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Why There Are No Hit Indie Games
Slate is running an article on why indie games are still such small potatoes in today's game industry. From the article: "In today's movie business, it's possible for an indie film like Napoleon Dynamite to become a sensation. Saw, which cost a mere $1.2 million, grossed 100 times that amount. That just doesn't happen in video games. The average PlayStation 2 game costs about $8 million. Studios often need large development teams--usually 40 or more people--to meet their tight deadlines. They spend money to license everything from comic book heroes to graphics engines. They record A-list actors. And if they burn their own CDs or do their own marketing, costs can really soar."
Whats the definition of a 'hit' game anyways? Besides the Napoleon reference The article only talks about how much money is spent on games, not if they make money or anythin gelse, doesn't that get to the whole problem we're having now of games just looking good but (most) playing like crap?
I have no idea how large Popcap Games was back when they released it, but Bejeweled was a hit. In fact, a lot of their games have proven to be popular. Obviously they can't be thought of as an indie game studio now. And then there was that old puzzle game before it that was a huge smash hit created by that Pazhitnov guy in Russia . . . what was that again? I forget.
Studios often need large development teams--usually 40 or more people--to meet their tight deadlines.
And Napoleon Dynamite was shot by 3 guys?
Yeah, Napolean Dynamite hit me like a brick. I was stunned having fully spent an hour and a half in front of the biggest non-sense ever created.
StepMania seems to be a very popular game. There's an active modding community and a multiplayer add-on. Haven't played it myself but looking at some of the clips on youtube.com it looks very polished.
Must be great fun at a party.
We can't rate hit indie games by their fiscal gross alone. Some of the most popular games out there (Continuum, anyone?) are free.
I don't know, anymore all I play are FPS like BF2.
However, in the past I've played one or two storyline based games. Needles to say, it was a story any freshman in Comp 101 would have laughed at.
I think that, in many ways like movies, more emphasis is placed upon things blowing, huge guns, hell, even celebrity voice overs, title namesake, time to market (console release dates?) are making for crap games, much in the same way that there have recently been a spate of bad movies, IMHO.
I'll use a poor example, Tron. I saw it when I was about 7, and was mistified ever since. The sight of the arcade cabinet still gives me goosebumps. Has anyone played the travesty known as Tron 2.0? It made me cry, especially after the price two months after release was approx 14.99 (during a time when 49.99 was roughly the release price limit, which I paid for that POS). Not even one celebrity voice over (I think Bruce Boxleitner may be cheap these days).
FP?
Galciv 2 would be a proof to the contrary. As are many strategies published my Matrix Games. There ARE hit indie games (there may not be much in the way of REVENUE, but the profits are good). Galciv II of the starforce fame was (and still is) on the RETAIL Top 10 lists in US, Canada and also in Europe (at least in play.com). Total budget was something on the order $500000 or so, IIRC. Ok, not just two guys in a basement, but still, very small developer and in my books an "indie".
When something is good, the word-of-mouth advertising can do wonders.
Its not because you don't hear about a game in the mainstream game review site that they aren't hits. Its just a question of exposure. Take Hexic or Crystal Cave on XBox Live. They fare pretty well for games with 0$ in marketing budget.
Some games have a niche market and are quite recognized among players. Cave story, Tumiki Fighter or even some *band variant comes to mind.
In the end its only a question of marketing. Just like Open Source, suffers from a lack of "Open Source Marketing", Indie suffer from a lack of "Indie Marketing". But things are picking up IMHO.
The natural market for indie games is the PC, the structure of console gaming assumes large publishers; back in the day console games were either first party titles or arcade ports. In the 80s and 90s the majority of PC games were "indie" studios like Maxis, Id, and Sierra: small-staff affiars that occasionally produced mega-hit games, but also subsited quit well on sleepers and more nich titles.
This all changed after the indroduction of dedicated graphics processing and of online gaming, and the resulting arms race for whiz-bang excite-the-fanboys-with-screenshots features. The arcade culture moved online and onto PC gaming, and the idea of PC games being something that an adult might want to play on their office machine began to die. Megapublishers moved in, purchased the formerly independant studios, and homoginized the industry.
And now you have an absurd situation where Nintendo is seen as being some sort of guiding visionary for thinking that video games could be intertainment for people who aren't hard-core gamers, when, in fact, before recently, PC gaming had been serving a diverse audience for over 20 years.
Anyway, I'm of the opinion that video games have become much more narrow and catering to a specific audience, one that no longer includes me. I'm no luddite. I appreciate good graphics and advances in technology, however games that use all these new features in ways that actually interest me are few and far between, and I find myself looking toward abandonware for new (to me) games.
I have a kind of generic critique of capitalism as a mode of cultural production that relates to this. It seems that commercial art is best when it is part of an immature market. The genre of the summer blockbuster saw a lot more creativity and inventiveness in the 70s and 80s, while the parameters were still being explored. Once Hollywood figured out the basic formulas of that game (e.g. "Die Hard" is a reproducable success, "E.T." is not, etc.) creativity dropped through the floor and you start seeing more and more sequels, licensed adaptations, and such. I'm not saying that profit is incompatible with art, just that it doesn't scale infinitely, when the producers get too greedy and refuse to accept the risk of not having a hit, the fun dies out.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
Very, very true... However, the big-shot movies don't learn anything from indie films like Napolean Dynamite and continue to overproduce movies that have a ridiculous budget. In a game though, the big-shot game developers can learn things from indie games like Spiderweb Software's: Avernum and Geneforge.
Studios often need large development teams--usually 40 or more people--to meet their tight deadlines.
Yeah, but indie developers usually don't have tight deadlines.
They spend money to license everything from comic book heroes to graphics engines. They record A-list actors. And if they burn their own CDs or do their own marketing, costs can really soar.
Again, you don't need to do this to make an indie game. Games on CD? Thats so 1999.
If you spend next to nothing to make a game, its easier to make a profit.
Take this guy for example.
The indie movies that are successful are those that manage to reach a wide audience. They get picked up for distribution (art house or even multiplex), advertised, reviewed, and otherwise get very similar treatment to studio movies. There are lots of indie movies that aren't successful and don't get this treatment, but it is a possibility. There are movies out there that everyone has seen and never realized that they were indie.
This is not true at all for indie games. There is no getting picked up by a distributor, getting reviewed, advertising or anything of the kind. They're either available for free from some site filled with indie games of dubious quality or they try to get sold by some new method (electronic delivery, serialized gaming, etc.). Its hard enough to be successful going against the flow in one aspect (indie vs large developer), and its even harder when you add a new distribution/payment scheme to that.
