Thread 723424041

>game development gets democratized through indie games
>everyone only makes slop

When I was growing up I had this notion that people had dream games they desperately wanted to make, but it turns out I was wrong

>>723424041 (OP)
>everyone only makes slop
correction: you only saw slop because you're bad at looking for good games

>>723424297
correction: it's not a person making this thread, it's a PR goblin working for an agency on behalf of some massive publisher

>>723424041 (OP)
All you need is one dude to make fat cash with minimal effort - Vampire Survivors, Lethal Company, tower defense trash, take your pick - and everyone wants in on that gravy. The only one making a profit here here is Steam, $100 to upload a game and zero downloads means no real operating costs.

>>723424571
>Lethal Company,
Lethal Company is an example of genuine soul because it was one 20 year old's solodev project using largely original assets with a concept that hadn't been overplayed yet. It's not bad just because a million shitty copies like REPO came after.

>>723424653
Pro tip: if a game can have a million shitty copies made of it, it was a bad game

>>723424041 (OP)
Vinny Vinesauce on the right

>>723424653
REPO is the best in the genre though

>>723424696
Bust-A-Move 4 is God Tier, even if there a million and one terrible Puzzle Bobble clones out there

>>723424041 (OP)
yes, success breeds clones trying to cash in on the hype
this is not unique to video games
it has been happening since humans began trading goods and services.

>>723424041 (OP)
Post this on reddit and you get fags like >723424297 patting themselves on the back.

>>723424041 (OP)
I'm working on my dream game, but I can afford to do that because I already have s job to make money. If I were unemployed and about to run out of money, I could see myself working on all kinds of slop to try and make some quick buck

>>723424041 (OP)
I’m not sure I really feel comfortable ever buying anything on Steam again now that Gay Ben owns that brain chip startup.

Uses your filters man, you arent forced to allow tags like LGBT and Walking Sim in your searches.

get this shit tier twitter meme out of here

>>723424041 (OP)
look into forever winter it's fire. Game industry laid of thousands of talented programmers and some are making a game.

>>723424571
Steam wants to sell games. They're pretty neutral and highlight non slop games to some degree for nextfests. The featured games are a cut above the usual shovelware being pumped out every day. There is some shit in the mix but unfortunately its their because people are buying.

>>723424041 (OP)
>be vamp surv dev
>copy crimson land (who wasn't original either)
>everyone and their dogs now think you invented genre
sad

>>723424297
>>723424379
correction: couldnt post a single indie game to prove OP wrong

>>723424041 (OP)
But vinny loves vampire survivor clones

>>723424041 (OP)
we are living in a golden age OP. Thousands of games are being released every year and yes, lots of it is shovel wear just like in the 90's with shitty copy-paste asteroid rip-offs, yes. But also, holy shit. There are DIAMONDS in there. Strange an interesting games. Games are getting easier to make, they are becoming disposable, but also possible when ones would not have been before.

Abiotic factor, EXO rally, Tall trails, glory to goo, lorns lure, battlebit, bloodline,

>>723426754
>we are living in a golden age OP
No we're not lol

Stopped reading there btw

>game development gets democratized through indie games
what the actual FUCK does this mean

name 1 (one)(uno) game with good ratings and good tidings

>>723426754
you could say the same about every console generation ever
just admit nobody wants to actually try and look out for good games.

>>723426570
i will shill ultra cop

>>723424041 (OP)
>everyone only makes slop
No, YOU only SEE slop, because your taste is so fucking pedestrian that the steam™®© algorithm has you pegged as a smooth-brained consumer of asset flips and survivalcraft garbage. There are dozens of genuinely soulful games released every month, but you're too busy crying about the latest fotm trash to ever find them. You don't have a discovery problem, you have a taste problem. Post your library. I fucking dare you. Let's see all the
>hidden gems
you've supposedly played you phucking tourist.

>>723424696
>mario
>ddr
>starcraft
>street fighter
shut the fuck up turbofaggot

>>723427291
no one should sort through steam every day. You can't. Influencers, word of mouth, advertisements, the boneyard of gaming websites, nextfest threads, steam picks, youtubers like splattercat, curators of all sorts. Its a golden age because their are less men in suits deciding what does and doesnt get made.

Like Im looking at Extinction day right now on nexfest and Im like, wow, that was a shitty flash game (contagion???)- no one would ever let this get past the whiteboard pitch in a studio.

>>723427812
>There are dozens of genuinely soulful games released every month
No there aren't lol

>>723428130
All shit believe it or not

>>723427627
What kinda game is this, robocop clone?

>>723428267
>Its a golden age because their are less men in suits deciding what does and doesnt get made.
Men in suits decided what gets made and what doesn't in the actual golden age of vidya, these days it's shit on the industry front and shit on the indie front, seems more like a general people problem

>>723428624
it's a small sandbox shooter, bigish levels with enemies and some goals you must complete.
4 levels 3 or so hours gameplay for 2$

A Game about feeding a black hole feels pretty good if you enjoy those silly timer based incrementals I don't think anything is topping astro prospector anytime soon tho.

>>723428671
the elephant in the room is that people stopped paying 60 dollars for a highly anticipated game due to the influx of cheap trashy alternatives. Playing lethal company for ten dollars, or vamp survivors for 3 bucks was not free, it cost other devs a massive sale, a DLC unnoticed, time spent away from them etc.

But you have to admit, we did leave them for cheap trashy games that showed an ounce of soul. Lethal companies amazing innovation was to..... have voice chat. Fuck the golden age of parenting me with software too afraid to let me even meet other people.

