Indie boom imminent?

[Aldacron]

It struck me during a recent discussion regarding the advancement of technology that independent game developers are on the brink of a huge boom. Not just in sales. I think the market is set to explode with demand for indie games of all shapes and download sizes. The mantras that we have been following (keep your download to 10MB or less; pump out small, casual games) will be invalidated.

It seems to me that technology is moving at a faster rate than the low end of the games market can keep up with. Buy an affordable mid-range system today and in 6 months it barely meets minimum requirements. I do not think that a significant number of people will keep up. So as the high end of the market gets rapidly higher (and smaller as a side effect), the low end moves much, much more slowly. Where then, lies the point of diminishing returns for the game companies? Where do they set their minimum requirements? I think that, in terms of development costs, this decsion will become more difficult to make as time goes by. Ultimately, they will be cutting out a portion of the market which is above the point of diminishing returns.

When that day comes, it will bring about an indie boom. Gamers who can't afford to get all of the latest bells and whistles in the latest AAA titles will turn to lower cost, more widely supported indie games in the same genre. RPG, RTS, FPS... anything goes. These will be people who are not in the casual PopCap crowd. People who don't mind downloading a 50, 100, or 200 MB game.

Is this just a pipe dream or do any others think it might play out this way (or similarly)? And if you do agree, when does it happen? I'm thinking we'll see the beginnings of it soonish, around the time the Unreal Engine 3 games hit the market (2006). I'm willing to bet that many (not just a few) of us could sit down and start on a hefty project now, spend a one - two year dev cycle and turn a hefty profit for a decently polished product.

[svero]

I think it's probably correct to say that as the technology advances so will the opportunity. For instance it's probably fair to say that more and higher speed internet access means more potential downloaders/buyers for different kinds of games. But I think you have to take the whole picture into account.

As the number of users increases and the market matures so does competition, and so does the cost of distribution etc... So these sorts of things provide a balancing effect that could *potentially* leave us in a position where while the market of downloadable games itself is doing better the little guy no longer has access to it and is doing worse.

The market growing and technology evolving in our favor doesnt necessarily mean good times for the average indie.

[Mike Boeh]

I think the boom has already happened... Now comes the bust...

[svero]

Hehe..nothing like a board full of seasoned cynics to inspire new and upcoming indies! :-)

[gmcbay]

Boom or bust, I don't think the initial idea of battling the retail publishers on their own turf has much merit. It isn't like AAA games cost $500 a pop. The price difference between $50 for an AAA title and $20 or so for an indie game is very minor in the grand scheme of things, and while people do like lower prices, there isn't enough room under $50 to make price a significant differentiating factor.

Whether the indie market grows or shrinks from here, your best bet is still to cater to gamers that the mainstream industry is ignoring or underserving. Trying to compete with the AAA FPSes and RTS will still be a losing proposition, IMO.

[DavidRM]

I wrote my book with the notion that the availability of tools, talent, content, and distribution methods make it possible to be a successful independent game developer in a way that had never been seen before.

I still hold to that.

We're still pretty close to the beginning of the indie game movement, though.

However...to comment on Retro64's post: We did see a boom, starting about 3 years ago, in the casual game market. That's a market that was all but *created* by the indies. And like all new markets that show a disproportionat profit margin, it attracted lots more indies and, eventually, the big publishers. In a sense, that boom built a publisher or two.

Go back 15 years in the film industry, and you find a similar occurrence, beginning with the success of sex, lies, & videotape. Suddenly you had major studios creating "fake indie" films to capitalize on a profitable new niche. The nature of independent film changed then, as it has several times in the past (go back further and you get The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Evil Dead and Night of the Living Dead; go even further and you get Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!; and so on).

Indie development will come and go as the Hot New Thing, and there will be booms and busts that follow on that status. In the late 1980's, you had independent games that were mostly platformers. In the 1990's, the shift to casual games happened. The 2K's have seen a blend of 3D and casual that has produced some interesting titles.

