We are living in the best era for gaming

[Mnementh]

Doctor_MG said:

Mnementh said:

You suggest that self-publishing is pointless, as you drown in an ocean of titles. But somehow the better titles find publicity over time. Undertale, Bastion, Minecraft were all self-published, yet still found success. So no, self-publishing is far from pointless.

I agree about the shortcomings of the big studios, but people here seem to believe Indies are somehow irrelevant or pointless. They aren't. And I am a big fan of 90s gaming, I grew up with it. But the reality is also, that back in the 90s we had a few studios making games. These days we have far more indies that operate similar to game studios in the 90s, and the tools and experiences allow for far more diversity and creativity. In this regard I consider today as a time, that is about 10 times the 90s, in number and quality of studios and games in the indie scene. And additionally we have the shitty AAA-industry, but I can choose to ignore it and play indies instead.

I didn't say self-publishing was pointless, I said it's hard to get places by self-publishing. For every Minecraft there are a thousand games lost at sea that barely make a hundred bucks (which barely covers the self-publishing cost), if they make anything at all.

I would argue that the limitations of hardware bread more creativity than not. For example, the stealth genre was invented because not enough sprites could be rendered at once. 

Definitely agree on quantity, don't really agree on quality. At least, not as far as impacting the game industry goes. Only a few games come out that really shake things up these days.

The argument of getting lost in the releases is nothing new really and nothing limited to digital publishing. The more serious part is, that modern AAA games have millions in marketing budget to avoid exactly that fate, but it still happens. Remember Ubisofts Hyperscape? Yeah, that happens even with big budget and big marketing.

My argument is that the great games exist. Maybe you have to look for them and they aren't presented to you, but in comparison with the 90s - back then it was worse because games were so niche and hadn't really any outlet to present themself. You learned of them by friends or if you consumed niche media, like game magazines.

And yeah, the quality games exist as well.