How am I supposed to find out which indie games are good? Without totally immersing myself into the scene, its next to impossible. Advertising, reviews and utilizing the existing distribution medium let people find independently produced things in the way that they're accustomed to finding establishment things.
Also: the game world does not have a clearly defined establishment in the same way that the movie world does. Just because EA is the behemoth now doesn't mean that they have the same kind of history as MGM (used to), and so being independent of them doesn't carry the same connotations in the consumer's mind.
The average star in an indy film is able to get by far easier than the average indy software developer.
First of all, even after one popular movie, the indy star will likely be able to make some money speaking at various events. They'll be able to star in theatre productions, even those running just a few weeks.
Second of all, it's far less costly for an individual actor or actress to make an indy film. That's why they can often star in four to five indy films per year! An indy game developer will often spend a year or two per game, if not more (for a larger project).
Those advantages rarely exist for a software developer. The individuals themselves are far less visible than indy actors or actresses. Nobody will want them to speak at events, let alone pay them to do so. Working part-time at other software firms to cover the expense of living while developing their indy title may be impossible (due to NDAs, etc.).
When you consider how much harder it is for an individual indy developer (or small group of developers) to get by financially, especially compared to indy actors or actresses, it's no wonder there are fewer popular indy games out there.
We're living in a country where the mighty dollar dominates over true talent. What was once a community where small developers can design their own games with no problem has turned into big business where pleasing the average consumer is the ideal goal. Hopefully, Nintendo lets Indie developers take off with the Virtual Console.
The article is more vaguely about console games than PC games. His comparisions between film and console video games is very flawed. Anyone can grab a camera, and edit the video. All the hardware is readily available. Same as with music. Take a console game, and its big bucks to get the development, and then the deployment. PC games are completely different as there is not as much overhead, as compared to consoles, with development and distribution. But have companies like EA lost their creativity. Oh yeah.
Well one of the problems is across the whole industry, lack of imagination. Stop using comic book characters, record some talented local voice actors, distribute through secure bittorrent, etc.. Want free marketing? Get your game /.ed as the next big indy hit. Or try sending promotional copies and news to every gaming site you see.
Don't complain about the system when there are ways to get around it, that just require some effort and imagination instead of whining for big bucks.
That just doesn't happen in video games. The average PlayStation 2 game costs about $8 million.
That's called a "barrier to entry." It's a feature of the non-free market which is inaccessible to 99% of business in order to limit or abolish competition (see "insufficient huevos") and deny small business access to the capital markets.
Let's recap:
1. There is no free market
2. There is no competition
3. There is no access to capital
Not bad for a capitalistic free market based on competition, don't you think?
Cue Slashdot apologists for the Neo-Darwinian game show status-quo "get more marketable skills" economy.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
If a game is not available on the shelf at Walmart and Best Buy, it is very unlikely to be a hit. However, shelf space at Walmart and Best Buy is so limited that game publishers have to rent the shelf space. The publisher pays for shelf inches or an end-cap, and the retailer doesn't care so much if the game sells or not. The retailer makes money from shelf rent regardless.
Small developers and small distributors do not have the capital to pay Walmart $8M for a national role-out. Therefore there is no shelf space for the games. Therefore they don't sell well.
A manager at Vivendi once told me that they could sell 50K units of an empty box at Christmas because the parents have no idea which games are good. They buy them randomly, and having and end-cap and a pretty box will result in more sales than any amount of game play quality.
The problems with electronic distribution have still not been overcome: Separating the good from the boring, handling payment, limited bandwidth, and game magazines won't review or publicize unless the publisher advertises.
I'd speculate that the indie scene is far, far larger than it ever has been at any point up to now. In the 'good old days' a one-man bedroom project could rock the industry, but the industry was very very small at that time.
Today's indie scene is probably far larger than the whole computer games scene of 20 years ago. (I have no figures to back that up, BTW)
End of discussion.
No Hit Indie Games ON A CONSOLE.
PC, anything and everything goes. Gaia, YoHoHo! Puzzle Pirates, anything PopCap seems to touch . . . Hell, anyone up for running through Exmortis or the Viridian Room, anyone?
Pretty sure that the "free market" before the anti-trust laws prevented competition just a tad more than the regulation of today's economy. Please be more specific.
Also, the reason there aren't many indie games now is the same reason there weren't many indie games a few decades ago. We're just getting into the medium and have not developed methods to cheaply streamline the process of game making, whereas movies have become much, much, much less expensive to make. We just have to wait and improve upon methods and make them more affordable.
Ex nihilo nihil fit.
I've been under the impression that the development kits for XBox & PlayStation are hellishly expensive, aren't they?
Besides, don't the real indies develop for Linux? TuxRacer would be huge on any other platform IMHO..!
(this is not a
"weren't many indie games a few decades ago" should be "weren't many indie movies a few decades ago". Just a little spur of the moment dyslexia, my apologies.
Ex nihilo nihil fit.
Stepmania does not count because Stepmania is a DDR CLONE. In order to be indie, it has to at least add something to the game, and I fail to see where Stepmania, aside from porting to the PC and allowing new songs to be created and made, adds anything.
Like others have said, TFA is full of shit. CS and Bejewled are just two examples.
Most recently, look at Geometry Wars. As anyone with a 360 will tell you, this game has a stellar conversion rate(30%+), meaning that 30% of people who download the demo, buy the game.
Also, what about the Shareware games back in the day of DOOM? How can TFA say that those weren't hits?
There are probably no 'hit' indie games for the simple reason that game rental companies don't purchase games from small publishers - how much revenue would that bring in per game? Any rubbish game under a big label will inevitably have a copy per Blockbuster store or whatever, hence, the smaller publishers don't get as much exposure, etc, etc.
I hope you're joking....Tetris. Pazhitnov's Wikipedia page. Interesting that he's still "in the scene" with one of his games included on some of the Xbox 360's...
Please help metamoderate.
Indie developers lack the funds and connections to bribe Wal-Mart's buyers to purchase and stock the game and to bribe EGM's editor to hype up and cover the game, where Wal-Mart = "the stores" and EGM = "the gaming mags."
In an economy in which bribes are an integral part, people who can't afford bribes get fucked. That goes for the market in games, safety, governments, and everything else.
Apogee, iD games, Epic MegaGames were pretty much independed in the beginning
Films are finally able to be made Indie style for low budgets and reap huge returns, because you can shoot one with what is now low-cost hardware and relatively low-cost editing suites of software.
Games will arrive at the same point when great game engines (which are starting to crop up) become available for relatively low-cost... ie: you can get a few people together with a good script, a good concept and some decent artists and create a game using off the shelf 3d engines and minorly tweaked, configured game mechanics systems.
Really the console gaming systems should be the target of choice for these ventures, given that they are not a moving target and that there is a lot of known variables.
