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Indiepocalypse

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Samuel411, Oct 5, 2015.

  1. Samuel411

    Samuel411

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    Yes, That's what I meant when I said, "Even though it is lucky that a youtuber picked up flappy bird". They already reached step 3 by the time the youtuber downloaded their game, now the dev can "control" whether or not the youtuber makes a video at this point due to the quality of the game and the hook.
     
  2. GarBenjamin

    GarBenjamin

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    How can the devs control that? How many games does PewDiePie review in a week? Let's say eventually there are 1,000 quality games released per week. Or even 100 quality games per week. Can PewDiePie review them all?
     
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  3. Samuel411

    Samuel411

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    He will review games that will give him something to talk about in a video and generate him views. Though I also said that once he downloads the game, not only takes a quick glance at them but rather downloaded them and has played. That reduces the number to maybe 10-30 games a week.
     
  4. angrypenguin

    angrypenguin

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    I suspect that number is a bit optimistic considering that we're talking about people who do this for a living.

    Regardless, how many games does he review per week? Getting downloaded is irrelevant. Air time is the only thing that matters.

    How? Can you identify one action the developer can take at this point which has a certain or near certain outcome of the developer making a video of their game over all other games?

    You say that the control exists in the quality of the game, but that isn't true in this scenario. That happens back in step 1. That ship has long since sailed by the time he downloads your game. There are things you can have already done to increase your chances of having your game picked from the 30, but you can not guarantee it.

    To me "luck" is something outside of my control which will improve my success if it happens, and that's exactly what we're talking about here.
     
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  5. Samuel411

    Samuel411

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    I just got back from eating some soup and thinking it over and realized now that yes there are other factors outside of anyone's control such as the games released that week, what is happening in the reviewers life, etc that can change which game does actually get reviewed.

    I was thinking in terms that it was not lucky by thinking that the reviewer will look through every game again and see which one will help them get more viewers and what can be something cool or good to review that day. Reviewers don't toss a pair of dice when deciding what to review. In FB case or other cases there could have been thousands of other factors that actually got FB a spot on the review I have no idea. FB is a really peculiar and interesting case. Maybe in an alternate universe pewdiepie never reviewed it and it never got any downloads...
     
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  6. GarBenjamin

    GarBenjamin

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    I can see where you're coming from and am sure they do put some thought into which games they cover. I just doubt they even look at all of the games released each week. There are something like 600 games released per day on mobile. I doubt he actually looks through more than a few hundred games total each week and maybe far less. That's the whole flooded market thing at work. The rate of game releases is way beyond a person's ability to check them out. And I am betting there are many times he chooses a poorer quality game simply because he didn't have time to dig through another 10 to find a really cool undiscovered game.
     
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  7. tiggus

    tiggus

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    Personally I believe it is part of the cultural shift over the last 5 years to valuing the ability to code for many professions. You have a LOT of successful entrepeneurs and business folks pushing the idea that even if your job is not related to programming you need to be able to code now to understand how the world works. I can't even count how many new hires I've run into in IT who have CS backgrounds simply because, even though they have no intention of being programmers.

    It's a small jump to firing up Unity and making a game when the whim strikes. Also lets be honest, if you are of average intelligence and you actually follow a few of the tutorials on the Unity website or on youtube, you can make the equivalent of flappy bird fairly quickly, and you'l;l probably upload it to the app stores because....why not?
     
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  8. Kiwasi

    Kiwasi

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    This. I'm a chemical engineer. My job is about pipes and pumps and why haven't we make the shipment that was due out last Friday and how to prevent a chlorine leak from wiping out the neighbourhood.

    Turns out one of the most valued skills that differentiates me from all of my colleges in the business is the ability to program. I can make a computer do things that many of my associates never dreamed about. (Admittedly they tend to use computers in a similar manner to a type writer.)

    This lead to a weird sort of cycle where I've started shifting into more and more of a computer development role. Making games has naturally supported the cycle. Turns out the same type of set up for iterating through a set of enemies and applying damage to them all can be used to iterate through a set of spreadsheets and crunch the data into something meaningful. I recently had to iterate through a 1GB data set (50 instruments measured every minute for the last 6 months). Turns out my understanding of memory limitations and optimisation techniques was very applicable.

