I read a Substack article today, about the game publisher, Panic, having hidden a link in the credits of their games that encourages people to send in real physical mail {shocker right!} to receive real physical patches for their jackets or bags. On this website there was a throwaway comment about also sending a note for the devs of the game, and whilst they didn't expect anyone to actually do this, it was most of what they got! And I just really think that this goes to show how much soul indie devs put into their games and, especially given the declining state of triple a games, why we should be showing them all our support.

At the end of March, Epic Games layoff around 1000 staff following Ubisoft doing the same with their Halifax studio (Rocksmith and mobile versions of Assassin's Creed and Rainbow Six) in January, and Sony with Bluepoint Games (Demon's Souls and Shadow of the Colossus remakes) in February. With all of these big companies shooting themselves in the foot {more like face at the rate they're going} and then blaming the consumers, with Epic's Tim Sweeney citing a "downturn in Fortnite engagement" as the reason to these layoffs despite increasing the price of V-Bucks, there's no surprise that the indie game or even double A market is rising and becoming ever more prominent in the mainstream media. How much longer can we get away with calling Balatro an indie game when it's won 19 awards over the 2 {ish} years it's been out and with coverage from major news outlets? These games are no longer hidden gems, they're just made by people who invest more passion than money into their creations.

Just moving away from indie games for a little bit, I also think that what the public want is the exact opposite from what makes these big companies money. More and more {and maybe it says more about the side of the internet that I'm on} I'm seeing people complain about how everything is becoming live-service, and how the price of games and consoles seem to be going up arbitrarily, and favouring single player experiences that they can share with others over mindless online gaming. This has all been proven by the success of Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream, which is genuinely taking over every bit of social media I own without a global pandemic forcing people to seek escapist experiences! Pokemon Pokopia came out a few months ago to a similar pomp and with the announcement of Splatoon Raiders (and as of today the release date trailer), Nintendo seem to really be making the games that the people want {we'll ignore Pokemon Champions for now, I'll get to that in the future possibly}

These 'cosy life sim' games have been flooding the indie market for the past couple of years, and whilst I'm not here to get into what this says about the state of the world currently, it's definitely not something to ignore.

Basically this is a long winded way of me saying that the more encouragement we give to these indie developers, the more funding they get meaning we get more gems like Hollow Knight or Blue Prince. And we already see this happening with Shapez.io getting a massive sequel that comes out of Early Access today {I'm so excited for this, I've been playing it for a while and it's amazing}, Silksong being HUGE and already with DLC announced, and Evil Empire, the team behind most of Dead Cells getting to make the next Castlevania game after their phenomenal work on the Castlevania DLC for DC.

If you love games, you have to love indie games, otherwise you just like flushing your money down the toilet to play the same game as last year except you can now play as a cat (thank you COD MW2).