14 DAY TRIAL // The creator of Fable and Godus, Peter Molyneux, is skeptical about the future of indie games, saying that their golden age won't last very long.
During this year's edition of the Game Developers Conference, the famed video game designer made a few intriguing statements regarding what he sees as the future of indie gaming.
He runs his own indie studio 22Cans, which is now working on Godus, and he says the spotlight won't shine on indies for long.
"Enjoy this time, because inevitably it will only last a short period," he warned, saying that the current prosperity and proliferation of indie games is only a cycle which will end when its time comes.
"Don't think we're going to be all indies for the next five years--these things go in cycles, just like in the music business. You have a time where punk is big, and then you have times like now where everything is manufactured," Molyneux explained.
Furthermore, he advised indie developers to be wary of venture capital firms investing in their games, as that will most likely impede their creativity.
"What those indie companies don't realize is that they'll then have to have board meetings, and in those meetings they'll be told, 'no, you shouldn't do that - look at this game that's making money'," he pointed out.
Dungeon Keeper, Populous, Black & White, Godus, all these game share a common theme, apart from Molyneux's involvement: creativity, an essential ingredient, as far as indie companies are involved at least.
Molyneux shared that today's era seems a little like the '80s, when he first started out selling and distributing his games on Atari floppy discs, when anybody could create a game that would become wildly successful, when there were no proper formulas or rules cast in stone and when nobody had any sense of fear and everyone was very driven, much like indies are today.
He revealed that he thinks that the indie scene blossomed to a point where developers are continuously stepping outside traditional boundaries and are striving to create new and exciting experiences.
This is contrasting with the days where the development community was dominated by huge budgets and fear of not becoming hugely successful, when there were very clear cut rules to making games which would result in titles such as Halo, Call of Duty and the other huge franchises.
Nowadays, the most celebrated games are things like Gone Home and Papers, Please, which he thinks is "brilliant."
22Cans's project Godus, whose development is led by Peter Molyneux, is available on Steam Early Access, in beta form.