NinjaBee Games writes "A continual debate rages about the nature of making independent games. 'What is Indie game development?' This argument endures throughout the year, but it's almost never heard louder than right after the announcement of finalists or winners of an Indie game development contest. The debate currently is in full swing after Microsoft's recent announcement that they will be changing the name of the Xbox Live Community Games section to Xbox Live Indie Games. In light of this important debate, Brent Fox of Indie developer NinjaBee has written a blog post in which he claims he has finally found the 'clear and undeniable' definition of Indie."
Indie music is music published independently. Indie games are games published independently.
If an indie game is taken up by a big publisher, its no longer indie.
Should an indepentendly produced and published game, released in January, that then gets picked up by a publisher in July, be exempt from any Indie awards for that year given in December?
Should an indepentendly produced and published game, released in January, that then gets picked up by a publisher in July, be exempt from any Indie awards for that year given in December?
Depends on when it was submitted to the award panel?
If an indie game is taken up by a big publisher, its no longer indie.
For one thing, define "publisher". If Valve accepts a given developer's game for Steam, does that make Valve the "publisher"? If Microsoft accepts a given developer's game for Xbox Live Commu^W Indie Games, does that make Microsoft the "publisher"? Now define "big".
I would argue that Steam is both. Just because Valve is a publisher that allows for direct purchases, doesn't make it not a publisher.
Anyone can write an application, and put the compiled binary up on their website, and "self-publish". Steam gives exactly what a publisher does: direct access to a large distribution network. In this case, that comes in the form of a desktop client app that serves as a storefront. In the case of EA, it comes in the form of relationships with brick and mortars like Game Stop, Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and others.
Either way, I'd say it's still publishing.
What's curious is that in the indie music world, "indie" just tends to mean independent of the "major" record labels (There are four, right? I'm not a big music person). It can still be published by a record company though. Epitaph Records has been cited as an example of that. But they publish for Bad Religion, NOFX Rancid, The Offspring, Pennywise, and other relatively well known artists. That doesn't seem to stop peoplr from claling them "indie".
The problem is that there is no direct analogy to the "Big Four" in gaming. The biggest publishers would probably be the three console makers(Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony), then a few dozen or so companies like EA, Sega, Konomi, Activision, Capcom, etc.
Oh, and throw a wrench into the works with Valve, and Steam competitors like Direct-To-Drive, etc.
I think the answer is to have different levels for these indie game competitions.
It could be by number of team members, or by dollar amount, or size of the publisher.
As for scenarios like the one someone else posited where a game is developed by a small studio in January, picked up by a major publisher like EA in June, and entered into an Indie Game Festival in October, I think what's important is what the level of support was when the game was in development. If EA funded the game, no way. But if EA only got involved after the team had a finished product, why not?
Anyone can write an application, and put the compiled binary up on their website, and "self-publish".
Not without a jailbreak, if your game's genre is one best displayed on the living room TV. As of 2009, video gaming on home theater PCs is still commercially insignificant, in part because most of indie game developers' potential customers aren't aware that PCs can be connected to TVs [sewelldirect.com].
What's curious is that in the indie music world, "indie" just tends to mean independent of the "major" record labels (There are four, right? I'm not a big music person).
Even the smaller record labels tend to be distributed by the big labels in North America.
The problem is that there is no direct analogy to the "Big Four" in gaming.
There's a Big Three of Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft. Without their digital signature, your game is confined to the desk.
Independently of a 3rd-party publisher.
A publisher being an entity that provides money up front in exchange for rights related to the game (sales money, IP ownership, etc).
big. [lmgtfy.com] Big is probably irrelevant, I used this to distinguish between the dev's grandma giving them £10 for a pizza during one night of development and EA giving them £500'000 for the rights to the game. But its a needless distinction.
If you're develop a game (or, for that matter, create a music track/make a movie) without being paid up-front by a 3rd party for the rights to publish the final product, you're independent. As soon as you get money for the rights to publish the final product before it is even in a releasable state, you're not independent anymore, as this kind of money generally comes with its own set of limitations and set by the publisher. You are now owing a finished product for the delivered money, and it generally should conform to conditions set by the publisher ("look... you can't show boobs! And could you please add some gore when you use a grenade?")
