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Is There a Future for Indie Games?
An anonymous reader writes "If you've been following Greg Costikyan's recent rants (such as Death to The Games Industry), you would have seen mention of one developer's attempt at breaking the traditional games publisher funding model. Well, their game is now in the stores, and whats more it has been getting some pretty good reviews, but has anyone heard of it? Judging by some
press, the marketing has been somewhat underwhelming. So the question is, is there still a viable space for good games developed outside the traditional corporate publisher model, or does E.A. already own the future of video games?" Moreover, when indie developers have to go up against the likes of EA and Steven Spielberg, what hope can they have for matching that kind of success? At least one company thinks they can do it by offering games for direct download. Is direct purchasing enough of an incentive for your average gamer to shell out money on something he's never heard of before?
i only ever car about fps but as far as i can see theres plenty of mods based on the complex engines which are the difficult bit to develop.
indie developers may need to licence an engine but theres still plenty of potential to do their own thing
Was Pitfall. Did they remake that recently or something?
:)
I loved playing that game years ago, they don't make em like that any more.
On the real subject of indies, I am finding Linux to be a wonderful world of shareware from way back when.
Looking around finding decent gems hidden away in the repositories and distros.
Sooner or later these will be polished and will become the must have games of tomorrow.
The bedroom coder is up there right now making the software, give it time
liqbase
Especially as the games market gets older and more discerning. I used to buy every console that came out, and spent at least $100 a week on games. A lot of that was crap, but I was immersed in game mags and sites at the time, getting a full blast of big name promotion. Nowadays, I might buy a game once a month, and my collection is entirely devoid of sports games, GTA et al, car games, and whatever the hell else passes for mass market entertainment these days. I only buy interesting games, that (are at least trying to) do something I've never experienced before. I would love to have a wide selection of games like that at my disposal, and I know for a fact I'm not going to get them from EA or Steven fucking Spielberg. I know I'm not the median publishers are looking to hit, but I'd like to think the segment I occupy is growing.
"You know why you do not see me styling wit my homies? Because I have no homies!!" -Mojo Jojo
Rag Doll Kung Fu is the indie game cream-dream. A fine piece of work that is fantastic without a six figure budget. Valve knows what's up; 15 bucks is a good price for a game that may not have the bells, whistles and intricacy of the big game companies, but is still a lot of fun. All hail the ever-fertile steam-niggurath and her thousand young!
I, along with many other people (that will no doubt reply to this), have various concerns about a system like Steam, but it is hard to dislike it when it supports the publishing of excellent games like this that push game development into new genres.
Anything that allows independent game developers to bypass the highstreet, can only be a good thing. I just hope that ragdollkungfu is the first of many such lightweight games that can afford to be experimental and actually fun for a change.
Life's EULA: shit happens.
The problem that people don't seem to realize is that marketting is the determining factor of how well a game will do. The art of a game is part of that marketting. Saying that people don't buy games on graphics is BS, which is obvious to anyone who looks at the sales of Doom 3, Half-life 2, Farcry, or any other top seller.
The big publishers have marketting budgets that rival the development costs of the title itself. For example, I worked on C&C Generals. The development budget for that title was ~25M USD. The marketting budget for that title was ~15M dollars.
Indie games simply can't compete with that kind of marketting, and word of mouth sales only grow the community that you already have. If you've only sold 10,000 copies of your game, WOM sales might grow your community to 100,000. But if you'd already had 100K sales, you would've hit the million mark instead.
I currently have no clever signature witicism to add here.
I was hired as a consultant for a company that is doing some Xbox Live Arcade games for MS's new 360. They are a startup and don't want to go head to head with the big guns, but arcade gave them an outlet where they can start out and build a reputation, and hopefully get some good reviews about them.
I think this is an area where MS is helping the little guy, and increasing competition in the industry. I also think this will help MS targeted the "less sophisticated" soccer moms with simple cheap games. From what I've seen sony really doesn't have a viable strategy to compete with this approach. I don't know about Nintendo, but my guess is that the small guys will be able to develop for revolution and to ok.
One thing to note, I'm not sure how much the success or lack of success of "Heroes of the Pacific" could have to do with it being an indie game or not; it seems like the much bigger hurdle the game is facing is that it is a flight sim. From what I can tell, the flight sim genre seems to practically be on life support...... it seems like even the really notable and excellent flight sims that have come out in the past few years haven't really done well (I'm thinking that IL-2 was probably the most successful, and even then I don't know how well it sold).
this is why there's Xbox Live Arcade. they're working with indie developers to allow people to download demos and buy them for the xbox and the 360...
