naive, but there are so many successful games coming out of the indie scene, as well as indie festivals and conferences which extoll the virtues of independent development and expose the drawbacks of working with publishers and investors. People are becoming increasingly more cognisant of independent work as a legitimate way of being a game developer, and that you don't need an enormous budget or a willingness to ape dudebro shooters to make it in the industry.

Besides, people have to start somewhere, not everyone will get a job at a large studio, and investors are assumedly unwilling to provide funds to anyone who hasn't already shown that they have something that's at least marketable, if not good as well. I don't think even the worst case scenario will see the indie scene dissolve entirely, because it has and I think, will continue to be one of the industry entry points.

On that note, it's interesting that he draws a parallel between punk and indie development, and makes no recourse to the fact that there is still a market for original music "with no sense of fear" as he puts it. It's not like punk went away, people still live by the ethos, and make and listen to the music, it just isn't as publicly visible as it used to be (and if I'm not mistaken, most music which is fondly remembered as symbolic of an era is usually elevated to that status through a historical filter which works to forget all the mediocre output, and wasn't as popular as it's often claimed to be). Some developers, Anna Anthropy for example, view their work as directly analogous to the DIY punk ethic, so I think that sort of mindset is probably going to keep the indie scene in existence, even if it's no longer thriving.

Again, the above could well be a product of my own naivete, but from the argument Molyneux presents, I'm not entirely convinced that independent development is in imminent danger of dying out. (Also, sorry for writing a post that's almost as long as the article we're discussing, hopefully it makes sense, even if it's entirely wrong)

EvanGreenwood

@brondin From what I gather of the music industry, it is incredibly hard to make money without major label backing, and even with major label backing you get bled dry.

From what I gather (from a few conversations with musicians) right now indie developers have it MUCH MUCH better than musicians... so I'm not sure that the punk comparison is misplaced in Molyneux's argument.

Though I'm not saying that artists who produce brilliant DIY style work are not going to have a place in indie games in the future. Just as the most brilliant musicians today can make a living independently.

(And I'm not even sure that the trend Molyneux is predicting is taking place, regardless of whether it happened in music).

brondin

@BlackShipsFilltheSky I was addressing Molyneux's claim that punk was big but now "everything's manufactured". Whenever music journalists start referring to a whatever-genre revival, the long-time devotees stand up and say, "it's not a revival, it never died, you just stopped paying attention." So the idea behind that argument was that even if indie games become less prominent, they're not going away. That point about my false equivalence between indie music and indie games is a really good one though.

On a related note, I'm under the impression that indie record labels like Top Shelf Records and Run For Cover are making life as a musician more financially tenable for less well-known bands, while still granting them creative control over their work. I wonder if the emergence of indie game publishers like Midnight City and Devolver Digital might foster a similar industrial ecosystem (assuming that I'm actually correct about indie labels benefiting indie bands) and possibly mitigate the trend Molyneux predicted? (Probably another case of false equivalence, but I think it's a similarity worth considering)

EvanGreenwood

@brondin Yeah, I really don't think Indie Games are going to stop being developed (with games like Papers Please and Hotline Miami being so financially viable)... The worst case scenario I can imagine is that indie games will end in the position of current independent musicians.

One other thing to note in Molyneux's background. The last time indie games went away, between about 1997 to 2007, they really went away. Just about no-one with a team smaller than ten people, and outside of the big publishers, made any money developing games during that time, and very few attempted it with any determination.

So that might cast a bit of doom and gloom on Molyneux's fortune telling. But the situation is different now.

dislekcia

Molyneux isn't seeing the same thing that everyone else is calling indie. His anecdote about hotel lobbies at GDC? Those meetings are people who can afford those hotels as expense claims, to see the indie scene, go hang out in the hostels, the cheap hotels and the couches of devs who live in SF anyway.

If anything, all that will happen is indie stuff will move again, just like it did in the "gap" he's talking about: That's when casual games happened, those early digital distribution games paved the way for things like Steam and distribution via websites. Yes, the casual portals eventually appeared and they maximised the business model and sort of ate that market, but there are still indies that work in casual games and make what they like making and earn a living doing it. There are still casual games AND there are still indie games, things just moved.

Maybe people end up moving away from Steam. Maybe Totalbiscuit starts up a web-front and Pewdiepie and co are the new distribution mega-overlords... Maybe not. All I know is that the people with smaller budgets and faster reaction times will adapt, those people will, inevitably, be indie.

dislekcia

Devolver Digital founder weighs in on the Destructoid article based on Molyneux's cyclic prediction stuff: Read

konman

@dislekcia

Thanks for the Devolver Digital article. Insightful.

So, almost 30 years ago Molyneux founded a British computer game development company (Bullfrog Productions).
20 years ago in 1994 they released a video game called Magic Carpet which was IMHO light-years ahead of anything seen before and I played it to death and loved all things Bullfrog since... with Syndicate they became my favourite producer.

Just illustrating my respect for Molyneux here, even though his latest games weren't as ground-breaking or popular.

I don't agree with Molyneux here though. Maybe I'm partial as an indie or maybe he is just trying to be sensationalist for some reason, like a new Madonna album? Don't know.

It's a bit like watching those "whimps" :) play in the 1995 Rugby World cup, they all look so *skinny* compared to the guys playing today? Something has happened. Technology and competition maybe? The industry has evolved into something different.

I still respect Molyneux's opinion.

@BlackShipsFilltheSky" I don't think Molyneux was talking about developers stifling their own creativity."
I just hope he is wrong or maybe expressed his opinion the wrong way somehow?

I find this bit from that article inspiring: "... this is indeed a Golden Age for games of all sizes, and we are extremely happy for all the artists, publishers and platforms who are finding freedom in getting small and staying small".