What is needed is an API and a toolset that doesn't change every year. Then you'll see some game developers spin off and do an Indie game with a few friends and a small budget. Until then it's such a risky venture to develop for a platform that may change dramatically by the time you're ready to release the game, that no one can afford to try.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
what about games like snood? in college, i'd estimate that 70% of student pcs had a desktop link to it. sure it didn't make a lot of money, but far more people were playing it (and freecell and minesweeper) than quake. i'd estimate that only 30% of pcs had quake installed. i'm sure that snood's cross gender appeal had a lot to do with the difference. economics probably had little to do with it, since i hardly knew anyone that had paid for a copy of either.
I think we could see a somewhat indie appearance through the use of Virtual Consoles. Geometry Wars was a big hit even though it did come from a major "game studio". If there could be some sort of open market for Virtual Consoles, like the development kit is free or relatively cheap and game makers get a certain cut of the profits perhaps 50%. That would definitely lead to some interesting games.
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
The real reason there are no indie console games is a bit of shoulder-work by the big boys. They have their party and the doors are closed. A couple years ago I tried to organize a console version of BZFlag and hit brick walls everywhere. To develop legally and efficiently, you need the development kits for the console(s) you're targeting. To get the dev kits, you need to already be an established game developer to get your own licenses or to even get signed under someone else. Sense the catch 22? The escape? Make a bunch of hit PC games first. So things aren't entirely hopeless, but its still a lot of proving to do before you can get anywhere close to a dev kit. You can go homebrew, but then you need to void your warranty and everyone who wants to play your disk does too. It's crap.
I'm not a big gamer, but I had loads of fun on Serious Sam I and II. Great independant game!
I'm sorry, the real reason there are no indie developers is not because they don't have the access to capital (as this article argues) it is because most indie developers believe they have to produce a big-budget game.Using the movie analogy, most indie developers believe that they have to make a Starwars movie that costs $100,000,000 when they should be looking at producing small budget drama or comedy movies for $1,000,000.
...
I'll give you an example of a game which (although it was made by a very large developer) demonstrates how even small budget developers can survive. Nintendo's Brain Training for the Nintendo DS was produced by (at its largest) a 9 person development team for 3 months and has sold millions of copies.
Want to make Millions of dollars
1) Produce a reasonably accurate golf swing tutor for the Wii (The same people how watch golf TV will pay $50 for your game and Wiimote attachment)
2) Bring you (completed) game to a publisher for distribution (if they are only covering distribution and no development cost publishers are reasonably willing to take a risk)
3) Call it Home Driving Range
4) Profit
Are we talking about just console games, or are PC games included?
Console games are more understandable because there is a higher initial investment. As well you only have a single model of distribution available to you. Which is also expensive.
On the other hands, PC games have a much lower initial investment (free tools if you really want) and by selling things electronically via a shareware method, you can keep distribution costs low.
Spiderweb Software still sells shareware games. You can get the demo for Avernum 4 released not to long ago on their website. Personally I'm more of a fan of the retro look of the Exile games (same game with slight changes, Avernum is just a completely updated engine). From what he's said he does okay on them, not hits, but they should be. The games are huge and engrossing. I used to play the demos endlessly when I was a teen in the mid-nineties.
I think the big obstacle is marketing. Indie movies seem to be able to get more exposure if they're even just reasonable. Critics, film festivals, independent theatres, etc.
A good indie game gets word of mouth, people pick it up, then some company buys them.
PC Gamer once devoted a whole paragraph to spiderwebsoftware. Huge. Compared to the pages other inferior games get because they come from an established publisher.
The guy has been making quality CRPGs for over a decade, and thats the best he gets. Gamespot hasn't even gone to the trouble of having someone review the games, or do anything else of value with their entries.
You can't compare indie movies and games becuase they're not of the same world. You can't even compare indie PC games and indie Console games. Two completely different environments. I think on the PC (windows or linux, or even a mac I guess) indie games completely have the possibility of becoming hits.
Then there are movies like Napoleon Dynamite... which may not be the bestexample - but there certainly are many others. Pulp Fiction was an indie and won picture of the year. Blair Witch was also huge. These three movies (and many more, just go to your local movie store) all have one thing in common. The way they tell the story and the story being told are completely abstract to what we are used to in the mainstream. Blair Witch tries to be a documentary gone wrong, Napoleon Dynamite gets into the life of the biggest dork in the nation; and Pulp Fiction was made by Quentin Tarantino... enough said.
Now with that background in the movie industry, what do indie games offer us? I don't really know for sure! Maybe you could argue a flash game like Defend Your Castle is an indie game gone popular (everybody has played that game, right?) The gameplay and plot are completely different than any other game I've played in the past 10 years - and that's what I love about it. But looking at the game industry as a whole, you don't see very many of these games; even if you look! The reason for this is that there are only so many different ways to tell a story in a video game. With movies you can be told the story from every different characters perspective; whereas in a video you are you! Also video games need to take longer than three hours to complete like a movie would; otherwise the consumers feel like they are being ripped off. This leads to the same grind we've seen over and over again. Lastly, just another point I want to make - how is it possible for there to be a video game about romance? We bearly see any comedy video games. That doesn't leave very much left to choose from.
Slash-for-Thought
Obligatory Wikipedia link
This makes sense because to make a movie one can take advantage of houses already built, landscapes to be filmed free of charge, forrests there for the filming. When a game is made EVERYTHING must be created by the game designers over and over again for each new game and prices soar. What we need is an open source project that gives game designers access to a world and characters they could use free of charge. They could then design the actual game and not waste time placing a tree here and a lake there. Someone should start an open source world, sort of like Wikipedia but instead of an encyclopedia it'll be an online world.
Most of today's hits are just new faces on existing game engines. They are only hits because companies spend a lot of money on marketing to convince people that the new game is really something better.
Sure, they may licence new comic book charecters. Or, for sports games, have the latest players names and stats. But, if the game play still is lousy, then ultimately the game is, too. Improving game play costs a lot of money. It's a lot cheaper to try and convince consumers that the product is better than to actually make it better.
This is no different than movie producers. Indie producers simply do not have the resources to market the film or pay high salaries for name recognition. Very often, their product, as an art form, is significantly better than what comes out of Hollywood, but without the marketing machine, it can't reach the critical mass need for public awareness.
Game producers are in the same boat. Just like indie film producers, all of the indie game producers resources go directly into improving the product and not the frills. So, indie game producers can and do produce games that are as good or better than what comes out of the commercial game houses, however, without the ability to market them, they can't reach critical mass, either.
Weird Worlds!
