So I have always tried not to talk about politics in my public discussion. There's already too much of that. But I'm getting uncomfortably close with all of this. So I am going to try to keep things more abstract and away from concrete political issues.
Also, I don't want to talk too much about "socialism", because everyone uses that word to mean something different these days. My wife grew up behind the Iron Curtain, and in my house, when "socialism" is brought up, it means a very specific thing. We aren't fans.
But you may not use that word to mean total state control of the economy. So it's a discussion unlikely to produce more light.
Anyway, thanks for the great comments! I'm flattered to be worth the time.
EDIT: Someone came in and posted the same comment 1000 times. I banned the user, but I can find no "Remove all comments by user" option. Am I missing something obvious? This is definitely a feature that should be there.
True, but not every game is for everyone. Assuming that everyone should play every game is kinda looking at Art from a use-case which isn't my cup of tea at least.
Also: "However, you should ask if you can't be bringing more people happiness with your limited time on earth" and and "If my country was healthy, stable, and on a sustainable path, most of them would not exist, including mine. That they do exist is a symptom of misplaced priorities, crappy opportunities for ambitious youth, and ongoing damage to our society" are literally opposed to each other.
"Let me make one thing clear: If you need to make art, do it. If you want to put a game on Steam, do it. I'm not a bully. I'm more on your side than you could ever imagine.
But at some point, you have to stop and see what is in front of your eyes."
That's likely at least a key part of why most indie games are made, I would suggest. And the but invalidates the previous statement. If you literally just care about the art and not the profit? Whatever.
"If my Empire wants to go full Bread and Circuses, that is fine. However, you DO have to make sure you can provide the bread before you get to make the circuses."
This is a systemic issue that isn't fixable by individuals. Going out and throwing down asphalt into potholes is a fine thing to do, but if the city isn't paying for maintenance, they're not paying for maintenance.
"Hell, forget full-time jobs. If you volunteered at a food bank for one afternoon, you would do more good than spending 20 years writing games nobody plays."
This is bordering on ableist, especially in a pandemic. There's a good number of immunocompromised that can't go out and do that. There's also this thing called bandwidth that isn't in limitless supply. Executive function is an important thing. Some people's passion projects let them recover that.
"Don't blame capitalism for these problems. Capitalism is the instrument that made the surpluses that made it possible for you to write art nobody wants in the first place."
This is some head-up-ass stuff. We as individual have a limited amount of control and spinning our wheels for change is important but is also something that's burnout inducing.
Overall, you're putting way too much on the individual and not on the systems. Especially important since systems of control have massive influence beyond what we can see. Say, for comparison, road width as a better moderator of speed limit. There should be subconscious cues at play that better drive the limit down than just posting a sign and expecting people to obey. The same is true for why things are the way they are.
People make their passion projects because it fuels them, and then put them on Steam because it might get the lightning strike of viral success. Due to how crappy things are (which you've noted in your post and I've quoted in this comment), this passion-project-gamble feels like a better shot for free-time fun and a chance to break out of the cycle of poverty than many other options.
As far as I can tell, Substack does not have (and really should) a Remove All Comments By User command. If I can find one, I can use it. Until then, I will leave all these replies up as a testimonial to why such a feature is needed.
Have you ever worked an actual job in your life? Not in high-school or part-timing during college - actual full-time, have-to-do-it-for-the-next-30-years job. If I recall your bio correctly, you never did. That would explain why you romanticise them - the actual jobs, including the ones which are the biggest service to community, suck and have always sucked. Just read Bukowski for reference. The menial jobs like fixing potholes suck for obvious reasons, while the white collar "information society" jobs suck because they always involve working on hopelessly complicated problems (whether it's improving the Windows kernel at MS or improving economic policy at a government agency) with a large group of uncoordinated people.
People over centuries have sometimes gone as far as murder only to avoid working in jobs. Now, we're finally (and perhaps temporarily) in a state where many ordinary people can somehow sustain themselves for years without having to work. They often put those years into pursuit of their art, with a hope that it'll generate income. Even if it doesn't, working diligently at your craft is very good for you, and much better than alternatives of drinking and gambling that people have often chosen in the past.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that the society runs and have always ran on economic exploitation and under threat of starvation ("get to work or else") - and the US is currently a wealthy and happy enough place that it's perhaps temporarily ran out of people to exploit, hence there isn't enough people to fix those potholes for cheap.
So, I posit, if millions of people can "waste" time pursuing their hobbies such as art, it should be celebrated, not lamented. It testifies to how much the US "has arrived" as a society. If, like you say, this state is temporary (which I believe it is - there should be a leveling of global living standards happening in this century), then the problem will just self-correct itself as the country gets less wealthy.
Also, most people don't have the resources to sustain themselves while they work on failed indie games for their entire life. Most of them will perhaps give it a shot for a couple of years and then (begrudgingly) join or re-join the workforce. They'll still end up giving decades of their lives to The Machine, so there's no major harm in them indulging themselves for a couple of years.
But, as many have pointed out already, the provision of "bread" (i.e. fixed potholes) depends on a political process, and not merely lack of workers. The potholes will get fixed as soon as the city assigns money to that and not other toy ideas politicians may have - or just increases the city tax rate to raise more money.
So, are you advocating for more people to actively involving themselves in the democratic process, trying to improve the system from within, instead of doing gamedev? That's something that Jordan Peterson have been calling people out to do recently as well (minus the gamedev part obv).
I'm not advocating for anything. Because real jobs suck so hard, nobody will ever advocate for their having to do them. Because our value system is based on the jobs sucking, there is no push for politicians to properly fund doing the hard jobs.
That is why (as I again explicitly state) the change has to be forced from outside. To be clear ... I am just as much a part of the problem as anyone else. I don't have the guts or gumption to pick up a shovel. I am not admirable.
I liked this post not out of a position of agreement/disagreement but because it is really a stimulating discussion. I think most people believe they have some sort of moral high ground when the reality is most, if not everyone, is selfishly locked in their own private fantasy of reality. This gets even worse with the internet since you can find anyone else to agree with you if you put in even a modicum of effort to look. I revel in the fact that I have (at least partially) swallowed the bitter pill; I can admit I am selfish and not a morally upright person. I could be doing something else to benefit society besides making games (the world would be a better place if I did) but I do it out of personal enjoyment in my free time, not out of the illusionary goal that I will receive some reward. I also respect you since you admit that you are part of the problem. It means you are talking on my level; the mud in the ditch vs the preacher in the pulpit.
Indie game devs are gambling. They're buying lottery tickets. And their failed indie game is worth as much as a lottery ticket that didn't win. That's the point of the article. Ugly truth, but since it's a truth, we should at least hear it even if we don't absorb it.
Seth Godin and Disney teach that everyone can be a winner. We're all gonna make it if we're generous. No. Only the most intelligent or most talented have a shot, and that's why intelligence makes you happy--because you have license to work a great job. People with 145 IQ get to play for a living, should they choose. They get to be Tim Urban or Ray Kurzweil. 110 IQ people don't. You can be brilliant and unlucky, but most of the lucky people are brilliant, and IQ is the real privilege.
Actually, author is privileged for his IQ too. He might be able to make an indie that cut through the noise if he started today--I'd give him about a 10-20% chance. Wonder if he agrees with those odds.
Also, pothole fillers exploit bigtime. They do nothing for hours until overtime begins, then they actually begin working. They could do something legit with their days instead.
I understand that this blog post will come to many people as a collection of inconveniences, and so I hope you are not chastised for what I perceive to be a pure intent to internally search for answers and warn people. As for myself, I found this to be an invaluable reminder of the privilege in which I operate.
