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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.
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
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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