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Jim Ryan on Indies 'It was just good to talk about in 2013. It is less relevant now'

fantomena

Member
I did and I still think it's garbage.

The conference was only an hour long while everyone expected it to be at least an hour and a half, like they usually are.

They had plenty of opportunity to show off some indies. Simply saying it's more relevant to talk about VR isn't gonna cut it.

Imo, Ryan is right. Indies fly off the shelves, people aren't as skeptical to indies as they were in 2013 and 2014. Now Sony has VR, a new thing, to focus on.

Even Chubigans, an indie dev, states Ryan is right in this very thread.
 

Budi

Member
Just read the full quote, wow what is it with this dude. He really shouldn't be giving interviews, never a good look. One minute collage of indies is the only way to showcase indies now? That disrespect. And even that reel is a big deal to unknown indie developer, it's great exposure even if the full picture isn't entirely clear from the short clips. It's an incentive for people to look those games up.
 
This is just whataboutism, but yes, MS should support products they release (or at the very least, not put current products in the same bucket as Kinect that they abandoned).



This is factually inaccurate. E3 is literally the only time of year that non-gamers know about games. It's the only time of year places like MSN news, Yahoo, or USA Today talk about games. It's why the number of people after the X1's first E3 who thought it was always online is much larger than zero even after they changed that (because people don't pay attention outside of E3 where the original plan was in place).

If you really think E3 is only for gamers, why in the hell would they put it on? We all get our news already from gaming outlets, and that doesn't cost these companies thousands (if not millions) to put on these shows. There's no reason for E3 to exist if not to get at people who don't follow gaming the way we do here.

As for indies not needing the exposure, tons of indie games blew up after getting featured in a sizzle real. They work, which is kinda why companies do them.
It's not factually inaccurate. Think about how millions of these systems are sold and then think about how many of the indies that are on these sizzle reels blow up to be huge successes because they were there.

The average consumer doesn't give a fuck about E3. It's why the conferences don't get huge viewing rates. It's why they're not on TV anymore. It's the definition of an enthusiasts show. Your average gamer isn't watching. Like I (And you) said, they probably get the information from news sources after the conferences, so they don't even know about the optics people are talking about. The average gamer has no fucking idea what was and wasn't on stage at Sony's conference. If they read an article they just know that it was available at some trade show.

And Microsoft, or any other company for that matter isn't going to dedicate time to what is clearly a business failure. Claiming that they should is way dumber than anything Jim Ryan has said.
 

Kacho

Member
Translation: "Early days of PS4 we didn't have a lot of exclusives so we used indies to fill that gap. Now we're good, we don't really need them to highlight our system anymore so why give them the free marketing. We'll push poor own products now. But just in case you're on of those listening who's really into indies I want you to know ere still value them"

It's common sense too
 

spekkeh

Banned
He doesn't say indies are less relevant, he says a sizzle reel of them is less relevant. There's nothing wrong with the full quote. The "it" in the OP juxtaposed like that is just misleading.
 

cucuchu

Member
And not showing anything at all does?

There are other avenues to showcase them. I would personally like to see an indie or two get some true highlight at the presser but that was not the direction they went this year. From Sony's viewpoint I think they took the feedback that VR was not highlighted very well at the 2016 PSX and decided to focus attention on that at E3.
 

Elandyll

Banned
Explain what makes the full quote less disrespectful to the indie devs. Indie devs work their asses off to get their games out on Sonys platforms and Sony don't even bother showing a short sizzle reel to show a short glimpse of what they've been working on.
He literally says it doesn't mean indies aren't important, aren't there on PS4 or they don't worry about them.
They already made their commitment clear is what he obviously meant.
He basically also explains that in a limited format, and having to do other statements (like PSVR support) it wouldn't be fair to just have a 2 minutes reel of quick snipets showing you nothing to just cross a box.

Jim Ryan sucks at PR, no contest, but man this is really cherry picking.

I think he mostly fails at also pointing out that they did show some indies (Supermassive and Housemarque titles among others) and that they have other venues to showcase PS4 indies. Like PSX.

Just not on the biggest stage they'll have all year. I'm not even mad about it. It's their choice. I just translated the PR speak.
Jim Ryan doesn't do PR speak hehe.
More like brain to mouth speak. :)
 

Gator86

Member
The amount of people who did not read what he said in full is staggering.

Neogaf echo-chambering in full effect.

Nope, dog-pile forever. The thread on whether people would pay more for PS+ if it bundled in other services like Vue was a monument to stupidity. Even after pages and pages of people explaining, you still had people popping in to say dumb shit.
 

