Is there an indie games bubble?
Is there an indie games bubble?
by Gita Jackson on Sep 27, 2023 // And does it matter if it bursts?
Wrong question, in my humble opinion. A bubble is speculative at its core. It’s about traders, the stock market, investors, speculators and shit placing much more value on a thing than what it’s worth. The distance with reality grows massive, until everybody wakes up and "pop!" all that sweet sweet wealth (or savings, for the peasants) vanished into thin air. Think housing market or beanie babies.
The question here is if indie game dev can remain sustainable. It’s like restaurants: the more there are, the harder it gets. The risk is not nearly as sudden and explosive as a bubble though. If there are too many, some shops close, others shrink.
Furthermore, the tools and knowledge required for gamedev keep getting more readily available. It’s an art too, so there will always be someone somewhere with the overwhelming drive to do it, profitability be damned.
dot com was regarded as a bubble and seem to have the same amount of sustainability as indie games: good ones are good and bad ones are bad
Domain name were a speculative asset. This supports what the person you're replying to is arguing.
And yet some of my favorite indie games are games practically nobody's ever heard of. Most recent was Metal Unit, a game that I don't know how I have in my Steam library and somehow evades the internet's favorite rule despite the main character being an anime girl in a bodysuit. At time of writing there are 17 players in-game.
So while good games are good and bad games are bad, the good ones may not necessarily be sustainable.
The article actually addresses this, but I feel "indie games bubble" is simply too broad a term. Is there a medium-high budget indie game bubble? Maybe. But can indie games in general even have a bubble? Fuckloads of indie games are passion projects, or made from crowdfunding money, or otherwise not based around the idea that they have to be the "product" of a sustainable business, making the whole idea of a "bubble" pointless. If the bubble pops, will itch indies stop making games? Will passionate solo devs languishing at double digit Steam review numbers stop releasing games? I don't think they will.
The indie game market will crash and countless of investors will sit on their virtual mountain of now worthless indie games
I better sell my 1,000 copies of Celeste I've been sitting on then. I was waiting for retirement, but might as well take the tax hit.
No. There will always be a demand for new videogames and indie studios make the best ones.
If anything the AAA bubble is bursting right now.
The AAA bubble burst a while ago. Complete AAA games rarely release anymore because studios keep trying to push the boundary on scope and size instead of focusing on quality.
The limited size of indie games means they'll always have the capability to ship complete. They don't always because the teams are much smaller and less experienced, but I've always found more enjoyment out of a passionate indie game than a corporatized AAA.
What's with this focus on the word "complete"? Usually I just see it from people salty about the idea that a game ever gets DLC, but we're rarely seeing the kinds of things we saw in the late 00s and early 2010s where games would have a "missing chapter" or whatever, so if something about modern games is being described by how "complete" they are, it seems like a bad descriptor to me.
What evidence do you have that AAA’s are a bursting bubble?
I agree with that person as long as we're continuing to use the qualifier "if anything". AAA studios have thoroughly undiversified themselves and are looking for buyers from the few other companies wealthy enough to afford them, hence Activision's and Zenimax's sales to Microsoft. EA, Square Enix, and Ubisoft were all looking for buyers, and it wouldn't surprise me if Take Two was as well. EA's got sports and Battlefield and little else. Square Enix has Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest and little else. Ubisoft has Assassin's Creed and Far Cry and little else. On and on. They spent the last decade not making small bets on new IPs to replace these IPs once their time in the spotlight wanes. It's the very thing that Phil Spencer was talking about in that leaked e-mail about what he sees as a strength of Game Pass and a weakness of how AAAs chose to respond to the changing market.
Someone didn‘t understand the meaning of speculative bubble
The marketplace has grown a lot, so it might be harder to stand out. But indie studios tend to operate in a far more sustainable way.
As long as there is a demand for games that are complete, affordable and GOOD... the indie game market will stay healthy.
Furthermore, there's no shortage of people who sometimes decide to support indie devs over giant AAA studios. Maybe I'm a bit snobbish, but I wrinkle my nose a bit whenever the next "super mega ultra open world souls-like Metroidvania rogue-lite dungeon crawler battle royale" from Faceless MicroTx Corp comes out, even if it winds up being decent.
As long as people can discover these indie games, people will buy them.
Betteridge's Law of Headlines still applies. Asking that question shows a misunderstanding of what a bubble is and also assumes that's what's happening right now is the only thing that will continue to happen into the future, rather than the ebbs and flows that come in any economic conditions. Current economic conditions are affecting a variety of industries right now, not just indie games, which the article acknowledges with regards to layoffs at big AAA studios. The market will only bear X amount of some thing, and spending is slowing, so X has to lower with it. That affects all video games right now, from Fortnite to Shadow Gambit.
I could see there being fatigue with particular genres of indie games (Metroidvanias, Rougelites, First-Person Horror without combat, speedrunner-oriented 2D platformers) but not with the very concept.
I sure hope there isn't fatigue with metroidvanias, we only just started getting more than a few...
So the article is arguing what is indie and what is not...
This has nothing to do with "bubble" in the economic sense. I was worried when I read the title but looks like things are alright.
Seems like from reading this the answer is if there is it's popped mostly and if there isn't then things will continue on as is maybe getting slightly worse.
There are probably multiple indie game bubbles, like roguelike card game bubbles or Metroidvania 2d retro 16 bit graphics game bubbles.
Will there ever be not a bubble? What else but games is there to create when everything is automated?
ChatGPT, program a Metroidvania 2d retro 16 bit graphics video game featuring a naked Emilia Clarke.
Impeccable taste, the new requirement for programmers.