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[Booger]

When I first decided to become an indie developer, I set my target on making a PS1-era quality game (Basic 3D, handpainted vs pixel graphics).  I thought by doing this I would leapfrog over the NES/SNES-era style indie games in development, of which there are plenty now, many on browser or for free (insomuch that a new paid-for game has to demonstrate it is better than e.g. Cave Story if it is to survive).

However now, I'm seeing games which are similar to my style which are free to play.  It's hard for me to put my upcoming game side-by-side with them and honestly feel like charging money.  It seems to me that the indie scene, like the mainstream scene, is slowly climbing up in the quality standard bar.  The first indie games were freeware Pong experiments, then later shooters with bit graphics, then more colorful platformers.  Now thanks to Unity and UDK, many indie games are now in full 3D with lighting.

Even though the cost for an indie developer is only a fraction, I still feel like one of the Japanese developers who are intimidated by the high cost of modern console* games and are surviving on the handheld.

*change that to 'indie' and it applies to me.

I had been making freeware experiments and thought now was the time to break and go commercial, but it feels like I've already missed the boat since the quality bar is miles ahead now.  Anyone else feel that way?

[Oddball]

You seem to be preoccupied with visuals. You should instead be asking yourself if, when placed side by side, your game plays as good or better than those free alternatives. Indie games survive mainly on word of mouth and the hype surrounding it. This means that whilst good visuals certainly help a game with great gameplay can still do well without them.

[Christian Knudsen]

Not really. Sure there are impressive and big indie titles with "full 3D with lighting", but there are still a lot more indie games that aren't that and are still successful. And just because there are a lot of free (mostly Flash) games out there (though free, they're still trying to earn money through advertising or microtransactions) doesn't mean you can't sell a quality game. You'll just have to make something that isn't already covered by those free games or monetize your free game in a new way.

EDIT: This was a reply to the OP.

[bateleur]

The question you have to ask yourself is who the audience is for your game. As the above two comments imply, many audiences are not unduly concerned with state-of-the-art graphics.

The last two games which I paid money for were Vertex Dispenser and Frozen Synapse, neither of which has anything advanced going on in graphical terms.

[Reives]

Graphics or game-play, the attributes indie games should focus and stay competitive on are uniqueness and fundamental ideas; you can't really rely on selling via comparison of how expensive the development assets are with corporations. It might obscure the goal that you should be competing toward to set the vision to matching that of a specific console era, in terms of either graphics or game-play (unless you're going for nostalgic players).

[Paul Eres]

the key thing to understand here is that the standard for commercial quality art is in the *quality of the art* and not the quality of the technology. in other words, low-fi technology with a good artist will sell better than high-quality technology (lots of polygons, lighting, and shaders) with a bad artist or with programmer art

e.g. which would you rather play: a 2d game in 320x200 and 16 colors with sprites by a team of professional pixel artists, or an xbox720 game the best engine in the world and billions of polygons with programmer art? it's really the artist that matters most, not whether a game uses nes, snes, or ps1 technology

so i'd say if your game looks worse visually than free games and you feel as if it can't compete commercially with them, chances are it's not the technology that's the problem, it's the quality of the art within that technology. the right artist can make any game technology look good

to sell successfully a game doesn't require high technology or high development costs, but it does usually require (among other things) that it not look ugly (whatever technology it uses)

[Alistair Aitcheson]

To be honest, I'd say development costs have dropped significantly for indies in recent years. The tools available for cheap, or even free, are becoming more and more, allowing skilled artists and designers to create professional products without expensive toolkits. Just look at the number of open source development environments and graphics tools out there now, which were nowhere near as powerful or easy-to-find ten years ago.

Even five years ago indies didn't have the same access to distribution platforms that they do now, with digital downloads and online stores meaning developers don't need publishing deals to afford physical distribution. The free-to-play pricing model didn't really exist back then because setting up a payment system would have been a lot of work - now there's affordable services which exist to do just that.

I don't think indie development has ever been more affordable.

[Murudai]

Dev costs are as low as you want them to be. My latest game was released on Steam and I did 95% of the work myself and it cost me under $2000 for the other stuff, which is nothing at this level of development.

My problem is actually reduced profits. Now that the USD is going to shit, all non-US based developers are taking heavy cuts due to the exchange rates. I'm getting 25% less per dollar earned this year than I was this time last year. That is a huge cut, and if it keeps going like this soon it won't be profitable at all for non-US indies.

[Triplefox]

Agreement with the others. What you're feeling is the "prestige trap," where it feels as if a certain quality bar of detail/effort in art is needed to succeed. There are countless examples of this not being the case. And if you're after the prestige, the AAA studios are still there, still spending multiple man-months on every character - you automatically pit yourself against them, by saying you'll have better art. But as an indie you have to accept a compromise somewhere.