Flintty

Member
Translation: "Early days of PS4 we didn't have a lot of exclusives so we used indies to fill that gap. Now we're good, we don't really need them to highlight our system anymore so why give them the free marketing. We'll push poor own products now. But just in case you're on of those listening who's really into indies I want you to know ere still value them"

That and it's not a stick they can beat Microsoft with anymore. Xbox was a bit shit for indies at the start of the gen so of course it made sense for PS4 to be indie friendly. Now, not so much.
 
Or put another way, "We didn't have many other games in 2013, so we needed something, anything to make our lineup look bigger. '4 the players!' *laughing* Indies served their purpose, but we've moved on."
 
He's saying at this point it's not relevant to tout their commitment to indies because at this point the relationship is already established

Could've worded it better but the thread title makes you think he's saying some dumb shit like his backwards compatibility comment
 

BY2K

Membero Americo
Imo, Ryan is right. Indies fly off the shelves, people aren't as skeptical to indies as they were in 2013 and 2014. Now Sony has VR, a new thing, to focus on.

Even Chubigans, an indie dev, states Ryan is right in this very thread.

Oh well if one indie says he's right, then he TOTALLY must be!
 

SOR5

Member
I get what he's saying, he's just not saying it right at all

He's not saying Indies arent important or valued, there's just less of a need to push them right now

And to that I disagree, there's still plenty of great show-winning content to display with indie games, unless they only care about showing indies for the sake of it
 
This dude derails his team's message in every interview he gets like Trump.

That said, are we really going to burn a man alive for telling the truth? Back when releases were sparse, many of us played along with the narrative that Indies are an integral part of the ecosystem (I know I sure did) but it's 2017 and we can all admit they don't sell consoles, they never will, and don't have as much of a need for stage time. It was mostly a wedge to drive between Microsoft, the developers and the press, before they supported self-publishing. A lot of people who ramped up Sonys indie outreach are gone and the releases aren't as notable as they were in 2013-2015.

Good post. My thoughts exactly. This guy needs to stop giving interviews, but he is absolutely right about the relevance of indie in 2013. No one wants supporting Indies, and Sony said we will. Then Microsoft paid attention and said we will too (Note: MS was always pro-democracy but dropped the ball this gen, and needed a reminder). Win-win for everyone and undid the damage that the industry did after such a successful reign of Indies.

Now? It's all about AAA experiences and console sellers, and exclusives, and more power.
 

Gestault

Member
The full quote sounds totally reasonable, even if I think the quality of the presentation might have been improved with more indie content.

And the fact that we elected, along with many other things such as Gran Turismo and PlayLink, not to give it its own spot on the stage this week, in no way means it is not important, or it is not there, or we don't worry about it. It was just good to talk about in 2013/2014. It is less relevant now. We have VR to talk about now, for example.

They have limited time for strategic announcements and showcases. They literally didn't show things like GTS, even though that's probably their biggest title overall. This all seems legit. they're trying to explain their priorities for limited event "space."
 
I did and I still think it's garbage.

The conference was only an hour long while everyone expected it to be at least an hour and a half, like they usually are.

They had plenty of opportunity to show off some indies. Simply saying it's more relevant to talk about VR isn't gonna cut it.

It's not about relevancy in the context of the quote as much as it is about commitment. Earlier in the gen, they wanted to show they were committed to indies. Now they want to show they are committed to VR.

That's where the VR example comes into play. Why he mentions GT: Sport and so on.
 

Shredderi

Member
Oh well if one indie says he's right, then he TOTALLY must be!

It's not just about showing as much things as they can think of. They want to push more attention on VR. The more they show indie stuff the more you take focus and attention away from the VR stuff they feel they need to push more at the moment. The more you show the more you divide people's attention.
 

TS-08

Member
He doesn't say indies are less relevant, he says a sizzle reel of them is less relevant. There's nothing wrong with the full quote. The "it" in the OP juxtaposed like that is just misleading.

Yeah. There is nothing at all controversial about what he said and it's ridiculous that it has turned in to a controversy because we simply can't allow a nuanced explanation of something.
 

chubigans

y'all should be ashamed
I was actually looking at psx announcements because of this thread there's a lot of indie announcements(that get complained about and is the reason ppl seem to think psx shouldn't be taken seriously)

I had a discussion about this recently- a friend f mine thinks that E3 is the only games conference needed, and I tried to highlight why things like GDC, PSX, Gamescom and the like are good for everyone, because there's less white noise for games to get buried in.

I agree, E3 is AAA time, and indie games can get lost, so having other conferences is great.

