Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
...if you are independent and one unsuccessful game still wrecks your place!! The whole reason you run a studio as an independent developer/distributor is so you don't have to make the same stupid marketing/management mistakes as EA or Acclaim or Midway or any of the big giant studios out there. How is it that you run your place so close to the bone that you can't afford to make a slightly experimental game every now and then? Why don't you have your own community site to help promote all your games? Even tiny companies need to promote their work (MoonPod have banners on all the major game-related webcomics for example) (although i see the author is using articles as a way to advertise too, which is pretty clever! he even got onto slashdot...). What happens if the market tanks or a more talented developer moves into your niche? There is plenty of room to innovate, and many video game companies (heard of Nintendo?) actually require innovation in order for their business plan to succeed. 3M does the same in their industry. If you can't innovate without unreasonable risk then it is your fault, not the consumers or the publishers.
:P look at your games' strengths, find your audience, target your niche, and help people find games they love!
I am working on building a self-supporting indie studio right now, and there are plenty of very valid sources of income that can help support you and your studio while you develop innovative titles of your own. They're not my dream projects, but they are short and pay VERY well, and give me lots of free time to pursue my real goals. If you box yourself in, and continue to make titles that sell ok but not great, and you never build yourself a financial cushion so that you can experiment, well then shit man too bad! Don't whinge on the internet about how innovation just doesn't sell; if you're going to innovate, PLAN on it not selling, and build your business around that. Time, word of mouth, and creativity are all on your side here! Just because your first couple experiments didn't sell well, that's no reason to start bitchin and moanin. They might have been bad games; they might be ahead of their time; they might be too late.
Final thought: If the game had real historical content, why do you cringe at its possible Educational (TM) value? There is a market for educational software that badly needs exciting historical games. A man can only play Oregon Trail so many times, and try as it might, Oregon Trail will never be received as the new God of War, especially if its a shareware PC title
There's a simple problem facing most indie games. They simply aren't very good. A few offer innovative concepts, but most are very derivative. The games also seriously lack polish. Often its poorly conceived controls, a sloppy interface or extremely amateurish artwork. The concept might be great, but the game in general is poorly executed.
The standard commercial game is fairly refined despite the occasional bug. Despite contrived content and a general lack of imagination a player can still expect a sufficiently satisfying gameplay experience. That's why these games continue to sell; they're adequately good.
Although I tend to follow whats out there I personally could care less about most games. I haven't played probably 90% of the commercial games available in the past few years and I've purchased even fewer.
I'm not looking necessarily for innovative gameplay. I'm looking for games that are outright fun; that make me feel like they're worth the money. I think there's too much of an emphasis on the latest and greatest 3d graphics with so much potential being wasted.
I don't have a problem with sequels. I like the familiarity of playing the same characters and seeing their worlds evolve and grow. What I dislike is when they're called franchises. Because it means the sequel is nothing more than a way of making money on the reputation of the first game, which inevitably means insufficient effort is put into making the sequel good.
There seems to be this fixation on innovation like that's somehow going to eliminate the glut of uninspired gaming. I don't need to wave around a wand like a fool in order to experience great gameplay. It might make for a great party game, but do I really want to physically move something every single time I play a game? There's already the problem on the DS with developers who are feel they absolutely must utilize the touch screen an end up with a weak game as a result. Those tools are great, but they just wont work with the majority of games.
Just focus on good gameplay. Blizzard has done well for a long time because they'd take an existing genre, strip it down, and focus on the elements that made that genre fun. Nintendo also has great games because they generally understand what's fun.
The problem is that game development is a time consuming process. I've developed a few flash games and most of it I've never finished beyond a basic proof of concept because of how involving it can be, although I tend to get too ambitious. I've also tried to initiate some projects with friends but those go nowhere fast and again, it can be a daunting process. You either need too much free time on your hands or a group of people who are committed to giving up their spare time to develop something. Creating artwork is overwhelming let alone actually coding these games.
One other problem is that of all the people out there trying to create games only a handful really have the skill to produce something truly good. The problem is that the ones who are that good probably end up working for the big developers in one form or another. That's probably why we rarely see outstanding indie work, because the ones that good are usually swallowed up by commercial gaming.
I think he was speaking a little bit tongue-in-cheek, but still, he does have a point.
Did the ad copy for Civ read "Learn history while commanding an empire!"? No it did not. When I think of a Civ game, my first thought is "That's a sweetass epic strategy game". The education just happens to be snuck in there. Many games have some educational aspects snuck in. They sell despite that, because no fuss is made about it during the sales pitch. Most people equate more educational with less fun. When playing most "somewhat educational" games, you find out about the educational bits afterwards. By then it's okay, because you already know the game is fun.
When you're trying to get someone to buy a game (or most anything else for that matter), education just doesn't sell. It never really has. Perhaps we should blame our education system for instilling us with a basic belief that education is not fun.
Random and weird software I've written.