It occurs to me, browsing the comments already posted, that there seems to be a contradiction between "indie" and "successful" inherent in a capitalistic or semicapitalistic system. Namely, once an "indie" has a hit, it becomes a studio, and thus sheds itself of the "indie" title. Examples of this would be PopCap and the original CounterStrike team (as others have already pointed out).
This particular process does not appear to be limited to game development teams; Dreamworks used to be considered "Indy," until they had a "hit," and then they were a non-indie studio.
In short, I think the so-called "problem" is that "indie" has come to be a synonym for "new."
~UP
Eat the Path.
It not really "indie" when your game is a clone of a game developed by a major studio.
I think soon we are going to start seeing better indie games, due to the maturation of digital distribution. From what I've heard one of the biggest hurdles to getting your game out there, is finding a publisher willing to publish your product. I'm seeing digital distribution programs like Steam being the future of indie games (and maybe games in general). Darwinia was an indie game, and it got very good reviews. I'm not really sure how successful it has been financially, but I know it got pretty good reviews all around. Just my two cents on the matter. My overall outlook is that now more than ever indie games have the chance to flourish.
Do you think it is possible that one day in the not too distant future there will be a point where graphics and physics engines cannot be advanced further, and at that point these engines will become available for a low cost. This is when any small team of programmars can grab a script and start working on the game, because the API will not change, and they will already have the skills required to efficiently make it. A good example of this is the SOURCE engine, it was designed to be used by indie developers so they do not have to build their own engines, but focus on the actual story telling.
A thing to remember here is that the so-called "indie developers" are selling to the "big publishers". That's a key part of the problem here. There's a lot of games out there and few companies with the ability to market the game or manage its online presence. It's like working for a normal business. They supply the tools, workplace, and coworkers, and they get the lion's share of the value you produce. If you want more, then you have to do more.
Isn't that only a couple grand, however?
That has been released for PS2, GameCube, Xbox and GBA. You can find it at retail stores. :)
I'd say that shows it can be done
The Website
Everything I need to know about copyrights I learned from Slashdot.
It was probably shot in 3 to 5 weeks. Video games require you to carry those 40 people for months.
The real problem is not the number of people, but that there's no good way to make a low-budget video game. You can make a good movie for very little money by not spending $100 million on special effects and marketing. Video games don't work like that. If you don't spend the money on having good graphics artists, your game looks like crap.
You can sell a movie with a great story and no special effects. You can't sell a game with fantastic game play and crappy graphics and sound - those games were already sold 10-20 years ago.
paintball
I actually don't really understand our obsession with "hits". There are good indie games out there for anyone who wants to look, and there are indie developers making a living off their games, as far as I can tell. I recently had a ball playing Darwinia, and Rag Doll Kung Fu.
I've made games, movies, and music, and I think it's just about artists and audiences getting over their obsession with being a big hit and dominating the world. Many of my favorite things are smaller scale things that touched me personally, and would not necessarily appeal to the mass market. And I think that's okay.
On the consoles it is far more limited, but I feel that is just an issue of openness. I mean, there wasn't much indie music on minidisc either. But the music in other formats exists, and games on the PC or online exist, and anyone with the talent and skills can still make something cool. And if they can't dominate the world and make millions like EA or Sony... oh well. I still appreciate it.
Cheers.
Hold up now, what do you mean there hasn't been a blockbuster indie game? I'm DAMN sure Tetris is considered and indie game since it was made for kicks and look how popular it is and how much money it has made over the last two decades!
Games are a relatively new medium and so things will take some time to settle. Who knows how it'll all pan out? But there is GarageGames, an early entry in expanding the indie gaming market. They're still relatively small, but MarbleBlast just got ported to the xbox 360.
Cheers.
How many copies do you need to turn over, or dollars do you need to make to be call "a hit". The http://www.liveforspeed.net/ racing game is an excellent sim, and pretty damn popular and uses a fairly unique bit-by-bit sales model.
Initially they produced Section 1, sold it cheaply which allowed further development, then produced Section 2... etc. etc.
By the time they finish, the racing public will have paid a total price similar to todays mass market games, but spread out over a year or two.
An indie film producer can purchase a camera and some film (or use digital for cheaper). Recruit a crew and actors and shoot their film and have it in the can in a couple of months. And not counting CGI and special FX and stunts, they can come reasonably close to hollywood style production values. Afterall, a camera shoots what it shoots. But for a video game, to get the perceived production values of a mainstream game requires so much more time and money. Content is an especially big hurdle since every single sound, model, texture, has to be created and this costs money... alot of money. And if you want really good sound, models and textures... its going to cost ALOT of money. In my opinion, this article is misplaced. Although there are many similarites in production between movies and games, comparing indie movies and indie game development is silly. Primarily, as a percentage of budget, an indie film on a $500,000 budget or less can potentially compete with a $50,000,000 budget movie in terms of becoming accessible to the mainstream movie going public. (Blair Witch Project, Memento, Primer, Napolean Dynamite, etc) but there has never been an indie game created at such a fraction of the mainstream budget for the current time period, that managed to reach mainstream gamers.
This may sound like Tin Foil Hat conspiracy, but I believe what is going on with the big game studios is more a result of sticking to what they know and minimizing risks. When you know that licensing a big name like spider-man guarantee's at least a minimal amount of sales, why risk even a minimal budget on something that you dont know is going to sell at all. Most big game companies seem to take the approach that the more "visible" the game the better the game will be. They arent really going after gamers they are going after TV watchers and Movie goers. The bonus for them is that if they can convince the public that they are the only option then they can continue to shovel out crap at will.
Small Indy devs are more interested in pushing the envelope and creating new things, things that are risky. If something takes off it gets noticed but if it flops...usually thats it..game over. Take Castle Wolfenstien and Doom that little indy company Id pushed a new way to interact in a game world that revolutionized the industry. Back then before the days of anti aliasing and pixel shading, a company could afford a couple of Jazz Jackrabbits and Commander Keens before they hit it big. Today you get one chance unless you develop it in you basement you arent going to get the infusion of capital to ever bring an original idea to fruition.
The flaw in the big studios logic is that for most people that play games regularly they care more about the game being fun and different more than if Joe Movie Star's voice is in it, or if its a licensed character. I cant remember the last really good game I played that had either a license or a popular voice, if it did it wasnt one that stood out enough to notice.
Still the notion that there are no hit indy games is just noise. You can look as small as bejeweled or as big as Homeworld or Freedom Force to see that small publishers do still exist, they just have to have a product thats good enough to drown out the noise around them trying to convince games that they dont exist. Of couse the ones that do break through usually get bought by the big fish so that they can pump out sequels while tying up the original developers to wallow in the stagnant waters they created.
