An FPS Minus the Shooting 172
phaedrus5001 writes "Ars has a story about a first person shooter under development that involves no shooting on the part of the player; at least, no shooting bullets. The game, Warco, has the player in the role of a war correspondent. The object is to immerse yourself in missions and firefights in order to document what happens. From the article: 'Players will experience the process of filming conflicts, going into dangerous situations armed with nothing but a camera. They will then edit the footage into a compelling news story.' While it's an interesting and different concept, it should be even more interesting to see if the developers can actually convince a publisher to release the project."
And you really don't with Steam (Score:5, Interesting)
Steam in particular, but other digital services as well (like Impulse and Direct2Drive) have become a way that many people get a good number of games. Well, they also promote games as well. Steam runs games on promo on their front page. The trend seems to be either games that are really big and popular, or games that are indy and somewhat obscure, but well done.
A recent example is Bastion. Made by a team of 7 friends it has won a rather large amount of acclaim. I'd never heard of it, until Steam had it featured. It interested me, and apparently a ton of other people. It has sold really well, been written about in the game press, and so on. No big studio, no big marketing budget, just a good game that got promoted by Steam.
Likewise you have other opportunities for promotion with these digital sellers in that they love doing deals. Impulse and Steam like to offer a sale every weekend, and one each day as well. So you agree to a temporary price reduction, and you get front page exposure, or even a special popup in the case of weekend deals. Plus people repost it on various sites.
If you have a high quality game, it really can rise up and do well with nothing behind it. Might not happen in one day, but it can happen.
Most of the people who complain that you "have to have a big studio to make it," just don't produce good games (or often produce any games at all, they just talk about doing it). Not any more. Digital downloads have become a great equalizer. No, you won't do Call of Duty's billion dollars of sales, but you may sell a couple hundred thousand copies, maybe even a couple million. You aren't likely to get rich, but you can make some money.
Big studios and big budgets are only needed for big games. If your project involves tons of high end art, voice acting, and so on then yes you might be talking a $50 million budget and you'll need financial backing to make that happen. However if you are less ambitious, there's plenty of market for cheaper indy titles.