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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."
A good Indie MMOG: Rubies Of Eventide. I have only heard good things about Rubies'.
Personally, I have an Indie game of my own invention. Although it doesn't take much thought, it does demand agility when using both a mouse and a keyboard with one hand at the same time. It's basic premise has to do with three open browser windows, the web site images.google.com, the text strings "angelina jolie" - "salma hayek" - "britney spears", a scroll mouse, and a big wad of tissue.
My girlfriend is not very fond of the game, and adamantly refuses to play along with me. I even offerred to let her use the joy stick instead of the keyboard.
In my opinion, the hardest part is getting good Artists. I run the open source SQ7.org game project, and we're doing some exciting stuff. We're doing fully voice acted, 3d rendered, interactivty, or a large scale.
While we've always have plenty of programming help (not that we couldn't use more..), I've found that getting 3d graphic artists is amazingly difficult..
Programmers tend to discover the site on their own, or read my sig in Slashdot, and help to volunteer to bring together a project like that. Programming types Rock.
But Graphical Artists tend not to do that, and I'm not sure how to attract them.. I've tried posting to 3d forums, Offering to pay the few bucks I can each month.. But I've never really gotten as much as I need. The people I have are Great, and we're doing some pretty damn cool artwork, but we need more help.
How do other people solve this problem? Can anyone give any advice on how to get their attention? Adwords on Google?
Colin
Colin Davis
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.
There's plenty of free game engines out there, some are open source. An example is Genesis3D, an engine I've dabbled with. Lots of the 3D engines are in various stages of development, and some of the ones I've tried do not seem quite powerful or flexible enough for the game concepts I'm trying to implement, but depending on what you're looking for, there are plenty of resources avaiable.
Don't forget to check out useful websites like NeHe's OpenGL page (here) or GameDev.net. There are literally tons of resources out there for someone looking to get into indie game development.
the blood has stopped pumping, and he's left to decay
the me that you know is now made up of wires
I run my own indie game company and let me tell you, there's nothing better than having the freedom to do whatever you like in the development process. Many game companies, especially the big ones, make you work one position and your input isn't appreciated on other topics. With Indie game companies you'll have anywhere from 1-15 people working at the company making something that truly (in most cases) want to play themselves.
The ideas portrayed in many indie games, although not blockbusters, are normally fun to play, small in size and are fairly inexpensive. With my company I have the freedom to code in whatever OS's I want, so my companies next game will be released for Linux/Windows at the same time, absolutely no code changes, literally. Most companies don't give that sort of freedom, where indie projects do!
I love the concept of indie game development. I dearly do. But look at indie development forums, look at indie game companies, and what do I see: endless reworkings of stale puzzle games, endless reworkings of a certain group, 8-bit games (Boulder Dash, Asteroids, Breakout), clones of Commodore/Atari/Apple favorites that now run on your desktop, and so on. There's also a certain high-end crowd that creates engines that look like Quake II, but without any games on top of them.
Imagine if the independent music scene were like this. All indie bands would be scrambling to record cover versions of small set songs from bands from the early 1980s. And they'd be defending that practice by claiming that there are only a handful of good songs out there, so why write a new one?
Then again, given how many indie games make the big time, maybe I'm just smart. :)
In any case, my web game, Carnage Blender has a small (I've made enough back to cover hardware costs and the odd pizza) but loyal following. It's primarily a clickfest but, I think, an entertaining one. There's far more depth to the strategic choices than is initially obvious, particularly when you start to get to the high-level spells.
We probably have one of the highest overall IQs of gaming communities that you'll find, because the admins actively discourage idiots. (As opposed to newbies, who are welcome.) Unfortunately, a lot of idiots have credit cards. Guess you can't have everything... :-)
For a minute there, I thought we were outsourcing game programming to India.
Go closed source.
Raise some capital.
And pay the devs.
He's ALMOST right on that. Part of what most of the artists who WILL work on you project look at is what the likelyhood that they get some sort of return on thier investment (time = money). I'm not saying that there aren't any artists who will work on a free - just damned few. And most that I do know are doing it to get a leg up in game development - build thier portfolio, etc.
If you've got a project that's up to the point of beta, you'll find it much easier to get artists on board. Also, go make an account at GarageGames, and watch for artists lookin' for a freebie project to work on in thier free time, or people who just quit a project and are lookin' for something else to work on (watch the .plan files.)
Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr - looking for something to read? Check out my three free novels at MidnightRyder.org
... the most important indie games of the internet's history - MUDs, MUSHes, MOOs and the like. They incorporate written and linguistic creativity, roleplaying, imagination, don't require any special software other than generic telnet, can be played on the oldest of links and, most importantly, are often free :)
Try a good one at hypercube.org:9000, or many others at www.mudconnector.com.
-- K
For those looking for more cross platorm options, there are these:
I don't really have a favorite of these, they all have some really attractive features.
It still seems picking up an opengl book and doing it yourself is the best way to go in the long run. Other options are taking older games with released source (Doom, Marathon, Quake 1 and 2) and using that engine. Again, learning curve will be high though.
Hands down, www.garagegames.com. They're selling the Torque game engine (of Tribes 2 fame) for developers for a measly $100. Great community there too
Well, that's nice and all, but it's not the question he asked. He asked about review sites for independant games. That's a project I've been working on as a side line (a nice community oriented freeware / indie game site) but haven't completed. One of them I would recommend is Indie Games. Not a great site, but fits what you are lookin' for. Also check a lot of the shareware games sites - pretty much Shareware Game Author or Freeware Game Author = Indie Game Author.
Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr - looking for something to read? Check out my three free novels at MidnightRyder.org
The Irony of Indy Games
;) Than again, there are a few companies that are going from commerical projects to more of an indy style. Once you see the amount that publishers take... you start to see the value in online distro's!
;) Enjoy the world of game development for zero cash!
Outside of the handheld ( PalmOS, PocketPC ) markets, or cell phones... many indy games are either crap... or sales pitches to publishers! Im not saying all... there are probrably dozens of exceptions, but on the whole this remains true. Its funny though, when you look at "past" indy games...
HomeWorld
Doom
FlashPoint
Really... by definition, an indy game is self financed, without a publisher in site. Its funny that that moment you have success in the indy market, you tend to get picked up by a publisher... then your no longer indy!
For anyone really interested in learning more, check out:
Garage Games Misc resources, plus a licensable engine
FlipCode Great gaming related site
Gamedev.net Like flipcode, but less mature ( you'll see! )
Gamasutra The site for game developers! Must see
CrystalSpace LGPL 3d Engine. Very impressive
WildTangent Cheap game engine (web based), plus online publishing
Auran Jet Affordable 3d engine, flexible licensing
OpenGl The site for OpenGL info. Lots of useful links
From the above list, you should easily be able to find anything else your looking for!
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.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!