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Can Independent Game Developers Survive?
Zanthor writes "Online Gaming - Comments and News has an interesting interview with Scott Miller and Larry Dunlap (Imperial Wars) about their up-and-coming game. While the concept has been around since the old Play By Mail games, their web-based client and world-class art pose the question: Can a small start up group compete with the big name publishers for the Multi-Player money?" EA employs how many people?
Introversion ended up quite successful with their simple hacking sim "Uplink".
It's a fun little game that started out as the guy's pet project, but ended up taking off and has sold many many copies since.
Heck I ended up buying a few copies for Xmas presents this year, and most of my friends agreed it was quite enjoyable. Runs on both Windows and Linux.
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www.llamasof.co.uk.
jeff minter was ultra cool at the alternative partys btw.. he even threw a special version of gridrunner++ to everyone who were there(no not actual physical discs/medium but download..)!
anyways.. he hinted that something 'big' is coming on 23rd day.. and this is on-topic on can indep. survive...
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Snood survived with little or no advertizing and beceame a phenomonon.
Snood was a port of an arcade game called "Puzzle Bobble" aka "Bust-A-Move". It rode on the advertising of BAM.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I have been working for four years at an indie development shop (~5 employees). We make war games (www.ezgame.com). About half-way through the development of our first game, we found out that a big publisher was making a game with the same setting and general approach to gameplay as ours. We did finish our game (and eventually got published), but it was very difficult to compete. It is important that your game has features that are different than those found in mainstream games. If two companies are trying to implement a game with the same set of features the bigger budget is much more likely to win out.
One good thing about working at a small shop, though, is that your costs are much lower so you don't have to make nearly as much money to break even.
Small indie developers generally don't want to stay indie. Usually, you will try and make a prototype for a game, then land a publisher to fund the rest of development (which kind of takes you out of the 'indie' category). If you weren't able to find a publisher, that might be a bad sign for your game.
www.ezgame.com/SNH
A lot of success for independents has come from focusing on a single product and releasing it for FREE. If it lasted, it would go PAY later.
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However, another way this works is through the developer making contacts with other developers through the process. A developer also gains a lot of valuable experience that helps him or her in future endeavors. Experienced developers teamed up together CAN compete with the big companies!
To see what I am talking about, read this:
ARC Attack, Retrieve, Capture. When it was client-side (meaning server passed on packets without verifying client data), it was fast and fun. It was independent for a while, then joined a couple of networks including TEN.NET (Total Entertainment Network).
TEN.NET became pogo.com, a web-only service so downloadable games had to go. ARC was made server-side (and slower) and licensed for WON.NET, Flipside, and SIERRA--companies that bought it each other out one way or the other.
Then, we have UniBall (uniball-central.com) created by a guy named "C:\". He made both the graphics and wrote the code. Oh, incidentally, he made all of the graphics for ARC. He hasn't worked on UB since 2000ish. The game is up through donations and admin contributions.
Finally, we have Pop Cap (popcap.com), makers of those java games you see on MSN's ZONE, YAHOO!, and everywhere else. You can even buy stand-alone versions for Windows and PalmOS.
What does this have to do with anything? You see, Pop Cap, in a way a monopoly on java games, wouldn't have existed without ARC and UniBall.
A game designer from Pogo.com (which licensed ARC when it was TEN.NET), an engineer from WON.NET (which licensed ARC), plus two other guys who had to do something with ARC when it was on WON.NET, and ARC's graphic designer and UB creator C:\, all make up Pop Cap Games.
You see, just make some free stuff to get noticed and to team up with others you meet along the way!
Also, enter your games into the Independent Games Festival. They award thousands of dollars to winners in different categories, now for the fifth year in a row.
You can see a bunch of entrants, representing many independent games, at their list of entries.
http://www.indiegames.com/2003entrants.
Cover your eyes and click this link!
I would hardly call the OS X market virgin anymore. If you look at the games most played on GameRanger (by far the biggest online gaming service for Macs), all of them besides Rogue Spear have OS X native versions. While there aren't as many games from big publishers on OS X, there is still a very hefty number. The games on that list are all ports of games made by big companies. Very few small companies have been able to put out fun, exciting, original titles. One notable exception is Ambrosia who puts out, among other things, the classic Escape Velocity series. Other Mac games from small, independent developers that I can think of that gained moderate notoriety are Airburst and Netfungus.
The common theme of these games is that they focus on the gameplay while using relatively simple looking graphics. It's unrealistic to expect a small company to put out a modern FPS given the complexity that such a project requires. However, a game with simple and fun gameplay can do well even if it doesn't have all the latest bells and whistles to wow the user superficially.
Minor nitpick- the primary developer of Counter-Strike was a member of the Action Quake team. Creative differences led to them parting ways with the Action Quake/Half-life team and creating CS.
True, but they had early successes that made them a ton of money. Back in the days of Wolfenstein 3D and Commander Keen, competition wasn't as brutal as it is today.
These days id can afford to only have 17 employees because they only release one game every two years and a half or so. Like Blizzard, they can afford to work on a game for as long as they need to because they've got this cash reserve from previous hits. There are very few companies who can afford that - most need to churn out a steady flow of games in order to survive. That usually means larger teams.
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