SOURCE is develop-online.net

AUTHOR is Matthew Jarvis

The whole article can only be read at the source.

Revolution co-founder reflects on the past golden age of independent development

British games industry legend Charles Cecil says that the first PlayStation led to the death of the UK indie sector during the 1990s.

The founder of Broken Sword studio Revolution was providing advice from his 35 years working in games development at this month's Interface event in London, which is taking place today (November 12th).

“The time of Broken Sword 2 was a golden era [...]"

“What brought everything to an end was the PlayStation in 1996. It inadvertently destroyed the indie scene the first time around. Because it was so successful, all of the retailers wanted to stock non-PC games. Not only did the cost of games escalate, but it was all about visceral 3D games.”

[...]

“Everything changed in 2007 with the iPhone,” he recounted.

“The App Store effectively had an infinite storefront, which meant the barrier to entry no longer existed for younger developers. Everything changed.

“We had a second golden era for indie developers. For a time, Flick Soccer was beating FIFA. It was insane.”

[...]

So, what do you think about his statements?

I find interesting that he points out the App Store as the reborn moment for indies. Seems that the mobile market helped more than one developer to stay afloat, even if it gets too much hate here.

There's not much to think about his statements, I mean, it makes sense. Retailers want to stock games that sell a lot of units. That's what gets shelf-space priority at a retailer. Indies have gotten their true golden age now with digital distribution though.

I agree with him and it's a good thing. He's basically complimenting the Playstation by saying it moved gaming forward.

It's funny though because indies are seeing great success on Playstation again 4 generations later.

True. The issue with the mobile marekt is sustainability. Name does npothing. You might have a critically acclaimed indie game that is downloaded a million times, just to have a second one downloaded less then 500 times. You simply cannot build on it a real and forseeable market strategy. This also exists on the console and PC market, but in a far smaller scale.

And then there is the difference between the gaming experience, and I think most core gamers will agree that the mobile industry is simply not there yet.

OT: good. The real indie revolution is the one that IMO started in 2006. When indie games could come out and trully become rivals of AAA development. I liked the games from the mid 90's but they were often shallow compared to full-fledged console games. There is a reason why so many of them fell into obscurity. I know that there are some counter examples to my theory, but I think the fact that gamers decided with their wallets on consoles speaks volumes.

I find it surprising that many protest hard when developers start putting out games for smartphones. It's just another source of revenues that may fund your next fave AAA games. Blizzard Hearthstone is an example of a quality game on mobile devices, and I don't need to tell you how successful Blizzard is at running business and supporting multiple platforms. Big N, best of luck with your next mobile f2p games!

It does seem to ebb and flow. The original Valhalla for indie developers was the 2nd gen (atari etc) and commodore, where games were produced largely by a single person as often as they weren't, if not more so. That declined initially, apparently another decline occurred with the expensive introduction of 3d, and now it seems to be thriving with mobile and downloadable games on the console. No shelf space problems.

I wonder what might cause another decline going forward? I'd say if VR became really popular that'd be darn expensive, but I just can't see the mobile market going amywhere.

It's worth to mention that Charles is not exaggerating when he says the iPhone helped indie developers.

Quick fact: By June 2015, Apple has paid out 30 billion dollars to Apple store developers. Most of the $30b went to game developers. That's a lot of money for a young thriving market.

Yeah, yeah, they also killed the dinosaurs but they're bringing them back damnit! Both of em.

I miss the old shareware pay-what-you-want freeware days of PC gaming in the 90s....