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Can Game Developer Unrest Lead to Revolution?
Bakajin writes "Greg Costikyan's blog article A Specter is Haunting Gaming speaks in coarse language about "despair" in the independent game developing community. He says that despite the fact that no Independent Game Festival title "has ever gone on to major publication and success... 10,000 geeks... would just love to do what the IGF guys are doing... work on something you believe in, not churn out the next big-budget piece of crap." I can't help but read that and think that it represents a huge opportunity for a new game machine that lowers the bar for entry and has a unique revenue model. However, is the story of Indrema a prophesy? Is Infinium just vapor? Is there any other solution?"
Hey! What's wrong with slashdot today? How come there aren't a couple of hundreds of "First posts" here? =/
On to my real post...
Somebody will have to start a underground/independent game label, just like some people do in the record industry when they get fed up with the big labels crappy attitude towards alternative music.
/.Mattsson - My native language is not English, so please don't whine over linguistic errors. (That's lame anyway...)
PDAs are cheap, increasingly ubiquitous, and well capable to running games of the complexity which kept me playing over the last 10 years. X-Com Enemy Unknown anyone?
I think one of the biggest issues may be that no-one (or very few people) hears of the games these independent producers make. It may well be an issue with marketing budgets, and the fact that the big game companies/publishers can saturate the game market with relative ease.
/. could review/announce some independent games and see if that boosts their sales? Then again, /. crowd = linux lovers = open source = no pay for software!
Perhaps good ol'
*ducks* flurry of AOL CDs
Also, the independent games I've seen (I haven't seen many - maybe three) didn't feel nearly as polished. I know they have bugger-all budget and the small touches are really hard to do well, but perhaps that's what it takes to get a lot of people to seperate themselves from their cash. Either that, or invent really addictive games like Civilization or something.
This sig intentionally left bla... dammit!
Who's got the whiteout?
Games like Serious Sam and others show that small, independant teams can still produce a good game that sells well.
This trend has happened in other industries over the years, however. Once any given industry starts to 'mature' and gain critical mass, it becomes harder and harder for smaller outfits or independant entepeneurs to make it. It is a problem of scale. It used to be much cheaper to produce a game, but now the costs are rising to the point where VC's don't want to risk their money on small, unknown outfits.
I don't think the industry is 'fucked', but there are fundamental changes that have been going on over the past few years. This is nothing new, it's just starting to reach a point of critical mass.
The industry is fucked. It's less imaginative, more risk averse, than the fucking music business. It makes Hollywood look happy to take a flyer on talent.
Crappy CDs only cost 20 bucks. Crappy games cost around $50 bucks.
And personally, I'm sick of strategy games with the same format but just different units over and over again.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
I bet games for cell phone are already growing as modest business.
Work together or die seperately. It's that simple. A solid common platform needs to be developed, BSD licensed (YES BSD in this case - actual real money needs to be made selling it).
The biggest problem, though, is artwork. The best solutions I've seen are a) a creative commons-like approach and b) an entirely parametric object mesh/texture-definition approach with an open library. I don't hold out much hope for the former and the latter is another generation or two off in technology.
Some Independent Game festival winners can go on to publication, but if they are not with the majors then distibution can be a problem. King of Dragon Pass (http://www.a-sharp.com/kodp/) is a great strategy and story creating game. It is innovative, different and delivered with passion. Yet its very differences made it hard for magazines to understand when reviewing and for distributors to comprehend when being asked to take it.
It is a shame, because games like King of Dragon Pass deserve far more recognition than they get. I expect that most people here have never heard of it let alone played it (even some slashdotters who may by ex-RPG players and remember Runequest and Glorantha fondly).
IAAPGD (professional game developer)...
:)
In this regard, the game biz is much like the music biz.
Both have a huge thriving independent scene, which contains bucketloads of talent. This is where you tend to go to get technical innovation, new ideas, or just off-the-wall insanity. There's a fairly low initial requirement to do it, since all you really need is a computer, although other equipment (instruments/devkits) can make certain things much easier.
The alternative to this indie scene is to 'sell out' - join a player in the organised business-oriented world of AAA hit-driven titles, which make money often at the expense of creativity. There are exceptions to this (be they Radiohead or Rez/Ico), but most things fit that rule (Fifa 2000/1/2/3/etc).
I'm a sell-out. I didn't want to make indie games, particularly. I wanted to make a living doing stuff I liked...
Game dev and music blog
Tell us what you really think.....
More to the point tho, does the write actually suggest anything that might be DONE about this problem, this "palpable sense of frustration"?
Just my £0.02
Scrab
RoseColor red={0, 0xffff, 0x0000, 0x0000};VioletColour blue={0, 0x0000, 0x0000, 0xffff};find / -name *mybase*|chown you
Unfortunately there is no real 'Arthouse' scene in gaming as it is still quite hard to market a game online without money, and you denfitely won't get any shelf space as an independent.
This is one area where open source could fill somewhat of a gap, but the OSS spirit in gaming is mostly present in the mod community (pre commerical CS, Urban Terror etc) because of the extremely difficult nature of making a game engine.
This is why I don't think you will ever see a blockbuster OSS title, and I feel increasingly few will come from independents as we drift to a few major studios.
Sad, but who else is betting we have a GIAA* in a few years?
Games Industry Assoc of America
"To any truly impartial person, it would be obvious that I am right."
In the words of the article.
Game development is not what it used to be. Nor will it be again. Get over it.
As computer games have become mainstream entertainment,
the industry has also gone the same way:
A few large companies serving 99% of the audience.
Anyone who is litterate can write a book.
Anyone with a camera can make a movie.
Very few writers get published, and few amateur moviemakers go big-time.
Why would it be any different for game developers?
Writers can always publish themselves and there's always UHF freqencies
and public-access for the amateur TV-producer.
Shareware and such are the computer game equivalents of these.
Nothing wrong with that. Many Hollywood directors started out with a Super-8 as well.
But please, don't pretend that you can turn back time to when competitive computer games
could be produced by a lone independent developer.
To come up with something innovative is more difficult in a mature market then a new one. In the beginning a lot of titles were innovative (started a new game genre). Now almost everything is done. Look at the already matured music or movie industry: almost all products are a variant on something else.
Sometimes a new genre becomes mainstream, but mostly that just means that the genre already existed, but comes to the attention of the masses (for example old tunes used in a commercial influence newer pop music).
However we do not have to despair, sometimes a real new movie concept comes up (and has of course a lot of follow-ups...) or someone writes a real new composition.
The frequency of innovation is just lower. This will also be the case in the game industry.
i think this award is more about cheap quicktime slideshows with interactive buttons in an arty-farty sense of content than real interactive environments games have become.
Software Testing is not politically Correct.
NEW YORK -- People for Ethical Treatment of Software (PETS) announced today that seven more software companies have been added to the group's watch list of companies that regularly practice software testing.
"There is no need for software to be mistreated in this way so that companies like these can market new products." said Ken Grandola, spokesperson for PETS. "Alternative methods of testing these products are available"
According to PETS, these companies force software to undergo lengthy and arduous tests, often without rest, for hours or days at a time. Employees are assigned to "break" the software by any means necessary, and inside sources report that they often joke about "torturing" the software.
"It's no joke," said Grandola. "Innocent programs, from the day the are compiled, are cooped up in tiny rooms and "crashed" for hours on end. They spend the whole lives on dirty, ill-maintained computers, and are unceremoniously deleted when they're not needed anymore".
Grandola said the software is kept in unsanitary conditions and is infested with bugs.
"We know that alternatives to this horror exist." he said, citing industry giant Microsoft Corporation as a company that has become successful without resorting to software testing.
I have a Xbox!
PLEASE, what should I do with my LIFE ??!
Despite the hype, there are an increasing number of "Garage Games" out there.
A good example is the recently beta-turned-gold "A Tale in the Desert". Its a non-combat online 'builder and skill' team-based egypt sim. No charge for the program itself. Free download, Free trial pay-to-play game.
Without even bothering with a retail presence, new games exist out there. I tend to keep an eye on http://www.betawatcher.com/
.....although many will interpret the demise of Indrema as a sign the Linux gaming is also dead, others disagree. When asked how if Indrema's death will affect the struggling Linux gaming community, Mark 'Nurgle' Collins, author of Linux Game Programming said, "Very little. The people who would buy the console because it runs Linux would already be running games on the operating system, and the average consumer doesn't really care what is pushing the games. " ...one gone and hopefully one of the said independent label will come up with sth unique. it's happened to music industry before....
I was kind of hoping that games would become an art form and be taken as seriously as films, records or books by the creative establishment. Instead we have bypassed the artistic stage altogether and fallen straight into the hollywood cash-cow wasteland. I cant even see how games could get out of that, although Peter Molyneux seems to have some ideas judging by yesterday's article.
I can only think of one Spector haunting the game industry.
Is he causing despair by making games that are too good?
Game dev and music blog
This isn't exclusive to the gaming industry. Reality is that you can't always enjoy what you do to earn a living. People simply aren't willing to pay for that.
Thier are numerious games being developed by small or independent developers, that self sell. Look in the area of stategy turn-based war games and text adventures for alot of them.
As alot of big name game are actually produced by small independant companies, they just use a big name company for production and distribution. For example look at Galactic Civilizations,Black and White, or Rise of Nations all developed by small companies.
The one thing I would agree with is the lack of new/original things, but that happens in everything. People are going to write stuff that they think will sell, good luck trying to find a murder/mystery written totally in poetry form.
In addition once you get big name enough to do what you want, you are generally going to write software in the same. The origins of The Sims, mentioned as original, can be seen if you look back at previous Will Wright games. What would be original is if Will Wright came out with a FPS shooter based in his genre of games.
Isn't this somewhere that open source is in theory already paving the way?
Stuff like SDL, even Java, have surely lowered the bar far enough that cross-platform home computer games can be made easily enough. Making for a console is a whole different ballgame of course, since they're essentially completely proprietary embedded systems (yes, I'm counting the PC-like Xbox here).
