Comic: https://www.deathbulge.com/comics/441
Alt text: Yeah yeah, there's always exceptions, I mean look no further than the game in the 2nd panel, not the most thrilling gameplay, is it?
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I will happily pay full price for an indie or solo dev/small team game even if I end up not loving it. I will always wait for a sale for the big AAA games.
Yeah, indie and AA-gaming are doing fine, its the AAA that is suffering. And I think they deserve it for sure: predatory practices, lack of innovation, everything looking and feeling the same… Indie and AA-games are the ones I look forward to.
Watching Paradox Interactive transition from AA into a AAA studio has been painful. They fill a niche that nobody else is really paying attention to, but they’ve become so entrenched that the games are really starting to feel like reskins of each other, and while I wouldn’t call their DLC strategy predatory, they feel just a hair below that point.
“Historical strategy simulator” is a pretty tough genre to attack as an indie dev, though.
There’s definitely amazing indie games, but there’s also hundreds of shitty and terrible indie games for every decent one.
And thats the natural way of the world. Without shitty artists there would be no good artists, because every good artist was once a shitty artist.
Sure everyone needs to start somewhere. I’m just saying it’s also very far from all sunshine and rainbows in indie-game land.
I mean don’t play the ones you don’t want to…?
Also, I’m a lot more willing to gamble on a $20 game than an $80 one.
My experience has been indie games are pretty well vetted if they are able to sell for $20.
Plenty of $3-5 games that are a bit of a gamble though. Even if it ends up being kind of lame I figure it’s funding for the developer to make another attempt.
Adding on to that: Sometimes these indie devs, who made a cool thing as a passion project and get rewarded with life-changing money via sales, then go on to continually update the thing since they can now devote time to passion. Thinking Minecraft, Terraria, Vampire Survivors, Stardew Valley as my personal “I have sunk hundreds of hours into this title” games. That $3 game might have good bones and just need time to flesh it out.
Also the communities will rally around devs that don’t use predatory pricing and cash-grabs. I know I’m not the only one who bought more copies of some of these games (or their OSTs, donation DLCs, Patreon, etc) to gift or even just as a thank-you when something updated and gave me more content or more polished experience.
My game list were so popular it was almost cliche, but we can’t really predict what the next great thing will be until it’s there and pricing your new best-seller at $3 means you get exposure and good will.
Yeah you are right there is plenty of small slop games that were clearly made as a cashgrab full of microstransactions and bugs. But i jist wanted to point out that its not so black and white.
If you read the negative reviews on steam, you can often filter these shitty ones out. Also, be suspicious by default of free games. There are some that were made by some game dev just having fun but most want to make money some way or another and f2p monetization is often pretty toxic, like adding a long grind just to sell ways to avoid it or p2w mechanics.
I haven’t felt like I’ve gone wrong by generally just buying the cheapest well-reviewed games on my wishlist, occasionally stretching the budget to grab a mid-priced game I’m interested in and rarely going for a AAA priced game. Means that I get to some great games later (eg, Hollow Knight is one of the more recent ones, highly recommended btw) but it’s been a great way to experience a wide variety of games from today and the last 15 years for not that much money.
I can respect a shitty indie game that has passion. You can tell a lot of people are ALMOST there on itch.io sometimes. And its just so close. Or just something that doesnt click with you. But thats ok.
“Or just something that doesn’t click with you. But that’s ok.” You’re going to rile up the rage addicts with this calm logic.
It’s funniest when they act like their rage is justified. Or destroy their own things.
This wisdom is strong. I respect the fuck out of shitty games that have crazy passion. I often enjoy them far more than soulless titles that are perfectly polished. A lot of my favorite games gain their character from their rough edges. Peripetia, Alisa, Webfishing come to mind.
I don’t think the intended message is that all indie games are great. The message is that if you’re frustrated with AAA-games and haven’t considered indie games, you should.
That’s why the Indie side is a full ecosystem.
Shitty games die and fertilize the ground so that all the good ones can grow.
If a AAA game dies, it takes another 6 years for investors and executives to gain the balls to maybe risk spending the money to make another game, so it fertilizes nothing, just sits and rots on sand.
there’s also hundreds of shitty and terrible indie games for every decent one.
I would skip those and play the good ones
Yes.
Ratings systems and reviews aren’t perfect, but they are a good starting point.