I would rant longer, but power outage, and my UPS is going to die soon.
Yeah, taken completely literally that is exactly what "indie" would be. However as it is generally used, I think that would only be part of it. The other part is the size of the developing company. So here is what I'd say is probably the simplest way to define "indie" as it is generally used:
1. The developer does the work on his own dime.
2. The developer is small enough that they only work on one or two games at a time.
Those are the games that we know of. Just because we haven't heard about it doesn't mean it ain't happening. Take Blizzard for example. We know that they're working on SC2 and Diablo 3 right now. But they've also been working on an original-IP MMO that we just found out about in the last few weeks. Do you really think they hadn't been working on that for quite a while before they gave us this tiny bit of info? I'd put money on it that they've got at least another half a dozen more projects that we know noth
Ok, counter-example. NetDevil a small studio, and are only working on Jumpgate Evolution afaik. Even if they have another secret project, thats "1 or 2"... and they're not indie.
Yes. That guys breakdown had some things in It that think some people would find objectionable.
Use of commercial software or big commercial game engines Why can't Indie game maker use such a stuff. So lets say it cost $2,000 to license the software. That is about as much as a good computer. So he has a crappy computer and uses software that makes programming a bit easier (as he is just an Indie developer and doesn't have the money for programming staff (The last time I checked $2k fixed cost or ev
He was listing a bunch of reasons that people use to say that a game "isn't indie enough". Deciding whether those reasons are any good is left as an exercise for the reader.
Except that in the music world, "Indie" is the "Alt" of the 2000s--it's a term so overused that it's well beyond useless.
Because of multi-platform games and digital distribution, the relationship between a game developer and their publisher is very different than the relationship between a signed band and their record label. I don't think the availability of games like Braid, Blueberry Garden, or The Dishwasher on mainstream platforms makes them (or their developers) not "indie."
Really? I must have somehow been paying my rent all these years with pixie dust then. Me and the other indie devs who do game development full time all manage to pay our rents and our food bills. Explain to me how we are not economically viable, but companies like EA who often make a net loss somehow are?
BTW, most fulltime indies do it because they have seen how badly most 'proper' companies are run. By your definition I do not have a job, nor will I ever have one again, having seen how much more efficient it is to work for yourself.
"A continual debate rages about the nature of color blue. 'What is blue?' Thanks to RGB and CMYK and other color models and scales we know what exactly means Cyan or 0.0.255 or 0000FF, but the common "blue" remains elusive."
If you're an independent game producer, then call yourself that. Calling yourself an "indie" has little actual meaning and tons of cultural meaning. It's a word like "hyper" or "nexus" that, in some people's [small] minds, makes words next to it look better. It's like how menus in China always have English on them: it's not for native speakers to read, it's so the locals will look at the English and say, "ah, English - this restaurant is international and therefore better." The quality of the product is irrelevant.
And now, you're upset because a big corp came in and sat on your made-up word. Ha-ha! What, they changed its meaning? It didn't have any meaning in the first place, other than to make words next to it look better to easily-impressed insular twits. That's what the brouhaha is all about here - not that MS is going to have a new game channel, but "they stole my cool saying! All the other hipsters at Starbucks won't think I'm cool any more!"
And now, you're upset because a big corp came in and sat on your made-up word. Ha-ha! What, they changed its meaning? It didn't have any meaning in the first place, other than to make words next to it look better to easily-impressed insular twits.
They're called "instwits", and I was one back when it meant something. You kids today don't know anything about self-congratulatory myopia, you think you can just blindly state that yours is the only pure form of artistic expression unsullied by corporate soul-sucking and that makes you a real instwit. Please. I was bouncing the idea of how unique and on the pulse of the times I was around an echo-chamber of like-minded pretentious blowhards while you were still battling with Suzie Stinkypants over who got the "special" blue carpet square to sit on for story time. But it wasn't special, you only thought that because a cadre of corpdroids* at the carpet factory calculated it to be "daring" and "edgy" while also not violating your burgeoning sense of conformity. That and all the others were either red or yellowish-beige.
