Is There a Future for Indie Games? 217
An anonymous reader writes "If you've been following Greg Costikyan's recent rants (such as Death to The Games Industry), you would have seen mention of one developer's attempt at breaking the traditional games publisher funding model. Well, their game is now in the stores, and whats more it has been getting some pretty good reviews, but has anyone heard of it? Judging by some
press, the marketing has been somewhat underwhelming. So the question is, is there still a viable space for good games developed outside the traditional corporate publisher model, or does E.A. already own the future of video games?" Moreover, when indie developers have to go up against the likes of EA and Steven Spielberg, what hope can they have for matching that kind of success? At least one company thinks they can do it by offering games for direct download. Is direct purchasing enough of an incentive for your average gamer to shell out money on something he's never heard of before?
Well, these guys have been making a go of it... (Score:2, Informative)
Introversion [introversion.co.uk] claim to be "the last of the bedroom programmers".
They've released two games so far, Uplink [uplink.co.uk] & Darwinia [darwinia.co.uk]. I bought 'em both, and thought they were great - definitely not the sort of games a company like EA would release.
For the unitiated, Uplink is a "hacking" game, intended to replicate the experiences of hacking you see in the movies. It's also littered with references to movies, and other computer games (I particularly liek the Frontier-style bulletin boards!) Darwinia is a little harder to classify. It's sort of part RTS, part God Game, tied together with a stylishly done 80's-video-game feel. (That's a rubbish explanation - you'll have to try the demo [darwinia.co.uk] to see what I mean.)
At the end of the day, I suppose it all comes down to acceptable risks. EA have got so used to raking it in from their annual updates to the NFL, NBA, NHL, FIFA (etc. etc.) series that they can't see the benefit in trying out anything that isn't a sure-fire-money-spinner (read, anything that isn't highly derivative of something they've done before). For the little guys to get noticed, I suppose they have to come up with something new/unconventional.
I know which I'd rather play...
Re:Misconeception about Indie Anything (Score:3, Informative)
Yes. (Score:2, Informative)
Is direct purchasing enough of an incentive for your average gamer to shell out money on something he's never heard of before?
The best incentive for a gamer to buy something he's never heard of before is the search for a game that goes beyond the mass-produced flashy emptiness of today's games. Direct purchasing is just icing on that cake. However, I don't know whether the "average" gamer would do this.
I remember when I was 14 and I walked into the Electronics Boutique to buy a game for my 486/33. I didn't have a lot of money, and there were a lot of choices. Some of the games I'd heard of before and read reviews on, but in the corner of the store I saw a game called The Elder Scrolls: Arena. I'd never heard of it before, but I gave it a chance anyway. Over 10 years later, I still play Arena and get that feeling of awe and amazement when I step into the "virtual world" that they had created.
While that story is not a great parallel to the current situation (independent and smaller game shops had a better chance then and they were willing to actually create innovative games and not churn out sequels substituting pixel shader effects for gameplay and content), I just wanted to point out that there are certainly diamonds in the rough.
I think smaller game companies, or perhaps a small number of larger companies that listen to their fans instead of their marketing statistics, have a good chance of reversing this trend but it's going to be an uphill battle for sure.
Indie games in Japan (Score:1, Informative)
These games are usually available for sale in shops specializing in Doujin stuff or by the makers themselves through the conventions and on the Internet.
Try developing for the Mac instead (Score:3, Informative)
The latter is currently something where the Mac community has the advantage. The Mac community is somewhat insular due to years of neglect from major publishers. For many, many years, ports would be slow to arrive, of shoddy quality, poorly supported or simply never materialize. This worked to hurt the sales of what was ported, resulting in even fewer ports, and drove Mac users to look to their own neighborhood for software.
Ambrosia, Freeverse, GarageGames and others came in and said "We'll treat you well, please buy our stuff" and we did.
The Mac shareware market has never gone the way of the PC side of things. It is still vibrant and exciting. People still want to develop for it. Mac users still pay attention to it, and when a good indie game comes out, we spread the word. Mac news sites put it at the top of their list of stories, forums buzz, and hopefully the developers get the money that they deserve.
With the PC market, trying to get attention for your new game is like shouting for people to pay attention to you in the middle of a crowded stadium. You could be offering free money, but even then it is doubtful that you could get the attention of most people. With the Mac, people come up to you when you walk in the door and ask "What do you have for us today?" and if you have something truly interesting, then it isn't too hard for the news to spread far and wide.
So come on over, we'll reward you for the trip.
As for indie games in general, I'd like to see a few developers focus on long-underserved niches instead of developing more games in glutted categories (Puzzle). Non-shovelware sim games would be welcome as there have been very, very few of them in recent years other than "The Sims 2" and "Sim City 4". (wow, two whole games).
Re:EA didn't make ID (Score:3, Informative)
Doom isn't what launched ID Software. It was Castle Wolfenstein. As I remember, CW was published online through Apogee Software. It made ID Software an instant success. After that, Carmack could have released "The Crappiest Game You've Ever Played", and it would have sold half a bajillion copies just on Wolfenstein's momentum.