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[ULTROS!]

It feels like there are a lot of them, in fact way too much and they’re drowning each other. I checked Steam, eShop, PSN and I’m overwhelmed the sheer amount of indies compared to say… 2008-2010.

What does GAF think? Do you think there are too many indie games you start ignoring a lot of these?

Also do you think a lot of indie games are pushing agendas nowadays? Or they’re mostly the same patterns: nostalgia inspired rogue-lite, JPRG inspired, and metroidvanias too name a few.

To share my experience, I only have only a handful favorite indies during the PS4 gen: Cuphead and Inside, will need to recall more though.

 

[reksveks]

No, you just need to figure a way to curate them

 

[Krappadizzle]

 

[Kuranghi]

Pastiche is a massive part of gaming imo, so I don't find it unusual that indies do it too to be honest.

 

[Orutisu Furio]

Too many indies, and the vast majority of them are trash.

 

[TrueLegend]

What problem do you have with people who chose to make real games, although very small in scale instead of going to play store and creating a new adfestion.

 

[R6Rider]

 

[StormCell]

It feels like there are a lot of them, in fact way too much and they’re drowning each other. I checked Steam, eShop, PSN and I’m overwhelmed the sheer amount of indies compared to say… 2008-2010.

What does GAF think? Do you think there are too many indie games you start ignoring a lot of these?

Also do you think a lot of indie games are pushing agendas nowadays? Or they’re mostly the same patterns: nostalgia inspired rogue-lite, JPRG inspired, and metroidvanias too name a few.

To share my experience, I only have only a handful favorite indies during the PS4 gen: Cuphead and Inside, will need to recall more though.

The easy way to answer this question: No, not as long as they're all making enough money to pay the developer(s). I always felt like the mobile app store was too full of bland-looking games, but apparently that crap is profitable. Who would have thought?

The complicated answer: Yeah, I feel like there's way too many indie games doing almost the exact same thing. Too many retro 2D rogue-lite whatever you call it's. There's honestly not enough indies attempting to borrow inspiration from other wells. We've had the occasional strategy game. There is that baseball game. There are rare instances of really good RPG games (Golf Story?). We are starting to see a lot more in the way of city builders and those types of simulations are coming back. Transport Tycoon Deluxe was a really big favorite of mine back in the day, and I think we're beginning to see those coming back.

What I would like is to see more indies tackling more complicated projects like water racing and snow boarding. There's just a ton of territory that has been left wide open by AAA publishers who bought up the devs who used to make those types of games and then consolidated their offerings. It's time for an indie to step up and make a Sims type of game that puts The Sims to shame. It doesn't need 6 years of polygon refinement, just a really good art style.

 

[kanjobazooie]

I only have a problem with indie games not tagged as "indie" on Steam. They make browsing big sales a hassle, can't filter them out.

 

[Clear]

Too many for their own good, commercially speaking? Absolutely.

 

[Danjin44]

I personally much more in to AA games than Indie and AAA games but these days AA games doesn't get much attention.

 

[DiddyKongRacing69]

Yeah. Can't keep track on all the indies. There are so many games on Steam in general that i could have 9 lives to play them all everyday and i wouldn't get close to playing all of them.

But that goes for movies and books too sooo

 

[Guilty_AI]

It feels like there are a lot of them, in fact way too much and they’re drowning each other. I checked Steam, eShop, PSN and I’m overwhelmed the sheer amount of indies compared to say… 2008-2010.

What does GAF think? Do you think there are too many indie games you start ignoring a lot of these?

Are there too many books? To much music? Thats just how things are in these types of mediums. Its natural sign of games becoming mainstream form of entertainment.
Naturally you'll ignore a lot of them. You don't listen to every music, you don't read every book, you just choose whatever picks up your fancy.

Also do you think a lot of indie games are pushing agendas nowadays? Or they’re mostly the same patterns: nostalgia inspired rogue-lite, JPRG inspired, and metroidvanias too name a few.

To share my experience, I only have only a handful favorite indies during the PS4 gen: Cuphead and Inside, will need to recall more though.

