So .. How do you see Indie game development in 5 years?

[Mark_Tempe]

How are things changing, what are the trends?
How did Indie game business looked 5 years ago?
Is it better or worse as far as profitability?
Another interesting trend I see is web games. Is this the future of Indie game development?
We see emergence of languages like Java , does that spell the end for C++ ?
What will became of game portals in 5 years ?

I know this is very general so here are my own thoughts:

I think w are seeing migration of at list hard core players toward game consoles. This could be considered good for the Indie Developers because as computer platforms may became one big niche market where big companies will not dare to venture. On the other hand where big game developers not dare to venture video card manufactures will not venture ether so we may see degradation of hardware platform ( from the game point of view). In my opinion migration of players away from the platform is never good for developers developing on that platform. I sow it all to vividly when I was developing games for Amiga. At the end we ware stack with a community of people around a platform who ware not willing to spend any money. ( the ones with money and willingness to spend it bought PC’s)

In the next few years we will probably see drop in price of high speed internet allowing 100MB titles or larger being distributed over the net on the large scale. That will create additional competition to Indie developers. As well as additional opportunities as Indies themselves will be able to distribute larger titles.

So .. How do you see Indie game development in 5 years?

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Huge and unique fantasy and science fiction games
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[HairyTroll]

How are things changing, what are the trends?

I see the indie developer as having to become a domain expert for a specific niche and develop products for that niche. Like the bridge building series by Chronic Logic or Shorthike by Kai.

I see large companies pushing the single indie developer aside and out of the traditional 'indie' casual game space. Why? Because the large development houses are going to have many small teams that can create games like Zuma in eight weeks. So any successful casual title will be cloned within 8 weeks. The time to market will decrease, and therefore the cost of entry must increase.

[WickedEwok]

A little off-topic as this has to do with the types of games we see rather than the actual business of them. What about more along the lines of social gaming. As people have access to greater bandwidth and network stability, we may see more and more casual games being tuned for multiplayer gameplay rather than aiming for an addictive singleplayer experience. The Xbox is already taking a big lead in that direction for consoles, and there is plenty of room for casual social gaming besides the current staple of casual MMORPGs. There are already plenty of generic multiplayer games like tetris, chess and pool but I haven't seen many original casual social gaming titles out there.

[soniCron]

I'm going to have to agree with WickedEwok: The future of games is really the multiplayer experience. There's a lot to be said about the single-player game, but we are social creatures, and as such, we will probably see a huge boom of multiplayer titles in the not-too-distant future. I, for one, have been focusing very heavily on this as of late and plan to steer Solari Studios toward a multiplayer focus over time. I think it's important that many of you give some very serious thought to this potential change in the market.

[TimS]

In five years, after taking my jetpack home from the office, I'll be playing The Glass Bead Game on my holo-computron.

Hm... One can hope. I suppose realistically:

How are things changing, what are the trends?
How did Indie game business looked 5 years ago?

It is getting better (for the consumer). There is a wide variety of games available for pretty cheap these days, and more casual games are moving onto the XBox, etc. too. For developers, I'd say the situation hasn't changed much. Many (indie) development studios have been bought by larger ones in the last five years, but the actual developers involved are still doing what they were doing prior to the buyouts. There are still high-budget and low-budget games, with some of each being good (in my opinion) and some being bad. Student projects (if anyone follows such things) continue to show us what kind of innovation we might see in the game world if nobody cared a lick about the commercial value of their ideas.

Is it better or worse as far as profitability?

This depends on who you are. I don't think it's any easier / harder for the random person who wants to jump into indie game development. I'd say the tools have kept up with the times to the point that today's (downloadable) game production values are as easy for developers to keep up with as they were five years ago -- and thereby make a profit.

Another interesting trend I see is web games. Is this the future of Indie game development?

Even your OS will likely be "on the web" in not much more than five years (maybe 10). I think the distiction between "web games" and non will get blurry as the years go by.

