These days it's very popular for every `individual` to be an ultra-human, capable of being a movie star, a rock star, a dancer, running their own company, multi-millionaire, owning a mansion, driving huge cars, president of the USA, super-muscular athletic bodies, being on tv, `having it all` etc. People more and more want to be capable of everything - a kind of superhero ego-frenzy, particularly in the USA.
Also the world is becoming a much smaller place and accessibility has greatly increased freedom and possibilities. Everyone is blurring their sense of what they `can be` based on an increased sense of unification across the world, which I think has a lot to do with the internet, as well as the hugely increased availability of and exposure to games and gaming hardware advances.
So many people now think they can be `just like` their heroes and that they themselves can become the hero. I think this is probably a more prevalent attitude in the USA because the UK for example is much more a group entity who really don't like anything new that stands out from the old too much, or any individually who fancies themselves as being more special than others - but I think in the UK too this attraction to being `the one` is on the rise. And of course it floods into every industry, not just games.
In the game industry there are now companies who put so many millions of dollars into a single game that the humble bedroom programmer couldn't hope to in any way compete with that level of financial backing, resources, manpower or time. The gap has widened a lot and it will continue to widen. 100 million to develop a game? No problem. Okay maybe a billion.
Inbetween those top-of-the-industry giants and the barely-scraping-by-with-no-money-to-spare solo developer, there is a huge range of developers with different abilities, tools, team sizes, business development, etc, and usually it seems like whoever is near the bottom of the ladder will gradually work their way up the ladder, as if magnetized by the huge success of the industry giants. So everyone's trying to outdo everyone else, and everyone's trying to have an even better more successful game, and everyone wants a piece of the pie. The standards will keep going up and up and up.
But, there will always be a bottom to the ladder. If you think of yourself more in terms of where you are on the ladder `absolutely` rather than `relative` to where all those ladder-climbers are, you might get a better sense of there being a market for your level of capability. There are people out there who will only buy games that cost a lot of money or meet a given standard, but there are also plenty of people with lower standards who will buy something smaller or less polished. It's not that you are being outperformed by others so much as that you're trying to keep up with the rising tide rather than identify your strengths and use them.
As always, and I agree, it is a challenge and you can try to rise to it, pursuing that ever evasive `better than others`. But don't lose sleep over it man, keep doing what you love. When the current crop of indie games has become sufficiently advanced there will now be yet another new band of simpler and less-advanced games being made which will become the next uber-indie group, and so it goes on and on.
The more the industry shifts to a more advanced level, the more new levels are introduced at the bottom of the ladder. I think in part that casual games game about largely because of the hugeness of most modern titles - their huge growth left a vacuum that needed to be filled by something a lot less intense or involved. And now casual games are getting to look almost as advanced and diverse as many old retro games. You're starting to see shootemups and platform games with a slightly more cutesy-easy look-and-feel. The engines are getting more advanced. Soon casual games will probably get so advanced that people will start saying they are too complex and then you'll get super-casual games, a whole new class of gaming.
Also the world is becoming a much smaller place and accessibility has greatly increased freedom and possibilities. Everyone is blurring their sense of what they `can be` based on an increased sense of unification across the world, which I think has a lot to do with the internet, as well as the hugely increased availability of and exposure to games and gaming hardware advances.
So many people now think they can be `just like` their heroes and that they themselves can become the hero. I think this is probably a more prevalent attitude in the USA because the UK for example is much more a group entity who really don't like anything new that stands out from the old too much, or any individually who fancies themselves as being more special than others - but I think in the UK too this attraction to being `the one` is on the rise. And of course it floods into every industry, not just games.
In the game industry there are now companies who put so many millions of dollars into a single game that the humble bedroom programmer couldn't hope to in any way compete with that level of financial backing, resources, manpower or time. The gap has widened a lot and it will continue to widen. 100 million to develop a game? No problem. Okay maybe a billion.
Inbetween those top-of-the-industry giants and the barely-scraping-by-with-no-money-to-spare solo developer, there is a huge range of developers with different abilities, tools, team sizes, business development, etc, and usually it seems like whoever is near the bottom of the ladder will gradually work their way up the ladder, as if magnetized by the huge success of the industry giants. So everyone's trying to outdo everyone else, and everyone's trying to have an even better more successful game, and everyone wants a piece of the pie. The standards will keep going up and up and up.
But, there will always be a bottom to the ladder. If you think of yourself more in terms of where you are on the ladder `absolutely` rather than `relative` to where all those ladder-climbers are, you might get a better sense of there being a market for your level of capability. There are people out there who will only buy games that cost a lot of money or meet a given standard, but there are also plenty of people with lower standards who will buy something smaller or less polished. It's not that you are being outperformed by others so much as that you're trying to keep up with the rising tide rather than identify your strengths and use them.
As always, and I agree, it is a challenge and you can try to rise to it, pursuing that ever evasive `better than others`. But don't lose sleep over it man, keep doing what you love. When the current crop of indie games has become sufficiently advanced there will now be yet another new band of simpler and less-advanced games being made which will become the next uber-indie group, and so it goes on and on.
The more the industry shifts to a more advanced level, the more new levels are introduced at the bottom of the ladder. I think in part that casual games game about largely because of the hugeness of most modern titles - their huge growth left a vacuum that needed to be filled by something a lot less intense or involved. And now casual games are getting to look almost as advanced and diverse as many old retro games. You're starting to see shootemups and platform games with a slightly more cutesy-easy look-and-feel. The engines are getting more advanced. Soon casual games will probably get so advanced that people will start saying they are too complex and then you'll get super-casual games, a whole new class of gaming.