More Devs Going Indie, To Gamers' Benefit

Wired is running a feature about how a growing number of game developers are abandoning jobs at major publishers and studios and taking their experience to the indie scene instead. Quoting: "They’re veterans of the triple-A game biz with decades of experience behind them. They’ve worked for the biggest companies and had a hand in some of the industry’s biggest blockbusters. They could work on anything, but they’ve found creative fulfillment splitting off into a tiny crew and doing their own thing. They’re using everything they’ve learned working on big-budget epics and applying it to small, downloadable games. The good news for gamers is that, as the industry’s top talents depart the big studios and go into business for themselves, players are being treated to a new class of indie game. They’re smaller and carry cheaper price tags, but they’re produced by industry veterans instead of thrown together by B teams and interns. Most importantly, unlike big-budget games that need to appeal to the lowest common denominator to turn a profit, these indie gems reveal the undiluted creative vision of their makers."

Re:To make games I want to play

[Jedi Alec]

Checked out your website, looks like a potentially fun game.

If I'm allowed to make a recommendation though, pay a little more attention to the use of language, both in the game and on the website itself. Speaking for myself I find less than top-notch quality graphics / voice acting etc. perfectly acceptable in an indie game, but mangled english is an instant turnoff.

Re:Quite

[sortius_nod]

I wonder if you know the difference between publisher and developer?

It's funny that this article comes shortly after the one about gaming budgets peaking. Maybe it's a sign of things to come.

awesome indy project

[nephridium]

This one's pretty interesting: http://www.wolfire.com/overgrowth [wolfire.com]

It's a "rabbit ninja fighting game" ;), free from DRM and they are even developing for Linux (just as they did the predecessor). They are also designing it very modder friendly by using open formats, allowing anyone to to add content and making the engine accessible by scripting (python). Even now during the alpha stages they are already offering support to the modding community.

Check out the hilarious dev/tutorial videos on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/WolfireGames [youtube.com]

If you donate you get access to their weekly alphas too! Yes, every week not only a progress report, but an actual updated usable product alpha to play around and mod with.

Re:I don't blame them. I ditched the industry too.

[Spatial]

I got tired of the 50-to-60-hour work weeks.

The worst part is, it actually hurts productivity [lostgarden.com] after a while. It only makes sense to do it for the very last couple of weeks of a project.