    The future seems very much open to someone who has the skills of a regular profession plus some basic programming. Making games is a pretty great way to keep your code and logic skills sharp.
     
  9. goat

    goat

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    When I started programming you never heard the term 'subject matter experts' because computers were not nearly so pervasive as today so often you were expected to learn the subject matter from the experts' documents. Mostly the domain of business accounting, physics, math, and general databases which hardly any biological or chemical sciences involved.

    Now over the past 25 year as programming has become abstracted and easier so programmers are less valued as programmers in and of itself and businesses search for the best subject matter experts because, well, if you're in business in a particular subject it's better to have experts in that subject than in programming. Now the really good programmers are working designing simulation, calculation, and database environments that subject matter experts must program to do their job.

    One reason I think making games is so popular is because if the game has a bug it's not the disaster for the game player say if you sold them an app that is supposed to tell them when to tune-up the car and you missed that change date by enough margin to blow-up their car engine.
     
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  10. Kiwasi

    Kiwasi

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    This is true too. Forget blowing up a car. I've worked on projects where you have the potential to blow up the neighbourhood and everyone in it. Games are a relatively low stress way to code.
     
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  11. goat

    goat

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    Well I can't say everywhere I worked that might be more interesting to the forum goers but I did once cause over 6000 retail stores daily POS reports to fail once and I had left for vacation. :) Turns out in accounting you put the minus signs after the number for negative entries. Subject matter experts are important.
     
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  12. zombiegorilla

    zombiegorilla

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    A good chunk of my extended family works in the medical profession. Yea... a bad day for me is a world apart from a bad day for them. :)
     
  13. zombiegorilla

    zombiegorilla

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    snicker...
     
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  14. Kiwasi

    Kiwasi

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    :p
     
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  15. Samlin

    Samlin

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    Exposure is the key.

    In any Digital store (like Apple's app store or Steam), there can only be 'one' front page. Browsing with proper category settings applied allows users to see games according to their preferences but most people have a limit to how many pages they would be willing to view. In the past there were few pages for any indie game category in Steam but now there are hundreds per category and it will get worse.

    A game made in 30 minutes and one made in 3 years will both take the same space in a store's page (excluding any paid advertising if available), as more games are added the probability of finding your game is reduced.

    An even worse offender is that poorly made games act as a 'deterrent' to those who played them, a negative reinforcer that reduces the probability that users will continue to look for new indie games in the future. Users will become conditioned that games from unknown developers are poor and that exploring the store for those games is a waste of time.

    Those who are still looking to enjoy new experiences will turn to other means of exploration like Youtube, games featured by popular streamers will get the attention, streamers act as a filter against 30 minute games and poorly made ones, users will see themselves more rewarded by this form of exploration.

    Basically, it all comes down to marketing and exposure, which is a tremendous field in it's own and not something a 'Lone' indie dev can tackle alone (or pay for alone), even larger teams fail at this.
     
    Last edited: Oct 7, 2015
  16. Tomnnn

    Tomnnn

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    The game market was saturated before I was born. A lot of people don't realize how many unheard of, unsuccessful and low quality games there are for nintendo. I PLAYED ADVENTURE64! My goodness that game was lacking direction, instruction, art, etc.
     
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  17. Teo

    Teo

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    This is a major mistake for different stores. I know everybody should have same chances for visibility. But something does not look fair here.
     
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  18. imaginaryhuman

    imaginaryhuman

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    As a parallel, think about the fact that most games on iOs are selling for less than $5, and mostly less than $1. Considering what kind of game quality you get for $1, including games that potentially have huge budgets, that's absolutely insane. Yet it for some reason doesn't stop people continuing to make games and churn then out and then sell them for a tiny slither of what they are worth, figuring the sheer volume of users will hopefully make up for the pathetic profits. What did many businesses do to try to adapt to this awful, unsustainable scenario. .. they innovated and came up with free-to-play. There may be a S***-tonne of indies all vying for attention, but this scenario still seems to be far removed from the measly $1 asking price for an iOS game. I think we have a way to go before things are so super saturated that everyone is asking $1 for a game they spent 2 years making.
     
