Slashdot Mirror
Indies the Biggest Stars At Game Developers Conference
RougeFemme writes "Indies beat out mainstream studios for most of the Game Developers Choice Awards. FTL: Faster Than Light, an independent game financed by a Kickstarter campaign, won the award for Best Debut. Because of the growing success of the indies, Eric Zimmerman, game designer and instructor at the NYU Game Center, is canceling the Game Design Challenge that he's held at the conference for the last 10 years. 'The idea of doing strange, bizarre, experimental games is no longer strange, bizarre or experimental.'"
Or children of Indiana Jones? :-)
...to the death of indie games. I've released an indie game on xbl and was pretty proud of it. I didn't get rich, I didn't win awards, I did it to make something fun. Indie games now are a rebirth of the games industry and really are no longer "indie" but rather small game development shops. The idea of being indie for me was to be against the regular establishment of publishing, development houses, big budget games. It seems the evolution of indie games will eventually prove that they are, by definition, no longer indie.
I wonder if it had to do with all the big dev's firing CEOs due to idiotic plans to make a product that they can milk for money, rather than a game they can sell to people for that same money
Defender of Microsoft and Communism!!!
Hmm, interesting concept for FTL. Sounds awfully like Psi 5 Trading for the C64.
wrong thread
I was actually lucky enough to have been there on Friday for the expo portion with a student pass, and I have to say the big companies didn't really show up for that portion. Sony and Microsoft had very light presence at the expo, despite having larger booths. Intel and AMD, along with various smaller vendors for something cloud based or app marketing based (that's about all there was in the small business area, apart from marmalade and corona). However, aside from there not being a big large business presence, the indie games were pretty awesome. I'm definitely going to buy Starforge this week because it was a mix of Halo and Minecraft, and I loved it.
No need to sound so apologetic. I also like my games to have some production values.
"Be nice, veer left, and never stop thinking" Iain Banks - Walking On Glass
This April Fool's Day, the staff of Slashdot will post only the most well-researched and carefully edited articles—for the entire day!
That wouldn't be an April Fool's Day joke.. that would be a sign of the apocalypse :P
This April Fool's Day, the staff of Slashdot will post only the most well-researched and carefully edited articles—for the entire day!
That wouldn't be an April Fool's Day joke.. that would be a sign of the apocalypse :P
+1 to parents! :-)
LOL
So, aside from this being a likely April Fools' article...
The best dissertation on the "indie" phenomon I've yet seen:
http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail203.html
I do like a fair number of indie games, of course...but there's something to be said for the established mores of "professionalism."
Indy in the context of computer games just means done outside of the publishing industry. Most games, particularly big budget games, are financed and controlled through publishers. A company like EA, MS, 2K, etc puts up the money, either to a studio they own or another studio, to make a game. They then own all the rights and distribution for it.
Indy games are when a company, or maybe just a programmer, goes and makes their own game, no publishers involved. The size and budget can really vary. For example one of the games, listed, FTL, was written by two dudes in China, and they hired another guy to do the music. On the flip side there is a game like Wasteland (not yet released) that has a sizable studio behind it, but is entirely financed through Kickstarter and thus is independent of any publishers.
It's not so much a question of professional vs not, but a question of funding and development models. You can see professional and unprofessional results in both cases. You probably see more unprofessional results with indy games since, well, anyone can release an indy game you just need to write one and stick it on the net.
The main difference though is assets and homogeneity. Games from publishers with big budgets have more assets than indy games, like full voice acting, higher detail art, all that kind of thing. They can afford more of it so they have more of it. They also tend to be more homogeneous. There's a big outlay of money, thus a big risk, so publishers want to stick with formulas proven to work. They are unlikely to take too many risks, do too much different.
The biggest thing there was Oculus Rift by a longshot. 2.5 hour wait to try it for a few minutes. Granted, GDC is not a consumer focused show, but I've never seen a crowd like that for something at GDC before.
ralphbarbagallo.com
But I do thing stupid using the same terminology to refer to companies/studios that self publish and people who just develop/publish games as a hobby.
