[colonwqbang]

Fortunately it's still possible to break into the games industry as an indie developer. You can be a solo developer and make a top selling game, if you're really good. Lucas Pope, Toby Fox, etc.

So I don't think we are in any kind of monopoly situation, nor are we in danger of ending up there right now.

The people who do buy AAA games, I suppose it's because they enjoy that sort of thing? I'm not really one of them.

[SXX]

Yes, you can work as lone indie dev, but only if you have savings to sustain you for 2-3 years or if you can live on ramen. For every successful indie game there are thousands of games that never been completed or failed on release.

With small exceptions people buy AAA games from EA / Ubisoft / Activision / etc for the same reason why people go to watch christmas movies - they know what exactly they gonna get. No surprises.

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

Well yes, of course. What else would you expect? Art has to find an audience large enough to support it or it fails. Same as it ever was.

The great thing about game dev is that you have low barriers to entry and the entire internet is a potential audience.

[KronisLV]

For anyone curious:

Lucas Pope, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucas_Pope

> He is best known for experimental indie games, notably Papers, Please and Return of the Obra Dinn, both of which won the Seumas McNally Grand Prize alongside other awards.

Papers, Please was a really nice concept, executed well. It even inspired a few other games, like Contraband Police, which recently came out and is pretty okay (like a 3D spiritual successor, sort of).

Toby Fox, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toby_Fox

> He is known for developing the role-playing video games Undertale and Deltarune for which the former garnered acclaim and he received nominations for a British Academy Game Award, three Game Awards and D.I.C.E. Awards, the latter known as the video game equivalent of the Academy Awards.

Both Undertale and Deltarune didn't seem too impressive on a technical level (e.g. not going for flashy graphics like many modern titles), but the world building, the gameplay mechanics, the character writing and everything else just felt really, really nice and on point.

I guess both of those devs are a good example that projects with a good concept and even better execution are still likely to be quite successful. Personally, I'd definitely also throw the Outer Wilds game on top of this pile as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Wilds

Here's a documentary about its making: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbY0mBXKKT0 (spoilers)

However, such success won't be likely for the majority of the developers out there, which is to be expected. Not that people shouldn't make games that they are passionate about, just that they should set their own expectations accordingly.

[robopsychology]

It’s almost a habit to buy the big AAA games for me - I’ve bought every AC since the first one and probably will do even if I don’t enjoy them now they’re open world RPG collection simulators. Same with CoD not being as fun as the original MW games.

[mrguyorama]

Why