I suspect that revenue models are a bigger problem, combined with distribution. To earn enough from a game paid for in very small chunks (say a free demo, then paying for new levels), you'd need to be damn sure people would keep buying them. Also, you'd need to be sure that people were honest enough not to just slap then into their P2P apps...
Game dev and music blog
Mozilla ate my comment, so I'll just reply with "I agree."
:)
and I'm glad I skipped the GDC.
LadyStar - Your Magical and Mysterious Adventure Awaits
I'm poor as a mother fuck, but I'm making a game because I got heart. Leave me alone, if your game sucks, you're not gonna make money. My game's gonna be far from sucking, just takes alot of fight to get one done.
A revolution? My ass. I may start a revolution with this fight after I make big cash... Maybe house the homeless, feed the hungry with spare change. Get some work groups set up for people without jobs. But thats only if I make it big.
God spoke to me
It's all very well for Greg Costikyan to wax lyrical on how the industry is fucked because no-one will invest $3m in his "novel gameplay concepts".
I'm pitching a PS2 game to a publisher RIGHT NOW for £50K. Get competitive, Greg, this is business.
ACE was brilliant during the 1980s, and Edge was great during the 1990s. But since Edge's decline in to a run-of-the-mill games mag there isn't really anything worth buying. Luckily GAME, a UK games retailer, allows you to return a games within 14 days for a full refund (and for any reason, including: "it sucked"). Thus I just buy games I think I'll like and play them for a week - if it's crap I can return it and try another one.
Seeing various petitions and protests, I get the impression that gamers (who are the ones paying for the fest) are more often getting treated badly by the current game publishers today than before. Perhaps gamers have become more demanding as well.
I've noticed, from subscriptions to services like jobserve and gojobsite that there is a recent and fast-growing demand for J2ME games developers for Java-enabled phones and PDAs.
They all seem to ask for about a year's experience in J2ME, evidence that you have written games before and that you are, 'passionate about games development.'
I don't know if this one or a small group of companies or if it's lots of small start-ups. Anyone know anything more about this?
Never trust a man in a blue trench coat, Never drive a car when you're dead
you can make good movies very cheaply, same with music, but it is tough to do the same with videogames. notice how good independent movies dont go crazy with special effects but instead have quality acting and story (or at least some bizarre premise). games need to do the same. big problem is that there are a reasonable amount of people willing to watch a movie even if it is filmed on with a handheld and takes place in someones apartment, as long as the story is worthwhile (clerks, etc.) while most folks buy the next gen console/computer for more power better graphics etc. cheap games dont take advantage of that so it is hard for them to work there way into the market.
now here is an idea that may work. take a selection of independently developed games, have those guys get together, or some interested third party, and release the games as a package. make it like the online music services where you can choose which games you want included in the package. they could then monitor which particular games are chosen the most and do further development with those.
philanthropists need to realize there is a need for philanthropy in the first place
For someone who says that the conference was full of despairing developers, he describes an awful lot of people who sound like they're desparately interested in creating new and innovative product. and these guys *are* the professionals, the ones who work in the industry. that doesn't sound like the industry is fucked to me, it sounds as though the only thing that needs to change is the publishers.
I'm not sure if this has been mentioned before, but if you're an independent game developer looking to make a game, the only place where you'll probably be able to compete is in the handheld market. Nintendo is probably somewhat stingy with their GBA/SP development kits, but a small korean company has a handheld that comes with a SDK and hardware to connect it to your computer. The company is GamePark and the hardware is the GamePark32. Strictly on a computing basis, it has more powerful hardware. However, it lacks the dedicated hardware the GBA possess. It also uses flash memory cards rather than a proprietary cartridge design. Your game will never reach a million people this way, but maybe if you show Nintendo what you can do with the GamePark32 hardware, they'd be willing to part with one of their coveted development kits. That or you could always get some of the unofficial development software for it.
Come, my brothers and sisters, the moment is at hand. We will seize the reigns of power and at long last crush the game development forces holding our people down!
The streets will run red! With the blood of our game development enemies!!!
VIVA LA REVOLUTION!
~/o (( game development anthem )) o/~
Interesting article. The comment about independent labels seems a bit screwy though - "I said that gaming needs an independent label" part of what music indies are about is that there are a plethora of them. Unusual games, like unusual music, will rarely be mainstream, so indies are by nature small. If you want to get independent games, you need to look at how the indie music circuit works.
/extremely unlikely/ there will ever be an indie scene for consoles.
Bands form, play to local audiences, get some radio time (eg John Peel session over here), get broader sales off the back of that, get signed by an indie, which in turn gets bought out to run as a subsidiary of a major player (think Creation records, for example, bought out by Sony)
The margins at each level are small enough that you need to get bigger backing to support the up-front costs of making sales into the next larger market. Bands don't need a label to do a 1000 pressing release; Independents don't need major backing to do a release in the UK; they do to go global.
If this is really where gaming wants to go, then they need to think about how to make money on a '1000 sales' game; how to make money on a '50,000 sales' game; and how to get backing from a major for a global game (250,000+ sales; figures plucked out of the air, probably unrealistic).
The distribution models for the consoles - with a license fee paid to the mfr, special disk pressing costs, etc, seem to me to put it beyond what can be economically done for '1000 sales'. The games market, unlike the music market, is pretty much a national game at the lowest level anyway, which means there's a huge barrier to entry for indies.
The economics of this are fairly compelling. You can't economically do a few thousand sales to a national market. So, you have to increase your margins. Sell downloads not media, sell direct to the public, produce games in less time (ie less complex games). The media limitation means that it is
-Baz
For the longest time that was the only choices we had! We couldn't get even crappy mainstream games. In an odd way I think of it as a blessing. We were exposed to great little garage design houses like Ambrosia, the maker of the Escape Velocity, Aperion and Pop-pop! They sell only through the web. They can't afford shelf space. But that hasn't caused them any big problems.
;p
I believe that Linux folks know all about garage crews as well so that part is covered. Now you just have to teach them to pay for their games.
You Windows users. Look around and explore! There are tresures out there waiting to be found. Package glitz isn't everything! For every game (good ones) that you buy creativity survives for that much longer!
-- What's this '-r *' file doing here? -- Oh well, a simple 'rm' should do the trick.
Face it, games are going to have to be "repetitive" because people expect virtual perfection for them. Also, most companies no longer have the will or desire to build a brand new (fill in the blank) engine. They just license the parts and build their story. To do otherwise would be like inventing a new language before you wrote a novel.
I do not buy this crap for a minute that big industry is in the process of "Hollywoodizing" the game industry. Granted Sony, Nintendo, M$, et.all seem to have a lock on the console market. That would be because the DESIGNED a lock into the console. The computer game market is still WIDE open though, as is the Cell Phone/PDA market.
PC and PDAs are general purpose computers. Open Source has, in the past, created immense libraries to handle everything from databases to boot prompts. There is nothing blocking someone from taking up the cause for game engines. Well, except for the fact that everyone expects to make a zillion dollars from the endeavor.
Linus did not start coding Linux in the hopes of raking in mad cash. RMS has never had any illusions of monetary gain. We need someone to start a similar project for games, but in the tradition of the great open-source projects, not quit his/her day job and do it on the side.
It takes years, yes, but look at the results.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
This is really depressing. It's been ages since I've been excited about a game, or been able to play it for hours. Now it seems like we spend our time waiting for the "next big thing", Neverwinter Nights, Warcraft III, Master of Orion 3, Team Fortress 2 (ha!), Doom 3, etc.
We don't buy other unknown titles because they cost so much and no-one else will own them to play with. We wait, and get these games which, sometimes, just aren't that good.
I miss the times when I'd have a game I'd play for hours on end - Transport Tycoon, Master of Orion 2, Ultima 7/8, etc. Innovation really is missing. Case point - the newest game we've started playing at our lan's is Natural Selection, a half life mod. This game is so different from any other first person shooters. It is refreshing and amazing fun, we played for many hours. It's the most fun I've had at a lan for a long time. Why can't we have good new games? Fuck Unreal Tournament 2003, Quake 4 (yes it's being made, not by ID), or these sequals. I want something new, something refreshing. I wish games were a third of the cost they are now, so that I could buy 4-5 games instead of just buying one to be safe. I could try out new games by a company I've never heard of. Right now it breaks the bank of most younger gamers (I'm not one - anymore).
And shelf space is controled by the big guys...
(eg John Peel session over here) Urm. John Peel sessions are/where played in finnish mainstream radio also called RadioMafia, which changed its name to YleX start of this year. And Well, yle is finnish equivalent for BBC. But i get your point ;))
yush
The indie game movement is a great opportunity for publishers to actually sign cheap talent and make good money. Unfortunately I've found that many of the "companies" which start making games never finish them. Is it time to start cleaning house with some of these old game companies which haven't produced anything decent in years? Maybe, but thats not for me to decide. Just like the minor leagues in any sports league, many of the players play for fun and thats where the true nature of their talent is shown. When game companies start getting games published, from what I've seen, they seem to move into two catagories. The first being the passive "lets not change our design system so we don't lose any money". And the other "lets do this crazy idea of x, because it sounds nifty" and ultimately ends up failing, i.e. World War 2 Online.
I myself had planned to enter my FPS into last years IGF competition however I wasn't able to finish the levels to perfection in time. I have the personal philosophy that if I don't like it, or wouldn't play it, I keep working to make it good. I hate almost all games on the market, so I can be a good judge of whats a decent game for myself.
After many evaluations of my engine, I rewrote things using SDL so I have my engine working under both Windows and Linux, and if I can get my hands a nifty G4, an Apple port. I plan to include all three versions on the CD with installs for each, daring no?
For the IGF this year, I'm planning to have possibly 2 entries, my FPS, and a racing game. Both projects are looking good, it's just a matter of whatever product meets my final cut, will be introduced.
