This is the end result of the Internet on practically any creative endeavor. You can see it in books, movies, music, wherever you look: too much supply, not enough demand to make a living wage. Ironically, this means that games are finally proven to be art: you can’t make any money making them, just like any other art form! Yay!
More seriously, it also indicates that “commodity games” are kind of… done. When gaming was characterized by the seemingly endless upgrade treadmill of the 80s, 90s, and early 00s, the “latest and greatest” mattered a lot more than it does now. Super Mario Bros. was a vast improvement over its predecessors. Super Mario Bros. 3 was an improvement over that. Super Mario World was still larger, with more features and better graphics. Mario 64 was 3D, which had never been done… and then the treadmill slowed down a little. Sunshine had better graphics. Galaxy and Odyssey… have better graphics.
In the indie world, it’s even worse. In 2018, I can either spend $15 on a new (probably “early access”) roguelike with pixel graphics or I can play one of the half dozen or so roguelikes with pixel graphics that I’ve gotten on sale in the past but never beaten. Platformers are a dime a dozen, almost literally in some bundles.
This is the future of gaming in a nutshell:
1-16 of over 5,000 results for Kindle Store : Kindle eBooks : Science Fiction & Fantasy : Fantasy : Last 30 days
There’s a reason the “starving artist” is a trope.
If this article is to be believed, the desired future of commodity games is an app store’s daily login bonus stomping on a gacha roller’s face, forever
This is the end result of the Internet on practically any creative endeavor. You can see it in books, movies, music, wherever you look: too much supply, not enough demand to make a living wage. Ironically, this means that games are finally proven to be art: you can’t make any money making them, just like any other art form! Yay!
More seriously, it also indicates that “commodity games” are kind of… done. When gaming was characterized by the seemingly endless upgrade treadmill of the 80s, 90s, and early 00s, the “latest and greatest” mattered a lot more than it does now. Super Mario Bros. was a vast improvement over its predecessors. Super Mario Bros. 3 was an improvement over that. Super Mario World was still larger, with more features and better graphics. Mario 64 was 3D, which had never been done… and then the treadmill slowed down a little. Sunshine had better graphics. Galaxy and Odyssey… have better graphics.
In the indie world, it’s even worse. In 2018, I can either spend $15 on a new (probably “early access”) roguelike with pixel graphics or I can play one of the half dozen or so roguelikes with pixel graphics that I’ve gotten on sale in the past but never beaten. Platformers are a dime a dozen, almost literally in some bundles.
This is the future of gaming in a nutshell:
There’s a reason the “starving artist” is a trope.
If this article is to be believed, the desired future of commodity games is an app store’s daily login bonus stomping on a gacha roller’s face, forever