Development: The World's Hardest Game

The current generation of technology has brought about changes to the gaming industry that have made producing games possible for small, and even one man, developers. The proliferation of mobile gaming and online marketplaces affords these dedicated and creative people the opportunity to distribute games that otherwise would never have seen the light of day or may have never been made in the first place.

While that sounds like an excellent step for the industry, mainly because it is, there are gray clouds in the distance that threaten the newly founded an blooming indie game niche.

Making games is a difficult task. If one were to compare the process to something like Dark Souls or Super Meat Boy, it would most certainly make those notoriously difficult titles seem like children's games. It should come as no surprise that, just like the aforementioned games, building something worthy of being sold is only becoming more and more difficult as new levels are uncovered.

Every graphical advancement, every new mechanic, or hardware update adds an extra layer of complexity to an already exponentially growing process. Every time someone raises the bar it reverberates all the way down; many times magnifying when it reaches those lower ranks. In many ways the days of games built by teams of five or six people being competitive on a service like Steam or XBLA are already waning. Five years ago a group of half a dozen people was perfectly capable of releasing a title that did well. With everything that's going on now these small development teams are at the razor's edge when it comes to having enough assets to keep up.

Game development hinges upon knowledge and skill in coding, writing, art, audio, video, 3D modeling, design and management. It almost demands an understanding of abstract concepts such as psychology that many people spend years in college studying. And last, but certainly not least, game development requires time, equipment, and capital beyond what most people can muster up and some people may see in their lifetime. These issues aren't becoming any less complex as time goes on and the industry grows.

There isn't anyone making it easier on the little guys either. One of the biggest markets for indie games, iOS, changes its programming language drastically with every update, pushing a lot of small developers out and likely shooting down more than one game mid development. The cost of putting yourself in a position to even develop for something like XBox 360 is more often than not prohibitively expensive. Even Steam, which is arguably the friendlies non-handheld market, has the indie games competing with more big name titles at lower prices than anywhere else. All this has me thinking though: As bad as I personally want a new generation of consoles and technology, what type of problems is it going to create for one of the more creative sectors the video game industry has?

Even now some mid-sized, well established, developers have set up shop in the downloadable space. Large publishers such as EA and Activision have set their sights on the area as well. With a new generation of technology and ever increasing production costs for Triple A titles that number is sure to grow exponentially as we move on. While that may not drastically affect game design as most people view it, I have to wonder what it means for the indie game market. The people who are trying to fit this stuff in around working another job or in between classes. Will it still even be possible to create titles that do as well as something like Bastion? How much harder will it be for the creative but unestablished young developers to make an impact and gain a foothold? And if it is substantially so how does that impact the gaming community as a whole moving forward.