Ever since the engine behind Tribes 2 was released for licensing at $99 per programmer, I've thought the entire concept of Garage Games was a rather good one to work with. An incredibly cheap engine license with built-in options for publication once a game is completed, the Torque Game Engine (TGE) is a great option for new game developers.
Not being a coder myself, I did refer a close friend to the engine when he started to burn out on Half-Life and Quake 3 modding, and he's dove right in with attempts to help TGE development move along. There are quite a few people out there around the Garage Games forums looking to put together one game or another, and some of them actually have proposals for things that aren't just Counter-Strike or Quake clones. Take a look at the games Garage Games sells in the store. All were made with TGE, none are shooters.
I can't say strongly enough just how much I think TGE will help revolutionize game production if people actually take notice. The entry cost of development is pretty low, particularly considering that you can develop on Linux and OS X based equipment in addition to Windows. There's a particularly large amount of room in TGE-based game development for Mac-oriented games, as well as Linux.
I'm on Garage Games' site as a designer, but haven't really been able to manage anything that went further than basic documentation. Even if I never accomplish anything, I at least feel glad I had a chance to try. Hopefully a few folks reading this post might give Garage Games and TGE a shot.
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
Once Computer game manufacturers start selling their games at a more realistic price they will sell more product! I mean, there isn't a single game on this entire planet that I would pay $50 for! Another thing is packaging, I would sooner pay $5-$10 less for game that came in a clear plastic "Zip-Loc" than pay the extra money to get it in a box! Why the heck should I have to pay for the superflous packaging when the box will just get thrown in the closet ?
"This is your life and it's ending one minute at a time."
Indie game developers face several problems with getting their game to market. The biggest problem is that the gaming industry and its distribution has matured but the indie gaming distribuion channels haven't yet. The music industry has a relatively good indie distribution network compared to the gaming industry. Music lovers can purchase all kinds of eclectic and not-so-mass-popular music if they know which shops carry that type of music.
So indie game developers aren't in any of the shops that most people frequent (EB Games etc.) and AFAIK there aren't any sites that publish a wide variety of indie games. What would really help is a site like garage games but on a grander scale and is open to all indie game producers. Sort of an EB Games for indie game developers to hawk their wares.
The other big problem is the cost involved in creating a title which even approaches AAA quality. With the relatively recent proliferation of capable open source 3D engines and libraries like OGRE, NeL (Nevrax) CrystalSpace, SDL and OpenAL the barrier for coding a high quality cross platform games has been dramatically lowered.
Of course there's also the issue of artwork being required. Hiring top quality artists can be restrictively expensive for indie gave devs. Someone had mentioned having a creative commons for game developers which I have always thought would be a wonderful idea. The problem is getting all of these far flung developers to work together in creating such a commons. WorldForge is slowing building a library of GPLed+FDLed media (which is now pretty substantial) but these things take time of course.
G. Washington on Government "it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."
What if all of these independent game developers got together and released their software on a subscription model? $N lets you download N games per month. When a game gets old, download a new game. Or perhaps even better would be something like ORA's Bookshelf model, where you have N games at a time, and if you decide the one you just tried sucks, swap it for a different one.
This solves the problem one poster had, where indie games don't get press coverage... with everyone going to one site for their indie game supply, they can just hit the "Whats New" link and see whats up.
The only problem with this model, is that unlike the bookshelf, they'll need a continuous supply of software titles for people to use (This doesn't necessarially have to restrict itself to games, now). They'll also need a revenue model that is fair to independent developers and which can still draw people to pay. ORA's honor system may not work too well against game piracy, as well, without some kind of controls (although I've been thinking... didn't someone do a web-based game delivery system for Half Life? Maybe this could be adapted to these needs, although it would require a whole lot of bandwidth on the hosting side.)
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
However, I think there is a ray of light... All my mates who used to play games are still playing them. No-one seems to be 'growing out' of them. My girlfriend's dad is addicted to Starcraft. I bought my dad a joystick and a WWII simulator for christmas (heh - irony ;-). At the moment, the market is immature and the demand is for the latest, flashiest fad. But the ranks of discerning gamers are out there, and they're growing. The games industry is slowly maturing beyond hardware-driven drivel (who cares if Doom3 has 2 billion polys if it plays worse than Half-Life?). Soon we're not going to be able to tell the games machines apart, aside from their logos and controllers (and hey - they're looking pretty damned similar today).
I believe I'm going to be able to make intelligent, interesting games that aren't solely targeted at the lowest common denomenator. The catch is, we have to wait until the money guys realise they can make a profit on stuff that isn't utterly mainstream. I reckon this is only going to happen when the audience for games of all kinds is much, much larger. Fortunately, it looks like it's getting there.
IAAAPGD
I've been to the last couple of GDCs and seen independent gaming's "best of the best". I've also downloaded hundreds of demos from independent developers. They're not very good.
This statement can be split into two different areas -- gameplay and presentation. Anyone in the industry can tell you about the legions of fanboys who want to "reinvent" the FPS genre by adding an autocannon, or "save fighting games" with this really cool interactive environment ideas. Just because you love games does not make you a game design, any more than a love for music makes you a musician. I'm not saying you have to be a professional to have good ideas, but if you took a random sample of 100 professional game developers and 100 indies, the pros would have the most exciting ideas hands down.
The other side of the coin is presentation. Game costs are ballooning and people expect their games to look like Gran Turismo and Tekken and you WILL be knocked by the consumer, the press and the almighty retailer if you fall short. A group of independent developers with a staff of six will find it tough to compete. Even if they have kick-ass gameplay, without polished presentation it will never hit the over-crowded store shelves.
A lot of professional games are crap. It's romantic to think that the answer lies with independent developers. I think we're better off trying to balance the power between developer and publisher AND publisher and retailer (the former will never happen without the latter), so that developers have a better ability to stick to their guns.
If you want an open handheld console to develop for, try the GP32. With specs like these:
# CPU 32 Bit RISC CPU (ARM9, 133MHZ)
# Display: TFT 3.5" Reflective TFT LCD(65,536 colors)
# ROM 512 Kbytes
# Storage SMC(Smart Media Card)
# RAM 8MB SDRAM
# PC Connection Cable USB Port connection cable
# Sound 16Bit PCM Stereo Sound, MIDI support (over 32 poly), 4 Channel WAV Mixing
# 32Bit RISC CPU
# Definition 320 X 240 Pixels
# Power 2 AA Batteries (12 Hours use time between charges)
# MP3 MPEG(I,II) Audio Support
# Controls 8-Way directional pad (joystick) + Durable 6 key buttons
# Wireless multi-player gaming
# Internet Connectivity
# Online multiplayer game can be played by high-speed Internet connection
How can you go wrong?
Producing a video game is *not* like shooting a movie or writing a book. It's still about writing software.
Writing software is difficult, time consuming, expensive. So-called game designers, with all their whining about innovation seem to forget that.
The current revolution in computer graphics hardware doesn't help either: players want eye candy, want huge worlds. It's hard to keep up for small studios.
(Imagine having to build your own type writer each time you want to write a new book, or having to build your own camera and projection machine from scratch each time you want to shoot an indy movie)
But in the coming years, APIs are going to stabilize, engines are gonna settle and integrate better with content ubiquitous content creation tools.
The guy that develops Air War and other heady board war games, I'm thinking is a nice middle aged man with a moustache and a hobby. Sort of like a Paul Davies, rather than a Denis Leary. But I like having my illusions shattered.
http://pcblues.com - Digits and Wood
Why does a game have to go to "Major Publication" to be a success?
/vs Supermarket, corner cofee shop /vs Starbucks or corner bookstore /vs Barnes & Nobels.
Why can't a game (or any content) serve a focused, interested community? Sure, most people will just go to the major vendors, but some will find the game that fits their particular interest.
This works the same for corner grocers
In town and cities that are spread out the superstores win out because of convenience. In dense cities the corner stores can do very well. It's just as easy to get to the individual stores and they can taylor what they carry to meet the local needs.
I guess it depends on what best models the net. Is it spread out where it becomes convinent to have one size fits all content or is it a dense city where its easy to find thing that fit my specific needs?
=Shreak
if we could get people to think of games as an avenue for artistic expression, then we could have some forward thinking peoples/companies/governments/etc. give out awards (cash or equipment) to independent, non-commercial developers for the creation of these small time games.
this is not a business model, but a way of making games for gamings sake. this way, the independent developers can concentrate on making the game instead of paying the bills.
philanthropists need to realize there is a need for philanthropy in the first place
Snow White for GP32
Sure, you won't get a chance to work on the latest 3D hardware, but you could create a viable commercial product. And the GP 32 isn't a dream, it's here and anyone can fool around with it and do innovative things.
(This also goes for PalmOS devices, PCs and the like.)
Sure, it isn't Indrema, but I like the fact that soon after I heard this new, innovative console hyped up, I could actually buy one.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
There's nothing stopping anyone from working on something that "they believe" in. Do it as a hobby, do it in your spare time, make sure you protect any potential intellectual property and functions along the way....
And if you truly have something in the end that was worth your time, have no doubt that you'll either get a big payoff after selling it to a corporation, or you'll make millions suing large companies that try to quietly steal your ideas.
This is not a troll, although I guess it might seem like it.
Has anyone considered that the most popular new games are not "the same old crap", as seems to be the implication, but instead are actually providing a level of immersion that _requires_ a large team of dedicated (yes, that means paid, with money) individuals focussed on the goal.
GTA3 is the obvious example here. People can love what they do, but it honestly takes a large team of people working a _long_ time to generate the sheer amount of models, textures, audio etc for this kind of game.
Independant game developers can compete on the originality stakes, but lets not pretend theres no reason for the success of certain titles.
With such a huge supply of folks willing to work on games development, companies get to pick and choose what they want - and they're risk-averse.