* Now there's a word that used to mean something, too. Nowadays anyone thinks they can show a little slavish devotion to a soulless entity at the expense of their integrity and respect for their fellow man and it makes them a corpdroid. Why in my day...
by Anonymous Coward
on Wednesday June 17, @07:06AM (#28359947)
An indie developer is the guy that says "Hey, I can code. I like video games. I should make my own video game! I have no visual or musical artistic sense, but that's just filler toward the end of the project!"
500 hours of coding later, the indie developer comes to realize that their game will fail miserably due to the fact that they underestimated how hard it would be to come across free graphic, music, and sound effect assets that reflect what the game is supposed to be.
That same indie developer then spends another handful of hours learning Blender to realize that the best they can come up with artistically is a sphere that's had its centre punched in that they euphemistically call a "bean bag chair" and try to completely retool their gameplay around that. Grand Theft Auto 5 becomes Beanbag Jumping World.
1,000 hours, many Blender exports, recording sessions in the bathroom bashing a plank of wood with a hammer to re-create the sound of wood cracking without buying some $100+ sound library and a crappy public domain tune later, they release their game on their webpage and over the next five years, approximately 3 people not related to the author check it out.
I disagree. "Day job" vs "on the side" is professional vs amateur, not whether you're indie.
Indie just means you're independent; take that as you will, but to me it means that you answer to yourself. Both amateur and professional developers can be independent, depending on how much control they have over their own project(s).
with your definition most professional game developers are NOT indie either!
Well, I think that's kinda true... as someone above said, if you're paid for your work before you have a finished product, then whoever paid for the product likely has a decent amount of control over it.
I agree it's not a perfect definition, as I'm sure there will be a counterexample somewhere. Think of Valve though; despite their success and relatively large size (for a "small" game company), they are a fully independent game company. Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington founded the company with their own money
Why is that important? For the air of being not one of the "big studio" products, so it's morally (more) wrong not to pay for my game? To be excused for creating mediocre games because, well, I'm just indie, I can't produce tripel-A games (which is a lie, btw, a lot of 'indie' titles offer way more enjoyment than any big studio touted triple-A titles)?
It has to do with the console makers' qualifications for developers. Nintendo, for one, states on its web page [warioworld.com] that it requires developers to have a leased office and previous published titles on some other platform. This means a smaller studio might not be able to port even a finished PC game to a Sony or Nintendo console or a Sony or Nintendo handheld. So I'd almost venture to define "indie" as "not qualifying for a PS2, Wii, PSP, or DS SDK".
I was actually looking into mobile platforms to develop for, and while iPhone has the largest market at the moment it's also the hardest to break into, what with the needing of a Mac, and an iPhone (that's £500 just to start coding if you're not already a Mac owner).
Symbian and Android are the only other two worth mentioning. Symbian uses a plethora of Development languages (C++ mainly, but you can use Java or C#.net 2.0 to make apps compatible with both Symbian and Windows Mobile. Signing up and using
Apple are really shooting themselves in the foot by restricting the development platform
Really? What with alot of people having the "iPhone shiney good, must have, must have!" mentality, theres quite a growing iPhone userbase out there. If anything it seems to me Apple has worked out how to cash in on the people buying there iPhone, and the people making apps to make the iPhone more desirable.
I'm not saying that the iPhone doesn't have the user-base. I'm saying that it's the hardest mobile platform to start developing for. It's detrimental to any kind of Indie movement.
I think with any mobile platform you need to buy the mobile device, as well as have a computer of some kind to code on. You also need to get the SDK, etc. Apple's only restriction is that you develop on a MAC vs a Windows or Linux based machine. Its not a significant restriction and honestly if your business model is so tight you can't afford a mac, you probably aren't that serious about developing on the iphone as a platform.
honestly if your business model is so tight you can't afford a mac, you probably aren't that serious about developing on the iphone as a platform.
