Our Indie Experiment - MadMinute Games

baby arm writes "MadMinute Games' Norb Timpko has contributed the first installment in a series on independent game developers. He describes the balancing act required to get a game like Take Command: 2nd Manassas out the door while still having families and day jobs."

Comments

This is a tough business

[IntelliAdmin]

I have total respect for any Indy game developer. It is a very tough business to get into. It is so saturated with Hollywood types that are constantly taking a loss on $10 Million game projects. Building a game is such a gamble. Its not like a utility, or p2p app where you can gauge the interest in it - you never know until you release the game what type of response you will get. Sometimes these Indy guys work on a game for years, release it and get nothing back.

Remote Admin Tools

I suck

[suv4x4]

If I say that in their low res demo movies it's obvious that the avatars use pretty low res billboard textures will make me suck won't it :P

I'll get modded down, I'll get replies asking "if I don't have better games, I better shut my mouth" or how bashing is nor productive and how many work went into this game.

But this is why the gaming industry is so tough nowadays. While all developers are small teams of talented boys and girls fascinated with technology, big budgets quickly up the ante and spoil it for everyone.

Indie games have to differentiate and separate themselves from the general games market and stress on different values, like gameplay, originality and fun (is Wii the Indie dev dream console?).

If they fight within the big market, too many people will stare at the low res textures on the avatars and sigh.

HELLO US EDUCATORS

[RealBeanDip]

From TFW:

I bombed vectors when I first took it at the Naval Academy, then I bombed it again when I took it at Penn State. Neither time did I care enough to really apply myself to learn. But when I realized that I had to learn vectors to make the little soldiers move realistically, I applied myself and mastered them. I wrote some C++ classes and immediately forgot them again, but the point is that when I finally had a real goal and application I was able to finally learn something that had eluded me twice before. I just took a little motivation.

Please read and re-read that. It is this kind of motivation that is missing in a GOOD CHUNK of our K-12 education and I think it has a A LOT to do with why a lot of kids are not interested in "core" courses.

Re:HELLO US EDUCATORS

[suv4x4]

Please read and re-read that. It is this kind of motivation that is missing in a GOOD CHUNK of our K-12 education and I think it has a A LOT to do with why a lot of kids are not interested in "core" courses.

Same here. But better give it up, educators world-wide believe you gotta stuff "knowledge" in the kids head against their will, or they will turn into little vegetables.

A lot of the stuff you learn in school isn't even useful, a lot isn't useful for the particular student (for example vectors are a must for 3D graphics, but quite not for a music composer), and a lot isn't given enough context to be seen why it's useful.

Only advice is: let your kids know they are not worth their brain storage in bytes mechanically copying information from school, and help them learn the right stuff.

Re:HELLO US EDUCATORS

[DeadChobi]

Anything that makes a student think critically about how to solve problems is good for them and directly applicable in the real world. Science and Mathematics may not be directly useful, but the critical thinking and problem solving skills make them an asset. You may not realise this, but after you finish Calculus you will have studied a new method for looking at and breaking down the world. This is completely independant of and yet built on geometry and algebra.

And when you're writing music, you still have to think about how the music sounds as you're writing it on paper. Mathematics and music both involve some heavy mental visualization skills, and there is much scientific evidence to show that studying the latter assists the former.

I think that the biggest mistake students make is thinking that because they'll never apply it directly, they dont need to study it. It's ultimately not about studying something so that you know how to do it. It's about studying something so that you can think in different terms if it becomes neccessary. A lot of thinking outside the box is done by people who have learned to use several different boxes, and just because one box doesn't seem directly applicable at the time, it does not mean you should not study it.

I agree that rote memorization is crap and should be banned from teaching curiculums. Oh, except for science curicula where memorizing physical laws and their names are very important to learning the language. Most students see the technique, and think "Oh, this is what we're supposed to be learning, how boring." They rarely stop to think "why is this useful to me? Is there something more I should be getting out of this?" And when the last question never gets asked after the former, then educators have failed.

Just the other day, in my sociology class, we were talking about the education system. The instructor mentioned a general movement toward going back to teaching communication skills, basic mathematics, and critical thinking. What a lot of teachers never mention is that science courses are there to force you to think critically about something. If your teacher never gets you to do that, then they have failed and need to go back to school.

Re:HELLO US EDUCATORS

[suv4x4]

Anything that makes a student think critically about how to solve problems is good for them and directly applicable in the real world. Science and Mathematics may not be directly useful, but the critical thinking and problem solving skills make them an asset. You may not realise this, but after you finish Calculus you will have studied a new method for looking at and breaking down the world. This is completely independant of and yet built on geometry and algebra.

This is the regular excuse, but it doesn't really work this way. Students aren't thought to apply critical thinking. They are thought to learn facts and formulas by heart, and to fit a specific mold the educational material has created.

It's not a coincidence that some of the greatest mathematicians of the 20-th century never were good at math in school. Actually Einstein was pretty bad at physics and math in school too.

Our brain has limited capacity for coming up with new "models" of the world. If all brains of our children are trained into the same model of the world, this limits their capacity to "think outside the box" (to use a cliche).

In other words, the more you learn based on a "mold" applied to all students, the more limited you become in your views.

Instead we should be given our options and let us learn organically, based on what we're interested in and what makes sense in the context of each individual. This is how we're built to work. Apparently though some people think they're smarter and want to force their "wisdom" on the people around them.

Employer-funded education the way of the future?

[scgops]

Most elementary, junior high, and high school teachers in America are government employees. That's bad enough. To make matters worse, they're given a checklist of things they must teach (and answers that students must regurgitate) in order to continue being employed.

Now, I don't have high expectations for civil servants in general, but I can't escape the conclusion that teachers are set up to fail. The ones I know work far more hours than any of their governmental supervisors. Given that the vast majority of their time remains focused on mandatory teaching & testing subjects, they have little time for motivating anyone.

Sadly, the only thing in American society that seems to evolve more slowly than the education system is the legislative baggage that mandates how teaching is supposed to be done. For many school systems, educating young people is being replaced by years of babysitting, with diplomas handed out mostly on the basis of acceptable attendance percentages for a suffient number of years.

Perhaps what we'll see in the future is a more entreprenurial version of way the military operates. Employers could foot the bill for training employees in skills that matter for their specific jobs. In exchange, employees would sign 2, 4, or 6-year contracts for long hours in low-paying jobs during which they can be fired but can't quit.

Re:Why waste time?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why waste time playing games when you could be writing them, like this guy? How much time do you waste grinding in WoW, trying to increase some number in a database? You could spend that time doing something productive -- creating something.

Pfft. I spend all day long doing something productive at work - writing code, fixing PCs, toubleshooting network issues, talking with clients... When I finally get home in the evening I've got more productive stuff to do - clean the house, mow the lawn, feed the pets, do the laundry... When I finally come up with a few hours of free time, the last thing I was to do is "something productive".

It's very nice, at the end of the day, to kick back and play WoW. I don't know how you play WoW, but the last thing on my mind is some number in a database. I'm too busy chatting with my friends, killing critters, following storylines, navigating dungeons, and enjoying the scenery.