And you'd be risk averse too trying to protect your seven-figure income if your game company hit it big.
what about Verge/Ika? Give those a shot if you wanna make a lowbudg game..
Anyway, the IGF was important. Independants who are working part time (for free) have a terrible time keeping motivated and focused. I did the game in order to focus on the design of the API. I entered IGF to stay focused on the game.
No IGF game got published, but how many entrants have been hired by game companies? It not about the games as much as it is about following through. It's a case where everyone who actually enters is a winner. The other 10,000 people are just wanna-bes.
Status update: 1) The API has improved a lot since then. 2) The ray tracer has gotten significantly faster than it was. 3) There is documentation coming together. 4) I just don't have time to do something really cool with it - need a new project with real goals again...
Reading the blurb for this article you'd think consoles are somehow raising the bar of entry into the gaming market. Maybe that's true for console games but the bar of entry for computer games is nearly non existant when it comes to hardware and coding materials.
The real barrier of entry is paying all the people that are required to make a game. Sure maybe coders who love to play games are willing to take a cut for a long while and try and start a stuido. But what about artists , 3d modelers, and musicians. Making a game requires a lot of different specilizations and that means a lot of people and a lot of cash to pay them.
Im often annoyed by how low creativity is in the industry myself but lets face it there are only so many base ideas you can work with in a game. I'd hate to see gamers fall into the same trap of thinking that different and innovative and new always = good. Look at the art of painting. A lot of snobby people go around saying what a "good " painting is based off of what kind of new concepts it introduces but to most of us these paintings just look like so many pieces of junk.
Believe it or not but a lot of problems with the game industry are problems with the developers and not the suits. A big enough portion of them act like whiney prima donna's and throw productivity out the window by trying to introduce new idea's that are just boring in the first place. All to many of them forget that the real purpose is to just make a game thats fun.
I like this game, POSTAL. http://www.gopostal.com/ On the demo for Postal 1, the sounds are horrendously EVIL ;-) You see people you just shot crawl on the ground asking "Finish the job" and other depressing things.
;-)
The game's brutally wonderful
The Scratchware Manifesto
Technoli
And I'm not just talking about the technical crowd either.. My closest friends are non-technical (as far as using a PC) strategy game buffs, so I proposed that we develop a PC game together, where I would take on all the burden of coding. I set up a Yahoo discussion board, but then later realized...it never got updated.
The biggest obstacle to this of course is procrastination. Has anyone had success in this area..? How did you meet your goal?
Thx
-jc
First of all, don't look to consoles as the solution. Any consoles. ESPECIALLY not vaporware consoles.
Consoles are closed platforms with a high entry cost. Even if you can meet that entry cost, there's still the matter of getting picked up by a publisher (you as an independent developer have 0% chance of getting your game on the shelves at EB or Best Buy).
I think your best bet as an indie developer is to develop for a computer platform (PC, Mac or Linux... preferably develop in a manner that it's easy to port to any of the 3). On the PC a developer, if so inclined, could:
The Underdogs has a manifesto that discusses developing "scratchware" games; games developed by a small team of enthusiastic developers dedicated to getting a quality product on the market with a small budget that can sell for under $25. The Underdogs even has a store where they sell games developed in this manner.
Developers: don't go into this with dollar signs in your eyes. Go into it with a solid idea for a game and a like-minded group of developers. I think you will be successful.
Part of the "risk aversion" on the part of these major publishers has to go back to the fact that customers are asked to pay upwards of $50 US for new releases. I know that it is expensive to develop games and that cost needs to be covered. I'm not offering a solution here, just identifying a problem.
But at $50 a game, publishers aren't the only ones making an investment in games. Those of us that want to buy new games but can't afford $50 a pop have to make our choices carefully. A lot of people look at a shelf full of games and can only afford to buy one this month and make a conservative decision b/c they want a game they know they will enjoy, they don't want to take a risk on a game that they aren't sure about. I don't know how to get out of that cycle, but it just seems like at the current pricing for games, you better be darn sure you like it or else you just threw away 50 bucks. And as long as people think like that, certain kinds of games are going to be more profitable than others.
You know, the sad thing is that you write English much better than a lot of native English speakers do!
Mark 'Nurgle' Collins, author of Linux Game Programming
"Nurgle" - ? No wonder nobody takes Linux seriously. How many people in the real world software community go by stupid childish nicknames? I know of none..
BlitzBasic has some great game dev tools specifically made for manipulating 2D/3D graphics on the screen. It is essentially a full-blown language with elements borrowed from both basic and C. Very easy to learn/use. You can do in a few lines what would take hundreds or thousands of lines in other languages. Plus, there is already a wide user base that you can get help and tips from.
Technoli
How apropos - after reading a bit of this thread, I check my email and lo, I received this email:
from http://www.costik.com/weblog/
The mood at the Game Developers Conference this year was, fundamentally, one of despair. To even the blindest apologist for the silly, if monstrous, construct the game industry has become, the handwriting on the wall was clear. Ten years ago, you could find a dozen publishers to pitch to; today, perhaps five. And of the remaining, half are on their last legs: the Vivendi Universal game group will almost certainly be in someone else's hands by the end of the year, Infogrames is fucked, Activision is screwed, 3DO is tottering, Acclaim is in dire straits. The only companies with evident strength are the manufacturers--Sony and Nintendo and Microsoft (included on this list not because they make any money in games, but because they have deep pockets)--and EA, despite the fact that it has utterly failed to make a go of online gaming which, two scant years ago, they claimed was the future. (And it is, but EA is too fucking stupid to listen to those of its employees who understand how online gaming works, and instead try to make it work like its sports game franchise. Which it doesn't and never will.)
Year by year, budgets increase. Year by year, sales increase less. And year by year, the publishers become more conservative; at $3m a pop and a 3 year dev cycle, it's too risky to invest in any game that's--risky. Thus only sequels and licensed drivel get funded.
Year by year, independent developers disappear. The lucky ones get acquired; the unlucky ones simply go under. Their only hope of funding is to bid on a sequel or a licensed product--and the reality is that doing that crap is cheaper in, say, Eastern Europe. It takes no creativity to do III in a series, or a game based on a movie that innovates only by appliqueing movie characters to a successful game style; that takes no creativity, and underpaid coders in Romania suffice.
Never mind the self-evident fact that the industry's real hits have always been innovative, always been out of left field--SimCity, Balance of Power, Command & Conquer, Deer Hunter, Roller Coaster Tycoon, The Sims. Licenses and sequels are perceived as less risky. No one ever got fired for greenlighting a Major League Baseball game, or something licensed from a Hollywood hit, or game IV in a series that's always sold. Pick wrong on an innovative title, and you're history.
And so the walls come closing in. You have to be fuckin' Will Wright to get an innovative title through; no one else can do it. (Okay, Miyamoto can do it. Maybe Sid Meier. But you get the drift.)
Fewer and fewer titles are commissioned from independent developers; the publishers gobble up studios, until they themselves fail, because they don't have the publishing spread (or, in many cases, the brains god gave a biscuit) to compete with the largest houses.
The industry is fucked. It's less imaginative, more risk averse, than the fucking music business. It makes Hollywood look happy to take a flyer on talent.
Mene mene takel upharsin. The writing is on the wall. And here we have my high-school buddy Warren Spector to confirm it: There in his keynote speech, telling us not to worry, just be happy. Drink the cool aid. Go to work for an in-house studio. Develop a licensed product. By God, Warren would be glad to do a Harry Potter game. What a lovely universe to work in. It's the future. It's the way things are. And it's not so bad.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your Friend. Honest.
Desperation breeds--sometimes despair, but at least as often, desperate innovation.
Some years ago, in a piece in Game Developer, I said that gaming needs an independent label, something analogous to independent music labels or independent film, to provide an alternative distribution channel for games that challenge the conventional wisdom, allow experimentation on smaller budgets, and can serve to reinvigorate the mainstream. The basic idea is true--but we live in a different world, and conventional retail, even if through slightly different retailers, may not be the answer.
Here's what I observed at GDC:
I went to a session entitled Proven Strategies for Self-Publishing on the Internet. Two years ago, it would have been empty. This year, the room was so full that conference associates had to keep on harassing people to keep an aisle clear, presumably in case of fire and panic. Panelists from companies like Pop Cap and The Groove Alliance say they're making real money through places like Real Arcade and Shockwave.com. Panelists say they think that downloadable shareware games like theirs will generate somewhere between $70m and $100m in 2003.
Now most of this stuff is drivel, although some of it is highly addictive puzzled games like Bejeweled that can't find a place at retail today, and bully for them that they've found a marketing venue that works. And in all likelihood, this marketing channel has its own strong forces that prevent any real creativity--instant-pickup games with no real depth. But still; this is starting to look like real money, without dealing with the twits in Redwood City, and developers are lapping it up.
They just want so badly to find a way out.
Or look it at the crowds around the Independent Game Festival finalists. That's a bunch of machines on the showroom floor, with representatives of the finalists demoing their titles. The IGF is basically open to any game that doesn't have a publishing contract, and hundreds of hopefuls submit titles every year (every year of the five it's been running) hoping for a little glory--and a shot at a publishing contract with one of the majors. Never mind that no IGF title has ever gone on to major publication and success. It's one of the few ways a garage operation can hope for a shot at glory.
So sad--and yet--look at all the people crowded around those demo machines. It wasn't like this last year. Or the year before. Three years ago, the demo machines were a virtual wasteland--and the IGF finalists were so happy when I'd stop by to ask them about their games. This year, I can't even get close enough to play--sometimes not even close enough to get a glimpse over the shoulders of the throngs about the machines.
They're this desperate--this desperate for the hope of a little innovation, a little chance to do something real, a little chance to reach an audience. These 10,000 geeks (that's what CMP Game Media claims was the attendance), most of them professionals, would just love to do what the IGF guys are doing--do a game for chrissakes, work on something you believe in, not churn out the next big-budget piece of crap.
