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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.
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).
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."
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.
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.
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
So what?
There is no such thing as a mass market except for three products: detergent, automotive, orange juice. Everything else is a niche.
LadyStar - Your Magical and Mysterious Adventure Awaits
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
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."
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.
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...
/after/ you released your product, why not have an auction site for game development projects to allow gamers to fund these /before/ the result is released to the world?
Well, instead of trying hard and investing lots of energy to collect pay
A team with a good reputation could outline its plans and say, we need two million euros to cover development costs, our expenses and to make a good living while we're developing this game. Please send your money here. If we don't receive our budget within three months, we cancel the project and pay everyone back 95% of what they contributed (5 % to cover auction costs and living expenses).
This would work for any creative product: literature, software, games, books, movies; it allows you to make money from supplying information without having to supply distribution- or other services, but prevents nasty things like copyrights and licenses.
The only thing is that people who have paid $100 and have received a great game, must learn not to whine anymore when others are playing that game for free.
If they think about it, they have little reason to either, because people who are enthusiastic about this game are likely to help make their favourite authoring team's next, bigger, better production possible.
Another nice property is that gamers are the ones actually investing here, instead of the banks funding initial costs. The latter tend to favour minimal risk over maximal fun and innovation; gamers may choose to strike a slightly different balance.
You just need some searching infrastructure to allow people to find the authors in whose products they want to invest, and a financial institution such as a bank that could be the trusted party to guarantee that people get paid back if not enough money was collected before the deadline.
Why not? Any reasons why this wouldn't work?
All generalizations are false, including this one. (Mark Twain)
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?
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.
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.
The problem lies ( for most "indy" developers )in availability of good development tools. I'll explain....( as I happen to be working on a game for cellphones at the moment ).
A) The use of "industry standard" software development tools, is in disarray. There's at least three different "Operating systems"( and/or "gaming engines" running ) on most phones today. None of which are compatible with one another. SO immediately, you're talking multi-platformed development to get any good market coverage. I will exclude J2ME from this, because J2ME, while "standard" across most advanced phones today, differ on the level of what's actually implemented within the VM on a given phone.
B) GNU-based tools for ARM are available, but targeted at areas very different from mobile computing( gaming ). Sure, there's eCOS and such, but what you have to go through to fit those pieces together makes you want to take up a paper route so you can afford Metroworks ( Aaaccck ! )
C) The compilers that the companies like Nokia and SonyEricsson ( Metroworks CodeWarrior ), are incredibly prohibitive expense-wise, for what I'd say most independent developers would be able to ( or care to ) spend. Example: $1150 for the Nokia 3650 software kit, alone.
Borland just released a "plug-in" to C++ Builder 6 that supports the Nokia 0.9 SDK for (Symbian 6.1 ) Series 60 ( i.e. Nokia 7650, 3650, etc. phones ), but yet again, the sdk is short yet again...no bluetooth support. Great, so I can write a game for the 3650, just not a multi-user one.
On the bright front, for those of us who still have our (LICENSED) Visual Studio 6.0, Nokia seems to have an SDK ( 126Mb ) that will work with it ( for the 7650/3650 ).
On the down side of that, SonyEricsson ( I have it from a good source ) has an SDK for their UIQ ( Symbian 7.0 ) platform that will also work with Visual Studio 6.0, but has not put it out for download. They're only releasing the one that ( yet again ) will work with CodeWarrior.
[Major Rant On] ( As if what I've said so far doesn't sound like a rant )
If the Phone Manufacturers REALLY want to increase their market share and spur growth in that market of "mobile entertainment", they'll come to their senses, and release SDK's that more than a handful of developers can work with, because of cost ( primarily ).
[Major Rant Off]
Sure...go ahead, call me a whiner. Send me your donations ($$) and I'll go and write a kick-ass game for your phones.
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
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
IAAPGD.
I don't see the indie innovation. I wish it was there but I have yet to see it. Can you point me to the indie games that are making these innovations?
I believe that you're equating 'indie' with 'unprofessional'. This is clearly false; there are now a number of developers and small shops who are creating games without retail publisher funding or interference in a professional manner; PopCap, Pyrogon (Brian Hook's company), Gamelab, us and so forth. Of course these projects aren't fiascos of 3D content and over-production, like independent movies aren't special fx blockblusters, but neither are they amateur wannabee-gamedev material.
Fundamentally I believe that the answer does come with independent game development, because it's only through proving new markets and styles of gameplay that 'publishers' will wake up and start funding such projects. I am all for balanced relationships between publishers and developers, but the current dismal state of big-budget game development is clearly not trending in that direction.
'Pirates + Puzzles + MMP = Kick Ass' - User Comment
Puzzle Pirates
Big chains like EB are actually paid by publishers to put the game on their shelves. They also don't pay the publisher for the game until it actually sells. If it doesn't sell, the publisher has to pay shipping to take it back (or they can retroactively lower the price, which is why bargin bins exist). In some cases a store makes more money from publishers than from actually selling the game. Furthermore, purchases are done in huge quantities by central warehouses, not on a store-by-store basis. They don't want to talk to you unless you can supply 1,000 copies (two copies per store). So, you get to pay them to take 1,000 copies of your game which they can return to you if they decide it won't sell.
The game is hostile to small companies and individuals. Not out of malice, but simple economics. This system works well for them, talking to you just isn't reasonable.
To have any hope, you're going to need to find management for your local store willing to make an exception. The big chains often have rules that simply won't allow your little deal to go through. If no such rule exists, the local management may simply quickly check the numbers and realize that even if your game is moderately successful (and the odds are against it), it will cost them more to stock it than they will make in profit. You need to find someone with the freedom to put your product on their shelves and a willingness to make a high-risk, low-benefit move. Really, you're looking for someone willing to take on your product out of a desire to do good, not simple greed. They're out there, but it's a small number. Since you're working on a store-to-store basis, you'll be hard-pressed to get widespread availability.
Your best bet will be truly independent game stores. They certainly exist. Of course, your potential market shrinks even further.
Like all too many things, economies of scale have lead to a situation where the lone creator has serious problems entering the market. Fortunately the internet makes it easy and financially possible to start selling a product, get a few people to try it out, and use work of mouth to spread the word. Thanks to the Internet I've found bands and games I would never otherwise have discovered.
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