When will indie games grow up?

Well as above really, why do most indie games largely comprise of cartoon bunnies and 'safe' themes?

maybe they are small teams and bedroom coder who dont have capacity to do something larger?

They don't. Just the ones you hear most about do. Casual games are by far the biggest market, so those are the ones you hear about. Spiderweb aren't making cartoon bunny games. Positech aren't making cartoon bunny games. Dave Gilbert's adventure The Shivah is hardly mainstream cutesy bunny.

I've seen some spectacularly "unsafe" themes too, none of which I'm going to link to as they're pretty bad taste.

You aren't going to see hardcore mainstream indie games in great numbers, because hardcore mainstream gamers don't play them. The kinda guy who buys a $3k rig to play Quake 5 isn't likely to think much of an Indie FPS, even if it's pretty good.

But yeah, plenty of niche and genre games out there, if you look around.

I don't have any bunnies or cartoons with my project, but that might not be such a bad idea..


Plus a tie-died U-boat never hurt anyone =-P

Broader appeal? BTW World of Warcraft doesn't have any bunnies in it IIRC.

BTW why aren't bunnies grown up? Rayman : Raving Rabbids is one of the most enjoyable games I've played since Conkers Bad Fur Day. Which incidently also had bunnies in it. Hrmmm...

Only one of my games featured bunnies - Par Fore.

Its strange because it doesn't seem to exist any more. Idigicon don't appear to be offering it for sale according to their website.

Maybe there's something in this 'bunnies don't sell' theory after all....

indies do grow up. with more powerful RAD languages the chance is very high to raise the level of quality. i am currently trying to squeeze the maximum out of blitz3d with our upcoming game, no bunnys in there ;)

just look at live4speed (http://www.liveforspeed.net/) - 3 guys did this game. you don't need a lots of men/women to produce a good game. you need the RIGHT ones ;)

personally, i am expecting more and more good indy games to come out in near future.

Look at the predominant market for indie games. 40+ year old women. THAT'S why you see bunnies, flowers, gardening games, etc.

...if the extent of your definition of "Indie Games" is 'casual games', maybe.

It depends what you are calling grown up. According to this months GameTM 19% of all gamers are over 50 and the average gamer is 41 years old, and I doubt very much that they are going down to the local retail store to pick up the latest AAA FPS. Those older gamers will be picking up the plethora of indie made Sudoku and Mahjong games. As for 'safe' themes, well I don't see a big budget, big studio, version of Super Columbine Massacre RPG.

I do think there is the point that the woman are a big market and they go for softer more feminine themes and appearances, so of course games made with them in mind will appeal to the softer side. What you're really saying is you think that you should make a `hard` game because you think you are justified and it makes you more of a man, or something like that.

I also don't think that the appearance of the game is related to how it plays. I also don't think that having a harder edge is more mature and in many cases is immature.

THere are a lot more high quality polished indie games now than ever. Just look at indie games in 2002 and 2003. ANd compare them to whats being made today.

There are a lot more developers making indie games professionaly now. Small studio's popping up with teams of veteran developers burnt by commercial games and doing their own thing.

The reason we don't see many hardcore gamers games is partly because if they are any good they become commercial or can't attract an audience to make them worth while putting in the effort.

To compete with commercial games and have all the nice looking graphics you need huge teames where 85% or the developers are artists and 15% coders and a couple of years hard work that may not come to anything.

Thats why most indies go for something simple and sweet that is a good time investment, so if the game isn't as successful as they would like, they don't get hit too hard.

Also, they are considering making ESRB type ratings compulsory for indie games which will have all the same legal requirements of commercial games.

There's also talks of all games sold online or wherever having to be submitted and a fee payed in order to get a rating with a possible jail sentence for those that sell inappropriate games to minors.

So it's going to be safer to make 'safe games'.

That's stupid :b
What about free software? Shareware file converters?
I've seen a lot of bad words in applications that are not games, and you don't see any of those getting age ratings!

Why? They're not compulsory for non-indie games.

Oh really? And how are they (by they I'm thinking the US Federal government, because games released in Europe are rated by PEGI) going to enforce that Internationally?

Why? If the rating applies to everyone? I mean if you're selling online, people are buying with credit cards, right? I don't know about the US, but in Denmark (and I assume most of Europe, you cannot get a credit card unless you've reached the age of majority, and can enter into legally binding contracts).

Well yes, but common sense has never gotten in the way of legislation.

You mean like how Alien Hominid grew up from being a flash game to appearing on multiple game consoles?