tl;dr the indie space is more competitive than it was a few years ago and it's hard to get noticed
Well maybe that's not fair, but that's the impression I got from this.
That is very different from a "bubble" popping. The problem of discoverability will be solved by someone - there's just too much money on the table for that to not happen. Whether it's Valve or not no-one knows (obviously they're the front runners now), but someone will get it done.
Sure. It's probably a lot harder for the indie devs out there in a lot of ways (in terms of trying to stand out - or only getting a smaller and smaller slice of the market). On the other hand, there are tools like Kickstarter, Unity and now Unreal which make it much, much easier to make games - often for a wider array of platforms.
Harder to stand out, but lower barrier to entry - that makes sense and does not mean that any bubble is about to burst. In fact, it probably means that games will just continue to get better!
I'd like to agree with you that 'the problem of discoverability will be solved', but history doesn't bear that out. Discoverability has been utter horseshit for PC games, iOS games and Android games... forever. And it's not improved at all, and no new players are improving it, because Steam, the iOS App Store, and Play Store all have customers 99% locked in. You can't force those big players to innovate unless they find a good reason to do it, because there's no way you're ever going to steal those customers away from them just by offering a better search tool. They want the convenience and safety and integration they get from the big player's storefront app.
The low barrier to entry for game development is actually not a new thing. The barrier has been low since the introduction of XBox Live Indie Games, perhaps even a couple years before then - that was just the visible point where a bunch of new developers started building and shipping games on a small budget.
The huge glut of samey titles releasing and squeezing each other out of the market is a relatively new occurrence. The stats he provided for Steam releases are a very new trend and concerning to anyone who wants to find good games to play, or build good games to sell. I can say for a fact that the clickthrough rates and conversion rates for Steam front page placement are much worse than they have ever been, even for high-scoring, well-reviewed titles with PR buzz.
Comments
tl;dr the indie space is more competitive than it was a few years ago and it's hard to get noticed
Well maybe that's not fair, but that's the impression I got from this.
That is very different from a "bubble" popping. The problem of discoverability will be solved by someone - there's just too much money on the table for that to not happen. Whether it's Valve or not no-one knows (obviously they're the front runners now), but someone will get it done.
Sure. It's probably a lot harder for the indie devs out there in a lot of ways (in terms of trying to stand out - or only getting a smaller and smaller slice of the market). On the other hand, there are tools like Kickstarter, Unity and now Unreal which make it much, much easier to make games - often for a wider array of platforms.
Harder to stand out, but lower barrier to entry - that makes sense and does not mean that any bubble is about to burst. In fact, it probably means that games will just continue to get better!
I'd like to agree with you that 'the problem of discoverability will be solved', but history doesn't bear that out. Discoverability has been utter horseshit for PC games, iOS games and Android games... forever. And it's not improved at all, and no new players are improving it, because Steam, the iOS App Store, and Play Store all have customers 99% locked in. You can't force those big players to innovate unless they find a good reason to do it, because there's no way you're ever going to steal those customers away from them just by offering a better search tool. They want the convenience and safety and integration they get from the big player's storefront app.
The low barrier to entry for game development is actually not a new thing. The barrier has been low since the introduction of XBox Live Indie Games, perhaps even a couple years before then - that was just the visible point where a bunch of new developers started building and shipping games on a small budget.
The huge glut of samey titles releasing and squeezing each other out of the market is a relatively new occurrence. The stats he provided for Steam releases are a very new trend and concerning to anyone who wants to find good games to play, or build good games to sell. I can say for a fact that the clickthrough rates and conversion rates for Steam front page placement are much worse than they have ever been, even for high-scoring, well-reviewed titles with PR buzz.
Yeah, the article isn't wrong on many points, but the characterization as a 'bubble' isn't right.
The race to the button pricing is a concern. I worry about the day where every title has to be free-to-play to get made... Ugh.