Some are, some don't. You might have your metroidvanias and rogue-lites, both good and bad, but theres also the Factorios and the Outer Wilds doing more unique things, or the Wreckfest's reviving genres that were thought to be long dead. Some might be pushing some agenda (which i just classify as bad writing tbh), others can have better writing than even the most acclaimed of high budget games.
Its all part of the medium's variety, you'll get all sorts of stuff. Majority of them bad probably, but more than enough good to make up for it.

Or rather, In those senses, you can't really argue the AAA industry is any different, if not worse.

 

[Magic Carpet]

Indies.
game programed by me on a Thursday night.
Art by my little sister during kindergarten snacktime. She likes the red crayon best.

 

[Rean no Kiseki]

ABSOLUTELY! When every and any bum thinking that he/she is a developer just because they have accses to asset stores and poses minimal programming knowledge, you're bound to get absolute trash infesting every store front possible.

Boy i sure enjoy scrolling the endless shit on the E-shop/PS store during a sale and seeing month in and month out the same indie shit with horrendous art styles and awesome names like "Yet Another Tower Defense Game" / "Pantsu Hunter"/"Hello Neighbor" / "Whatever Simulator" and countless shit that's always on sale cause no one buys them!

 

[Beelzebubs]

The good games will rise to the top. The shit ones (unless massively memeable) will do nothing.

It's a good situation to be in when there's so much choice.

 

[Hydroxy]

Yes far too many. Anyone can make a game these days so there has been a flood of trash

 

[Punished Miku]

It feels like there are a lot of them, in fact way too much and they’re drowning each other. I checked Steam, eShop, PSN and I’m overwhelmed the sheer amount of indies compared to say… 2008-2010.

What does GAF think? Do you think there are too many indie games you start ignoring a lot of these?

Also do you think a lot of indie games are pushing agendas nowadays? Or they’re mostly the same patterns: nostalgia inspired rogue-lite, JPRG inspired, and metroidvanias too name a few.

To share my experience, I only have only a handful favorite indies during the PS4 gen: Cuphead and Inside, will need to recall more though.

It's a lot, but that's also why Gamepass is shining for me. You can basically play a huge chunk of the great ones for very little cost. Keep em' coming. Xbox had that demo-fest during E3 also and showed off probably another 6 indies that seem really promising.

If you're paying $30 for each game, then it feels like too many.

 

[Impotaku]

Hell no, indie games are the last frontier of quirky fun & experimentation game styles. Not everyone creams their pants over AAA games, the longer i play games the harder it is to impress me and AAA games sure as hell don't. Recently played sky on switch and that game was just magical.

 

[Captain Toad]

There's not too many indies, but there is too much flat-out shovelware that's allowed on the console shops.

 

[RGB'D]

 

[lucius]

Yes I don’t even wanna check sales in Switch because it’s loading like 500 indies and slowly on a fast connection.

 

[ArtemisClydeFrog]

It's crazy, everyone wants to release their own shallow af game with ripped off elements straight from actual successful games so they'll do a project with like 2 people and expect people to pay for their 5 hour game.

Some of these indie devs should take some initiative and form a publishing/dev company comprised of other indie devs so they can pool their resources and actually create something decent and original. Until then, the trash will flow.

 

[Fake]

Was a time indie get my attention. I guess the quality and ambition of today indies get down.

 

[Jaybe]

I personally much more in to AA games than Indie and AAA games but these days AA games doesn't get much attention.

What are some of your fave AA games?

 

[swarley64]

Too many shitty ones, not enough good ones

When’s the last time an indie game hit you like Hotline Miami or FTL? Or Braid or Fez for that matter?

 

[Danjin44]

What are some of your fave AA games?

This list gonna be too long if I go on.....

 

[bender]

I'll never begrudge someone's attempts at creativity. There probably are too many from the standpoint that a lot of good (not great) games will be overlooked because of the glut of releases.

 

[Mozzarella]

Some of my top games of the past decade are indies, I wouldnt say too much indies but the media covering in gaming events is a bit too much, like in Geoff's. It is risky to day 1 an indie game because a lot of them are bad or mediocre. Some of them can be really good though. I dont mind a lot of indie games, people are free to do what they like and create more games but its as you said overwhelming to go to Steam store and be overloaded with indie games left and right, i prefer them to have something original in them, but a lot of them are just cheap clones of bigger games or sometimes basic games with little gameplay and its just about a message either social or political or artistic from the creators, so they appeal for the target audience only.