Then we have the Experimental Games Workshop. It's so crowded they open all the doors so people standing out in the hall can pogo high enough to catch a glimpse of the screen and see the games they're demoing. The highlight is, as I expect, the Indie Games Jam (about which more in another post)--although I also very much like the entry from some Japanese guy whose name I don't catch, who has something he claims is PSII email software that plays like some bizarre rap dancer with a synthesized voice rapping the text you enter, and a character bopping about swishing a Japanese calligraphic paintbrush and spattering virtual ink about the page--I have no idea what this thing is, but it makes every game I've played this year look tired.
Why are all these guys here? This isn't even a channel. These games were never created with anything approaching commercial intent. We're supposed to be cynical industry fucks, not a bunch of starry-eyed artistic dweebs.
But we're all so desperate for something real, something creative, not the same old same old same gold crap. Tony Hawk LXIX. Hollywood Blockbuster XII. Army Men XXIII. Coasters of Might and Magic.
And even.... even... at Nokia's sponsored Developing for N-Gage sessions, the room is jammed--despite the doubts about Nokia, the doubts about N-Gage, the feeling that even if it works, it's just another console shell-game, another route to the same dull uniformity. It is something new, a little different; maybe there's still opportunity to do something real here, maybe there's a route in, maybe it won't be Tony Hawk Mobile Edition and James Bond 007 for Bluetooth--maybe Nokia means what it says when it
talks about "enabling new game styles" through connected mobility.
Though that sure does sound like the same old corporate drivel, doesn't it? Connected mobility, forsooth.
It's not just N-Gage, in fact. Mobile is on the tip of everyone's tongue. Is it real? If so, when? And how much? And what's the business opportunity? Where does it lie? And (in Glenn Broadway's language), will retro gaming kill it? Does it really all have to be Asteroids recloned?
There's something going on here. Exactly what, I cannot say. Where it leads, I have no idea. But there was a palpable sense of frustration at this year's GDC, a feeling that the walls are closing in--and that something has to change. Somehow. Somewhere.
The game is a virtually infinitely plastic medium; it's adaptable to every technology from the neolithic on. Digital games have explored a tiny fraction of the possible--particularly tiny because of their (up until recently) inherently single-player nature. Inexorable business forces--fuelled at least as much by the lack of imagination of publishers as their risk averseness--have nonetheless squeezed the range of the commercially possible down to a few hackneyed lines. Yet at the same time, developers have become far more aware of the potential, far more respectful of their own history and the promise it held, far more educated about the possibilities of design--and consequently far more frustrated at the narrowing paths into which their talents are channelled.
A specter is haunting gaming--the specter of its own oblivion.
But gaming is young, and restless, and not ready to die.
Redwood City is tense; the king and queen go about their affairs, oblivious to the public mood. But angry men congregate in the public squares, and harangue the passers by.
Something is about to blow.
Government IS the problem.
but like all other "under ground scenes" it';s hidden, and the good stuff is hard to find. Any people listen to indie music out there? You guys know what I'm talking about, you have to shuffle through loads of crap to find one gem....but damn, that one gem is fantastic.
indie gameing sites (warning 90% crap! But, RPGDX has a good reviews system, so look for the highest reviews....)
RPGDX
Dark Dreams
Allegro Games Depot
Madmonkey
click me
You'd be surprised how many people only know you as "Old Fart" in your department :)
It's called a Linux PC. With Tux Racer as the minimum performance
standard, plus a requirement of good TV Out support, there is a large
market for games.
An indie mag, like how indie movies have Gurella Film, and indie music has Rock&Roll the mag, we need an indie zine which covers and cuts the crap.
click me
1. A desire to compete with the big boys--to make the next Quake killer, to build a wicked-cool 3D game of epic proportions, etc.
2. A desire to make a fun little game.
Much of the beef with the current state of indy gamemaking seems to revolve around group one. Everybody wants to be David to the industry's Goliath; everybody wants to be that breakthrough, rags-to-riches, beat-the-odds underdog. To that end, there are -maybe- half a dozen indy groups/folks who have the vision, dedication, and know-how to actually pull this off; they crop up every now and then, release an acclaimed title, and often end up entering (gasp!) the industry.
Sad fact is, you're not gonna be able to go toe to toe with a company that can throw three dozen full-time people and several million dollars at any given title. It's not gonna happen. No matter how cool, revolutionary, or fresh your idea is, odds are, you -don't- have -all- the skills necessary to pull it off on an indy budget. You're a crack coder, but can't design a UI to save your life. You can create beautiful game art but physics makes your head swim. You've got this really, really cool special effect that puts the big houses' work to shame; all you need now is a game to wrap around it...the list goes on.
If, as an indy game developer, you make a few changes to your outlook, you can have a -really incredible time- making a game. Here are a few suggestions:
1. Don't quit your day job. Treat gamemaking as a hobby, something you do for a few hours a night instead of watching TV or playing other games.
2. Bite off less than you can chew. For your first few projects, just keep it insanely simple. No special modes, no added effects--pick one simple aspect of your game, build it, polish it. After you've done this, start tagging all the 'cool' stuff on.
3. Focus on your strengths, but pick something to improve. Maybe take an art class once a week. Maybe buy a book on algorithm optimization. Maybe study user interface design. Maybe take a marketing class. Remember, you're indy, you're small, you need to be able to tackle as many facets of making a game as you can. The more you broaden your skills, the better your games will be.
4. Get a little help from your friends. Once you absolutely -love- what you've created, have your friends try it out. -Listen- to their feedback, swallow your pride, and consider ways to make more people say "Wow!" and fewer people say "Umm..."
5. Don't use the big titles as a meterstick. Do that, and you'll soon find yourself violating suggestion two. Your mantra should be something along the lines of, "I -cannot- compete with Rockstar Games. I -can- make a really fun game that lost of people will like."
6. Do it to have fun. Do it because you -love- making games. Do it because you want to entertain people. If you make your game a labor of love, it -will- be a great game, even if you're the only person who ever sees it as such. Look at it this way: if you make a game that you enjoy so much that you play it more than any other game you own for years, haven't you made the best game you could ever wish for?
There are success stories out there. Other posters to this article have articulated this point quite well. All I'm trying to say is, don't get into indy games for the wrong reason. Do it for yourself, do it to have fun, and you won't regret it. Measure success by self-satisfaction, not by shelf space and bottom lines.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
A lot of the latest games come with the ability to write subgames using their engines.
There are even a few previously released games that are freeware now with such an engine. Dink Smallwood comes to mind.
And for RPGs or interactive fiction a single individual can surely still do their thing. It's even possible to put them on the web.
Not polished? That's crap. To me, polished means no bugs, and an excellent storyline that makes sense. My old games don't crash, and the whole game isn't "go kill the monster and level up." The new ones I've got seem to crash much more often, and I haven't found much BESIDES go kill the monster.
Nearly all of my old games where made by six people or less, but the new ones...
I would also like to note that the best game I've ever played was an independant one.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Yes, hard core pc gamers expect the latest 3d and etc....but not everyone is a hardcore gamer. Some people don't care about graphics as long as they look good. Not spectacular and jaw dropping, just no ass-ugly. if you look at the game industry like the movie industry, then the indie gamers *should* do what the indie movie industry does, and use the lower budget/less effects to their advantage...
click me
Is hard. And once you do something that gathers attention of the masses, it's fairly easy to knock out copies as well.
That and everything is just theme and variation on what's been done before (not to say that maybe it isn't worth redoing...)
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
OGRE. They've really been jumping in the past year, and it's excellently suited to all types of 3D games, not just BSP geometry or room shooters.
--
No wonder nobody takes Linux seriously. How many people in the real world software community go by stupid childish nicknames? I know of none..
No kidding; get the fucking wookie off your shirt and understand a degree of professionalism.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
...can be done.
Take a look at Laser Squad Nemesis - Written by the same guys who did X-Com. A free download, players can join the league by paying a subscription (various lengths).
You don't need the backing of a publisher to make a game work. LSN has done it by good marketing (especially being championed by popular UK games magazine PC-Zone).
I work with Canopy Games, and we've recently run into this situation with our new game, I Was an Atomic Mutant. Yes, we have a publisher (ValuSoft), but some of the large retailers rejected our game early on, dismissing it as "not mainstream enough". If it's not tied to an already successful book, movie, or TV show, why would anyone want it? Game development is not like books, or even movies. Books, all you need is yourself and some paper and pen. Movies, are very expensive but there are hundreds of festivals, and venues to get noticed. Games cost a lot to make and there are not many festivals...and unlike the movies, with say, Sundance, major studios aren't snatching up games from the festivals.... So it's expensive to take a risk, and the major chains could give a rat's patootie about the innovative thing. Internet distribution has a few kinks yet, notably, bandwidth, pay model, and most importantly, marketing. In our case, we anted up for all our own marketing, paying for our website and all the subsequent promotion. We hope it's working. If we didn't do it, Mutant would be dead on the vine, there's so much static in pop culture today. It's a catch-22. The big retailers say, "if it sells, we'll carry it". But if they don't carry it, how can it sell? wee-hooo, what a ride.... This is a problem. It is true that the next big thing probably isn't going to come from a giant studio. What's frustrating is that the next big thing may already exist and be in the process of being roundly ignored by anyone who can get it out there. In the meantime, we get sequels and movie tie-ins. Someone mentioned Serious Sam as a model for indie game development. That's unrealistic. That game was made in Eastern Europe. Cost of living, and standard of living, make it almost impossible to compete with developers over there. Just like there are no Nike shoe factories in America now....(a bit extreme, but you get the picture). Sam is an "A" list style game that could be marketed at budget prices because the initial cost was low, due to the geographic location of the developer. That's just a little blast from the small developer world. I've outlined some facts and some problems, without necessarily coming up with solutions, I know....let's keep up the discussion, and see what happens.