If one's business model is so tight, such as being on summer break from school, what should one do to raise $1,000 to buy a Mac + iPod Touch + certificate or a Vista-capable PC[1] + Xbox 360 + certificate?
[1] XNA Game Studio runs on Windows XP. But don't try running it on a five-year-old hand-me-down PC; as I read the requirements, acceptable performance requires a machine otherwise capable of running the Aero interface in Windows Vista.
The same way as most everyone else that does -- rich parents set them up with it. Like that Bill Gates guy. Walking into a multi-million dollar trust fund is the sort of thing that enables one to drop out of Harvard and do weird things. Even if he "failed," he wasn't going to end up on the street or flipping burgers. That or you work for someone else for a while, save diligently, and gather as much knowledge and experience as you can before striking out on your own with some street cred under your belt.
Go back to school first if you can't figure out how to make $1000. a basic ipod touch and an xbox 360 have similar price points, so really you're only talking the difference in price between a mac and a pc sufficient to code on.. probably not $1000 price difference. If you already have a kick ass PC, then go develop on the 360. If you have neither and really want to develop on the iphone, find the extra few bucks and make it happen.
So what do you do? Take out a loan for a Mac? You would be laughed out of the bank if you tried to do that. And honestly a lot of really good coders have crappy machines. It doesn't take a hugely expensive machine to turn out good code especially when you aren't rendering much on the machine itself. And really Macs are different than Linux/Windows machines because they are way, way, way, way, way more expensive. The capabilities of a $500 laptop are higher or just as high as a $999 Macbook the only differen
I'm not saying that the iPhone doesn't have the user-base. I'm saying that it's the hardest mobile platform to start developing for.
Are you including the DS without jailbreak and the PSP without jailbreak? Nintendo states on its developer application page [warioworld.com] that it won't even sell you a DS devkit unless you have a leased office and a track record on some other platform.
while iPhone has the largest market at the moment it's also the hardest to break into, what with the needing of a Mac, and an iPhone (that's £500 just to start coding if you're not already a Mac owner).
Not everyone owns a recent Mac. But not everyone owns a recent PC running Windows either; it may be older hardware that still works, or it may have come with something other than Windows. Let's do the math: in addition to the signing certificate (99 USD per year on both platforms), iPhone development needs a Mac mini (600 USD) and an iPod Touch (220 USD), while XNA needs a recent PC running Windows (I'll say 400 USD) and an Xbox 360 (300 USD). It's almost a wash.
To develop for the XNA platform, it is NOT necessary to own an Xbox 360
To get a game onto Xbox Live Indie Games, you need to make absolutely sure that your game runs smoothly on an Xbox 360.
if you buy an Xbox 360 controller and hook it up to your PC, you can test games designed for the 360 without the console itself.
I haven't used XNA yet (old PC is old), so I don't know whether or not there exist implementation differences between XNA for Windows and XNA for Xbox 360, in the sense of the "write once, debug anywhere" of Java. A game might work on a PC but end up unplayable on an Xbox 360. Besides, the 19" monitor connected to your PC probably isn't big enough to fit four play testers, each holding an X
Windows mobile is a bit Meh, but you can dual-develop Symbian/Windows Mobile apps through C#.net (as I stated before) and therefore, I did mention it as a side.
You do realize that MBA's are people with a Masters Degree in Business Management. And a lot of them have very different Undergrad Degrees, Including Computer Science, Engineering, and all those other geeky areas of study. Heck some of them have advanced degrees in those areas too. But got an MBA to further their careerer, as it says on your Resume I am not just a whiny geek.
Most of the stupid management like that happens around the middle say with a team of sales people (with undergrad business degrees, o
Its like music (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Its like music (Score:5, Interesting)
Should an indepentendly produced and published game, released in January, that then gets picked up by a publisher in July, be exempt from any Indie awards for that year given in December?