Over the mid-way of my twenties, still a young man by the account of many, I found most of my life to be empty. The predilection of the people surrounding myself is for unlimited consumption of content, delusion, denial of the essential truth that our lives demand sacrifice, that all time is borrowed. With much struggle I have come to realise that the only moments I feel satisfied are when I am solving a problem that exists outside myself, when I am working in a job which serves others. That I have wasted so much time learning about an increasingly large pile of games or movies, useless trivia mostly, and eschewed meaningful career goals such as being an environmental officer because I neglected to put effort into learning to drive brings me immense guilt.
So, I thank you for your meditations, not because they were directly written to benefit myself, or even that they were intended to depict a reality that others believe, but because you tried to be honest.
And I shall end it on a good note, I find this post to be life affirming. I am about to start working in a career that directly benefits people and have spent an enormous amount of time over the pandemic period to filling the pot holes in my own life - even if that means I end up playing a few less games.
I have a very different view of the cause-and-effect here. I don't think the issue is a lack of social prestige associated with pothole-filling. If there was someone willing to hire enough people for a large enough wage, people would take the work and fill the potholes.
But not many of those people would be switching from making art. Because while 12,000 games in a year might be a lot, it doesn't actually represent many *people* relative to all the other things people are doing, especially since we're really talking about the long-tail of small-or-no-team indies. If we took everyone in the US making games nobody plays, or music nobody listens to, or books nobody reads, and convinced them all to do something else, it'd be an tiny blip in the economy. It'd be pretty big deal to those industries, of course: the remaining game-makers (especially those near the edges of wherever we draw the cut-off) would have a much easier time reaching audiences. And I suspect this is why it seems so relevant to you, why the causal relationship seems so clear.
(If the pay was high enough and the hours humane enough, people might even fill potholes while intending to make indie games nobody will play in their spare time, for the same reasons humans have always told stories and played music for their friends and family after doing what they need to do for survival. I'm not sure how to maintain a sustainable global industry of art-for-pay, but art as a hobby will always exist.)
I think you are assuming that the choice between art and work-work will stay, just that, a choice. I know, I know, it's easy to be pessimistic and economists predict 50 out of every 5 recessions. But ... I think the option to make art is something I am going to lose.
Not trying to be rude, and I’m not there yet, but I don’t think you can argue your way out of a midlife/existential crisis. I hope you figure things out, but this is as much about those 10k Steam games as it is about potholes. I guess starting with “It’s hard to look back at your life’s work and wonder if you took the wrong path.“ would have saved a lot of digital ink.
As for the points made in this post, they should probably be questions, not statements. As it is, it reads like you’re trying to justify how you feel, not trying to find any truths. Like how the fact that 30 games get released per day on Steam is validating your thoughts, even though it’s a glorified indiepocalypse post, just a few years late.
In your initial thread, the issue was that these games weren’t played by anybody. It briefly became about people wasting their money and education on schools that can’t promise success. Then it’s about the fact that playing games at all is a waste of time, which directly contradicts the initial point.
And I guess “Does entertainment have any value?” is a valid question, but the answer is that it’s subjective. It’s on you to decide what’s valuable. Society thinks things that make money are valuable, you seem to think things that fix the world are valuable. But here, this is about self fulfillment, which can take many forms. And if that has no value, then why are you even trying to fix the world?
You also mentioned music and films, but this is more than just entertainment. It’s about religion, or science too. Scientists are valuable, right? Except sending things to mars doesn’t really solve our problems, maybe. And biologists who need to hit a certain number of publications per year to keep their funding will definitely be able to randomly find a bacterium that’ll teach us how to cure cancer. Especially when funding is based on the potential application (usually by industries) of research, that won’t reduce our chances at all. (Heh, maybe I already had my existential crisis)
But back to games and potholes. Steam has potholes too, but those aren’t the amount of games published every year. It’s the discoverability.
The fact that these games aren’t played IS a problem. Not because their creators wasted their time, but because they probably have an audience. For example, games like Super Auto Pets or SNKRX were relatively successful, but nowhere near the amount of Vampire Survivors. People who play VS would probably also like those two games, but the majority probably haven’t heard of them. It’s pretty sad to think that our favorite game probably already exists, and we’ll never know about it.
But should we ask people to stop making games (not by gatekeeping tho!) while we figure stuff out? Should we ask people to stop driving while we fix those potholes?
As for the price of schools.. yeah that sucks. If only people knew that the best way to get good at making games is to make a lot of games- wait stop no don’t tell them that there’s too many games already.
Honestly the issue isn’t that there’s too many games. People don’t need degrees or the absence of a full time job to publish games or Steam (hence why there’s so many). IMO, what probably pushes people to go all in on games is the stories of the Moldenhaurs mortgaging their house twice to make Cuphead, or the way Ember Lab gets presented as underdogs, even though the brothers’ father was at the head of multiple Disney parks.
Anyways, I think the industry does have a problem with how success is showcased, and how the methods mostly aren’t criticized. And school should definitely tell their potential students what the world looks like. But at the same time, schools need to run, even in countries where they aren't for profit, and you still end up with teachers whose job is mainly to make people learn how to be teachers, thus producing approximatively no external value by the rules of this post.
But what does it all mean for this post? Probably that attacking people for doing what they love isn’t how you solve those issues, nor find answers to your personal doubts.
Let's say that everybody who liked Vampire Survivors *would* also like those other two games, and *did* get to hear about them. Now you're assuming/hoping they'll play three games instead of one. And maybe they only had time for one.
For me as a lover of video games, discoverability is *not* the problem. I have already discovered more delicious-looking games than I can play. The problem is that I am mortal. There are only so many hours in a day, and so many days in my life. I have a full-time job and multiple hobbies.
So I have to limit myself to the games that I'm most likely to love. The cream of the crop. That tends to be 1) games from studios I already know and trust, or 2) games that a lot of other people are already raving about. It's not as though I couldn't go hunting for some of the more obscure options; I just don't have room on my wishlist.
It also displays a fundamental lack of understanding of multiple areas / disciplines (economics, government and resource allocation, how a real person's fucking job works, etc), as well as is extremely callous towards artists who just want to express themselves. But mostly, it just fuckin sucks.
These past few weeks really have changed how I look at you, your work, and your place in the gaming landscape. Incredibly disappointing.
Saying true things people don't want to hear has always (Always!) been my brand. Your appeal to authority is clumsy. This post is about seeing the decay happening in front of our eyes, not listening to some credentialed economist telling us everything is perfect and going back to sleep.
The experts who run my life, shape my world, and tell me to shut up cannot, as far as I can tell, find their asses with both hands in a brightly lit room.
Why make art nobody wants? Because fuck you is why. Making art nobody wants is a sacrament of defiance, a way to leave scars on a world that isn't worth saving.
People create because they want to create. People don't do shit jobs because those shit jobs come with shit pay. You talk about the problems with Seattle's roads. Lets take a look at what road crews make in Seattle: 54% of road crew jobs pay less than $38,500 year. At 2,000 hours/year, that's $19.25/hour, a mere two dollars an hour more than Seattle minimum wage. Again, 54% of those jobs pay LESS than that. But lets not merely compare it to the minimum wage, lets compare it to a living wage. Can you make enough money doing road work to live a reasonable life? Well... if you're lucky. That's just about enough to get by alone, by the numbers I'm looking at. But you won't be socking away money for emergencies or a comfortable retirement and you definitely can't afford to support a spouse or children. And how are your career prospects starting as a road crew employee? You can move into being a construction worker, or you can work on sewers instead! Wow!
