The State of Indie Gaming
There have been a drought of posts about non-indie games lately, I blame it on the lack of (to me) interesting news – saying something about the GTA “controversy” at this point just seems redundant so I’ll save what little I do have to say for a later reflection. Anyway, in continuing with indie news, Gamasutra has an interesting piece about the business side of independent games right now…
“… But casual games downloads are going through a crisis. There is a number of good studios cranking out a far higher number of good games than the audience can consume, creating a glut of good titles and reducing the shelf life of every title.
This crisis is accentuated by the fact that portals haven’t turned out to an Amazon or Netflix model; instead, they pushing the same top 10 to every user, regardless of the user’s tastes.“
It’s written seemingly only to answer the question “how can independent games be commercially sustained?” so it might be a little on the dry side compared to design articles, but it is at the same time broad enough to have something interesting even if you aren’t planning on selling your game.