I'm curious. How many /. readers out there are authors (of those dead-tree things, not software)? How is this on-topic? Well, writing software for a living is similar to writing novels. There are some number of well-known big-money publishers out there, and there are a larger number of not-well-known shops which occasionally produce hits, and then thare are independants.
If you're an author, you can choose to:
(a) Write what you believe. If you choose this path, you will have to have a Real Job (TM) to pay for things like food and shelter. You may find that the amount of time and energy you have to write varies with your Job and Family influence. That means, you will be at it for many years before finishing anything, and get very little sleep.
(b) Write what will sell. Many authors take this route. Find a genre you kindof-like, look at the slop that's on the shelf, write something that feels much the same. Chances are, one of the middleweight publishers will buy it and sell it direct to the bargin bin. You're writing (good practice) and making enough money to pay for food OR shelter, so only a semi-decent Job (TM) is needed. Your Family might actually see you.
(c) Write what they tell you. This usually only happens once you've managed (a) or (b). You get hired or contracted by a Big Corporate Entity (TM) and they say "We need you to write a by next Quarter." In this mode, you write to whatever specs they give you and churn out a product which will be pushed into the market. It offers the distinction of being a Real Job (TM) all by itself, but as with any other Job, you have are bound by the Chains of Command, and have a Boss.
It seems to me that software development has also reached that place. It's usually impossible for a single person to break into the market, but if a small group gets together they have to face the three choices above. Let's face it... we ALL want to write the thing that's in our head. We're all sure it's really cool, and that other people would like it too (and maybe even pay for it). But we all also have to eat too, and have a place for our computers to stay in out of the rain.
Once upon a time, you used to be able to get a job by just going to the place you wanted to work and being persistant. Nowadays, that gets you thrown in jail for loitering and/or harassment. How do unknown game developers get a foot in the door these days?
WWJC?
Both of these previous busts have been marked by a clear shift in the central location of game production. In the Atari era video games were centered in the US. When they busted, the industry centered in Japan, based on trans-Pacific marketing (Nintendo). When Nintendo busted after the SNES, it realligned again to support both US (GTA3) and Japanese (FFX) development, with little focus on worldwide marketing on the whole. (Let's face it, most of the deeply Japanese titles for Sony systems are just quietly released here without fanfaire, on the assumption that the fans of Japanese-style games will find them on their own).
My guess, then, is that what we'll see is a shift towards European developers, particularly as the EU and the Euro consolidates Europe and makes it possible for Europe as a whole to host a power-developer.
Philip Sandifer's academic website
Here's a perfect example of an independent developer who's got those left field ideas, and has executed very well on them:
eGenesis recently launched A Tale In the Desert - a MMPORG which has distinguished itsself in a number of important ways:
1. A constructive multiplayer approach - It's been speculated and theorized on (well, by me and my friends, anyway) - but these guys have done it with style.
2. Ingame voting - it's allready transforming the gameworld of 'egypt'
3. A particularly clean launch - unlike any number of MMPORG titles I spent loads on and was frequently not playing because of bugs.
4. Gameplay mechanics that reward the player for the player's skill, not for artificial avatar skills.
5. Excellent Support. I had a GM to help in 10 seconds on the release date!
6. Simultaneous Linux and Windows clients at launch.
check out this previous post... A Tale in the Desert
I also noted the following article re: Difficulties in making MMPOGS Ten Reasons You Don't Want to Run a Massively Multiplayer Online Game eGenesis has all of this stuff down.
Free tryout, etc. Here
Support Independents, and Linux gaming!
Indrema suffered from the same dotcom failures that many other companies at the time did. I can't find a timeline on the company at the moment, so I can't make specifics, but they advanced with thier project with the assumption that it was going to require a large sum of cash to just get it out the door, with the expectation that they would recover it later. This is great if you already have the product and just need the money to produce it, but it's another thing entirely when you're in uncharted territory with no idea of your market, no idea of your R&D costs, and no idea about how long it's going to take. And I'm not saying that the Indrema developers didn't have an idea about these things, but they clearly hadn't thought it out sufficiently.
Most successful businesses rely on the initial partners putting in lots of 8 hour nights working for nothing but sweat equity for upwards of years before they have a product that has a decent chance in the market. The dot com era got people spoiled to the idea that they could do all this initial R&D while getting paid $150,000 a year, because VC's were willing to live off the hype. The point is, its unrealistic, and it didn't last.
An open source gaming console isn't a stretch. It's just a matter of what dedicated people are willing to put into getting it out the door. At the minimum, it requires the following:
- A custom hardware platform. Even if it is based on x86 hardware, you'll need a design that gives a performance and cost advantage to a console system, otherwise people could just buy a PC, defeating the whole purpose of the console. Even the X-Box, mostly a standard PC stuffed in a tiny box, has shared memory pipelines and other features that give it an advantage over comperable computers at the same speed and cost. Sony develops their hardware from scratch, and gains a cost advantage as a result, but the R&D involved in doing that is out of the ballpark of any smaller companies.
- Games designed for the platform. Assuming it's not just a standard PC in a box, you'll need games. Some might get by with a recompile, but for the most part, you're going to need others to invest their time and effort with the hopes that you're going to have a successful platform. When Sony or Microsoft puts up their cash to make it happen, it's a safe investment. You know the system will be available, and you know people will be marketed into purchasing it, so the quality of your game is the only selling point you need to concern yourself with. When you don't even know if the console will sell, you're going to have a tough time getting others to invest in your dream. It's quite the chicken and the egg problem. Nobody buys the console without games, and nobody buys the games without the console. The best course of action would be to hope for a bunch of easy ports of already available games, so even if they don't take full advantage of the hardware, there will at least be a selection available to give some credibility to the system.
- A market. If people don't buy it, none of this matters. Linux people aren't the primary market here. We already have our linux boxes, and all things considered, would prefer more games available on that system before the effort is spent to put them on a vapor console. So you need to go after the console gaming market in general, which means you need to compete with the other consoles on the market. And you're not competing with the PS2 and Xbox, you're competing with whatever is available 3 years from now, because that's the minimum time its going to take to get a viable system out the door.
If enough individuals are willing to do the games on a small budget with the hopes of some future return, there's a possibility. But a company creating the console is going to rely on the sweat equity of others for the success of their own product. It's not out of line to think that way, but it's going to be an uphill battle.
And one of the quotes from the Indrema developers said it best. Wait until you actually have a product before you talk about it. Time spent talking is time not spent working. People love to drool at vaporware, but they can't buy vaporware, so your pre-marketing efforts are in vain. Even if you finish it years later, people will have gone on to drool at other things. To have any hopes of success, you have to sell your product while people are still drooling. That means, give them some pictures, give them some specs, give them a date, and STICK WITH IT. You can't predict hardware development, you can't predict software development. You can predict how long it will take to put it into boxes and fill said boxes with fuzzy foam peanuts. Market appropriately.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Software might be fun (before the inevitable burnout and shift to some sort of career that humans should do) but fun and professional are not mutually exclusive
If you love independent gaming and want to help keep it alive, do the right thing and PAY for those shareware games. And yes, I've paid for mine. =D
;)
There's a LOT of great games made by a few people working together on something they love. But like any other business, if they don't get money they don't stay in business.
Remember that Doom started out as shareware, I don't think you could call Id "unsuccessful".
If you want a list of things to try, Soldat, Space Station Manager, Space Empires IV, and Uplink are all fun.
I use Windows... like a two dollar wh.. why don't I just go ahead and not finish that sentence.
Greg's post was good, but I think this is currently "conventional wisdom". He simply stated what everybody has been feeling for the past couple of years. The point that this kind of thinking will change the industry is correct.
I don't want to turn this post into a big sales job, but GarageGames IS a label for indies. If you haven't heard from us yet, you soon will. I was the founder of Dynamix, a Sierra label, and got fed up with large corporate control. Myself and a few of the best technologists felt the way Greg does three years ago, but we did something about it. We leveraged our position at Sierra to get control and ownership of the code behind Tribes 2, and started selling it for $100 per programmer as the Torque Game Engine. Eighteen months since we sold our first engine, we have amassed a very large and active development community, and have started selling games via ESD.
We do anything we can to help indies: be it cheap, powerful, cross platform technology with an extremely liberal license; team building; or publishing. We only created the publishing arm out of necessity, and give 65% royalties, do not take box rights, or take any claim on your IP. Of the first three titles that we published on-line, we have gotten box deals for two of them (even though you do not give us your box rights, we can help you get your deal).
Anyway, enough about GG. The point is, we are on the front line of change in the industry. It is my absolute belief that making a game is much more like being in a rock band than making a movie, i.e. three to five guys that are very good at what they do can make absolutley great games. You can make games that will change the industry. If you think you need to compete on the number of 3D models, or amount of non-interactive "movie" between interactive areas, or number of mo-cap moves, then you will fail. However, if you concentrate on pure game play, concept, and FUN, then you will win.
Distribution for these good games will appear. The big publishers are moving toward larger and larger games, leaving behind nice "little" niches and markets that others will move in to fill. Box distribution is not going away any time soon, and it will continue to look for good titles. Not all of the titles can be shovel ware from Russia published by highly controlling value publishers. The market will find a way. People want to play fun games, developers want to to make fun games, and it is inevitable that they find a way to meet.
Jeff Tunnell
www.garagegames.com Independent Games
Software might be fun (before the inevitable burnout and shift to some sort of career that humans should do) but fun and professional are not mutually exclusive
Inveitable burnout is a cop-out for kids who don't like having a real job and dealing with the social dynamics of a professional work environment.
I'm a hardcore programmer, and I do it for fun, but I also do many other things that are just as fun. By looking at me, you'd think I was (*shudder*) a laywer, or in some sort of business oriented profession.
Fun and professional are not mutually exclusive, but being immature and wearing a wookie shirt while calling yourself Nugle is. When I meet people I don't say, "Hi, I'm Xerithane and I can code mad l33t and recite star wars backwards."