Sadly, many of todays games could easily be made for 1/3rd their budgets if they would forget the voices (who cares) and forget the hours of lovely boring cut scenes that most games skip over in the first place. I love cinematics as much as anyone but give it a bit of a rest, if I wanted a freakin movie i'd buy a ticket and go see one.
Seriously, when was the latest "new idea" you saw with regards to gameplay?
Tetris? Lemmings? Command and Conquer? Sim City? Wolfenstein 3d? Elite?
Everything I can think of these days is a variation on the same general idea (other than flight/driving "sims" of course). The last truly interesting and original game concept was over 10 years ago...
Given that, the only real way to distinguish yourself as far as marketing goes, when limited to a fixed number of game themes, is by graphical or audio superiority. This costs money.
Sad really... if someone was to come up with an original (or even, not flogged to death in the past 5 years), entertaining gameplay idea, they'd do well...
Me? I'm waiting for a decent new 2d platformer to come out :D
smash
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Well, I think the times are shifting. Just take a look at Garry's Mod; the game was coded by one guy in his free time. It became popular because of Garry's interaction with the community, he both listened and responded to the user. He will be selling the latest version for $10 on Steam, making 50% profit. Not only that, but he's receiving the full engine source for Half-Life 2, and he's getting it at no cost. This is a huge deal, considering most companies will pay several thousand dollars for a license to the engine. Big news for the indie crowd.
Perhaps it's time they learn to stop wasting all that money on graphics and console games?
Let's see, Tsukihime and Higurashi both sold over 100,000 copies. Granted, they sell for like $10 in Japan, but the development costs certainly don't reach the $8m average for PS2 games stated in that article. These two are visual/sound novels (think choose-your-own-adventure books in game form really, but with computer enhancements).
Meanwhile, the Touhou game series is so popular it has its own annual conventions in Japan where all the fans sell music arrangements and other stuff based on the game (there's something to be said for having a culture that's not so anal on copyright like the US). The third one just happened this month. Keep in mind, the actual games are made by a single guy! Engine, artwork, and music.And that's with the game being a danmaku shmup, which isn't a very popular genre either (compared to FPS, RPG, RTS, or [ick] sports games). Example gameplay vid (my own)
Having shipped a few titles, here is what I've noticed...
1. Tecnically Details of implementation
On a console, there are numerious technical details (barriers of entry) that need to be worked around.
On a 40 man team, usually there is 1 guy dedicated to just rendering, 1 to CD/DVD & movie loading/playback, 1 for physics, 1 for audio (basically core engine), the rest of programmers on the game coding. Memory Mananement is a secondary killer issue to worry about. Now, you just don't sit down one day and decided to write a rendering / sound engine on the PS2. This thing takes weeks to get working, and years to get optimized. Indie teams just don't have the man-power to build "Rome" in 2 years.
2. Art
"Good" art costs a LOT. Indie games just don't have to the budget, to compete with game studios. Is it necessary? No, but in today's economy, presentation gets noticed more then form.
3. Marketing
If you can't afford the shelf space in Walmart, which accounts for over 80% of the game buying public, chances are, your game is going to be a dud, due to lack of exposure.
The best advice for the indie game devs is "Less is More" -- focus on the _core issues_, namely gameplay. People are more likely to remember a fun game with bad graphics, then a bad game with great graphics.
--
Game Design is about the unholy trinity: Realism, Logicalness/Consistency, Convenience
Unfortunately, far too mamy players are argueing about the wrong thing, usually the red herring of realism.
I have enjoyed lots of games from indie devs lately, and i also bought them all.
http://introversion.co.uk/ have some interesting games, their latest is called Darwinia and is published through Steam, i think they are about to become big, available in both Linux, Mac and Windows. They are also playing with a new game, visit their page!
http://s2games.com/ - these guys have made Savage, an rpg-fps genre with a cool community and great servers with a lot of teamplay and fun. For Linux and Windows. Savage 2 is underway and i have pre-subscribed to get access to the beta-test.
It seems that systems like Steams can help indie devs a lot to get out to people, it certainly helped Introversion a lot.
Umm... I think that game is a "truly interesting and original game concept" that has come out recently.
Other games that I find to be fun and amusing are games that move away from the conventional console controller. (Nintendo realizes this, and thus the Wii controller was designed)
Samba De Amigo, DDR, Guitar Hero, Donkey Konga... games like that have a very bright future.
With the new systems all having some sort of network for gameplay the doors are wide open for possibilities. I always thought that a team puzzle games would do very well, MMORPG's for the PC have that element, but on a gigantic scale. Something smaller and simpler could produce the same addicted frenzy.
One of the reasons I don't development games is not because of my lack in programming skills, but my lack in graphics design talent and music composition. What are some resources for open source sprites and open source music?
I think that this would allow the open source community to come up with some really innovate 2D games, as a lot of other folks like myself don't really care about fancy 3D graphics and such. Tetris, NetHack, and others are not fun to play because they have flashy graphics, but because they have good, solid gameplay. Heck, many people today continue to play older, 8-bit and 16-bit games through NES and SNES emulators.
Personally, I would love to see a new game done using something like the isometric Fallout engine, or side-scrolling games like Duke Nukem, with fluid pixel-based animation (think Prince of Persia).
Titus Barik
I really like FlightGear.org and TORCS on the sim side.
I can see talent and continuity issues in particular trying to coordinate game creation with a lot of people. But impossible?
Developing and publishing a successful, mainstream home console game is a massive undertaking, in terms of both funding and staffing. Hundreds, even thousands of people; millions upon millions of dollars. Many smaller, more innovative development houses are left out in the cold, or relegated to cheaper platforms, like GameBoy Advance.
It's a problem upon which Nintendo has set its sights this time around. Satoru Iwata, Nintendo Corporation's (ex-developer) President has repeatedly stressed how disappointed by the current state of game creation.
Not much is known for sure at this time, but many are speculating that it will be easy to build and sell games for Nintendo's Virtual Console service. Several sources have also speculated that a Wii Developer Kit will cost about US$2,000.00. Now if Nintendo could only somehow help with the other costs of marketing and publishing a new console game, it could bring a lot of cool games to a lackluster industry.
But this isn't the first time this has come up. For example, at GDC this year there was something called Project DarkStar from Sun that aims to level the play field by providing the infrastructure (software and hardware, I think) for people developing MMORPGs in return for a cut of the action -- if the game doesn't make money, then it's free; if the game makes money, then the game developer pays a cut. Intriguing model. They had some nice demos. If it pans out then I think there could be a lot of new, imaginative, risky games that start to appear.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
Galactic Civilization... master of orion anyone?
I'm glad you mentioned popcap, because when they released Bejeweled, it was three guys, and I was hanging out with them while they were scraping by and I had money. Now they have a thriving company, and I am poor. (well, by comparison)
I think that probably any successful game turns into a game company, or gets sold to a large game company.
