Indie Games Con Gets Report, Awards

Thanks to DIYGames.com for their report on the 2003 Indie Games Conference, held by Garage Games in Eugene, Oregon from the 10th-12th October. The Con aimed to "...not only celebrate independent developers and their work, but to provide a comfortable environment for developers to learn about the different elements of game creation, and to show their games to peers", and the Player's Choice awards for the Con showcase some interesting upcoming indie titles, with Fuzzee Teevee getting 'Best Graphics', and the Oids-inspired Bit Shifter winning 'Best Single-Player'.

Comments

Innovation

[Midnight Ryder]

Unluckly, I have to agree (keeping in mind I've produced 7 2D puzzle games over the years now). Lots of games just try to capitolize on 'Me too' gameplay style.

Almost none of the games at IGC were 'Me too' games. Everything was fairly fresh and new games. That's not to say they didn't have thier basis from other games at times - GravRally from 21-6 is really just another racing game, but, really innovates in it's execution (the GravMode - stick to any surface, no matter upside down or not! :-) and it's gameplay modes (the Chase mode was cool - basically, it's tag played at 200+ MPH!). Trajectory Zone (full disclosure - that's from my game company) finds it's gameplay core from Scorched Earth. Then cranks it up with realtime play, lots of new options, neat environments, etc. And of course, it's 3D, but much more easy to play than Scorched3D, and moves MUCH faster.

Only one game ran in a browser, and that was a special exception - ThinkTanks has a new version out (Windows only) that runs in the browser. Very scaled down, fits in 3 MB, that sortta thing - basically, it's a sales pitch for the game. Not a single game was arkanoid, tetris, etc - I found that to be just too cool. I don't have a problem with 'inspired by' games, but 'clone of' games just tend to blur together, and really suck because of a complete lack of innovation. (Adding one new block to Tetris is not an innovation ;-)