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

Elemental

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out this game mod that a team is developing, i do believe its the largest organized game mod development team yet. The Elemental

Did they ever die?

[MyNameIsFred]

Did they die or were they overshadowed by a few big companies in the console and PC world?

I'm not a big gamer, but in the Mac world some of the best known, and highly regarded game developers are small. One example is Pangea Software whose games are shipped on all iMacs. It's a one man outfit (although he hires out graphics and music).

Re:Did they ever die?

[toh]

There's a strong parallel between film & TV and video games. Both have turned into huge, overblown "industries" dominated by scads of cash. But in both cases cash can be observed to have little to do with actually producing any substantive value. Is "Friends" getting less vapid and idiotic as the cost per episode vaults ever higher? Wasn't "Waterworld" a gripping flick? Is "Diablo" really that much different from, or better than Nethack?
Take the Pangea (Brian Greenstone) example - I don't necessarily love his games (they're good but generally not hugely gripping), but the lack isn't in those areas that money can contribute to. Gameplay is either there or it's not, like real emotional, intellectual or artistic value in a film. Money won't help here, and usually it hurts by raising the stakes too high and making people and projects inflexible. Classic games succeeded because they were *just games* - they didn't have stockholders to answer to.
However, the apparent dominance of big industry in movies doesn't mean there aren't lots and lots of interesting indie films being produced - there are and always have been. Moreover, the film industry pretty much recognises that it's forever creatively bankrupt and looks to indie stock for new ideas. This is even easier in games, where the cost of entry is lower. There is a baseline cost to making a film even when shot on DV, but the baseline cost of game production is just the use of computing machinery similar to that required to play the game (which shouldn't overreach anyway if you want a decent audience).
It's also not true that game innovation ever went away. Lots of games in recent years have been done in Java or Flash or otherwise made available via a browser, and some are even huge hits, though you might not recognise them (ever played Popcap's"Diamond Mine"?). They just tend to get lost in all the dross, and especially to fly under your radar if yourOf course, in film the indie players are inevitably co-opted and end up just producing more pap (again, excess of money contributes to this). Not to overstretch an analogy. ;)

Our list

[mnmn]

We're a group of four developers working in SDL+Opengl1.4 + DirectX + QT ... trying to produce an industrial-strength multi-platform FPS game, and there are a few obstacles along the way that seperates us from the bigger companies:

(1) Artists. We can only go so far with our limited time and budgets with blender, (to a limited extent, with demo versions of truspace, 3dsmax..)

(2) Programming man-hours. I spent a month building a truspace object importer, that also optimises the polygons and faces. We tried Polytrans, but we still have to use our little (will be GPL) prog for optimisation and correction purposes. We now need importing filters for several other file types but dont have the time to program it.

(3) SDKs. Playstation, gamecube, Xbox development kits are out-of-reach for us, unless we've already sold a couple of games. These kits are priced for companies that can pay.

(4) Investment. We'll need to feed ourselves for a few months while we develop. This hasnt been possible and the development work has taken a back-seat to our jobs/studies. I'm sure many cottage-industry developers can relate to this, despite the open possibilities and chances in the market for ideas.

I'm sure people can come up with more problems but we've discovered these to be the biggest ones ensuring the market belongs to the relatively few larger companies. Theres sure is skill out there, and so are ideas. I can just hope the opensource spirit enters the game-developer circles, and sourceforge gets packed with high-quality competing games that has revolutionised servers and operating systems.

The matrix?

[IamTheRealMike]

Ever since seeing The Matrix, I've sometimes wondered what would happen if somebody attempted to build a completely generic world engine, by applying the techniques of OO programming to virtual reality. For instance, by loading terrain programs, tree-growing programs, erosion programs and a weather/sky program, you have built yourself an outdoor world. By subclassing those programs, you can alter the trees, develop new kinds of trees and so on. ViscousBody -> Liquid -> Sand -> Desert.

The open source model would apply, with people taking already existing programs and modifying them, to make the world richer and richer. The world (the construct?) would be an enormous continous space, with parts being fantasy, parts futuristic sci-fi cities, and other parts being similar to the real world.

Once a "critical mass" of programs had been achieved, it would become possible for people to create their own games in this virtual world. I love playing Supreme Snowboarding, it's a bit old now, and pretty simple, but I love the feeling of speed you get as you board down the course. Perhaps that world could be a virtual ski resort - some people could play "Sim Ski Resort", I could play snowboarding, and 007-wannabes could use it as a virtual film set. We'd all play together in this huge virtual world, adapting it to create new games and scenarios as we saw fit.

Of course, there are lots of practical design problems here. How to make a programming language that is simple enough to be understood by people without lots of prior programming experience. How to build a world that doesn't get killed by latency. Can you even simulate the natural world using only mathematics etc? I think so - look at some of the GIMP filters for instance.

It's just a pipe dream of course. I for one don't plan on attempting it anytime soon. I think WorldForge are trying something similar though.

Re:The matrix?

[tvalley000]

The first hurdle I see to this kind of setup is hardware. I think the guys at Butterfly.net are taking that battle to the streets by providing a game development platform on top of a massive Grid. This promotes seamless worlds that support hundreds of thousands of players.

The second hurdle is monetizing a world like this to provide impetus toward development. You could provide the world itslef as an open source playground, but the really nice artwork (textures, models, etc) and interactive elements (scripts, epic quests, etc) would be in packaged SDKs. You'd have to have some sort of monetizing here in order to support the bandwidth requirements.

The final hurdle is to manage adoption and pricing in such a manner that your pipe dream doesn't fold the minute the first player logs in.

