Indie Game Devs Should Give Up

Red Herring is covering an indie game panel held this week at E3, at which Warren Spector essentially told independent game developers to just give up now. From the article: "Fellow panelists echoed Mr. Spector's sentiments, telling a room full of game company representatives, industry consultants, and members of the media that the path to entering the $7-billion market is fraught with more pitfalls than Tomb Raider. While opportunities do exist, small companies and startups find it difficult to secure funding and distribution for their work. They often have to deal with past projects that pigeonhole them and potentially hamper future expansion."

Comments

Re:Sad... but True

[jchenx]

You're also forgetting XBLA (Xbox Live Arcade), home to many popular indie titles: Bejeweled, Zuma, Outpost Kaloki, Wix: Fable of Souls, etc. You've got hundreds of indie developers clamoring to get on-board, which is "good thing" for gamers.

It's still unknown whether or not the PS3 marketplace will have support for indie developers, or whether they will just continue to cater towards the big name companies. What they demoed in their press conference was Namco's Ridge Racer, downloaded onto their PSP, which is quite different than what the 360 currently offers.

Re:As always, terrible summary

[VGR]

Agreed. The Slashdot summary should have used the last line of the article (which also happens to be a floating quote in very large type on the page):

'Look where the big guys aren't. ... Embrace the chaos.'

That point is stressed a number of times in the article: Don't try to compete with the offerings of huge companies. The result will be all budget and no substance, if you even manage to complete it at all.

My favorite example of game innovation is still Tetris. It reinforces that the path to success isn't likely to come from technological muscle, but from finding something truly new. There are undoubtedly plenty of undiscovered genres that don't rely on horsepower.

An example

[Hylis]

Three years ago, I had an advice from a ultimately big publisher, responsible of european aquisition:"maybe you can try to do something else than games on PC or console" clearly meaning:"just give up".

Now, we have sold our first half million of PC games. And with a free game released in january, we have one million new player every month. On Gamespy online players, we would always be in the top10, and first in it's gendra: car racing. Our game rank more than 80% on Metacritic. We made our first game with one graphic artist and received 80% on Gamespot. Now, we are offered millions of dollars to develop on console.

I don't say they are wrong to warn you. Today, I would not try to pitch a game based on a an idea to a publisher or to develop a common PC/Console game from scratch. But I think of many ways to start.

You are right to believe in what you believe, or you are wrong. That's just what I wanted to say.

Founder of an indie studio

Different platforms=different strengths/weaknesses

[jchenx]

Except I want to make a multiplayer game for Everyone, and Internet play results in a nearly automatic Teen rating due to COPPA. How do I fit four people around one PC monitor if most PCs aren't connected to televisions? Not all games benefit from being networked with a separate view for each player; games that don't benefit include Bomberman, Tetris, and Smash Bros.

Sounds like you have a game design issue, which can't really be solved on the PC platform. Different platforms have different strengths and weaknesses. Obviously party games ARE hard to do on the PC, because computer monitors are almost always smaller than TVs, and more importantly, they reside in people's offices and not living rooms. But I don't know why you're using this to debate that indie devs are screwed, since there are many indie titles for the PC that aren't party games.

Console games are great for party games, since you've got that "10 foot experience" thing going for you. You can do things like split-screen, or have everyone share the same viewpoint. What DOESN'T work well for console platforms are games which have to have a lot of detail, such as many RTS or strategy games, or require a fine-tuned control scheme (mice are more accurate than controllers for most people).

Now, if you're serious about wanting to make an awesome party game, but need an entry point to the console industry, then take a look at the other replies here (including mine). There's Xbox Live Arcade and the Virtual Console on Wii. That's certainly a start.