Games are art. Some people do it for money, some do it to express themselves, some do it for fun. What's worthless to you is very valuable to someone else.

Yes but it's undeniable that the industry has changed recently. It used to be, someone would make a game to express themselves, it would be picked up by a major studio, it would be expanded and polished until it had mass appeal, and became the next "blockbuster" game. Now, it's, someone makes a game to express themselves, and they eke by on a trickly of income, they fight for placement among the sea of shovelware on the game store sites, and they never get picked up by a big publisher. Meanwhile, the big 3 game companies are creating the same formulaic game over and over and, through massive advertising campaigns, have captured all of the customers.

>expanded and polished until it had mass appeal, and became the next “blockbuster”.

I’m not going to say that never happened. But I can’t think of any examples off the top of my head.

The fortunes of small independent teams have certainly risen and fallen multiple times over the years.

Blizzard fits this model. They didn't go from Warcraft to WC3 to WoW without outside investment.

Blizzard certainly doesn’t fit the model of

>someone would make a game to express themselves, it would be picked up by a major studio, it would be expanded and polished until it had mass appeal, and became the next "blockbuster" game.

Warcraft was a big success and Warcraft 2 was a huge success. Both of those games were published by Blizzard themselves. They were purchased by Vivendi a few years later.

I can’t think of a single game where a major studio picked up a small game then expanded and polished it into a blockbuster.

The closest I can think of is maybe DOTA. Where the creator of a mod was hired by valve to make a stand alone game. But that definitely wasn’t normal.

That's just wrong though. "Warcraft" was a "success" but it didn't reach a wide audience. They took on investment money and were able to get each subsequent game to a wider audience. Know anyone investing in indie games in 2025?

I can only think of examples where famous streamers made indie games go viral.

this is 1:1 what i hear people say about solana memecoins

Memecoins as art? I count myself fortunate to have not been subjected to that line of thought until now.

Yes, Also petition to just call memecoins ponzi scheme or scamcoins to not even ever let people think that its worth putting 1 cent of money on.

Scamcoins are comparable to disease or even cancer. Theoretically every scam is.

Unlike memecoins most games have utility via interactivity. I say most because there are definitely games like Banana that don't really have any interactivity, but it arguably had a different kind of utility: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aitVHsg0rWA

Oh no, they're fully irony poisoned.

Welp

Lets discuss. I genuinely hate memecoins with a passion but not indie games

Honestly, memecoins are just ponzi schemes. They are created on hype and people buy memecoins with the idea that it would trade higher and so on.

Noone in their goddamn right minds would just pay for an app showing some image of something. No, it is the idea that you can sell it for higher price, or if you can't, then why not just donate to them in the first place??

like if you think pepe is cool, just mail matt fury (I think he's the creator, just searched) some money and email him thanks on why pepe matters to you.

But nope people buy these shitty ass things just so that they can sell it to some other person believing the same dream as them.

And no, every cryptocoin is like this unless stablecoin in this sense but some coins have some utility that I can understand but still, if they have utility, just buy them when you want the utility man, but memecoins are the worst of the worst, just leeches on gullible people.

Indie devs are more like clippy (louis rossman, lets go, I am doing my deal spreading clippy) Once you bought them, 99% don't want anything else from you. They don't want you to sell it to an higher fool. they want you to play. they want you to give them feedback (both critisicm and praise) they want you to recognize the work they put in and they are proud of what they created which is why they created it.

Indie devs making games usually also take a lot more time and effort and that can only happen 90% of the time when you love the project than memecoins

But also I will admit that there are games that are not like that (think mobile ad games) and yes they are as much an evil/scummy as memecoins. Maybe a little less since trading factor and selling to others is gone but still some apps target little kids so they are worse in that. Maybe those apps take some time to develop but that's it. In my opinion yes shitty mobile games are comparable to memecoins, they are both (scams?), one might take more effort than other but honestly that varies but yeah even then they both are scams.

But doing the disservice of even comparing every indie game to memecoin might make you A) completely wrong, doing a great disservice while basically spreading lies that basically ragebaited me man B) the most downvoted person

You kinda ragebaited me no offense and I know you might be a good person. And its okay, misunderstandings happen. I may be wrong too, I usually am and that's why lets discuss if you think there is something wrong with what I said

> Noone in their goddamn right minds would just pay for an app showing some image of something

Not to necessarily disagree with anything else you argued, but there's a small relatively profitable genre of games for consoles that are just a unity template with an image of a turtle or whatever, and you mash a button to pet the turtle. The reason these exist and people buy them is because you get trophies for pressing the button.

So "an app just showing an image of something" is not very far from what those games are, and a bunch of them exist and do make money. It's tremendously weird.

There are also games like that Banana steam game that exist as part of a weird microtransactions economy instead of existing as what most people would consider a game.