When you step into the real world, certain things are expected. Like, you know, adult behavior. Continuing to wear t-shirts and watch kids shows (Yes, Star Wars is a kids show) and discussing it like a religion do not reflect kindly on your mental state.
I have a great time at my job, and I doubt I'll ever get burned out doing software development. Maybe professionally, yes, but that's because I find myself having an urge to go into project management just to increase my God-complex even more. If your doctor walked in wearing a shirt that was the equivalent of a ThinkGeek slogan, how confident would you feel?
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
Actually, I'm the guy that you agreed with 2 posts ago. But anyway.
Software is not a matter of life and death. I wouldn't want my doctor to wear a ThinkGeek shirt, but I wouldn't mind if my manager did, if he's a good manager.
I'm a programmer, and I don't like it. I'd rather be doing about 10 other things, but I need the money. Burnout is not a cop-out at all, there are real work environments beyond the ones that involve sitting on your ass and being someone's corporate cocksucker or bitch.
Does anyone know of a good 2D game engine? I'd like to do some game programming for fun, but have little desire to deal with the 3rd dimension.
A little nonsense now and then, is relished by the wisest men... --Willy Wonka
Ion Storm, and other "independant" developers (like G.O.D.) weren't just founded to make games; they were founded with EGO. LOTS of EGO. TOO MUCH EGO.
These "independants" were too busy trying to be rock stars instead of making good games.
Indy developer. Web only sales. Both Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord and Combat Mission: Barbossa to Berlin won a dozen or so "game of the year" awards and have sold a ridiculous number of copies.
Enigma: Rising Tide is an Indie Game. We weren't represented because someone didn't get our registration in on time; we missed the deadline by 6 hours and were told it wouldn't be fair to let us in.
Tesseraction Games is a group of former Dynamix people. We built Enigma with our own money and a small amount from some individual investors.
We landed a publisher just recently and are heading for a worldwide retail release beginning the end of this month (Europe), May for the USA and June for Asia.
There are exceptions, but there are also many reasons why Indie games rarely make it out of the "garage".
--Dirty Bill
Makes me wonder if in the future, an elite class of game developer emerges who is completely focused on the intrinsic qualities of game design rather than the commercial aspects, with the side effect their "works of art" are huge hits when they release one every five to ten years. When I say "elite" I refer to their ability to invest large portions of their lives into this activity with no worries of economic realities due to being indpendently wealthy of self-sufficient in some way. I could imagine them being complete primadonna's about developers working for corporate outfits...
:)
Hmm. Sounds like something I'd read in a Gibson novel.
-Rob
Try programming. You might find it entertaining.
You then might decide that you want to make games because it is challenging and fun.
And then you will find that there are 100,000 screaming children at your door about how your games suck, they want a job "playing games all day, and how they want.... blah blah bla blah my-little-feature-that's-stupid in 'their' game that has no chance of being marketable.
And then the process will have gone full circle.
I work in the gaming industry as a network engineer/sysadmin.
The Nebula Device
http://www.radonlabs.de/
Free Portable Game Engine
Actually, I'm the guy that you agreed with 2 posts ago. But anyway.
:)
;)
I wasn't directly disagreeing with you in my previous post, just saying I think that a lot of CS/IT people need to grow up, in general
Software is not a matter of life and death. I wouldn't want my doctor to wear a ThinkGeek shirt, but I wouldn't mind if my manager did, if he's a good manager.
Neither are most doctors. Your average family doctor rarely sees something that can count as a life threatening point.
I'm a programmer, and I don't like it. I'd rather be doing about 10 other things, but I need the money. Burnout is not a cop-out at all, there are real work environments beyond the ones that involve sitting on your ass and being someone's corporate cocksucker or bitch.
Burn-out is a sign of immaturity, in my opinion. If you are mature, professional, and good being the corporate cocksucker is something that will never happen. I can count the times I've been a bitch on one finger, and that was because I had zero professional development experience.
I can think of other jobs I'd rather do for a while, but as a profession I'd only choose software in some manner. Whether it's managing or developing, I'm happy. I like creating things.
If you are working in a place that you don't count as a real work environment, I would suggest finding a new job. Office Space is supposed to be a joke
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
Yes. Programming is the best computer game ever. You get to invent your own plot as you go along, and the puzzles and challenges can last a lifetime. And it's text-based.
>"Nurgle" - ? No wonder nobody takes Linux >seriously. How many people in the real world >software community go by stupid childish >nicknames? I know of none..
In the MMO arena? LOTS.
Heard of "Designer Dragon"? I think he's calling himself "Holocron" these days over at the SW:G boards. (I mean Raph Koster, of course)
Generally in games, less common but most devs in general I know use..umm..interesting nic's on forums, IRC and such.
Just because someone is called something you consider silly in the games communitys dosn't mean they're not professionals.
Hussle is a rare thing in the demoralized post-boom world. And few geeks know how to sell, which is why we're in the economic mess we're in right now.
Finding God in a Dog
No.
If you are a programmer, look at how the game runs, think about it technically. No offence to the writers (I admire y'all greatly), but those games are relatively technically simple. One's an RPG, one's sort of a myst-like adventure. But the games sell, and they are paying for themselves well. Woo hoo!
Anyone of you, if you learn to sell, can sell your games. A good salesman can sell anything, they say. So if you learn that _one_ thing, provided that you have all the programming skills, and can get a friend to do some artwork for you, or can spare a couple K for art and music, you can sell your indie game.
Now excuse me, I've got to go play Strange Adventures in Infinite Space.
...this largely mirrors something I posted on an earlier thread (re: the "Hollywoodization" of the games industry and risk aversion). Still, I was hardly the first to point this out.
But there are independent software labels. Take a look at:
Delta Tao
Ambrosia
Beenox
Of course, some of them live hand-to-mouth (i.e. on incomes of less than $100,000 a year) but, so do independent film makers and recording artists.
The fact is that like Hollywood, the games industry is dominated by risk-averse money people who spurn originality in favor of the sure thing. But like Hollywood, the games industry is always willing to leap onto independent innovators (the "My Big Fat Greek Weddings" of games), such as id.
Don't be surprised when yesterday's bold innovators become part of today's problem, that's part of the creative life cycle (just as great innovative scientists become curmudgeons in their old age).
Of all the other game developers I've met, I can't count more than a couple that really cared about anything but "innovation." The cause to innovate is admittedly sexy, but coding is also about managing changes, reliability, stability, managing risk, managing time, managing bugs, and plain common sense. While most game programmers claim they care about these things, the reality is that few people actually give a fuck.
To believe that this additude doesn't have a tremendous impact upon the industry as a whole is terribly immature and I don't feel any pity for anyone but the customer. In my opinion, when we (game developers) grow up as professionals and develop the skills needed to manage risk in our implementations, we will have more power to be innovative.
"People with opinions just go around bothering one another." -The Buddha
Independent publishers should stop going after the mainstream market. Independent film makers don't try and make special effects driven action movies they know Hollywood will chew their lunch on that. But Hollywood leaves huge parts of the field open to independents so from: B-movie horror to literature based drama to porn to non fiction documentery to kung foo to T&A cable features to gay love stories to ... the independents make lots of money.
I don't see much innovation at all in educational games (a huge market BTW, parents have much more money than teenagers and expect their young children to play with a toy for something like 50 hours over the toy's life). I'd love to be able to buy my daughter some games that aren't slightly more graphically rich versions of the Apple II games that were popular 20 years ago. Why do I still see "where in the world is carmen sandiogo" and "oregon trail" on the shelves?
I don't see much innovation in card games; and mind you something like 15 million people in the US are avid card players. There is one publisher designing anything like a good quality poker engines. The last major innovations in Bridge s">GIB came in the mid 90's. No one has tried to make real improvements. BTW many of these card players are over 50 so there would be roughly 0 games that are designed to appeal to their demographic the card game would need to compete with.
What about obscure simulation? With the exception of Microsoft flight simulator there are almost no detailed simulations anymore. Why don't we have things like surgical simulations or carpentry simulations? These things could pick up sales from interested children, educational simulations, adults who always wanted to be an X...
I can think of unfilled markets all day, why can't the independents?
Hmmm, let's see...we have 4 artists and two programmers (me being the full-time one)
and we just released "I Was An Atomic Mutant."
Of course, opinions may vary but it is making the shelves.
"Hi, I'm Xerithane and I can code mad l33t and recite star wars backwards."
You're hired.
ps- Just as a comparison, I'm a hardcore gamer, I love doing it, I don't get to do it all day at work, but I still get burnt out on gaming. Different strokes for different folks. And if my doctor walked in wearing a ThinkGeek slogan, I'd be impressed, my doctor is over 50 and I don't think he's ever even looked at the screen of his secretary's machine. A computer illiterate "professional" of ANY line of work destroys my confidence.
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Just as a comparison, I'm a hardcore gamer, I love doing it, I don't get to do it all day at work, but I still get burnt out on gaming. Different strokes for different folks. And if my doctor walked in wearing a ThinkGeek slogan, I'd be impressed, my doctor is over 50 and I don't think he's ever even looked at the screen of his secretary's machine. A computer illiterate "professional" of ANY line of work destroys my confidence.
My old doctor, before I moved, was very computer literate. You may get burnt-out of gaming temporarily, but I doubt that one day you will just fade away and not be able to game anymore. Coding is like that for the true coders of the world. I say this with much chagrin, because coding is something one does because of the personality they are. If you get burnt out doing it, you aren't supposed to be programming.
Certain behaviors are necessary for social standards. Whether you agree with them or not, wearing a stupid t-shirt instead of professional attire isn't going to change it, it will make you look like a chimp. Unless you are rich, then you can be like Hugh Heffner.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
Well as a disclaimer I work in a law office so professional attire is something I understand. The problem I see is when people cross over to a seemingly (i said *seemingly* ;) ) elitest mindset about 'professionalism' and decide that folks dressed in anything less than a collared shirt and dockers (jeans only on friday, you slack ass hippies!) are less than adequate to take part in their daily social routine and don't deserve a decent chance at demonstrating their competence before being judged.