You know what? i think yea its too much but that doesnt bother me since i only bother to check indie games based on recommendation and word of mouth, i dont randomly pick them up because as i said its low reward.

 

[Sir Vilhelm]

Damage control thread?

https://www.neogaf.com/threads/platform-x-aka-sony-and-their-relationship-with-indies.1611979

https://www.neogaf.com/threads/sony-draws-the-ire-of-indie-video-game-makers-jason-schreier.1612211


Never thought I'd see a thread about having too many games

 

[Paasei]

It's only the good ones you have to worry about. Then there aren't that many, but at least they're gems.

I do agree it's overwhelming to go through them all and find the good ones.

 

[NeoIkaruGAF]

There's probably too many bad/unworthy ones. But the same could be said about far bigger productions.

The ratio is probably bigger today, but the truth is, there was a LOT of shit during every generation of video games. But you didn't have poorly curated online stores showing the whole lot of them, and specialized magazines didn't like to waste space flinging shit at games that were best left unknown, so you could be blissfully unaware of their existence unless you got fooled by some cool box art in Toys 'R Us or your granny didn't find the game you wanted for Xmas and decided to get that other one that surely would do.
Anyway, derivative, poorly coded shit was everywhere, always. Yet, you wouldn't believe how much little girls loved their awful horse games on the Nintendo DS. Just like the NES era kids forced themselves to love those uncountable Mario clones that weren't worth a byte of the original thing.

It's true, indies are a dime a dozen and there's so many bad ones. They also tend to stick to some specific genres because they're cheaper to make and easier to design. That doesn't mean they're all the same, or that they're not fun. If you generalize about indies, chances are you haven't played that many, or you are drown away by some of their most common features (Metroidvania progression, anime style, 2D graphics, visual novels) because of prejudice.

 

[Mr Hyde]

I agree there is a mountain of crap indie games out there but if you know where to look and you know what you like, it's easy to spot the the good ones. I for one love the indie scene, some of my best gaming experiences are with indies.

 

[TonyK]

My main problem with indie games is if they look too indie. I immediately exclude any game done in pixel art or that remains to me 8 or 16 bits era. I'm 46, I lived that gaming era and I ended incredibly tired of that 2D representation. In fact I abandoned gaming for 2 years at the end of super NES and only returned because I saw Wipeout in the PSX of my cousin. So no, I don't want to play a game that looks like a Master System game. But I don't have any problem in playing something like Inside, what I consider a masterpiece.

 

[Sentenza]

Well, yes, there are too many, but that's their problem, not ours.
Natural selection will do its course as usual.

 

[Darlingcognito]

Oh yeah definitely, they should just go slower and make games over 5 years till they're all Sony level bangers.

 

[kanjobazooie]

My main problem with indie games is if they look too indie. I immediately exclude any game done in pixel art or that remains to me 8 or 16 bits era. I'm 46, I lived that gaming era and I ended incredibly tired of that 2D representation. In fact I abandoned gaming for 2 years at the end of super NES and only returned because I saw Wipeout in the PSX of my cousin. So no, I don't want to play a game that looks like a Master System game. But I don't have any problem in playing something like Inside, what I consider a masterpiece.

I agree. Some of these games even look uglier to me than NES/SNES games. (sorry, Stardew Valley)

That nostalgic artstyle is basically a crutch for indie devs, no offense to them.
The only retro-styled game that I thought was actually great was Shovel Knight. The tight gameplay carried that game, not the nostalgic graphics imo.

 

[jufonuk]

You don’t have to play all of them.

also like post above. Sometimes indies are shorthand for smash/Metroid/Zelda clones and rogue like/lite. With various degrees of quality. Plus the extra indie difficulty to make it retro.
They can be annoying. But also some indies can be great (Hades, Katana Zero, one strike, Enter the Gungeon,shovel knight)
I’m waiting for some indie punch out clones

 

[Spaceman292]

It feels like there are a lot of them, in fact way too much and they’re drowning each other. I checked Steam, eShop, PSN and I’m overwhelmed the sheer amount of indies compared to say… 2008-2010.