So imagine you're a young adult, fresh-faced and full of ambition. You want to do something with your life. Is it a viable strategy to accept a job in a field where you will do difficult physical labor at hours that will permanently damage you? (A lot of road work is completed at night, take a look at mental and physical health stats for night shift workers)
...no. No, people don't want to do that. They will if they're forced, but that's not a shining example to set up as ideal. The ideal we should be setting up is one where people at least have the time and energy to pursue more than their job. And that means paying people more, and working them less. Fortunately, we have the secret to doing just that, and it's automation. Unfortunately, there's no will to adapt automation to reducing human misery, for fear that it will "destroy jobs" (jobs which nobody wants to do anyway).
To make our crap, we offshore our jobs to people working in crap conditions on crap items. There's no value in automating that because human labor in other countries is cheap. And since there's no value in automating what we offshore, there's no value to automating work on our own shores (this is a giant logical fallacy, of course, but I'm giving insight into the psyche of those who are holding back automation).
So, the solution is obvious. Throw off the cherished illusion that rugged individualistic capitalism is a good thing. Look at society as a whole rather than a collection of individuals. Take care of the society, which means taking care of the people who support it. Compensate the road workers well. Now that you've done that, begin work on reducing the labor needed, and as jobs are automated out, take care of those people, as they are still part of society. Train them to maintain the machines rather than labor manually. Let them learn how to make more and better machines, to keep the metaphorical and literal trains going. But don't just do that to the jobs here in our American Empire, do so elsewhere too. Build great automated factories that take a fraction of the labor here and teach/help/allow other countries to do the same. Each iteration of this cycle improves the world. But all of this, every single step, hinges on one axiom: We are more than a collection of individuals.
As long as we're mired down in the individualistic bullcrap America peddles and refuse to develop systemic help, we'll never make progress. An individual going to a soup kitchen and volunteering for an afternoon sure seems like it does some human good, but it changes literally zero systemic problems. If the entire indie games industry quit their projects and ladled soup, there would still be the same homelessness problem in a year. Because that's still a collection of individuals acting individually.
I honestly believe this country, and perhaps the world, is simply doomed. We don't have the vision and the foresight to make the changes that need to be made. We're stuck with a fractured system that can't agree on incremental changes to the status quo. We act as individuals multiplied by our wealth. How do individuals with no wealth make systemic change? It's impossible. Many people see the fall coming, but there's nothing that can be done. I'd like to sell you all on a dream where we, the people, band together and seize change through either entirely legal means or ethically justified direct action (which is just a sanitized way of saying civil war), but that doesn't happen in reality anymore. Frankly, it's barely happened ever. White folks like me would like to point at the civil rights movement, but an honest looks shows that fight's far from done. That kind of sweeping, successful change only happens in video games and movies.
So, we make and play video games. We fiddle while Rome burns, but unlike Nero, our fiddles are on layaway.
There's a lot here, so just one comment. There are two debates going on here.
1. Is our system unsustainable?
2. How fix?
I think you and I are on the same page about #1 and a long way apart on #2. I'm still a firm believer in capitalism, but capitalism won't function in a society without forward-looking values. But socialism won't function in that system either.
Yeah I got really rambly, I'll admit. I should point out that my vision isn't really what we currently consider socialism, since our current perspective on socialism is still a very individualistic one. Capitalism can still co-exist with human goodness, just not our current system.
Consider this: You're talking about people trying to "live the easy life sitting and making art indoors." However, there's a different group of people who are doing far more harm to human happiness than them. And that's people who live the easy life sitting and profiting off of stock indoors. I'd stake that each of those people is a greater net drain on society than ten indie game developers. They don't create anything anyone enjoys, nor do they keep our roads working. They simply exist and demand that companies provide them with ever-greater returns on their investment.
I think people's tastes are varied enough that there are STILL niches that haven't been explored well that can lead to successful games. Your average indie dev probably couldn't make those though.
Never forget that video games as a whole is still a very young medium. I think in the long run believing that the genres we have now is all there is will prove to be myopic.
The word you're looking for is "Decadence." We're a decadent culture, and it can be wonderful to live and create in a decadent culture--and it's no individual's fault that it's a decadent culture--but its days are numbered unless something changes drastically. Like you, I am also afraid that things will only change when the world changes against our will.
Believe me, the word came to mind, but I had a mental block against using it.
I think it is possible that the mass time-wasting is society going on strike against a shitty, abusive labor market and economy. If that is the case, there is hope that things can get better without societal collapse. We'll all have less stuff, but sustainability can be restored.
Ok, so, I'm an indie dev working on a starvation salary to make my dream of making games for a living a reality. Despite the fact that your article raised a lot of my hackles, I'm going to engage with it in good faith, because despite what my hackles say I think you're also arguing in good faith but I do think you take a few logical leaps.
Firstly, you say "Nobody wants this many games!" and then cite how much the average game sells on Steam. That's a logical fallacy: it's likely 90% of those games were not shown to potential customers, so those customers had no idea those games existed. There are about 26m users on Steam, so even if each user bought only one game this year, that averages out to hundreds of thousands of sales per game, if you assume (wrongly, but this is for the sake of argument) that those sales are distributed equally. So there are enough players: the main problem is the algorithm shunts them to games that are already popular. That's not a games problem, that's a 21st century problem in the same category as "Why is facebook destroying democracy?"
Second, you say that because you are unlikely to make a game that sells well, you should not try, because the odds are stacked against you. This is true, but it has been true about every artform, forever, ever since there was commercial art. The odds of writing a 19th century novel that made it into a serialised paper were probably slim. The odds of your rock band being picked up by a major label was as much about luck as talent. The odds of writing a novel that will get published by a respectable well-placed publisher are incredibly slim. This is not just games, and this is not just about The Algorithm making it hard to break through (although I do think The Algorithm makes the whole thing unnecessarily hard, by the way). This is just art being a niche that many people want to do (because it seems fun), and there being limited places. Ask any novelist.
Thirdly, you seem to be under the impression that one can either make video games, or make a difference in the world. You even imply that just *playing* a game (alone, in a room of your own) means you're not getting out there and making a difference. I think this is false: firstly, the implication that playing games = no social work is just wrong. People can't be on all the time, they need time to relax, ergo games. But also, if you make games you can 1) put positive messages in those games about cultural things you care about 2) organise or be part of bundles or fundraisers 3) point your social media audience towards causes that you care about. None of these are as straightforward as just filling in a pothole, but I would much rather raise thousands of dollars for charity to preserve a green corridor in the amazon than fill in a pothole - and that's something I wouldn't be able to do without an audience. (Incidentally, I'm not making that example up: our game was part of this bundle https://itch.io/b/1164/world-land-trust-bundle which raised over $70k. I'm sure our game was only a small part of that, but each game helped make the bundle look more appealing to people overall, and maybe one day I'll make a game that can headline that kind of bundle.)
This bit I find really interesting: "I'll write all the games I want, while I can. BUT. Suppose the rest of the world starts saying, "Um, actually, we don't want to bust our humps making crap for debt forever. We're tripling our prices." Then my whole world goes to pieces."
Absolutely! And when that happens, I will adjust. I would like it to happen sooner, frankly, because the world we have is unfair and unjust in many ways, and the sooner underprivileged and exploited people say "no more" the better. But I'm one person, and I alone will not bring the great revolution to pass, so I see no point in worrying about what-ifs. If the world is fundamentally restructured tomorrow to be fairer and someone says I have to scrub toilets now to hold up my end of the privilege, ok, I will be very happy to do that. But until then, what am I meant to do?
