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Indies the Biggest Stars At Game Developers Conference

Posted by samzenpus on from the everyone-loves-an-underdog dept.

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.'"

18 of 62 comments (clear)

  1. East Indies, or West Indies? by jankoh · · Score: 2

    Or children of Indiana Jones? :-)

  2. Welcome... by gabereiser · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...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.

    1. Re:Welcome... by ikaruga · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Don't worry as real "indie" games aren't going away. The only thing dying is the original meaning of the world "indie", something that is unavoidable in the human society. 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.

    2. Re:Welcome... by Nyder · · Score: 4, Insightful

      ...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 don't agree. What is going on is that developers are understanding that Triple AAA titles and spending big money to make games is a waste. And it's funny because that is how video games were for computers since someone started selling the first video game. You didn't need a big budget to program for your computer. Problem has been the cost of programming on consoles was high, and the big publishers have all gone "hollywood" and think that spending $100's of millions of dollars on video games is smart business.

      I don't know about anyone else, but I'm not paying the $40-$50 they want for some of the current games that are seriously outdated graphics and the PC versions are ports that don't get any love at all. I haven't seen a release in the last year that has been worth any money paid ('cept Guild Wars 2), and as a smart consumer, I did NOT pay for any of them. (I paid for GW2 if you get confused). But some of these indie games? $10? Sure, no problem.

      --
      Be seeing you...
    3. Re:Welcome... by Zarhan · · Score: 2

      I don't know about anyone else, but I'm not paying the $40-$50 they want for some of the current games that are seriously outdated graphics and the PC versions are ports that don't get any love at all.

      I agree. I just shelled out $65 for Tides of Numenera on Kickstarter, and I earlier put in $30 for Star Citizen. And they are not even going to be ready for quite some time! I didn't put any money, but I think I'll probably end up buying Hero-U (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1878147873/hero-u-rogue-to-redemption) once it's completed. Also interested in Richard Garriot's new project (Shroud of Avatar), not sure if I'm going to participate in the crowdfunding or not.

      "Indie" does not necessarily mean "cheap" (see Tides and Star Citizen), of course they have smaller budgets than the triple-As even though Star Citizen is approaching $10M, but for me the recent ones have been about a certain renaissance. It's kinda has same overtures as Baldur's Gate series did 13 years ago - renewing the entire RPG genre, but on a industry-wide scale instead.

      And gotta say, I love it. For last 5-7 years I've basically played just WoW and very few other games, until things started gaining more momentum about a year ago. The new indies, combined with Steam holiday discounts (where you can pay $5-$10 for a bit older games) has basically given me gaming back as a hobby.

    4. Re:Welcome... by Mashiki · · Score: 2

      Indie games now are a rebirth of the games industry and really are no longer "indie" but rather small game development shops.

      Welcome to 1980, this is exactly what happened when the PC started taking off. but other platforms like Commodore and Apple were popular. Used to be the small guys would release games for nothing or next to nothing in magazines, and provide you the basic or whatever else so you could copy, and run it right on your computer. I've still got cassettes for my old man's vic20. It was the indie shops of the day that came the big name shops in the late 80's and 90's.

      People weren't decrying the "death of the indies then" they were congratulating the indies on becoming big players, and becoming successful. So it makes me wonder, is this people having a chip on their shoulder about indies becoming successful and possibly becoming the next and future developers? Possibly. But indies really didn't go anywhere in the last 20 years, there just wasn't as much of a demand for them.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    5. Re:Welcome... by Jesus_666 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Well, "indie" comes from "independent" (as far as I know). Yes, it does have a number of more or less vaguely defined additional connotations depending on who you ask but the most basic definition is "a game released by a person or company not affiliated with a traditional publisher". Currently, self-publishing is a rather popular thing and we will see a number of new game development companies arise from this (cf. Mojang), some of which will subsequently be acquired by big publishers. Later, the current indie wave will come to an end.

      That doesn't mean that independent game development will come to a screeching halt, possession of a 3D engine will be outlawed for noncorporate entities and someone will burn all copies of "The C++ Programming Language" out of fear of the language being used for unsanctioned game development. It just means that starting your own video game company will be less attractive for a while until the next indie wave starts. There will always be hobbyist game developers. There will always be people writing and selling their own games. There just won't be a big deluge of them for a while.


      I think, however, that you're conflating indie games with freeware games and are critical of anyone who sells their games and dares call them "indie", similar to how a music band is either "underground" or "a sellout" according to some people. However, not everyone agrees that "indie" automatically implies "freeware"; to many it just means "without a traditional publisher" - or "independent", if you will.

      --
      USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
    6. Re:Welcome... by Charliemopps · · Score: 2

      The same thing happens in every art medium. Look at Rock and Roll, that was supposed to be indicative of it's "strangeness" but after a few decades it was mainstream. The music industry got hold of it. Then came along "Alternative Rock" which was a more direct reference to it's "otherness" from normal rock. But of course, it got so popular, my friends and I joked back in the 90's "Alternative to what? It's the only thing on the radio!" And now we have "Indie Rock" which has already peaked and is pretty regularly being played on radio stations. What's next? It's all labels and doesn't really matter.

    7. Re:Welcome... by Gravatron · · Score: 2

      You don't need a lot of money to program. But you do need money to higher staff like musicians, artists, game designers, sound techs, actors, mocap, marketing, etc and so forth. Games rose in complexity, and thus, so did budgets. Most indie games don't approach the size, scope, or complexity of such games, so naturally they have a reduced budget.

    8. Re:Welcome... by gabereiser · · Score: 2

      No, I published my game on xbl for under $500 including hiring a composer and sound guy for the music/sfx. Granted I did the art and programming myself. But I know guys in the local IGDA who do art for art's sake and don't require $80/hr artist pay. The trick is to find someone who is as excited about the project as you are.

  3. Re:Google Glasses: Concentration Camp For The Mind by gabereiser · · Score: 2

    wrong thread

  4. Expo by Niris · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  5. Re: Indies are nice, but by Rational · · Score: 2

    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
  6. Re:Psi 5 Trading for the C64 by bug_hunter · · Score: 2

    Yay, somebody else who played Psi 5! They're somewhat similar but far from "awfully like".
    FTL has a bit of story and changing scenarios and a far different mood. Psi 5 still had awesome crew personalities and a hectic pace when things got rough.

    --
    It's turtles all the way down.
  7. Re:WHERE IS APRIL FOOL!!! by chromas · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This April Fool's Day, the staff of Slashdot will post only the most well-researched and carefully edited articles—for the entire day!

  8. Re:WHERE IS APRIL FOOL!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    That wouldn't be an April Fool's Day joke.. that would be a sign of the apocalypse :P

  9. Oculus VR by flarb936 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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
  10. Startups and amateurs by tepples · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.