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In the past, making money and making great games had a lot of overlap.
But then the big studios realized how much some people are willing to spend on either the latest version of the same thing, to not have to wait for a timer, to skip a grind (especially one tuned specifically to make people want to skip it), to gain an advantage over other players, plus a bunch of psychological tricks and are so often chasing that money, which probably kills a lot of the passion for their staff that actually knows how to make good games until they either leave or start phoning it in.
But indie studios, while they can also be run by people just chasing the money, can also be run by people more interested in the creating a great game aspect than the money aspect.
You can see the same thing across the entire economy. The main difference is that regulatory capture and the amount of resources required to make a video game aren’t set up to prevent new players from entering the market and since games are digital they scale much easier than physical objects. Like some people have de-enshitified their cars or even made their own from scratch or an older one, but it’s not like they can just sell those de-enshitified cars to anyone, they’d need to ramp up production quite a bit to get the same reach viral indie games can get.
We went from “build a better mouse trap” to “seriously cheap out on the parts”
Unfortunately indie devs just don’t have the resources to make the kinds of immersive story games I really like (think Uncharted, TLoU, Horizon Zero Dawn, etc.)
There could totally be an indie game like Uncharted. Why not?
So you are a movie guy huh?
No, you’d have a point if I had mentioned Detroit: Become Human (which I gave up on halfway because it was so boring). But these games have solid gameplay too.
COD MW2 boycott mentality never stopped
I mean, at a sufficiently low enough price, I’d pick up a game I wouldn’t purchase at full price or on release if I knew I’d still enjoy playing it. I view it like how I shop for meats, I only buy managers special for 30-40% off and freeze them for later. Yeah, it’s a sale statistic, but how much does it matter to the publisher if I bought it a year late for 85% off with season pass and never really got super into the MP or MTX?
That boycott picture is from like release day, I remember it when MW 2 came out. There are many similar pictures of the left for dead 2 boycott groups as well.
At this point the only AAA games I touch are those from at least 10 years ago. Warframe and PoE2 scratch the AA/live service itch without overstaying their welcome, and for everything else, indie releases have it covered.
Been working through a bunch of new and older titles this year - in the past month or two alone I sunk so much time into Look Outside, Inscryption, and Endacopia, and just picked up Sprawl Zero which looks phenomenal. I’m working through the MGS series right now which I’ve somehow never played (hence the “older AAA” exception), and got a good handful of backlog selections lined up for after this binge.
Valheim v1.0 just came out
I think we need to find a happy middle ground with these “early access” games. That game is now old enough that most people who would enjoy it have already played it so much that they have had their fill and moved on.
They buffed mist torches thank god
a yeah, a land of creativity like pixel art retro metroidvania #3764917. ok, that was a bit cynical, but lets not pretend like indie is bastion if endless creativity, but I admit that the lack of dependency makes the creativity much easier there.
bastion
Unironically a great indie game
Supergiant has a damn good track record.
I still want Transistor 2.
Personally I felt Pyre was a little meh. But even their weakest game is still a hell of a lot better than many AAA.
And Darren Korb is one hell of a composer.
pyre was a wild swing and i love it for that. there’s no other game like it. wizard basketball visual novel that tries to convey the bittersweetness of letting go and moving on?? incredible stuff
True, but they made up for it with Hades.
I think that’s the general consensus. Pyre was clearly a transitional game for them from shorter narrative focused games towards the long roguelikes where narrative unfolds over repeated playthroughs that Hades 1 & 2 are, but Pyre just a) didn’t have a great gameplay loop, and b) didn’t leave you really feeling like it was worth keeping going and freeing your entire party. I did play through to the end once and just don’t think I’ll go back and do it again. Meanwhile every several years I go back for Bastion and Transistor.
I hope their next game is back in one of their original settings though. I love both Hades games, but their other games did a great job of leaving me wanting to understand the world better and just wanting more.
You need to find reviewers with similar tastes as you do.
“This story has words in it, how unoriginal.” /j
You’re not entirely wrong, even if a little disingenuous. I think it’s quite clear that indie games provide the best examples of creativity and freedom of expression in gaming currently, but there definitely is also quite an oversaturated jungle to cut through of roguelikes, deckbuilders, roguelike deckbuilders, Metroidvanias, Soulslikes, Soulslike Metroidvanias…
Some porn games are unironically strategy/dungeon diver gems.
Though I’ve noticed that some non-porn games are adding “nudity” and “sexual content” to their user tags when the game has none to attract people looking for good porn games, but then it turns out to just be a good game without porn.
I noticed when looking through some of my unplayed games’ tags and saw “dating sim” plus the ones above in a bunch of SAO games, which are unfortunately not very good games from the ones I’ve tried so far, which is kinda ironic given that a great game is central to the story.
Do you have any recommendations?
Ero Dungeons. It’s cute and funny (but ero). Also has a bunch of good mods.
Also Dungeon Repeater. Honestly, just look on itch or f92zone with rpgm or Wolf rpg tags.
spoiler
Well, some are to a weird kink, if you can ignore that, there’s Naive Cat Erusha, Regret Island and 3D: Dungeon Keep Her and old Path of the Pixie. Those are some with phenomenal execution and/or a funny/cute tone. But weird kink.
Then again, Rimjobworld is also not that rare, regarding rapey stuff.
I played marvel snap cuz of the draft release. I saw so many predatory practices I ought right uninstalled the game once draft was over
Second frame should be them looking up and going: “Uuuh, horse armor is on sale for only 15.99”
What’s the difference between giving valve a 30% cut, relying on their algorithm for marketing, using their infrastructure, and a publisher?
A publisher has creative control over the games, and can make you make changes for profitability and veto creatively risky games. There are definitely good publishers out there (e.g
Annapurna the publisher of outerwilds seems pretty chill), this meme is about AAA studios and how the massive studios have all gone to shit.Annapurna the publisher of outerwilds seems pretty chill
You mean the publisher owned and operated by the fascist Ellisons? The one that had its entire staff quit en masse in protest of management abuse?
The games are good though.
Huh I had no idea, certainly looks bad tho, I retract my statement.
Tbf you can also get unlimited keys to sell and use elsewhere without issue. You’re paying for the audience, convenience and trust.
No ones stopping you from posting to itch.io or handing out USBs, but Steam will always be preferred because of the user experience.
Good source of free real indie games (even the Portal devs are from there, hired by Valve after presenting Narbacular Drop there)