Id consider Snood a quite sucessful indie game. Proving not only that you dont need a bazillion dollars to develop a sucessful game, you also dont need an original idea.
The inherant differences are enough to explain this.
1) A film is technologically MUCH easier to make than a game.
2) Films have a consumer base of almost 100%, games are much lower, maybe 50% counting consols, and how many indie games are on consols?
3) Films are consumables, you watch a film 1-2 times in your life, some people can play the SAME game 1-10 years, everyday even, therefor they will be MUCH LESS likely to play other games.
4) A game is a MAJOR time investment usually, therefor consumers will take fewer chances playing a risky game.
5) Films have been around a lot longer than games, their market is bigger, more accepted, etc...
For a group to make a AAA quality film (without visual effects) is FAR easier than to make than a AAA game.
"FWIW, Tron 2.0 is considered to be a fairly good game, to quote the Eurogamer review: "It certainly isn't going to win any awards for pushing the envelope, but it's a damn sight better than most of the generic FPS tripe we've seen pass through the office over the last year or so."
Agreed. Tron 2.0 simply came out at a bad time. But the graphics were nice for a tweaked Jupiter engine (similiar to the one in Mysterious Journey II). Now F.E.A.R. is pushing the envelope (it's certainly making my GPU cry).
...was largely done by three guys. Granted, it might not have been the most popular game on the market, but all the critics, and nearly everyone who played it for that matter, loved it.
"Most of today's hits are just new faces on existing game engines. They are only hits because companies spend a lot of money on marketing to convince people that the new game is really something better."
Ah the slash-cynic. Notice how in his world, people don't think for themselves. It's always some outside agent. e.g. marketing, government, aliens.
"Sure, they may licence new comic book charecters. Or, for sports games, have the latest players names and stats. But, if the game play still is lousy, then ultimately the game is, too. Improving game play costs a lot of money. It's a lot cheaper to try and convince consumers that the product is better than to actually make it better."
Once again we see his "faith" in humanity. The consumer is mearly a puppet, and those outside agents are it's puppet masters.
"This is no different than movie producers. Indie producers simply do not have the resources to market the film or pay high salaries for name recognition. Very often, their product, as an art form, is significantly better than what comes out of Hollywood, but without the marketing machine, it can't reach the critical mass need for public awareness."
Slash-cynic! I'd like you to meet Mr techno-faith. You may have seen him on slashdot "marketing" the idea that as long as you have technology. e.g. moores law driven machines, the Internet. No one will ever be troubled by big bad old buggy-whip makers.
"Game producers are in the same boat. Just like indie film producers, all of the indie game producers resources go directly into improving the product and not the frills. So, indie game producers can and do produce games that are as good or better than what comes out of the commercial game houses, however, without the ability to market them, they can't reach critical mass, either."
And once again we see the time honored technique prefected by centuries of cynicism, the repeating statement.
How about Geometry Wars on XBox Live?
Tetris is an abbreviation of tetanus and trismus (a classic symptom of tetanus). Tetanus is what you get when you step on a rusty I piece.
Counter strike, pokemon, wario, super mario 2, gauntlet, dead or alive and a whole bunch of others were initially indie projects, the thing is in videogames HIT indie projects ussually dont stay that way too long. (although they are some exceptions like popcap, gish, alien hominid, etc) the same can be said about the movies you mentioned though.
Go ahead MOD my day!
More opinions here
Quake 3 and Half Life were both indie games, Id and Valve are both independent developers. Activision and Vivendi are to them as Liongate Films is to indie film makers.
Vote for me, and your wildest dreams will come true...
nintendos other trick (at least with the GB and GBC i dunno about the advance) was to require a nintendo trademark to be in a particular place on the cart
The GBA uses the same trick, but it is legally ineffective in the United States. See Sega v. Accolade, whose core findings of law were upheld post-DMCA in Lexmark v. Static Control.
Anti-competition.
The free market does not care about global maxima. It cares only about local maxima, and the local maximum for the retailers' profit is to carry only games from larger publishers. Shelf space is the private property of the retailer.
Anti-competitive. Anti-free-market. Anti-capitalist. Barrier to entry.
But unless the barriers result from coercion on the part of the government, the free market worshipers will call the entry barriers entirely just, as the result of fair protection of retailers' private property.
The "free market" prevented competition? Huh?
The libertarian free market ideal includes strong protection for private property. Shelf space is the private property of a retailer. Libertarians are divided as to whether patents and copyrights, through which console lockout mechanisms act, are private property (Rand) or state coercion (Cato).
Umm... I think [Namco's Katamari series] is a "truly interesting and original game concept" that has come out recently.
Katamari was invented in 1983 by Williams.
Other games that I find to be fun and amusing are games that move away from the conventional console controller.
The topic is "indie games". What indie can afford to have a custom controller manufactured?
Samba De Amigo, DDR, Guitar Hero, Donkey Konga... games like that have a very bright future.
Music games are patent minefields. See Konami v. Roxor .
I always thought that a team puzzle games would do very well
Then go pirate one.
Mr. O'Brien seems to have tunnel vision.
But damn it, I want someone to prove me wrong! Write the next awesome game yourself! (I want a version of Global Thermo Nuclear Warfare please)
;)
Boy, do I have good news for you. It's so frikkin' ironic you should mention "Global Thermo Nuclear Warfare". The article is about indie games right? Smalltime game devs? Because of THIS very article I got a bit nostalgic and wanted to check out what Introversion was up to (remember Uplink?). And guess what? they're apparently writing a "Global Thermo Nuclear Warfare"-like game called DefCon. I am NOT shitting you, check this link out. Best of all, they even have a tradition of porting to Linux
Goddamnit, I want a ferrari!! *looks around to see if a ferrari appears*
You lucky bastard.
"I'm seeing digital distribution programs like Steam being the future of indie games (and maybe games in general). "
If so, then that would be an "I told you so" to all the members of this forum who bad-mouthed steam when it first came out.
A better comparison is to consider where the media is played. For movies this is a cinema and DVD, for games this is on a PC or console.
Not many Indie titles are released on consoles as those platforms are expensive, dedicated platforms with slick marketing and tightly controlled distribution channels.
This is very similar to the mega-cinemas with massive screens and surround sound. Those big mega-screens show mostly blockbusters with expensive special effects, not indie titles. Instead, the indie films make their money from small independent theatres and cult DVD sales.
The analogue for games is the PC, however, for whatever reason there doesn't seem to be a large enough market to support a thriving alternative distribution channel.
You can go into a movie store and if it isn't on the shelf, at least order Eraserhead. There is probably no ability for you as a consumer to exchange money for 99% of independent games over 2 years old.
