Why Game Developers Go Rogue 214
cliffski writes "Jay Barnson interviews the new crop of indie game developers.
How could anybody abandon the steady paychecks, access to the best tools and engines, large teams of skilled colleagues and the glory of working on one of next holiday season's blockbusters for a chance to labor in relative obscurity on tiny, niche titles?
Steven Peeler was a senior programmer at Ritual Entertainment. For him, leaving and forming the one-man studio Soldak Entertainment came down to a desire for creative freedom. 'I really wanted to work on an RPG, and Ritual only made shooters,' he says. 'There were some annoying politics going on that was really frustrating, I disagreed with the direction the company was taking, I was really tired of pushy publishers and I just wanted to do my own thing.'"
Because we can (Score:3, Insightful)
'Nuff said.
Chance to do something different (Score:5, Insightful)
A steady paycheck looks good on paper and many people are perfectly happy working on someone else's ideas for their entire lives. Eventually though, people with a creative streak have to have an outlet or they go insane. Sometimes a part-time hobby is enough, sometimes it means quitting the steady job.
Steady Pay Checks ? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure why anyone refers to employment as a games developer as "steady". They are precarious outfits, pathetically dependant upon "hits" that may or may not come again, until they burn you out and drop you like a stone.
An easy explanation for developers "going rogue" is that the pay is so very very bad that the difference between unemployment and salary whilst you write the code is so small that it is not as hard a decision as in other lines of work.
Re:One drawback of indie games: Local multiplayer (Score:3, Insightful)
Should I just bite the bullet and develop my prototype for Windows?
No, just do it literally. It's been years. If you haven't solved it yet and you're still posting the same old crap, your prototype isn't ever going to be made, much less a finished game.
Stop trying to hide your QQing under the guise of actually doing something development-related
Piracy and Anti-DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
Interesting quote from the article:
"Some of them cloak it all with this thin veneer of 'sticking it to the man' and being 'anti-DRM' and 'anti-big corporations.' Despite me giving a free demo, no DRM, innovative games, at reasonable prices with great tech support from a one-man company, the bastards still rip me off and take my stuff anyway."
So in other words, this guy releases his game with no anti-piracy DRM measures and people still play his game without paying him.
I get into piracy arguments with other folks all the time. They talk about how they want "DRM-free" music, information wants to be free, most modern music is crap anyways, etc. But when it comes down to it, they're just being cheap.
Re:W2 = loser, 1099 = winner (Score:5, Insightful)
Go solo, everyone. Cut the unbilical cord and if you're a hard worker, you'll prosper. Then find about 10 of your previous coworkers, offer them a few bucks more an hour, and bill them out at 5X their pay to not just your old employer but their competitors, too. 3. Profit!
It's called being a contractor and the reason you charge 5x your old salary is because you have to pay your own social security, health insurance, 401K, etc etc etc.
There's a lot more to a W-2 salary than the money in your pocket after taxes.
Why Game Developers Go Rogue (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Mostly lack of business acumen (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you're barking up the wrong tree a bit here. History is chock full of studios founded by programmers, artists, and designers that broke off from their employer to do something interesting. In many cases, it was to escape the employer's risk aversion. i.e. It's not that games other than First Person Shooters don't sell. It's that large companies know that FPSes sell, so they don't want to take a risk on anything else.
The smaller studios, OTOH, have an opportunity to pursue new gaming styles and lines of games that don't have to align with what the big executives THINK will sell. Sometimes they make it big. More often, they manage to prove out the market before being folded back into a larger company. That larger company then sees "hot new opportunities" that didn't exist before. Could the large company have opened up the market to begin with? Sure. But why take the risk when someone else will do it for you?
The end result is that these smaller studios (these days often referred to as "Indies" partly due to the low investment capital needed to start making modern games) make their money in a tried and true business fashion: An exit strategy.
The fact of the matter is that very few small business owners make it big. (Investors like to tout the "90% of small businesses fail" number.) There's nothing inherently different about the gaming sector.
Re:Chance to do something different (Score:5, Insightful)
Speaking as someone whose done it (not in the games industry, but a similar life changing career move), there can come a time when you'd rather be happy and poor then well off and having to do what someone else says all the time. This is especially true for people of a creative flair.
Besides, if things go well, the period of time with little money will eventually end. Even if not, you won't have that constant feeling of 'I should have done that thing' for years afterwards.
Believe me, that's a killer. I've worked with people who chose the safe path over their dreams, and they tend to be unhappy about it.
In one case, the guy was so openly bitter (in his case about not having risked going to medical college), that he was quite unpleasant to anyone else who talked about taking a chance with their own careers/lives.
For myself, I spent several years perpetually broke, but undeniably happier then I'd been for years. I'm not broke any more, but I'm still happy.
Re:One drawback of indie games: Local multiplayer (Score:5, Insightful)
Historically != Modern Approach
* WiiWare
* XBox Live
* PlayStation Network
These are all services that Indies are able to break into these days. For a small investment (free - $600 for XBLA, $2000 for a WiiWare dev kit) you can make your game for one of these consoles, then offer it for download for a small fee.
