Nowadays it’s not the same as it used to be. You got many more games, but same or lesser budget and same or lesser amount of free time.
However, I don’t get sales and people going nuts and buys games in droves, and then never playing them. I personally only buy games I really want to play or something I feel can inspire me (or something to learn from). Thus I only have a few games on the back burner.
As long as people still buy games in droves, we’ll see this market saturation.
As it has always been, 85% of profit is made just by having good social skills. You don’t even have to make games to earn from.
I wouldn’t say IAP/F2P have destroyed the industry, but rather they reflect changing attitudes toward gaming and changing technology. When someone is waiting in line, in an office, etc., they’ll just play a game on their mobile device to keep themselves occupied. Companies realized more people (not just traditional gamers) are spending more time on their mobile devices and had to find a way to squeeze money out of those short opportunities when they have a users attention. The model wouldn’t be so widespread if it wasn’t working.
Also, I think users have come to expect things for free on the internet, in exchange for their personal information, i.e. attention (google “attention based economies”). Probably in the future, we will start to see the consequences of this, along with the cloud, etc. Not to mention, games have to compete with social media now (or they somehow blend together since they can serve a similar purpose).
The overall situation is not a bad thing. We are in a time of transition from selling products -> services and from being passive consumers to active contributors (social media). I’m sure a new industry will pop-up eventually; however, I don’t think that new industry is VR…
Another interesting read:
I think that open source systems will mature,
imagine a system that is a open source social network designed to develop games,
a ‘Collaboration engine’
or to develop cars, or medical devices?
I think we are on the cusp of our play becoming our work,
and our work being done by machines.
You sure love your loaded forum thread titles.
From everything i’ve seen, so long as you’re not publishing in the mobile space (because unless you’re lucky, you WILL get buried), quality indie titles nearly always comes out top. Theres plenty of instances on Steam Greenlight where completely unheard of games and game developers do really well because their game is excellent, theres an audience for it, and people as a result share it with others. Plus, it is still the responsibility of indie developers to properly market their own games, they cannot expect other stores to do the marketing for them or for luck to be on their side.
The mobile market has been screwed for years now, but on computers and even consoles the market is still great, and even if people use all these free programs as a hobby, its still really awesome to see all the cool things people do with them. You should be able to beat a small pool of competition just as much of a large one if your business is sound and you make an excellent game, the main thing democratisation has done is bring in a pool of terrible developers who make games that get downloaded a few times if that.
In summary, i couldn’t disagree more with your thread 
I never would have predicted that games meant for “computer play” would be the way to go 
I’m debating with myself if I can or should try to create a surge of games before the next wave of raytracer consoles hits the stores. The thought occurred to me that Playstation5 etc could suddenly pop out of nowhere, if the consoles decide they could emulate the mobile disposable phone market model. People are somewhat accustomed to the idea where a new better version of the phone is constantly released ie: “The NEW Galaxy Tab, now with a keyboard”, so even though it has only been two years the consoles could unleash something that will probably be more mindblowing than what’s already mindblowingly available. Imagine that, where suddenly everything before PS4 quality of graphics is considered hopelessly “Retro” I suspect there’s only a small window of time left before indy development is firmly relegated to a fun hobby.
I think some sort of ‘ubber second life’ will appear,
a universe where people hang out in VR, and play indie games.
Edit: I also see this as how games will be made**
In vr collaboration, with the ability to hand sculpt and paint in VR.
on the other hand, as long as there is evolution, there will be learning, games will be played… all beings play, medium is irrelevant
also, entertainment is a form of self maintenance & preservation
“Was it even worth doing?” Really?
Of course not… I mean, look at the fact that everyone has access to pencil and paper. That has completely ruined my ability to enjoy art.
</sarcasm>
@Fweeb, touche, not sure where this thread is going really…
When the barrier of entry lowers, which is rather common in technology fields - to ask “was it worth it”
… is just an odd question (unless its addressed to the person who did it) which isn’t the case here.
exactly
and not just that… now we have to read all kinds of crap!
was it really worth it? 
One thing is enjoying making games, another actually profiting from them. A lower barrier of entry will indeed mean less money and less chance of success for everybody in the industry except few lucky ones. This is the way modern capitalism works and I do not mean it in a derogatory manner.
I should note that the apps I developed weren’t game apps :D. I lucked out with a few public domain movie apps that I worked pretty hard adding excitement to the ancient films with new artwork, and was sidetracked from the game I was developing. I was experimenting with andengine and jpct and quite a few others trying for a small download footprint. I’m not a proficient coder and was becoming a little punchdrunk and finally went to try out the new free license I had for Unity for Android, but around this time I believe is when I experienced the wagons circled around a freshly fenced up Android market, and I threw my gold pan in the river and gave up :D. With the thread headline really stoking the embers now I’m wondering if the new iteration of graphics quality will shrink the “indy inclusiveness” of the next iteration of engines/markets? I can remember when the 3DRad engine became “free” to use, maybe around 2003 and I think around that time I looked into the unreal engine and seem to remember it being unbelievably expensive to develop with, and wonder if that “no indy” scenario will be replicated again with the nextgen engines, along with the cost of graphics cards, etc. It is still fun but if I show my brothers any game experiments or even full renders they are “Meh…” as they play extensively PS4 and have become hard to impress. It’s difficult to compete with that, so I imagine the next gen wave of games, fully unbiased rendered and ludicrously intricate 3D mansions infested with dozens of different zombies created by an army of talented people…
I love making my game, I am in no hurry to finish.
some people are in a race for money,
others are enjoying a walk with a old friend,
if at the end I make some reward that is cool,
but I am in it for the walk.