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The Rise of The Indie Developer
Gamasutra has up a feature on The Rise of the Auteur & the Return of Indie Development. The article's argument is that the explosion of gaming into mainstream consciousness is opening up niche market opportunities. From the article: "As the overall market of game players increases, the subset of people interested in indie development will naturally increase. Have an interest in indie artists in any medium usually takes more effort (finding new artists via word of mouth or niche communities) and so most people are not interested in putting forth that effort. The formulaic nature of most game development will slowly help spur some of these new players to look for new sources of game experiences."
It's not exactly called the mainstream because it has a tendency to search every nook and cranny for the niche stuff. You need ads and retail presence if you want to reach those people and want to sell to more of them than just confused mothers who think it'll make a nice gift for their son.
Also, those new gamers don't long for innovation yet, they aren't as jaded and see no reason to divert from the hollywood-style market with big flashy graphics and mediocre gameplay. Going the indy route won't gurantee good games and I doubt they'd buy another indy game if they encounter a bad game first.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Gamemaking tools are simply getting better. Computers are able to do more in less time. Today's gamemaker gets to spend a lot less time slogging through proprietary hardware APIs, interrupts and assembly code and a lot more time actually building the game. That's what counts the most.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
I think this is true with almost anything now days. People have some sort of nogistalgic impression of the past that makes it seem so much better than the present. Add that into the fact that people just like to bitch and complain, and you've got the above comment applied to anything.
There will always be something new and innovative out there. I'm willing to bet there's a lot of stuff that people don't even pick up on. Additionally, we have to remember that during the last decade a lot of new genres sprung to life. Of course games like Doom were going to be innovative. Nothing like them had really existed before. Someone could make a game that simulates growing mold and it would be somewhat innovative (we already have sim games of all types) but would the market really want to buy a product like this? If you want to blame anyone for the lack of innovation, blame consumers that keep buying the same rehashed stuff over and over again.
There're still plenty of frontiers out there for games to explore. The Nintendo DS, for example, is something that really hasn't been done before. There are also a lot of genres out there that need refinement before we can move on. 3D platformers could, in general, stand to have better cameras that offer tighter gameplay. Occasionally, innovation happens within a genre. Look at the Madden series. It went from playing a season with your favorite team to having an owner mode where you can set the price of hotdogs in your stadium.
Innovation is happening all the time, but when the market fails to support innovation, it goes away. Given the cost of producing a game on a console it's a lot harder for indie developers with radical ideas to get into the game. That's why you see a lot of nifty little games come out for computers or made in flash. These are a lot easier for a small timer to make given their limited finances.
...Is the government. Thanks to the other news that's been duped on Slashdot 8439284923 times in the past week, there is speculation that the government will attempt to make game ratings manditory and overseen by the federal government. If your game isn't rated, they want to make it illegal to sell.
Right now, getting your game rated by the ESRB costs more than the budgets of most indie games because of all of the material you must send to them. It will probably get even more stricter now thanks to the recent news. This won't hurt hobbyists who don't want to sell their product, but if you think that the government won't crack down on online sales of video games as well as in brick and mortor stores, you're crazy...
I work on an indie game in my (not so copious) free time. It's open-source and 100% free (as in freedom, and in beer). I do it mostly because I enjoy doing it and it lets me learn many new things. I also consider it my gift back to the OSS community, which has already given me so much.
Of course since I have zero budget and very little time on my hands, it's not going to be a flashy game that will compete with the likes of WoW or something. Rather, it's something reminsic of the SNES-era RPGs, which were the most fun IMO. If a user is introduced into indie RPGs by means of free games, then surely sooner or later they're going to play one that they think absolutely rocks, and thus hopefully they'll begin to look at non-free indie games with more curious eyes.
Hero of Allacrost, a FOSS RPG for *NIX/*BSD/OS X/Win
First, India steals our boring IT jobs. Now, they are stealing our game development jobs? We're doomed.
Is to no longer cost anything. Games will be made as commissions from wealthy patrons; probably corporations these days, but individuals could also buy themselves a small game. Everything else will be from amateurs, in the best sense(done out of passion).
I just don't see any way for the current systems of production and distribution to hold up in movies, music, literature...people are going to pirate it all someday. It's an inefficient system, anyway; it results in a lot of costly crap shoved onto shelves.
Who would call himself 'indie'?? My dog's name was Indie!
See pictures of tits
I, for one, welcome our new indie developer overlords.
With indy games like Gish getting rave reviews, proof that the indy scene is more than tetris, breakout, and R-type clones.
The indy scene really is about the people who are ok plunking down $20 for a game that they can just pick up and play for 20 minutes, isn't overly involving, and can be put back down. People ranging from your Mom playing Zuma, to your kids playing Chuzzle, to Dad playing Jets 'n Guns
I like Indy games, especially for my young daughter, that I know are fun and entertaining, innexpensive, and have replay value - and the $20 price tag on most makes them worth while to me.
I agree. One example of "niche" technology I think you all should try is the Oakland Baseball Simworld. You can play a kind of e-learning game based on running the Oakland A's over the next 15 years. It's at http://www.sbs-world.com/ ...
It was created in an programing language developed by Forio Business Simulations. Yes, computers are able to do more in less time. There are far more resources available to web programers.
I want to play a fat, balding, ugly old git; not some slim, sexy, buff guy who I will never ever be in real life.
Hey, the perfect game for me is one where you get to play Ron Jeremy!
I think this woman needs to get a dictionary and understand the meaning of 'fantasy.'
then, right after doing that, she needs someone to teach her what the phrase 'sex sells' means.
How many people would buy games where you play a fat lesbo?
The reason girls and Windows users don't understand UNIX is because all the documentation is in Man files.