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For the last week or so I've been keeping my eye on some indie titles currently in development through websites like IndieDB, Kickstarter, Kotaku, Develop and others in order to see how other people are developing their games. Yesterday evening whilst watching some indie game trailers on YouTube it suddenly hit me how many indie games there are by watching almost a dozen of them by using the ‘related videos' sidebar on the site.

Most of the games looked great, but do all these games help the indie scene? Thinking critically about both sides of the argument, I developed some thoughts on the matter.

Lots of indie developers and indie games is a good thing


Success Kid - made an indie game its #1 on indie db

  • 1. It forces developers to be better, enforcing a ‘dog eat dog', 'survival of the fittest' kind of market
  • 2. More games means more ideas and inspiration, which means more good ideas and therefore great games
  • 3. More developers means a better community, which means we can help each other more, creating a more vibrant and more lively indie scene
  • 4. The growth of the indie scene as a whole will allow a more level playing field with corporate developers, and more recognition in the wider media
  • 5. Indie games are a great vehicle for innovation, therefore we will see more new business models, ways to play and ways to interact with each other

Lots of indie developers and indie games is a bad thing

Futurama Fry - not sure if this indie game is good or if its just similar to one i've played before

  • 1. How many indie developers are giving up their full time jobs to create indie studios? Market reports in the US and Europe show that around 50% of businesses fail in the first 4 years. 50% of the indie community is a lot of casualties, so hopefully there will be new developers to replace them!
  • 2. Some great games might never get played because the market is becoming more and more saturated so people never find these great games, or they lose interest in the tired market altogether and stop playing anything at all
  • 3. Lots of games means lots of game ideas, which may mean lots of similar, copycat games and game mechanics which passionate gamers looking for something new find less enjoyable
  • 4. It's really easy to start an ‘indie studio' these days. All you need is an internet connection, a PC, some skills to develop and some tools, all of which have become readily accessible or cheap in the last few years. Lots of the people who do this could be inexperienced, might not know what they're getting into and could risk their future well being. More importantly though, they could make rubbish games!
  • 5. There could be ‘brain drain' away from corporate studios as people leave them to go to Indies, and I've seen this happen much more in recent times than it used to (I'm one of them!). This could mean that innovation levels will fall in the AAA market as the best developers leave to go solo, and the quality of console, PC and similar games will fall, as will their sales

Thinking of these arguments, compounded with a week of taking a look around the indie marketplace, made me truly realise that thousands upon thousands of indie games across an entire range of platforms is a huge amount and is a trend which could affect the industry as a whole, good and bad.

Overall, the vast majority of the effects of this trend are positive, but there could be some downsides. The best thing to come out of it are the great games we've seen and had fun playing, but the bad side is that there could be some pitfalls for us as an industry in the near future when the Indie bubble pops and we start to see some negative effects of our success creep in.

On a final note, I can't even remember a quarter of the trailers, blogs, websites and screenshots that I've seen this past week, and it just goes to show that it used to be OK for you to just get your game out there, but now you have to get it out there and shout about it the loudest.

These are just some of my thoughts on the indie scene at the moment, from the perspective of living and breathing it from the inside out. In answer to this article's question, I'm not sure there could ever be too many indie developers, we simply have too much to offer the games industry as a whole. I hope this provoked some of your own thoughts, please comment with your opinions!

Cheers, you can register to play our games at:

pilots.aphelio.com


Mike
Aphelio

www.aphelio.com

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Post comment Comments  (0 - 10 of 11)
Miscellaneous-P
Miscellaneous-P

Thanks for the friend request! :D

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Tranceheart264
Tranceheart264

Lol thanks for the friend request i guess if you need any help with ideas or somethin then ask though not like i can provide much other then ideas school sucks and money is tight at the moment anyways thanks for the add and good luck guys ^.^

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Angel_of_Death2
Angel_of_Death2

Why did you send me a friend request???

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AphelioLtd Creator
AphelioLtd

Hey, Angel_of_Death2, we're new on here and are looking to make cool friends and join in the community. You don't have to accept the request if you don't want to =)

- Mike

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narh...
narh...

Yo Bruv :)

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moddlord1
moddlord1

waz up! friends now and welcome to moddb!

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k21n
k21n

How do you know my name ? haha ( not so funny -.- ) Yes, i'm a 3d modeller! :) And looking forward to increase my skills and learning how to draw. I also like to play the guitar/piano.

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Zorder
Zorder

Accepted! Looking foward to what you guys can bring to us. ;)

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AphelioLtd Creator
AphelioLtd

Thanks! Like I said to k21n, sorry for the slightly random add, we're just starting out on IndieDB and wanted to add some cool people :)

Are you a dev too or just here to play games? :P

- Mike

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k21n
k21n

Thanks for the friend request :) Looking forward to see your work guys! Also welcome to IndieDB!

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AphelioLtd Creator
AphelioLtd

Thanks, we're just looking for cool people to add to get us going really! But don't want to come across spammy :P

I like the stuff on your page are you a 3D modeller then?

- Mike

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