The indie scene will always be in flux. Learn to love it. :)

-David

[Kai Backman]

I would think most agree that the boom with short supply, especially in the casual games market, is definetly over. We have a lot of products on the market and a lot of competition for the customers. That boom probably started busting 1-2 years ago. It was a very temporary situation anyway, the profit margins achieved by several key players were so astronomic that it shouted for competiton. So easy fruits are definetly out.

What are we left with? Here are some pretty safe bets:

- Downloading as a form of distribution is here to stay, and will probably marginalize retail distribution at some point in the future. This keeps lowering the physical barrier for entry into the market and also making the market more heterogenous. Downloading will also gain bandwidth limiting further physical barriers for content and moving the bottleneck to production.

- Where big revenue streams are present the development investments used to capture those revenue streams will inevitably rise. More difficult is to say if the rise will be through single developers investing more or more developers competing for the same slice of the market. In any case currently liquid publishers (read EA et al.) will push investments into the market as the total size grows.

- The removal of artificial barriers will probably push for a situation where companies of a specific size (10k$ 100k$ 1M$ >10M$) are optimal for a specific market segment. As the market grows, more and more of these niches to dominate will open up.

- Knowing human nature, this market will end up being cyclical with investments lagging the actual performance by one or two years. When times are booming cash and developers flow in and after a flash and bust a lot of people find safer havens. Thus there will always be under or overcapacity (maybe with a slight emphasis on overcapacity due to the image of game development).

--

So what's the big picture. The indie who came into the market cashing in on the boom will probably make some losses during a year or two and leave for greener pastures. Some indies will stay doggedly and pick a wrong section to dominate (super casual games like Bejeweled but better) or the wrong opponent (EA in big title sports games) and thus fail withing the next few years. Some few will pick a piece of the market where they can outperform their competition (including EA) and thus slowly dominate their turf.

Aim for the last group! :D

--

As a second tought, all through the E-Business years there has been this notion that E-Business is somehow different than traditional business and thus followed totally different rules (like unlimited exponential growth before 2001..). These same toughts seem to echo in the halls of Indies from time to time. I can personally see just similarities between games publishing and most other types of business.

The key question for us is economies of scale. Where economies of scale dominate you get large busines units (Wal-Mart in retailing) and where they don't you get small ones (your local antique shop). Can game development gain from economies of scale? Centralized tool development might push in both directions (EA's proprietary tools or open source toolchains for Indies). Same with learning (peer learning from physical proximity, online forums as distributed exchange of ideas). Content creation is more and more the bottleneck and here individual performance can vary by several magnitudes. A tough question, my bet is still that Games will stay clear from either extreme with a slight slant towards smaller business units.

--

As for Aldacrons original bet, yes you are probably right that some people would be able to do that. But there are also other people who will be just as profitable with much smaller projects.

[Jack Norton]

Just a word about the game sizes... maybe in USA not, but talking around I noticed that a lot of areas still have modem or at most ISDN connection.
Downloading a 50mb demo with a ISDN isn't really a nice thing, I can assure you ;)

So first the DSL need to be more spread (or maybe satellite connections) before that boom happens... I think we need at least 5 more years.

(for example I live in Italy, just 30km south of a medium city in which they have cable connection, and still I can have only ISDN)

[Jim Buck]

It's the same in the U.S. as well. I saw an article around a year ago that put the % of broadband internet users at an astonishingly low figure (I can't remember it now, but for some reason 26% sounds familiar). It's the people that have broadband that don't realize this, though, and tend to think that most people access the internet also with broadband. Dial-up will "die" out very slowly still (and it will never 100% be gone).

[EpicBoy]

Yep, just got back from my girlfriend's parents house and they have ... dial up. It's still very much in use, all around the world.

[^cyer]

HI,

somebody posted this file here but i will provide link to it again:

http://www.igda.org/online/IGDA_WebDL_Whitepaper_2004.pdf

this is a very good read (regarding indie boom, internet connections around the world...)

[Aldacron]

Boom or bust, I don't think the initial idea of battling the retail publishers on their own turf has much merit. It isn't like AAA games cost $500 a pop. The price difference between $50 for an AAA title and $20 or so for an indie game is very minor in the grand scheme of things, and while people do like lower prices, there isn't enough room under $50 to make price a significant differentiating factor.