Case in Point: Defend Your Castle [wikipedia.org] went from a single-player flash game to a local multiplayer title that happens to be the third most popular game on the WiiWare service.
Now if you mean "Indie" to mean "Homebrew", you're barking up the wrong tree. Go get a copy of DevkitPro [wiibrew.org] + a copy of Twilight Princess for the Wii. That will allow you to develop local multiplayer for a console. Another option is to support XBox 360 controllers on Windows PCs. They are designed as USB devices intended for plugging into either a computer or a console. You can then encourage players to purchase these controllers.
Assuming your homebrew title is good enough, that is...
Re:Mostly lack of business acumen (Score:3, Insightful)
in todays society, if you are programming for a company, you will have to put up, or no paycheck. In atleast 90% of america's economy it is political and ego stroking. Making someone look good. Only way you can get away from this, is if you are the Sole Programmer in a company of One... and at that, you will have to stroke someone's ego to atleast sell your code/product.
Re:Piracy and Anti-DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem in that case is that he hasn't got his business model sorted.
If people can take your product and walk without paying, they will, its human nature. If them doing that robs you of your livelihood, then the solution is change the product.
Not DRM, that's a train that goes no place good.
No, the solution would be to have a game with on-line components (even as simple as a score league and competitions with small prizes) that people must be registered users to access. So long as the online componants add value, your users will register and pay.
If not then yours is just another in the sea of games people feel no need to purchase.
Re:Piracy and Anti-DRM (Score:4, Insightful)
What it comes down to is, pirates will pirate regardless of whether there's DRM or not. DRM is only an inconvenience for paying customers.
"Some of them cloak it all with this thin veneer of 'sticking it to the man' and being 'anti-DRM' and 'anti-big corporations.' Despite me giving a free demo, no DRM, innovative games, at reasonable prices with great tech support from a one-man company, the bastards still rip me off and take my stuff anyway."
And I suppose he has proof that people pirating his games are the same people who claimed they only pirate to stick it to the man?
Re:Creativity (Score:1, Insightful)
It may be an art form to the advertising & publicizing departments when promoting the games but to the decision makers its usually not.
1. Look at what kind of games are doing well at the moment.
2. Pick game engine to do the game based on money/engine popularity.
3. Pick a setting/environment.
4. Write a few bits of a story around the setting.
5. Try to add one or two bits of gameplay somewhere if there is enough time.
6. Churn out game as soon as possible.
Most game companies seem to focus on graphics and very little else.
Good luck to the guy. I wish more people would do this. I'd rather play an awful looking game with good gameplay than one of these 'interactive cut-scene' pieces of crap like most games are lately.
don't get sick -- Re:W2 = loser, 1099 = winner (Score:5, Insightful)
I have had one W2 job in my life
That speaks for itself. You really have had very little experience, and people should take your anecdotal analysis with a grain of salt. I have had many W2 and 1099 jobs, and in the long run I greatly prefer the stability of W2 jobs, even though I really enjoyed the weird hours, huge paychecks, and random nature of my early contracting jobs.
I'd say try it before you get too old, or at least give moonlighting a shot.
Go solo, everyone.
1099 jobs are great when you are young, healthy, and full of piss and vinegar and can afford to start life over again if you screw up. If you want to go solo over age 30, make damn well sure you have a contingency plan, or are networked and diversified out the yin-yang.
Also, don't get sick! Unless you live in a state that has passed laws allowing groups of people to pool money and buy discount healthcare, you are F-U-C-*-E-D. Once you go on record with a HINT of chronic illness, you will very likely not be able to get insurance. The government mandates that insurance companies sell you insurance if you have a pre-existing condition, but they don't mandate the price. You could very easily could end up requiring to pay $3~5k per month for health insurance.
I'm eternally grateful that W2 companies get such great deals on group health coverage.
Re:W2 = loser, 1099 = winner (Score:1, Insightful)
If you think that a 401(k) is for idiots, then you obviously have no understanding of retirement planning. Yes, if someones makes gobs and gobs of money, they could just put it in safe and take it out as needed. Here, in the real world, we have something called income taxes, capital gains taxes, inflation, and an average market return of 8-12% a year (depending on what view you take). Plus, if you are lucky like me, you can get matching on a 401(k) /cheer
Insurance is also only cheap if you have a clean bill of health when you get it and have a fairly binding agreement. Many insurance companies also reserve rights to drop customers in some situations. This happened to my cousin, who at 26, had colon cancer. She made a full recovery and was dropped by her insurance company later -- with full legality (so my sister, aunt, uncle, uncle and bro-in-law who are lawyers told me).
Also, lest we forget most start up companies fail. Contracting is great when one has a gig, however even persons with great talent lay idle sometimes.
Even if you are a badass at computer science, programming, etc unless you have a solid understanding of finance the odds are greatly against someone making solid money - also what about providing for a spouse & kids? I would feel pretty bad if I couldn't pay the bills because I planned poorly.
