[zinxq]

This also increases the sheer quantity of "not good" games. And the ability for copycats to copy games in record time.

Relevant Escapist video about out-of-control rampant copying in Mobile Gaming: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q30qZSEnI9Q

[vlunkr]

Exactly, even if you make something novel and win the indie lottery, it's going to be ripped off immediately. Apple and Google are really failing at maintaining any level of quality in their app stores.

[bogwog]

It’s pretty much all their fault. The same way the internet is overflowing with ad-riddled blogspam due to Google, the appstores are filled with scammy/exploitative clones because that’s what makes the most money when there’s no competitive forces to drive quality control of any kind.

For example, if the Epic game store became known as a source for good mobile games, customers will stop browsing the App/Play store for games and will instead go to the curated and high quality alternative, because why the hell wouldn’t they.

If Apple and Google are forced to stop suppressing competition on iOS/Android, it may lead to an entirely new mobile gaming industry that’s actually somewhat respectable.

[cableshaft]

> Exactly, even if you make something novel and win the indie lottery, it's going to be ripped off immediately.

Yep, see any of the 200+ Wordle clones and derivatives out there, only about two months after it went viral.

One of my video games has had at least five clones made that I'm aware of (probably several more than that), and it didn't have anywhere near the same success that a game like Wordle did.

[TillE]

If you make a game which can be cloned quickly, you've made something extremely simple. Don't do that.

Anyway, I would certainly not choose to develop mobile games, seems like a bad idea for many reasons. But look at PC games: you can make something as absolutely weird (and arguably 'unmarketable') as Disco Elysium, which needed no "lottery", it's simply a masterpiece.

[vlunkr]

I agree, when it comes to larger indie games. But there are still simple games that are worth playing, and certainly don't deserve to have their revenue stolen by content farms. The game referenced in the video above is an example of this. And people forget that 2048 was heavily "inspired" by Threes.

It's a separate discussion, but I believe there's still a "lottery" aspect to indie games. There's a lots of survivorship bias as play there. For every Hollow Knight or Disco Elysium, how many other passion projects run out of funding, or get released and go unnoticed?

[jlawson]

There's a huge infrastructure for game discovery - Dedicated subreddits with millions of subscribers, curators, massive infrastructure from companies like Valve (Steam) and Google to help discoverability, forums and discussion groups and Discords and Kickstarter...

People are hunting endlessly for good games. But cannot find them.

Even me! I'm a knowledgeable nerd with time, but I can't find anything worth playing. I know many people in the same situation.

There aren't really unknown gems. Great games don't go unnoticed. Many indie devs just like to think they do because they don't want to accept that their game just isn't very good.

Hollow Knight and Disco Elysium are great examples. These could never have gone unnoticed. These are professional efforts from teams of dedicated, very skilled developers, who did a lot of non-obvious things the right way. Nothing replaces a game like Disco Elysium especially. It was always going to get noticed. (I don't know HK as well but from what I've heard it is also exceptional at what it does.)

I'd be interested if you could name any unnoticed game that approaches either of these two in being compelling to play.