There continues to be a lot of talk about the plummeting prices for indie games. It’s getting to where you almost can’t give games away. Bundles, and sales, and bundles and bundles and bundles and bundles. All over the place. The artwork, premis’s and titles blur together, they all look alike. They all claim to have unique gameplay, amazing graphics (although to be honest, the last time I was really wowed by a game’s graphics was Bioshock: Infinite, and I can’t remember the last time before that), fantastic stories. And I recognize that my game is going to be in a very similar position. I guess my big hope is just that I can get someone with some sort of audience to pay attention to my game, and thus bring the attention of their audience to bear on my game.
But that’s not what I want to talk about. It seems pretty clear that the drop in barriers to making games is responsible for a good part of this glut of games. It’s awesome that all sorts of people can make games now, that opens the path for some really unique takes on what a game is or should be. But it also means that anyone and everyone can and will make games. But I read a post on a blog on the internet on this day that has changed how I view this problem.
The article in question is here (and I have to say, that it’s a very interesting blog overall) here’s a two sentence sum-up: Everyone and anyone can write, and there are so many people who want to write, and so many people who would do it for free, that it’s become very hard to make a living writing. You can only really make money doing things that no one, or not enough people, would be willing to do for free. So now the hordes of people who would be willing to make games for free, can, which means that it’s very difficult to make a living making games.
But here’s the little bit of hope that this article-inspired perspective granted to me: There should still be, and hopefully always will be, things in gaming that few people are willing or able to do for free. 16-bit-style RPGs have been democratized by engines like RPG Maker, now it’s just about as easy to make an RPG as it is to write fan-fic, and probably pays just about as well. Game Maker and other similar products have made it so easy to make puzzle platformers, that everyone who would do it for free, can do it for basically free. It seems like I’ve been seeing more low-quality 3D shooters of late, which I would bet has something to do with Unity3D’s growing popularity in recent years.
But the thing is, creating quality work is hard, and because it’s hard, there are less people willing to do it for free. Inventing new mechanics is hard; writing well-crafted stories, especially stories that allow a lot of player interaction, is hard; there are lots of things in game development that are still hard. And hopefully, that means that there is still some money to be found in those things. Of course there’s still the problem of discoverability, everyone claims unique mechanics, and impressive stories, and it’s blasted hard to sort the chaff from the wheat with nothing but a few screenshots and a short blurb to go on.