<story><title>The Rise and Fall of the Lone Game Developer</title><url>http://www.jeffwofford.com/?p=1579</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ekianjo</author><text>&amp;gt; I feel like we are in a golden age of PC gaming right now.&lt;p&gt;Not really. Its golden Age was in the late 80s, early 90s, where games were still made by educated people FOR educated people, before the whole thing went mainstream and any sign of complexity went progressively down the drain so that Everyone could start playing games. I miss Falcon&amp;#x27;s 300 pages manual, or even Colonization&amp;#x27;s fantastic booklet that went far above describing how to just play the game.&lt;p&gt;The early 90s were dominated by AAA titles from Origin, pushing both the boundaries of what was technically possible on PC as well as driving genres forward by developing non-linear game structures and exploring 3D environments. Nowadays AAA blockbusters jsut rehash the same formula over and over again (care to take another Assassin&amp;#x27;s Creed?).</text></item><item><author>MrMember</author><text>I feel like we are in a golden age of PC gaming right now.&lt;p&gt;Genres completely abandoned by AAA developers ages ago are seeing a resurgence thanks to crowdsourcing. Space sims have been all but dead since Freelancer in 2003 but now there are several to play and look forward to.&lt;p&gt;Formerly obscure genres like roguelikes are seeing mainstream success thanks to high quality &amp;quot;roguelike-like&amp;quot; games like FTL.&lt;p&gt;Hell, even the impenetrable Dwarf Fortress brings in enough money from donations to support future development.</text></item><item><author>gavanwoolery</author><text>:) Yes, pretty much.  DotA was created as a small mod, and now look at the commercial explosion it has spawned, with tournaments containing $2+ million in prizes and everyone wanting to make MOBAs.&lt;p&gt;I think in the past 20 years, we actually have not made as many breakthroughs in game mechanics (of course, this was easier in the early days).  Games are still fairly similar to those of the 90s, only technically more complex.  I think we are beginning to maybe get a better handle on game design, which I am seeing creep in with more appreciation of more obscure (now less obscure) game types like roguelikes and CCGs.  Little known fact is that Plants vs Zombies was largely inspired by deck building mechanics found in Magic the Gathering, so you are beginning to see some more obscure mechanics like that get mainstreamed.</text></item><item><author>CodeCube</author><text>&amp;gt; There is so much unexplored space in the medium. We might have stripped the surface, but there is gold down there somewhere.&lt;p&gt;And so the cycle continues :P</text></item><item><author>gavanwoolery</author><text>The gold rush was almost over before it started on mobile - it did not take more than a year for things to become extremely competitive.  Flash games suffered a similar fate.  Consoles have not generally been indie-friendly but Playstation is now making a better effort on that front, although they are still mainly catering to indie devs who have already &amp;quot;made it.&amp;quot; Greenlight is becoming quite competitive (there were 17,000+ active games when I was on there). Kickstarter seems to have lost a great deal of its enthusiasm (perhaps rightfully so).&lt;p&gt;And yet...&lt;p&gt;There is so much unexplored space in the medium. We might have stripped the surface, but there is gold down there somewhere. :)</text></item><item><author>ANTSANTS</author><text>More like, the iOS app store gold rush ended. The indie dev scene is thriving on PC. Stop throwing your time and money away developing for a platform overwhelmingly used by people that don&amp;#x27;t really care about your games, that are looking for brief distractions while they wait in the checkout line, and by and large refuse to pay even a dollar for the privilege. Don&amp;#x27;t blame the industry because you avoided the platform used by people that actually buy games, play them for hours a day, tirelessly promote the good ones on message boards and amongst their friends, and will actually appreciate the effort you put into your work.&lt;p&gt;Also, Donkey Kong was not created by a &amp;quot;lone game developer.&amp;quot; Miyamoto may have designed Donkey Kong by himself, but he had entire team of contract developers at his disposal.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/134790/the_secret_history_of_donkey_kong.php?print=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.gamasutra.com&amp;#x2F;view&amp;#x2F;feature&amp;#x2F;134790&amp;#x2F;the_secret_hist...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://gdri.smspower.org/wiki/index.php/Company:Ikegami_Tsushinki&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;gdri.smspower.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;index.php&amp;#x2F;Company:Ikegami_Tsus...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>exDM69</author><text>This is a perfectly valid opinion and seems to be downvoted because of disagreement. (albeit you could have clearly stated it&amp;#x27;s &lt;i&gt;your&lt;/i&gt; opinion).&lt;p&gt;I kind of agree. A lot of AAA games these days are just unoriginal. They follow the genre they exist in without much creativity or original ideas. Perhaps the storyline in the game is what people are after these days, but gameplay-wise, I don&amp;#x27;t remember when I&amp;#x27;ve seen a big production game that I would have wanted to play.&lt;p&gt;Not to underestimate the value of nostalgia, of course. Some of the old games have not stood up to the test of time. E.g. I played the original Dungeon Keeper recently and I was a bit underwhelmed because I remember when I played that game when it was new and how great it felt.