The Future of Independent Game Development

The Guardian's Games Blog has an article discussing where indie game development will go in the next few years after its recent resurgence. The story follows the success of one small game studio, and suggests that the games industry will move to further embrace low-cost development. Quoting: "The likes of XBLA, ... PSN and WiiWare represent a reasonable revenue stream for publishers and developers, especially with a recession looming. However, in-house staff may not have the skills required to punch out cool, hugely intuitive budget games, with little or no management. If you look at something like Geometry Wars from Bizarre Creations, the project was started in the free time of experienced coder Stephen Cakebread, and may never have happened had he been shunted on to different, larger projects. Instead, big industry players are reaching out to the indie scene to source talent."

Comments

Independent development is a good way to go

[Mad Merlin]

I put Game! together in my free time, and initially it had exactly zero art. A couple artists came upon it and liked it enough to start contributing art, and thus it actually has quite a lot of art now.

Web based games allow for very rapid evolution, and also means you can start putting it in front of users way earlier than usual. It doesn't take a lot of code to make something useful either, I'm still the only coder on Game! and that's just in my spare time. In comparison to game studios with several hundred people all working on a game compared to a few people working part time, it's amazing what you can still get done.

Re:Whats with the console obsession?

[samkass]

I'm not sure why you say "and maybe the iPhone". Anecdotal evidence suggests that the iPhone is the premiere platform for independent game developers right now. At least one small Mac game developer said that their first iPhone release generated more money in the first 3 months than all the Mac games they'd ever produced in the history of the company. And it's easy to develop for and deploy for, and the limited size and scope of the games make the smaller and more focused games sellable. The Apple Store makes a lower price viable.

Yes, Apple gets to approve or disapprove your game. To my knowledge, Apple has never rejected a game, although I could foresee a "Postal" kind of thing having some trouble down the road. In any case, Apple is doing a lot more good than evil when it comes to the small game developer.

Re:Reach out to the indie scene

[Anonymous Coward]

If that's what you think of Indie games, then I suggest that you check out World of Goo. It's very refreshing.

Re:Whats with the console obsession?

[KDR_11k]

Yeah but you're comparing it with MAC GAMING.