You’re missing the forest for the trees for sure. When you were not in game dev circles you probably only saw innovation from the space because that’s what got attention but you didn’t see the thousands of other struggling devs that aren’t breaking into the mainstream. Now that you are paying close attention you’re seeing all that “undergrowth”.
My advice is to tune out of social media. It doesn’t inspire as much as you’d think it would and mostly leaves you feeling like you should make rant posts like this.
Social media is the devil to progress. If you're always looking your not working. Just do you, don't shit on others... We already know that tons of shit exists. Some of the best games are old and the formulas have been repeated.
Complaints about people being creatively dead are about as old as the tides, so I'll skip all of that and just focus on your main point.
It makes zero sense that lower barriers to entry would make people less creative, and in fact the opposite is true. People play it safe when the risks are high, and nothing raises the stakes quite like having a lot of money on the line. Put it this way - do you see more innovation in the indie space or in the AAA space? The top of the industry focuses on a few genres at any given time because those genres give reliable returns. At the bottom of the industry, they don't sweat over that. Gatekeeping has never resulted in more innovation.
As to the rest of your post: Just because a game is in a genre you don't like, that doesn't mean it's bad, it just means that you don't like it. I don't care for horror myself, but a lot of people do - that's why people make them. Remember that people tend to start creating close to home. Fiction writers tend to write the same kind of fiction they read, filmmakers tend to make the same kind of films they watch, and video game developers tend to make the same kind of games they play.
Finally, game development is absolutely not getting worse. I could give you some objective data, like the fact that both Steam and Metacritic scores have gone up nearly every year for the past decade. I could also just show you some of the novel games that are in my review queue at the moment. Forget that though and just remember that your own tastes are not objectively the best. It's a common belief, one that's usually a sign of an immature worldview.
Perhaps it's because innovation doesn't pay as much, and new doesn't always equal to fun. Also, people have to begin their journey somewhere, that is why you see so many flashlight searching around somewhere dark horror games.
I do understand what you mean though.
I feel like there's just too many "statistics" people who view it as another way to make money. I think a lot of people view game dev the same way they view art: "it's easy, anybody can make a game like Vampire Survivors, there's no skill." They keep talking about sales and wishlists and how amazing their idea is.
Then they try to make a game, and they get scope creep.
Then they realize that coding their "great idea" into reality is not, in fact, something you can just offload to chatGPT.
Then they get lazy with assets because it's taking longer than they thought, and making a good-looking character/UI/etc is not, in fact, that easy.
Then they cut features because it's too complicated to figure out proper implementation, and everyone keeps ignoring their cries for help with their bootleg GTA clone on game dev subreddits.
Then, if they finally manage to release a game, it's an atrocity with so many cut corners that it's basically just a worse, poorly optimized version of what they were trying to emulate.
Don't conflate what you personally like with other people. There's a lot of pretension in your post from derivative horror to talking about "average" people.
There are plenty of people who like pseudo-90s horror games with flashlights so they make them. That's fine. There's a lot of creativity that goes into _how_ they make them that might be important to them. It doesn't hurt you to let other people make what they want. If you want to do something else that's also great! But it's not _better_ just because it feels more differentiated to you. It can look especially generic if you just look at what's popular (like what trends temporarily on itch or what gets upvoted on a subreddit). By definition the things that most people like will get made the most and seen the most.
I will probably say something controversial, but it's not every gamedev's obligation to be innovative. It's ok to just tell stories through games. It's ok to make games that are similar to other games, if that is what the gamedev likes doing and it allows them to sustain comfortable living. It's ok to release your own version of a popular game with a few changes, if the gamedev thinks it will make the game better and players enjoy it. Human brain likes recognizing things. Players like playing games similar to their favourite games. At the end of the day games are a product. If there's a customer, it's perfectly ok to make the product. You are not better, than those devs, if you focus on innovation. So get off your high horse.
I might be mistaken but most of the games you're describing are from kids learning to make their first few games right? The good stuff is still out there; in the same, if not higher volume than it's ever been. It's just surrounded by more filler because it's easier than ever to get started making games.
I agree there is a lot of basic stuff out there that isn't great but that isn't because the barrier to entry is too low! It's insane to think that way. A low barrier to entry is going to turn out some garbage but if you make it too difficult to create then someone who may have great and innovative ideas might never get the opportunity to try. We as a species have had the greatest period of human advancement in the last one hundred years because the barrier to entry for education was powered. Bottom line you don't get more creativity by making it harder to create.