The only thing I can do, really, is make art and be nice to my friends. It's all I'm actually genuinely good at. So until things change, I am going to continue complaining about the algorithm, and I am going to keep making stuff. I am also going to warn younglings ahead of time that their dream of making games will be incredibly tough, and that they must be prepared for that. But the idea that this automatically means we "need" fewer games is, I think, quite misguided.
As far as the Steam thing goes, I've seen a pretty widespread sentiment that goes something like "Steam should show more people these small indie games so that people will buy them." I think the sad truth of the matter is that Steam isn't showing them to more people precisely because the people who do see them DON'T buy them. If you assume that Steam wants to make money, why would they deliberately decide not to make money on those smaller games?
Steam provides an amazing service to indies - they take care of a lot of the uncomfortable parts of your business for you, and provide some not-quite-free advertising to boot. At the same time, Steam should not be your advertising platform, it should be your distribution platform. There's not an algorithm picking out the best games, there's an algorithm boosting games which sell well, which is something you can accomplish outside the distribution platforms if you combine hustling and getting lucky.
It's a good post but let's be honest, the root cause very much is capitalism. Excluding that as the cause is the same as excluding potholes as causing a bumpy ride, since they're part of the road that brought us here.
The laptop you use to program was built with resources mined by child slave. The coffee you drink was picked by child slaves. The abundance you have is caused directly by capitalism. At the same time, capitalism wants to remove funding for roads. Potholes are directly caused by capitalisms destructive influence on politics and infrastructure.
Art will always exist, no matter the economic system. Heck, Tetris is a communist game and it's one of the most popular games of all time. It is perfectly possible to identify capitalism as an issue while also maintaining games as an art form.
I'm not sure if this is an original thought, but maybe it's not so much that there's too many games, rather that global distribution has made it so a ridiculously tiny amount of games can meet the demand of the entire world. In a way, a few people are hoarding artistic fulfillment just like billionaires hoard money. It's nuts that a single person (say, Chris Pratt) can basically supply the demand of the entire world for leading movie actors, depriving probably thousands of people of jobs who might be really good at it.
If people could be persuaded to only consume movies/art/games that were made in their local region (or some other slice), that would create many jobs per region and allow many more people to feel creatively fulfilled and useful. Since art is really subjective, I doubt anyone would even notice if their region's media is as "good" as the next region over. It would just be like a few decades ago when there was less media available.
Just a thought experiment really, but I do think that people's need to feel useful is very important.
"It's nuts that a single person (say, Chris Pratt) can basically supply the demand of the entire world for leading movie actors"
This doesn't surprise me at all. Art is a way to mold culture, and people want to share a culture. Note you say "Chris Pratt" and I immediately know who you are talking about. That is valuable.
That is why all art will have a few superstars everyone knows. Stephen King. Fortnite. Etc.
This is why genre slicing is useful, and people talk about "discovery" as the problem to solve, but audience scale is a phenomenon that's different, and maybe not fixable.
If human population were 1 trillion, no matter how much you atomize attention, there will always be bestsellers that suck up most of the oxygen, because lifespan and attention is finite. The winners of the attention lottery will be trillionaires. I don't know how to fix this.
Interesting idea. To some degree, perhaps this happens already. Small-time authors and artists can gain local notoriety from things like book-signings, exhibitions/gallery showings, and craft fairs. I don't know if there's any analogue of this for games.
If you took it *too* far, then people from different regions (or sections of whatever slicing scheme you used) wouldn't be able to share culture. I think it's cool that I can connect with people from other continents by using the media we've both read/seen/played as a reference.
In terms of the gaming world… entrance requirements are lower than ever. Gaming companies are bigger than ever, and, the whole industry itself makes both movies and music seem quaint comparison. The number of games may seem mind boggling, but … it tracks with the sheer astronomical scope of the industry.
We've gone from Pong, to multi-billion-dollar acquisition deals. Microsoft's purchase of Activision-Blizzard at $68.7 billion dollars is more than a third the expenditures of the entire Apollo space program, and yes, that is adjusting for inflation. This little novelty industry some thought would die a fad, now, by sheer dollars, *IS* modern entertainment.
On the other point… Honestly, I don't see much intersection between our failing infrastructure and the rampaging Godzilla the gecko of gaming has since evolved into. Gaming is a matter of markets and demand, for good or ill, the capitalism you bring up. Infrastructure, meanwhile, is the realm of governments and governance, civil necessity as opposed to direct economics. Take away the gaming and… you'd probably just end up with more boring, non-gaming software engineers and just as many pot holes.
More broadly speaking, the private sector, leisure, art, necessity, or otherwise, can't really be held to account for the fundamental breakdown of communal scaffolding that make this civilization thing work. That's up to the leaders of society, who are invested with the power to make those decisions, and by extension, the responsibility and blame. Sure, you and I can vote and campaign and do all that political stuff, but it can't be our lives, nor should it be, nor should it have to be.
Yes, there are massive implications of global inequity and economic systems, societal priorities, cultural values, and all that big brain stuff right there, but… I just don't see much intersection between the sustainability of a specific private industry and a local city government stooging up basic road maintenance.
But... circling back to gaming? Maybe if the people in charged played more SimCity with the transit advisor who'd have an absolute, all-caps meltdown the instant you skimped on your road maintenance budget, you wouldn't have so many pot holes...
"In terms of the gaming world… entrance requirements are lower than ever."
I've heard this a thousand times, but this time when I read it it suddenly rang false for me.
The main entrance requirement now to make any art is time. Time is also the most limited, precious thing there is. We all have tons of free time right now. I hope we appreciate it. That is rare.
I guess what I'm saying is that I think making art is still very costly. There is one major expense that can never be gotten rid of.
"Any" art, sure. The nature and cost of time is an immutable constant.
Gaming specifically...?
The industry is huge. Distribution platforms are plentiful. The discipline is mature. Education on the subject is readily available. Acceptance of the hobby is mainstream. The market size eclipses the noonday sun. Gaming has been normalized. Getting into it might not be a great idea (I don't think it is, and didn't) but it's no longer bizarre.
Now, that's not to say success has gotten any more obtainable – the number of failed game developers is likely several times that of the entire industry of decades past. Market size vs. market oversaturation, and boy howdy does this article establish that little hurdle. But that just goes to show how easy it is to get into it now. You couldn't have such an insane number of games if the art form was as impenetrable as it was in the days of shareware.
And… yeah, most who do will be wasting their time. Sad, but true. But… arguably? Also true of all art of all forms. Measured against practical, tangible success, monetary and otherwise, art is overwhelmingly a waste of time. But that kind of hardcore, absolutist utilitarianism is completely dehumanizing. The vast majority of art is ultimately about personal fulfillment. And while it might not amount to dollars you can spend, followers you can count, views, subs, or favorites, there is still value in that.
And if your art does manage to reach and improve the lives of even a small handful of people… entertain them, edify them, make their limited time just a little better? Well, there are infinitely worse and more pointless ways you could spend/waste your time.
So I have always tried not to talk about politics in my public discussion. There's already too much of that. But I'm getting uncomfortably close with all of this. So I am going to try to keep things more abstract and away from concrete political issues.
Also, I don't want to talk too much about "socialism", because everyone uses that word to mean something different these days. My wife grew up behind the Iron Curtain, and in my house, when "socialism" is brought up, it means a very specific thing. We aren't fans.
But you may not use that word to mean total state control of the economy. So it's a discussion unlikely to produce more light.
Anyway, thanks for the great comments! I'm flattered to be worth the time.
EDIT: Someone came in and posted the same comment 1000 times. I banned the user, but I can find no "Remove all comments by user" option. Am I missing something obvious? This is definitely a feature that should be there.