Yeah, I think a fully focused conference outside of E3 that has a ton of indie announcements is just a much cooler thing than a sizzle reel. I can't even remember any of the games that was in the MS indie sizzle reel. Not because they weren't memorable, but because it was just so much info at once.

Wait. You are a indie Dev and don't want your games shown on the biggest stage. Alrighty then....

you rather indies be shown at smaller conferences? i disagree, i love that indies are given the same event priority as bigger games

Ask the Ooblets devs what they think about being featured in two of the conferences :)

I don't think indie games have much to prove anymore. They are here, they are making tons of cash, and I don't think they need to be shown right after the new Halo trailer or the big Uncharted game to prove a point ("hey this game is just as good as a AAA game!"). Now, I don't think that's a bad thing either...but my personal preference is for E3 to be all out "big" game titles.

Step back and look at it. If it was Microsoft saying the same thing, would you be as charitable?

Microsoft's conference was basically 75% indies. I didn't like it. (And I didn't really like Sony's conference this year either).


Even though i don't think the full quote is so bad, the notion that "indies aren't as important in a E3 showcase" is such bullshit. Indies are what saved E3 this year. And to show some on their conference would definitely help since that was some boring shit

well thankfully you don't represent the indie scene in general because that's not really true.

There's a good middle balance with indie games. Neither MS or Sony achieved it this year, and if it wasn't for the PSX conference later this year I'd totally be bummed out.
 
I'm sure we can both agree that what he said wasn't ideal but also that what you said is nonsense. The audience Sony and the others are targeting at E3 aren't people who like Undertale. It's the people who want to see CoD, FIFA, Days Gone and so on.

I'm sorry but that's bullshit. I walked away from e3 so disappointed in Sony because they really didn't have the same type of wow or surprise that last years show did. I mean, the games were awesome but I knew they were coming from last year

Sony needs to aim at ALL audiences if they want to continue slaying this gen. All those games you named I couldn't give a rats ass about but yet I loved the pre-conference (with UT, Crash, and even Knack 2)

It makes me think of the PS1 generation when Sony tried telling us that we didn't want 2D games on their system.
 

BY2K

Membero Americo
It's not about relevancy in the context of the quote as much as it is about commitment. Earlier in the gen, they wanted to show they were committed to indies. Now they want to show they are committed to VR.

That's where the VR example comes into play. Why he mentions GT: Sport and so on.

Yes, but they still could have shown off a few indies during the unusually short conference. Nothing was stopping them.
 
Imo, Ryan is right. Indies fly off the shelves, people aren't as skeptical to indies as they were in 2013 and 2014. Now Sony has VR, a new thing, to focus on.

Even Chubigans, an indie dev, states Ryan is right in this very thread.
theirs literally thousands.. hell millions of indie devs that will probably disagree with him
 
I've said this on the cross-play argument, will say it again:
Arrogant Sony is back, full power.

It was VERY healthy for the Playstation brand to be the underdog prior to PS4 launch. After the second year of this generation, the #4theplayers motto is not at all representative of nowadays.
 
Seriously, this thread is embarrassing. Jim Ryan said nothing bad, some here clearly want to interpret things how they want or that arrogant Sony is back or some other crap that is polluting this forum recently.

If you read things, you can clearly understand what he's trying to say and it's absolutely normal. Jeez...
 

jroc74

Phone reception is more important to me than human rights
I'm not seeing much of an issue with the full quote.

Me either.

I suggest others read the entire thing.

Some of what I took from it was indes have made it to the point they dont really have to do an indie showcase for them all the time.

And some they did it wasnt fair because it was too many games in not enough time.

Thats if I'm interpreting it right.
 
Yes, but they still could have shown off a few indies during the unusually short conference. Nothing was stopping them.

Right, but I think that's more a criticism of the conference rather than the quote. Sony didn't show off several new IPs, GT: Sport or one of their biggest JP console exclusive games at the conference. They could've shown off indie titles and this quote would still be accurate and fine.
 

EGM1966

Member
Ryan studied PR with Trump I see.

Actually I get it in terms of needing to decide what topics to focus n in a set amount of time and the focus changing over the life of a product but damn he's finding the worst way to say everything right now it seems.
 

phanphare

Banned
everyone with the "but the full quote!" stuff

the full quote is still shit

sizzle reels aren't effective. great. I can agree with that. you can still show games outside of a sizzle reel! no one is forcing them to relegate every single indie game to a sizzle reel.
 