Sure, some of them are just old arcade games (like Joust) updated for online play. But games like Outpost Kaloki X looks like a good example of an indie game developer making a name for themselves on the Xbox 360.
Again, I'm not a console gamer. I just read about this in a rather glowing Extremetech opinion article by Loyd Case.
TO START
PRESS ANY KEY
Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...
"That's almost it. To make a movie, you point a camera at something, and you've got content. That content can certainly be improved with special effects, actors, direction and thousand of other things, but the base effort is very low."
Um, the modding community has already proven that the barriers to entry are low (your "pointing a camera" as it were). And like film the results can be improved in a thousand ways.
I think the main issue is the literally hostile relationship console makers have with the indie scene. I mean, console makers view your average "indie developer" more as a "hacker looking to crack the copy protection scheme" than as a "potential developer of the next runnaway success", and treat them accordingly.
They've erected massive barriers to entry. Historically the development systems have been ridiculously expensive. The NDAs, licenses, royalty agreements are burdensome. Your developing on a highly proprietary system, where there is zilch for community support so you are going to be relying on the manufacturer a LOT. And they don't even want to consider getting involved with an independant or "small company" until they've approved your "proposed game"...
So you pretty much have to have an established track record of successful titles before they'll even look at you. And worst of all you simply can't go it alone without manufacturer cooperation, because you absolutely need their development systems and support (and these days you'd need to have your content digitally signed with their keys too...)
"Seven-times watered down Marxism isn't really serving us very well, and the public rightly finds little resonance in a class debate cloaked in the language of the Industrial Revolution."
You're right in this, however alternatives are being explored, though not widely spoken of in the main much in the West (in particular the United States). Look to South America and the anarcho-syndicalist movement, the workers reclaiming abandoned factories, and so forth. Of course people will always need to do "business" and will always need to organize. But will it always be done in the same manner? Is it not arrogant and naive to assume history has stopped with late (psuedo) capitalism and a corrupt and deceptive version of representative democracy?
> Saw, which cost a mere $1.2 million ... The average PlayStation 2 game costs about $8 million. ... The cost of the average PlayStation 3 game is expected to rise to $15 million-$20 million, plus another $10 million or so for marketing.
Holy apples and oranges, batman. The economics of making movies and the economics of making video games barely resemble one another. You get movie funding based on a storyboard, and you can hire your buddies as actors. You then film the movie in a couple days, and one person spends some time "editing" it.
Meanwhile in video game developer land, it costs at least $50k for an artist, $100k/yr for a codemonkey, and about $150k/yr for a senior developer or manager (note: I'm including salary, taxes/fica, benefits, floorspace, A/C, etc). Assume you hire a a manager, a senior developer, 3 code monkeys, and 2 artists for 18 months. Multiply that out, and you're already looking at $1 million. And so far we've ignored QA, advertising and publishing.
Seriously though: if the A-list games have 40+ people working on them for 18 months, you can't expect to compete on features/quality with a budget of only $1.2 million.
What this article basically forgets is that the established studios are, in a sense, indie developers.
Consider that id, Eidos, Blizzard, Bioware, etc. are, essentially successful indie developers. In some cases -- e.g. 989/Verant -- a big company gets involved to bring what essentially started as an indie game (EverQuest) successfully to market.
I note that Snood is available for Gameboy DS -- that's an indie game.
The big game companies are analogous to movie studios. They try to pick winners at various stages of development (with similar degrees of success). A no-name independent developer might become interesting to a studio when they have a compelling alpha, while a big-game developer might essentially get backing for any hare-brained idea.
An innovative smash hit game essentially becomes a game genre. E.g. Wolfenstein 3D / DOOM created the 3d first person shooter genre. Having decided you're making a game in this genre, given there's pretty much no "script" (even a comparatively plot-heavy FPS such as Half Life has a laughable plot) so it all comes down to production values.
Unless you're being truly original, you're only going to compete with the big guys on production values. Independent movies can compete on the basis of writing (which doesn't cost a lot of money), acting (which needn't cost a lot of money), subject matter (...). By and large, these aren't seriously useful options for indie game developers -- so unless they're very original they're limited to competing on production values, and they'll lose.
OK, rambling. Will shut up now.
There are tons of free flash games that are fun and addictive. Most were put together by one or two people.
Perhaps there's a market for these games bundled together?
So, exactly how isn't Tetris an indie smash hit?
(8-DCS)
Believe me or not, but Doom I, when it came out, was actually an independant game. Think of it, ID decided to go the shareware route, and offering episode I for free was sort of surprising in 1993. This decision was certainly motivated by the fact that well, ID wasn't so great a company at that time, and needed to get as much audience/buyers as possible, without having the marketting powers of biggest gaming companies. The success it had was orders of magnitude higher than the investments (speaking of money) in it. Does not mean the game wasn't of professionnal quality. Of course it kicked the ass of any other shoot'em up at that time. For sure. But Doom I didn't licence any movie's super-heroe to handle that shotgun. Nope. Just plain old custom-made artwork. After that, the engine/game has been licenced/imitated by many other game publishers, who wrote mods or clones, but well, from where came the innovation and the fun? Certainly not from mainstrean actors.
The point is: that was 1993, what about today? Well, that kind of miracle does not happen very often you know...
Comparing it to films. Well, if you happen to compare the whole software industry and the whole movie industry, you'll find out that there are still small software companies which are able to get out of the pool, do real cool stuff, and get money for it. Then still comparing to movies, well there are many successfull movies which have a public, but are never seen in those hudge cinemas, and you won't be able to buy the DVD at your local super store.
Now why is that that some indie movies can raise millions whereas indie games seem not to be able to do it? I mean, now. Remember Doom I, we have a good example that it can (could) happen. Maybe this (successfull indie games) does not happen because they are simply different and a business model adapted for activity A might not be adapted for activity B. There are many differences between games and movies. The age of the industry, the fact that you play a game several times while by default, you see a movie once, the fact that games or not *only* artistic stuff, there's also technical wizardry behind them (generally speaking, I mean, you can make a movie without Pixar's technology), the fact that a movie can hit your grandmother as well as you, which is not quite true for games, and so on... Now guessing which factor makes it so different is IMHO simply impossible to find, if it makes sense at all.
But basically, what you need to make a successfull indie game is John Carmack's talent + hard work + a good idea + the right context. That's hard.
