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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?
There's always hope, as long as you can get your product mentioned on Slashdot...
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
And they'll be the wave of the future. There will always be some lonely game creator out on the fringest making something cool that everyone will lap up. When it gets popular though, they'll no longer be an independent though. They'll get bought out.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
If PC gaming continues on a decline, and the console oligopoly continues to give a cold shoulder to letting independent developers obtain console devkits and sell games on indie labels, then no, there isn't much of a future for indie gaming. All three gaming handheld systems sold in U.S. stores, whether chain or local, are officially closed systems. (These include the GBA SP, the Nintendo DS, and the PSP.) Phones don't count because for one thing, most phones have decidedly subpar D-pads, and for another, a lot of people are happy with land lines and unwilling to pay $960 for a 2-year mobile phone service commitment (or import a SIM-free phone) just to play a video game.
The, of course, there will be people like myself who only purchase games with linux binaries too...
The future of gaming is users becoming game masters, not just players, even supplying their own computer hosts to the network in which the game is running. Like when Doom really exploded its genre to capture the entire gaming scene by allowing anyone to make their own "levels".
I want to put my own GPL game server up on the most popular gaming network. With my own features running on the common protocol, so people who play in my "module" can play by my rules. Maybe that means possessions and attributes beyond the universal ones can't transfer, because some modules are built for "Monty Hall" style cheats, just pumping up characters without restriction. Maybe such a network will have a "web of trust" where changes to character state are tagged with their origin, which must be accepted by an automated system elsewhere, or not apply. It's a little complex, but once we work it out, we'll have a canvas on which players and masters of games can all exercise our imaginations on one another. Where's the most popular, featureful GPL MMORPG running right now? I want to take a crack at it.
--
make install -not war
Considering most "gamers" today don't know the difference (and probably don't care), who makes the games they play, I think it all comes down to how indie games compare to big corporate games. If the games are fun to play, people will buy them, period. I doubt anyone really cares who made the game. For example, I wouldn't see a movie just because it was made by universal studios, I simply would see it because it was entertaining.
public class null extends java applet { System.out.print ("Tabula Rasa"); }
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
I had never heard John Carmack until he started giving away the first few rounds of Doom. EA's vaunted marketing can't compete with a very good game getting good word of mouth.
Cell phone and flash games are much cheaper and easier to make. A few of them, like zuma and bejeweled, also make rediculous amounts of money.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
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
Year after year art and hard work are ignored for sex and cheap thrills. I wish it were different.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
I have some friends who are doing alright making Java games for mobile phones. As I mentioned in a previous post, since graphics on mobile phones and other limited devices are so cruddy development focus tends to be on addictive gameplay rather than eyecandy. It is possible to be a small independent game studio, since there are a lot of free tools for J2ME programming and the APIs are simple (what is difficult is making them run well on all different phone models). There is also no need for a big art studio to render orchestral music, hours of CGI, etc. At least not yet.
It seems most of the money in that market is not trying to sell your game through a portal (though if you get a really big hit you can rake in the cash), or even worse trying to sell it yourself, but to make ad games that companies can make available for free as part of a competition. I think there is a big potential market for really innovative and addictive mobile games, as at the moment a lot is just re-releases of games for old platforms, with slightly updated graphics.
A few links if you are interested in getting started on J2ME programming:
J2ME.org discussion board
J2ME Gamer
Midlet.org
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
Independents are just that, independent. Rogue commercial organizations will usually scrape out a living in a niche market or become/join a large company.
If a small company comes up with a really good idea in their industry it'll end up being copied by the big dogs. Look at everybody and their brothers selling single songs for some variation of 99 cent.
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.
Introversion claim to be "the last of the bedroom programmers".
They've released two games so far, Uplink & Darwinia. I bought 'em both, and thought they were great - definitely not the sort of games a company like EA would release.
For the unitiated, Uplink is a "hacking" game, intended to replicate the experiences of hacking you see in the movies. It's also littered with references to movies, and other computer games (I particularly liek the Frontier-style bulletin boards!) Darwinia is a little harder to classify. It's sort of part RTS, part God Game, tied together with a stylishly done 80's-video-game feel. (That's a rubbish explanation - you'll have to try the demo to see what I mean.)
At the end of the day, I suppose it all comes down to acceptable risks. EA have got so used to raking it in from their annual updates to the NFL, NBA, NHL, FIFA (etc. etc.) series that they can't see the benefit in trying out anything that isn't a sure-fire-money-spinner (read, anything that isn't highly derivative of something they've done before). For the little guys to get noticed, I suppose they have to come up with something new/unconventional.
I know which I'd rather play...
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.
If I recall, it goes something like this:
$49.99
- cost of boxes, CDs, manuals
- cost of shipping
- cost of shelf space
- publisher's cut
- cost of Hollywood voice actors
- other big budget expenses
===========
$49.99
Give or take, but I have yet to see an Indie game priced at an "impulse buy" level.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
With AAA titles consistently costing double-digit millions to develop, indie developers are pretty much the only ones who can afford (ironically as it is) to try out something completely new where nobody knows whether it'll be the next hit or just tank.
The next genre (not mix of genres, but completely new genre) will probably be started by an indie game. Of course, 5 years down the road nobody will remember that game, and everyone will attribute the fact to the first blockbuster game hopping on the bandwagon.
Indie games are where the truly exciting stuff happens. EA and Co. are tied up doing Random Game 2006 and Other Game Part 3.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
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).
Is direct purchasing enough of an incentive for your average gamer to shell out money on something he's never heard of before?
