The Indie Game Commandments 23
simoniker writes "As part of an in-depth postmortem of Xbox title Stubbs The Zombie over at Gamasutra, company founder and Bungie co-founder Alex Seropian has revealed his own personal 'indie game commandments' when setting up his new firm: 'First Commandment: We shall establish our game's creative direction... Second commandment: We shall own our intellectual property... Third commandment: We shall not let a third party determine our success, such as the publisher who's doing (or not doing) the marketing, or the funding source (likely a publisher) making demands that are not in-line with our goals... Fourth Commandment: We shall have a small manageable team. We don't want 50 employees making one game over three years in house (we want low overhead), and we don't want to suffer the churn of ramping up and down for projects.'"
India game commandments (Score:2, Funny)
Translation (Score:3, Funny)
#4 is the Lorne Lanning Commandment (Score:3, Insightful)
Then shut down your studio and claim you're going to make movies, rather than finish what had been an enjoyable series.
Re:Translation (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Translation (Score:3, Insightful)
It is too bad that IP theft and misuse has grown to be such a concern that ownership has to be enshrined in commandment form.
Re:Translation (Score:1)
bean counters (Score:3, Insightful)
don't let the bean counters near the talent.
don't let the sales vultures near the talent.
don't worry about the numbers, the game is good because we have talent.
Its arrogant, and I bet it would be fun to work there, but I can't see this as something that can be sustained in todays culture.
The sales vultures and bean counters need to justifie their existance to other dep[artments.
Re:bean counters (Score:1, Insightful)
So while, say, a development studio owned by
TFA (Score:5, Interesting)
The game itself looks cute and well made, although I'm beginning to join the "repackaging an FPS engine sucks" camp.
Re:TFA (Score:2, Interesting)
As someone who's spent a lot of time (in a different industry) on contractor-heavy projects, it was a little amusing to read that he had the exact same list of complaints we always do--and a little surprising that he didn't see these things coming ahead of time. I assume they're universal problems. C
Re:Left one out.... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Left one out.... (Score:1)
Re:Left one out.... (Score:1)
Yeah, but you won't be able to use them to run the game, which is what he said he does. Starforce does prevent him from using the product the way he wants to.
Interesting interpretation via Bungie (Score:4, Insightful)
Check. Marathon: great art direction, a cogent storyline with development potential. Myth: also great art direction, compelling gameplay mechanic for RTS, fantastic atmospheric storyline.
Check. All original development done by Bungie, with in-house artists and designers. They even bought the company that composed the music for Myth.
* Third commandment: We shall not let a third party determine our success, such as the publisher who's doing (or not doing) the marketing, or the funding source (likely a publisher) making demands that are not in-line with our goals.
Aaaaand here's his mea culpa. Microsoft buys Bungie, dramatically alters scope of Halo, makes it a one-platform-launch. Delays game for years. Alters art direction, ends up being a pale shadow of the Marathon design. Myth is sold to a 3rd party developer who produces a lacklustre sequel. Halo is a great success - the only success, really - for Xbox. Crawls onto other platforms much later, the last of which is the Mac - four years after it was demo'd on a blue and white G3 tower at Macworld.
Can't comment. Maybe Stubbs suffered from this.
Re:Interesting interpretation via Bungie (Score:1)
Stubbs suffered from being a bit dull and boring. But hurrah for fabulous cut scenes! Add more shiny!
Re:Interesting interpretation via Bungie (Score:4, Interesting)
There's a fascinating video from Bungie out there somewhere, demonstrating various stages in the development of Halo. It becomes immediately obvious that it was a rather tortured project, with little cohesive game direction behind it, and wildly changing ideas as to what the final product should be. Starting as an RTS, moving to third-person, and so on. The stunning films produced for MacWorld and E3 on are revealed as smoke-and-mirrors - there was a work-in-progress engine there, some nice vehicle physics and some semi-working weapons, but no AI, no missions, and most importantly - no game.
Probably the only thing that really made it through intact to the Xbox FPS was the art direction. (Compare the video from E3 2000 with parts of the final game. Pretty close.) The gamers' nebulous ideal of an earth-shattering Halo, which Microsoft allegedly killed, suppressed or altered, actually never really existed.
Original goals for Halo: hazy. Obviously he's not making that mistake again.
Re:Interesting interpretation via Bungie (Score:1)
Is this the one [youtube.com]? If no, it's still got some pretty interesting commentary.
DN
Re:Interesting interpretation via Bungie (Score:3, Informative)
Bungie not the best to comment (Score:2)