Indies, Steam and Early Acces - gamedev revolution or impending crash?

faetal on 12/2/2014 at 11:41

Whenever I think of the development of Star Citizen, I can't help also thinking of Synecdoche: New York.

Muzman on 12/2/2014 at 14:09

Quote Posted by Al_B

The app flipping article may well be genuine (and considering some of the rubbish on mobile platforms I'd believe it) but I could equally see it as a carefully constructed advert for the code and advertising services discussed in the article over-hyping the potential income.

Indeed. Less the Wolf of Wall Street, more the Imp of itunes.
There's probably some truth to it. A lot of that sort of garbage was showing up as web ads for a while. And a look at the Flappy Bird farrago shows there's apparently money there somewhere which means even more speculator assholery incoming.

Also fun, (http://www.dansdata.com/gz146.htm) Hilarious money laundering aps

It really is insane.

Anyway, on topic. Yeah I can imagine seeing some game in ten years getting articles about how it made millions of dollars but was never finished. In fact there was no evidence it was ever seriously worked on after year 3.
But I don't think it'll be common.
One thing to remember with Star Citizen is it's an MMO of sorts. People have forgotten that before WoW really dominated, every new MMO was crammed with people trying to get in early so they could grind the game, make themselves dominant and set up some sort of business, gather unique items and sell them on ebay etc etc. It's not a regular "I like games like this" sort of buy in. It's a good old Oklahoma Land Run. You'd think it'd slow down a bit once people see just how many are going to be there at that start. But everyone thinks they can run a bit quicker when they need to I guess.

For the time being I think there's too many games that appear to be working out for any sort of mass investor abandonment. You might see a sort of dot-com-days-like thing where quite a few of the more successful ones are just drunk on money and have terrible management (maybe Clang and Double Fine to some extent already?). The fallout might be interesting there, since it won't be lot of musty fund managers who understand loose lips sink ships etc who come for their money/stuff, but 100,000 angry internet nerds.

WingedKagouti on 12/2/2014 at 15:11

Quote Posted by Muzman

One thing to remember with Star Citizen is it's an MMO of sorts. People have forgotten that before WoW really dominated, every new MMO was crammed with people trying to get in early so they could grind the game, make themselves dominant and set up some sort of business, gather unique items and sell them on ebay etc etc. It's not a regular "I like games like this" sort of buy in. It's a good old Oklahoma Land Run.

Also, streaming/youtube channels to rake in ad money, by virtue of being able to provide early footage of an anticipated title.

Starker on 12/2/2014 at 22:16

There's also the fact to consider that there hasn't been a really big KS failure yet. Things will probably settle down once one of those million dollar babies goes belly up and the nerdrage of thousands of fans floods the internet. I don't think any one project is that big to sink the whole ship though.

Pyrian on 12/2/2014 at 22:37

I think the notion of Kickstarter dying from a high-profile failure is more-or-less over at this point. There's already been too many successes; the idea that it can't work is gone, and the notion that individual projects might never get finished is frankly healthy skepticism. Perhaps even the idea was misguided; funded Kickstarters usually don't fail so much as merely do not succeed, which isn't quite the same. There isn't necessarily a critical point where something goes from "late" to "failed", such that most of the vaporware just kind of sits out there, continuing to not succeed. So, confidence in Kickstarter as a whole was always resting on garnering some notable success, and not on avoiding notable failure.

GUFF on 12/2/2014 at 23:29

Even the non-indie game market is saturated with shovelware of all kinds and has been for years and years. This is why the recent youtube policy changes in regards to game footage is so awful. So many people's purchase process has become avoiding the corrupt shill professional reviews to see an actual person playing and/or commenting on a game before they buy it, which is why some content makers like Totalbiscuit do so well. That process was great for good games as it helped them sell more than they would have, but of course lowers the sales for bad/mediocre games which had nice looking trailers, teasers and so on which only showed them in a good light, or reviews from professional reviewers who have a conflict of interest in that when they pan a big budget yet ultimately terrible game they hurt their own livelihood by potentially not getting access to games before release from the company that published it in retaliation. An example I can remember from like 9 years ago was Castlevania: Curse of Darkness--pretty solid but very mediocre game, with pre-release videos that really hyped it up. Wasn't that good, at least wasn't full price on release good. Would have bought it for the price it dropped to a half year later, though.

I don't think there's going to be any kind of crash but issues like the youtube one certainly don't help sort the wheat from the chaff. There are also some other genuinely horrible things in the industry right now like day 1 DLC (including pre-order DLC, which the upcoming Eidos Montreal Thief is going to have) and really most DLC in general but that is neither here nor there. DLC is mostly for people who liked games and wanted more of it and is best served in "expansion-like" content but there's a ton of horrible overpriced costumes or horse armor or whatever that just makes me shake my head. You don't have to buy it, though.