I would play them both. Because fuck me I guess
If you dont play a game for 2 hours and didnt buy it more than 2 weeks ago, you can refund it if you bought it on steam
Oh no I spent $3 on a game that could use some more polish.
Honestly even if the game ends up being kinda lame I won’t ask for a refund.
There’s a lot of indie games costing $30+ these days
yes but more chances to be good. variance is expected ln chances. the choice is your’s to pick which ones to play. no one said you absolutely had to play the shit ones. use your free will.
There are more good indie games than ever. It doesn’t bother me that there are also more bad indie games than ever. We have a variety of ways to separate the wheat from the chaff. And I don’t think the ratio has ever been better than 1:100 in any genre in any time period. 🤷♂️
That is why indie gamer bloggers still exist, to write about which ones are bad and which are good.
All the old cool shit still exists even if its not “mainstream”.
The games I always remember/return to the most are the ones that had an amazing storyline.
That doesn’t require a huge budget. But it does require the developer to love the game too.
So many companies are run from an excel spreadsheet. No true leadership or vision.
I don’t even have time for all the great indies.
Like seriously, that’s a real problem. I had to remove Deltarune from my wishlist. DELTARUNE.
I’m having more fun with Supplice than any AAA shooter since… idk, 2016 at least.
Me, watching at the pages upon pages of games I haven’t even touched yet in my collection… Even if half of them are complete duds, and half of what’s left is kind of meh, I’ve got enough to be entertained forever even if all gaming studios vanish overnight.
Unfortunately a large percentage of the population (subconsciously) believe that if a product isn’t marketed to them, they shouldn’t touch it.
To put it more accurately, they don’t look. They don’t seek. They wait for it to get served to them via an algorithmic feed.
I think this is a core issue with all of civilization, right now.
We will mock this, but we all use Product X in industry Y, which is the more well-known brand of that industry. We don’t know that if we explore Z Niche Store, we can find excellent replacements for Product X that can take a little more effort to use and appreciate but are valued more for it.
You can fill in that mad lib in several ways; it’s very much down to which industries you pay close attention to.
How much difference does it make for your life?
What’s the fraction of your time you spend in it?
How long do you have to work to earn the money to pay for it?
As I see it, those are the kind of question which dictate how much time one should spend in trying to figure out the best option for something.
Trying to figure out the best cost/quality option in, say, soap or discardable plates for a party, is seldom worth it versus spending time figuring out, say, what’s the best house or car to buy or even just a good sofa for you living room or mattress for your bed.
And yeah, plenty of people won’t spend anywhere as much time researching even a purchase they’re going to spend the next 30 years paying for (the house), which IMHO is pretty sad - if something will cost you tens of thousands of hours of your life to pay for (by working to earn the money to pay for it), spending many hours of your time in making totally sure you’re getting the right one is the wisest way of going about it.
So, it’s totally logical for casual gamers to invest in their game purchasing decisions the same time and care as they do for, say, their soap purchases, and it’s logical for people who spend many hours a week playing games to care a lot more about finding the best games for what’s probably their main form of entertainment.
Sounds like a them problem
Technically it’s more of a Deez Paradox.
And there’s also those, who will throw a hissyfit if they’re forced to play something without modern AAA graphics, don’t want to play “woke” games, etc.
Just finished Momodora: Moonlit Farewell. Couple of years old now but that game had more passion put into it than anything I’ve played in years. Puts many AAA to shame.
I still need to play that one. I played Reverie a few years ago and that was an amazing game that is still in my top recommendations.
Can also recommend Minoria from (I think) the same dev. I believe unrelated story but very similar feel.
Played Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora recently, and it struck me almost immediately:
This is, without a hint of doubt, a Ubisoft game. The setting may change, the characters are swapped, but it is always the same gameplay. Like if they figured something that works with Assassin’s Creed and decided to never change it, ever.
Whatever Ubisoft action RPG you start, you always play Assassin’s Creed with extra decorations. Again. And again. And again. Zero creative vision, just new textures on top of the same mechanics.
you always play Assassin’s Creed with extra decorations.
Or if there are guns and vehicles, it’s all Far Cry :-)
They used to have good writing though. How’s Avatar’s story?
