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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?
By outsourcing animation, sound and music, and concentrating on programming. That's what Bungie did (didn't save them from themselves though). There's just too much to do in a modern game for a small startup to cope with, unless they're really smart like Relic software and manage to make something which has high quality graphics/sound without much effort.
> Can a small start up group compete with the big name publishers for the Multi-Player money?
s .net
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you'd be surprised, at least in the brazilian and portuguese market. It's pretty virgin in the game developing sector, and publishers are keeping an eye out for almost all projects made by "amateurs" in the industry. check:
http://fozi.no-ip.org
http://www.truedimension
TD is under construction
Moderators: Don't agree? pray tell why.
As somebody who's been in the industry for 9+ years, I'm going to tell you that you'd better have something so out of the water good (like, Doom, for instance) or noone is going to bother without the massive flood of marketing that the idio-trons have come to count on. I've seen GREAT games made by large companies flounder, due to not enough marketing. And conversely, I've seen sub-par drivel sell millions because of a marketing blitz.
Independant games can be "successful", in the same way that independant movies are. The majority of them are seen by a few, who love them. But only 1 in a few hundred make any money at all (like Blair Witch or My...Greek Wedding). It's not the fault of the movie (or the game), it's just the average lazy consumer DEPENDS on the magic box to tell him what to buy, wear, watch, etc. Without the voices from the wonderful box, the average person just does not have the gumption to go out and LOOK for whatever it is that they really want. They take the best of what is offered them. Truly sad, but very true.
I hope the gaming community keeps independance from the bigger gaming companies.
All music is controlled by the bigger companies and look at that as the failed model. I wouldn't want this for games either.
In the US already we have games which follow on from the success of others, advancing little but offering the tried and tested routine. (Like some movies an music)
If we keep some of these smaller publishers then it might raise the bar of game playing and game design.
In Europe some smaller gaming publisher see games as an art and not the same way as EA or Infogrammes. Thus their motives are different and allows them to take greater risk in their creation of games,instead of playing it safe, just creating sequels or clones and maximizing profits as much as possible.
I was part of an independant game studio for awhile, but funds ran out and we were done before we ever released our first project. It really is EXTREMELY rough for those of us indie companies to get by. Especially with the fierce competition that has spouted up over the last years.
The only real indie-type game that has even somewhat made it has been Serious Sam and Gore. And that isn't much. Serious Sam is certainly great but Gore left a bad aftertaste in my mouth.
Independant games are flourishing. (look at http://rpgtoolkit.com)
Really, anyone can break in as long as they find a good niche. Naturally, if an independent churns out a quake clone it's not necissarily gonna be picked up by fans everywhere.
But think of your favorite games -- weren't they unique in some way?
I haven't been following it lately, but last time I looked they had 20 employees.
They seem to be doing alright.
This game by Delta Tao got it's start in 1997 as an MMORPG and has been going strong ever since. It's catering to more of a niche and underrated market of course, the Macintosh platform, but they were able to create a highly addictive, playable game that was able to establish a real sense of community. It's something larger companies like Blizzard and Sony aren't capable of due to the fact that they can't possibly listen to all of their customers and customize the game to suit the individual's taste.
I definitely agree with the previous poster that the Macintosh platform is an untapped market. If you've millions of users with hundreds of choices, you're less likely to succeed, even if your game is awesome. There will always be something better. If you're working on a platform with less users, still millions, but with maybe 2 or 3 choices, you're far more likely to make money.
This is what our studio is attempting to do, and though it's too early to tell how successful we'll be, we believe it's the best route to a self-sufficient indie studio. Successes like Popcap and GameHouse are inspiring, and give one roadmap to being self-sufficient. Another good example is Small Rockets.
In our case we are working very closely with GarageGames as our primary publisher/distributor. Between their help teaching us how to handle PR and marketing, their willingness to give advice on how to be successful, and our own attempts at networking, we think we will be a successful indie in the not-too-distant future. A good example of such cooperation was last week's MacWorld in San Francisco, where we helped run an arcade station for GG showing their title Marble Blast and our title Orbz (small, shameless plug). By joining them in SF for a few days, we were rewarded by making several contacts for future game development work and possible OEM deals.
This is how indies can "compete" with the big publishers.
Dave Myers
21-6 Productions, Inc.
