Indie Games - Fast, Cheap and Everywhere

bios10h writes "MSNBC has an article about indie game developers and their businesses. 'INDEPENDENT COMPUTER GAMING: It's not always pretty, but ask any one in the biz and they'll say that it represents the purest form of game development. And sometimes the cheapest.' Interesting read about the indie games scene... maybe we have indie developers in the Slashdot crowd that would like to comment on this."

Comments

r they worth playing

[Anonymous Coward]

that is the real question

Purest form?

[The Terrorists]

Who says one form is purer than another? Does creating games for profit make them impure? I certainly hope to profit from my creative work, and it is quite pure - in fact, it is religious music. Where do these standards come from? Look more closely for assumptions in articles, and at least explain them in the write-up, editors.

Re:Purest form?

[CaptIronfist]

Not pure as in making money out of something or not, but more pure as in no dead lines, no ridiculous marketing requirements and no wacko specifications made by total tech ignorants. 'Pure' as in the players are playing the work of the developpers and not some digested products from an all-star publishing team.

That's how i understood the remark.

Re:Purest form?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with profit is that it can sidetrack and destroy creative ideas.

A for-profit developer will tend to cater to what he assumes will sell the most. In doing so, he detracts from the integrity of his own ideas. A "non-profit" developer, on the other hand, is not concerned with what sells. He sets his own goals and follows his own ideas.

Sometimes (or perhaps most of the time) this can lead to total and complete failure. But every now and again, something truly unique will emerge.

So I tend more to trust the work of someone who isn't out to make a buck. Someone who believes in his or her own ideas enough to find other ways of supporting him- or herself, without "selling out" and caving in to the potential demands of invisible people.

Re: What makes it pure

[Baron_Yam]

I suspect that you're supposed to infer that 'pure' indicates that indie games are driven by a desire to produce a product from individual inspiration, whereas commercial games are more likely to be based on marketing stats.

Re:I am an indie developer

[wiremind]

Tabs are bad because you can only see one page at a time, where-as 3 open windows ( i prefer 4 ) you can see all 3 at once.

Re:Open Source games, and Gathering Artists

[El_Ge_Ex]

Not to sound too simplistic, but....

Quit looking on the Internet, no good artist will post his/her work there just so it could be taken by hundred's of people to be claimed as their own.

Check your local Art School, as an Artist (part-time) I can say chance's are it teaches 3d modeling and compositing so there you will be able to find people who not only have the knowledge of what you are looking for but also are looking for a way to advertise that they have that knowledge. An artist just starting out will typically for for free just for the exposure and the ability to put his/her contributions on a demo reel.

Just my $0.02

-B

Oh, that depends...

[Midnight Ryder]

It still seems picking up an opengl book and doing it yourself is the best way to go in the long run.

Oh that depends on if you want to concentrate on game development part time for the next 18 months, or on engine develpment part time for the next 12 months, THEN start game development. Engine development and game development are two different beasts really - the overlap in some areas, but, game development concentrates on issues like gameplay, content, etc., while engine development concentrates on things like speed, graphical optimisation, etc.

My opinion to ANYONE who's looking at starting into the Indie field, get a free engine or buy an engine (see a couple o' edorsements for my favorite elsewhere in these threads) and use it. Indie Game Development is rarely someone's fulltime job, so why spend the time re-inventing the wheel? Spend the time developing games.

(On the flip side of that, there's always the issue that you know the engine like the back of your hand if you developed it yourself. I purchased the Torque engine, and it's something like 250K lines of code. I'm surprised how well I know certain parts of the engine, because I decided I just wanted to make a 'quick tweak' on something, like adding particle system LoD, and ended up pretty much knowing it by heart now. So this is kind of a non-issue - get to know the parts of the code you WANT or NEED to know about, and ignore the other stuff. Just be sure to start with a fairly stable and secure engine before thinking this way ;-)

MUDs

[Magnifico]

You can make great, fun, and interesting games without artists! Those games are called MUDs and Interactive Fiction.

Most MUDs are indie and free. Many are even open source and kept alive and going by one or two developers and a handful of loyal players.

Over the past decade, the player base for MUDs and IF have been whittled away by first-person shooters, Diablo, and now games like Everquest. But MUDs and IF are still alive and kicking. A lot of them are more creative and groundbreaking than any commercial game.

I think most people are too overly concerned about pretty pictures and not concerned enough about game play. I guess this is why most people would rather watch TV or a movie than listen to some 'radio drama' or read a book.

WOW an On-topic chance to plug my OSS project.

[vtechpilot]

I have an OSS game project that I have been working on as a hobby for about 4 or so years now. Its in Visual Basic (I know, some will say Yuk!) and the basic idea is to build a framework that others can use to create their own MMORPG. I wouldn't exactly call it an Indie game since its not exactly a game (more like an engine), nor are we(mostly I) incorporated in anyway.

My Comments on such a venture, Unless you just really like to program and don't have any thing to code that is more worth while then don't start such a project. However, If you just want to flex your muscles, and understand that it will almost never be finished, or 'good enough' or profitable then go right ahead. Also keep in mind that there is a good chance that it will become one of those unfinished things that you will probably spend the rest of you days regreting that you still havn't finished it. You'll go through periods of fast developement where you code more every day, and there will be times when you won't touch it for months. God forbid should anyone actually want to play your game then you introduce new nightmares in terms of support and such.

Other than all these headaches it has been a very rewarding hobby for me.

Re:Where do I start?

[Hatta]

Why do you need a 3d engine to make a game? Most of the best games ever written are 2d or text, from back in the day when gameplay counted more than FPS.