The Third Golden Age of Indie Dev will be unrecognizable from AAA Games.

Player taste, Game technology, and Gatekeeping have frequently created and then destroyed opportunities for indie development. These cycles might be about to be shattered, creating a new class of independent developers in a creative resurgence not seen before.

Something is about to happen that was not true in game development for the longest time: That more work is done by the tools applications than is done by the creative human piloting it.

The tools are a little tricky to get working, documentation is lacking, and to compile the output often requires relatively high-performance PCs. The tools have been tested on mainstream games and are now made available for use. Much content can be repurposed such as textures, AI logic, sound and scripts – allowing small indie teams of 3 people to build games that look like created by seasoned veterans. It's a liberating time where, I could as a level designer, open up the editor, repurpose some assets with some clever art changes, and go to town building a unique world all by myself. - It's the late 90s of course!

The First Golden Age (1997-2003)

Quake and Half-Life supercharged a scene of mods and games that started as offshoots and hobby-powered game dabbles and turned total franchises. The technology was fairly advanced to allow small teams to create impressive (for the time) games without requiring large support. Experimentation was rampant, and from it were born many classic franchises: Counter-Strike and Team Fortress, or the first mods from the later creators of Subnautica and others. Our own team started in the modding scene of that era with the creation of a game called GUNMAN CHRONICLES, which was – very 90ies – about cowboys, robots, and dinosaurs in space. 

Half-Life, Quake editors, etc, have stubborn survived into the new retro-game era

It was a moment when technology, player tastes, and digital access created a conducive environment for new teams. No longer locked behind obscure technology or limited to a select few with access to special hardware, home computers could author games and connect with audiences at scale.

The engines of the era, Source, Unreal, Id Tech 2 were the first proper generation of 3d world authoring tools widely accessible, allowing a compatible skillset between new dev teams worldwide. While textures were fairly low rez and largely only diffuse, good lighting, sound effects, and some clever scripting would go a long way for a compelling experience. And player tastes were lined up for novelty and creativity, entering the early 2000s, as online play erupted through the modding scene.

Getting games out in the 90ies was both difficult and easy. Discovery was easier through enthusiast websites, and there already was an economy of digitally downloading games and paying for them. But getting a physical distribution deal was the best way forward of course, which was a significant hurdle for small teams, but with many modded games going PC first, or PC(only), the issue of console didn't hold you back.

The End of the First Golden Age (2003)

Because that's where the convergence would end, with the release of Playstation 2 in October 2000, began the shift towards console first for many publishers, and with it started the often-debated end of PC gaming. What did end, though, for that era was easy to access to PC-era indie innovation. With PS2 came bigger budgets, and bigger expectations to release on console. Indie teams and hobby enthusiasts couldn't get access to devkit hardware very easily. Further, player tastes seemed to shift.

Sequels in games began heavily shifting to using static meshes instead of BSP surfaces

Unreal 2: The Awakening (above) marks the actual point where 3d art teams around the world instantly had to quadruple in size, and where level designers could no longer work independently to create worlds from simple geometry. Instead, level designers relied on large teams of artists to concept-model-texture assets for use in levels. This need for large groups begat further teams; concept teams, level meshers or decorators, paint-over artists, and beyond. The first Golden Age of Indie Gamedev was over. 

The Second Golden Age (2008-2013)

Then came the indie renaissance of the 2008-2010 era. Player tastes were exhausted of over-produced blockbusters and craved focused games with more significant innovation and gameplay. Unity and other engines democratizing development, while mobile game platforming surged, PC gaming matured (again) and leveraged rapidly increasing internet speeds worldwide. Hence, the alignment of Taste, Tech, and Transfer's starts allowed a new generation of indies to flourish and grow. This era admittedly lasted longer.

But again, technology began to shift, with overpopulated stores, increasing production and marketing spend, studios would out-spend each other to get on top. And with proliferating platforms, many indie studios could no longer sustain themselves on mobile alone and had to embrace other platforms, re-opening the gatekeeping dilemma of getting access to dev kits.

But perhaps the most difficult issue, the one draining the most effort and attention, was the increasingly unsustainable development teams' size. Engines were good, but not good enough to truly automate to bring team size back down. The bloat was affecting smaller studios and only few indies could afford the risk to stay small for their sequels - only those with really good longterm product life.

The Third Golden Age (2022+?)

This is about to change as we enter this third golden age of independent development.

And that’s thrilling. What will happen? Technology is about to outpace humans – in creation of video games. That initially sounds foreboding, and I don't exactly mean it this way and it was not the first time. Each of the golden ages was in part created because players accepted use of similar tools to create something new. Most players probably can intuitively tell a Unity game from Unreal from a custom rendered - but who cares it's all based on the same toolset.

Something is about to happen that was not true in game development for the longest time: That more work is done by the tools applications than is done by the creative human piloting it. When was it last so lopsided? In a sense, in the 90ies, because here was the first time that compiling, rendering, authoring and some content creation was automated from earlier assembly and C++ based toolsets in a way that allowed an individual to work in the toolspace almost exclusively to get fast and diverse results. The result is the same. Teams could go from 10 to 2. Maybe this time teams can go from 100 to 20.

EPIC Game’s announcement of META HUMAN characters is only the last announcement in an evolution pattern that has seen drastic automation and enhancements in game development. 

Auto-generated voice meets auto-generated human face and animations. No human was involved in the actual output above but only directed the algorithms creating it.

The trend of automation is going to hit all branches of development. Machine learning, generated content, online accessibility and beyond will permit creative minds to experiment and create vast amount of interesting and accessible games and experiences. Assume smaller games will look as good as larger productions. With it, will come the rise of new independent developers, which will graduate into global powerhouses.

Disruption is going to be obvious. Overspecialized studios have to be aware of the shifting landscape of services and player expectations. If everyone can create reasonably realistic characters in their own home, you better bring something special to the table.

Like noted earlier, this democratization of creation tools is not new and has happened before. The results were similar: Creativity and copious amounts of it.

Will there be another downfall of the Golden Age?

Inevitably, there will be changes in the industry. First, I'd expect to see issues with content overflow - too many people using tools for nothing terribly exciting. This will force attention elsewhere. Maybe this time around mass adoption by VFX and other industries will broaden the scope of tools and entertainment, but certainly, there will be a content issue at one point.

The question will be: If making games becomes easier again, will a new flood of content lead to a new round of gatekeeping? Maybe this time on streaming game services such as with Microsoft GAMEPASS or others? Who will decide what is quality, if every game LOOKS like quality (but might not be)? Will player expectations shift further up to STILL require thousands of people on games, or could optimal team size finally shift again downwards to something more sustainable? Or will the equation tip over when one-billion-dollar company decides to break the industry by outspending their competitors DESPITE the tools being so good? Hard to say.

Overall, we can learn from the film industry where camera and recording tech has become much more affordable and hence more mainstream. It seems to help talented directors to get a break earlier in their career and on their own terms, making films that LOOK like they have much larger budgets. Their talents and unique voice lift above the technology and they are noticed in a crowd effortlessly. Maybe we will see the same in games.