Well…it does have some good points. To provide an example without much spoilers, I’ll take one from the early game: while some RDA humans join the Na’vi resistance, and Na’vi are happy to have some help, they keep the original Avatar’s line of Pandorans’ mistrust towards the humans. You are being reminded that humans (the “Sky People”) might sometimes be allies, but they fight a proxy war, and you are here to protect your very homeland. This does get developed further down the story, and it’s a little gem, being a rare shift against humans in the game industry. It provides a nice shift of perspective, while being true to the original story.
Or, the fact that Na’vi clans all have their own vision of war, and some are hesitant to join in again after past defeats. This adds more political complexity to the lore, as opposed to “good guys - bad guys” mentality.
Also, on the crossection of story and game mechanics, there is a disharmony debuff granted when you get too genocidal towards local wildlife. It lowers your senses, makes you a pariah among na’vi, leads to your ikran abandoning you, and more. I think it’s nice, though they made a fairly poor job communicating what counts as a source of one.
On the negative side, it often feels like game design came before the story itself. A lot of it feels like they first planned where the player should go, and only then - the actual “why” behind it. This leads to some awkward turns in the story that feel like a patched afterthought.
There are all these people who think it’s only a video game if it involves big fightymen killing things. That’s hyperbole (they could be big sportsmen doing sports), but not by much.
These are the people who view graphics as the be-and-end-all of a game’s quality. There are more kinds of games than anyone could count, but you wouldn’t know it by asking those people.
I mean… if you only have a console (or even worse: only a Smartphone) I get why it looks like that to people. Some people apparently don’t even have a PC or laptop anymore.
I’m genuinely upset at how miserable the mobile scene is compared to the rest.
I’ve got a phone that’s orders of magnitude above a TurboGrafx or a Game Gear, but 95% of the games are GACHA crap or so ad bloated as to be unplayable.
Yeah, it’s abysmal. I still rock a OnePlus 7 Pro from 2019 with /e/OS, that damn thing can run Crysis (I tried, works with Winlator - lots of compatibility bugs though). The SoCs are so powerful Valve designs a whole stand-alone VR system around it able to play full-blown PC titles. Modern phones got crazy performance.
Good games without all the extorsion money simply can’t compete in the attention game though and people won’t pay money for something worthwhile if there’s a storm of crap “for free”. The internet and digital spaces in general got utterly broken by surveillanve capitalism. But, you see… it’s for ✨the economy✨.
Personally a big thing that holds me back from even seriously considering mobile gaming as an extension to normal gaming instead of “the best you can do when you don’t have access to better devices” is the input side. I hate touchscreen controls for anything with real time action because touching the screen obscures it from view, plus you don’t get the tactile feedback of buttons that makes it trivial to play without needing to readjust your finger positions constantly.
And I know there are external controllers you can use with phones, but if I’m making space (and remembering to bring) one of those, I might as well just bring my steam deck or even the switch instead.
I mean, yeah, why not bring a dedicated device, but the shit you can do with a phone and a controller is not unimpressive. I’ve got anything and everything psx and before emulated (including SCUMM and DOS, so I could play old lucasarts or sierra games. Fuck if I remember how to do that. Something on fdroid) on a oneplus 7 pro and galaxy s3.
I think the money aspect is a big one with this. Someone with a Steam Deck and/or Switch doesn’t see the need (well, Switch maybe unless it’s jailbroken), but if you just want something and money is tight then a new 50€ controller and your existing phone gets you way further.
50€? What has happened to the controller market in Europe while I was in the toilet?
EDIT Cheap gamesir for $35 USD. I’ve got an old gamesir g3s. Something like 10 years old. Still works great, i might have to reset it with the pin if I’ve been using it 8 hours straight.
I have a GameSir G4 and it’s trash, utterly awful input lag and the connection never worked correctly with any device other than Android either. Basically unusable without a cable, I’d never recommend their stuff.
people won’t pay money for something worthwhile if there’s a storm of crap “for free”.
I’ve got the first six FFs, which were remastered and released on Mobile. Got me through lockdown, when I was just trapped in a socially distanced office with nothing to do.
Like, it’s definitely possible to make - and sell - a good game that works well on a phone.
The internet and digital spaces in general got utterly broken by surveillanve capitalism.
Ain’t that the fucking truth.
It’s unfortunate that the attention economy is what sells the existence of these indies in the first place.
Slay the Spire!