Parent
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Should an indepentendly produced and published game, released in January, that then gets picked up by a publisher in July, be exempt from any Indie awards for that year given in December?
Depends on when it was submitted to the award panel?
You didn't define independently or big (Score:5, Interesting)
Indie music is music published independently.
Independently of what?
If an indie game is taken up by a big publisher, its no longer indie.
For one thing, define "publisher". If Valve accepts a given developer's game for Steam, does that make Valve the "publisher"? If Microsoft accepts a given developer's game for Xbox Live Commu^W Indie Games, does that make Microsoft the "publisher"? Now define "big".
Parent
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Steam is a store-front. That's like saying Gamestation/Gamestop/Amazon/Play.com are Publishers
Re:You didn't define independently or big (Score:5, Insightful)
I would argue that Steam is both. Just because Valve is a publisher that allows for direct purchases, doesn't make it not a publisher.
Anyone can write an application, and put the compiled binary up on their website, and "self-publish". Steam gives exactly what a publisher does: direct access to a large distribution network. In this case, that comes in the form of a desktop client app that serves as a storefront. In the case of EA, it comes in the form of relationships with brick and mortars like Game Stop, Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and others.
Either way, I'd say it's still publishing.
What's curious is that in the indie music world, "indie" just tends to mean independent of the "major" record labels (There are four, right? I'm not a big music person). It can still be published by a record company though. Epitaph Records has been cited as an example of that. But they publish for Bad Religion, NOFX Rancid, The Offspring, Pennywise, and other relatively well known artists. That doesn't seem to stop peoplr from claling them "indie".
The problem is that there is no direct analogy to the "Big Four" in gaming. The biggest publishers would probably be the three console makers(Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony), then a few dozen or so companies like EA, Sega, Konomi, Activision, Capcom, etc.
Oh, and throw a wrench into the works with Valve, and Steam competitors like Direct-To-Drive, etc.
I think the answer is to have different levels for these indie game competitions.
It could be by number of team members, or by dollar amount, or size of the publisher.
As for scenarios like the one someone else posited where a game is developed by a small studio in January, picked up by a major publisher like EA in June, and entered into an Indie Game Festival in October, I think what's important is what the level of support was when the game was in development. If EA funded the game, no way. But if EA only got involved after the team had a finished product, why not?
Parent
Small labels distributed by the majors (Score:3, Informative)
Anyone can write an application, and put the compiled binary up on their website, and "self-publish".
Not without a jailbreak, if your game's genre is one best displayed on the living room TV. As of 2009, video gaming on home theater PCs is still commercially insignificant, in part because most of indie game developers' potential customers aren't aware that PCs can be connected to TVs [sewelldirect.com].
What's curious is that in the indie music world, "indie" just tends to mean independent of the "major" record labels (There are four, right? I'm not a big music person).
Even the smaller record labels tend to be distributed by the big labels in North America.
The problem is that there is no direct analogy to the "Big Four" in gaming.
There's a Big Three of Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft. Without their digital signature, your game is confined to the desk.
Re:You didn't define independently or big (Score:5, Insightful)
big. [lmgtfy.com]
Big is probably irrelevant, I used this to distinguish between the dev's grandma giving them £10 for a pizza during one night of development and EA giving them £500'000 for the rights to the game. But its a needless distinction.
Parent
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a publisher also publishers the game..pays for distribution, packages the game, ships it, etc.
Re:You didn't define independently or big (Score:4, Insightful)
If you're develop a game (or, for that matter, create a music track/make a movie) without being paid up-front by a 3rd party for the rights to publish the final product, you're independent. As soon as you get money for the rights to publish the final product before it is even in a releasable state, you're not independent anymore, as this kind of money generally comes with its own set of limitations and set by the publisher. You are now owing a finished product for the delivered money, and it generally should conform to conditions set by the publisher ("look ... you can't show boobs! And could you please add some gore when you use a grenade?")
I would rant longer, but power outage, and my UPS is going to die soon.