Whether the indie market grows or shrinks from here, your best bet is still to cater to gamers that the mainstream industry is ignoring or underserving. Trying to compete with the AAA FPSes and RTS will still be a losing proposition, IMO.

I'm not talking about price points or competing with AAA titles. What I'm getting at is that the segment of the market the mainstream industry ignores will increase as minimum system requirements get higher. To me, this says that more serious gamers will be looking for alternatives in the indie market, thereby driving demand for a variety of games. An indie FPS won't be competing with AAA FPSes. The mainstream and indie markets will be separated based upon mininum system requirements, not costs.

[Aldacron]

Just a word about the game sizes... maybe in USA not, but talking around I noticed that a lot of areas still have modem or at most ISDN connection.
Downloading a 50mb demo with a ISDN isn't really a nice thing, I can assure you ;)

So first the DSL need to be more spread (or maybe satellite connections) before that boom happens... I think we need at least 5 more years.

(for example I live in Italy, just 30km south of a medium city in which they have cable connection, and still I can have only ISDN)

Yes, I understand that. But I think more people who already have broadband connections, people who would normally prefer to buy AAA titles, will turn toward the indie market as they grow weary of upgrading their systems to meet minimum requirements. That's what I was trying to get at in the original post.

[Mark Sheeky]

Hmm, I think the downloadable game market is saturated. Quality is increasing which only makes things harder for new developers and most people still go to a shop when they want to buy a game, even if it means paying more. I don't think a boom is here or imminent.

Mark
Cornutopia Games
http://www.cornutopia.net

[HairyTroll]

I'm not talking about price points or competing with AAA titles. What I'm getting at is that the segment of the market the mainstream industry ignores will increase as minimum system requirements get higher. To me, this says that more serious gamers will be looking for alternatives in the indie market, thereby driving demand for a variety of games. An indie FPS won't be competing with AAA FPSes. The mainstream and indie markets will be separated based upon mininum system requirements, not costs.

An Indie will be competing with AAA FPSs - not the AAA titles of today, but the AAA titles from 4 years ago.

Quake III was released on 30 Nov, 1999. Here are the mimimum system requirements:


Minimum Requirements (PC):
- 3-D Hardware Accelerator with full OpenGL support
- Pentium II 300 Mhz or AMD 350 Mhz K6-2 processor or Athlon processor
- Windows 95/98/ME/NT 4.0/2000 operating system
- 64 MB RAM
- 16 MB video card


A 'serious' gamer then, who may not be as hardcore now and therefore has not upgraded his hardware, would expect at least a Quake III quality title if he were to purchase an FPS from an Indie today, correct ?

Say that Quake III cost $5,000,000 to develop back in '99. How much do you think it would cost an Indie to develop the same quality title today? There are more options today, I'm sure the Quake III engine would only cost a $100k or so to license seeing as it is 4 years old. The Tribes engine from GarageGames for $100 is also an option. However the Indie has all the content to create and that does not come cheap.

I agree with you that if more gamers refuse to upgrade then there will be a large percentage of the population with average hardware - however this is todays hardware.

The AAA FPS games of yesteryear cost millions to develop. Gamers with vintage hardware still expect their gaming experience to be the equivalent to the games they played 4 years ago ( I don't believe an OpenGL version of Bejeweled qualifies as a replacement for Quake III or Unreal ).

So my question is, what Indie today has the means to create an AAA title of 4 years ago? And extrapolating from this... what Indie in 4 years could create the AAA FPS's of today?

[Coyote]

The key advantage a small, lightweight independent studio has over the big publishers is just that: it's small and lightweight. It can move and change direction quickly, and can afford to take risks.

Eventually, if you find a highly profitable niche, the 800-pound gorilla will arrive and squat in the territory that you discovered. There's an expression for that (kinda) that is popular in business: "The race to be second." Anyway --- you have a few options:

#1 - If you can settle in that niche long enough and be profitable enough before the gorilla sets up residence there, you may have enough power to fight them over the turf.

#2 - You find some way to co-exist with the gorilla: Maybe a partnership. Or a buy-out. Or some other mutually advantageous position.