:-D
Did that make any sense?
Have a nice day.
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Those screaming children can add the feature themselves if they want it. Ah, the beauty of opensource game programming, "If you want it, make it yourself!".
Well as a disclaimer I work in a law office so professional attire is something I understand. The problem I see is when people cross over to a seemingly (i said *seemingly* ;) ) elitest mindset about 'professionalism' and decide that folks dressed in anything less than a collared shirt and dockers (jeans only on friday, you slack ass hippies!) are less than adequate to take part in their daily social routine and don't deserve a decent chance at demonstrating their competence before being judged.
Competence is not the same as professionalism, and often times (especially in the IT world) they do not go hand in hand. I personally don't like jeans, and wear only slacks. I get a lot of shit for it from certain people when I go out on the weekends (They automatically assume I'm an elitist yuppy, which is funny because I have actually held the title "Ranch Hand") dressed like it. When I'm interviewing someone, I look at the full package. When I'm working with someone, I look at their personality and thought processes much more than their dress. I prefer to work with people with an adequate sense of hygeine and professional attire though, just like I prefer wearing jeans.
When my company starts hiring people, aside from the art department, I will have dress code enforcement. Strictly, no shirts with messages on them and nice jeans or slacks for the guys
Have a nice day.
Thanks, you too.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
So, you too envy his corn's happyness?
Sicko...
And the problem is the genres, after all (FPS, RTS, RPG, etc.) The genre games are so - generic (yes, it's a cognate) - tthat it's questionable just how many of them the market can support. Or how much innovation (I am getting tired of the word - how about "creativity") that can be found within a genre.
Incidentally, GTA3 is a great game; The Sopranos plus Tarrantino in a video game, and probably going to be remembered for a long time as part of the maturing of the game medium. BMXXXX is just puerile pandering, and I feel deeply sorry for anyone over the age of 18 who gets off on it.
Yeah "Xerithane" is so much more professional.
Yeah "kin_korn_karn" is so much more professional.
i personally think part of the problem is that the consumer expects something with the production aspects of final fantasy X for their 50$USD (100$AUD) so when you have independent games being released which wont give you 100 hours of play with more CG than you can poke a team full of maya artists at the consumer gets narky.
i think that gaming has to step back a bit, not every title needs to be huge massive epic like experience, whatever happened to the cool but short lifespan beat em ups and shoot em ups? simple, no one wants to pay 100$ for one of these things.
what it comes down to is that id happily pay 100$ AUD (50$ USD) for something like Final Fantasy X2, but i wont pay 100$ AUD for a clone of Rtype. however id probrably put down 10-15$ AUD for it no problems! maybe even 20$ AUD if it were pretty fun, hell even if i only get 5-10 hours of play out of it, its still on par with standing in an arcade shovelling 2-4$ into a machine.
i think the industry needs to realise that consumers are smart enough not to throw 100$ at something which is going to provide 20$ worth of entertainment.
dms0
-= world leaders choose world leaders not us, not a democracy, not a revolution! =-
ok you hit it right with the competence part. showing up for an interview in jeans would be rather incompetent. as far as the elitest yuppie thing, you obviously have the dollar sign disease clouding your judgement. I dont make that much money yet. ;)
Oh and just as a side note, I did have a nice day, and you are the first person around here to ever respond to that.
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Geez Greg, maybe you should have stuck with tabletop RPG's.
Most garage bands suck.
Most garage games suck.
The licensed games that you consider dreck sell because that's what the PLAYERS want. They want the FIFA/NASCAR/NFL etc games with the new yearly lineups and some gameplay/graphics improvements and tweaks. The general audience wants to fly a broom through Hogwarts and play quidditch. They want to pummel Venom as Spider Man or foil the egomaniacal wannabe world conqeuror as James Bond. They also want to be able to go to their local K-Mart/Wal-Mart and buy a shrink wrapped game on the shelf.
Sometimes all a game needs is some incremental improvements to lift it from average to great. For example Dark Cloud was a good game, but Dark Cloud 2 is a great one. Level 5 fixed a whole bunch of the things that were frustrating in the first game and gave the new one a whole new look. Yes it's a sequel, but IMHO a sequel that's better than the original.
There's also plenty of innovation in the mainstream games, you just have to have eyes that see rather than self absorbed blindness. And blindness is something some developers are good at. Take Ion Storm. They do an homage to Squaresoft in Anachronox. But they make the game for the PC instead of the gaming systems that the majority of Squaresoft fans own, the PS1/PS2. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Or take those developers that think they can do a good AAA quality game with all the trimmings with a small team and then they have to delay and delay and delay that game because it isn't finished. The game that I mentioned above, Dark Cloud 2 had 8 people just working on character motion, another 9 just working on game balance., 6 more on the map graphics.
One final note, whenever I read comments or articles by Meier, Wright, Costikyan, Spector etc it's almost like consoles don't exist to them. Which is surprising since that's where the numbers and money are. There's nothing stopping them from doing an original game for a console, not just letting someone else port one theirs.
The only successful indepedent game I can think of is the Combat Mission series. The company behind it has a pretty healthy philosophy on game developing. I read a very interesting interview with its founder, about it a couple of years ago. (sorry I don't have th link handy :( ).
Anyway, I'm sure there's still hope for indepedent game developing
Depends on the software. Embedded stuff for aircraft or cars certainly is. Mobile phones and GPSes may not appear to be critical, but if you've just broken some major part of your anatomy or if you're lost in the hills, they could be critical to your survival.
Grab.
A few years ago I was playing computer games like a madman with my 386, but then when I got a new computer, I got NHL 97 and that was fun for a bit, but I never ended up buying games, and until now I never really saw why. The point is, after C&C, I never really saw anything that great. I mean, I bought Starcraft, but it felt too much like C&C and I lost interest quickly. If I'm going to play a game, I want to play one that seems like it's actually a piece of art. Something new, creative. I want to admire the author's genius when I play it. When you can place all the games on the market today into categories of sim, 3D shoot 'em up, or sport, there's a problem.
So, a few years ago, I had to search elsewhere for creativity. The video games were suffering from the same kind of creative lack, so I turned to board games. The American market was lame, because it's all controlled by Hasbro. So, I turned to the German market and I was shocked to find that they still create amazing board games which adults can play (and I'm not talking about porn or RPG's here). I got into Settlers of Catan which is one hell of a game and isn't even comparable with the crap the computer game industry was putting out.
Later, I found that most hobby stores sell these German games (in English translations) instead of the Hasbro games. Also, on every German game, you'll find the designer's name on the cover... kinda like buying a book. After all, if you liked one game by an author, you're likely to like the next product. The reviews are always based on how innovative these games are instead of just how well they sell. Now if there's this kind of room for creative innovation in the board games market which is thousands of years old, there has to be room in the computer game market of a half century, isn't there?
WikiCreole - a common wiki markup language
This is one of my favorite topics whenever games come up, but an interesting trend I've seen with Netrek, a multiplayer graphical (albeit fairly primitive) free online space combat game.
It's been around in various forms since the early 1980s, going from text-only iterations, to xhost-and-telnet on unix/VMS, to client-server, to multicolored, to multiplatform. Funny enough, even though the action is comparatively clunky-looking (10 updates/second) and the graphics look like they belong on a mobile phone (ships are 24x24 pixel bitmaps) the game still has a very large following, even a league.
I like comparing this sort of thing to chess--a game becomes refined over time, while games lacking the potential for such maturity are just forgotton. Frankly I don't think that the rules of chess have changed within my lifetime; that's because the game is as balanced as it's going to get.
When Quake first came out and went online, we scoffed at it as a flash-in-the-pan that wouldn't last. We were partially right, as you'd probably be hard-pressed to find people who play Quake I anymore. However, the whole FPS genre matured enough to get people to play it fairly seriously. Same with games like StarCraft (look at how much it's played in Korea.)
I think this goes to show that, parallel to the 'newer-and-flashier-is-better' way of looking at game development, as well as the need for constant innovation, there are proven game types, which evolve to the point that the gameplay is almost perfect and thus supersedes the actual way the game looks. As the author of the piece hinted, you put movie character faces on any FPS and name it after that film, but fundamentally the gameplay wouldn't change.
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
OK, I always forget about stuff like that. I guess I should say that 99.999999% of all desktop applications are not matters of life and death.
I would gladly pay for Free/Open Source software. I'd love to purchase Starcraft or something like that and have the source code there with it so I could tweak it, and so on. As long as the Battle.net standards are kept in the code, Blizzard could actually serve as an ASP. Hmm. That's one example. Truth is that the majority of people who game don't really tweak code... Having the source code would probably make for some interesting games. I don't know why people keep saying "Open Source is free". It's not always free. Money can be made, just look outside of the traditional approaches...
"But it won't sell, so it won't be published, so you're never going to hear about it."
How is selling or gettting it published the point?
click me
as far as the elitest yuppie thing, you obviously have the dollar sign disease clouding your judgement. I dont make that much money yet
;)
I just like comfortable things, and I'd be lying if I didn't say that at one point I did have a disease cloud of monetary ideas over me. I like to think that went away, and while I still make a very good living, my motivation is make decisions for myself first; money comes after.
The problem is, most people can't see past the slacks and dress shoes to see that I just find them comfortable, and I just happen to like it. I'd dress this way even if I was completely broke, and had to save up money for the slacks and shoes. To me, comfort is the most important part of daily life.
Oh and just as a side note, I did have a nice day, and you are the first person around here to ever respond to that.
I also admit fallibility!
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
is nifty. The rest of you talk to much. www.oakleafplace.com
For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods
You or I must yield up his life to Ahrimanes. I would rather it were you.
I should have no hesitation in sacrificing my own life to spare yours, but
we take stock next week, and it would not be fair on the company.
-- J. Wellington Wells
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