Industry Research - Why go indie?

Going to be doing an introduction and conclusion for each section as I post just so it’s easier to understand what I’m looking at without backlogging.

What is going on in the games industry?

To start off a look into what is currently happening in the games industry will expose where indie games stand in the market and what caused this. First, what is triple A development?  

In the games industry, triple A (AAA for short) games are created by large studios with vast amounts of budget, therefore a game created by these large studios are generally considered to be of higher quality because of the scale of the projects. A great example of the sheer size that these projects can get is the game Destiny. This game cost half a billion to create and market and its team was over 400 strong during development. This style of development was the king during the first few years of the 7th console generation (Xbox 360) and there were very few smaller independent games produced.

However, in recent years, there has been a great surge in smaller independent game studios creating enjoyable and successful games. Part of the reason for this is based on how triple A games are developed. They are simply becoming too big and risky to get a profit from a £40 price tag, this is inherently unsustainable and causes large companies to avoid creating risky new ideas, so a lot of developers have broken away from the studios to create their own smaller independent ones instead.

Peter Molyneux is a perfect example for this, in 2012 he decided to quit working for Microsoft (the company that bought his previously indie studio in 2006) and went on to create a new small studio called 22cans saying ‘’ I just felt compelled to become an indie developer again’’ [Peter Molyneux 2012] Part of the reason he left was because he did not want any creative constraints enforced on his games by Microsoft.

Why are indie games becoming more popular?

There are a few reasons why smaller independent games are becoming more popular. Firstly, the rise of the mobile market caused by the release of smartphones created an open platform for companies to release their games. These games would benefit from having quick playtimes on their levels for on the go entertainment, which in turn made smaller games with small development cycles ideal for the platform. Even now the mobile apps market continues exponentially each year. [Realizing Potential of Mobile Gaming 2009]

Statistics on mobile app growth from 2011[Statista 2015]

Currently this market is completely oversaturated due to the ease of the platform and the large amount of shovel ware on the platform. Shovel ware is a term for games or applications that are rushed to quickly release them or a game that is at its core a reskin of a previous game or even worse a direct copy of a popular title on the platform. Flappy bird for example was a very popular basic game when it came out and currently on the Google play store there is over 30 clones of the game.

Secondly, their profitability is much higher than most AAA games. Games created by an independent developer incur a lot less production costs because of their much smaller teams and lower use of marketing. For example, the game Her Story was created solely by a Sam Barlow on a tiny budget and to date has sold over one hundred thousand copies. This profitability has also encouraged larger companies to introduce easier ways for smaller games to engage the online communities through their platforms.

In the debut presentation of the PS4 (8^th generation console) they talked a lot about how their platform is encouraging small independent companies and promoted this as a major feature of the ps4. Microsoft also did the same thing with the Xbox one during their E3 conference.

The PC retailer Steam (created by Valve) has took this ideology one step further. In the last few years the sheer number of indie games attempting to get on the platform has been overwhelming, so Valve decided to create Steam Greenlight so that the community decides if a game is interesting enough to be added to platform. Greenlight is a way to publicly display a game (trailers etc.) and get the community to actively vote for projects that they would be interested in buying, this method does have its advantages and disadvantages though.

Greenlight prevents a lot of shovel ware getting through to the store because of the community actively reporting or downvoting it. This system can also be abused to stop an original game getting on the store, if voters decide to either downvote the game or don’t see any incentive to vote for the product. Also, if a game does get through the greenlighting process the developer has to add steam works functionality to their game which, increases the development cycle of the game if they decide to add it at the end of the project or adds the risk of wasting time if they add the functionality early then don’t get through the process.

Finally, a reason why developers are going indie is so that they have full creative freedom without a large production company hindering them because of the risks involved in creating something new.

In Vertex 2 Sparth (Nicolas Bouvier – Concept Artist) gives a little insight into his work on halo 4 and his experiences working with a large established IP. During his time working on halo he only had minimal constraints when it came to thinking about creating a new look for the world, this is because of 343 Industries wanting to ‘’create a real upgrade compared to the Bungie Era’’. [Nicolas Bouvier 2014] In contrast to this he was very constrained on when it came to aspects like characters, enemies and weapons. He describes them as exciting constraints that he needed to breakdown and then improve upon.  

Constrains are quite useful when you already have an established IP like this because it stops developers straying away from what is desired. On the other hand, it also stops developers experimenting with new ideas or gameplay elements due to the risks involved with new ideas, which was the reason for Peter Molineux’s departure from Lionhead.

Failure in indie development

The creation of indie games isn’t without its own problems, some of which come down to publishers or the developer promising too much.

No man’s sky was one of this year’s biggest games even though it was an indie game. The game was created by a small studio called hello games which is comprised of 16 people. This game was funded in part by Sony to make it an exclusive for their platform and was marketed as something huge, I think this mistake was part of its poor reception on release. A lot of people (including myself early on) saw this game as a triple A title because of its massive marketing presence, this in part caused expectations for it to be beyond what a small team is capable of (by the time of its release). This marketing also led to the price of the game being £40, which is the common price for a AAA title.

The other reason for its poor reception is because of Sean Murry lying or promising too much in interviews, for example in one interview he explains that animals on every planet work like real ecosystems, there will be a food chain and each one will have different behaviors. In the actual release, planets do have randomly generated animals but they don’t react to one another or do anything much at all aside from idle around or run away if the player gets too close (Some animals will attack but only the player). There is a huge number of examples of this in Sean’s interviews including; multiplayer aspects, giant space battles, planet and animal types that are not even coded into the game (Snakes and desert planets), different player abilities and a lot crafting complexity. [Cyman90 2016]

In the end, No Man’s Sky was built up too much on false promises and ideas so when the game released and a lot of that content was missing it highlighted how much more the game could have been. Personally, I think that the game would have had a much better reception if they were more accurate with what would be available in the game from the start, this would have been to stop people’s expectations getting too high. Secondly giving it a more reasonable price relating to its production quality so that consumers were less likely to feel ripped off by the price tag.

Conclusion

From this look into the industry it is easy to see why developers are deciding to create smaller companies, however triple A development is still the king because of the sheer amount of money they have access to for marketing. Also because of big retail platforms making it a lot easier to get an indie game on their platform it’s a safer environment for taking the risk in creating a smaller company. Finally, In my opinion the indie market share will continue to grow alongside triple A development because of its higher profit margins and the ease of access that companies are introducing for smaller games to be successful.

References

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