Optics from E3 mean shit. People should have learned this by now. The vast majority of people who play video games don't watch or know anything about E3. If they hear anything from it, it's from news sources after the conferences are over, and literally everything gets covered at that point, no matter if it was on a stage or not.
Are you genuinely saying that Sony and Microsoft's 2013 E3 presentations ($399, Used Games, Always Online, etc) made NO impact on how those two consoles sold the following holiday? Optics from E3 mean alot. They won't be the end-all be-all, but they drive fan emotion and devotion.

Additionally, those indie devs are going to appreciate the advertising in front of a huge global audience. Even if most console owners never see the press conference, those games are still being exposed to players who may have never found them overwise.
 
It's not factually inaccurate. Think about how millions of these systems are sold and then think about how many of the indies that are on these sizzle reels blow up to be huge successes because they were there.

I did just now. And I can think of several indie games that blew up by being on one of these stages in a quick reel. We even have several from this year! That one game that got made by that GamerGater got huge on a quick trailer.

The average consumer doesn't give a fuck about E3. It's why the conferences don't get huge viewing rates. It's why they're not on TV anymore. It's the definition of an enthusiasts show. Your average gamer isn't watching. Like I (And you) said, they probably get the information from news sources after the conferences, so they don't even know about the optics people are talking about. The average gamer has no fucking idea what was and wasn't on stage at Sony's conference. If they read an article they just know that it was available at some trade show.

Most of the write-ups are the week after, but they're also written based on the conferences. Writers for the average news publications aren't lingering at what amounts to a con for a week to wait in line to play games, it's not their thing. They go to the conferences and talk about what looked cool to them in trailers. If your game doesn't make the conference, then it's not getting written about except on gaming sites. That can severely hurt indie titles. Again, there's a reason companies show these games on stage.

Nobody needs extra marketing for Gran Turismo (which is why I thought it was a good idea to keep it in the pre-show). Games like Cuphead do need that marketing.

And Microsoft, or any other company for that matter isn't going to dedicate time to what is clearly a business failure. Claiming that they should is way dumber than anything Jim Ryan has said.

Ultimately I agree that Kinect, Move, etc... are business failures (even if I think they should still be supported to show you actually support your products), so why talk about indies in that same way? Why keep them from your main show the same way Vita started disappearing. Remember how that went? Slowly less and less appearances until it got branded a Legacy system, which just lets Sony justify mining its games for ports and then letting it die proper.

Ryan is stating that indies aren't a feature at their shows, I guess forever. I honestly can't think of a time when this meant anything good for whatever had been kicked off the stage.
 

jond76

Banned
He doesn't say indies are less relevant, he says a sizzle reel of them is less relevant. There's nothing wrong with the full quote. The "it" in the OP juxtaposed like that is just misleading.

How is a sizzle reel less relevant than not showing any at all?

Like I said earlier, I went back through the reel from the MS presser and looked up games that seemed interesting to me. Seems like a win for visibility.
 

TS-08

Member
everyone with the "but the full quote!" stuff

the full quote is still shit

sizzle reels aren't effective. great. I can agree with that. you can still show games outside of a sizzle reel! no one is forcing them to relegate every single indie game to a sizzle reel.

The quote isn't shit just because you might have a different philosophy. That's not why this thread was made and thats not what's being discussed.
 

oti

Banned
I'm sorry but that's bullshit. I walked away from e3 so disappointed in Sony because they really didn't have the same type of wow or surprise that last years show did. I mean, the games were awesome but I knew they were coming from last year

Sony needs to aim at ALL audiences if they want to continue slaying this gen. All those games you named I couldn't give a rats ass about but yet I loved the pre-conference (with UT, Crash, and even Knack 2)

It makes me think of the PS1 generation when Sony tried telling us that we didn't want 2D games on their system.

See? You're actually a perfect example of what I am saying. You might not have liked what they showed during their presser but you and me are people who follow this stuff day in and day out. And we follow outlets other than the E3 Presser itself. We will see those smaller games because we #engage with Sony on a level that is inconceivable for those who just watch the presser itself.

What I'm saying is that if you say Undertale was your highlight of this E3, Sony clearly didn't target you with their presser. I myself though Days Gone looked super lame but I'm sure thousands of Walking Dead fans are going absolutely crazy on their Facebook feeds right now.
 
everyone with the "but the full quote!" stuff

the full quote is still shit

sizzle reels aren't effective. great. I can agree with that. you can still show games outside of a sizzle reel! no one is forcing them to relegate every single indie game to a sizzle reel.

That's only part of it. His main point is regarding commitment to indies vs. something like VR. Sony has established they are committed to indies, that's not something in question like it might have been at the start of the gen.

The VR example is to demonstrate they see VR titles the same way.
 
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