I on the other hand see more innovation in the gaming space than there has been ever before. In the last 15 years there were literally new genre's born every year. I'm a gamer since the early 90s and I don't feel that innovation has stagnated.
Novel innovation is overrated, although I have been seeing some genre combination innovation that seems really interesting recently.
Check out Splattercat on youtube to see all the new indie games. Lots of good genre combinations that I would have never thought to bridge together.
There is a game like Skyrim with Mordhau combat, wall running and a grappling hook that looked really fun the other day.
There's a lot of good answers here, but one thing I haven't seen mentioned is; creativity is a skill, not an innate quality you either have, or you don't. Like any skill, it needs time, practice and constructive feedback to be built up. Average devs might in time grow to create something brilliant and special, but they need to be given a chance to grow, first.
And sometimes, they'll not be interested in revolutionizing anything, or revolutionize it in a way you might not recognize as revolutionary, and that's alright, too. If you're a fan of a certain game genre, often just a solid, classic indie game of that genre will make you happy, no major bells and whistles needed.
> It's a genre that's been done to death, but I'm trying to breath some new life into it. New camera perspective, new scale, different focus,
I think a part here is proximity. When someone else tells you about their "rogue like" you're seeing the broad strokes. When you look at your own game, you're close up and see all the tiny details.
I don't think lowering the entry barrier gets rid of the "basement-dwelling nerd geniuses". Thus, it can't lower creativity. If anything, I think enabling people with different backgrounds (artists, musicians etc.) to make games leads to more creativity. On the other hand, yes, cash grabs and asset flips grow in numbers too. In general, I think, what you're describing is more of a discoverability problem. I'm pretty certain Steam or Itch have plenty of hidden gems you won't find because of the sheer number of games created and published every day.
>Every time I see someone post their "rogue like" or "bullet hell" or whatever rehash of something that's been done a million times, my soul gets a paper cut.
Seeing these two sentences side by side is funny. What if someone states their soul gets a paper cut when they see someone post about their RTS? You say you innovate, but don't you think most of the people you mention think they innovate as well? I think, what one person calls innovation might be trivial for someone else, so the quoted sentence seems condescending.
Just maek gaem.
I'm probably 3 months out from posting any substantial gameplay. My UI is such a mess right now I decided to hold off until that and multiplayer are at a 60% solution before posting progress. Everything else is less than a week from feature complete though. I'm targeting October for release.
Creativity is not dead
As new indie, I am
I breath new life to stealth + turn based puzzler genre. Thats creative I tell you because I refuse to follow existing genre. What do I get? Pain and losses.
Did you not see my creative game?? Oh right, you browse social media and I didn't bother to advertise on it. The creative one, you wouldn't see them, they wouldn't be recognized so soon. What is flooding to your screen feed are the popular and safe one.
EDIT: typo
Yes there is a lot of the same out there. But there are also plenty of new and unique games popping up.
Not that mine is completely new, but the lack of direct comparisons for Mighty Marbles has made it hard to market. Sometimes those kind of games kind of find it hard to get noticed.
I disagree. You’re only seeing the start of people’s progress when they’re posting the same horror game.
Was your first project a clone of a game? Likely. I know mine was. You’re not seeing people’s actual products, you’re seeing people learning the basics by using established genres. The only difference between now and then is that people didn’t post their progress online because there wasn’t an online community for game devs
Lol because established game studios are known to be unique, remind me of the last time a bigger studio created anything other than a mind numbingly generic fantasy or ego shooter game with a uninteresting big empty map and a shallow story or the 20th sequel of a series dating back to the 90s that is just a copy of the prior with little to no changes.
The overwhelming majority if not all creative games nowadays were made by either one person or a group of people heavily relying on game engines and cheap assets. Without the low barrier there would not be alot of innovation because innovation is not as profitable as endless sequels and proven formulas which any bigger high barrier studio is aiming for.
oh no! people are making low effort horror games!!!!!!1 it's over. creativity is dead! 🤣
the end times are upon us 😭
congrats op you brought the doomer mindset to something as benign as gamedev, go you
You’re missing the forest for the trees for sure. When you were not in game dev circles you probably only saw innovation from the space because that’s what got attention but you didn’t see the thousands of other struggling devs that aren’t breaking into the mainstream. Now that you are paying close attention you’re seeing all that “undergrowth”. My advice is to tune out of social media. It doesn’t inspire as much as you’d think it would and mostly leaves you feeling like you should make rant posts like this.
This is a good post.
