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Manifesto Games is Live
Conspiracy_Of_Doves writes "As reported before, Greg Costikyan, author of the Scratchware Manifesto has had a business plan in the works for a while now to do an end run around the PC Gaming industry and get indie games to the masses. Wait no more. Manifesto Games is officially GO! PC gamers of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your retail chains!"
Why is this so newsworthy?
Indie games... for the most part suck.
... Er ... Maybe the old saying IS true, Ideas are a dime a dozen.
But think of all the unique indie titles and names that could be yours! Ideas of a lifetime! You could never expect non-indie companies to come out with such awesome games as "Lucky Fisherman" or "Jelly Wars" or "Boogers in my Dinner". But that's not all!! Buy our indie games now and we'll even throw in a special prize. We'll have one of our developers come to your house and build YOUR own game!
Not only that, but they stupidly hype their games to the point of unrealism and expect people not only to believe that, but still believe it after they've played it for a few minutes.
And one of the games, an xcom clone, claims that they have to charge for online play because they have server maintenance costs, unlike RTS's. Eh, wait... Yes they do. Even if it's just the game hub, they have costs, too. Don't lie to me and then expect to get money from me afterwards.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Not necessarily
How many people would it take to make the next Geometry Wars? or bring back a fresh but old-school gameplay platformer, or 2D fighter? Not to mention there's a huge gap between your WoWs and your Solitares. Bigger companies are testing how high they can push up the high end and almsot completely neglecting the low. Indie devs tend to start at the low and work their way up, but without at least a foothold at the bottom of the spectrum you'll never see that middle ground start to materialize.
Indy developers aren't always anti-establishment but most often just some programers having fun in the spirit of the art in their spare time... and IMO we need more people like that in the game industry
Collector's Edition
Hrm.. I dunno.. I took a look at some of the games on the site and they look pretty interesting. I agree, there's no WoW there, but maybe a low end Starcraft, or a decent RPG... Don't count them out yet, some of those games may be more fun that the average "big budget" games being pumped out..
Look at something as simple as tetris.. How many years has it been? There are still variations coming out that people are more than willing to pay for.. Lumines anyone?
XenoPhage
Technological Musings
Tetris...
Sorry, but I had to say it. A game can be something else than an ultra realistic world simulation in many polygons and big textures, and still be fun. In my book that is even a pro, and there are more people like me; and they are casual players - the group that the market desperately wants to target, you will never get casuals to play EQ or WoW - possibly FF, but not for long - and at a friends place.
So, is it possible to do something like tetris on 5 people, get it really polished - and do the QA? Yes, it's a question of getting a good enough idea - and to actually develop it. And making a clone of something old is not it. Second question, will a startup do that? Not in 1000 years.
But if there are 1000 startups...
Yes, I am a biological organism. All rumors to the contrary are just that, rumors.
I'm a game developer. What exactly is Manifesto supposed to do for me? He's obviously not going to put my game in a box and sell it retail. He's not going to get me a development kit for the major consoles. (As you know, only large-scale publishers can purchase those dev kits, at any price.) He's basically going to sell my game for me online, and take a cut. Gee, thanks pal. I can accept PayPal on my own, thank-you-very-much.
The Manifesto Manifesto is nothing but a list of complaints, not a list of services that Manifesto offers.
But then, suppose I'm intrigued, so I want to sign up and sell my game through Manifesto. How do I do that? The "Help" page is busted.
When I moderate, I only use "-1, Overrated". That way, I never get meta-moderated!
I found Dreamfall (by Anarchy Online developer, Funcom) and Castle Marrach (by pay-for-play developer Skotos) in their lists of available games. I don't think that either of those companies counts as "indie"-- though the part where Castle Marrach's write-up calls the rest of the industry "philistines" certainly reflects an unfortunate indie stereotype. The rest, with the occasional exception like Crimsonland or Deadly Rooms of Death, looks like the kind of shareware crap you might find cluttering up download.com or the rotating jewel-case racks at your local EB. The whole thing looks more fanzine than manifesto.
Oh well. Guess we get a stress test today as well.
They did a big logo design some time ago, and I cringe every time I see the one they chose.
MAN!FEST GAMES - Games for the man inside you. Mmmm.
If an Indie game developer tries to make a game to stand up against the "WoWs, FFs, and EQs of the world" their efforts WILL suck in comparison. Successful Indie developers (which I define as those that make at least a comfortable living making their games) don't try to compete at that level. They take a unique idea with a unique approach, or more often, try to appeal to the casual gamer (or they do both). The biggest problem for a decent Indie game is cutting through the noise of lesser works when you have something truly special.
Mutant Freaks of Nature: "Frighteningly Addictive"
You know what I read this logo as?
"MAN! FESTER games".
Given that one can sum up the half the problems with the current games industry as "games by men! for men!" I can't really see this logo attracting new, non-HARDCORE!!! audiences.
egypt urnash minimal art.
And one of the games, an xcom clone [snip]
If you're talking about Laser Squad Nemesis, it was deveolped by the authors of Laser Squad and X-Com -- you'd notice if you paid more attention to the game description. I suppose making a new version of your own game is a clone, but it would be less derisive to call it a sequel. The game is actually quite good, and has been around for a few years now. I'd played the demo but wasn't interested in the full version due to the fact that I don't know anyone that would be interested enough to play against me, and I'd rather play multiplayer than single player.
If there's anything more important than my ego around here, I want it caught and shot immediately.
To answer your question "How many people would it take to bring back a fresh but old-school gameplay platformer"
Alien Hominid was made by 4 people.
Bandwidth doesn't cost that much these days. So nix that as a benefit (indies can always put their games up on Download.com or fileplanet for FREE).
...
Next benefit:
Sure, you could sell it on your own website, but he can generate more traffic
Oh? He can? Prove it.
You attacked the right game for the wrong reason. I visited the site, saw this game, and proceeded to freak out with excitement (I loved X-Com, it is easily my favorite game to date). But then I played the demo... and it is pretty much nothing like X-com, added to the fact that it costs money for a limited single player game (you could go on for ever in X-com) and a multiplayer that doesn't look exciting. I'm not sure how it happened, but it seems like the creators of X-com failed on everything that made X-com great.
Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns
Well that's easy: 1 man does not make a video game. Not even a team of programmers. It's an entire set of teams for art, programming, plot, gameplay, and other elements I'm sure I'm forgetting. Every time some hype says 'from the developers of x' I just laugh because even if it's under the same company, some of the talent has left and been replaced. It's not the same team, ever.
But I attack them for lying, not for the game itself. I didn't care for xcom and I didn't even try this game. Any company that flat out lies on their website won't get anything from me except badmouthing.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
If you're a small (PC) developer: these guys offer marketing for a very reasonable cost. (IE, no other portal I'm aware of passes on such a high percentage of the sale price to the developer)
If you're a (PC) gamer: these guys are collecting some cool games for you to check out. Sure you could have ferreted them out on your own, but if everyone was willing to do that we wouldn't have a need for marketing in general.
If you're a large (PC) developer or a console developer: this isn't for you. Not everything is.