What does GAF think? Do you think there are too many indie games you start ignoring a lot of these?

Also do you think a lot of indie games are pushing agendas nowadays? Or they’re mostly the same patterns: nostalgia inspired rogue-lite, JPRG inspired, and metroidvanias too name a few.

To share my experience, I only have only a handful favorite indies during the PS4 gen: Cuphead and Inside, will need to recall more though.

What kind of question is that? Are there too many people making music and drawing pictures too? Too many independent films?

 

[TV&Drugs]

No. LOL. Thats like saying there are too many cereals at wallmart. You dont have to eat them all.

There are absolutely not too many good indies. Who cares how many there are. Just play the good ones.

Theres lots of shit on Netflix, doesnt mean you watch it all.

The more that are made, the more that some of them will turn out to be good. So we need as many as possible tbh.

 

[Skifi28]

These days, anyone that can write a few lines of code can become a game developer (and that's loads of people) and have their game on all major stores (95% of which are not worth playing). Is that too many? Depends how you look at it, but I'm leaning towards yes. Digital stores are like sewers after heavy rainfall, overflowing with crap and they're getting more and more difficult to navigate. We also have an increase of inflated egos constantly whining left and right which is also getting annoying. It's like a new flash game apocalypse.

It's a big (first world) issue.

Can't disagree with this. In the end, it doesn't matter that much one way or the other.

 

[ShadowNate]

There are too many games. Not just indie.
And there many, many great ones, hidden gems or just scratching the right itch. And many many trash ones.

It's a big (first world) issue.

 

[Bo_Hazem]

Yes, I and I want a store seperation to put them in their own category instead of bloating the store when looking from some decent games instead of those mostly garbage content.

 

[Daymos]

Yes! Supporting the little guy has become like a publicity trend and it has lined the digital storefronts with shit. Having 1000s of shitty games tarnishes the whole concept of indie games. I have about a dozen indie games now and I don't think I've finished a single one of them, they aren't that good. I can spend 100s of hours in dragon quest 11s or tales of vesperia hd or even baldurs gate 1&2.. but I can't stay interested in hollow knight or earthlock or shovel knight or bastion or cosmic star heroine, etc, etc.

Putting indies on high has become like a social justice push.. the big publishers are bad and undertale is the BEST rpg of all time!!

 

[odhiex]

While I am disagreeing with the notion of too many indie games, I do feel that so many of them are relaying too much on the aesthetics (2d pixel, anime style, retro 8-16 bit music, or etc) that is no longer feels unique.

Same same but different...but still the same. Lol

 

[Birdo]

Lack of quality control is the problem.

The e-shop is an embarrassment, probably the worst of the three. Just pure trash.

 

[Malio]

There's a lot for sure. But you gotta figure out how to weed out the good ones.

 

[Guardian's Light]

It feels like there are a lot of them, in fact way too much and they’re drowning each other. I checked Steam, eShop, PSN and I’m overwhelmed the sheer amount of indies compared to say… 2008-2010.

What does GAF think? Do you think there are too many indie games you start ignoring a lot of these?

Also do you think a lot of indie games are pushing agendas nowadays? Or they’re mostly the same patterns: nostalgia inspired rogue-lite, JPRG inspired, and metroidvanias too name a few.

To share my experience, I only have only a handful favorite indies during the PS4 gen: Cuphead and Inside, will need to recall more though.

The more, the better, considering most AAA are shit and 1 out of 10 is really good nowadays
You basically have an infinite choice of really good games, often for less than 10$

Also, Indie world gave us some of the best games ever created, think Shovel Knight, Katana Zero, Hollow Knight and Co.

 

[Hari Seldon]

Like others have said the problem is not that there are too many Indy devs, the problem is that they are largely concentrated in a few genres. Could really use more sports games, especially on PC.

 

[brian0057]

The problem isn't that there's too much indie games.
The problem is that most of them suck.
It's the Wii/PS2 shovelware era all over again but for every platform.