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- cross-posted to:
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From Jason Schreier. “The plural of ‘anecdote’ is not ‘data’,” but this is some analysis from Schreier seemingly rooted in many anecdotes. The long and short of it is that development on AAA games tend to routinely hit bottlenecks where entire portions of a team are waiting for some other team to unblock them so that they can continue to get work done.
Man, I wish we still got FPS games off an assembly line, and I’m waiting for indies to get out of the Quake era.
Trepang2?
Youll probably be waiting for a while since most indies are solo devs. Its hard to make 3D models and textures of the PS2/GameCube/Xbox era quality as a solo dev in a reasonable amount of time, especially for every object a game would need.
The programming isn’t even the hard part. Its mostly the amount of time and work required for making art assets that take the longest in game developmemt.
I suspect this is an area where we may see AI assets help speed up development for smaller studios.
That thought is why we don’t have really good games any more, but games made for an engine.
Where are the new C&C, the new Neverwinter nights, the new Commandos (by Eidos), the list goes on.
The new C&C is Tempest Rising. The new Neverwinter Nights has a variety of answers, from Baldur’s Gate 3 to Solasta to Pillars of Eternity, depending on what you’re looking for. Commandos has spawned an entire genre at this point; not only is there a new Commandos coming soon that looks good, we just had a series of three and a half games from the sadly-now-defunct Mimimi that all fit the bill, as well as that game Sumerian Six just last year.
Games of that era were frequently made a dozen or so people in 18 months. Whether that passes some arbitrary line in the sand for what counts as “indie” or not, I don’t much care; it’s just a market segment that’s been left behind by AAA that I’m waiting for someone to pick up the mantle on. Most genres that AAA have left behind have been filled by now, but FPS games that fit the mold of what we got between ~1998 and ~2016 are still an itch I need scratched. From what I can see on the horizon, there’s Fallen Aces in early access that I’d like to see once it’s 1.0, Core Decay going for a Deus Ex sort of thing, and then Mouse: P.I. for Hire, but I’d still like to see the full package with co-op and deathmatch modes like we got back in the day.
Zortch is a neat one, less Quake and more early 2000s FPS feel. Pre-Doom 3, pre-HL2 in gameplay, but with the style of comedy and charm you’d get out of a Shiny Entertainment game. Very much a solo labor of love, and it’s only like $5 if memory serves me right.
Thanks for the recommendation. I’ll check it out. I’ve got Phantom Fury from this past year, and even with a ton of criticism heaped toward it, it was still in the ballpark of what I wanted to scratch this itch.