Independent video game studios gain popularity in tumultuous industry environment

Games made by small teams and solo developers are some of the best selling products in the past year.

While video gaming has become one of the most lucrative industries in entertainment, the industry has found itself in a difficult time. Some of the major companies have had layoffs and other cuts. But in the wake of that chaos, independent studios are gaining some traction.

When Trento von Lindenberg started his own independent game studio last year, he wanted to capture the fun and zaniness of his home state — with a game called: “Floridale Man: The Joy of Chaos.”

“Throughout the game, players will be able to create weird things,” von Lindenberg said.

The character Floridale Man works for a grocery store chain called “Hublix” and races around sunny Floridale having fun.

Players move around the game world causing chaos by finding random items and putting them together creatively.

“If I combine this golf bag from the mini golf course, and, um, a cannon, that will turn it into a golf bag that shoots golf clubs at things,” Von Lindenberg explains.

Floridale Man is the first game from Von Lindenberg’s new company, Mouldbreaker Interactive. It’s a team of just nine game developers working together remotely.

They’re part of a growing trend of smaller game development studios that have cropped up over the past decade.

YouTube essayist and self-described “video game pundit” Jacob Geller said the indie games they’re developing are popular.

“Games made for a much lower budget by much fewer people — sometimes, one person,” Geller said.

Big game publishing companies like Microsoft and Sony made huge investments during the pandemic when the industry was hot — gobbling up studios and intellectual property. But player numbers dwindled once COVID restrictions wore off. Publishers closed some game studios and laid off thousands of developers to trim budgets.

Some laid-off designers went on to create their own independent studios.

“Smaller teams and new creators are finding incredible success,” Geoff Keighley, host of the annual Summer Game Fest in Los Angeles, said at this year’s event.

Keighley pointed to the top 10 best-selling games so far this year on an online marketplace: “Two of them are considered, you know, big company games. But the other eight come from indie midsize teams or solo developers.”

As big budget games are more of a gamble, Keighley said more developers and gamers may flock to the growing indie game scene.