#3 - You relocate to discover the next big thing.

#4 - Some sort of combination of the above.

[HairyTroll]

The key advantage a small, lightweight independent studio has over the big publishers is just that: it's small and lightweight. It can move and change direction quickly, and can afford to take risks.


If you define "small, lightweight" as not having much cash then I'm not sure I agree. How often can an independent studio change direction before it goes under?

I agree with your statement concerning Indies taking risks - however I feel that that risk taking is due to necessity as all non-risky paths are blocked by the 800 pound gorilla. (I'm 6"1 and 230 pounds..... what that make me? Fat, I think)

[princec]

Hehe..nothing like a board full of seasoned cynics to inspire new and upcoming indies! :-)
That's why I got busted as a mod on Dex remember ;)?

Cas :)

[princec]

I notice that development of games has become much, much faster lately. Rather than having to spend a large proportion of development time on fine tuning and assembly optimization of blitting routines we're able to just throw stuff together and rely on the hardware to take care of everything.

Case in point: I use Java and OpenGL. Five years ago this wasn't an option but now all machines are capable of absorbing the VM overhead, and even the scabbiest 5-year old rig has something like a TNT in it which has exceedingly powerful hardware blitting in it. The end result is that I've simply not had to worry about drawing sprites or fart around finding pointer bugs and memory leaks and random inexplicable crashes.

Twenty years ago a developer would take 3-4 months to write something like Dropzone. By today's standards it's got laughably simple gameplay and almost no content. But it still took all that time to make! I could write Dropzone now in less than a week (seriously! Toroidal Cave Fighter coming soon). And for me, that's what the technological advances have enabled. I can write pretty much anything in next to no time and not have to think too hard, because even the low end machines are stupendously powerful.

Cas :)

[Mark Sheeky]

True, in some ways. Getting any 'bobs' moving on the Amiga took me ages and scrolling was a nightmare. Still, building up a bank of decent C classes and an engine and stuff will always take a newbie a good few months. After that, development does speed up. My fastest game took 10 days, Outliner, but on Amiga that only took 14 so there's not too much difference. Content is what takes time otherwise AAA title developer would also get faster, when it seems to get slower with new hardware :)

Mark
Cornutopia Games
http://www.cornutopia.net

[oNyx]

The minimum system specs you should target for reaching a wide audience is a sliding window. 4-5 years old machines usually (the vast majority of machines aren't used for more than 6 years).

What Cas said is also true. It's getting easier. Just look at something like Space Invaders. It's so cheap (by nowadays standards) that it's done as a tutorial. However, we always tend to exchange that advantage for a more complex design.

Well, I think it's great. You can switch to/use a higher level and you can do about any game you like (except those with too much content) as long as you don't use something extremely slow like flash. Oh and basic 3d acceleration becomes also ubiquitous.

[Reactor]

Just thought I'd mention that the game I'm working on at the moment will be about 40-50meg in size, and more than likely require (as a minimum) an 800Mhz cpu and fairly recent graphics card to run. It'll be interesting if what Aldacron has mentioned actually holds true, and whether there truly is a market waiting for those who reaching out a little closer to the AAA games. But, from my perspective that crowd already exists. It's been there for some time- a fairly large niche of gamers who sit between hardcore and indie, and who are looking for game creators with the ability to take some risks.

Let's hope I'm right ;)

[Chris Evans]

It's fine to want your game to run smoothly on a PII 400 Win 95/98. However, remember unlike traditional retail games, most Indie games have a life cycle of at least 4-5 years. Also, more than likely the majority of your sales will come in the latter years.

So I personally don't see anything wrong with making your minimum specs at around today's mid-range systems. Within a few years when your sales hit full stride, most everyone even on lowend machines will be capable of running your game. Your game may also take longer to look outdated if you target today's mid-range systems.

Of course, a lot depends on your intended audience. If you specialize in casual games, then it's probably important to get the minimum specs as low as possible. However, I think if you're doing an action game of any sort, then you can afford to be a little liberal with minimum specs. Usually anyone who plans to buy a 3D action/adventure/rpg/fps game will have some kind of 3D hardware acceleration on their computer.

