Where is the online/indie game market headed?

[svero]

I'm curious to see the thoughts of other developers about where the market will be 2-3 years from now. How will the market change/mature? What new opportunities are coming up? What distribution methods and markets are closing?

[Omega]

Here's what I predict:

1. Whoever gets the most marketing will have the most sales, assuming their web site has a working shopping cart system, screenshots of their game, and a downloadable version, a box shot, and the game actually installs.

2. Games inside games -- maybe in EverQuest III, you go up to somebody and you can play tetris against them. Or another game you both have.

3. Some kind of a standard for importing humans into programs. So that you can create a model of yourself to use inside a soccer program. All games will be able to use that model. In a indie game, importing your file would make you 2d with your hair color and body type as a sprite. In a 3d game, it could use every detail in the file, and make you look really like you do. EA's "The Sims" would do its own thing with it. It would just be a simple file that has as many details in it as possible about your body, and there would be a FREE standard to write to it and read from it by any game.

4. People creating pornography programs with #3.

5. A competitor to download.com that only shows indie games and not every single game/mod/patch/winzip utility.

6. America Online version 19. Includes 14,000 hours for one month.

7. A wrapper that turns 2d graphics into 3d will be developed and offered for free. No 3d knowledge or art or programming experience needed.

8. Cell Phone games with very good quality graphics and sound and screen size.

9. More people downloading demos than ever.

10. Books coming out on 'buying indie games online' hitting #153 on Amazon.com's best seller list.

11. Amazon.com having an indie games section.

12. After which, ebgames and others will have links to indie games.

I think all of this will happen in 3 years, especially now that I said it :)

[Dan MacDonald]

I think games that run in the browser will become more pervasive and also more sophisticated. With addware, trojans, viruses becomming more and more pervasive in downloadable content, I think consumers are going to be less and less willing to download content from unknown or little known sources.

[princec]

The inevitable forking of the market as the "indie" as we know it makes a decision to join the portals and pretty much no longer being indie, or consolidates and redoubles efforts to be properly independent. Many casualties on the way.

Large increase in competition from India and China. Popcap probably to outsource their coding to skilled Indians.

The continued failure of the Linux market to produce return on investment for indie game developers.

The continued strength of the OSX market. Competition will hot up a little.

Relentless requirement of consumers for decent quality gaming experiences. Games that look like they were made 5 years ago will simply be ignored for flashier looking ones.

Pervasive broadband. Modem market no longer significant for sales.

Cas :)

[cliffski]

"Relentless requirement of consumers for decent quality gaming experiences. Games that look like they were made 5 years ago will simply be ignored for flashier looking ones."

I disagree. all games look amazing now. doom looks great, but its tedious. People will finally start buying games that are fun rather than just pretty.

[svero]

I disagree. all games look amazing now. doom looks great, but its tedious. People will finally start buying games that are fun rather than just pretty.

Yikes! I sure hope you mean Doom 3.

[princec]

No, that's on a whole different level. I'm talking about the difference between, say... hm. Well I can't really single out anyone's game here for looking dated and crappy, so perhaps we can point at Dweep Gold being the archetypal success story. All someone has to do to steal Dweep's thunder is to basically rewrite the game with lovely graphics and market the hell out of it. Given the choice between the two I suspect almost everyone would pick an identical game with pretty antialiased graphics, flashy special effects and transitions, and OGGed soundtrack.

Cas :)

[cliffski]

i couldnt be bothered to type the '3'

[terin]

If I had to crystal ball it, and I agree with some of whats been said (Broadband reaching the end of its exponential growth curve in about 3-4 years is likely, probably at about 80% of households).

I think portals will continue to grow in strength AND number as downloadable games continues to take sales from mortar and brick stores.

This should cause:
A) An increase in piracy
B) An increase in co-dependence
C) An incrase in potential profitability

B is important because it means you will rely a lot more on these portals. Let's face it: Even right this second unless you have established your site years ago already it seems the best way to gain yourself coverage and traffic is to make a hit and throw it on a portal. Without that even a hit may go unnoticed. That should only get worse in the future. But with the growth talked about in C, "worse" does not mean less profitable!

C as the market grows competition will heat up. Downloadable games IS the future of both the retail and the indie market. This means that the actual dollar sales will do nothing but increase between now and then: It will put indie developers in direct comparison between retail products.

This means the discrepency between a hit game and an average indie game will widen between now and then. Great games will make even more money and good-average games will make less or the same (even if its the same it will FEEL like less).

I definately think a REAL indie portal is coming... I'll drop a clue that I am already working on it with someone else who frequents these boards and backed by some MAJOR game sites. Odds are some of you lucky people will be getting an e-mail from me over the next month or so. :D

But the only thing I am sure of is AOL version 19.0 with 14,000 free hours.

[DavidRM]

"1964 - The Year That Was" is the name of an album released by Tom Lehrer in...you guessed it...1964. The songs on the album satirize the issues of the day: racism, intolerance, the threat of global war, poor education, etc.

What makes it interesting in the context of this thread is that almost every one of the songs, written to make fun of the state of the world in 1964, could be considered relevant today, 40 years later.

For all the progress made in the world, we seem to be in about the same place we were. We may have taller buildings, better communications, more effective vaccines, and a deeper understanding of the universe, but people are still people, and most of them haven't changed anything but their clothes.

So, in 3-5 years, I predict, things will be fundamentally the same as they are now.

So, for independent game developers:

* Finishing products and getting them "to market" will remain the biggest hurdle.

* Building a team, motivating that team, and managing that team will still be difficults, even with better tools for communication and coordination.

* Creating content for games will remain a highly specialized skill requiring specialized knowledge and tools.

* Most "new" ideas still won't be that new because they will come from a steady diet of what's already available, mashed together and slightly digested.

* Most indies will still prefer to "just make games" rather than learn how to run a business and/or do their own marketing.

* Many indies will get discouraged and complain that the oppurtunities have all been had and that there's no success left to share in.

On the other hand:

* Just like the casual gamer market was originally discovered and exploited by indies, so too will new markets that have hardly been addressed today.

* As indies work together, the community will grow and have a greater sense of itself.

* Many more resources and tools, on both the content and coding side of the equation, will become more available and even less expensive.

* Indies will have ideas for new game play, taking games in totally different directions than they have ever gone.

* There will be even more wisdom and experience gathered together and made available, making it easier for new indies to access it and use it--once they realize they can benefit from what other people have learned.

Overall, I'm optimistic. :)

-David

[Nexic]

I think that indie games will continue to become more popular until they become like the current day retail market and then a new indie games market will appear (advertising mainly through flyers attachted to aeroplanes). This market will work on the principle that you only pay for the game once you have finished playing it. Ie. download the full version, play until you are bored, then you pay for how long you played :-D And of course that market will continue until a new one emerges and so on.