Which is why it's a good idea for indie developers to know their audience and advertise appropriately. Moonpod, for example, has ads for Starscape (a really nice shoot-em-up/management mix) displayed with gaming related comics like Ctrl+Alt+Del or 8-bit Theater - people who read those comics are likely to be interested in obscure and/or old-school-like games and having the advertisement on the site also serves as some kind of approval by the artists - after all, if they wouldn't like the game they wouldn't advertise it, right? (Actually, concerning how pissy web artists can get I'd figure that the probability of them knowing what games they're advertising for is quite high.)
Independent companies often produce stuff that is in some way superior what you usually get - one example would be Decker (Coral Cache), a graphically unimpressive freeware game for Windows that just happens to be the best simulation of breaking into computers in the Shadowrun world. Please don't click the link unless you really are interested, it's a private site and has a lot of images up front.
However, these innovative or otherwise extremely cool games need to be advertised to the right people. The usual gaming magazine reader will not be interested in games that deviate from the well-known genres like Uplink. But gaming geeks, "real" gamers and the like might want to know about it - which is where specialized advertising comes into play. If a company advertises with the bigger gaming comics it can reach a decent audience that is most likely more interested in their work than the average gamer. If they manage to get mentioned on Penny Arcade it's jackpot... And as Tycho is fond of letting the world know of obscure games he likes just getting PA to notice them might be a way of generating sales.
Indie game companies will always be able to reach an interested audience as long as there are internet celebrities who are willing to display their banner/discuss their latest game. It's not the megabuck business that mainstream gaming is, but there is an ecological niche for games that are just too far out for the regular gamer.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Yeah, but don't forget that few people had internet access and the web hadn't espoded in its pants yet back when the original Doom released. You needed meat-shelf-space because that was the only place anyone was likely to set eyeballs on it. Now you have lots of indie-specific online outlets, a gaming television station (of sorts), magazines, websites and usenet groups focused on them.
A Tale in the Desert is an indie project, essentially. They aren't on any shelf anywhere and are distributed online. They're doing pretty well and have been for a couple years.
Actually, the specialized skills you mention being needed for a game are available in programmer "collectives" like Ambrosia (see my post to parent).
So if you have a great idea for a game, but need others skills, you can probably find people willing to help in collectives like these. Or make one of your own.
These guys aren't billionaires, but they say they make a very nice life, and have fun at it.
Lies about crimes
There is definitely a very promising future for indie games, and there are lots of developers and portals which are already doing this and doing very well at it. The market is growing every day.
I've seen this with my own site Sortasoft.com, which has been growing at a very rapid pace. The fact that I can distribute games at almost 0 cost allows for a very high profit margin. It also allows me to distribute games for promotional purposes such as contests, etc. at no cost.
As evidence of this... mod me up and then drop me an email (promo +at+ sortasoft +dot+ com) and I'll give you a free copy of my game Funky Farm. Well see if we can get this shameless plug up to a 5.
It seems to be a question of degrees. And I say this for the people reading, not necessarily to the parent poster who seems to know how it works.
You have an idea. You let it mull around the back of your mind for a few years. You get maybe three friends and associates interested in the idea, and over the course of quite a few weekends you pull together a very rough demo. At this point you may need to finagle some art resources either by schmoozing or paying someone. You hit every industry contact you know with your demo, and many that you don't. Look for a "champion" who really likes your game and will help drive it through. While you do that, on the strength of your demo get some fundraising going. VC's are nice, but really hit up small businesses, people, friends, family, etc. Now scale up production, moving into a low-cost but rat free office space, and hiring artists, developers, an office manager, a business manager, etc. Appoint yourself project director (or somesuch), and get to work making that game. Hit your milestones, piggyback into your publisher's E3 booth, and ship. There is nothing in the above scenario that prevents people who are genuinely interested from breaking in.
Most independent studios really are indie studios that got funding and scaled up. The studio that released Alien Homonid, for example, started as a few guys working their tales off, found investers, scaled up, created a great game, shopped for a publisher, and released. Other studios get a publisher involved earlier to mitigate risk.
And these aren't rare: somewhere in the realm of 1/2 of all games are created by independent developers. See that logo that pops up on the screen after the EA title? That's the developer. Not all of those are independent, but many are.
The difference between and indie and an independent developer is just that an independent developer wasn't afraid to grow. At some point they may get bought out by a major studio and enter what is somewhat pessimistically known as a "decline phase," but that's also another step in the natural evolution of things. I believe parent poster pointed out the "craploads of cash..."
If you want to be independent, and all of the risks / control that entails, you can do it. Or perhaps more strongly, that is how it is done.
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