Over the years, we've seen many smash hit indie games. In fact, these indie games have been the backbone of creativity in the industry on large, providing players with amazing stories and worlds to explore. Cult of the Lamb is just one example of this, a game from a small studio seemingly coming out of nowhere and garnering critical acclaim and much love.
"I think we definitely had an idea that people were going to like Cult of the Lamb and it was going to be a success, but I think it would have been mad to assume that it would have got the level of success that it did get," Massive Monster's art director, James Pearmain, tells me.
"It's weird in the industry right now, because you have these AAA games that cost $200 million or however much to make, and so they have to charge $60 or however much it is to sort of have any chance of breaking even. And then you have all these indie games that are coming out at a fraction of that. And a lot of them, actually, have just as much content as the AAA games, and in some cases they're just as good, if not better experiences."
Looking at my recently played library in Steam, it's a mix of AAA games like Fallout 76, Deadlock, or Battlefield 6, and some AA games like Arc Raiders. But there's also a hell of a lot of indie games that just keep sticking around. Cult of the Lamb isn't just a regular play, especially with its recent Woolhaven expansion; Stardew Valley, Lethal Company, and SCP: Secret Laboratory keep popping up.
One of the best things about the gaming industry right now is not knowing when the next indie smash hit is going to come out of the woodwork and happily surprise us all. But with everything else going on in the industry as of late, I don't blame anyone for getting nervous about the future.
"It's really hard to sort of tell what's going to happen," Pearmain says. "I don't know if [releasing an indie game] is necessarily harder. Our friends over at Aggro Crab just sold a ridiculous amount of copies with Peak, and you know that they're not a new studio. But I think that kind of took them massively by surprise.
"I'm sure there will be games in the future that just absolutely explode, almost out of nowhere, like Schedule 1 this year, which sold a ridiculous amount of copies. Sometimes you just make something that really resonates with people." Peak's devs have said time and again how the success of the multiplayer climbing sim took them by surprise.
On the other hand, Landfall, the other half of Peak's development team, had less success with their previous multiplayer game Content Warning, something which I thought was going to be the next Lethal Company. I absolutely love Content Warning and still play it occasionally with my friends, but it just didn't take to water as Peak did. It really does seem as if you can't predict how players will react to these kinds of games.
But that doesn't mean all hope is lost. "AAA games are getting a bit stagnant, with their hundreds of millions of dollar budgets, and then you can just make a really interesting indie game with one person, and the risk is so low, because you just need to be able to afford to eat and pay rent.
"I think that's where the really interesting stuff comes from, and I think players really respond to that. So, yeah, I don't think those days have gone at all. I think there'll be plenty more indie smash hits, and I can't wait to play them."