On a small scale, I'm reminded of InterMUD and privatized mudlibs. You can download something like LimaMUD for free, stick it on top of MudOS and start developing. Support is nearly non-existant, and you have to develop 80% of the content yourself before you open the doors. However, you can license one of the old well-developed Mudlibs (like Nightmare, for example) and get yourself the majority of the way to the finish line.

The obvious differences between the above and your pipe dream are scale and graphical implementation.

Independant doesn't mean cheap..

[m0i]

Go see LiveForSpeed and see for yourself! More realistic simulation than almost anything out there, free while in beta test, netplay.. Worth a try, really.

a return to the good old days.

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be nice to see a return to the days when the commodore ruled. Where there where a lot of interesting and new games being made by little development teams instead of large ones trying to copy half-life.

Does anyone else remember when games came in cardboard folders that on the insert had a picture of the development team dressed up to fit the theme of the game? Nowadays, they would need a full sized yearbook to do that.

It's alive....ALIVE!

[Martigan80]

Doom flourished with third-party maps. Modifications for Quake and Half-life took on lives of their own, leading to commercial releases.

This also has surpassed the programmers expectations. It also can lead to an interesting point that sometimes the developers do not want to spend so much time supporting/developing for the game. Sure the fans help, and it is the fans that make their material free to use. There are plenty of talented CGI people and programmers, they just don't want to devote their entire life for peanuts and a divorce.

I personally always look at the "other" games. The ones made by a common Jane/Joe. It is kinda of like going to the old theater on campus and seeing what the no-name director/artist can do. Sure graphics is great, but so is the game play. For instance look at Neverwinter Nights. The capabilities are amazing, not to try to sell it, but you can pretty much add anything you want to your modules, sound, graphics, tile sets, scripts, and even more. Granted to really cruddy part is the the tool-set is for Windows only. Just think of is a a fact that this game was in development for 3-4 years before Linux started entering the scene. Any how the main point is that most of the games that live so longer are due to the fans. They are the ones creating the materials and keeping it going. The businesspeople have already made their money so they could careless about the continuing life-unless they see a sequel out of it.

What I did

[skreuzer]

Since I was very young I have been using a Macintosh and when I first started to learn game development, it was on a Macintosh platform. I recently picked up programming under Win32 since I have more access to machines running Windows. When I was going to school at night, I meet a kid who wanted to get into game programming. Our biggest problem was we could not come up with a game idea that was good, and didn't already exist. (Apparently we are not the creative bunch) Then it hit me. Alot of people have written very successful games for the Macintosh and released them as shareware. I would email the person who wrote the game and ask if they would like to port their game over to Windows to expand the user base. Alot of people took me up on the offer, My friend and I would write these games after work and then the author would sell them on their site and we get a check every once and a while for a couple of bucks, which would usually be exchanged for Beer at the bar right next to the school. Basically, I get to enjoy my hobby, and make a few bucks at the same time.

Open Source Zelda

[Tronster]

I'll utilize this topic to drum up support for an Open Source game I'm helping to push forward. It's Open Source Zelda and can be found here.

This project was started by Nehe (of famed OpenGL tutorials) and he maintains posting the stable milestone check-ins. Even if you aren't interested in OSZ, check out his site...his tutorials are the best on the web, IMHO.

The idea is to re-create the original 8-bit Zelda which Nintendo released in the mid-80's, but for it to have an open architecture so that other developers may reuse the engine for similar games. The code is also highly OO, and well documented in the hopes that those interested in knowing how to create a game (or apply OO design) can glen some knowledge from other developers' work.

It's Win32 now, but we have had interest from a developer in the BaltoLUG who may begin a Linux port. Anyone is welcome to attempt this, branch it, or do whatever they want with the code (under the GPL). =)

Problems with Indy development.

[Anonymous Coward]

Gaming houses can rake in the cash nowadays. Thus, most of the good game programmers are already getting paid to drink beer at work while coding obscure bits of code. Sure, the bulk of them aren't driving Carmack's cars or funding experiments to drive commercial space flight. But they're not starving, and they're being paid to do what they love.

There's the problem with open source games. No one wants to do the bull work for free. There's plenty of artists and musicians out there who would just love to do stuff for any given game, but the point is - they're all useless until you have an engine and accompanying code written to *use* their work.

There's plenty of people who would want to write sexy code, level editors and such. That's great, and useless, without an actual game.

There's boatloads of folk who would take care of all the minute details for you. Great, anyone want to help out with the boring dirty work? Nope.

Solutions to this aren't easy, but they're not terribly hard. For example, iD has released various bits of source that can take care of the 'hard' stuff. True, it's GPL, and thus, if you distributed the game, people would easily find ways to cheat and such since they'd have yer source.

Suck it up and make your game able to be played between friends who can trust each other. Realize it won't become the next Counter-Strike. (Which, in itself, is a constant battle between cheating and developers of anti-cheating software.)

You're in this to make games, not get rich, right?

If you're in it solely to get rich, suck it up, throw proposals around, get some venture capital, and *hire* people. If you're in it for the purposes of doing it, or for popularity, open source gaming development could be a good option.

I can't count the number of hours I've lost to FreeCiv, conquering the world in the name of the Lidless Eye.

eXistenZ?

[Pharaoh's Curse]

I don't know how many of you have seen this movie but I thought it was interesting when they mention while driving along that the countryside is full of game developers.

I'd like to see game development take that sort of direction where programmers, designers, artists, musicians, etc. start gathering in random locales, especially those outside the big cities. It's discouraging for those who are looking to get into game development to think that their options for living are limited to Seattle, LA, and Texas. The net certainly makes this sort of do-it-wherever business possible.