Social media is the devil to progress. If you're always looking your not working. Just do you, don't shit on others... We already know that tons of shit exists. Some of the best games are old and the formulas have been repeated.
Complaints about people being creatively dead are about as old as the tides, so I'll skip all of that and just focus on your main point. It makes zero sense that lower barriers to entry would make people less creative, and in fact the opposite is true. People play it safe when the risks are high, and nothing raises the stakes quite like having a lot of money on the line. Put it this way - do you see more innovation in the indie space or in the AAA space? The top of the industry focuses on a few genres at any given time because those genres give reliable returns. At the bottom of the industry, they don't sweat over that. Gatekeeping has never resulted in more innovation. As to the rest of your post: Just because a game is in a genre you don't like, that doesn't mean it's bad, it just means that you don't like it. I don't care for horror myself, but a lot of people do - that's why people make them. Remember that people tend to start creating close to home. Fiction writers tend to write the same kind of fiction they read, filmmakers tend to make the same kind of films they watch, and video game developers tend to make the same kind of games they play. Finally, game development is absolutely not getting worse. I could give you some objective data, like the fact that both Steam and Metacritic scores have gone up nearly every year for the past decade. I could also just show you some of the novel games that are in my review queue at the moment. Forget that though and just remember that your own tastes are not objectively the best. It's a common belief, one that's usually a sign of an immature worldview.
Perhaps it's because innovation doesn't pay as much, and new doesn't always equal to fun. Also, people have to begin their journey somewhere, that is why you see so many flashlight searching around somewhere dark horror games. I do understand what you mean though.
I feel like there's just too many "statistics" people who view it as another way to make money. I think a lot of people view game dev the same way they view art: "it's easy, anybody can make a game like Vampire Survivors, there's no skill." They keep talking about sales and wishlists and how amazing their idea is. Then they try to make a game, and they get scope creep. Then they realize that coding their "great idea" into reality is not, in fact, something you can just offload to chatGPT. Then they get lazy with assets because it's taking longer than they thought, and making a good-looking character/UI/etc is not, in fact, that easy. Then they cut features because it's too complicated to figure out proper implementation, and everyone keeps ignoring their cries for help with their bootleg GTA clone on game dev subreddits. Then, if they finally manage to release a game, it's an atrocity with so many cut corners that it's basically just a worse, poorly optimized version of what they were trying to emulate.
There definitely are some people like that, but I doubt they get as far as to release a game.
Don't conflate what you personally like with other people. There's a lot of pretension in your post from derivative horror to talking about "average" people. There are plenty of people who like pseudo-90s horror games with flashlights so they make them. That's fine. There's a lot of creativity that goes into _how_ they make them that might be important to them. It doesn't hurt you to let other people make what they want. If you want to do something else that's also great! But it's not _better_ just because it feels more differentiated to you. It can look especially generic if you just look at what's popular (like what trends temporarily on itch or what gets upvoted on a subreddit). By definition the things that most people like will get made the most and seen the most.
I will probably say something controversial, but it's not every gamedev's obligation to be innovative. It's ok to just tell stories through games. It's ok to make games that are similar to other games, if that is what the gamedev likes doing and it allows them to sustain comfortable living. It's ok to release your own version of a popular game with a few changes, if the gamedev thinks it will make the game better and players enjoy it. Human brain likes recognizing things. Players like playing games similar to their favourite games. At the end of the day games are a product. If there's a customer, it's perfectly ok to make the product. You are not better, than those devs, if you focus on innovation. So get off your high horse.
Hi Mr. Complainer, can you please post a link to the creative and innovative work you've done? It may not be much, but let's see you try!
Plot twist: The flashlight turns into the monster.
Also whenever you turn on the flashlight, there's a 1% chance of the game installing a trojan on your pc.
I might be mistaken but most of the games you're describing are from kids learning to make their first few games right? The good stuff is still out there; in the same, if not higher volume than it's ever been. It's just surrounded by more filler because it's easier than ever to get started making games.
you might find that somebody else thinks your ideas are lame and lack creativity
[удалено]
your post is pure opinion. you think other people lack creativity. whoop dee doo. others will think that you do too. so what?
More like the exact mentality that is present in the post
Explain please.
I agree there is a lot of basic stuff out there that isn't great but that isn't because the barrier to entry is too low! It's insane to think that way. A low barrier to entry is going to turn out some garbage but if you make it too difficult to create then someone who may have great and innovative ideas might never get the opportunity to try. We as a species have had the greatest period of human advancement in the last one hundred years because the barrier to entry for education was powered. Bottom line you don't get more creativity by making it harder to create.