[Aldacron]

The AAA FPS games of yesteryear cost millions to develop. Gamers with vintage hardware still expect their gaming experience to be the equivalent to the games they played 4 years ago ( I don't believe an OpenGL version of Bejeweled qualifies as a replacement for Quake III or Unreal ).

So my question is, what Indie today has the means to create an AAA title of 4 years ago? And extrapolating from this... what Indie in 4 years could create the AAA FPS's of today?

But we don't have to spend the money they spent. They were on the bleeding edge back then. The bleeding edge has moved on. Much of the development of Q3 (and others) was R&D that we don't need to do. With today's tools creating content of Q3-era quality can be done more quickly than it could then. We don't need to purchase top of the line systems for testing, or hire a team of 10-20 people and pay them each 60K+ per year. We can, today, reach the same level of quality on a much lower budget.

The Q3 engine will be open sourced by the end of the year. If you follow the approach Prairie Games (http://www.prairiegames.com/) is taking (releasing a GPLed Q2-engine game commercially) then you can use the Q3 engine for no cost. The Torque engine at $100 is a steal. Plus with all of the low cost content packs, code packs, and free resources you can save a hunk of development time.

When you think about it, indie games have been competing for some time with the AAA titles of yesteryear. That's nothing new at all.

[Mark Sheeky]

Interesting. As another thread mentioned though, the ideal indie game takes about 3 months and certain genres won't fit in that because content takes time and some games demand content, not just the back-end engine and programming. Thus, F.P.S. games, even those of 3-year old quality probably will not start to flood the indie market. I don't object to being wrong though!

Mark
Sound Effects For Game Developers
http://www.indiesfx.co.uk

[Coyote]

certain genres won't fit in that because content takes time and some games demand content,
This COULD change, however. There's a lot of free and licensable content out there, now. And guys like Josh Ritter have been busy coming up with tools and procedures to generate content more rapidly than conventional means. And many (if not most) games start with a library of off-the-shelf sound effects.

The games industry has been gung-ho about adopting many of Hollywood's worst practices... I can envision a day where we adopt some of the more efficient ones as well. Set designers and wardrobe departments don't usually start from scratch with every TV show or movie --- they try and re-use what's already in stock, or what can be acquired cheaply. They focus their custom-design efforts on signature pieces, or very unusual elements - though even then they often start with something else and extend it.

While we'll never be able to keep up with the sheer quantity of amazing content provided by many of these AAA games, I believe we provide very entertaining and YES, high-quality entertainment in these genres. We just have to provide some originality to the mixture, instead of poor 'me-too' imitations.

[princec]

I think the "ideal" time of 3 months is a comfortable balance point of risk and investment for most indies' financial situation. In theory we could spend a year on a game, but the risk of the extra content failing to produce 4x as many sales is far, far greater than we can sensibly take based on very limited cashflow.

Cas :)

[Aldacron]

Interesting. As another thread mentioned though, the ideal indie game takes about 3 months and certain genres won't fit in that because content takes time and some games demand content, not just the back-end engine and programming. Thus, F.P.S. games, even those of 3-year old quality probably will not start to flood the indie market. I don't object to being wrong though!



I think the "ideal" time of 3 months is a comfortable balance point of risk and investment for most indies' financial situation. In theory we could spend a year on a game, but the risk of the extra content failing to produce 4x as many sales is far, far greater than we can sensibly take based on very limited cashflow.


Right, I agree with you guys when we talk about the current market. I'm saying that the market will change such that we will be able to afford to work on games with a 1 year+ development cycle, as the number of people willing to buy those games will increase. I'm willing to bank on it in fact, which I am doing with the project I am currently working on. I actually started it last year, but shelved it for lack of time and resources. I've recently taken it up again and expect to spend the better part of a year on it. And that using an existing engine (which I am heavily modifying at the moment).

[NuriumGames]

I think the "ideal" time of 3 months is a comfortable balance point of risk and investment for most indies' financial situation.

I have taken a different approach, been developing a game for about two years, and will be ready in a pair of monts. I don't know if it will pay off, time will tell. :rolleyes: