Why are paid indie games excused for more flaws than FOSS?

Why are paid indie games excused for more flaws than FOSS?

Postby STL26 » 02 May 2021, 21:58

I've noticed a lot of indie games recently with less content or polish than flash or FOSS games get excused for "being a indie game", I know indie games don't have a AAA budget, but if FOSS and even browser games can achieve that, why not indies? Let's take one of the most popular indies, Among Us. This game was probably the fastest selling nintendo switch game with 3 million sales on the platform in 15 days alone. But despite that, the contents of the game are extremely lackluster. Only 4 maps, there was 3 before April 2021. And the updates are extremely slow. But the game is highly positively received, and any criticism gets met with replies like "it's a indie game, calm down" But there are so many FOSS games like SuperTuxKart which have much faster updates. And the maps in that game are 3D, meaning they need do add tons of detail and models compared to the simple 2d maps. The graphics are also some of the more poor and dated looking 2D graphics. Also, the game has tons of bugs, which are also accepted by the fans due to "being a indie game". Despite the massive money the game has earned, it's struggling compared to FOSS games. But FOSS games can release updates so fast, despite their game having no monetization and only small donations money. Another example is the game "Celeste" The gameplay in this one is really good, but the pixel art looks worse than many actual 16-bit games, the characters have no eyes, and some sprites look like they got passed through a color reduction filter. And many indie games need a kickstarter for worse quality games than free open source. Yes, FOSS games had many updates of evolution, but even at the earliest stages in their 2000s versions, some still have better art than what indie games have "due to limited budget" despite the fact indies are commercial games and these FOSS games have almost zero budget. So how does this happen? Are the developers just lazy? A mainstream paid indie game really shouldn't be worse than a obscure free open source game. It's worrying for the indie game industry if paid games offer less than free open source games with no microtransactions or ads or any monetization.
STL26
 
Posts: 1
Joined: 24 Apr 2021, 15:27

Re: Why are paid indie games excused for more flaws than FOS

Postby Julius » 03 May 2021, 11:54

FOSS games are usually labour of love developed over years, while Indie games need to put food on the plate of the developer. It is really apples Vs. oranges.
User avatar
Julius
Community Moderator
 
Posts: 3297
Joined: 06 Dec 2009, 14:02

Re: Why are paid indie games excused for more flaws than FOS

Postby dulsi » 03 May 2021, 12:23

People have different expectations from a 2D vs 3D game. Among Us is going to get more credit in the public eye because it is an original game. (Before you say it isn't original because of game X, it is original because it is first time many people saw the concept.) While SuperTuxKart has original elements, it is a kart racing game and will immediately be compared to Super Mario Kart and similar games. This is perhaps the biggest problem with FOSS games becoming popular. We tend to copy other designs. I don't have a problem with that but it does make it harder to catch the attention of gamers.

Unlike Among Us, I have Celeste but have not played it yet. Looking at the trailer video on Steam, I think you underestimate the level of polish in that game. FOSS games don't tend to have animations like you see in the clip. Yeah some games do but most FOSS games has simplistic animations like a walk cycle. They don't have unique animations for cut scenes. An rpg maker user complained about an rpg maker game became popular without anything special. The first response comment on a kiss scene in the beginning. They had custom animation for it instead of just putting two sprites next to each other and explaining in text. As for Celeste's artwork not being good that's subjective. I think the sprites are nice and don't have a problem with missing eyes. When doing pixel are you have to get just the essence of the characters so some details will be missing.
dulsi
 
Posts: 570
Joined: 18 Feb 2016, 15:24

Re: Why are paid indie games excused for more flaws than FOS

Postby Technopeasant » 05 May 2021, 02:38

Honestly I think the pace of updates is part of the problem for FOSS games. They are essentially never finished, so I never feel that inclined to finish them.

Same reason I don't play early access commercial games either.
User avatar
Technopeasant
 
Posts: 176
Joined: 22 Feb 2017, 03:38

Re: Why are paid indie games excused for more flaws than FOS

Postby Wuzzy » 20 Aug 2021, 22:28

Julius again managing to perfectly and utterly missing the point of the thread, as usual. :p
That does not at all explain why non-free indie games are apparently excused more mistakes than FOSS.

I don't know if this narrative is true, but I also kind of have the impression. FOSS is expected to be literally perfect and the criticism of it can be very brutal. If there is a criticism in the first place! While so-called "indie games" really seem to get away with more. Which is funny, because many FOSS games are technically indie games, too (as in: independent), they are just rarely perceived as such.

The problem is, FOSS games are just completely ignored at worst and laughed at at best. In the games media, FOSS is practically non-existing, while non-free "indie games" at least get the "cool" status. I feel like the FOSS idea as such is in general just stigmatized. We're the uncool ones for constantly complaining about the evils of proprietary software, nobody wants to hear that. xD But that's just a hypothesis.

Another hypothesis is that it's simply because we don't have a marketing budget to bribe the games media to write favourably about us or at least, you know, mention us. :D I don't believe for a second that the games media is being honest 100% of the time. It is deeply frustrating that we are being so utterly and completely ignored. They don't even rip us apart with harsh criticisms, with that I could at least live. But this complete ignorance is SO frustrating.

To be honest, I do think most FOSS games are not even worth mentioning, but we still do have a FEW gems. So the COMPLETE ignorance of FOSS is not fair.
User avatar
Wuzzy
 
Posts: 989
Joined: 28 May 2012, 23:13

Re: Why are paid indie games excused for more flaws than FOS

Postby drummyfish » 21 Aug 2021, 10:04

Yeah I think it's simply business, the more money is in the project, the more popular it is, as money buys marketing and marketing means hyping, lying and hiding flaws. Extrapolating this, AAA games also get away with more than indie games. Every single AAA game is unplayable at release, they're littered with bugs, performance issues, spyware, gambling, ads etc., yet they get the most attention and the most praise. Indies at least have to offer some basic quality to get a fraction of that love. As with everything, you find the best quality outside the market, at the exact opposite pole of the popularity spot.

So as always, with any topic we discuss, the moral of the story is: ditch capitalism.

Also to touch on the "regular updates" topic: I don't think it's healthy at all to have games judged by or dependent on frequent updates. A good game should ideally be finished one day and be enjoyable for the rest of days, like for example chess. Sure, story games might need updates for replayability out of their nature, but it shouldn't be the case with all games, not even most games. Let's not support this consumerist trend of constant updates in free gaming, it's unsustainable. Again, I see the proprietary toxic culture leaking into the free culture here.
socialist anarcho-pacifist
Abolish all IP laws. Use CC0. Let's write less retarded software.
http://www.tastyfish.cz
User avatar
drummyfish
 
Posts: 448
Joined: 29 Jul 2018, 20:30
Location: Moravia

Re: Why are paid indie games excused for more flaws than FOS

Postby PeterX » 21 Aug 2021, 12:15

drummyfish {l Wrote}:As with everything, you find the best quality outside the market, at the exact opposite pole of the popularity spot.

Could you name some example games which are unpopular but good quality?

Greetings
Peter
User avatar
PeterX
 
Posts: 270
Joined: 01 Oct 2020, 21:44

Re: Why are paid indie games excused for more flaws than FOS

Postby drummyfish » 21 Aug 2021, 12:53

PeterX {l Wrote}:Could you name some example games which are unpopular but good quality?

Greetings
Peter


Well, basically all the good FOSS games we all love so much? E.g. Xonotic, in my opinion objectively among the best AFPS ever created, probably the best AFPS today. And its popularity among all FPS games? Basically zero, the active community reaching perhaps a few dozen of people, having basically one normally populated server, no one knows Xonotic besides the tiny tiny niché of FOSS gamers. Compare it to shit games live Quake Champions, a huge letdown which still has many thousands of active players and is a game everyone knows about, despite being the unsuccessful game among the AAAs, I'm not even talking about CS. You can substitute your favorite FOSS game, be it STK, Minetest, FLARE and others.

This further applies even within this community, the smaller games that are truly libre and well written are unpopular compared to the bloated big ones that sacrifice parts of freedom for popularity. It is almost a universal rule everywhere that the popular thing is the inferior one (see e.g. operating systems, music, politicians, ...).
socialist anarcho-pacifist
Abolish all IP laws. Use CC0. Let's write less retarded software.
http://www.tastyfish.cz
User avatar
drummyfish
 
Posts: 448
Joined: 29 Jul 2018, 20:30
Location: Moravia

Re: Why are paid indie games excused for more flaws than FOS

Postby bzt » 21 Aug 2021, 14:39

drummyfish {l Wrote}:It is almost a universal rule everywhere that the popular thing is the inferior one (see e.g. operating systems, music, politicians, ...).
That's just the symptom. If you want to understand the reason, you have to dig deep to the root cause of the problem. Sadly we're not homo sapiens (means "wise"), rather only homo ludens (means "fooling around"). Our society isn't a healthy functional one, just something that looks like a society (no matter the ideology, this stands to communism, capitalism etc. and also at all level of life: politics, economy, olympics, etc.). Similar when children playing daddy-mammy: they aren't a real family, they just play that they are. Now this poses a fundamental issue with all the things as this can't form a meritocracy, rather just a bunch of incompetents in power fooling around. Doing always the bad choices for their own profit instead of the benefit of the whole society, and then trying to lie about it by saying their choice is the popular one. That's what you can see everywhere, and that's what you perceive as "always the inferior is the popular". Sad, but true.

Now about the indie / FOSS: it is the same (but also true for AAA games).

- Indie games are professional ones, meaning there are sponsors behind it who give their money. Of course they will lie about it rather than admitting they were fools and invested in a bad game. As a result the game makers are not interested in making a popular game that people actually like or has a good quality, they are only interested in making it look like popular for the sponsors. Once a sponsor falls for the lie and invests, they will automatically continue to lie about the game's popularity and quality too.

- But with FOSS, there are no sponsors, therefore it is a lot more closer to the ideal world where nobody lies. There is no "look like" here, it is really the quality that matters. Obviously this means that reviews are more honest, nobody deletes the negative opinions either, so you can see all the pros and cons. Sadly sometimes you can also see paid trolls spreading negative opinions too (probably paid by professional game makers if they see competition in the FOSS alternative).

Conclusion, Julius is right, you can't really compare the two, because they are measured on two totally different scales:
- AAA and indie scene rigged, negative voices are often silenced,
- FOSS scene is honest most of the time, and when isn't, it is suffering from false negatives.

Cheers,
bzt
User avatar
bzt
 
Posts: 332
Joined: 23 May 2021, 21:46

Re: Why are paid indie games excused for more flaws than FOS

Postby Technopeasant » 22 Aug 2021, 04:01

drummyfish {l Wrote}:I'm not even talking about CS.


If you mean Counter-Strike, that started as a free Quake mod, which kinda goes against your argument that money is the only producer of popularity. I would never argue that money doesn't influence this, but there is still such a thing as broader word of mouth.
User avatar
Technopeasant
 
Posts: 176
Joined: 22 Feb 2017, 03:38

Re: Why are paid indie games excused for more flaws than FOS

Postby PeterX » 22 Aug 2021, 19:00

Counterstrike started as a Halflife mod, not Quake, but I think that doesn't invalidate your point, Technopeasant.

STK is an example of a popular libre game based on a AAA game.

Minecraft started without much money and became very popular.

Maybe it's not that black-and-white.

Not sure if bzt is right with the negative voices being silenced in indie game scene and not in FOSS. But it seems to me, that's the truth.
User avatar
PeterX
 
Posts: 270
Joined: 01 Oct 2020, 21:44

Re: Why are paid indie games excused for more flaws than FOS

Postby bzt » 23 Aug 2021, 04:10

PeterX {l Wrote}:Not sure if bzt is right with the negative voices being silenced in indie game scene and not in FOSS. But it seems to me, that's the truth.
What I meant is, with FOSS the issues are public and nobody hides them. For example you can check that Minetest has a huge amount, even the smallest little problem is public. Also read its forum, you'll see that people are talking about its shortcomings freely, offering workarounds and solutions to each other. But don't go far, you can also look around on this very forum too.

On the other hand, for a typical indie or AAA game, you can't see the issues, you can only rely on filtered opinions and shady reviews (like on Stream, AppStore, Google Play etc.) which are known to be biased as they want to make money. (The only exception is when the game is so buggy that it is simply not possible to swipe the problems under the rug, like with CP2077 lately.)

Take for example my last indie purchase, Slaps and Beans, can you tell me where are the negative comments about it on the Steam page? All you can see is "All reviews: Very positive", but in fact it is buggy as hell, some important sprites are just missing, the control is unusable in the car race, and it sometimes crashes due to memory allocation / double free errors. My boys (who love Bud Spencer and Terence Hill movies very much) were almost crying when they tried to play it. I got so pissed that I've pirated the Android version for them. Luckily that wasn't that bad. And I don't feel any remorse about pirating it, because the version I've paid for is unplayable!

Another typical example for indie is itch.io, have you tried downloading Linux games from there? Most of them are crashing, buggy, and if not, then lagging like a pregnant snail, but you can hardly find any negative comments for some reason. Take for example this one. It took me a whole afternoon to get it working under Linux, because the screen was "snowcrashing", but can you see any negative comments about the bugs? Of course not. Same with this one, I've struggled a lot and could only get it working with an Intel video card, but not with AMD/ATI. Any complaints in the comments? Nothing, even though I'm sure I wasn't the only one trying this game with an AMD/ATI card.

In contrast, I had very similar usability issues with Scorched3D. But since it's FOSS, I could looked up all the issues and negative comments with replies as well and I was able to get it working. Kenny vs. Darth Vader is just unbeatable :-)

I hope these examples proves a bit that "indie games are excused" is a real thing, and not just "it feels that way" or "seems to be". Also that hiding bugs and negative opinions can be easily counterproductive.

Cheers,
bzt
User avatar
bzt
 
Posts: 332
Joined: 23 May 2021, 21:46

Re: Why are paid indie games excused for more flaws than FOS

Postby PeterX » 23 Aug 2021, 15:36

bzt {l Wrote}:
PeterX {l Wrote}:Not sure if bzt is right with the negative voices being silenced in indie game scene and not in FOSS. But it seems to me, that's the truth.

...

I hope these examples proves a bit that "indie games are excused" is a real thing, and not just "it feels that way" or "seems to be". Also that hiding bugs and negative opinions can be easily counterproductive.

Yes, it does make it more concrete and clear.
User avatar
PeterX
 
Posts: 270
Joined: 01 Oct 2020, 21:44

Re: Why are paid indie games excused for more flaws than FOS

Postby Julius » 24 Aug 2021, 12:22

I would say this isn't a question of "silencing negative voices" but rather that players know that some showelware indie game is a take it or GTFO kind of affair where reporting or complaining about bugs is mostly pointless.

In fact some indie developers have been very open about the fact that the bug-reporting culture of Linux users has been nothing but a hassle and the reason they decided to drop Linux support.
User avatar
Julius
Community Moderator
 
Posts: 3297
Joined: 06 Dec 2009, 14:02

Re: Why are paid indie games excused for more flaws than FOS

Postby Technopeasant » 29 Aug 2021, 04:39

PeterX {l Wrote}:Counterstrike started as a Halflife mod, not Quake, but I think that doesn't invalidate your point, Technopeasant.


Correct, I was thinking of Team Fortress. I have never played either.
User avatar
Technopeasant
 
Posts: 176
Joined: 22 Feb 2017, 03:38

Re: Why are paid indie games excused for more flaws than FOS

Postby bzt » 29 Aug 2021, 18:48

Julius {l Wrote}:I would say this isn't a question of "silencing negative voices" but rather that players know that some showelware indie game is a take it or GTFO kind of affair where reporting or complaining about bugs is mostly pointless.
Yeah, you're right. But I think we're saying the same, because the "take it or GTFO" attitude to me looks like one (very efficient may I add) way to silence negative voices.

Julius {l Wrote}:In fact some indie developers have been very open about the fact that the bug-reporting culture of Linux users has been nothing but a hassle and the reason they decided to drop Linux support.
Never heard of that, but I believe you, I can imagine they do that. Btw I'm sure they are wrong, because being open and hearing out user complaints is essential for good quality software. IMHO.

Cheers,
bzt
User avatar
bzt
 
Posts: 332
Joined: 23 May 2021, 21:46

Re: Why are paid indie games excused for more flaws than FOS

Postby Technopeasant » 05 Sep 2021, 20:21

I am sure that fear of your bugs being noticed is a big reason why people avoid cross platform or open development.
User avatar
Technopeasant
 
Posts: 176
Joined: 22 Feb 2017, 03:38

Re: Why are paid indie games excused for more flaws than FOS

Postby dulsi » 05 Sep 2021, 20:46

Technopeasant {l Wrote}:I am sure that fear of your bugs being noticed is a big reason why people avoid cross platform or open development.

I don't think that is the case. There are developers who love Visual Studio. They install all the libraries they need. The Linux needs a makefile (or similar tool) which they are not that familiar with (or maybe have never touched). If you wait until later to build/test Linux, you get a bunch of problems because you weren't consistent on the case naming for files. Some only show up at runtime when it tries to load the next quest. You get errors because sometimes you read "foo\\bar" which Linux doesn't like. If you are used to Visual Studio debugger, gdb seems alien so when you have to debug you have a lot of trouble,

Personally I think they have it wrong. They are starting with Windows and porting to Linux. You are better off starting with Linux and cross-compiling to Windows. If I want to build an SDL2 program for Linux I use 'dnf install SDL2-devel' and I can build it. If I want to cross-compile to Windows, I use 'dnf install mingw32-SDL2' and then you are ready to build. (vcpkg and probably tools like chocolatey can make it closer to Linux ease on Windows but it doesn't provide cross-compiling. The exception is if you are using .net but testing the linux build is still harder than Linux where I can just run the executable under wine.)
dulsi
 
Posts: 570
Joined: 18 Feb 2016, 15:24

Re: Why are paid indie games excused for more flaws than FOS

Postby Technopeasant » 23 Sep 2021, 04:17

All of the above is true, but I meant more that people are scared to go open source because they are ashamed of their code quality.
User avatar
Technopeasant
 
Posts: 176
Joined: 22 Feb 2017, 03:38

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest