Clogging the Crap-Filters

Posted by Rampant Coyote on March 6, 2014

Long ago, I called myself an “indie evangelist.” I could see the awesome indie games coming out that nobody had ever heard of, and thought, “Wow! Look at what these indies are doing! If only people were to pay attention, and actually try these games and make them profitable, we could have more of these unique, innovative, clever little games!”

I guess I was naive. Okay, not totally. It’s a given that when you open the flood gates, you are going to be increasing the crap-to-gem ratio.  But you also get more gems. That much hasn’t changed.

What I perhaps didn’t anticipate was how a little bit of money would change things. Especially a little bit of money from a game made in just three days. Just like the mainstream world, the big money-makers just get cloned to hell and back by a bunch of paycheck-seeking, passionless, low-talent hacks. I mean, okay, it’s one thing to be a low-talent hack. Many of us suffer under this disadvantage. But at least try and be creative about it!

Instead, we have this fun little note, reported by Polygon –

Report: 60 Flappy Bird Clones Hit iTunes App Store Every Day

That’s right, ladies and gentlemen. We have an army of indies trying to cash in on the success of one cheap and dirty little game that got lucky. Many are not even departing from the bird-and-pipes theme. This is what we’ve become. The golden age of indie is built upon a dung heap.

I guess that makes indie games pretty much the same as everything else out there.

When the walls come down (the barriers to entry), filters are needed. Lots of filters. I still don’t quite see that for indie games. Maybe it’s because the supply has so exceeded demand that people can’t keep up.  Just trying to do a fair evaluation of indie PC RPGs would consume some serious time and effort on the part of several people. At this rate, it could be more than a full-time job just evaluate Flappy Bird clones. Sixty a day! At five minutes of evaluation per game (assuming they are all as tiny and easy to get the gist of as the original), plus ten minutes to write up the evaluation and post it to a site… that’d be 15 hours of work every day just to keep up with the new clones.

While I appreciate the individual player evaluations, there’s still something to be said for specific, clear, informed voices. We do get some of that… there are some “niche” gaming sites with reviewers with several well-written reviews (a track record), informed opinions, and decently voiced views on games that can really help with purchase decisions. One person whom you trust is worth ten anonymous reviews who give near-minimum or near-maximum scores and barely readable two-sentence reviews.

But they can’t keep up. No doubt there are a lot of worthy entries that get clogged up in the mess. And I’m not just talking about the gems either – I’m talking about the games that may be flawed but interesting, perhaps unpolished but having a few really cool creative ideas.

Kinda like making indie games – if you aren’t just cashing in on what’s popular, then it really has to be a labor of love. There’s not a whole long of reward to be found on the average. Even taking some kind of niche like indie PC RPGs – it’s hard enough just to keep track of what’s getting released, let alone provide a fully-played, thoroughly evaluated reviews. If only. It’s like we need a small army of CRPG Addicts focused on modern indie releases.

I wish I had an answer.

Filed Under: General, Indie Evangelism - Comments: 7 Comments to Read



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