After CronoCloud pointed out this confusion to me several months ago, I have started using two different words for these groups: "startups" and "amateurs"/"hobbyists" respectively. Amateurs develop games as a hobby; startups develop games with the aim of recouping the budget. In fact, one could make an argument that there's a huge divide between a startup of people who have worked game industry for years and a startup of developers switching from some other field to games (like Stardock). This makes three identifiable groups: amateurs, inexperienced startups, and industry alumni startups. Console makers have traditionally catered only to experienced startups.
I don't know what grandparent is opposed to, but I'm opposed to the fact that every platform that ships with a gamepad appears to require a digital signature before a game will run, and qualifying to get your game signed requires experience in the commercial video game industry. The indie-friendly stationary gaming platform (PC) ships with a mouse and keyboard, and the indie-friendly handheld platform (mobile phones) ships with a flat sheet of glass. These stock controllers work well for some genres but not for others, and Slashdot users have told me that people aren't willing to buy what's needed to play an indie game in a gamepad genre (a second PC for the TV room, or a clip-on Bluetooth gamepad for a phone).
You didn't need a big budget to program for your computer. Problem has been the cost of programming on consoles was high
Ideally, indies would just program for PCs and phones and leave the consoles and their restrictions behind. But it appears that console owners are the only market of people who actually buy games in some genres. I gather that apart from the geek demographic that frequents Reddit, Slashdot, and AVS Forum, not very many people are willing to connect a PC to a big enough monitor for two to four people to fit around. I haven't even seen anybody using a Bluetooth gamepad to play a game on a phone.
I thought "homebrew" referred to "freeware executed through a jailbreak". Wii homebrew, for example, has used any of several jailbreaks to execute, such as Twilight Hack (LoZ:TP savegame exploit), Bannerbomb/LetterBomb (Wii Menu exploit), and Smash Stack (Brawl savegame exploit). Given the ease of patching the exploits that enable jailbreaks (remember PSP cat and mouse?) and of suing sellers of products that rely on jailbreaks (remember Lik Sang?), I don't see how any game developed with the expectation of recouping its budget can be confidently released through the jailbreak route to market.
The main difference though is assets and homogeneity.
That and the fact that consoles have traditionally been the only hardware on which people expect to play certain genres, such as fighting games and other genres that rely on same-screen multiplayer.
Try out Don't Starve. Indie game on Steam or as a Chrome app. It's a work in progress but the production value is really great. They are working on the story part of it but the sandbox area is quite nice (generative worlds) and the game mechanics are pretty solid at this point.
Features crafting from components, mob algos, npc recruiting, weather systems, r/t combat (not turn based), multiple characters you can switch out, hunger, health and insanity meters you have to maintain (pick flowers, play music, make fancy clothes and eat candy to boost your sanity up). This list doesn't do it justice.
When they get adventure mode completed its going to be even better.
http://www.dontstarvegame.com/
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
a second PC for the TV room, or a clip-on Bluetooth gamepad for a phone
A bluetooth gamepad makes sense for the PC too, rather than buying a whole new PC.
Not if the PC and TV are in separate rooms. To quote adolf: "I'm not lugging my desktop between rooms or stringing destructive ground-loop-ridden HDMI cables around the house so I can play a game on my PC on my [big TV] in my living room."
- IF YOU'RE NOT INDIE...
- Indie Man
...so this has been going on for some years.
... are crap. While I enjoyed FTL and thought it was one of the few indie games worth anything. Most indie games are worse then NES/SNES/PC games from 20 years ago.
The reality is the middle market for game development is coming back via kickstarter and indie games were really mostly smaller developers attempt to push mostly crapware on a gullible consumer base that will eat garbage if they propagandize properly via popular gaming sites.
The internet is a bizarre echochamber of gullible morons when it comes to gaming and you especially see this with how games have become homogenized as they've gotten more popular with the masses. For us expert gamers, gaming has really gone to shit everything has become lowest common denominator. Oldsters like myself hope to see a bit of a renewal of more complex games via kickstarter but most of us older geeks are taking a wait and see approach to see how it will all pan out given the limited funds for projects like PA.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/659943965/planetary-annihilation-a-next-generation-rts
Thnaks. Soccer Team Uniforms