If you’ve even glanced at books like Jason Schreier’s excellent Press Reset, you know there’s something wrong in the gaming industry.
Most of the people who make games at major studios work long hours, have little job security and struggle to find stability in an industry where crunching for months just to get a game out the door may only preclude the abrupt closing of a studio you’ve given years of your life to in order to put something on the market.
Big-budget games are often plagued with delays and bugs as publicly-traded companies push (or stick to) release dates to help stock prices in what’s a multi-billion dollar industry of nomadic programmers and developers moving from company to company. And the indie scene is fraught with uncertainty as well, which is likely why so many gamers have supported a bundle of games hoping to ease some of the struggles of the modern gaming industry.
A “Shorter Games With Worse Graphics” bundle on Itch.io has made waves this week, a collection of indie games from 25 different developers with the goal of bringing attention to game makers without a traditional publishing deal creating without many of the problems plaguing AAA development. It’s the second bundle of its kind, which was inspired by a viral tweet from Jordan Mallory, a podcast producer at Fanbyte who asked for “shorter games with worse graphics made by people who are paid more to work less.”
i want shorter games with worse graphics made by people who are paid more to work less and i'm not kidding
— The Wonderful and Dynamic Jordogawara (@Jordan_Mallory) June 29, 2020
That tweet resonated with many people who love games but don’t like the way many of those major titles are created thanks to mandatory crunch and fraught development schedules that cause burnout among workers and lead to wild uncertainty in the industry. As explained by developer Damien Crawford, the goal of the project is to raise awareness of the concept itself, but also get these hard-working game makers paid.
'The Shorter Games With Worse Graphics Bundle' is now live! This is a collection of 28 games from 25 different independent developers; this thread gives a sample of all of them! #indiedev #indiegames #itchiohttps://t.co/y0BKiP8ohJ pic.twitter.com/A0E3ywoGyl
— Damien Crawford (@TheWorstRPGDev) August 1, 2021
The bundle has been an immediate success, seeing its funding goals reached a handful of times. They even got a bit playful with the funding goals because of the support they’ve seen.
The Shorter Games With Worse Graphics Bundle is currently at 69% of $6969.69, which is pretty… nice. Please check out these 28 games and the developers that made them!https://t.co/y0BKiP8ohJ pic.twitter.com/q0V6nYtBLq
— Damien Crawford (@TheWorstRPGDev) August 3, 2021
Increased the bundle goal a lot, to $696,969.69, because then each developer makes roughly a year's salary at California's minimum wage and that'd be great for these developers to havehttps://t.co/y0BKiP8ohJ https://t.co/i0K86XrxuG
— Damien Crawford (@TheWorstRPGDev) August 5, 2021
It’s a deal certainly worth checking out, and even if the whole package isn’t for you there are bound to be gems worth buying on their own. And it’s a good reminder that while the industry will almost certainly continue to have labor issues, there are lots of people working very hard to make positive changes for workers and still make great games in the process.