Parent
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Yeah, taken completely literally that is exactly what "indie" would be. However as it is generally used, I think that would only be part of it. The other part is the size of the developing company. So here is what I'd say is probably the simplest way to define "indie" as it is generally used:
1. The developer does the work on his own dime.
2. The developer is small enough that they only work on one or two games at a time.
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Those are the games that we know of. Just because we haven't heard about it doesn't mean it ain't happening. Take Blizzard for example. We know that they're working on SC2 and Diablo 3 right now. But they've also been working on an original-IP MMO that we just found out about in the last few weeks. Do you really think they hadn't been working on that for quite a while before they gave us this tiny bit of info? I'd put money on it that they've got at least another half a dozen more projects that we know noth
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It is just a new label. Microsoft is a the master of the astroturf.
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Yes. That guys breakdown had some things in It that think some people would find objectionable.
Use of commercial software or big commercial game engines
Why can't Indie game maker use such a stuff. So lets say it cost $2,000 to license the software. That is about as much as a good computer. So he has a crappy computer and uses software that makes programming a bit easier (as he is just an Indie developer and doesn't have the money for programming staff (The last time I checked $2k fixed cost or ev
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He was listing a bunch of reasons that people use to say that a game "isn't indie enough". Deciding whether those reasons are any good is left as an exercise for the reader.
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Except that in the music world, "Indie" is the "Alt" of the 2000s--it's a term so overused that it's well beyond useless.
Because of multi-platform games and digital distribution, the relationship between a game developer and their publisher is very different than the relationship between a signed band and their record label. I don't think the availability of games like Braid, Blueberry Garden, or The Dishwasher on mainstream platforms makes them (or their developers) not "indie."
Re:Noun (Score:4, Interesting)
Really?
I must have somehow been paying my rent all these years with pixie dust then. Me and the other indie devs who do game development full time all manage to pay our rents and our food bills.
Explain to me how we are not economically viable, but companies like EA who often make a net loss somehow are?
BTW, most fulltime indies do it because they have seen how badly most 'proper' companies are run. By your definition I do not have a job, nor will I ever have one again, having seen how much more efficient it is to work for yourself.
Parent
In other news... (Score:3, Insightful)
"A continual debate rages about the nature of color blue. 'What is blue?'
Thanks to RGB and CMYK and other color models and scales we know what exactly means Cyan or 0.0.255 or 0000FF, but the common "blue" remains elusive."
Independent, not "indie" (Score:3, Interesting)
And now, you're upset because a big corp came in and sat on your made-up word. Ha-ha! What, they changed its meaning? It didn't have any meaning in the first place, other than to make words next to it look better to easily-impressed insular twits. That's what the brouhaha is all about here - not that MS is going to have a new game channel, but "they stole my cool saying! All the other hipsters at Starbucks won't think I'm cool any more!"
Re:Independent, not "indie" (Score:4, Funny)
And now, you're upset because a big corp came in and sat on your made-up word. Ha-ha! What, they changed its meaning? It didn't have any meaning in the first place, other than to make words next to it look better to easily-impressed insular twits.
They're called "instwits", and I was one back when it meant something. You kids today don't know anything about self-congratulatory myopia, you think you can just blindly state that yours is the only pure form of artistic expression unsullied by corporate soul-sucking and that makes you a real instwit. Please. I was bouncing the idea of how unique and on the pulse of the times I was around an echo-chamber of like-minded pretentious blowhards while you were still battling with Suzie Stinkypants over who got the "special" blue carpet square to sit on for story time. But it wasn't special, you only thought that because a cadre of corpdroids* at the carpet factory calculated it to be "daring" and "edgy" while also not violating your burgeoning sense of conformity. That and all the others were either red or yellowish-beige.
* Now there's a word that used to mean something, too. Nowadays anyone thinks they can show a little slavish devotion to a soulless entity at the expense of their integrity and respect for their fellow man and it makes them a corpdroid. Why in my day...
