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Independent Games Festival 2005 Entries Announced
simoniker writes "The Independent Games Festival has just announced its list of entrants for 2005, the seventh annual contest. The awards, to be given out at next year's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, are all about 'Rewarding Innovation In Independent Games,' and there's a total of $40,000 in prizes, including a $15,000 grand prize for both the 'Open' and 'Web/Downloadable' categories. Notable entries this year include Nayantara's online CCG Star Chamber, Chronic Logic's ball-o'-tar platformer Gish, and Digital Eel's forthcoming Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space, the sequel to Strange Adventures In Infinite Space."
"without backing from large corporations"? Indy smindy, a good game is a good game regardless of who wrote it.
The indy game scene is definitely to be watched. Two main reasons why I believe that it won't be long before the next big things come from there instead of one of the big studios:
One: The studios are producing ever more sequels. It just is commercially safer. You know for a fact that BigTitle 2 or HugeSeller 4 will sell at least a few ten-thousand copies to people who buy it because they liked the first, second or third part.
Two: With stuff like Torque and others, the indies are closer to the pros than ever since C64 and Amiga days. The big shots have todays ubercool engine, but the indies already have access to yesterdays engine, which runs better on most users machines anyways.
The critical part in all indie games I've seen (and I've seen many, beta-tested quite a few, and had my hand in the development of one or two) is the artwork. Good coders are rare, but average coders are a dime a dozen. Even average artists, however, with all the skills required to create textures, 3D models, music or sound-effects ready for use in a game - those guys are not that easy to find.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Plus a few of them have native linux versions so there's no screwing around with wine or winex or whatever.
Be Safe! Sleep with a Marine. Semper Fi!
that a Half-Life 2 banner is on the side of the article...
The problem with the game industry is that it gets distracted by pretty pictures. The parent compaired the Torque engine with 5 other engines. What was their common thread? They are all newer and prettier. How are these engines 'better'? More realistic physics models? Curved surfaces? Support for DX9 shaders? How do any of these things make a game more fun? The only way an engine is truly better is if it simplifies development with a better API than other engines, or allows you to do more with the same system resources than other competing engines. And if an engine does everything your design calls for, who cares if it is modern?
A good game is one that will be enjoyable, regardless of how it is rendered. For the last week, I have been playing all the MAME pac-man games, and it's amazing how well designed the original pac-man game was. (it really shows because a lot of the later variations were horrible. You can't improve much on a great design.)
I expect that some people will blow indy games off as 'crap to the masses', but then, the masses also seem to enjoy Brittney Spears and the Third Matrix movie, so what do they know.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
The problem with Indie Games is that unless a RELATIVELY LARGE group of programmers are willing to gather together and pour their time into a world-class product, it will simply remain on the back-burner.
Wow, replace the word "Games" with "Films" and you'd have the same argument people used to have against Indie Films.
We are getting to a place in game development where the graphics and coding for games is becoming easier and easier to do. In the not too distant future it will be trivial and the big game companies are going to get more and more competition from "indie" games. This is the same thing that happened to film once the complexity and cost of making film/video decreased.
I note that your "review" of Indie games didn't even mention game play, just engines. I don't know about eveyone else, but I buy games for their gameplay. If I want to look at good graphics, I'll go to a movie.
Look at some of the big hit online games (Everquest, etc.); the graphics are sub-par compared to the latest and greatest doom-unreal-etc clone yet they continue to do VERY good business.
Anyway, enough of that rant...
W.E.P.
I bought Gish, but after discovering how their copy protection worked, I ended up warning all my friends about it. None of them bought it. Quick summary: you get X activations (i.e. installs), and once you're out of activations, sucks to be you. You might be able to convince them to increase the number of activations, but don't count on it - I tried and they refused. (I was trying to install it at a friend's house so we could play multiplayer.)
:)
I don't really regret buying it - what I do regret is that I now have to keep a crack on a server so I can play it if I want. Several of my friends that don't want to deal with cracks simply didn't buy it.
If there was ever a perfect example of why overbearing copy protection is counterproductive, this is it.
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
Your fancy engines don't mean crap to the masses who don't play FPS.
The masses play more of "The Sims" and "Starcraft" than all the games made with all of the aforementioned engines.
You can let the sales figures speak for themselves.
As far as independent games go, there are more people who know about Bejeweled than Far Cry.