&lt;p&gt;Good thing that there are still interesting indie games. Even 15-20 years ago when I played more games, I spent more time playing small indie titles I found from BBS&amp;#x27;es and computer magazines than I did playing big titles.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Rise and Fall of the Lone Game Developer</title><url>http://www.jeffwofford.com/?p=1579</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ekianjo</author><text>&amp;gt; I feel like we are in a golden age of PC gaming right now.&lt;p&gt;Not really. Its golden Age was in the late 80s, early 90s, where games were still made by educated people FOR educated people, before the whole thing went mainstream and any sign of complexity went progressively down the drain so that Everyone could start playing games. I miss Falcon&amp;#x27;s 300 pages manual, or even Colonization&amp;#x27;s fantastic booklet that went far above describing how to just play the game.&lt;p&gt;The early 90s were dominated by AAA titles from Origin, pushing both the boundaries of what was technically possible on PC as well as driving genres forward by developing non-linear game structures and exploring 3D environments. Nowadays AAA blockbusters jsut rehash the same formula over and over again (care to take another Assassin&amp;#x27;s Creed?).</text></item><item><author>MrMember</author><text>I feel like we are in a golden age of PC gaming right now.&lt;p&gt;Genres completely abandoned by AAA developers ages ago are seeing a resurgence thanks to crowdsourcing. Space sims have been all but dead since Freelancer in 2003 but now there are several to play and look forward to.&lt;p&gt;Formerly obscure genres like roguelikes are seeing mainstream success thanks to high quality &amp;quot;roguelike-like&amp;quot; games like FTL.&lt;p&gt;Hell, even the impenetrable Dwarf Fortress brings in enough money from donations to support future development.</text></item><item><author>gavanwoolery</author><text>:) Yes, pretty much.  DotA was created as a small mod, and now look at the commercial explosion it has spawned, with tournaments containing $2+ million in prizes and everyone wanting to make MOBAs.&lt;p&gt;I think in the past 20 years, we actually have not made as many breakthroughs in game mechanics (of course, this was easier in the early days).  Games are still fairly similar to those of the 90s, only technically more complex.  I think we are beginning to maybe get a better handle on game design, which I am seeing creep in with more appreciation of more obscure (now less obscure) game types like roguelikes and CCGs.  Little known fact is that Plants vs Zombies was largely inspired by deck building mechanics found in Magic the Gathering, so you are beginning to see some more obscure mechanics like that get mainstreamed.</text></item><item><author>CodeCube</author><text>&amp;gt; There is so much unexplored space in the medium. We might have stripped the surface, but there is gold down there somewhere.&lt;p&gt;And so the cycle continues :P</text></item><item><author>gavanwoolery</author><text>The gold rush was almost over before it started on mobile - it did not take more than a year for things to become extremely competitive.  Flash games suffered a similar fate.  Consoles have not generally been indie-friendly but Playstation is now making a better effort on that front, although they are still mainly catering to indie devs who have already &amp;quot;made it.&amp;quot; Greenlight is becoming quite competitive (there were 17,000+ active games when I was on there). Kickstarter seems to have lost a great deal of its enthusiasm (perhaps rightfully so).&lt;p&gt;And yet...&lt;p&gt;There is so much unexplored space in the medium. We might have stripped the surface, but there is gold down there somewhere. :)</text></item><item><author>ANTSANTS</author><text>More like, the iOS app store gold rush ended. The indie dev scene is thriving on PC. Stop throwing your time and money away developing for a platform overwhelmingly used by people that don&amp;#x27;t really care about your games, that are looking for brief distractions while they wait in the checkout line, and by and large refuse to pay even a dollar for the privilege. Don&amp;#x27;t blame the industry because you avoided the platform used by people that actually buy games, play them for hours a day, tirelessly promote the good ones on message boards and amongst their friends, and will actually appreciate the effort you put into your work.&lt;p&gt;Also, Donkey Kong was not created by a &amp;quot;lone game developer.&amp;quot; Miyamoto may have designed Donkey Kong by himself, but he had entire team of contract developers at his disposal.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/134790/the_secret_history_of_donkey_kong.php?print=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.gamasutra.com&amp;#x2F;view&amp;#x2F;feature&amp;#x2F;134790&amp;#x2F;the_secret_hist...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://gdri.smspower.org/wiki/index.php/Company:Ikegami_Tsushinki&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;gdri.smspower.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;index.php&amp;#x2F;Company:Ikegami_Tsus...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sergiosgc</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s hard to make the case for the early 90s being the peak of game quality, use Origin as an example, and completely miss out a reference to Roberts Space Industries and Star Citizen.&lt;p&gt;The golden age is in the future, and the future is already here (just not evenly distributed).</text></comment>