There seems to be heaps and heaps of 3d shooters, stealth games and up until recently, rts games. What happened to the games that require analysis, strategy and brains? GalCiv is a golden exception, generally there isn't many good 4x games nowadays. Anyone remember sid meiers Covert action? That was a brilliant game, decipher stuff, figure out how terrorist/international crime networks are operated...thats one good example of a thinking game....we need more of it, and as the young gamers of yesterday gets older (i started gaming on my c64, some 21 years ago) one would think there was a big market for intelligent, mature games....hell, many games back then required more thinking than the current crop....remember "president is missing" by cosmi. The only worthwhile game i've played recently was Phoenix wright, ace attourney....on my ds....
What about Darwinia?
I think many of us play indie games... indie game makers may not get rich, but their works don't go unnoticed.
How many people here have played escape velocity, galactic civilizations, lugaru, or exile/avernum?
In some way the market is expanding as more and more people decide they can't afford or just don't care enough to pay 400 dollars to buy the video card necessary to run all the latest industry games. The indies have historically focussed on games that are either 2D or can be run on shitty embedded graphics. They have also usually offered a lower price point. This is going to turn out to be a win for them in the long run. There's 6 billion potential gamers out there, most of which are probably going to be gaming on a tight budget.
I stand corrected. But how difficult is it for indie devs to get on there? I know Valve/Steam needs a reasonable predicted sales, what's it like for Live?
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
Have we gotten so small minded so drowned in our conspicious consumption that we would actually imply without a second thought, that success can be measured by the highth of the pile of cash. Its just this sort of thinking that has led us to the a game market which is incapable properly evovling new paradigms. Movie analogies are marvelous take Clerks made with art in mind on a budget of what 500$ and then its that slippery slope into the world of Bill and Ted as they chase the bling. And has anyone stopped to consider that companies like valve start out beyond the clutches of the likes of publishers like Sierra. The majority of the groundbreaking innovations in video game history came from 'out in left field' as opposed to the sweatshops of blizzard (in which you can always smell 1.25$ an hr labor) or EA.
there are several "indie" games available on the steam engine: Darwinia, Space Empires IV Deluxe, Dangerous Waters, etc.
And the "Desert Combat" mods for Battlefield 1942 as well. They added a lot to the gameplay and so far as I know were provided freely by a third party.
This is JUST WRONG!
ID software defined Indie Hits. And if that is not recent enough for you...
CounterStrike redefined Indie Hit.
The premise of the article is wrong. Yes it is hard to make a hit indie. But it happens, and happens with a vengence.
This article is FULL of errors and was obviously written by an amateur who doesn't know the subject matter. This paragraph proves it:
"Most independent developers take money from the big publishers in exchange for the rights to the games they've developed. The publishers market and distribute the games to retailers. The developers pay back the initial loan from the royalties they earn. Several industry types told me that an indie studio will typically get a $5 million advance on 15 percent royalties. If the game has a wholesale price of $30, the developer must sell more than a million units to get out of hock. In other words, the game has to be a blockbuster, something on the order of Tomb Raider or Splinter Cell. The cost of the average PlayStation 3 game is expected to rise to $15 million-$20 million, plus another $10 million or so for marketing. That means indie developers, who already go bust with great regularity, will have even less wiggle room."
You can see by the very first sentence (in bold) that the writer doesn't know what he's talking about. First of all, the paragraph describes the classic developer-publisher relationship that is in place today. He uses the term "indie" when it should just say "developer". If you are contracted to a publisher and on top of that you have the means to take on millions to develope a game for them, you sure as hell are not an indie.
An indie developer is... well "independant" (Duh!). Meaning they are not tied to a publisher. They self-publish and are small-scale.
The writer seems to think that an indie is just a guy who is not employed by a publisher. Then he goes on to try and claim Will Wright is an indie because he has creative control of a studio?!? Laughable.
Don't be fooled by the "truth" disguise. Science is a serious attack on Christianity.
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
It's called The Long Tail.
Yeah. Wii all wish that someone would come up with some completely new style of gaming that wii could try. But wii all know that if anyone did, wii would just take the piss out of the name. A pity, because wii would all have a great time otherwise.
Me? I'm waiting for a decent new 2d platformer to come out :D
Same here. Something like the old Super Mario Bros. games. But new. A new Super Mario Bros, if you will. Amazing how nobody's thought of that.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Super Monkey Ball - inspired the much lauded Katamari Damacy in obvious ways. - marble madness
Donkey Konga - an EXACT clone of Taiko Drum Master. And there were all the bemani games.
Nintendogs, - Dogz
Kirby DS, Yoshi Touch and Go... - aren't these two very similar? I've only played Kirby
Goldeneye 007 - Quake! Honestly, it was cool but nothing new.
Metroid Prime - Again, not new (apart from in terms of pacing)
I'd add WarioWare (and WW:Twisted) and Alien Vs Predator (vision modes, ceiling walking, pouncing).
Plenty of new ideas out there, but it's hard to tell what's new and what you just missed first time round...
I quit!
This is not compelling stuff.
Then after version 0.9 comes out jimmie the programmer has a baby and can't spend his evenings coding anymore. Molly in quebec that you met on the internet doesn't understand his code, and her artist sister only uses lightwave, not 3D studio like the old artist had an illegal copy of.
My point is that making a good *modern* game is a large project that most small dev teams are not prepared for.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
The original Runescape was Free to play and was written by ONE person, with his brother desigining content. Today it is a pretty big MMORPG. There is still a Free to play version, but also a $5 per month version. At peak times there are more than 120,000 people online on 106 servers. I guess that is not a hit?? I am not sure how many subscribers there are, but I believe it to be in the 50,000 range.
Napoleon Dynamite is not an indie movie. It's not independent. It's an MTV movie. It's the ultimate example of a manufactured movie that's all style and no substance. Being an MTV movie, it received heavy airtime and marketting on MTV. There are plenty of idiots around that want to be cool that MTV has enough power to decide what's cool, and can make stupid movies like Napoleon Dynamite, that they have a stake in, become such the hit marketting sensation. You're insulting indie filmmakers everywhere by making that claim. Indies mean that either you're good at what you do or you can't do it at all. Napoleon Dynamite, in terms of its substance, was such the utter shit that proved the point that no matter how lame your jokes are there'll always be too many dorks convincing themselves they're so hilariously funny if it'll make them feel cool and good about themselves in that "Ahhh, I get it, I like this movie so I must be cool!".
1) An absolute free market destroys competition and innovation. The simplest cursory understanding of the steel, oil, and meat barons of old makes this obvious, or shit, look at Microsoft.
2) Movies have become incredibly cheap to make. CGI has cut the effects budgets down tremendously, and high-definition digital cameras mean that the huge cost of film stock has vanished. Not to mention it takes less time to shoot with digital as you can watch everything right away. You don't get to see how the lighting turned out on the specific type of film stock you used until you take it back to the lab. The only thing that keeps the budgets so high are the actors' salaries.
Ex nihilo nihil fit.