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?
game mods are the new indie games (Score:3, Interesting)
indie developers may need to licence an engine but theres still plenty of potential to do their own thing
The only indie game I know (Score:4, Interesting)
I loved playing that game years ago, they don't make em like that any more.
On the real subject of indies, I am finding Linux to be a wonderful world of shareware from way back when.
Looking around finding decent gems hidden away in the repositories and distros.
Sooner or later these will be polished and will become the must have games of tomorrow.
The bedroom coder is up there right now making the software, give it time
I think so. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I point the world to (Score:1, Interesting)
Not at all. (Score:4, Interesting)
I, along with many other people (that will no doubt reply to this), have various concerns about a system like Steam, but it is hard to dislike it when it supports the publishing of excellent games like this that push game development into new genres.
Anything that allows independent game developers to bypass the highstreet, can only be a good thing. I just hope that ragdollkungfu is the first of many such lightweight games that can afford to be experimental and actually fun for a change.
Not Really.. (Score:4, Interesting)
The big publishers have marketting budgets that rival the development costs of the title itself. For example, I worked on C&C Generals. The development budget for that title was ~25M USD. The marketting budget for that title was ~15M dollars.
Indie games simply can't compete with that kind of marketting, and word of mouth sales only grow the community that you already have. If you've only sold 10,000 copies of your game, WOM sales might grow your community to 100,000. But if you'd already had 100K sales, you would've hit the million mark instead.
MS is helping the little guys here (Score:4, Interesting)
I think this is an area where MS is helping the little guy, and increasing competition in the industry. I also think this will help MS targeted the "less sophisticated" soccer moms with simple cheap games. From what I've seen sony really doesn't have a viable strategy to compete with this approach. I don't know about Nintendo, but my guess is that the small guys will be able to develop for revolution and to ok.
Flight Sims...... (Score:3, Interesting)
XBox Live Arcade (Score:1, Interesting)
Gaming comics to the rescue! (Score:4, Interesting)
Independent companies often produce stuff that is in some way superior what you usually get - one example would be Decker [caro.net] (Coral Cache [nyud.net]), a graphically unimpressive freeware game for Windows that just happens to be the best simulation of breaking into computers in the Shadowrun world. Please don't click the link unless you really are interested, it's a private site and has a lot of images up front.
However, these innovative or otherwise extremely cool games need to be advertised to the right people. The usual gaming magazine reader will not be interested in games that deviate from the well-known genres like Uplink [introversion.co.uk]. But gaming geeks, "real" gamers and the like might want to know about it - which is where specialized advertising comes into play. If a company advertises with the bigger gaming comics it can reach a decent audience that is most likely more interested in their work than the average gamer. If they manage to get mentioned on Penny Arcade it's jackpot... And as Tycho is fond of letting the world know of obscure games he likes just getting PA to notice them might be a way of generating sales.
Indie game companies will always be able to reach an interested audience as long as there are internet celebrities who are willing to display their banner/discuss their latest game. It's not the megabuck business that mainstream gaming is, but there is an ecological niche for games that are just too far out for the regular gamer.
Re:Not at all. (Score:4, Interesting)
They started out with a squad level WWII game (Combat Mission) that takes place on the western front and uses a really interesting (and effective) WEGO game play model. The game is everything that Avalon Hill's Squad Leader boardgame wanted to be but couldn't, because of the immense complexity of the Squad Leader rules.
Battlefront/Big Time Software started out distributing only via online purchase (with CD sent in the mail) and were spectacularly successful for an indie game. Despite selling smaller numbers, they seemed quite happy with the financial returns (the principals in the company have long experience as game developers for other companies), and have released a couple of sequels, plus published games for several other developers, and are working on a new, more powerful game engine.
To top it all off, they release for Mac and PC at the same time.
A couple of the things in their formula for development that I think made a big difference:
1) the guys developing it are game players, as well as developers, and developed a game they wanted to play, first and foremost.
2) they developed a great game first, and worried about the eye candy later. Eye candy might help sales up front (wow! you can see where the bolts on that truck were rounded with a wrong sized wrench!) but game play and repeat playability is what keeps the game selling.
