We’ve talked a lot about the coming demise of dedicated gaming consoles as mobile gaming takes over. And long-time video game industry analyst Michael Pachter seems to share the same views. In a talk at VentureBeat’s GamesBeat 2015 conference, Pachter talks about how essentially, consoles don’t need to exist. But don’t freak out. Your favorite experiences won’t necessarily go away. Pachter says:
Now let’s fast forward 30 years later … we all have a monitor in our home. We all have a CPU and a GPU. It might be a tablet. It might be a laptop. It’s going to be the iPad Pro. It’ll be the Surface Pro. So once we have that, all we’re really missing is the controller and then wait for all that stuff to talk. And the way that stuff will talk is Chromecast. The AppleTV. So it is very easy to replicate the console experience with a CPU and GPU combo that is pretty damned competitive with current generation consoles. We won’t be there with the iPhone 6S, but we’ll be there with the iPhone 9.
The entire article is worth reading for his thoughts, as I think he’s pretty spot-on. He talks about how “if you want to play Call of Duty, and you don’t want to buy a console because you can’t justify the investment to play one game, we’ll sell it to you a different way. It’s coming. That is happening." Which is true – the big experiences aren’t necessarily going to go away, just the way that we play them will.
Though, I also think that it might be an interesting transitory next few years. Companies are pretty clearly gearing up for a free-to-play shift. You see more elements that started to pop up in mobile games a few years ago – currencies, RPG-style character management, mission systems, microtransactions – coming to prominence in console games. Destiny in particular feels like it’s a stepping stone to “games as a service" that we’ve seen with something like Clash of Clans (Free) which is constantly updated and upgraded.
It’s an interesting time for the gaming industry, for sure.
This has so many parallels to why people don't try to make it as more traditional artists (music, paint, digital, acting). The real answer would be living in a society that doesn't only care about how you can monetize yourself but one that provides and abundance of fair jobs or basic income that allows for ample time to contribute to society (through game creation in this example) and/or raise a family outside of that fair work. Then, again, you would get people who have time and space to make something they love that received more care and attention independent of the need to make something that just takes money (Not "makes" money, Money is not created, it is taken. Even the process of literally making bank notes in actuality effectively makes all the previous bank notes worth less unless you also destroy some old ones.).
TooLongaNoReada:
Again I make the case for dealing with economics inequality as an ultimate fix for pretty much any problem you have.
Post-scarcity markets like Carter mention only work if the surrounding economy is itself post-scarcity, it isn't so creative endeavours like game development will be limited if you can't turn a buck with it. Get past needing it to be monetarily valued and it's pretty open as to what can happen.
Thanks, and I agree. I had to wiki "post-scarcity economy" because I wasn't familiar with the term. Like you, I, and a lot of other commenters are mentioning, we could all reap the benefits of great art if we didn't have to worry as much about financial security. Would there be no impetus to make art though? Stress is a good motivator and shouldn't be completely removed but too much stress paralyzes the system or causes people to beat the system any way they can.
This will work itself out naturally. If the market is oversupplied, then by nature those who continue to develop in it will receive less in return. Eventually, necessity will convince many to do other things. Markets tend toward equilibrium in the long run, whether "we" consciously change behavior or not.
EXACTLY! Exactly! Exactly. Any situation in this (or any other market) -- freemium, abusive IAPs, the indiepocalypse, the abundance of wonderful premium games, good customer support, awful customer support, pixel art -- is the logical result of the sum of the preferences of every customer. It might be weird, painful, or wonderful in the short term, but in the long term, we'll either figure out a way for everyone to fit on the store at the same time and succeed, or we'll have fewer, "better" games that better stand the test of time.
I think a lot of Indie developer problems come from a lack of execution. There's more then a handful of indie developers who make great games consistently to support their small team.
nice article carter.
Very true article. But also strangely encouraging for me as a hobby developer. It means that if I don't make enough to support myself I am not failing. I want to make games that I love and others love. Yes my brother and I have said it would be cool if we could move to making games somewhat part time, but the fact that we are making games people enjoy is super awesome.
It's just like the rainforest - the big dominant trees at the top, nothing in the middle, and all the niche players at the bottom who manage to carve out a little space for themselves, and can survive because they're upkeep is so low.
Sorry, as a geographer and biologist this is a terrible metaphor. Please read up on your tropical forest ecology and the prevalence of multi-story, complex community structures in plant and animal species. :) There are plenty of things that appear in the middle, just like in the game development world. This includes the epiphytes and parasites at all structural and trophic levels that rely on those things they live or feed on (again, just like the game development world).
I'm an indiepocalypse denier, but not the kind who has his head stuck in the sand like Carter thinks some people are. Think about it this way: if the number of indie devs keeps growing, then that must mean the market for indie games keeps growing as well. One is directly proportiate to the other, it's how supply and demand works. However many indie games are being published, there are just as many people to play them.
