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?

Comments

The only indie game I know

[LiquidCoooled]

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 :)

Not at all.

[fatbuddha]

Take http://www.ragdollkungfu.com/ for instance. A small game released by a single developer through Valve's Steam, that is doing very well indeed with little to no advertisement.

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.

Re:Not at all.

[ZephyrXero]

What we need is an open source alternative to Steam. Something that's multiplatform and lacks all the annoying DRM type crap that makes people hate using steam... Building it on top of bit torrent would be a very good idea too. Anyone interested in making this a reality, or has anyone already started on it???

MS is helping the little guys here

[CDPatten]

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.

Re:MS is helping the little guys here

[Headcase88]

Here's a plan that I've hear Nintendo state twice (once at E3 and the other at TGS I think) but never seen actually reported on any sites:

They say that there are so many individuals with ideas that can't play on those ideas becasue they don't have the money. So Nintendo plans to fund those companies to make games for Revolution.

I think it's a great idea because indie companies will have a chance to make awesome games, and it'll help Nintendo with Revo sales (and possible payback in the game does well enough). My question is will they really do it?