Angry Birds Dev Needs Big Success From Bad Piggies

[surg3n]

Can't a game developer ever be happy with just making a good game, that people like, that gives them the money to make their next game, with a bit of profit on the side?

The MMO industry has been locked into this self destructive cycle for years now - pouring untold millions into developing 'the next WoW', and they fail every time, because WoW was a one in a million fluke. Like Minecraft. Like Angry Birds.

Other genres seem to be stuck in the same mindset - like EA chasing CoD numbers on everything (like the infamous 5 million sales target for Dead Space 3) These crazy expectations are the biggest threat the industry faces right now, and if studios and publishers don't rein in their expectations a little they're going to wreck themselves.

Sadly no

I'm an indi developer who has a full time job, and I've spent the last year adding polish to a game to keep publishers happy, so it might make more money that I don't really need. I loved my game, fun to play, has a bit of charisma to it, probably would make me a couple of grand. Then a publisher get's involved, and a marketting dude, and 2 freelance artists, 4 musicians and their cats, and a couple of extra developers just to contradict everything. Now I can barely stand to look at my game - I'm over worked and stressed and there's probably thousands of developers out there in the same position as me. All I wanted was to get people playing my game, maybe fund myself a new gaming PC from it, have a holiday for the first time in... 3,4,5, 11 years. Not being greedy or having any lofty expectations y'know.

Now my game is prettier, more polished, more features, but it's the same damn game at the end of the day. I swear, marketting and publishers are the vultures of the indi gaming scene. They find a fresh cadaver and peck at it, until it resembles every other bland, clean, stripped out corpse that they've seen. Rovio had that with Angry Birds I bet, then people got marketting involved, and started the comparisons and over-thinking and doubt.

It's like having a boss for a year who you must keep happy, but they don't pay you - you pay them to make your life miserible.


Anyhoo, sorry to rant - just had to get that off my chest, I don't envy professional game developers, I envy people like Ed McMillan, and Notch, and VLambeer, not because they're succesful or rich or anything like that - I envy them because they managed to keep the douchebags out of their equation and they still love what they do.

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

Can't a game developer ever be happy with just making a good game, that people like, that gives them the money to make their next game, with a bit of profit on the side?

Not these guys.
Not when you choose to milk the game you make this hard. This game has copypasta spin-offs out the ass and more toys than Pokemon currently does. Rovio (aka Zynga 2 as I call them) has dug themselves a hole here and the only way out is to keep making games that will sell stuffed animals.

Rovio are no longer serious video game developers. They're competing with Mattel now.


P.S. Thank you for knowing what Fear Effect is!

 

[Fappy]

You got to love how transparent these guys are. At least they openly admit that this is nothing more than corporate ambition. Makes you wonder if this brand had any kind of soul to begin with.

 

[Zombie_Moogle]

The success of Angry Birds, as opposed to their other games, may be based on it's simplicity. Anyone could pick up & play Angry Birds. I think Bad Piggies might intimidate the casual customer base that Rovio depends on

 

[Space Jawa]

Eh, makes sense considering the runaway popularity of Angry Birds. I mean, no one wants to be known as a one-hit wonder, right? I know I would not. :\

On the one hand, yes - it would be better to get another hit rather than just being a one-hit wonder.

On the OTHER hand, being a one-hit wonder is better than never having had a hit at all, right?