The Indie Game Commandments

simoniker writes "As part of an in-depth postmortem of Xbox title Stubbs The Zombie over at Gamasutra, company founder and Bungie co-founder Alex Seropian has revealed his own personal 'indie game commandments' when setting up his new firm: 'First Commandment: We shall establish our game's creative direction... Second commandment: We shall own our intellectual property... Third commandment: We shall not let a third party determine our success, such as the publisher who's doing (or not doing) the marketing, or the funding source (likely a publisher) making demands that are not in-line with our goals... Fourth Commandment: We shall have a small manageable team. We don't want 50 employees making one game over three years in house (we want low overhead), and we don't want to suffer the churn of ramping up and down for projects.'"

Comments

#4 is the Lorne Lanning Commandment

[Moryath]

When you reach the end of the game's development, fire EVERYBODY so you can keep the royalties for yourself.

Then shut down your studio and claim you're going to make movies, rather than finish what had been an enjoyable series.

bean counters

[Nf1nk]

So basicaly his comandments are
don't let the bean counters near the talent.
don't let the sales vultures near the talent.
don't worry about the numbers, the game is good because we have talent.

Its arrogant, and I bet it would be fun to work there, but I can't see this as something that can be sustained in todays culture.
The sales vultures and bean counters need to justifie their existance to other dep[artments.

Re:bean counters

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but that's the whole point of his founding wideload to begin with. With a wholey independent development company that can sustain itself on moderatly successful games, it gives them the freedom to experiment and develop the sorts of games they'd like to develop. The beauty is, any game they deliver to a publisher will make the bean-counters and sales vultures happy, since the publisher won't have to put the kind of cash into development that they normally do.

So while, say, a development studio owned by EA could never adopt this method and be sustained in today's culture as you say, a studio like wideload can still thrive.

Also, if you rtfa you'll find that he's not as arrogant as your summerizing of his first few commandments would paint him.

Re:Translation

[chrismcdirty]

I interpreted #2 as "We will not let a publisher run our intellectual property into the ground with a series mind-numbing sequels."

Re:Translation

[andrewman327]

I am sure that the OSS fanboys on /. are going to love Rule #2. I should ammend my sig to read: "Information wants its damn latte. NOW!"

It is too bad that IP theft and misuse has grown to be such a concern that ownership has to be enshrined in commandment form.

Interesting interpretation via Bungie

[thatguywhoiam]

* First Commandment: We shall establish our game's creative direction.

Check. Marathon: great art direction, a cogent storyline with development potential. Myth: also great art direction, compelling gameplay mechanic for RTS, fantastic atmospheric storyline.

* Second commandment: We shall own our intellectual property.

Check. All original development done by Bungie, with in-house artists and designers. They even bought the company that composed the music for Myth.

* Third commandment: We shall not let a third party determine our success, such as the publisher who's doing (or not doing) the marketing, or the funding source (likely a publisher) making demands that are not in-line with our goals.

Aaaaand here's his mea culpa. Microsoft buys Bungie, dramatically alters scope of Halo, makes it a one-platform-launch. Delays game for years. Alters art direction, ends up being a pale shadow of the Marathon design. Myth is sold to a 3rd party developer who produces a lacklustre sequel. Halo is a great success - the only success, really - for Xbox. Crawls onto other platforms much later, the last of which is the Mac - four years after it was demo'd on a blue and white G3 tower at Macworld.

* Fourth Commandment: We shall have a small manageable team. We don't want 50 employees making one game over three years in house (we want low overhead), and we don't want to suffer the churn of ramping up and down for projects.

Can't comment. Maybe Stubbs suffered from this.