Re:Because we can (Score:5, Insightful)
Version 1:
"I really wanted to work on Performance Parts, and Auto Parts Company X only made roof-racks and cargo-nets," he says. "There were some annoying politics going on that was really frustrating, I disagreed with the direction the company was taking, I was really tired of pushy investors and I just wanted to do my own thing."
Version 2:
"I really wanted to work on graphics apps, and Software Company Y only made custom data management software," he says. "There were some annoying politics going on that was really frustrating, I disagreed with the direction the company was taking, I was really tired of pushy clients and I just wanted to do my own thing."
Why should we care just because they're a game developer?
Re:Mostly lack of business acumen (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact of the matter is that very few independent programmers make it big.
I think that's exactly the mentality many developers are trying to escape by "going rogue". Many of them would be happy making a modest living, never "making it big", while creating the games they want to make.
There is another article [escapistmagazine.com] in the same issue of Escapist that describes the history of Kingdom of Loathing. Nobody's getting rich there, but they jobs a ton of game developers would kill to have.
Re:Mostly lack of business acumen (Score:3, Insightful)
What is insightful about this comment?
There is a lot of space between a starving programmer and "making it big". Their goal is not to make it big, but to make a living with what they love.
You don't have to be Picasso to make a living with painting. You don't have to be Metallica to make a living with music. And you don't have to be Sid Meier to make a living with your games.
Re:Piracy and Anti-DRM (Score:3, Insightful)
No, the solution would be to have a game with on-line components (even as simple as a score league and competitions with small prizes) that people must be registered users to access. So long as the online componants add value, your users will register and pay.
Your solution is seriously flawed. What you suggest is really just DRM that isn't necessarily "forced" on users. With this solution, you can only take your game in two directions:
1. Make your game suck enough without the online components so it forces people to register the game. However, why would they register if all they know is that your game sucks?
2. Make your game good without the online components and hope people will register it because it's fun. If the game is already fun, why would people with tight budgets pay more for the game?
You are also not taking into consideration that there are people who like to play games for themselves and don't really care about competing against others. You are also not taking into consideration that games may be single player by nature and making it mutliplayer or pseudo multiplayer would only damage the feel or the theme of the game. You also assume that the game developer has the resources (programmers with net coding experience) to create online components. Not necessarily a fair assumption.
Re:Piracy and Anti-DRM (Score:3, Insightful)
Who in their right mind would think that making a game suck without an online component would be a good idea?
Methinks you haven't really thought this through.
You add MORE to the game, not take stuff away.
Re:Because we can (Score:2, Insightful)
Someone left a company because they were unhappy... Really? I'm shocked.
It's analogous to an article stating that a lot of game developers use cars to drive to work, eat food for energy, and laugh at funny jokes.
Maybe if there was some more interesting details as to the specific situation, or some kind of examples of the corporate politics that lead to game design elements that we the gamers could see in the end result it would be worth reading but, c'mon...
Re:Mostly lack of business acumen (Score:5, Insightful)
You can be the greatest programmer in the world, but until the realities of the market are well understood, you're going to be starving.
The fact of the matter is that very few independent programmers make it big.
Another fact of the matter is: independent programmers don't need to make it big. They just need to make a decent living doing what they love, and that's certainly achievable if you know your market well. That last bit is important. You're no longer just a programmer, now you're suddenly also a marketer.
Through the big-game phase (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:don't get sick -- Re:W2 = loser, 1099 = winner (Score:1, Insightful)
"I have had many W2 and 1099 jobs, and in the long run I greatly prefer the stability of W2 jobs, even though I really enjoyed the weird hours, huge paychecks, and random nature of my early contracting jobs."
That speaks for itself. You really have had a very unique experience, and people should take your anecdotal analysis with a grain of salt.
Re:don't get sick -- Re:W2 = loser, 1099 = winner (Score:2, Insightful)
nice try.
i didn't assert i was correct. i asserted anecdotal evidence should be taken with a grain of salt, mine included.
that is the key difference.
Re:Steady Pay Checks ? (Score:3, Insightful)
I've become wary of the game development "industry", not because of the terrible pay, but the terrible hours. Or at least, the incredibly stupid combination thereof. Even your brother's article mentions the brutal hours that just drive intelligent people away.
Because that's not real (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, and the streets paved with gold. Because, you know, the game industry isn't run by a group of dinosaurs in a market with too little external pressure to drive out famously bad production practices.
The steady paychecks don't exist in a contracted world. The best tools and engines are things that were shaky when they were one-man hacked together ten years ago in C by someone who thought they should still have been writing assembly. The large teams of skilled colleagues are college kids being paid next to nothing while they're burned out by 70 hour workweeks in day one crunch mode shops.
If game design firms like this existed, the two year attrition in gaming wouldn't be 70%. This article is about fantasies of how the industry works, not realities; that's why the author can't figure out what's going on.
Re:Not quite, I'm affraid (Score:3, Insightful)