Why do they bother?

Phelmo

Phelmo

CAGiversary!
There are some games out there that have had hundreds of people working for months and spending millions of dollars to deliver games that don't necessarily sell millions of copies.

Earlier I read this article about a game (Minecraft) which is an indie game developed by just 1 man. This game is now selling a copy every 3 seconds and pulling in over $350,000 a day.

Would it be a good idea for the major companies to instead of pouring a ton of money onto one game, they hire a small team to work on small, fun games that work on the replay/addiction factor (not to totally stop making the big games though, they are still good).
 
Developers rarely invest "tons of money" on a small project. Generally they have a small team work on it and spend very little to actually create it - so the ability to gain profit on those projects are really high. SO they use those projects to fund their bigger ones.

Also movies do a similar thing where they can push out a small/crap movie which costs very little to make but they make a ton through the advertisements in the movie - so even if only 10 people go see it they'll already have made a huge profit. Thus why you see complete crap come out all the time by the big companies: Sony, Universal ect.
 
What I'm saying is that there is a possibility that a game could take of just as well as Minecraft has done, so why don't the big companies try to do so? Yes they make crappy ones that are cheap to make but often don't sell well, when for the same price with the right idea they could be making hundreds of thousands a day.
 
[quote name='lokizz']isnt that what psp minis are?[/QUOTE]

and xbox live indie. Most people can't name a single one of those indie games
 
What if Minecraft was released on the marketplace or as an iPhone app then? Would it do as well on the consoles as it has done on the PC?
 
[quote name='Phelmo']What if Minecraft was released on the marketplace or as an iPhone app then? Would it do as well on the consoles as it has done on the PC?[/QUOTE]

It would be fine on any system. The point is a game like Minecraft comes along maybe once a decade. You could be paying 100 small game designer teams to try to developer their own game, and they will never make what Minecraft made in a day. Chances are you are better off paying 100 game designers to work on a single project.


A smaller projects that did work out might be puzzle quest. It did well but no where close to what a bigger project made.
 
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@62t I pretty much agree with you, I just wanted other peoples opinions on it mainly. Where I like games like Minecraft I probably prefer the big games, the only thing I don't prefer is the price tag. But that is expected from a CAG I guess.
 
sony is getting the word out on their idie games through plus. i doubt many people would ever buy them if they didnt toss them out as freebies. on top of that the price for them imo is too high if they were all $1 more people would take a risk on them.
 
Well without the big companies spending more money and using more people we wouldnt have metal gear solid 5, ratchet and clank tools of destruction, little big planet, alan wake, world of warcraft, diablo, and so on. And thats not a world I want to live in. If all we had were popcap and indie games Id quit gaming.

Very few indie games are worth a shit anymore. Now everyone is trying to forceibly make an indie game because they are doing well. You have the occasionl gem like flower but for every one of those you get 3 other turds shit out that try and have that indie feel to them, few are good because they are good. And indie games are in, your cool if you play them now. Give it a couple more years and no one will like them because to many people shat them out and flooded the market.

Besides, Im not paying 15 bucks for a little game just because someone thought it would be cool to make it "retro" by making it look 8bit, or someone making one like limbo which is basically just stylized for the sake of it into a angsty teenagers wet dream.
 
you know, like in the film industry, there are huge costs in marketing the big titles. The actual production costs don't even compare in many cases. It's interesting.
 
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