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Throwing Himself On the Innovation Grenade
spidweb writes "A long-time Indie game developer writes on IGN.com about trying to make innovative games, and the occasionally painful consequences. From the article: 'Like all (or many, or some, or none at all) other game developers, I spend a lot of time staring into the void of my own uselessness. So, to try to give my life a sense of meaning and accomplishment, I occasionally try to innovate. I really hate trying to do something new. Sure, it gives personal satisfaction. But you know what else is fulfilling? Staying in business. Not losing your house. And you can't pay for food with Creativity checks. But, every five years or so, I try to do something that isn't the standard material.'"
That is another *really* good point to consider. I don't care whether you were innovative or not, screaming on the top of your lungs for people to buy your product, hell, giving it away for free--to stand out amongst the crowd of games released at that time was damn near impossible.
"Where's PC Gamer?"
PC Gamer has written nice reviews of my games, but that started 2-3 years later. It is a very good lesson for aspiring Indie developers. You have to have the tenacity of the cockroach. Editors WILL go out on a limb and writie about indie games, but you need to put games on their desk for quite a few years before they'll finally notice you.
I don't blame them for this, of course. It's entirely understandable.
- Jeff Vogel
Spiderweb Software
Fantasy RPGs for Mac and Windows.
http://www.spiderwebsoftware.com
Hire better artists next time. Your art assets are consistently very, very weak.
You need someone who understands composition, balance, contrast, and a number of other things that are missing. What you appear to have is someone who can do decent, not fantastic, cartoons.
Take a look at Heroes of Might and Magic or Warcraft III. Every single screen could have been painted by hand. You can hardly tell the characters are sprites or 3-D models.
In your games, every character is an awful, two-dimensional thing slapped down without blended edges. If you don't want to devote the hardware to blending it in real time, at least *pre* blend the art with a background of approximately the same brightness as the one you intend using.
This is inexcusable.
It's one thing to say gameplay is more important than graphical glitz. This is true. It's entirely something else if your graphics actively interfere with seeing how the gameplay is progressing.
Real animators don't make all that much money, and they turn out a fuckton of drawings in a day. Find one. Hire him for a couple of weekends.