(I wish I could pin comments.)
Yeah socialism is not a useful word for the reason you mention.
If the same word is routinely used to describe both the political system in 1930s USSR and in 2020s Norway, its no help.
Some thoughts:
"nobody wants this many games"
True, but not every game is for everyone. Assuming that everyone should play every game is kinda looking at Art from a use-case which isn't my cup of tea at least.
Also: "However, you should ask if you can't be bringing more people happiness with your limited time on earth" and and "If my country was healthy, stable, and on a sustainable path, most of them would not exist, including mine. That they do exist is a symptom of misplaced priorities, crappy opportunities for ambitious youth, and ongoing damage to our society" are literally opposed to each other.
"Let me make one thing clear: If you need to make art, do it. If you want to put a game on Steam, do it. I'm not a bully. I'm more on your side than you could ever imagine.
But at some point, you have to stop and see what is in front of your eyes."
That's likely at least a key part of why most indie games are made, I would suggest. And the but invalidates the previous statement. If you literally just care about the art and not the profit? Whatever.
"If my Empire wants to go full Bread and Circuses, that is fine. However, you DO have to make sure you can provide the bread before you get to make the circuses."
This is a systemic issue that isn't fixable by individuals. Going out and throwing down asphalt into potholes is a fine thing to do, but if the city isn't paying for maintenance, they're not paying for maintenance.
"Hell, forget full-time jobs. If you volunteered at a food bank for one afternoon, you would do more good than spending 20 years writing games nobody plays."
This is bordering on ableist, especially in a pandemic. There's a good number of immunocompromised that can't go out and do that. There's also this thing called bandwidth that isn't in limitless supply. Executive function is an important thing. Some people's passion projects let them recover that.
"Don't blame capitalism for these problems. Capitalism is the instrument that made the surpluses that made it possible for you to write art nobody wants in the first place."
This is some head-up-ass stuff. We as individual have a limited amount of control and spinning our wheels for change is important but is also something that's burnout inducing.
Overall, you're putting way too much on the individual and not on the systems. Especially important since systems of control have massive influence beyond what we can see. Say, for comparison, road width as a better moderator of speed limit. There should be subconscious cues at play that better drive the limit down than just posting a sign and expecting people to obey. The same is true for why things are the way they are.
People make their passion projects because it fuels them, and then put them on Steam because it might get the lightning strike of viral success. Due to how crappy things are (which you've noted in your post and I've quoted in this comment), this passion-project-gamble feels like a better shot for free-time fun and a chance to break out of the cycle of poverty than many other options.
As far as I can tell, Substack does not have (and really should) a Remove All Comments By User command. If I can find one, I can use it. Until then, I will leave all these replies up as a testimonial to why such a feature is needed.
EDIT: Substack is helping out. Thank you!
Have you ever worked an actual job in your life? Not in high-school or part-timing during college - actual full-time, have-to-do-it-for-the-next-30-years job. If I recall your bio correctly, you never did. That would explain why you romanticise them - the actual jobs, including the ones which are the biggest service to community, suck and have always sucked. Just read Bukowski for reference. The menial jobs like fixing potholes suck for obvious reasons, while the white collar "information society" jobs suck because they always involve working on hopelessly complicated problems (whether it's improving the Windows kernel at MS or improving economic policy at a government agency) with a large group of uncoordinated people.
People over centuries have sometimes gone as far as murder only to avoid working in jobs. Now, we're finally (and perhaps temporarily) in a state where many ordinary people can somehow sustain themselves for years without having to work. They often put those years into pursuit of their art, with a hope that it'll generate income. Even if it doesn't, working diligently at your craft is very good for you, and much better than alternatives of drinking and gambling that people have often chosen in the past.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that the society runs and have always ran on economic exploitation and under threat of starvation ("get to work or else") - and the US is currently a wealthy and happy enough place that it's perhaps temporarily ran out of people to exploit, hence there isn't enough people to fix those potholes for cheap.
So, I posit, if millions of people can "waste" time pursuing their hobbies such as art, it should be celebrated, not lamented. It testifies to how much the US "has arrived" as a society. If, like you say, this state is temporary (which I believe it is - there should be a leveling of global living standards happening in this century), then the problem will just self-correct itself as the country gets less wealthy.
Also, most people don't have the resources to sustain themselves while they work on failed indie games for their entire life. Most of them will perhaps give it a shot for a couple of years and then (begrudgingly) join or re-join the workforce. They'll still end up giving decades of their lives to The Machine, so there's no major harm in them indulging themselves for a couple of years.
"the actual jobs, including the ones which are the biggest service to community, suck and have always sucked."
I EXPLICITLY say this. REPEATEDLY.
And yet, they need to be done. And they go undone.
You can't have bread & circuses until someone provides the bread.
But, as many have pointed out already, the provision of "bread" (i.e. fixed potholes) depends on a political process, and not merely lack of workers. The potholes will get fixed as soon as the city assigns money to that and not other toy ideas politicians may have - or just increases the city tax rate to raise more money.
So, are you advocating for more people to actively involving themselves in the democratic process, trying to improve the system from within, instead of doing gamedev? That's something that Jordan Peterson have been calling people out to do recently as well (minus the gamedev part obv).
I'm not advocating for anything. Because real jobs suck so hard, nobody will ever advocate for their having to do them. Because our value system is based on the jobs sucking, there is no push for politicians to properly fund doing the hard jobs.
That is why (as I again explicitly state) the change has to be forced from outside. To be clear ... I am just as much a part of the problem as anyone else. I don't have the guts or gumption to pick up a shovel. I am not admirable.
I liked this post not out of a position of agreement/disagreement but because it is really a stimulating discussion. I think most people believe they have some sort of moral high ground when the reality is most, if not everyone, is selfishly locked in their own private fantasy of reality. This gets even worse with the internet since you can find anyone else to agree with you if you put in even a modicum of effort to look. I revel in the fact that I have (at least partially) swallowed the bitter pill; I can admit I am selfish and not a morally upright person. I could be doing something else to benefit society besides making games (the world would be a better place if I did) but I do it out of personal enjoyment in my free time, not out of the illusionary goal that I will receive some reward. I also respect you since you admit that you are part of the problem. It means you are talking on my level; the mud in the ditch vs the preacher in the pulpit.
Indie game devs are gambling. They're buying lottery tickets. And their failed indie game is worth as much as a lottery ticket that didn't win. That's the point of the article. Ugly truth, but since it's a truth, we should at least hear it even if we don't absorb it.
Seth Godin and Disney teach that everyone can be a winner. We're all gonna make it if we're generous. No. Only the most intelligent or most talented have a shot, and that's why intelligence makes you happy--because you have license to work a great job. People with 145 IQ get to play for a living, should they choose. They get to be Tim Urban or Ray Kurzweil. 110 IQ people don't. You can be brilliant and unlucky, but most of the lucky people are brilliant, and IQ is the real privilege.
Actually, author is privileged for his IQ too. He might be able to make an indie that cut through the noise if he started today--I'd give him about a 10-20% chance. Wonder if he agrees with those odds.
Also, pothole fillers exploit bigtime. They do nothing for hours until overtime begins, then they actually begin working. They could do something legit with their days instead.
I understand that this blog post will come to many people as a collection of inconveniences, and so I hope you are not chastised for what I perceive to be a pure intent to internally search for answers and warn people. As for myself, I found this to be an invaluable reminder of the privilege in which I operate.
