06.07.07
Are Indie Developers Doomed to Clones Only?
Last Friday’s night I was at an Irish-style bar and having a fun time with a couple of friends of mine who also like the place. From time to time there are some local bands that play their repertoire there, but I noticed that most of the time the songs they play are just a version of a well known song or even the original song unchanged. That fact, and perhaps too much beer, made me think if all indie groups, whatever their domain, are doomed to “copy” well known creations.
This also can be applied to indie game developpers. If you take a look at major games portal’s lists of “top 10” games, you’ll see that most of them are are clone of well known games, and most of these clones are match-3 games.
Don’t get me wrong now, all these games are really professional and well made, and I do not have any doubt that all these developers have put a lot of effort making them. I just feel that is a shame that so many great developers spend time to develop yet another match-3 game when they could be creating a new creative gameplay. Some of them do it, others do not.
Perhaps the problem is not that these developers do not want to make creative games but people don’t want to play games that have a very different structure of what they are used to. After all, all these games are the Top 10 for some reason…
Of couse, I’m do not have the right to point others and say “you all have no creativity…” since I don’t even follow my own advice with my games :-P. But I think this is something we should take into account when planning a new game.