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?"

Comments

Obvious - develop for PDAs

[Asmodeus]

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?

Re:Obvious - develop for PDAs

[Enfors]

X-Com Enemy Unknown anyone?

There's a guy who's planning on making an unofficial clone of X-Com (called X-Force) for PalmOS based PDAs:

http://www.gotactics.com (click the X-Force link on the left).

I'm definitely looking forward to that one.

Marketing/Awareness

[kruetz]

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.

Perhaps good ol' /. could review/announce some independent games and see if that boosts their sales? Then again, /. crowd = linux lovers = open source = no pay for software!

*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.

Re:Not entirely

[hikousen]

It used to be much cheaper to produce a game,

It still is. A good programmer and artist team can build a game for a few hundred dollars.

but now the costs are rising to the point where VC's don't want to risk their money on small, unknown outfits.

VC's don't invest in computer games, despite the romantic myth of the perfect game start-up.

Of course, the idea of a VC who doesn't want to risk their money is amusing enough on its own. If they want a sure thing, they should buy T-bills.

problem and possible solution

[jarnies]

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.