Over the mid-way of my twenties, still a young man by the account of many, I found most of my life to be empty. The predilection of the people surrounding myself is for unlimited consumption of content, delusion, denial of the essential truth that our lives demand sacrifice, that all time is borrowed. With much struggle I have come to realise that the only moments I feel satisfied are when I am solving a problem that exists outside myself, when I am working in a job which serves others. That I have wasted so much time learning about an increasingly large pile of games or movies, useless trivia mostly, and eschewed meaningful career goals such as being an environmental officer because I neglected to put effort into learning to drive brings me immense guilt.
So, I thank you for your meditations, not because they were directly written to benefit myself, or even that they were intended to depict a reality that others believe, but because you tried to be honest.
And I shall end it on a good note, I find this post to be life affirming. I am about to start working in a career that directly benefits people and have spent an enormous amount of time over the pandemic period to filling the pot holes in my own life - even if that means I end up playing a few less games.
May you have good health.
I have a very different view of the cause-and-effect here. I don't think the issue is a lack of social prestige associated with pothole-filling. If there was someone willing to hire enough people for a large enough wage, people would take the work and fill the potholes.
But not many of those people would be switching from making art. Because while 12,000 games in a year might be a lot, it doesn't actually represent many *people* relative to all the other things people are doing, especially since we're really talking about the long-tail of small-or-no-team indies. If we took everyone in the US making games nobody plays, or music nobody listens to, or books nobody reads, and convinced them all to do something else, it'd be an tiny blip in the economy. It'd be pretty big deal to those industries, of course: the remaining game-makers (especially those near the edges of wherever we draw the cut-off) would have a much easier time reaching audiences. And I suspect this is why it seems so relevant to you, why the causal relationship seems so clear.
(If the pay was high enough and the hours humane enough, people might even fill potholes while intending to make indie games nobody will play in their spare time, for the same reasons humans have always told stories and played music for their friends and family after doing what they need to do for survival. I'm not sure how to maintain a sustainable global industry of art-for-pay, but art as a hobby will always exist.)
I think you are assuming that the choice between art and work-work will stay, just that, a choice. I know, I know, it's easy to be pessimistic and economists predict 50 out of every 5 recessions. But ... I think the option to make art is something I am going to lose.
Not trying to be rude, and I’m not there yet, but I don’t think you can argue your way out of a midlife/existential crisis. I hope you figure things out, but this is as much about those 10k Steam games as it is about potholes. I guess starting with “It’s hard to look back at your life’s work and wonder if you took the wrong path.“ would have saved a lot of digital ink.
As for the points made in this post, they should probably be questions, not statements. As it is, it reads like you’re trying to justify how you feel, not trying to find any truths. Like how the fact that 30 games get released per day on Steam is validating your thoughts, even though it’s a glorified indiepocalypse post, just a few years late.
In your initial thread, the issue was that these games weren’t played by anybody. It briefly became about people wasting their money and education on schools that can’t promise success. Then it’s about the fact that playing games at all is a waste of time, which directly contradicts the initial point.
And I guess “Does entertainment have any value?” is a valid question, but the answer is that it’s subjective. It’s on you to decide what’s valuable. Society thinks things that make money are valuable, you seem to think things that fix the world are valuable. But here, this is about self fulfillment, which can take many forms. And if that has no value, then why are you even trying to fix the world?
You also mentioned music and films, but this is more than just entertainment. It’s about religion, or science too. Scientists are valuable, right? Except sending things to mars doesn’t really solve our problems, maybe. And biologists who need to hit a certain number of publications per year to keep their funding will definitely be able to randomly find a bacterium that’ll teach us how to cure cancer. Especially when funding is based on the potential application (usually by industries) of research, that won’t reduce our chances at all. (Heh, maybe I already had my existential crisis)
But back to games and potholes. Steam has potholes too, but those aren’t the amount of games published every year. It’s the discoverability.
The fact that these games aren’t played IS a problem. Not because their creators wasted their time, but because they probably have an audience. For example, games like Super Auto Pets or SNKRX were relatively successful, but nowhere near the amount of Vampire Survivors. People who play VS would probably also like those two games, but the majority probably haven’t heard of them. It’s pretty sad to think that our favorite game probably already exists, and we’ll never know about it.
But should we ask people to stop making games (not by gatekeeping tho!) while we figure stuff out? Should we ask people to stop driving while we fix those potholes?
As for the price of schools.. yeah that sucks. If only people knew that the best way to get good at making games is to make a lot of games- wait stop no don’t tell them that there’s too many games already.
Honestly the issue isn’t that there’s too many games. People don’t need degrees or the absence of a full time job to publish games or Steam (hence why there’s so many). IMO, what probably pushes people to go all in on games is the stories of the Moldenhaurs mortgaging their house twice to make Cuphead, or the way Ember Lab gets presented as underdogs, even though the brothers’ father was at the head of multiple Disney parks.
Anyways, I think the industry does have a problem with how success is showcased, and how the methods mostly aren’t criticized. And school should definitely tell their potential students what the world looks like. But at the same time, schools need to run, even in countries where they aren't for profit, and you still end up with teachers whose job is mainly to make people learn how to be teachers, thus producing approximatively no external value by the rules of this post.
But what does it all mean for this post? Probably that attacking people for doing what they love isn’t how you solve those issues, nor find answers to your personal doubts.
" I don’t think you can argue your way out of a midlife/existential crisis. I hope you figure things out,"
This is extremely accurate. "Dudes need therapy" is an annoying meme at this point, but might be quite apt in this case.
Let's say that everybody who liked Vampire Survivors *would* also like those other two games, and *did* get to hear about them. Now you're assuming/hoping they'll play three games instead of one. And maybe they only had time for one.
For me as a lover of video games, discoverability is *not* the problem. I have already discovered more delicious-looking games than I can play. The problem is that I am mortal. There are only so many hours in a day, and so many days in my life. I have a full-time job and multiple hobbies.
So I have to limit myself to the games that I'm most likely to love. The cream of the crop. That tends to be 1) games from studios I already know and trust, or 2) games that a lot of other people are already raving about. It's not as though I couldn't go hunting for some of the more obscure options; I just don't have room on my wishlist.
This shit fuckin sucks, dude.
It also displays a fundamental lack of understanding of multiple areas / disciplines (economics, government and resource allocation, how a real person's fucking job works, etc), as well as is extremely callous towards artists who just want to express themselves. But mostly, it just fuckin sucks.
These past few weeks really have changed how I look at you, your work, and your place in the gaming landscape. Incredibly disappointing.
Saying true things people don't want to hear has always (Always!) been my brand. Your appeal to authority is clumsy. This post is about seeing the decay happening in front of our eyes, not listening to some credentialed economist telling us everything is perfect and going back to sleep.
The experts who run my life, shape my world, and tell me to shut up cannot, as far as I can tell, find their asses with both hands in a brightly lit room.
Sometimes dudes who are "being honest bro, always" are just being assholes.
You're just being an asshole.
Why make art nobody wants? Because fuck you is why. Making art nobody wants is a sacrament of defiance, a way to leave scars on a world that isn't worth saving.
lol
People create because they want to create. People don't do shit jobs because those shit jobs come with shit pay. You talk about the problems with Seattle's roads. Lets take a look at what road crews make in Seattle: 54% of road crew jobs pay less than $38,500 year. At 2,000 hours/year, that's $19.25/hour, a mere two dollars an hour more than Seattle minimum wage. Again, 54% of those jobs pay LESS than that. But lets not merely compare it to the minimum wage, lets compare it to a living wage. Can you make enough money doing road work to live a reasonable life? Well... if you're lucky. That's just about enough to get by alone, by the numbers I'm looking at. But you won't be socking away money for emergencies or a comfortable retirement and you definitely can't afford to support a spouse or children. And how are your career prospects starting as a road crew employee? You can move into being a construction worker, or you can work on sewers instead! Wow!
