Return of the Independent Game Developer?

chromatic writes "Several of the trends that make open source development possible are affecting other programming worlds. I've written an article about independent game development. Perhaps the gaming industry is ready for the craftsman-team approach."

Comments

Its not that easy...

[pr0c]

I've been trying to get people to work on an open source game for several months now.

Nobody wants to do the bitch work... all the hardest stuff to get started. They just wanna join in and help after it gets goin.

I'm no coding wizard, i can do enough to get by... I write the working shit code and the people too lazy to help at first fix it. Maybe it works better than i thought.

Re:Its not that easy...

[xdroop]

Nobody wants to do the bitch work... all the hardest stuff to get started. They just wanna join in and help after it gets goin.

Ahhh, young grasshopper, it sounds like you don't want to do the 'bitch' work either. You have obviously not learned the lesson of Mozilla. Go and learn.

To summerize, the point is that until you have something that builds and mostly works, there's no point in shopping it around for opensource help -- people want to be able to build something, use it, make a small change (like changing the splash screen to have their name on it) and then build and use it with their change. That's what sucks your helpers in -- immediate, positive feedback. Until you can get the project (by yourself or with a motivated small group of people) you are better off by yourself, since you'll only get armchair quarterbacking until then.

Re:Its not that easy...

[iabervon]

You just need to find people who are coding wizards, like the general idea, and don't have particular ideas about the artistic aspects of the result. Nobody ever does the hard parts of any open source project; they do the parts that are relatively easy for them, which may seem to others like the hard parts.

The problem you're probably having is that the people you're looking for are already working on their own game (or game engine). You might have more success looking for an engine that already does enough of what you want that you can tweak it a bit and have something up and running to get people interested.

What will save game companies?

[ackthpt]

Maybe coming up with better ideas for games, for a start. Now that I have a system I can realistically look at buying games for, I scanned the titles and darn few look interesting. Then Gavin Camp and friends put together Scorched3D and, heck, that's all I can think about playing. They're closing in on v32 with numerous improvements and they're having fun develping it. Check it out here

Essentially what happens is a game company lanches with a hot idea, a sexy game everyone has to have and a console maker feels they have to have, too. All is right with the world and there's money in the coffers. Then after a few games, or extentions of the first successful title, it's a scramble. Take anything, a dead horse which can spare a little more hide for whipping, and dress it up. Reviews say it stinks, nothing like their glory days, etc. The only company which seems to be eluding this downfall is EA, but in my book they're still rehashing old titles every year, 2002 football, 2003 football, etc.

It's not really unlike what happens with rock bands. The great songs they've played in clubs and garages for years are finely honed, they cut an album, it's hot, they're stars. Then the sophomore jinx kicks in and they release a mediocre second album and disappear.

What boggles my mind is the wealth of original ideas explored back in the day on C64, Apple][ and Atari 65xx processors. Almost all were designed by some guy in his basement, submitted to the emerging game companies, and sold 10,000-30,000 copies. You rarely hear their names anymore, but that's like the band analogy, they had one great idea. Imagine mining those things, finding the owners to get that stamp of approval (to keep the lawyers out of it later) and do a new release. I know a lot of those games still kick ass in emulators. Imagine what a Gavin Camp could do with them, with OpenGL, etc.

It's the Content, Stupid (tm)

[Otis_INF]

Years ago, when gfx developers ruled the demoscene, content was not that important. Today, it's the other way around: developers can program whatever they want, if you don't have awesome 3D models, textures and sound, it will not draw the attention expected.

The same goes for games. A 3D engine/2D tile engine is one thing, but what will you show with that engine? The programmer art cooked up by the developer? I hope not :). No, what's needed is a big pile of content: 3D models/textures, backgrounds, fonts, sounds, musicscores etc. etc.

So I don't see the 'independent game developer' as a valuable jobdescription. What's needed for development of a good game is a complete team, with of course one or 2 developers but above all: a couple of contentproducers with excellent skills.

Problems

[Featureless]

Your idea may fly eventually, but right now Moore's Law hasn't caught up with it. Workable 3D game engines have a very tightly honed feature set. They work because of a massive, carefully chosen set of compromises.

This is how it will turn out. Assume everybody will come and throw a stone soup party on the engine. A few months later you're already getting 0.25fps, and everyone is pointing fingers. You have to pick and choose, or give up. Well, picking and choosing is what everyone is already doing, and moreover they set out from the start to do it, so...

With a very, very well managed project - I almost think of a couple people working full-time on managing it, you can go farther than a few months, and maybe do some interesting things, but at the end of the day, you won't get to the destination you're imagining for another few years at least.

First you have to build it!

[Das Vole]

>> Nobody wants to do the bitch work... all the hardest stuff to get started. They just wanna join in and help after it gets goin.
>
> Ahhh, young grasshopper, it sounds like you don't want to do the 'bitch' work either.
> [ ... ]
> ...the point is that until you have something that builds and mostly works, there's no point in shopping it around for opensource help...

And therein lies a key problem. (Comments not directed at the original author.) Xdroop, you nailed it on the head. You see so many people who want to be an Instant Producer(tm) w/ no experience or budget. Usually goes something like, "I have this GREAT game idea, all I need is volunteers - a programmer or two, some artists, and..."

In other words, "I scribbled this on a napkin and now I want others to make it happen."

DoD sims were my mainstay prior to taking the leap. I was as a one-person start-up that crumbled just prior to beta release due to divorce. (DOH!) But I built the project from the ground up with OOD/reuse/robustness in mind, cross-platform, OpenGL, networking, etc. Took my time to do it right. My kids were enthusiastic beta testers, found more bugs than any team of grown-ups ever could. ;-)

I still have the project and will resurrect it some day (solo, thank you). But if I really wanted to, I have enough that I could release the design docs (technical and gameplay), business plan, and commented source to a prospective team and they could see that it works, review it, play with it, and decide if it was right for them to join a team.

If instead I'd gotten on an IRC channel/Usenet group and said, "I've got this great idea for a realtime cross-platform 3D networked series of games, all I need is...". That's like standing up in the middle of a shopping mall and hollering, "I'm looking to get laid by a gorgeous model, all I need is..." Your odds are about the same.

Many a game hobbyist's dream... BUT...

[Maul]

I've been playing video games pretty much since the NES came out, and know many who have been playing since earlier. I love playing console
and PC games, and love the idea of making my own game, even if it is just for fun.

Many game players (at least among those with some computer knowledge) dream that they could make a game of their own.

However, there is actually quite a bit of work to go into a game, besides just programming. Unless it is a text only game, you need art and music. You also have to come up with the concepts and story for your game, as well as the "rules" for the game itself (for example, if you want to make an RPG, you need to figure out all the stats, etc. that you'll need).

If you are making the game for fun, it is doable. It doesn't really matter if the game ends up looking like a Super NES game. As long
as you enjoy the end product.

But then there are those who might try to start making games professionally. It seems that starting from scratch will only get more difficult as time goes on to make a game that will sell.

In the early to mid 80s, if you could code well, you could probably make a text adventure game by yourself and have a shot at actually selling it if it was good / interesting, especially if it was well liked by other computer geeks.

Unfortunately, things have changed. The top selling PC games nowadays were made with many people. To make a similar game you not only need programmers, but you need 3D artists and someone to make an entire music score. You might need voice actors, and someone to "direct" the cutscenes. Finally, you need to market the game to an audience of the lowest common denominator.

Such a game would be quite hard for someone starting out to produce and then break into the business with. Even if someone can manage to make a good game, they still have to get it out there.