Slashdot Mirror

A physical copy is pointless if it still requires you to connect to Steam.

I still occasionally play games that I bought over a decade ago - including those from companies that are defunct. Good thing they never used DRM requiring a connection to their servers, eh?

You've got a neat imagination. Heck, I could afford to buy over a dozen copies of Orange Box every week, but that's not the point. I don't want to deal with any BS when I'm just trying to play some games and relax. This is why I've bought more games for my Wii than my PC in the last year. I'd buy a 360 and Orange Box, but I doubt that system would last a year before getting a RROD, let alone ten years...

I'm one of the co-owners of an independent game company right now so I feel like I have a few things to say on this subject. His premise is flawed, IMO.

First of all, we heard this same argument on the Dreamcast homebrew development list back in the day when John Byrd (Sega DTS guy) was on there. He literally said that a couple of guys in a garage can't make a game these days. It was basically the same thing Peter Molyneux is saying now. I told him it was BS then, and I'll say it's BS about this as well.

The problem is one of scope. This same thing applies to movie makers, musicians, anyone. If you start out with the goal of wanting to be a world-wide phenominon, then you are probably going to fail unless you have the bookoo bucks. That's not how normal business people start though. You find yourself a niche somewhere where you can establish yourself, and then you work upwards from there. If you're passionate about it and stay on it hard, and more importantly if you have the talent, then you'll usually get a couple of key breaks eventually. If you don't, then perhaps you should try something else. Or, if you're like me, there's probably no failure too grand to keep you away from it. :)

You also have to look at the indie film and music scenes to see how this works, it's not that difficult. You find something you can do within the budget you have available to you; you spend time and track down people who have similar interests; and then you band together and make something that will lift all of you up to the next budget level so you can produce something more interesting next time. It takes patience, yes. It definitely takes a load of hard work. But you don't need a "worldwide AAA game" to be successful, just enough to pay yourself to continue your work.

There is also, of course, an element of "right place at the right time" but that tends to be purely luck (though it can be engineered occasionally).

And before any of the trolls start... our budget: $0 and a few hours of free time each day.

For all you people complaining about not being able to "get into consoles", may I humbly suggest a Dreamcast?

You can find a fully free SDK here, a thriving homebrew community here, and there are already hundreds of homebrew games out there, many of them with source code.

A top of the line dev station will run you about $200 -- $50 for a used DC console, ~$15 for a serial cable, ~$135 for a BBA (100mbps ethernet), and a Cygwin install if you use Windows.

We're also working on opening up a market again with various others which, if not as large as the PS2 or GameCube, would certainly qualify as one of Garage Games' "niche markets". There are millions of DCs out there, about 90% of which can run games burned on CDR or pressed on a CD with no modifications.

So what are you waiting for? :)

We (Cryptic Allusion) are also developing a Dreamcast game with the freely available homebrew tools to go beyond the basic get-as-many-steps-right-as-you-can of DDR to something much closer to Puyo Puyo or Puzzle Fighter. Here's the link:

Feet of Fury

There's also Dance With Intensity that someone developed to play DDR songs on your PC, assuming you can track down the step files and MP3s/OGGs.

Slightly incorrect link there (it's my site :)

gamedev.allusion.net

and here's another for you:
cagames.com

Honestly I can't see why people on here keep harping on and on about Linux and NetBSD on the Dreamcast, when its main use these days is for development console homebrew games. :) Of course Linux for DC is also getting some nice support that will enable this as well, but it's a bit behind the other stuff that's out.