In the past few years, indie games have surged in popularity, breaking out from niche corners of the gaming ecosystem into mainstream attention. It’s not hard to see why. The way we consume entertainment has changed dramatically. TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, … all of them have taught us to crave stories in quick, concentrated bursts. We scroll, swipe, laugh, and move on. And whether we realize it or not, that rhythm is changing how we play, too.
Players no longer have the time or maybe the patience to sink over 100 hours into a single sprawling epic. Instead, they’re chasing that same feeling of discovery, but in shorter, sharper experiences. Indie games have become the perfect fit: affordable, creative, and often designed with just enough depth to hook you before life calls you back.
Even big platforms are catching on. Roblox, introducing Roblox Moments, a universe built on player-created worlds, recently took a page straight out of TikTok’s playbook. Its new short-form video feed lets players watch, share, and instantly jump into gameplay clips that feel tailor-made for a generation raised on endless scrolling.
Roblox Moments: Driving In-Game Discovery
GIANTY is watching a generational shift unfold. The next wave of games or indie games and the players who love them won’t be defined by genre or budget, but by how social-first, AI-assisted, and shareable they are.
The TikTok Effect: Why Short-Form Content and Indie Games Amplify Each Other
Bite-sized discovery matches modern attention spans
Short-form platforms have trained audiences to expect quick, impactful engagement. A 30-second gameplay clip can now serve as a mini-trailer, sparking curiosity and leading directly to a download or purchase. Indie games with sharp mechanics and visually distinctive art styles thrive in this environment.
Virality, not marketing budgets, powers visibility
AAA studios rely on massive marketing budgets. Indie teams often have none. Instead, virality does the work: a quirky mechanic, a surprising plot twist, or a funny fail moment captured in a short clip can explode online and bring in thousands of players overnight.
Take R.E.P.O – an indie game that climbed the Steam charts without a marketing budget. Its physics-based co-op chaos and laugh-out-loud moments went viral on social media, with one TikTok clip alone hitting over 4 million engagements. Players couldn’t stop sharing their funniest teamwork fails and monster fights. That kind of organic buzz did what paid ads couldn’t and made R.E.P.O impossible to ignore.
Lower cost of failure encourages experimentation
Indie game studios can afford to take creative risks. If a prototype doesn’t land, they can pivot quickly. Short-form virality rewards experimentation; if your game generates even one standout moment that catches fire, it can fuel your entire launch.
Roblox Goes TikTok Mode: Introducing “Moments” and AI Creation Tools
Roblox Moments Introduction
In September 2025, Roblox announced a transformative new feature: Roblox Moments, a TikTok-style short-form video feed inside the Roblox platform.
What is Roblox Moments?
- Supports vertical, 30-second gameplay clips like TikTok.
- Players can trim, add music, and write descriptions directly in Roblox
- Viewers scroll through a feed and react with emojis
- One tap lets viewers jump directly into the feature shown in the clip
This creates an instant loop between discovery and play, all inside the platform itself. The traditional pipeline — Discover → Download → Play — is giving way to a more integrated loop: Watch → Play → Create → Share.
This cycle feeds itself. Every player is a potential creator, and every shared clip is a marketing tool. For indie developers, the implications are huge: design games with shareable moments, and your players will market them for you.
AI Tools That Power Creation
Alongside Moments, Roblox unveiled AI-powered creation tools that further democratize development:
- Text-to-3D generation: type a description, get a usable model
- Animation and asset helpers: smoothing complex workflows
- Real-time voice translation: making experiences globally accessible
By blending short-form video with AI-driven creation, Roblox is evolving beyond a game hub. It’s becoming a social platform for creativity and discovery.
What AAA Studios Can Learn from the Indie?
Rather than fearing this change in trends, embracing it can also have its benefits. A recent example is Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, which has drawn attention for deliberately offering a shorter, more focused experience compared to the average full-price story-driven RPG.
Instead of padding content to hit a 50-hour mark, they focused on making every moment count. It’s a design philosophy that speaks directly to today’s players – people who still love deep stories but want to finish them.
A focused game means lower production costs, faster development, and fairer pricing – all without sacrificing impact. Clair Obscur proves that less can be more, and that respecting the player’s time might just be the most powerful design choice a studio can make today.
For AAA developers, adopting this indie game mindset could help recover audiences who might otherwise drift toward smaller titles while still delivering polished, memorable experiences at scale.
Tips for developers and publishers:
- Design for shareability: Create moments that pop in under 15 seconds; visuals, surprises, or outcomes that thrive on short-form video.
- Think bite-sized: Build modular experiences players can jump into and return to easily.
- Use AI to scale smarter: Automate assets, speed up iteration, and empower user-driven creation.
- Go where players scroll: Instead of treating TikTok, Instagram, or Roblox’s Moments as secondary, developers should see them as primary distribution channels.
- Empower your community: Let players remix, clip, and co-create… It’s the fastest path to organic growth.
Looking Ahead: The Future of Play and Indie Games
The indie game boom isn’t a passing trend — it’s a signal and also short-form content. Games are evolving into living, shareable experiences, and those who adapt fastest will shape the next generation of play.
For GIANTY and for the wider industry, the lesson is clear: the future of play is not solitary, but social-first and AI-assisted. We believe the future of gaming belongs to creators who adapt fast, experiment boldly, and design with players’ evolving habits in mind.
Whether you’re an indie studio finding your voice or a publisher scaling up to meet global audiences, we help you bring your ideas to life from concept and art to engineering and live operations. Get in touch with us
