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[Ivan]

You should kindnap him in a van and release him into the woods where he can run free and make indie games.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

At least Nicalis appears to give full creative control to the developers, from what Nifflas says there. Still, I think it's a step in the wrong direction, I wouldn't want to see this pattern (of companies buying exclusive rights to publish indie games) gain traction, since it'd turn indie games into an extension of the mainstream games industry instead of something distinct.

[GregWS]

release him into the woods where he can run free and make indie games.

Sounds more like Rohrer than Niff.  :D

OK, joking aside, I agree with Paul.  Indies have always had full control over both business and design, so why are so many people OK with the idea of letting someone else handle the business side so heavy-handedly (not just doing business things, but choosing platform exclusivity against the designer's wishes).  I can understand why a designer would allow someone to handle some of the business side of things, but I would expect that the designer would still have final say, and that doesn't seem like the case here.

[Eclipse]

At least Nicalis appears to give full creative control to the developers, from what Nifflas says there. Still, I think it's a step in the wrong direction, I wouldn't want to see this pattern (of companies buying exclusive rights to publish indie games) gain traction, since it'd turn indie games into an extension of the mainstream games industry instead of something distinct.

why i've always to quote your posts? you've exactly my same vision regarding this argument

[Valter]

Paul, I think that would actually be a step in the right direction! If indie development gets integrated into mainstream gaming, it might do wonders for increasing the quality of mainstream games. Soulliard said that he left mainstream gaming because of poor quality- do you think that the overall quality of games will improve from competition with indie developers?

Gaming is already going through something of a "retro renaissance", with the activation of the XBox live arcade and WiiWare and such. 2D gaming is more popular than its been in a long time.

At the same time, the upper end of gaming is beginning to reach its peak. Triple A titles like Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion, and Halo 3 and Killzone 2 are all reaching the end limit of what current game systems can accomplish. There are still some graphical polishes that can be made, and probably connectivity issues for online play to be fixed, but I think mainstream gaming is running head-on into a wall.

What happens when we hit that wall remains to be seen, but I think the most likely result will be a direct rebound. There's little chance of a return to the four or five man teams of the 8-bit era, but old genres of gameplay that haven't seen the light of day in many years might be coming into light again soon.

I figure indie gaming is the key to all of this. It's sort of like the impact that the movie Saw made on cinematography. It might not have had a major direct influence, but it pretty clearly proved that a well-done, low budget movie can make a lot more profit than the massive budget films that were being made at the time.

The main thing currently standing in our way right now is the stranglehold on gaming consoles. One reason Saw made all the money it did was that it could go straight to movie theaters (to the best of my knowledge). Potential break-out titles like Braid have to go through Microsoft (or Nintendo, or Sony) in order to host their games, and they lose a significant amount of profit along the way.

Analysis: I think the key to gaming progress is an independent/free-to-use gaming console, or something of a console "internet" that people can host games on without charge. The internet currently does that very well. On the other hand, I don't think there's enough computer gaming popularity, or internet organization, to bring enough attention to indie gaming. An organized console database that could host games without deference to a corporation would be ideal.

It may seem like a tall order, but I doubt anybody really expected the internet until it happened, either. And I think that the attention that indie games like Braid and Castle Crashers are getting may bring it around sooner rather than later.


(This is somewhat tangential to the topic, but I really think that bringing indie gaming into mainstream gaming would do nothing but help things progress.)

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

Again, I think this may be a clash in worldviews. I view the quality of mainstream games as abysmal right now, and indie games as the only games currently worth playing, with a few exceptions here and there. I don't want indie games quality to improve if it means becoming more like mainstream games. I don't think mainstream games becoming more retro would be a good thing either, since it's the retro indie games that I usually avoid. Night Game is 2D, but isn't retro at all. I don't see games like Oblivion, Halo 3, and Kilzone 2 as a peak, but as a bottom, as something that they can't get any lower or more decrepit than.

I don't totally disagree though, I do think it'd help mainstream games to steal indie games. I just don't care about mainstream games, I want them to fail. I don't want mainstream games to get any better, I'd prefer if it collapsed and everyone moved to the indie game model, rather than mainstream games drawing strength and parasiting off of indie games in an attempt to keep itself from dying, like a vampire looking for fresh blood. It'd be far better if the mainstream games business model failed and collapsed on itself, with the indie game model taking its place, rather than the mainstream game model enticing a indie game developers into its model in an attempt to keep itself from dying.

[Valter]

Just to clarify: Oblivion, Halo 3, and Killzone 2 are peaks of budget, not peaks of gameplay. They all costed ridiculous amounts of money to make.

Like you said, 2D games aren't necessarily retro. Braid is one of the most successful indie/mainstream games out there now, and it's not retro at all, while it is 2D.

