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

Indie principles rule

[SIInudeity]

Power to the indies. I myself, have been hobby-coding games since I was in Primary school. Power to these guys, who code games for the love of it, not the money.

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

Re:This is a tough business

[ggambett]

We don't compete with the $10M projects. We're not after the same markets to begin with - there's a clear separation between hardcore and casual gamers. Casual gamers are way more interested in gameplay (although the production values have been rising over the years) so you can actually compete with a 2 or 3 person team. The key is to "fight" on your own rules, make the limitations work for you instead of against.

You're right that it is a gamble though. Your game may be a hit or a total flop. However there are some elements all successful games share, over the years you gain some understanding about what makes games work. It's still risky, which is why you see so many clones and derivatives. Yes, the casual space is filled with clones, derivatives and sequels as well. The truth is, innovation is risky. Unfortunate, maybe, but true nonetheless.

Re:This is a tough business

[IntelliAdmin]

You right that you are not in the same market - Now that I think about it, it really has no weight in the issue. Last year my 5 year old nephew came over for a month. I have zero games, and was not about to put out $50 for some game I would never play again. Found a very cool indy game that he and I played for weeks - only cost me $14.95. It was a typical 2D shootm up (Kinda like the games you would see in the old days on the Atari 2600, or Commodor 64), and it was a really fun time.

Remote Admin Tools

Buy the game, it's terrific

[crimguy]

Good article, and I'm glad MMG is getting some press. Take Command 2nd Manassas is a great game, and a terrific achievement for a 2-man development team. If you haven't bought it, give the demo a try - I guarantee you'll be impressed. It has my vote for wargame of the year (in my make-believe gaming awards in my head)

And no, I do not work for the company. I hadn't heard of them until about a month ago.

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.

Re:I suck

[crimguy]

If it's any consolation, the game has hi-res sprites as well. The demo is limited to the low resolution sprites. It's not 3D, but for the genre it's pretty good.

Re:I suck

[AnyoneEB]

(is Wii the Indie dev dream console?)

I believe that is in Nintendo's plan. I hear the dev kit is $2000 (although it may be difficult to get one right now). Obviously, that is more than it costs to get started on PC ($0; assuming you already have the hardware in both cases), but it is cheaper than most consoles. Nintendo is offering easy XBox Live Arcade-style distribution of games via their Virtual Console feature. Actually, on that topic, how has XBLA been for indie developers?

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?

[Aladrin]

Maybe because some people prefer the tedium of MMO grinding to the tedium to MMO writing.

I've wanted to write my own game for YEARS. But that dream is only a dream. I like the planning, I like the thought of having my own game and doing what I want with it, but the reality isn't nearly so rosy.

As soon as your project gains even a little fan-base, you've suddenly got a group of people telling you:

A) Your game sucks because it's not (insert reason/other-game-name)
B) Your game needs to do this. Yesterday.
C) They hate you because you don't listen to them on YOUR game.
D) Everything is peachy and wonderful and they have nothing to say, really, except they want to waste your time and if you don't respond, they turn into C.

This is, of course, assuming you work alone. If you work FOR someone, or WITH someone, you've gained at least half a boss.

Life in game-dev land is NOT ALL ROSES.

Add in the fact that the average career of a game dev is 5 years and you've got a recipe for disaster.

More power to the game devs that make all the games I love playing, but I no longer want to be one of them. I'd much rather pay whatever I have to and just have FUN playing them games. Ultimately, they come up with more ideas that my single brain could ever create anyhow.

Re:Employer-funded education the way of the future

[jalefkowit]

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.

What you're describing isn't something new; it's called indentured servitude and it was a common form of employment in colonial North America. As we've become more attentive to the rights of the laborer, this and other forms of slavery (and being legally bound to a contract you can't get out of is certainly closer to slavery than free labor) have gone by the wayside.

I wouldn't mind seeing employer-funded education necessarily (though one wonders if that would result in the same bad consequences we've gotten from the employer-funded health care system). But indentured servitude should remain in the past, where it belongs.