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  19. imaginaryhuman

    imaginaryhuman

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    There were always also bad and good games for as long as there have been games. Same with any medium, movies, music, etc. Tonnes of sub-par stuff, some really super bad stuff, and a few high-budget (mostly) good ones. Thinking back to the Amgia days for example I recall many quite horrible games in amongst the better ones. Back then you were either a 'shareware' author or commercial, there was no indie or AAA. But then again, there were also 100 times fewer developers.
     
  20. LaneFox

    LaneFox

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    I look at it as the market purging itself of garbage. The best products float and there are companies that will pick up the best indie products for publishing.

    Make a good product, you'll be fine.
    Make sub-standard products and now it won't be tolerated because there's tons of that crap.

    The Indie boom brought a lot of fresh air, saw a measure of success and increased accessibility and now the market is stabilizing the influx of garbage. The greenlight stuff? Look at it as Steam offering you a tiny shopcorner in NYC. Do what you will with it, but whining about it gets you nothing. No one is entitled to success or customers.

    Also don't forget that we are all part of this mass of developers so whining about there being too many developers is basically saying you're part of the problem.
     
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  21. imaginaryhuman

    imaginaryhuman

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    I know this makes sense sort of in theory... however, there is such a thing as a search engine, and it's up to the search engine to identify products with as much relevancy as possible. For people who know what they are looking for this usually means much more likelihood of getting found. That's a different navigational approach than sifting through categories or generally browsing from the top down. If you can create enough buzz outside of the store itself that people would come and just type in the name of what they're trying to find, knowing that to browse for it is nonsense, unless it's a really popular hit (which would then maybe prove that they can't find it so they resort to search), they're still likely to find it whether there are 100 or 10000 games out there. It's up to you to make sure there are ways of discovering your game and raising awareness about it beyond the store itself. Same thing if you run a website, you can't just talk about what your game is doing within the website, you have to go out into the network and drive inbound traffic using other strategies.

    Also I agree with the above comment... there will always be good games that people know about and find and want to play regardless of all the other noise. You just need to make sure you're making a 'good game'.
     
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  22. Teila

    Teila

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    Maybe...but I still think a lot of is coming from the "age of game playing" rather than from working professionals who are bored and make games. I imagine that is a very small percentage of the professionals out there. I think I have met one other person ever in my community or connected to my circle who makes games...outside the internet forums or Unity events. There is a small group in a nearby city but it is tiny compared to the size of the city. :)

    I have teenagers and a significant percentage of teenagers I meet through them, whether they be homeschoolers, public/private school kids, middle schoolers, or high schoolers, have an idea for a game. When they find out I make games, they all pitch me their ideas, tell me their plans to make games someday. I encourage them and my son has even tutored a few kids in Unity. Some are going into CS or IT fields, others are artistic so will drift that way. I have a feeling many will at least try to do something related to games. Look at all those for-profit schools out there, churning out kids with game development degrees who work years of internships for peanuts? Why would those schools do so well if it were not for the ever ready crop of kids who will go $100k into debt to get these degrees?

    I remember when my son was young and struggling with reading and writing..he told me that games were the only thing he did well. I remember when I wanted to be an "author" because I thought writing was what I did well. I think this is common and with games so pervasive in our world, even to the point where I see people out to dinner, playing games on their phones, not even interacting, why would it not seem an obvious career choice to many kids?

    BTW, kids to me is anyone under 30. LOL It is all relative.
     
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  23. Deleted User

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    We don't hear about how most people do it either, the "boring" way..

    "Well I worked my way up over many years, had losses for a fair while. Gained, improved, found a segment market in which my games worked well and created marketing campaigns outside usual channels. I found success after many years of hard dedication and work."

    Not exactly headline grabbing stuff there.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Oct 7, 2015
  24. Kiwasi

    Kiwasi

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    This is true. For many players making something in Unity is more engaging then any game in the market.
     
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  25. Gigiwoo

    Gigiwoo

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    +1 for truth.
     
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  26. Tomnnn

    Tomnnn

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    Mandatory screenshots & videos from your game. That'll make it fair. The quality between 30mins and 3 years should show ;)

    That is a burn directed at digital homicide
     
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