So imagine you're a young adult, fresh-faced and full of ambition. You want to do something with your life. Is it a viable strategy to accept a job in a field where you will do difficult physical labor at hours that will permanently damage you? (A lot of road work is completed at night, take a look at mental and physical health stats for night shift workers)
...no. No, people don't want to do that. They will if they're forced, but that's not a shining example to set up as ideal. The ideal we should be setting up is one where people at least have the time and energy to pursue more than their job. And that means paying people more, and working them less. Fortunately, we have the secret to doing just that, and it's automation. Unfortunately, there's no will to adapt automation to reducing human misery, for fear that it will "destroy jobs" (jobs which nobody wants to do anyway).
To make our crap, we offshore our jobs to people working in crap conditions on crap items. There's no value in automating that because human labor in other countries is cheap. And since there's no value in automating what we offshore, there's no value to automating work on our own shores (this is a giant logical fallacy, of course, but I'm giving insight into the psyche of those who are holding back automation).
So, the solution is obvious. Throw off the cherished illusion that rugged individualistic capitalism is a good thing. Look at society as a whole rather than a collection of individuals. Take care of the society, which means taking care of the people who support it. Compensate the road workers well. Now that you've done that, begin work on reducing the labor needed, and as jobs are automated out, take care of those people, as they are still part of society. Train them to maintain the machines rather than labor manually. Let them learn how to make more and better machines, to keep the metaphorical and literal trains going. But don't just do that to the jobs here in our American Empire, do so elsewhere too. Build great automated factories that take a fraction of the labor here and teach/help/allow other countries to do the same. Each iteration of this cycle improves the world. But all of this, every single step, hinges on one axiom: We are more than a collection of individuals.
As long as we're mired down in the individualistic bullcrap America peddles and refuse to develop systemic help, we'll never make progress. An individual going to a soup kitchen and volunteering for an afternoon sure seems like it does some human good, but it changes literally zero systemic problems. If the entire indie games industry quit their projects and ladled soup, there would still be the same homelessness problem in a year. Because that's still a collection of individuals acting individually.
I honestly believe this country, and perhaps the world, is simply doomed. We don't have the vision and the foresight to make the changes that need to be made. We're stuck with a fractured system that can't agree on incremental changes to the status quo. We act as individuals multiplied by our wealth. How do individuals with no wealth make systemic change? It's impossible. Many people see the fall coming, but there's nothing that can be done. I'd like to sell you all on a dream where we, the people, band together and seize change through either entirely legal means or ethically justified direct action (which is just a sanitized way of saying civil war), but that doesn't happen in reality anymore. Frankly, it's barely happened ever. White folks like me would like to point at the civil rights movement, but an honest looks shows that fight's far from done. That kind of sweeping, successful change only happens in video games and movies.
So, we make and play video games. We fiddle while Rome burns, but unlike Nero, our fiddles are on layaway.
There's a lot here, so just one comment. There are two debates going on here.
1. Is our system unsustainable?
2. How fix?
I think you and I are on the same page about #1 and a long way apart on #2. I'm still a firm believer in capitalism, but capitalism won't function in a society without forward-looking values. But socialism won't function in that system either.
Oh, and yeah, if correct that's a shamefully low salary for roadwork. We are getting what we pay for.
Yeah I got really rambly, I'll admit. I should point out that my vision isn't really what we currently consider socialism, since our current perspective on socialism is still a very individualistic one. Capitalism can still co-exist with human goodness, just not our current system.
Consider this: You're talking about people trying to "live the easy life sitting and making art indoors." However, there's a different group of people who are doing far more harm to human happiness than them. And that's people who live the easy life sitting and profiting off of stock indoors. I'd stake that each of those people is a greater net drain on society than ten indie game developers. They don't create anything anyone enjoys, nor do they keep our roads working. They simply exist and demand that companies provide them with ever-greater returns on their investment.
Roadwork citation: https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/Road-Worker-Salary-in-Seattle,WA (I don't know if this message board will zap links so fingers crossed)
cockfoster
I think people's tastes are varied enough that there are STILL niches that haven't been explored well that can lead to successful games. Your average indie dev probably couldn't make those though.
This may be true, but finding those niches has gotten super-hard.
Never forget that video games as a whole is still a very young medium. I think in the long run believing that the genres we have now is all there is will prove to be myopic.
The word you're looking for is "Decadence." We're a decadent culture, and it can be wonderful to live and create in a decadent culture--and it's no individual's fault that it's a decadent culture--but its days are numbered unless something changes drastically. Like you, I am also afraid that things will only change when the world changes against our will.
Believe me, the word came to mind, but I had a mental block against using it.
I think it is possible that the mass time-wasting is society going on strike against a shitty, abusive labor market and economy. If that is the case, there is hope that things can get better without societal collapse. We'll all have less stuff, but sustainability can be restored.
I still need some hope. :)
I like that alternative picture, and I'll join you in hoping there's something to it!
Ok, so, I'm an indie dev working on a starvation salary to make my dream of making games for a living a reality. Despite the fact that your article raised a lot of my hackles, I'm going to engage with it in good faith, because despite what my hackles say I think you're also arguing in good faith but I do think you take a few logical leaps.
Firstly, you say "Nobody wants this many games!" and then cite how much the average game sells on Steam. That's a logical fallacy: it's likely 90% of those games were not shown to potential customers, so those customers had no idea those games existed. There are about 26m users on Steam, so even if each user bought only one game this year, that averages out to hundreds of thousands of sales per game, if you assume (wrongly, but this is for the sake of argument) that those sales are distributed equally. So there are enough players: the main problem is the algorithm shunts them to games that are already popular. That's not a games problem, that's a 21st century problem in the same category as "Why is facebook destroying democracy?"
Second, you say that because you are unlikely to make a game that sells well, you should not try, because the odds are stacked against you. This is true, but it has been true about every artform, forever, ever since there was commercial art. The odds of writing a 19th century novel that made it into a serialised paper were probably slim. The odds of your rock band being picked up by a major label was as much about luck as talent. The odds of writing a novel that will get published by a respectable well-placed publisher are incredibly slim. This is not just games, and this is not just about The Algorithm making it hard to break through (although I do think The Algorithm makes the whole thing unnecessarily hard, by the way). This is just art being a niche that many people want to do (because it seems fun), and there being limited places. Ask any novelist.
Thirdly, you seem to be under the impression that one can either make video games, or make a difference in the world. You even imply that just *playing* a game (alone, in a room of your own) means you're not getting out there and making a difference. I think this is false: firstly, the implication that playing games = no social work is just wrong. People can't be on all the time, they need time to relax, ergo games. But also, if you make games you can 1) put positive messages in those games about cultural things you care about 2) organise or be part of bundles or fundraisers 3) point your social media audience towards causes that you care about. None of these are as straightforward as just filling in a pothole, but I would much rather raise thousands of dollars for charity to preserve a green corridor in the amazon than fill in a pothole - and that's something I wouldn't be able to do without an audience. (Incidentally, I'm not making that example up: our game was part of this bundle https://itch.io/b/1164/world-land-trust-bundle which raised over $70k. I'm sure our game was only a small part of that, but each game helped make the bundle look more appealing to people overall, and maybe one day I'll make a game that can headline that kind of bundle.)
This bit I find really interesting: "I'll write all the games I want, while I can. BUT. Suppose the rest of the world starts saying, "Um, actually, we don't want to bust our humps making crap for debt forever. We're tripling our prices." Then my whole world goes to pieces."
