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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?
and not by how big you are.
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.
Remember Richard Garriot AKA Lord British? He used to sell his Akalabeth game with a plastic baggie and Xeroxed manuals. If the game is good enough, someone will buy it, no matter how bad the presentation.
My postings are informational and does not constitute legal advice. Act on it at your risk.
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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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.
but the OS X market is virgin enough for the picking.
You have tons of users to a relatively new OS missing featured and games from before while unwilling to leave the new features. Make games for them if you need money, but don't quit your dayjob first.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
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.
In some respects, indie developers can have a better chance as startups, since in theory their overhead is lower. The games industry is a lot like the movie industry, in that the big budget titles, even if they're very popular, can often end up not making a lot of money.
Of course, there's always the need to define 'indie,' a problem that applies to games as much as music or movies. Just being small doesn't make you independent; if you've got a relationship with a publisher or larger company, that makes a big difference, even if your company/studio is only a handful of people.
Whether a truly 'indie' developer can survive depends a lot on the market they're going after. If they're doing a niche product, especially something a little retro, they've got a chance to make it on the quality of their product (or sometimes even lack of competition, although that's rare). If they embrace an alternative business model instead of vainly trying to get shelf space, they've got a shot. If, on the other hand, they want to actually compete with major developers and big publishers, they rarely stand much of a chance.
At least that's what I've seen. There are exceptions. There are a lot of ways to approach the games industry, for those with the will to do so.
Bushi
The problem for independent game developers comes down to this: game creation is a massively labor intensive process, requiring more cash than most can acquire. Worse, many game developers are young and inexperienced making schedules and budgets neigh-impossible to control. When small start-ups begin to hiccup on the development, the end usually isn't far off.
My guess is if Imperial Wars is to last, it'll be picked up by a major publisher. It's interesting to note, the entertainment software market is narrowing down to 2 main publishers, EA and Microsoft, making the market less friendly towards independents hoping for publishing deals.
I'm surprised that no one here has mentioned some biggy indie developments. Granted, they are not necessarily full-fledged games within and of themselves, but the modding community does have the ability to crank out some great games, including the ability to make and/or break a game.
... that's just the way our current (crappy) system is set up.
For instance, Half-Life. OK, it's a great game, good storyline, sold pretty decently. Then comes the Counter-Strike mod for it (created by an indie developer). Suddenly H/L explodes, and is still selling thousands of copies per year (don't forget that it came out many many years ago). From here, the CS team has since been "merged" into VALVe Software, and a new game (Counter-Strike: Condition Zero) is the result.
Other great examples of this are the original Team Fortress for QuakeWorld and Action Quake for both Quake I and Quake II. (Action Quake actually partially inspired Counter-Strike).
Independent developers are rampant in the RPG and War Simulation genres. Simple Google searches can reveal a surprising amount of good games out there, including ones that are sold on a per-download basis (thus eliminating the publisher altogether). Granted, they may not be making a tremendous amount of money, but almost no indie in any form of entertainment will make a lot of money
For a more corporate aspect, I would recommend taking a look at GoD Games, which started out as a collection of developers joining together to form their own publishing group. (Publishing is where the actual game is made/broken. If you don't have a publisher, your game, however good it is, will not go very far) It's since been phenomenally successful.
I see no reason that indie developers can't stay together and functioning in the big world of mega-hits like EA's (well, Maxis') The Sims. The form of entertainment is simply too broad for the big wheels to cover everything.
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A lot of independant game developers survive just fine. Depending on the game style you work with, a single person can do all the work - surviving then is a lot easier than a 40 person team. Most of my games have been single player puzzle games *. I have a day job, and do my game programming at night - it's trivial for my game company to 'survive' in that environment.
But when you get into monsters that require a team like Trajectory Zone (under development - have some sample screen shots), then things change a lot. As a single person development team, it's easy to make all the choices, do the job, and not have to worry as much about timelines, depending on someone getting thier job done (or, just as important - you getting your job done on time.) And that's just doing it 'part-time' - IE, keeping a day job, and working on games at night. Try and do it full time, and it gets even more complicated - where's the next infusion of cash come from? Or more importantly, where's lunch come from?
That's not to say it's so complicated that people aren't doing it as Indies - they are. Heck, after Trajectory Zone ships, I'll finally move to full time game development instead of part-part time. (Funny words actually - "part-time" doesn't describe living, breathing, eating, and dreaming game development in all your "spare time.")
I always like readin' about games like Imperial Wars - nice to see someone doing' it. When I spoke at Indie Games Con 2002 my co-speaker was a full time Indie developer. Really cool to spend some time talkin' to someone who was doin' it full time, and find out how they managed to pull of what they have done so far. David Michael wasn't the only person there doing it full time, of course - there were others too, and talkin' to them ended up giving me a lot of insight. If you are really seriously interested in Indie game development, hit the next Indie Game Con - there's a lot to be learned there.
Oh, and for those interested - here's a transcript of the speach. It's got a lot of interesting stuff in it - oddly enough, the title of the speach is "Can I Make Money As An Indie Game Developer?" - very appropriate to this particular /. thread :-)
Another place to go look around at when it comes to Indie Game Development - Garage Games lots of people there working towards Indie game releases at the moment, and some people who have already completed thier current projects and moving to the next game. Look in the business section and the general sections for some really good discussion on the subject (note - just like anywhere else, gotta sift a bit to find the good stuff from the crud.)
(*Yes, some shameless self-promotion there. Sorry, it's totally nessisary :-)
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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.
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Zanthor
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
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
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