Parent
Indie Developer Definition (Score:5, Insightful)
An indie developer is the guy that says "Hey, I can code. I like video games. I should make my own video game! I have no visual or musical artistic sense, but that's just filler toward the end of the project!"
500 hours of coding later, the indie developer comes to realize that their game will fail miserably due to the fact that they underestimated how hard it would be to come across free graphic, music, and sound effect assets that reflect what the game is supposed to be.
That same indie developer then spends another handful of hours learning Blender to realize that the best they can come up with artistically is a sphere that's had its centre punched in that they euphemistically call a "bean bag chair" and try to completely retool their gameplay around that. Grand Theft Auto 5 becomes Beanbag Jumping World.
1,000 hours, many Blender exports, recording sessions in the bathroom bashing a plank of wood with a hammer to re-create the sound of wood cracking without buying some $100+ sound library and a crappy public domain tune later, they release their game on their webpage and over the next five years, approximately 3 people not related to the author check it out.
Indie Developers (Score:2)
I'm surprised that no one has mentioned Team Shanghai Alice yet in comments.
A one man development studio? Can't get much more independent than that.
The definition is not rocket science (Score:2)
Nor is it even comp.sci. The definition is really simple:
If your paying job is NOT game development, then you ARE an indie if you do game development on the side.
If your day job IS developing games, then you're NOT an indie (you are a professional!)
Who publishers your game doesn't change your status of how you got the game made.
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I disagree. "Day job" vs "on the side" is professional vs amateur, not whether you're indie.
Indie just means you're independent; take that as you will, but to me it means that you answer to yourself. Both amateur and professional developers can be independent, depending on how much control they have over their own project(s).
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with your definition most professional game developers are NOT indie either!
Well, I think that's kinda true... as someone above said, if you're paid for your work before you have a finished product, then whoever paid for the product likely has a decent amount of control over it.
I agree it's not a perfect definition, as I'm sure there will be a counterexample somewhere. Think of Valve though; despite their success and relatively large size (for a "small" game company), they are a fully independent game company. Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington founded the company with their own money
Does it matter? (Score:2)
Come not near to me, for I be indier than thou...
Why is that important? For the air of being not one of the "big studio" products, so it's morally (more) wrong not to pay for my game? To be excused for creating mediocre games because, well, I'm just indie, I can't produce tripel-A games (which is a lie, btw, a lot of 'indie' titles offer way more enjoyment than any big studio touted triple-A titles)?
Seriously, what's the big fuss?
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Seriously, what's the big fuss?
It has to do with the console makers' qualifications for developers. Nintendo, for one, states on its web page [warioworld.com] that it requires developers to have a leased office and previous published titles on some other platform. This means a smaller studio might not be able to port even a finished PC game to a Sony or Nintendo console or a Sony or Nintendo handheld. So I'd almost venture to define "indie" as "not qualifying for a PS2, Wii, PSP, or DS SDK".
Why do you always call him "junior"? (Score:3, Funny)
Pah! Everybody knows that Indy was the dog's name!
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I was actually looking into mobile platforms to develop for, and while iPhone has the largest market at the moment it's also the hardest to break into, what with the needing of a Mac, and an iPhone (that's £500 just to start coding if you're not already a Mac owner).
Symbian and Android are the only other two worth mentioning.
Symbian uses a plethora of Development languages (C++ mainly, but you can use Java or C#.net 2.0 to make apps compatible with both Symbian and Windows Mobile. Signing up and using
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Apple are really shooting themselves in the foot by restricting the development platform
Really? What with alot of people having the "iPhone shiney good, must have, must have!" mentality, theres quite a growing iPhone userbase out there. If anything it seems to me Apple has worked out how to cash in on the people buying there iPhone, and the people making apps to make the iPhone more desirable.
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I'm not saying that the iPhone doesn't have the user-base. I'm saying that it's the hardest mobile platform to start developing for. It's detrimental to any kind of Indie movement.
