My Thoughts on Indie Game Developers
I just reread that comment thread, Anthony, I realize someone might think I'm bashing consoles and "console players" and boosting up "PC players" or whatever. But... that's furthest from the truth. What I am pointing out is the bad the direction big companies like Microsoft have taken console gaming. Freedom to buy what we think is best is the magic that makes things better. Whether its a game or socks this holds true. The free market one might say. But.. The console industry has figured out how to hold our gaming for ransom to control what we buy. When I buy a console to play with friends, the truth is, I have to go back and pay for an XBox Gold account or I have to buy extra controllers or buy the competitor's console to play an exclusive game. All this money is something I would rather spend on a game that is developed by a couple developers working their butts off in some basement to build the best game of their lives. These indie devs are the generators of innovation, not some exec who really doesn't care about games and ordered his developers to add micro-transactions to a highly anticipated Star Wars game knowing he will get the sales because, well... Star Wars. I hate to draw the line at PC gaming but here it is. The PC gaming industry doesn't have a few giant conglomerates controlling its direction. There isn't a Microsoft XBox or Playstation or even a Nintendo. It has a bunch of companies trying to make money the best way they can by filling a need. Instead you have NVidia competing for your money to give you the best video card, you have Microsoft trying to fill the need for an OS, Valve is trying to give you the best digital retail game market, etc. You choose who you think is best for all of these "needs". Because of this, PC gaming has developed in an organic way (sometimes in its favor and often not in its favor) Right now you're seeing a revival in indie gaming (something that could not happen on the console world). Right now, these small games are very economical making the PC gaming side of things a cheaper option over consoles. This revival is similar to how games were made when we were kids... Back then, no one knew Mario or Luigi or Solid Snake or Mega Man. Nintendo and all of these developers were innovating to get us to chose their game! This is just like the indie developers of today. They are trying everything to get us to pay $4.99 for a copy of their game. Who knows how long this will last. The console guys are smelling the success and attempting to port the best of the best indie games. Right now is a good time to be playing on a PC. My write up in Quora was... easy on the console side on purpose (as to make it less bashing on consoles) I did not mention XBox gold or what happens to games if you buy them digitally (sometimes they disappear!) or the average cost of games or dirty tricks Microsoft would employ to keep your XBox live account active. Because I am neither a PC gamer or Console gamer. Games are games, players are players. I am simply pointing out where we (the players) are being taken advantage of. Believe me, if PC gaming had this problem, I would be writing about that in Quora too.