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Zanthor
One problem with online games (a lot of online things these days) is that they usually demand and involved registration process before you can do anything worthwhile. I honestly don't have the inclination to register like that for every game that comes out just to find out it sucks (or, less likely, doesn't suck). Snowcrash had generic avatars, and Slashdot has ACs. Regardless of how much you favor or disfavor the idea, I know I wouldn't have spent much time on Slashdot at all if I didn't initially have a voice as an AC.
...but the way that the entire video game industry works right now.
This is the model: you have a few (maybe 15 with $200m+ sales) publishers, and you have maybe 2,000 independent developers. (There are also in-house development teams, like Core Design, but we're going to ignore them.)
The independent developers come up with a game idea. But because these firms are (usually) hideously under-capitalised they then need to go flog their idea to a publisher. The publisher then agrees to fund development of the game - subject to milestones - and and negotiates a pitiful royalty rate, which the developer will never (unless they are exremely lucky) see.
In addition, the publisher usually gets all IP such as brand names. (So, when MegaHunterKiller II is developed, there is no gurantee that the original developer will be asked to make it. A classic example of this is StarFox on the SNES which was originally developed by Argonaut...)
Oh yes; the publisher can usually pull the plug on the game at any time, leaving the developer high and dry.
Because advances usually only barely cover the cost of developing the game (and not all the inevitable overheads of running a business), the independent developers lead a nasty hand-to-mouth existence.
Oh yes, and because the publishers are usually publicly quoted companies that need to make quarterly sales and earnings "numbers" they like to rush games out before they are finished so they can keep their shareholders happy. (Never mind whether that's best for the developer, the publisher or the gameplayer longer-term... lets think of the stock options.) For an example of a stupidly rushed out game, think Turok; ahhh what three months more development could have done to that game...
No wonder developers want to find another way to finance and get their games to market.
Self-publishing is one option, but this doesn't solve the problem of finance.
What I would like to see (as a finance person, closely involved with the video game industry) is a number of private equity houses that finance games independent of publishers. Then, developers could complete (or nearly complete) games before they sold them onto publishers.
These private equity houses would manage a portfolio of projects, and so wouldn't worry too much about whether a game came out on March 31, or April 20.
Anyway, just my 2c
--- My dad's political betting
Ok...so how are you going to get thos boxes on store shelves? There's a whole logistical process behind that, as well as a sales pitch/network to figure out. That's a whole lot of time and effort, on top of the schedule you have to keep to just to make the game. It's just not that simple.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
iD software only has 17 employees, and only 2 work on the engine. that's almost small enough to be "independent", and look at them.
A good place to see dozens of independent game publishers succeeding is www.shrapnelgames.com where you can find good stuff like Runesword (a sharware RPG now gone commercial) and Space Empires (a shareware 4X game also gone commercial). Both are products of small 1 or 2 person developers and both are making a profit. The author of Space Empires has quit his 'day job' and gone to full time work on his game. There are thriving communites for both games on the message boards, as well. These are only the two most successful of Shrapnel Games titles.
That's why Linux is beating Windows, right? What a silly, naive thought process. I could easily list off a dozen great games you have never heard of. Marketing sells, and small time game makers can't afford to market their product, or get it stocked in stores.
Yes, it is 2003, and I agree that selling games in a plastic baggy would probably not work anymore, you're right. But the thing that you are incorrect about is that all games must be extremely costly to produce and sell; this is incorrect. Perhaps all of the games that you are thinking of, such as Halo, GTA 3, or Final Fantasy could only be done with massive teams and large amounts of people, but that does not exclude anyone from making smaller, less ambitious games that will still sell a few copies. Someone mentioned Bungie Software, who before joining Microsoft both developed and published its own games. One of their more successful titles, Myth: The Fallen Lords was produced by a total of seven or eight people on its team. It sold well in respect to Bungie's standards, which was only a few hundred thousand copies, and made them enough money to continue developing games. Many people at Bungie predicted (and accurately, I believe) that Halo would never have become the game that it was, nor would it have sold nearly as many copies, had Bungie continued outside Microsoft and released the game for PC's. It certainly would have been successful in _their_ eyes, but because it lacked the backing of a large publisher, could never have reached the magnitude of the best-selling games on the PC. So while I think it is possible to develop games independently, it takes lots of talent, knowledge of the markets and your product's niche, and a little luck to have a chance at being successful.
ATITD had thousands of players over three beta periods, with several communities and fansites already up and running, and they're now planning to publish and release it themselves. I think this game is going to be the first test of whether independent developers can survive in a scene that's more full of multi million dollar, hollywood-scale games than ever before.
- Stormcaller
http://www.stormcaller.net