CamHostage
Member
Oh, this interview has made me so depressed on a Monday. Good info, but if Housemarque isn't hot for the future, I don't want time to move forward ever again...
I'm not sure its fair to say its a pricing issue on consoles per se, as it is a perception of pricing issues with the "will wait until its free on PSN+" mentality
I feel you on this. Even going PC+PS4, the future remains uncertain.Oh, this interview has made me so depressed on a Monday. Good info, but if Housemarque isn't hot for the future, I don't want time to move forward ever again...
The aspect of portability is something indie games have desperately needed to stand out from the pack....hoping this "Nindies" thing kinda works out.
i'll buy this on steam thanks House. i'm not sure how well it will do though, seems like most big indie hits have some longform gameplay ie: rogues (spelunky, isaac, gungeon) or just tons of hours of play like a stardew. i think the ps plus argument definetely holds some weight on the playstation side, considering the context of almost all their games end up on the service.
Depending on the genre you look at, there has in fact been a massive gulf in quality over the years regardless of price. Not discrediting the older examples here, but compare a Shadow Complex to a Hollow Knight / Ori and the Blind Forest, a Braid to The Witness or a Geometry Wars to Super Stardust HD / Resogun for example. Wonder Boy: A Dragon's Trap remake also elevated itself well beyond the level of what an average remake on XBLA / PSN back in the day looked like. Just off the top of my head.This is going to sound cheap, but, I'm willing to bet that, while a lot of the points expressed here are true, indie devs saw a drop in sales once many of them kinda collectively decided that $19.99 was a good launch price on consoles. For me personally, that's past the point of impulse buy, which is what I did with so many indie games in the PS3/360 era. I understand game development is expensive, but, IMO, I haven't seen a big shift in quality to merit the price increase.
I think the more troubling thing I see is when some people who do end up showing interest in an indie game go "will be nice to play when it's a free PS+ game."
Sad to hear that apparently Alienation didn't sell too good. I'll keep buying their games on the PS4 but they should get plenty more of new fans on the PC.
I bought Alienation last year, told all my friends the game was awesome. None of them bought it.
Now it's on PS+, all my friends are playing it and saying it's awesome. I'm fuming.
Yeah, good luck indie devs ! A VERY LARGE chunk of players just buy the usual AAA flicks and just play the PS+ indies releasing each month for free.
I don't know, For Honor and Wildlands open betas helped Ubisoft greatly.
The aspect of portability is something indie games have desperately needed to stand out from the pack.
Wasn't resogun free to all new PS4 owners when the console launched?
I still play my copy from time to time. Really fun game!
One thing I've noticed about console/PC indie split is the difference in marketing.
PC games are spread purely through word of mouth without need for a marketing budget. Something like Stardew Valley, Kerbal, Binding of Isaac had zero marketing budget, but ends up selling millions of copies purely through word of mouth. This immensely benefits indie games, where they don't have the budget for a marketing campaign.
Conversely, on console marketing budget dictates the success of the game. If you don't have the ability to market, then you are significantly less likely to penetrate.
Sad truth, superb (better than ever) indies have been out this gen and practically didn't get any coverage. Media outlets are getting worse every year.
I liked Resogun a lot, but was disappointed with the DLC and never bought any of it. It seemed geared only to hardcore fans so I never bought any of it.
Yes, that's my point. They had some big hits but as a whole just frowned upon and no where near the size they are today.Castle Crashers and stuff like that was out then. There was a small number of platform curated indie games that sold a lot because their was less competition.
What they actually had is a much much smaller selection.This is because as much shit as Microsoft gets, they had the digital marketplace for smaller games nailed.
Mandatory demos for all arcade games, fairly decent curation and great promotions like Summer of arcade.
They dumped the mandatory demo requirement because devs hated it and Sony didn't mandate a demo so it became a sticking point. Since Sony is on top now they would have to be the ones to bring that back and they've never shown any interest in doing so. As always, there is debate over whether demos help or hurt games in the long run.
Wonder if they're gonna continue with 1 multiplat + 1 Sony funded game or just go all multiplat for now on
What they actually had is a much much smaller selection.
That's not hard to "nail", but it's also not really what most people want.
Sure, promotions are nice and all, and so are demos, but the real differentiator is the far larger selection. And there's no simple "solution" for that.
Well, to be fair I don't think it has a heck of a lot to do with consoles. I think Resogun performed very well.
Dead Nation was a port of a PS3 game, and it's not a great game. Neither is Alienation.
Neither Alienation or Dead Nation come close to matching the critical reception of Resogun, or Stardust, so why would they anticipate them to perform the similarly? Both are sub 80% on metacritic, which doesn't make them bad games, but it means there are 100+ digital titles better than them - some of which direct competitors (e.g. Geometry Wars 3, Jamestown+).
Releasing on PC won't make a difference when the issue is that they are struggling to deliver high quality titles. The rpg-lite systems that they've been working on through Dead Nation and Alienation haven't payed off because they entail a considerable amount of additional work, and they have little to show for it as the games were no better received.
Expanding onto new platforms isn't going to solve this issue, they need to work towards making better games. Significantly, look at what went wrong in both Alienation and Dead Nation. Why weren't they as popular as the rest of their titles? Critics found the experience dull and less exciting than Resogun or Stardust. The RPG systems hope to extend the games lifespan for many more hours, but neither Alienation or Dead Nation feature gameplay that's significantly more in-depth than Resogun or Stardust. This is a problem because they have tried to extend a gameplay loop that may keep the player entertained for 20 minutes in Resogun (the length of an arcade run) to a 10hour campaign in Alienation.
It doesn't work, people get bored, and launching on PC isn't going to remedy the issues that the studios recent games have had with the quality of their games.
I'm not saying it's hurting, hence the quotation marks on problem, I merely pointed out that more competition means individually the chances of being a hit are smaller.Curation is not the answer, even on consoles. It certainly doesn't explain why indie developers flourish on Steam, where there is less curation, and more competition than any other platform.
Also, self-publishing is hurting indie developers? What nonsense. It's precisely because of the ease of publishing that indie games have flourished in recent years.
Nowadays, unless your game is published by a 1st party, it makes no sense to not go multiplatform and PC.
"Some xbox arcade title"?
Outland is amazing. It's basically Ikaruga meets platforming plus coop.
but but, I thought 99.999999989% of pc gamers were pirates while console gamers buy all their games at full price, exclusives most of all.
This is because as much shit as Microsoft gets, they had the digital marketplace for smaller games nailed.
Mandatory demos for all arcade games, fairly decent curation and great promotions like Summer of arcade.
Kuittinen says that "millions and millions of people have played our games, but mostly on PlayStation platforms." The question of how many of those people also own PCs, and whether Housemarque's reputation has carried beyond PlayStation's walled garden, will be answered in part by Nex Machina.
What they actually had is a much much smaller selection.
That's not hard to "nail", but it's also not really what most people want.
Sure, promotions are nice and all, and so are demos, but the real differentiator is the far larger selection. And there's no simple "solution" for that.
Nowadays, unless your game is published by a 1st party, it makes no sense to not go multiplatform and PC.
True, look at the threads with the PS+ game announcements. Almost all are "omg another indie game" shitposts.Well, he's not wrong. The "it is indie so it is shit" is huge on consoles.