Hm, that's valid point and this is why I said in the end (I think) that yes some memes and games are comparable but not every.

Regarding about petting a turtle, the thing that I don't get is uh, who are paying for it. heck, I can just ask gpt 5 for the code to do so or why not just open source so small things? the only reason I can make petting things make sense is kinda like that banana game (yes I had heard of it) and to be honest, that thing still doesn't make sense to me and is absolutely a memecoin kinda thing and I think that they are targeting the same genre really. Men who want 100x returns because the whole industry is of liars who are selling you courses saying that they have 100x'd and you can too. Also the fact that people are genuinely so stuck in the world at the same time that the only thing that they think that they can reasonably do is buy memecoin (which is almost like gambling if the odds were 99% casino .01% you since maths stop working in scamcoins ) The same people who gamble man, its chasing the highs. Maybe memecoins are a little bti less illegal or maybe its sorta allowed / less shunned than gambling in the world makes it more relevant. I thought for more and I think I finally get it. just as how gambling is addicting, memecoins are also addicting.

Once people start they can't really stop just as in addictions, and uh the more they fall, the more they feel like it that the only way out is by shouting out loud about memecoins and making more people fall into the trap/ making it more lucrative/fashionable just as mostly any other addiction (think flashy casinos) I am not even kidding but this idea goes sort of mainstream because the same principle applies to bitcoin etc. too, pardon me for being crude, but digital gold my ass. As someone who genuinely uses stablecrypto and mostly uses native coins barely just to transact the stablecrypto. I never used to get it why the hell would people do what they are doing. I now actually understand. Suddenly things make sense to the behaviour I see.

Maybe some people believe it in because they want to be part of such utopian future idea that they have and so good for them, if someone's in for the tech, that's really good. But I'd much rather not do that since I don't want to fall into such addiction or trap or something and I genuinely want almost peace of mind in that sense. I am not compromising on psychological effects that I or heck anyone can have if they say their money fall in value and doubt about themselves. I don't want that. The best/ only thing that I will do is maybe invest in world index funds because I genuinely believe that their value comes out of productivity and not scams essentially. And its infinitely better than keeping your money in a jar and infinitely better for atleast my peace of mind than even normal crypto aside from stablecoins which I hold, I like stablecoins) Its just not worth it but maybe for some it might be and I get it but still they are a fraction of the real userbase and the real userbase is making things worse for everyone by being a speculating/almost gambling machine man.

I think I get it, some people loved it for the tech and they used it, then there was some utility for sure but then some (malicious?) people started to sell the idea to everyone that it would 100x (maybe they genuinely believed it) and then it got attraction by (stupid? people) and got mainstream news to either attract more (stupid?) [I don't like that word, almost is deregatory] and maybe more tech lovers too.

This all kept on happening and the internet really just spread this like a wildfire to almost the gambling state thing that we have today.

So I get it if people are still in there for the tech but Like said before, can't hurt my psychology / go into almost imo addiction at this point of recouping loses etc. just because i like the tech. but I get it if people are like that, I met someone online like that who genuinely loved crypto for the tech and thus was investing into them and I was just shocked man (I also like such tech but I don't make my wallet to speak that) I always wanted to prove them wrong because I wanted to be right but I mean I am right from my pov and they are right from theirs.

The thing about whether they're a good person or not is that it doesn't matter because they're not worth replying to either way. You don't have a moral obligation to steel-man absolute stupidity, whether it's meant sincerely or trollingly.

I do think that we have a moral obligation though. And we can discuss about that too.

Basically, I think that this person who has this "stupid" thought had it because they were wrong in their reason and nothing wrong with that and they just showed the world that they have it.

Now here's what I think, if I mock them, they would hate even more and they would actually convince themselves that they were even more right

And if I say nothing, then they are just living in their own bubble and the algorithms serving them are either ragebaits or their own echo chambers.

But even then, if they are truly "stupid" (i don't think they are, they just have a wrong take), then worst case they don't change and even then I had fun writing the comment. but yeah I did get ragebaited in the beginning, they were so punchable as a face when I first read it but I mean, I don't know man, we need to burst echo chambers or atleast have good discussions around it instead of just making them live in their bubbles with wrong takes imo.

But I also understand that we have no moral obligation to, but I really try (I think) in this world to not make myself an echo chamber by helping others who are in so.

Not that we have to do it, but I got complimented once in some sense for it and I kinda aligned with it ever since.

Small things like compliments / actually listening to others can actually have the potential to compound so much for the other person that honestly its worth it in my opinion. But I think that I wish to get such reciprocity back, someone actually discussing things / helping others but the world just feels so mixed man idk. I just don't want to be shining hero but uh I genuinely wish that I can be the change that I want in this world

Say you don't play games without saying you don't play games.