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I think with any mobile platform you need to buy the mobile device, as well as have a computer of some kind to code on. You also need to get the SDK, etc. Apple's only restriction is that you develop on a MAC vs a Windows or Linux based machine. Its not a significant restriction and honestly if your business model is so tight you can't afford a mac, you probably aren't that serious about developing on the iphone as a platform.
How do I raised capital? (Score:2)
honestly if your business model is so tight you can't afford a mac, you probably aren't that serious about developing on the iphone as a platform.
If one's business model is so tight, such as being on summer break from school, what should one do to raise $1,000 to buy a Mac + iPod Touch + certificate or a Vista-capable PC[1] + Xbox 360 + certificate?
[1] XNA Game Studio runs on Windows XP. But don't try running it on a five-year-old hand-me-down PC; as I read the requirements, acceptable performance requires a machine otherwise capable of running the Aero interface in Windows Vista.
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If you don't can't muster a thousand dollars to buy your initial hardware, I don't think you're in a good position to consider working for yourself.
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If you don't can't muster a thousand dollars to buy your initial hardware, I don't think you're in a good position to consider working for yourself.
I know that. The question was: how does one get into such "a good position to consider working for yourself"?
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That or you work for someone else for a while, save diligently, and gather as much knowledge and experience as you can before striking out on your own with some street cred under your belt.
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Go back to school first if you can't figure out how to make $1000.
a basic ipod touch and an xbox 360 have similar price points, so really you're only talking the difference in price between a mac and a pc sufficient to code on.. probably not $1000 price difference. If you already have a kick ass PC, then go develop on the 360. If you have neither and really want to develop on the iphone, find the extra few bucks and make it happen.
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Including the DS and PSP? (Score:2)
I'm not saying that the iPhone doesn't have the user-base. I'm saying that it's the hardest mobile platform to start developing for.
Are you including the DS without jailbreak and the PSP without jailbreak? Nintendo states on its developer application page [warioworld.com] that it won't even sell you a DS devkit unless you have a leased office and a track record on some other platform.
XNA vs. iPhone: It's almost a wash. (Score:2)
while iPhone has the largest market at the moment it's also the hardest to break into, what with the needing of a Mac, and an iPhone (that's £500 just to start coding if you're not already a Mac owner).
Not everyone owns a recent Mac. But not everyone owns a recent PC running Windows either; it may be older hardware that still works, or it may have come with something other than Windows. Let's do the math: in addition to the signing certificate (99 USD per year on both platforms), iPhone development needs a Mac mini (600 USD) and an iPod Touch (220 USD), while XNA needs a recent PC running Windows (I'll say 400 USD) and an Xbox 360 (300 USD). It's almost a wash.
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To develop for the XNA platform, it is NOT necessary to own an Xbox 360
To get a game onto Xbox Live Indie Games, you need to make absolutely sure that your game runs smoothly on an Xbox 360.
if you buy an Xbox 360 controller and hook it up to your PC, you can test games designed for the 360 without the console itself.
I haven't used XNA yet (old PC is old), so I don't know whether or not there exist implementation differences between XNA for Windows and XNA for Xbox 360, in the sense of the "write once, debug anywhere" of Java. A game might work on a PC but end up unplayable on an Xbox 360. Besides, the 19" monitor connected to your PC probably isn't big enough to fit four play testers, each holding an X
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Windows mobile is a bit Meh, but you can dual-develop Symbian/Windows Mobile apps through C#.net (as I stated before) and therefore, I did mention it as a side.
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Windows Mobile? Is that a competitor to the iphone?
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Why not Windows Mobile?
Best Buy stores don't even sell Pocket PCs anymore. So I fail to see how Pocket PC owners are an especially viable market.
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You do realize that MBA's are people with a Masters Degree in Business Management. And a lot of them have very different Undergrad Degrees, Including Computer Science, Engineering, and all those other geeky areas of study. Heck some of them have advanced degrees in those areas too. But got an MBA to further their careerer, as it says on your Resume I am not just a whiny geek.
Most of the stupid management like that happens around the middle say with a team of sales people (with undergrad business degrees, o
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Which is why they're called MBMs.
Wait, what?