Indie-pocalypse : The saturation of the gaming industry
By: Olusola I Olaoye
Tags: Indiedev, Game Design, Game Development, Indie Game, Indie Game Development

If you happen to be an indie game developer, you have probably received the heat of this harsh reality. Our childish dreams of having a hit on our first titles and making “the big bucks” have been broken down. Even those (myself included) that got into indie game development without caring much about the pecuniary gain, still believed that our first title will at least have some dedicated players. In fact, some of the ultra-hyper-optimists probably imagined a world where they will be super-rockstars after launching their first title, being invited to multiple conference around the world while having red roses thrown at their feet on arrival to these big events.

Have we forgotten the year 2013? A 28 year old Vietnamese developer, Dong Nguyen shocked the world with a hit game called flappy bird. What made this game so popular wasn’t the quality of graphics or any form of complex game mechanics. It was rather its simplicity, simple graphics, “easy to understand” gameplay and the fact that it was able to trend on social media platforms.

Flappy bird mobile game

As trivial as it looks, this game had over 500 million downloads on the google play store alone. It was also reported to have generated over 2 million dollars in revenue. This particular game inspired lots of additional developers to get into game development. The question was, how can a game so simple get so much popularity and generate so much revenue? While most would arrive at a consensus that Dong Nguyen’s success was a product of serendipity, I will argue that while luck played a part in his success, the real answer is more complex than that.

Many developers have had their fingers burnt. Basically, they were struck by the lightening of reality when they saw that their first title could barely get any players, even when such title was free. Many have to go through series of social-media advertisement, both paid and free just to get people to play their games for free. The truth is that there are so many games out there. We now have an “indie-pocalyse”, a hyper-saturated market, AKA the video game inflation. The video game inflation has given birth to the rise of new-generation spoilt brats that I will like to label as “neo-brats”. The short attention span given to game titles has left game developers in a unfavourable situation. In order words, “if I play your game for 5 minutes and it’s not giving me the joy of my life, then pass! I am not interested”.

I remember growing up with my “Super Nintendo” with only 5 games (Bomberman, Battletoads, Flashback, Zelda and a racing game that I cannot remember the name). I loved all these games (not equally of course). I mean, when you have only 5 games for years, you will be forced to give each of them a chance until you like them. This is not the case today. With the heap of new titles being released on Steam, Google play store, Apple app store, Windows store, etc. Players now have a thousand different buffet restaurant to choose free food from. The fact that games such as Asphalt 8 and Asphalt 9 are free on the google play store and apple app store gives other developer no other option but to publish their own racing games for free an look to In-app purchases for revenue. I mean, if Aspahlt 9 is free, how dare you put a price tag on your racing game?

Screenshot of Asphalt 8

Screenshot of Asphalt 9

The gaming industry is not unique in terms of this problem. We see similar trends in many other industries. The big boys take the bag, leaving the remnant for the majority peasants to fight over. Since it’s pretty clear that over-saturation has lead to this mess, the question then is what lead to the over-saturation of the indie game-dev scene? I will list 4 reasons why the game-dev scene, especially the indie game-dev scene is facing this.

Low barrier to entry in development tools. With the rise of game-engines, the bar got lowered drastically. Before the rise of popular game engines like Unity engine and the Unreal engine, programmers were required to go through hell and back to produce any kind of remotely decent looking game. The openGL framework was never friendly towards casuals (and don’t even get me started with Vulkan). Languages like C++ are also not beginner friendly. However modern engines like Unity and unreal engine have lowered that barrier. With Unity’s C# and Unreal’s blueprint system, opportunity has been opened up to a lot more developers. Even web-based engines such as play canvas now make it possible to use easy languages like javascript to make decent 3D and 2D games. This of course would inevitably increase the number of games that are being produced. As if these free engines are not enough, there are tens of thousands of available gaming assets (3D models, 2D artwork, scripts, shaders, sounds, etc) that are there to make your development life as easy as possible. Low barrier to entry in learning resources. The rise in the use of the internet made it possible. With many available high quality tutorials, the knowledge on how to make games is no longer “top secret”. Check on youtube and you’ll see series of videos on how to make more than just simple games. In fact the knowledge on how to create your own game engine is all over the place to the point that we are already facing the game engine apocalypse. The fact that the knowledge is out there, and in most cases for free, this has brought more feet through the door. Low barrier to entry in publishing. Back in the console days, acquiring publishing licensing was more difficult. Console license? don’t even think about it! It took a lot of paper-work and the standard was really high just to get your foot in the door. Even in the early days of google play store and apple app store, there was less saturation which helped lots of early hyper casual games succeed. More and more games continue to flood mobile and PC stores. I would say that console titles are still relatively safe compared to other platforms, because publishing on console still requires a minimum quality standard of your product, which shuts the door for many titles out there. The rise of other forms of entertainment. Let us not forget that games are not utility products. To put it bluntly, they are just a way to pass the time and several other things are good at just doing that. Netflix, social media, different sports, as well as the tons of games out there are also fighting for the short attention span of people.

This is not all bad news tho. There are still indie games that are making it big. There are many people who still live off indie games. So what steps should you take if you want to maximise your chances for success?

A huge fan-base. I cannot stress this enough. Dev-log series, sharing your progress on reddit, youtube and other platforms will take you a long way. People will be interested in playing your game because they will feel like they were part of your journey. Early Access or demo versions released. People want to test their hands on your core mechanics first. As there are lots of games out there, it would be wise for developers to capture new fans by releasing a demo version or an early access of their game. A team of highly specialised developers. This could earn you games that are just few levels below AAA games quality. With engines like unreal engine and cry engine, specialised and highly-skilled individuals (artists, programmers, audio experts and animators) can team up and make really cool looking games. Look at hell-blade for example.

Screenshot of Hell blade (Senua’s sacrifice)

4. If you do not have a large audience on social platforms and your game isn’t really high-quality (perhaps an average mobile game), then you need to pump some serious cash into marketing, using platforms like google ads, facebook ads, twitter ads or paying several youtube game marketers (with high view-counts) to help you market your game.

A combination of the last for points will most likely take you somewhere in the saturated market. And for those of you who continue to make games for fun without caring about profit, I will strongly encourage that you continue to do so.