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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 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.
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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.
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.
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.
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
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)
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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