Slashdot Mirror
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)
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.
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.
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/
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.
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
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
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).
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.
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?
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
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.
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
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.
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
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
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
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
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.
...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).