>Normalfags discover the series I like
>Every series and genre this happens to gets dumbed down, casualized and ruined
>But games are for everyone chud!
>Now normalfags are being catered to with droves of games that literally play themselves
Get me out of here man

>>723429264
It's starting to happen to me more times than not. Monster Hunter was a big one and has made me more protective of my favorite series going forward

I try to be as respectful as I can whenever coming to new series like final fantasy or digimon

>>723424041 (OP)
This website is 3000 garbage threads for every one good thread but it doesn't stop me from looking.

>>723424721
I like how the original artist meant for it to be himself, but vinnys audience just stole the meme so hard he went "okay fine whatever".

>>723424041 (OP)
Democratization = scam legalization
Gaben opened the gates and allowed anyone to publish almost anything for $100 fee it ended up in 18k games per year, almost 50 per day. What strategy is more profitable with those numbers, one game you made with effort, or some asset flip crap that can get popular because of streamers? Gaben turned steam into a casino where every dev pays $100 to try their luck

>>723424041 (OP)
Turns out the higher barrier of entry was a good thing. Lots of classics were indies. Doom was an indie game.

>>723426339
>Forever winter
Need to be cooked for years, they really fucked up wuth releasing game in such condition.

>>723429264
>>723429931
remember anons gatekeeping is always good to do

the fastest and best example is those pirating sites being shared 2 much. only for them to be finally taken down because fucking retards couldnt keep to themselves

>>723426754
>we are living in a golden age
not even you believe this

>>723426570
If you’re using that tactic to get people to post good games, it doesn’t work because everyone expects the next line to be "that’s shit" sight unseen.

>>723429264
You're the only constant in this equation here. Maybe you're only getting into series that are already casualized for the "i'm totally hardcore" audience that love souls shit.

>>723424696
Any one who says pro tip is a faggot whose opinions are not worth listening to

>>723424653
Repo is way better

>>723424041 (OP)
>Vinny declining to play more survivorslop
yeah fucking right

>>723424041 (OP)
I do have a dream game i absolutely want to make, but i need to create and sell low effort streamer slop for 10 years to fund it first.

>>723426570
I'll shill this shmup/third person shooter demo we put out at next fest then. You might or might not like it but at least it's not another clone of a popular indie roguelike, right?

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2980450/Cliax_Codec/

>>723430204
>Gaben opened the gates and allowed anyone to publish almost anything for $100 fee
thats just capitalism retard

>>723430245
>Doom
That's a dumb example.
>Turns out the higher barrier of entry was a good thing.
No, it wasn't. It's better to have 10 good and 1000 trash games, then just 1 good game.

>>723430204
You're retarded if you think that $100 fee has any real impact on the money Valve makes. It's only there because people were fucking around too much, back when it was free.

>>723430204
It's not Steam that opened the floodgates, it was free engines and asset stores

>>723430245
Skyrim was also an Indie game.

>>723432729
No, it was Steam and later itch.io
free engines existed 30 years ago. royalty free assets and just plain stealing existed 30 years ago.
But 30 years ago, slop was freeware and a stepping stone to making something better.
Now, 'developers' start monetizing their helloworld.exe

>>723433007
back then you would slap your shovelware together with flash and put it on some flash portal like NG.

>>723424041 (OP)
>Deckbuilders
>Roguelites
>Survivor-likes
>[x] simulators
>Browser-tier garbage
All dopamine slop. PCfags have become no better than parents and normalfags who played Angry Birds and Candy Crush.

>>723433689
I was thinking a bit earlier than the flash era, but yes that's the gist of it.
Used to be you put it somewhere for free, now it's on a store for $2.99

>>723429264
Reminder that for every 1 instance where you're on this side, there are 2 instances of you being the secondary nigger making the ruined version of another thing popular

>>723424041 (OP)
Unfortunately, the market is over-saturated and there doesn't seem to be a correlation between quality and profit. If only quality games were profitable, then people would only make quality games. But many games are very profitable without having quality and many quality games aren't profitable, which causes a slop factory that drowns out any quality games.

It's actually very similar to the circumstances that caused the video game crash of 1983, albeit the industry is far too large now to ever crash like that again. But the sea of slop does mean people will probably stop trying to sift though thousands of bad games to find the one good one, which will only punish indie devs who actually try even more.

>>723430245
>Doom was an indie game.
An "indie game" by developers who had already established themselves in the market, were talented in their own right, and signed a distribution deal with a real company to get into stores across the country.

>>723426431
If only they knew as much about video games as you do.

>>723424041 (OP)
>When I was growing up I had this notion that people had dream games they desperately wanted to make, but it turns out I was wrong
Those "dream games" often require a substantial budget and a team of talented people working for 6 months, so unless you're a multi-millionaire who invested in a studio that's not happening.

>>723437219
>working for 6 months

You're correct, but it's usually way more than 6 months too.

>The average salary for computer programmers in the U.S. is approximately $107,000 per year
>The average Digital Artist salary in the United States is $129,742 as of September 01, 2025
>The average salary for a musician in the United States is approximately $52,833 per year, with an average hourly pay of about $51.05

So if you wanted to have 1 programmer, 1 artist, and 1 music/sound guy work on a game for a year in the US it'd cost you around $300,000. That's way more than 99% of indie devs can afford to spend, and that team is way too small for 99% of games people envision when they think "if I made a game it'd be X"

It'd be nice is there was a market for mid-budget games, but it seems like they'd either get drowned in slop or overshadowed by whatever the latest AAA buggy broken betrayal of a franchise is.

>>723424041 (OP)
games were ALWAYS just ripping each other off
>see every doom/pong/spaceinvders/ clone when it was the hot thing

>>723424041 (OP)
Plenty of indies make their dream games, you just don't count them because you personally dislike the genre or visuals.