Carter brings up some good points in this write up, but what he sees as market saturation I see as a thriving industry. Competition is GOOD for the medium because now you can't strike gold just by making a quick score based arcade title any more. If you want to stand out, you have to make something incredibly addictive like Minecraft, incredibly scary (by average standards anyway) like 5 Nights at Freddy's, or just plain unique and compelling like A Dark Room.
Or you can make a mediocre game and just hype the hell out of it on social media (coughSTARCOMMANDcoughcough).
Wow, glad someone else still remembers star command.
But I agree with carter, that there is a saturation that keeps growing. I can't remember a single title that came out last week. I know they were all well-made games with earnest, hopeful people behind the and yet that's the problem. Well-made games just aren't good enough anymore when everyone else is making well-made games too. Nothing was memorable because there's just so much like it. It gets me sad when I think of all the charming, decent games that get lost in the sea of homogenous titles.
This doesn't make me sad at all, it just means that we're seeing an evolving market where niche filling and adaptive radiation is necessary to find markets that sell games. This is a great thing! We don't need 150 clones of flappy bird.. one was enough, and it should drive people to be more creative. The problem is that you're equating earnestness with greatness. Just because you create something that's of reasonable quality doesn't mean that it should earn you a ton of success. If it's truly great, then like cream it should rise to the top. Which, if it's truly great and unique maybe you don't even need luck or marketing.. but we've arrived at the time where we have so much quality that developers shouldn't demand selling more copies they should be demanding more money for their really high quality, niche productions.
I like the suggestion that more people should develop as a hobby, if only because it will give us more games that are focused on good gameplay and fun, rather than monetization. Hobbyists will make games they want to play. No hobbyist sits down and makes Age of War or Clash of Clans or Dungeon Keeper (the mobile one), because those are bad games. A hobbyist could take the same concept, strip out all of the timers, premium currencies, and everything else that gets in the way of actually playing the game, and have something that's way more fun to play.
It would be like the modding community on PC. It's just a bunch of people who want to make cool things releasing those things to anyone who wants to try them (I recognize that some modders would love to make money, but as a community that isn't the goal). The existence of the modding community doesn't reduce quality of the products coming from for-profit studios, they are different people with different motivations for making games.
It seems Amazon's recent inspired move has slipped under the radar- they're paying devs to provide their games free, with all free IAPs. This really is a very good sign and ought to be commended (and copied). Something like a yearly subscription to mobile play stores in exchange for similar free content would work too. Only problem is they've just found the new Underground App appears to be leaching people's data and contacts, but it's still an interesting idea.
This is one of the best TA articles I've read in a while. I appreciate the admission that timing/luck remains a big factor behind success stories.
Long before iphone game development was a thing, there were people coding games and releasing them for free. There were contests where the winner could notch up recognition and modest prizes.
The AppStore has made most of that irrelevant. Now, the contest is the AppStore itself. The winners gets a TA or Apple feature, and the potential prizes are much larger.
Making games can be almost as fun as playing them. Even if the AppStore provided no mechanism for developers to earn money, I'm quite sure that people would still be churning out quirky, interesting games.
As tallgeese states, this is little different from the traditional arts - there are plenty of folk who love writing, or acting, or painting. A few will go on to make lots of money. The vast majority will not, but that doesn't mean they won't have fun doing it.
It's definitely acceptable to be a weekend warrior who puts out games in her/his spare time.
Sadly, that's why my first game inches toward completion a year after I'd wanted it done... the day job must come first, if the game is something you give away for the fun of it.
I'd give anything to be able to put out 2 games a year, full time. This cannot, however, happen. So... hobby it is!
What game what's that in the final image I forgot.
Great post! If you're trying to be a full time developer, since luck can't be fabricated, it is necessary to focus on things you can control. For us, key words are quality, finding a cool angle on a project and trenching yourself up in preparation for a long war.
Let's say that there's 4 states that define financial success: irrelevant, surviving, living and thriving.
1 on 100 devs are going to be relatively successful (surviving or living), which is mostly achievable with things you can control. 1 on 1000 are going to make a hit that makes real money (living or thriving), which is achievable with luck.
If you stay in the top 1% dev tier and manage to survive for long enough, at some point you might have a lucky strike that will put you in the 1/1000 tier, which will place you in a 'living' or 'thriving' state.
Being a weekend warrior is fine, though it might restrain the type of games you can go for, unless you team up with a lot of people or are ready to spend 10 years on it.
I like this article.
Devs make games that are cool and fun and all the rest is bonus!
As for the overpopulation, Looking at what I bought the past few months I'd say there is still plenty of room.