I'd say mainstream gaming is just dandy right now, but there is currently a level of bureaucracy that shouldn't be there. If you look at other mediums of entertainment, like music and movies, they don't have to go through a company just to get the thing into the consumer's hands. Video Game developers pretty much have to go through Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo if they want their game to be made, which means extra cuts of profit lost, and extra uninformed people trying to make informed decisions. Music just goes onto a CD that all CD players can use (although it has changed somewhat with the advent of the IPod). In other words, they don't have to pay the companies that make CD players. All they really need is a publisher that will distribute the CDs for them.

So I guess what we'd really need is for some patents to expire, so that we can get something like a "universal gaming system" that anybody can develop for. I don't think it would be that unlikely, although muscling it through the current console titans would be tough as things currently stand.

(To your other point: I think mainstream gaming and indie gaming are both fun, and I personally can't see significant differences between them. About the only thing I can see truly distinguishing one from the other is the graphical work.)

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

Yes, definitely a clash of worldviews. I don't see mainstream games as just dandy, I think they were going downhill around the late 80s and never recovered. I play perhaps three or four mainstream games a year now, for the most part I've learned to ignore them as usually worthless. I don't think the problem is just the bureaucracy. I linked to a partial mirror of the scratchware manifesto earlier on, if you read that you can get a taste of the worldview I hold about the mainstream games industry -- Chris Crawford's writings on the mainstream game industry are also relevant. Here's a controversial one: http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20060612/murdey_01.shtml -- very recommended, even if you don't agree with it, at least read it to get an idea where I'm coming from.

As for indie games being similar to mainstream games, that's sometimes the case, but it's usually the worst indie games that are similar to mainstream games, the indie games I enjoy aren't usually much like mainstream games. Indie games are far more personal and interesting, it's not just about lower-quality graphics. There is a significant subset of indie games which are just rehashes of early NES and SNES games, but as I said I tend to ignore that subset, and even those are often far more interesting than the games they attempt to model. For instance, Barkley: Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden is far more interesting than most mainstream jRPGs, even though in form it's a jRPG. And are you really saying that the only thing that distinguishes, say, Increpare's games from mainstream games is just graphics?

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

A few choice quotes from it for the lazy

No, there's nothing inherently wrong with recycling the same thing over and over and over, but how do you know what you're missing if you're not trying? Has anybody noticed that we don't appeal to the general public? Has anybody thought that perhaps it might be a good thing?

I've been preaching this sermon for 20 years now…more than that, in fact, and I haven't seen any serious attempt to move in that direction. Indeed, I hear all sorts of arguments as to why “we don't need to change our spots, we’re doing just fine the way we are.” And in fact, and this is a fundamental point, nobody changes unless they're in pain. And the industry is not in pain. So it's going to keep doing the same thing until it hurts.

I see the games industry itself as pretty much static. That is, when I look 20 years into the future, I see pretty much the same games industry. Same players, you know, EA, Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo. Same basic kinds of games. Racing cars and slaying dragons and shooting monsters. Much snazzier, but essentially the same gameplay. But I see that the big difference is that in 20 years that will be a small subset of a much larger universe of interactive entertainment.

[Valter]

I can agree with that sentiment. And I do think that the best indie games are the truly wacky ones, like Garden Gnome Carnage (which would never in a thousand years end up in a mainstream outlet :D). The main difference is that I also like mainstream games. I guess it's because I have a higher tolerance for the generally derivative plots and graphics that most mainstream games follow religiously. I do think some game series are heading into dead-ends (like Square Enix, if it fails to break its love of young effeminate boys), but I prefer the gameplay elements of games to the storyline or graphical elements.

I do think the games industry is growing steadily more tolerant of variety, though. 2 or 3 years ago, I would have agreed that the games industry is totally static. I'm pretty sure the XBox Live Arcade and other games networks have changed all that, though. Mainstream development has certainly become more sympathetic to independent development, if nothing else.

Besides which, I think there's too much industry in Mainstream gaming to be totally ignored. It's like a sleeping giant. If we could just get it up and move it in the right direction (like getting it to consider story and graphics seriously), it could do things that would blow your mind. So I think this is a case of wasted talent (or at least wasted productivity) at work here.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

I liked mainstream games when I was younger, so the difference may just be age. I think when you reach 30 or so, only the most hardcore gamers continue to find anything valuable in the latest crop of mainstream game releases. Most mainstream games have at least one of the following: killing, solving puzzles. That's about it, it's very rare to find a game that doesn't have one or the other (and most have both). Killing and solving puzzles can be fun, but there's so much more games could do, and having played 10,000+ games about killing or solving puzzles is kind of enough for me. Indie games have games which aren't always about killing or solving puzzles (for instance, Seiklus, or Tale-of-Tales' games, or increpare's Opera Omnia game, and so on).