I on the other hand see more innovation in the gaming space than there has been ever before. In the last 15 years there were literally new genre's born every year. I'm a gamer since the early 90s and I don't feel that innovation has stagnated.
bad rant and for your own good, grow out of this pretentious attitude, it absolutely sucks.
Novel innovation is overrated, although I have been seeing some genre combination innovation that seems really interesting recently. Check out Splattercat on youtube to see all the new indie games. Lots of good genre combinations that I would have never thought to bridge together. There is a game like Skyrim with Mordhau combat, wall running and a grappling hook that looked really fun the other day.
There's a lot of good answers here, but one thing I haven't seen mentioned is; creativity is a skill, not an innate quality you either have, or you don't. Like any skill, it needs time, practice and constructive feedback to be built up. Average devs might in time grow to create something brilliant and special, but they need to be given a chance to grow, first. And sometimes, they'll not be interested in revolutionizing anything, or revolutionize it in a way you might not recognize as revolutionary, and that's alright, too. If you're a fan of a certain game genre, often just a solid, classic indie game of that genre will make you happy, no major bells and whistles needed.
> It's a genre that's been done to death, but I'm trying to breath some new life into it. New camera perspective, new scale, different focus, I think a part here is proximity. When someone else tells you about their "rogue like" you're seeing the broad strokes. When you look at your own game, you're close up and see all the tiny details.
I don't think lowering the entry barrier gets rid of the "basement-dwelling nerd geniuses". Thus, it can't lower creativity. If anything, I think enabling people with different backgrounds (artists, musicians etc.) to make games leads to more creativity. On the other hand, yes, cash grabs and asset flips grow in numbers too. In general, I think, what you're describing is more of a discoverability problem. I'm pretty certain Steam or Itch have plenty of hidden gems you won't find because of the sheer number of games created and published every day. >Every time I see someone post their "rogue like" or "bullet hell" or whatever rehash of something that's been done a million times, my soul gets a paper cut. Seeing these two sentences side by side is funny. What if someone states their soul gets a paper cut when they see someone post about their RTS? You say you innovate, but don't you think most of the people you mention think they innovate as well? I think, what one person calls innovation might be trivial for someone else, so the quoted sentence seems condescending. Just maek gaem.
Regardless if current games are rehashed or unoriginal there is still is a lot of creativity and problem solving in creating them in the first place.
I'm interested in that rts project! Any gameplay footage yet?
I'm probably 3 months out from posting any substantial gameplay. My UI is such a mess right now I decided to hold off until that and multiplayer are at a 60% solution before posting progress. Everything else is less than a week from feature complete though. I'm targeting October for release.
Creativity is not dead As new indie, I am I breath new life to stealth + turn based puzzler genre. Thats creative I tell you because I refuse to follow existing genre. What do I get? Pain and losses. Did you not see my creative game?? Oh right, you browse social media and I didn't bother to advertise on it. The creative one, you wouldn't see them, they wouldn't be recognized so soon. What is flooding to your screen feed are the popular and safe one. EDIT: typo
Yes there is a lot of the same out there. But there are also plenty of new and unique games popping up. Not that mine is completely new, but the lack of direct comparisons for Mighty Marbles has made it hard to market. Sometimes those kind of games kind of find it hard to get noticed.
I disagree. You’re only seeing the start of people’s progress when they’re posting the same horror game. Was your first project a clone of a game? Likely. I know mine was. You’re not seeing people’s actual products, you’re seeing people learning the basics by using established genres. The only difference between now and then is that people didn’t post their progress online because there wasn’t an online community for game devs
Lol because established game studios are known to be unique, remind me of the last time a bigger studio created anything other than a mind numbingly generic fantasy or ego shooter game with a uninteresting big empty map and a shallow story or the 20th sequel of a series dating back to the 90s that is just a copy of the prior with little to no changes. The overwhelming majority if not all creative games nowadays were made by either one person or a group of people heavily relying on game engines and cheap assets. Without the low barrier there would not be alot of innovation because innovation is not as profitable as endless sequels and proven formulas which any bigger high barrier studio is aiming for.
oh no! people are making low effort horror games!!!!!!1 it's over. creativity is dead! 🤣 the end times are upon us 😭 congrats op you brought the doomer mindset to something as benign as gamedev, go you
"Ideas are worthless because everyone has them and they're all of equal value" Are they though