We see emergence of languages like Java , does that spell the end for C++ ?

for independent developers who want to make a certain TYPE of games, perhaps. There are a lot of younger "new" programmers now who don't care to learn C after having learned java (or actionscript for flash, for that matter). Lots of indies (like Lionhead Studios... :D ) will keep using C++ for a while, methinks. (I'll be one, for sure)

What will became of game portals in 5 years ?

Probably just like they are now, but with more multiplayer games and more webcam-based games. Also, I expect further consolidation (there will be just as many, but the big ones will have eaten a lot of small ones in the mean time, so they'll likely be more powerful/influetial). I also expect larger companies that need to stay current like AOLTimeWarner and Microsoft to start buying the larger portals, eventually.

Just my $0.23.

[Mark_Tempe]

Wow! er… that kind of answers all of my questions about the future doesn’t it?…

Seriously,very insightful, great read.
I was planning to make my next game an economic strategy like Trade Winds and was contemplating (not very seriously ) making it an online multiplayer game. I will have to take a more serious look at this idea.

[GameStudioD]

5 years ago or so download.com and other large download sites were the way people found downloadable games. The large download sites were difficult to navigate and were cluttered with other non-game software. Searching was relegated to long lists of game titles. Most sites did not have categories.

At some point, the portals created download sites exclusively for games. I guess they are called publishers (???). The portals categorized games and limited their libraries to make search "easier". So now, you have shorter lists of game titles, a slight improvement over the download sites.

For the next 5 years, search will be important. Can a site like Big Fish Games, for example, hold 500 or 1000 games? Right now, the answer is no. Gamers are already frustrated with sifting through an existing archives of 250 to 300 games. Search will have to improve for the downloadable industry to grow.

I do not agree that multiplayer is the next big thing for casual games. I think the soccer mom or the office worker is playing the casual game to get away from people. Although, do think we will see more multiplayer games than we have right now.

[svero]

5 years.. gee that's a long time...

Well I expect that in an ironic twist, in the future most of *us* will be Clones, whereas indie games will be highly original and produced entirely by powerful AI's that escaped army research networks to make their way onto the Internet where they proceeded to take control of the world financial markets, remaining military computer networks and of course indie game development sites.

[arcadetown]

Then the apocalypse came and all the good indies went to nerd heaven and the bad indies ended up having to work for EA.

Not to hard to see where things will be in 2 years. Beyond that... yup 5 years is a very long time in internet years. I see downloadable games featured in on a lot more sites than they are now (sort of the equivalent of candy in checkout lanes of stores), a lot more sales, increased quality, higher entry level, yet still tons of opportunity, etc.

[cliffski]

5 year guesses:

Puzzle games like match 3s will make no money at all. eastern european or 3rd world countries will knock them up in days for peanuts and sell them for cents, not dollars.

The console market will be bigger, PC triple A games will be a rarity.

Some form of trusted computing, or uber-l33t online activation will become a de-facto standard, and most downloadable games will require a web connection to play. Thats the only way piracy will be stopped.

Modding will be dead in mainstream games, due to pressure from lawyers and short sighted biz-dev people.

Cas will release a game that actually sells

Lionhead will not exist as an independent company any more

The Russian and Chinese market will actually be worth targeting for downloadable games.

Bah, who knows.

[electronicStar]

Okay I'm going to be innovative and optimistic here :D:

Maybe in 5 years there will be several experienced independent devellopers who will have finally succeded in the business while making original games. They will be offering many innovative and fun games on their websites.
Their names will be famous and the users will go to their websites to find a selection of great casual games with good value, mainly games from one develloper with maybe a small amount of referral with other devellopers.
These independant devellopers will become new important players in the market.
It will be like being able to connect to Capcom.com or Taito.com and being able to download the latest hit, tailored specially for the downloadable market.
The audience will be awaiting for the release of these studio's next title with great expectations. All the games will have a certain touch depending on their develloper, the art assets will take an important place but that will not be a big problem because everybody will have broadband and, at least a GeForce4.
The clone industry will be in crisis (maybe consoles too).
The intermediaries (portals or search engine) will be less and less used.

Lol that's just a dream.