I also don't think the mainstream games industry can be reformed. As Crawford and Costik said in those articles, most game developers employed in the mainstream games industry couldn't be creative to save their lives, it's not just that the business aspects are holding them back, it's just that they can't do it. Their idea of innovation is adding a new twist to an old genre -- Costik used an example, it went something like: they'll change one or two things and make a new type of RTS -- but they still want an RTS, not something new. Whereas in the 80s, experimental games were common. So there's almost no way they can be reformed; it'd involve basically getting rid of most of their personnel, and changing their entire business model: letting designers keep their own IP, giving them higher royalties, and so on. It's not even just about game quality, the business model is the direct cause of the terrible game quality, and until that changes the game quality won't change.

Besides, a lot of people (like you, apparently) are fans of the games the mainstream games industry already is putting out. Why change, when they continue to sell? Game sales are still on the rise, in spite of the recession. They don't have any motivation to change in any core way. And yes, they're becoming more amenable to new ideas and adapting some indie games in order to get new ideas (since they can't produce them themselves), but I see that as a bad development, since an evolution isn't a revolution. Should the US colonists have been satisfied if King George had said "okay, we'll allow you a single representative, therefore you can't claim to have taxation without representation anymore."

So what hopefully will eventually happen is that games for people who don't really enjoy games revolving around killing or solving puzzles will eventually come out of the indie games industry and form their own, separate, market. That'll take some time, but it'll go slower if the mainstream industry starts buying up indie games like Night Game and adapting them for their own purposes. Because gradually, indie game developers will start to adapt their games to mainstream industry tastes instead of continuing to be experimental if they see the mainstream games industry buying up their games. That's beginning to happen with casual games and indie games already to a degree.

[Fuzz]

I don't want there to be a "universal console". I'm using one right now to make this post. Computers are used for so much more than just gaming, so naturally games are more accessible if they are made for computers. Indies don't have to go through big companies right now, they can release games easily on the internet. And no, I'm not anti-console; I have a PS2 and sometimes use it, although not particularly often. I just don't think that there needs to be any new "universal console".

[GregWS]

I'd rather there just weren't any consoles at all, and we just used PC's for everything.

I mean, people already hook them up to their tv's, so why not just take it all the way.

The current console manufacturer's could focus on innovative interface devices and games (because, for instance, when it comes to the Wii, does the console itself really matter?  No, it's all about the controllers used to interact with it, and those controllers work just as well with PCs.).

@mega conversation: well, I didn't read too much, but I think it's safe to say that I'd be siding with rinku here, because I have a general loathing for mainstream games right now; I despise listening to my brother talk about how great Killzone 2 is, for instance.  There area couple exceptions, sure (Wipeout  ), but overall, it's shit.

I think you hit a point (with either age, or just exposure to ideas/stuff you want to do) where you have to prioritize your time/experiences.  And now that I'm having to do that with my life, I'm more-or-less demanding a lot more from my games (and everything else for that matter) than I ever did before; I want truly meaningful experiences that I'm glad to have had.  It's like how I watch almost no tv, but I love Battlestar Galactica, because that show is truly a pinnacle, and it deals with relevant things in an interesting way, and doesn't shy away from "controversial" topics.  Now that it's over I have no regrets about putting that amount of time into watching through the seasons, because I received so much from it.  Now before I start a game or read a book or watch a movie, I have to ask myself if it's worth it, or if I should direct that attention to a different game, book, or movie.  Anyway, you guys get what I'm getting at (and I'm guessing that rinku said something similar). 

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

The problem with PCs though is that their lack of standardized specs makes making games for them hard. The benefit of PCs is that they're an open platform and you don't need anybody's permission to sell a game on them.

What I'd prefer would be to see a standardized gaming PC "console". That would be pretty nice. Like just a core 2 duo 3.0 mhz, NVIDIA 8600 GT, 2GB of RAM, Windows XP, DirectX 9, and put it all in a box that looks like a console and comes with a joystick. Then when you make a game for it you can be sure it'll work, instead of a bazillion different system configurations.

[Fuzz]

The problem with PCs though is that their lack of standardized specs makes making games for them hard. The benefit of PCs is that they're an open platform and you don't need anybody's permission to sell a game on them.

What I'd prefer would be to see a standardized gaming PC "console". That would be pretty nice. Like just a core 2 duo 3.0 mhz, NVIDIA 8600 GT, 2GB of RAM, Windows XP, DirectX 9, and put it all in a box that looks like a console and comes with a joystick. Then when you make a game for it you can be sure it'll work, instead of a bazillion different system configurations.

Actually, that's a pretty good idea. I've been finding that quite a few games won't work on my computer as my computer is quite old and has an old graphics card, including The Path, which I really wanted to play.