3) they developed a community on their message boards and really listened and responded to comments and questions. During the beta days they were very active on the boards. As it got closer to release time they were less active, but when they showed up they gave really good information about what was going on. They've continued like this for subsequent releases.
4) they didn't promise what they didn't intend to deliver. If they weren't going to put something in that people wanted, they generally said so, and often explained why.
5) they had great advance stuff to show off the game. They showed bits from an actual game, with comments by the players, even at the alpha stage. They released a fully functional beta for free, with a couple scenarios, but no editor. The beta had some bugs, and some things that just weren't quite right, but I ordered in advance after I realized that even if all they did was ship the beta plus a scenario editor I was going to enjoy it for a long time. Even with only two scenarios the two player play was good enough that people played them for months against various opponents and never tired of it. They got a ton of good feedback from the beta, and took advantage of all of it to improve the game.
Re:Not at all. (Score:3, Interesting)
Despite this, the new version of Steam (The distribution platform used) is meant to include support for third-party mod distribution via. an integrated interface which effectively solves advertising problems. If Valve and indie developers get their act together, Steam can do advertising and distribution in one. Just make sure it is priced right bearing in mind the fact that the distribution costs are far less than through physical media.
Re:Not at all. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:MS is helping the little guys here (Score:5, Interesting)
They say that there are so many individuals with ideas that can't play on those ideas becasue they don't have the money. So Nintendo plans to fund those companies to make games for Revolution.
I think it's a great idea because indie companies will have a chance to make awesome games, and it'll help Nintendo with Revo sales (and possible payback in the game does well enough). My question is will they really do it?
Re:Not at all. (Score:2, Interesting)
That is the best idea I have heard all year. Sounds like another Google project, too. Maybe for next year's summer of code. Heh.
Re:EA didn't make ID (Score:2, Interesting)
A Tale in the Desert is an indie project, essentially. They aren't on any shelf anywhere and are distributed online. They're doing pretty well and have been for a couple years.
Programmer "collective". (Score:3, Interesting)
So if you have a great idea for a game, but need others skills, you can probably find people willing to help in collectives like these. Or make one of your own.
These guys aren't billionaires, but they say they make a very nice life, and have fun at it.
There is definitely a future (Score:2, Interesting)
I've seen this with my own site Sortasoft.com [sortasoft.com], which has been growing at a very rapid pace. The fact that I can distribute games at almost 0 cost allows for a very high profit margin. It also allows me to distribute games for promotional purposes such as contests, etc. at no cost.
As evidence of this... mod me up and then drop me an email (promo +at+ sortasoft +dot+ com) and I'll give you a free copy of my game Funky Farm. Well see if we can get this shameless plug up to a 5.
Independent vs indie (Score:4, Interesting)
You have an idea. You let it mull around the back of your mind for a few years. You get maybe three friends and associates interested in the idea, and over the course of quite a few weekends you pull together a very rough demo. At this point you may need to finagle some art resources either by schmoozing or paying someone. You hit every industry contact you know with your demo, and many that you don't. Look for a "champion" who really likes your game and will help drive it through. While you do that, on the strength of your demo get some fundraising going. VC's are nice, but really hit up small businesses, people, friends, family, etc. Now scale up production, moving into a low-cost but rat free office space, and hiring artists, developers, an office manager, a business manager, etc. Appoint yourself project director (or somesuch), and get to work making that game. Hit your milestones, piggyback into your publisher's E3 booth, and ship. There is nothing in the above scenario that prevents people who are genuinely interested from breaking in.
Most independent studios really are indie studios that got funding and scaled up. The studio that released Alien Homonid, for example, started as a few guys working their tales off, found investers, scaled up, created a great game, shopped for a publisher, and released. Other studios get a publisher involved earlier to mitigate risk.
And these aren't rare: somewhere in the realm of 1/2 of all games are created by independent developers. See that logo that pops up on the screen after the EA title? That's the developer. Not all of those are independent, but many are.
The difference between and indie and an independent developer is just that an independent developer wasn't afraid to grow. At some point they may get bought out by a major studio and enter what is somewhat pessimistically known as a "decline phase," but that's also another step in the natural evolution of things. I believe parent poster pointed out the "craploads of cash..."
If you want to be independent, and all of the risks / control that entails, you can do it. Or perhaps more strongly, that is how it is done.