How Indie Games Became a Next-Gen Battleground

Why Sony and Microsoft are fighting for the affections of independent developers, and why that's good for us.

Whatever you want to say about Microsoft right now, you can’t say that it’s not listening. The Xbox One policies as they stand today are practically unrecognisable compared to how they stood when the console was announced at the end of May. Gone is the daily authentication check, gone are the restrictions on doing whatever you want with the games you purchase, gone is the man who said that if you wanted to play games offline, you could just buy an Xbox 360. And finally, as of yesterday, gone is the archaic requirement for independent developers to find themselves a publisher if they want to see their games on Xbox Live Arcade.

I don’t know to what extent all of these compromises will undo the damage caused to the Xbox’s image in those first few weeks. Some will see this continual backtracking as weak-willed. Others will just be pleased that they won’t have to deal with the nightmare of forced online authentication when you’re moving house and whichever incompetent provider you go with can’t be bothered to get your internet up and running for seven weeks. But it’s this latest compromise that might prove the most important. Independent developers - many of whom have vocally sided with Sony over the past few months - now ostensibly have fewer reasons to keep their games off Microsoft’s platform.

In Marc Whitten’s statement yesterday, he promised great discoverability, full access to things like Achievements and Kinect and the ability to use any Xbox One console as a development unit. Some still have their suspicions, though. Retro City Rampage’s Brain Provinciano expressed his reservations to Engadget, saying that independent developers will still not have the same access to Xbox One tools as big publishers, and previous negative experiences with Xbox Live Arcade and Xbox Live Indie Games may keep some creators away. The general consensus is that we don’t know enough about this change in policy yet to know exactly how good it is (though everyone seems to agree it’s better than nothing).

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Instead of fighting over third-party exclusives, the big boys are now fighting over indies.

But I’m more interested in the fact that Microsoft has decided to change it at all. The decision reaffirms that independent development is a significant battleground for the next-generation consoles, something few people would have predicted five years ago. Up until the launch of the Xbox 360 and PS3, a console was all about the exclusives, and E3 was all about which lauded third-party developer you could get up on your stage to lord it over the competition. For years PlayStation was defined as much by Grand Theft Auto and Final Fantasy as by Sony’s own games. Microsoft threw money around like crazy in the early days of the original Xbox to tempt third-parties on-side, or turn them into Xbox-exclusive studios.

First-party exclusives are still an important part of a console’s identity - or, if you’re Nintendo, the entirety of your console’s identity - but third-parties have pretty much moved on. Unless you’re owned by Sony or Microsoft these days, you’re making games for everyone. Final Fantasy XV might have made waves at Sony’s E3 conference, but you know you’ll be able to play it on Xbox One.

Instead of fighting over third-party exclusives, then, the big boys are now fighting over independent developers. Sony had a selection of them up on its stage at E3 alongside the developers we’re used to seeing there: Ubisoft, Square-Enix, Activision. Why? Because there’s going to be a lot of money in it. Here’s why.

Indie games aren’t just a sideshow in the games business, they are increasingly becoming the show. Mobile development is dominated by self-publishing small studios, and those few that succeed make an extraordinary amount of money - 30% of which goes to Apple. Steam works the same way. For decades, the platform holders have been spending millions on buying, supporting, marketing and distributing for small developers, taking their projects on as investments. Meanwhile, all Apple has to do to take an attractive cut is let developers self-publish on the App Store.

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Indie games aren't just a sideshow, they're increasingly becoming the show.

That’s a hell of a lot less work. It’s no wonder Nintendo and Sony have been so keen to create a self-publishing-friendly network for Wii U and PlayStation 4; indeed, it’s incredible that Microsoft apparently hadn’t figured it out until yesterday. Allowing developers to self-publish costs the platform holders almost no money, compared to partnering with developers to publish things. It also ekes control over talent away from third-party publishers; let a developer self-publish, and they won’t be signing a deal with someone else.

The future for the next-generation consoles has to move closer to a Steam-like model, with an ever-larger selection of cheaper, digitally self-published games existing on the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live alongside the big first- and third-party games. All that the platform holders have to do is create a platform that independent developers want to publish on.

And thus begins the courting, something that Sony has been extremely good at so far, ever since the days of Net Yaroze on the PS1. Sony is reportedly giving out PS4 dev kits “like candy”, according to a developer speaking to Polygon, saving them the $2,500 that a development kit would otherwise cost. It offers loans and support to help developers get their games onto the PSN, and is very open about its self-publishing policy. Its developer relations team, meanwhile, aggressively courts the best independent developers. Microsoft has retaliated by enabling every Xbox One console to be used as a development kit, and its vast experience with Xbox Live Arcade (which was once consoles' only flourishing downloadable games market) and Xbox Live Indie Games is sure to pay off.

Of course it’s not just about the business, especially not if you’re into playing games rather than making money out of them. Independent development is often where the best new ideas come from, where experimentation flourishes rather than being crushed under the heel of huge risk-averse companies, and where you’ll find the greatest variety of games that aren’t about shooting stuff. Independent games can afford to be thematically ambitious, aesthetically unconventional and mechanically imperfect (though it doesn’t always pay off). Any company that cared at all about video games would want games like Transistor, Don't Starve and Thomas Was Alone on their platform. And Octodad, if it had a sense of humour. These games are wonderful.

Self-publishing on the new consoles won't be a guarantee of success for independent developers. You only need to look at the teensy proportion of App Store games that break into the top 10 to see that. But console audiences are good at seeking out the best games, and PS4, Wii U and Xbox One all represent a good chance at success. And there's a reason that Microsoft and Sony are fighting over their affections: self-publishing means a healthier variety of games and a big return for the platform holders without the huge investment that's necessary for a second-party studio. Indie games have become a next-gen battleground, and I'm feeling optimistic about the effect that's going to have for the people who play games as well as the people who create them.