this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2024
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Nacon exec says industry's problem is "too many games" (www.gamesindustry.biz)
submitted 7 months ago by nanoUFO to c/games
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[–] ZOSTED 16 points 7 months ago (3 children)

A lot of indies, too. And quality isn't enough to rise above the fray anymore.

I'm not going to say it's too many, because that's subjective, but in business terms it's a "red ocean"

[–] sugar_in_your_tea 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I play indies because they're more of a "blue ocean" market, in that they push the boundaries to create very different experiences to what the industry is doing. These indies tend to trickle their way to larger studios once they prove the concept. For example:

  • Minecraft - general idea of crafting being a core mechanic; now tons of games have crafting as a major mechanic
  • Factorio - automation-type puzzles; didn't quite make it to AAA AFAIK, but there's plenty of other studios now making automation games
  • Demon Souls/Dark Souls - FromSoftware was small-ish before those games, and now there's a whole genre
  • Slay the Spire - now there's a ton of deck-building games
  • Limbo - see Little Nightmares and plenty of others that have a very similar feel

And so on. Indies tend to push the boundaries (i.e. blue ocean), and larger studios fill in behind them.

[–] ZOSTED 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

I see what you're saying, and agree with your clarification. Maybe a broad term like red ocean wasn't the best choice of words.

I was thinking more about how it's harder for individual (or tiny) contributors to stand out. This is just one metric, but look at steam games tagged as "indie" released over the years. Game developers went from having stand out among dozens of other games, to hundreds.

Like I'm part of a group of solo/tiny game devs outfits, and we're seeing first-hand how a game is almost dead in the water unless you spend serious time/money on marketing.

E: forgot link

[–] sugar_in_your_tea 3 points 7 months ago

Yeah, it's pretty rough for devs, but there are still plenty of stand-out indies. It just takes a lot more work to stand out.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

There are lots of identical indie games, usually found in the forms of pixel shit, asset-pack Unity crafters,, and melodramatic walking simulators.

[–] ZOSTED 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Hey at least melodramatic walking simulators are trying to say something

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, they're trying to say "I'm so deep, give me money". I seriously doubt the number of autuer-driven art-first video games breaks out of the margin of error

[–] ZOSTED 2 points 7 months ago

Right yeah, I don't like low effort games

[–] PinkPanther 2 points 7 months ago

14532 games were released on Steam in 2023. And that's Steam alone. Absolutely insane numbers.