The best incentive for a gamer to buy something he's never heard of before is the search for a game that goes beyond the mass-produced flashy emptiness of today's games. Direct purchasing is just icing on that cake. However, I don't know whether the "average" gamer would do this.
I remember when I was 14 and I walked into the Electronics Boutique to buy a game for my 486/33. I didn't have a lot of money, and there were a lot of choices. Some of the games I'd heard of before and read reviews on, but in the corner of the store I saw a game called The Elder Scrolls: Arena. I'd never heard of it before, but I gave it a chance anyway. Over 10 years later, I still play Arena and get that feeling of awe and amazement when I step into the "virtual world" that they had created.
While that story is not a great parallel to the current situation (independent and smaller game shops had a better chance then and they were willing to actually create innovative games and not churn out sequels substituting pixel shader effects for gameplay and content), I just wanted to point out that there are certainly diamonds in the rough.
I think smaller game companies, or perhaps a small number of larger companies that listen to their fans instead of their marketing statistics, have a good chance of reversing this trend but it's going to be an uphill battle for sure.
Books are too time wasting to consume.
Not to mention having little nutritional value. Taste like crap too.
That's why I just settle for reading 'em.
KFG
Yeah, you corporate weenie knob-polisher, there is games after E.A. EA has the Sims. EA did not have Doom, Myst, Mario, the original Sim City, Tetris, Quake, Pac Man (scoff only if you never put a quarter into a Pac Man (or any of his relatives') machine in your entire life), or ten zillion other blockbuster titles that leap instantly to our minds when we think of popular games in history. And like any software gaming company, EA has had it's share of stinkers, too. (I have almost - after intense exorcism - forgotten about the one with the baby angel you fly around possessing people, which I purchased during one of those 24-hour brain tumors you get every year during flu season.)
Meanwhile, how's "free software" for indy? Truly, we may believe that there is only one kind of computer in the world and it proudly sports the bent-squares-in-Fischer-Price-colors logo on it's case, but I insist that non-Windows computers are not a myth - I'VE SEEN THEM! The truth is out there...running on an ext2 file system.
Now, while we're on the Sims, lemme just say that we played the Sims to death in our household for about a week, until we realized that the fun derived from playing the Sims came entirely from dressing up the little pixel dolls and downloading templates to draw precious little furniture pieces for them. Then we started mesh modeling instead. It's better because: (a) You can download it for free http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Home.2.0.html here, (b) It fits on a floppy instead of needing 2 Gigs to stretch out in, (c) It's all there, and doesn't need a $60 expansion pack every two weeks to keep current, (d) You can download some equally free starter dolls and furniture pieces to start playing with http://www.katorlegaz.com/index.php?a=download&c=B lender_3D_Model_Repository here, (e) You can make everything look like you want it too, even the naughty bits, and you don't need to wrestle with a transmogrifier to try to correct the blurry-pixels that appear when your model takes a shower, and finally (f) your models will never get so wrapped up in making breakfast that they forget they have to go to the bathroom and pee on the kitchen floor and then go take a shower because now their hygeine is red and leave breakfast to set the kitchen on fire, causing them to miss work and get fired over the telephone.
Yes, EA has had some home runs. No, they will not own the world. Now, don't you feel *better*?
With indie games, you need to be able to overcome the fact that most gamers are not paying you the slightest bit of attention. To do this, you need to either get a ton of money together for a PR campaign, get a lucky break or have people naturally interested in the idea of the indie game market.
The latter is currently something where the Mac community has the advantage. The Mac community is somewhat insular due to years of neglect from major publishers. For many, many years, ports would be slow to arrive, of shoddy quality, poorly supported or simply never materialize. This worked to hurt the sales of what was ported, resulting in even fewer ports, and drove Mac users to look to their own neighborhood for software.
Ambrosia, Freeverse, GarageGames and others came in and said "We'll treat you well, please buy our stuff" and we did.
The Mac shareware market has never gone the way of the PC side of things. It is still vibrant and exciting. People still want to develop for it. Mac users still pay attention to it, and when a good indie game comes out, we spread the word. Mac news sites put it at the top of their list of stories, forums buzz, and hopefully the developers get the money that they deserve.
With the PC market, trying to get attention for your new game is like shouting for people to pay attention to you in the middle of a crowded stadium. You could be offering free money, but even then it is doubtful that you could get the attention of most people. With the Mac, people come up to you when you walk in the door and ask "What do you have for us today?" and if you have something truly interesting, then it isn't too hard for the news to spread far and wide.
So come on over, we'll reward you for the trip.
As for indie games in general, I'd like to see a few developers focus on long-underserved niches instead of developing more games in glutted categories (Puzzle). Non-shovelware sim games would be welcome as there have been very, very few of them in recent years other than "The Sims 2" and "Sim City 4". (wow, two whole games).
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)
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.
The ______ Agenda
> Maybe there was some deeper stuff in there and it was
> the greatest love story since Romeo and Juliet
The notion that it was supposed to be a love story didn't even occur to me until days later when I read someone complaining about that in a movie review.
IMHO, the movie was not a love story at all, but was a character piece---an examination of two people who feel lost, both within their lives and between cultures. I didn't feel any romantic tension between the two main characters, at all---they were two lost souls tossed together by the tumultuous waves of their lives, finding (in that brief moment before life pulled them apart again) a sense of understanding and companionship that people rarely find, and that steadied them through some particularly rough seas.
For that, the movie was brilliant. But if you were watching it as a love story, then, yeah, it was bad - it sucked as a love story because it wasn't one.