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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.'"

8 of 62 comments (clear)

  1. 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 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.

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      USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
  2. 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.

  3. 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!

  4. 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.

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    ralphbarbagallo.com
  5. 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.