Absolutely! And when that happens, I will adjust. I would like it to happen sooner, frankly, because the world we have is unfair and unjust in many ways, and the sooner underprivileged and exploited people say "no more" the better. But I'm one person, and I alone will not bring the great revolution to pass, so I see no point in worrying about what-ifs. If the world is fundamentally restructured tomorrow to be fairer and someone says I have to scrub toilets now to hold up my end of the privilege, ok, I will be very happy to do that. But until then, what am I meant to do?
The only thing I can do, really, is make art and be nice to my friends. It's all I'm actually genuinely good at. So until things change, I am going to continue complaining about the algorithm, and I am going to keep making stuff. I am also going to warn younglings ahead of time that their dream of making games will be incredibly tough, and that they must be prepared for that. But the idea that this automatically means we "need" fewer games is, I think, quite misguided.
As far as the Steam thing goes, I've seen a pretty widespread sentiment that goes something like "Steam should show more people these small indie games so that people will buy them." I think the sad truth of the matter is that Steam isn't showing them to more people precisely because the people who do see them DON'T buy them. If you assume that Steam wants to make money, why would they deliberately decide not to make money on those smaller games?
Steam provides an amazing service to indies - they take care of a lot of the uncomfortable parts of your business for you, and provide some not-quite-free advertising to boot. At the same time, Steam should not be your advertising platform, it should be your distribution platform. There's not an algorithm picking out the best games, there's an algorithm boosting games which sell well, which is something you can accomplish outside the distribution platforms if you combine hustling and getting lucky.
Jesus, you made so many games… how do I not end up like you (no offense) :(
It's a good post but let's be honest, the root cause very much is capitalism. Excluding that as the cause is the same as excluding potholes as causing a bumpy ride, since they're part of the road that brought us here.
The laptop you use to program was built with resources mined by child slave. The coffee you drink was picked by child slaves. The abundance you have is caused directly by capitalism. At the same time, capitalism wants to remove funding for roads. Potholes are directly caused by capitalisms destructive influence on politics and infrastructure.
Art will always exist, no matter the economic system. Heck, Tetris is a communist game and it's one of the most popular games of all time. It is perfectly possible to identify capitalism as an issue while also maintaining games as an art form.
I'm not sure if this is an original thought, but maybe it's not so much that there's too many games, rather that global distribution has made it so a ridiculously tiny amount of games can meet the demand of the entire world. In a way, a few people are hoarding artistic fulfillment just like billionaires hoard money. It's nuts that a single person (say, Chris Pratt) can basically supply the demand of the entire world for leading movie actors, depriving probably thousands of people of jobs who might be really good at it.
If people could be persuaded to only consume movies/art/games that were made in their local region (or some other slice), that would create many jobs per region and allow many more people to feel creatively fulfilled and useful. Since art is really subjective, I doubt anyone would even notice if their region's media is as "good" as the next region over. It would just be like a few decades ago when there was less media available.
Just a thought experiment really, but I do think that people's need to feel useful is very important.
"It's nuts that a single person (say, Chris Pratt) can basically supply the demand of the entire world for leading movie actors"
This doesn't surprise me at all. Art is a way to mold culture, and people want to share a culture. Note you say "Chris Pratt" and I immediately know who you are talking about. That is valuable.
That is why all art will have a few superstars everyone knows. Stephen King. Fortnite. Etc.
This is why genre slicing is useful, and people talk about "discovery" as the problem to solve, but audience scale is a phenomenon that's different, and maybe not fixable.
If human population were 1 trillion, no matter how much you atomize attention, there will always be bestsellers that suck up most of the oxygen, because lifespan and attention is finite. The winners of the attention lottery will be trillionaires. I don't know how to fix this.
I'd be in favor of moving Chris Pratt to pothole-filling duty.
Interesting idea. To some degree, perhaps this happens already. Small-time authors and artists can gain local notoriety from things like book-signings, exhibitions/gallery showings, and craft fairs. I don't know if there's any analogue of this for games.
If you took it *too* far, then people from different regions (or sections of whatever slicing scheme you used) wouldn't be able to share culture. I think it's cool that I can connect with people from other continents by using the media we've both read/seen/played as a reference.
In terms of the gaming world… entrance requirements are lower than ever. Gaming companies are bigger than ever, and, the whole industry itself makes both movies and music seem quaint comparison. The number of games may seem mind boggling, but … it tracks with the sheer astronomical scope of the industry.
We've gone from Pong, to multi-billion-dollar acquisition deals. Microsoft's purchase of Activision-Blizzard at $68.7 billion dollars is more than a third the expenditures of the entire Apollo space program, and yes, that is adjusting for inflation. This little novelty industry some thought would die a fad, now, by sheer dollars, *IS* modern entertainment.
On the other point… Honestly, I don't see much intersection between our failing infrastructure and the rampaging Godzilla the gecko of gaming has since evolved into. Gaming is a matter of markets and demand, for good or ill, the capitalism you bring up. Infrastructure, meanwhile, is the realm of governments and governance, civil necessity as opposed to direct economics. Take away the gaming and… you'd probably just end up with more boring, non-gaming software engineers and just as many pot holes.
More broadly speaking, the private sector, leisure, art, necessity, or otherwise, can't really be held to account for the fundamental breakdown of communal scaffolding that make this civilization thing work. That's up to the leaders of society, who are invested with the power to make those decisions, and by extension, the responsibility and blame. Sure, you and I can vote and campaign and do all that political stuff, but it can't be our lives, nor should it be, nor should it have to be.
Yes, there are massive implications of global inequity and economic systems, societal priorities, cultural values, and all that big brain stuff right there, but… I just don't see much intersection between the sustainability of a specific private industry and a local city government stooging up basic road maintenance.
But... circling back to gaming? Maybe if the people in charged played more SimCity with the transit advisor who'd have an absolute, all-caps meltdown the instant you skimped on your road maintenance budget, you wouldn't have so many pot holes...
"In terms of the gaming world… entrance requirements are lower than ever."
I've heard this a thousand times, but this time when I read it it suddenly rang false for me.
The main entrance requirement now to make any art is time. Time is also the most limited, precious thing there is. We all have tons of free time right now. I hope we appreciate it. That is rare.
I guess what I'm saying is that I think making art is still very costly. There is one major expense that can never be gotten rid of.
"Any" art, sure. The nature and cost of time is an immutable constant.
Gaming specifically...?
The industry is huge. Distribution platforms are plentiful. The discipline is mature. Education on the subject is readily available. Acceptance of the hobby is mainstream. The market size eclipses the noonday sun. Gaming has been normalized. Getting into it might not be a great idea (I don't think it is, and didn't) but it's no longer bizarre.
Now, that's not to say success has gotten any more obtainable – the number of failed game developers is likely several times that of the entire industry of decades past. Market size vs. market oversaturation, and boy howdy does this article establish that little hurdle. But that just goes to show how easy it is to get into it now. You couldn't have such an insane number of games if the art form was as impenetrable as it was in the days of shareware.
And… yeah, most who do will be wasting their time. Sad, but true. But… arguably? Also true of all art of all forms. Measured against practical, tangible success, monetary and otherwise, art is overwhelmingly a waste of time. But that kind of hardcore, absolutist utilitarianism is completely dehumanizing. The vast majority of art is ultimately about personal fulfillment. And while it might not amount to dollars you can spend, followers you can count, views, subs, or favorites, there is still value in that.
And if your art does manage to reach and improve the lives of even a small handful of people… entertain them, edify them, make their limited time just a little better? Well, there are infinitely worse and more pointless ways you could spend/waste your time.