Indie Games Con Gets Report, Awards

Thanks to DIYGames.com for their report on the 2003 Indie Games Conference, held by Garage Games in Eugene, Oregon from the 10th-12th October. The Con aimed to "...not only celebrate independent developers and their work, but to provide a comfortable environment for developers to learn about the different elements of game creation, and to show their games to peers", and the Player's Choice awards for the Con showcase some interesting upcoming indie titles, with Fuzzee Teevee getting 'Best Graphics', and the Oids-inspired Bit Shifter winning 'Best Single-Player'.

Re:Indie games

[Midnight Ryder]

Are most of these games published under the GNU license?

Nope. Most of 'em are distributed under normal copyright rules. However, all of them in the contest were done using the Torque engine - so you can mod the heck outta 'em through the scripting engine side of things.

Re:Indie games

[Anonymous Coward]

Not all in the contest are Torque -- quite a few of the puzzle games are custom engines. The NVidia/Chronic Logic BridgeIt is custom, and Fuzzee Teevee is custom, too.

Re:Indie games

[Midnight Ryder]

Ya know - I forgot about that :-) Originally, there were only 5 games in there. Fuzzee Teevee and BridgeIt weren't in there (which proves a write-in candidate can win sometimes ;-)

Re:LAME

[Acidic_Diarrhea]

I would pay for them. Even if they're not quite up to the graphical, sound, or dialogue snuff of some major releases (although, given the glut of rushed-to-market products [Hi Eidos!], some of these homebrewed games are better than games produced with a much larger budget), these people are making these games out of a real respect and love for the games. Those types of people are great for the industry and it would be better that they sold their own games really well and got noticed by a big company and sna

Re:LAME

[Midnight Ryder]

ven if they're not quite up to the graphical, sound, or dialogue snuff of some major releases

That's the funny thing - many of them were up to snuff graphics and sound. (I didn't get to see FuzzeeeTeevee, so I can't speak about that one.) Not all of the games that appeared there were mentioned in the articles, nor were they in the competition, btw. Anyway - graphically, Dark Horizons: Lore [garagegames.com], GravRally (which I can't find any links to at the moment!), and Trajectory Zone [trajectoryzone.com] (our product) would set side by s

Re:LAME

[Anonymous Coward]

Indie games ROCK!!! - well ok some do and most don't, my favourites are;

1. Starscape (www.moonpod.com [moonpod.com])
2. Alien Shooter (www.sigma-team.net [sigma-team.net])

Re:LAME

[bear pimp]

Too true, there's a sea of turds out there, with a few goodies trying to hold their head above water. Here's my tips for sorting indie games:

Ignore if:
looks like arkanoid
looks like tetris
looks like bubble bobble
runs in a browser
looks like mahjongg


Or just visit Diy Games [diygames.com] they are about the only decent site I can think of for indie games.

Innovation

[Midnight Ryder]

Unluckly, I have to agree (keeping in mind I've produced 7 2D puzzle games over the years now). Lots of games just try to capitolize on 'Me too' gameplay style.

Almost none of the games at IGC were 'Me too' games. Everything was fairly fresh and new games. That's not to say they didn't have thier basis from other games at times - GravRally from 21-6 is really just another racing game, but, really innovates in it's execution (the GravMode - stick to any surface, no matter upside down or not! :-) and it's gameplay modes (the Chase mode was cool - basically, it's tag played at 200+ MPH!). Trajectory Zone [trajectoryzone.com] (full disclosure - that's from my game company) finds it's gameplay core from Scorched Earth. Then cranks it up with realtime play, lots of new options, neat environments, etc. And of course, it's 3D, but much more easy to play than Scorched3D, and moves MUCH faster.

Only one game ran in a browser, and that was a special exception - ThinkTanks has a new version out (Windows only) that runs in the browser. Very scaled down, fits in 3 MB, that sortta thing - basically, it's a sales pitch for the game. Not a single game was arkanoid, tetris, etc - I found that to be just too cool. I don't have a problem with 'inspired by' games, but 'clone of' games just tend to blur together, and really suck because of a complete lack of innovation. (Adding one new block to Tetris is not an innovation ;-)

Re:Innovation

[mink]

"(Adding one new block to Tetris is not an innovation ;-)"

But if that one block completely changed the Gameplay and the way people play the game IMO it is innovation. Compare New Tetris (N64) to Stock Tetris.
True it is more innovative to change the way the game plays, compare Puyo-Puyo to stock Tetris.

Shameless self promotion (Not really ;-)

[Midnight Ryder]

Ok, I gotta say it - one of my products had it's premier there at IGC '03. Trajectory Zone [trajectoryzone.com] showed off for the first time to the public. That was a blast :-) (Keep in mind it's just it's first beta - beta 2 will be comming along here in the next two weeks or so.)

If you are an indie game developer lookin' for feedback, I highly recommend going to IGC next year with your game - there were 25 machine, and during any given ShowOFF session, you could get more face to face feedback about your game than you ever have had the chance to get before. Plus the organizers (GarageGames [garagegames.com]) did something smart - they also provide feedback forms for people to fill out. So no only do you get face to face feedback, you get 'annonymous' feedback where people don't have to worry quite so much about the effects of insulting the developer ;-) Plus, you get to WATCH them play the game - see what hangs the player up, what makes them laugh or curse, etc. It's unbelieveably great - testing across the Internet doesn't have nearly the power of doing it live.

Oh, and if you haven't looked at our game sneak peek [trajectoryzone.com] yet... ;-)

The best (IMHO) indie developer out there...

[Bagels]

Check out the folks over at spiderweb software [spiderwebsoftware.com] - Jeff Vogel and co. make the Avernum and Geneforge series of indie RPGs. The graphics and sound leave more than a bit to be desired, but the games have excellently balanced gameplay and very well-written, witty plots. Vogel himself is one of the more famous characters in the whole shareware scene - he's among the few that's actually made a solid living off of it.