[GregWS]

What I'd prefer would be to see a standardized gaming PC "console". That would be pretty nice. Like just a core 2 duo 3.0 mhz, NVIDIA 8600 GT, 2GB of RAM, Windows XP, DirectX 9, and put it all in a box that looks like a console and comes with a joystick. Then when you make a game for it you can be sure it'll work, instead of a bazillion different system configurations.

That's exactly what I'd like too.  I guess I should have said "PC Console" instead of just PC.

I really hope this happens within a few years; multiple consoles really sucks.

Multiple unique handhelds is probably still fine though, as the size naturally leads to different approaches to the same design problem of portable gaming.

[Craig Stern]

What I'd prefer would be to see a standardized gaming PC "console". That would be pretty nice. Like just a core 2 duo 3.0 mhz, NVIDIA 8600 GT, 2GB of RAM, Windows XP, DirectX 9, and put it all in a box that looks like a console and comes with a joystick. Then when you make a game for it you can be sure it'll work, instead of a bazillion different system configurations.

I don't think that would work. A computer like that would be at least $600, and that's without taking into account the cost of peripherals like game pads. The reason consoles are able to sell at prices like $250 is because the hardware is subsidized by anticipated future software sales. Without the console-maker acting as the gatekeeper for games and taking a cut, the console becomes too expensive to sell at a price attractive to consumers, and without consumers buying the console in great numbers, the console never becomes a viable platform for developers. In other words, the very things we don't like about consoles are central to the business model that makes them work.

You could probably get around this issue by deliberately using last-generation hardware however, somewhat like Tectoy is doing with Zeebo.

The biggest issue then will be whether consumers will be willing to pay for (essentially) a cut-rate computer with some game pads and Windows XP at a price comparable to those of current-gen consoles.

And if they are, what is to stop them from simply pirating games, as PC gamers currently do? I guess that's not the console-maker's problem if they're not taking a cut of the software sales, but that certainly limits the console's usefulness to developers.

(Sorry for sounding like a wet blanket, by the way--I'd be interested to see if someone could figure out a way around these problems!)

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

Ah, but think of the benefits of mass production! When you standardize something and mass produce it, it becomes much cheaper. Selling at a loss isn't the only reason for low console prices, there are also a lot of benefits of mass producing the same thing over and over.

And yes, piracy would still be a problem, but piracy on the consoles is also a problem, just not as much as with PC games since it's marginally harder. Ideally this would be combined with a Steam-like open source DRM system, though.

[Peevish]

Latecomer to this conversation! First off, can we please never again use a slavery metaphor for the games industry? That's, like, half a point off from Godwin's Law.

At Sundance for the past few years, the conversation has been getting louder: indie films may simply serve no purpose anymore. More an more interest has been shown to them, and now it seems like nothing at the major festivals is innovative anymore. When Sundance stopped being Sundance enough, they made Slamdance. Now Slamdance might not be Sundance enough, so they made Moondance and Nodance and even Tromadance. But no major movies come out of those festivals because they don't have the clout.

I don't think Tyrone set out to rip anybody off. He's not an evil man. He's a businessman. And this idea that mainstream gaming will get better if the indies get involved is a very businessman attitude, like indies just have dibs on all the creativity. The question is not whether or not Nifflas is benefiting in some way from a more corporate model, it's whether a corporate model is in any way good for creativity.

I think Tyrone imagines he's doing both Pixel and Nifflas a large favor by earning them more money if they only accept a few limitations, and I'm sure his logic sounds very solid when he gives it; it makes sense to him, and since many people in this thread have argued the same it must make sense to a lot of people. He won't understand how the creative freedom isn't expendable because it can't be monetized.

But the reason indie gaming has so much creativity is exactly because there have been NO limitations, completely unhindered creativity. A fanbase only exists because people take to a game emotionally, because it was DESIGNED to incite emotion. Disappointing your fanbase just means disappointing the people who love your game the most.

The more corporatized indie gaming gets, the closer it gets to obsolescence. It just becomes a cheaper, indie-quirk little brother of the mainstream, same as indie film is becoming, and people start wonder, "why do we have two industries?" Nifflas will go back to making free games for a small fanbase, same as before, and Tyrone will get some other job and keep his eyes on the bottom line.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

Well, it wasn't exactly a metaphor, it was more of an analogy -- I wasn't saying it was like slavery, since obviously it's volunary. I was saying that just because the victim is happy with it doesn't mean it's a good thing (which is also true of slavery). It's voluntary, and it's not slavery, but it's certainly at least victimization and an uneven relationship. There's nothing fair about publishers getting 92.5%+ and developers 7.5%-, marketing is important, but it isn't 90%+ important. And even in music and books, the musicians/authors often make a larger royalty percent than is common in the games industry. I suspect Nifflas's royalties are higher than average, I'm just going by what Costik has said about the industry average.