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There are millions of asset flips, but the top indie games have never been better. It’s hard for indie developers because there’s so much competition: you need to heavily promote a quality game only because there are so many other quality games.

Likewise these tools have enabled many more people to create vibe-coded slop, and may lead to more quality software (making it harder to stand out without marketing), but the best software will only get better.

by sethops12 hours ago|

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The implication is that the gatekeeping has become marketing dollars, when it used to be skill at making a fun game. I don't think we're in a better situation today.

by armchairhacker1 hours ago|

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There are fun games that succeed without marketing, e.g. Balatro, and there are bad games that fail despite it, e.g. Highguard.

The reason that “skill at making a fun game” doesn’t guarantee success is because there are so many fun games. Much less, if at all, because there is so many slop.

by WA2 hours ago|

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idk, indie games that come to my attention seem to be very polished. Which one is successful and fits your criteria?

by slumberlust2 hours ago|

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I disagree that accessibility is a detractor here.

There's never been a better time to be an indie dev. I'd rather have 1/1000 indie games be awesome than being force fed whatever storefront disguised as a game 'AAA' publishers poop out every year.

Just look at how slay the spire is doing up against marathon right now. Which of those was shouting the loudest? Highguard anyone?

by PaulHoule1 hours ago|

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I'll second this.

It is true that the indy game market is brutal but it's always been brutal.

You don't really hear about a crisis at the indy game level though, rather at the AAA game level there is much of "we'd like to use our market power to take out the risk in game development" and then years later we realize they took out all the value before they took out the risk and now they're doomed.