They need to release the sequel on mobile already. I’m dying here
There is nubbys number factory
And thats it, there are no other good mobile games
The only mobile game Ive purchased is Monument Valley, I really liked that one.
Only counting (intended) exclusives, uhh…
osu!stream…
Uhhhhhhhhhhhh…
Mekorama.
Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…
Well, as a consolation prize, you can run PPSSPP on Android, Linux, and possibly iPhone. You can also find archived ISOs for pretty much every PSP game ever made such as Monster Hunter Freedom Unite, Monster Hunter Portable 3rd, Crash Twin Racing, Phantasy Star 2, etc.
A lot of great games have been ported to phones. Then you have emulation. I am playing games up until 3DS on a 6yr old phone with a blue tooth remote that sticks to the back of my phone.
Do you have the screen vertical or two screens horizontal? I’ve been trying to get through a run of radiant historia and I keep falling apart because I can’t get the screens lined up right
I’ve been doing the screen vertical. I have an McCon that can change the direction you place the phone on the remote.
Even if you only have a console, it’s really not THAT bad especially if you’re not a conscious consumer. Like my kids love their Switch 2 games because they don’t really know any better yet. They see me playing different games on my PC or even indies on the Switch and look genuinely interested so I’ll get them to play those soon enough to expand their horizons (and eventually let them know how shitty a company Nintendo truly is lol).
But Switch exclusives are amazing anyway. 1st party Nintendo games are almost always good. And ever since Switch 1, pretty much all of the indie games are available on the platform. And since indie games don’t really need powerful hardware, it’s a great experience.
The quality is good, I give that to them. But their pricing, ownership model and especially opinion about copyright is abysmal (weren’t they the ones trying to patent relative motion?). Nintendo has some genuinely good artists and engineers who clearly love their job but they take the carrot-and-stick approach to the extreme and it’s disgusting.
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You can emulate tons of consoles and games on your phone though
Just sucks without physical buttons. Using button on the screen covers things up and is much harder to use.
There are a few really good gamepads (or smartphone holders for e.g. Dualshock).
Taking a premium phone from a few years ago and slapping a controller on it genuinely makes an awesome mobile console. And inbetween all the garbage there even are a few really good native games, such as the remastered GTA Trilogy.
Got a Bluetooth controller. Changed everything.
Agreed. Some emulators do have the option for haptic feedback via the vibrations. Which still isnt ideal but i found it quite useable for certain types of games.
Or you just buy a bt/usb controller for 20-50 bucks. A few phones even have usb-c dp alt mode and you can enjoy the games on the big screen.
if you only have a console
… then your an idiot in the first place.
If you spent $700+ on a gaming only device that you can’t use for most “PC activities” (office, banking, browsing the web, etc), than you obviously set your priorities wrong.
Most indie games run on 10 year old budget laptops/PCs and you can get them definetly cheaper than a console.
Do you know how goddamn cheap an old console can be? It’s insane value for money for entertainment. You do not have to buy the latest console. I played Star Wars Racer for hours the other day with my nephew, on the old Nintendo 64 in my games cupboard, gathering dust but still working perfectly.
Yeah cool, but the meme is about modern gaming…
The meme is, but you were saying that consoles are hella expensive. I was just saying they do not have to be.
Of course you can buy a 15 year old console for $50 or something like this. But will it run any modern games? Obviously no.
I can also probably buy a 15 year old PC for the same price, install Linux and use it as a daily driver and maybe even run some modern Indie games.
So really not sure what’s your point in this discussion when you change the starting point…
Retro gaming:
A bunch of Indiana Jones fighting against techno-feudalists seeking to hoarde proprietary
Cozy Pixel Dating Exposition Building Pastel Farming Dog Quirky Fishing Rogue-lite Crafter
Shut up and take my money!
For real though, casual and chill-out games are so cathartic. Sure, I love my edgy soulsborne action adventures… But a couple of edibles and some Slime Rancher and I’m happy as a clam.
It’s a logical outcome. The big studios are risk-averse. Why bother with something that hasn’t been already ‘proven’, and also if they think something has gone “out of fashion”, then similarly don’t risk revisiting something that will make them look dated.
The pleasant creative outcomes stem from people who want to do it for the sake of doing it rather than constrained by predicted business results. It’s by no means a guarantee of quality, a lot of Indie stuff sucks, but certainly being overly business minded inhibits anything ‘different’ coming out.