What is important for game art is what has been true since the oldest known board games: People should understand what the pieces are and what they do, and be able to easily read the situation. If you do that, everything else is fixable. Some things do better in screenshots and trailers, but the rule-of-thumb minimum for market acceptance as a "pretty" game is "looks shiny and glowy, things tween and animate gracefully, text is aligned well, and I can identify the shapes." It's very easy to pull that off even if your artistic abilities are modest.

The last game I did (Subpar) I even forgot those rules and had to go back to fix up to near-acceptable over a few days; then I decided I had the core concept wrong and stopped all updates. I didn't agonize over graphics very much at all, when if I had said "oh, I need 3D and bladebla" it would have been another 6 months to discover I had the wrong concept, because I had to ship it to get accurate feedback. And I'm not really agonizing with the current game either; though I have some nice technology to bring to bear on it and am putting a pretty large amount of attention on polish-type stuff, it's 90% focused towards UX, not beauty for its own sake. The actual assets are almost all very fast to make (with the exception of character sprites, of which I'm trying to keep to a few, modular, with limited animation). Doing that lets me skip to making the game faster.

[EddieBytes]

Here's my explanation as to why you might think you're at a disadvantage here:

I believe on one hand the average quality of indie games is slowly rising. On the other hand, more and more free gamedev tools come out, even production quality ones, so you're more productive now then you probably were or would have been 5 years ago.

Now, if you draw the line and add up the numbers, you'll see the free tools have evolved, are now more numerous, and as a result, since gamedevs use them, there are more quality games now then there were 5-6-10 years ago. All in all, no one really has an edge over you, the playing field is as leveled now as it was a few years ago. It's just that the level is a bit higher.

If there are good free tools out there that you can use, use them. Otherwise'll get left behind.

[MM]

If you make a game for free you risk nothing but your time. It is easy and possible to make it for free in this era (minus electricity bill). This is what you should aim for before putting out any money. Unless you have a rich dad...

[Booger]

I really loved reading the replies, thank you.

I also read somewhere that a good portion of the modding scene... those who would have made "total conversion" mods years ago, are now releasing standalone indie games.  Had they been expert modders, then they would be expert indie devs today.

Yeah, 5 years ago I can release a small game in a forum, and people will be going "Good Job!"  Today there are so many ambitious projects, the smaller projects would be hearing nothing but crickets chirping.  Many projects that people lovingly labored over get ignored.  I suppose one main factor why I decided to put some money into games is because I don't want to become irrelevant.  It's partly an ego thing, I guess.  Even if I don't outshine other games I want to at least be on the same average level, and with a commercial game, I'm sending the message that major effort was put into the project.

MM > I always make new IP.  I've never made a fan-game nor participated in a group that made one.  The freeware realm is dominated by fan-games:  they're easier to make since you can just rip art assets from the original game;  the maker receives free publicity by being associated with famous IP.  The only downside is just make sure you're not C$D'd.

With new IP it's hard to find teammates to work with you for free, since they're more fond of more famous games (making fan-games) or they might as well just work on their own IP.  So whenever I embark on a free project with someone, the effort is to just maintain a good friendly working relationship rather than striving for perfection and risk angering/alienating teammates.  It's a "scratch my back I'll scratch yours, help me in my project I'll help yours" kind of situation.  That's not the case when I own the IP and just pay everyone else, where I can demand a bit more since, hey, it's MY game.

Many indie projects crash and burn before reaching completion.  If I asked people to work on my game for free, and if I fail, I would be guilty of wasting people's precious time.  At least by paying artists, I sort of feel better providing a little income to somebody in this economy, as long as the assets are finished, whether or not the game is completed.  The risk is all mine, but should I succeed, I can have no qualms grabbing all the success.

[cliffski]

There are a lot of very 'nice looking' games out there using free engines. This doesn't make them high quality games. They often look good, but have few features, or unoriginal design, or play badly.

There are also a lot of projects by newcomers to indie game dev, esp from the mainstream industry, who are making and releasing their first projects, projects which may be awesome, but the business model makes no sense and they are unsustainable businesses.

If you want to compete as a full-time indie in the long run, you can avoid the latter group, because I suspect they won't be around for long. I know a lot of people who have spent a lot of their savings, their relatives savings, and their overdraft to make games that have no market, insane competition, no busines plan, or are sold so cheap that they will never break even.

So right now, may not be the calmest time to take the temperature of the indie market in terms of quality. I think it's a bit of a bubble. When I look at games that sell no better than my own, but are made by 6-10 man teams, I know there are a lot of people that are a month or so away from flipping burgers

[EddieBytes]

You can't blame free engines for their users' failure. They provide a significant advantage to indie gamedevs if used well: time, money to name the most important two.

[Christian Knudsen]

I don't think he is (this isn't a thread about free engines). He's simply saying that, yes, there are a lot of nice looking indie games out there. But they're nice looking because indie developers now have access to 'professional' engines for free, not because the developers have necessarily become better at what they do or the games have higher development costs.