Hellblade developer Ninja Theory and Psychonauts developer Double Fine are reportedly among the studios fighting to avoid closure as Microsoft makes significant cuts to its Xbox business.
Honestly a big part of me thinks “good riddance, let these big corporations trying to enshittify the video game industry all die” but then I think about how no matter how cool indie game companies are, they can’t fulfill the same role for entry level video game developers and artists or for video game developers and artists who want the consistency of a stupid large game development company so they can start a family…
I find it really frustrating most video game fans are naive as hell about this shit and only seem to react with “Yeah, let them all collapse, fuck them!” like yeah I get the vibe but look at the impact it is going to have.
I love indie games, I really really really really do I am such a weirdo finding weird video games makes me feel human and grounded, but I can also see how the boring, predictable consistency of large game studios play a different vital role in the video game industry even if I don’t buy games from these companies myself.
A very well reasoned take that I entirely agree with.
I mean yeah, as a stereotypical semi-insane/delusional solo dev myself… can indie devs make awesome shit?
Absolutely yes.
Can they make something on the scale of production value / plain ole scope of a well paid AA or AAA team?
Fuck no, not unless you count ‘they took 10 actual years to do it all, basically by themselves’, or, basically sold out somewhere before year 10 to get an actual team and resources, for way way waaay above a reasonable price.
But yeah, its basically a tragedy, but a seemingly capitalist realist unavoidable tragedy, at least untill somebody sets up the equivalent of Mondragon as a game dev studio/publisher.
To me, the absolute worst thing is that basically every AA team just does eventually get gobbled up and shit out by a megacorp.
There are very few counterexamples to this, on like a decade timescale… they tend to be the ones that are firecely independent and dedicated to basically one game, that they just keep updating… everybody else that does a seemingly pointless sequel?
Basically, they do that because they could not afford not do, they spent or otherwise lost too much money.
And then even like Unity gets enshittified.
Its a fucking mess, we’ve got MBA brained sharks making all the decisions, and basically, they’re evil idiots who care about nothing other than line go up.
Microslop is incapable of not strangling the things it acquires impulsively and obsessively, there is no plan just chaos with cycles of culling.
Remember back when it was basically just EA that was notorious for killing every studio it acquired, via ungodly incompetent management?
Now its just the industry model… do everything you can to have to most idiotic people managing everything.
Honestly a big part of me thinks “good riddance, let these big corporations trying to enshittify the video game industry all die” but then I think about how no matter how cool indie game companies are, they can’t fulfill the same role for entry level video game developers and artists or for video game developers and artists who want the consistency of a stupid large game development company so they can start a family…
I find it really frustrating most video game fans are naive as hell about this shit and only seem to react with “Yeah, let them all collapse, fuck them!” like yeah I get the vibe but look at the impact it is going to have.
I love indie games, I really really really really do I am such a weirdo finding weird video games makes me feel human and grounded, but I can also see how the boring, predictable consistency of large game studios play a different vital role in the video game industry even if I don’t buy games from these companies myself.
A very well reasoned take that I entirely agree with.
I mean yeah, as a stereotypical semi-insane/delusional solo dev myself… can indie devs make awesome shit?
Absolutely yes.
Can they make something on the scale of production value / plain ole scope of a well paid AA or AAA team?
Fuck no, not unless you count ‘they took 10 actual years to do it all, basically by themselves’, or, basically sold out somewhere before year 10 to get an actual team and resources, for way way waaay above a reasonable price.
But yeah, its basically a tragedy, but a seemingly capitalist realist unavoidable tragedy, at least untill somebody sets up the equivalent of Mondragon as a game dev studio/publisher.
To me, the absolute worst thing is that basically every AA team just does eventually get gobbled up and shit out by a megacorp.
There are very few counterexamples to this, on like a decade timescale… they tend to be the ones that are firecely independent and dedicated to basically one game, that they just keep updating… everybody else that does a seemingly pointless sequel?
Basically, they do that because they could not afford not do, they spent or otherwise lost too much money.
And then even like Unity gets enshittified.
Its a fucking mess, we’ve got MBA brained sharks making all the decisions, and basically, they’re evil idiots who care about nothing other than line go up.