Can Independent Game Developers Survive? 60
Thanks to Gamesindustry.biz for their editorial asking whether independent videogame developers can make it in the increasingly cut-throat games business. The article comes after the recent closure of respected UK developers Mucky Foot ('Startopia'), the latest in a long line of recent developer failures, and the author asks: "What's going wrong? Some of these casualties have been victims of mismanagement or poor quality control, but many were properly managed, fiscally sensible and extremely talented companies." The editorial continues: "Companies like EA, Microsoft and Sony don't really need [smaller developers] any more, as large publishers increasingly focus on internal development and suck much of the best talent into themselves. Smaller publishers aren't in a position to take risks on the kind of innovative games that small developers do best." Is the situation really as bleak as this implies?
Re:why isnt anyone answering this? (Score:1)
Complexity (Score:5, Interesting)
By complexity, I mean the amount of time making independent code objects to handle each and every interaction that could take place in the world. This involves AI scripting for the mobiles, interaction scripting for the static items and world physics for everything else.
No longer can people write one set of libraries that will apply to each and every level of a game. I guess what it comes down to is that things can't be re-used as much as in days past: independent developers rely on the fact that people want a fresh outlook on games, not the same rehashed EA clone and it takes a lot more work to create something like that now (without the $$$$$ middleware).
Re:Complexity (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Complexity (Score:3, Interesting)
If you want to ignore the big publishers, you have to work for your due. There are places where small teams can put out an excellent game. Cer
Re:Complexity (Score:1)
Re:Complexity (Score:2)
GBA development is pretty easy - the homebrew community has figured out pretty much every detail of the hardware.
It really comes down to the fact that the crap that's on the GBA sells well, so few publishers want to take a risk with something original.
Re:Complexity (Score:2)
I don't think it's necessarily the logic or interaction as much as it is the complexity of the content.
Any decent programmer can write you a set of code that provides consistent behavior for any given number of levels. (Scripting is another matter entirely, but scripting is a relatively trivial task compared to developing a full game engine.)
Content, on the other hands, is a serious problem. Making things that look good in 3D is an order of magnitude more difficult than making presentable 2D objects. W
Re:Complexity (Score:1)
You mean, O(e^n) where n is the number of dimensions? That is, a 3d game is 9/4 times as complex as a 2d game?
Re:Complexity (Score:2, Informative)
The dramatic rise in the number of small studios going bust (mostly in the UK AFAIK) is nothing todo with technology or QA or Art or any other kind of production problem. Remember that the whole development cycle is a drop in the ocean in terms of total development costs. Most of the cash goes on marketing and manufactuing. The root of the matter is the failing relationship between small studios and their publishers.
There are really 2
Re:no, no they can't (Score:1)
Thanks,
--Gabriel
Re:no, no they can't (Score:1)
Re:no, no they can't (Score:1)
remember how id got successful (Score:1)
Yes, but they are in the wrong niche (Score:2)
When there are 1500 pound gorillas like Microsoft and Sony, the goal is not to compete with them but find untapped markets. It isn't so much getting a slice of the pie, but making a whole new pie. Eventually, the gorrilla will eath the new pie, but, with some luck, enough time will have elapsed to give the small company some real revenue (hopefully enough to say "to hell with this" and retire).
small developers, big publishers (Score:4, Insightful)
This situation might be as bleak as implied, if not for the fact that it's just incorrect. Microsoft, for example, owns Zone.com, through which they run most of their PC multiplayer titles, and yet the majority of the content on that site comes from small developers who pump out shareware Java/Flash titles, many of which have become extremely popular (think PopCap Games).
Additionally, many small developers have come up through the mod communities in more complex game types, such as FPS games, where a handful of developers were picked up from various mod groups for Quake and Half-Life, either in new development houses or by companies like id and Valve (and Valve themselves formed a lot of the talent to develop Half-Life from mod developers).
It's a matter of knowing what a small team is capable of and finding practical methods of distributing and marketing your product. Many larger developers and publishers have tried many things to encourage and help this (again, Valve and id with their respective mod communities), while others pretty much strike off on their own (GarageGames).
Re:small developers, big publishers (Score:1)
Nothing new here... (Score:4, Informative)
That said, there are a few well managed ones and/or developers with big enough hits that they can stay around a long time - Stormfront Studios is still in business I believe, and id Software isn't going anywhere any time soon. Some of the more successful developers deliberately decide to be absorbed into a big company, too, like Blizzard or Westwood - and didn't Valve do that also?
The other route is to keep expenses tiny, always, and just keep making games until they pry the keyboard and mouse out of your cold, dead, fingers. The fellow that did the Dink Smallwood games is still at it, at the Independent Games Festival I saw his teenage lawnmower game. I've been running my own Dragon's Eye Productions for over 10 years now, and doing better than ever. PopCap Games is doing really great (and their games are tons of fun, so they deserve it), and there's too many shareware, freeware, flash and java games and game sites to even mention. Yes, a lot of them suck, but there's some good ones too. There's a lot of interesting looking games at dexterity.com [dexterity.com] for one. I still hope that Garage Games [garagegames.com] will thrive, too - they're doing original game development using the Tribes 2 3D engine (which they made, at their last company). I don't think the development houses are dying any time soon - just some specific individual ones, which has happened pretty much every year, often with little fanfare.
What makes games different? (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, a lot of independents die out. More often than not, these independents try to fight toe-to-toe with EA, Microsoft, etc. This is how you lose; you can't use the same tactics as the 800-pound gorilla, or you'll get crushed.
What you can do, though, is take advantage of being a small developer. You can produce edgier stuff. You can try crazy new things. You don't have four levels of management to clear things with. You may not hit as hard as they do, but you can act with far greater flexibility and alacrity than a big game house can.
If you've got a Wal-Mart to compete with, you can't expect to survive a price war. They're geared for that kind of thing, and they will beat you every single time. You can, however, expect to blow them out of the water with excellent customer service or specialized services. Similarly, you can't out-'big' EA. You've gotta take a different approach. For all it's fearsome size, there's plenty that a small, independent firm can do better than a giant like EA.
Infinity Ward was indi (Score:2)
Poor Muckyfoot, I'll miss them (Score:2, Interesting)
Startopia reviews (It was a brilliant game) (Score:1)
Barriers to entry. (Score:1)
A lot of bigger game companies play marketing games with thier products and don't value supporting and fostering creative talented teams and giving them some decision power in the creation process.
To them it is sbout control, psycographic marketing, and
The two things that small developers lack... (Score:2, Insightful)
Let's assume their spouce can feed them for the 3-4 years it takes to actually code a decent games. Let's even assume they gang together and form tiny companies.
One problem is the enourmous amounts of artistic property needed to raise a modern-looking game.
Individual developers (or tiny dev groups/companies) don't have anywhere near the amount needed. Getting it isn't cheap, and getting competitive stuff is hard
No such thing - small devs. lack very little :-) (Score:2)
Hm - you've missed how things have evolved recently:
1. BUYING a modern working 3D engine SDK costs between 300K to around a million, depending on engine. Wrapping it costs a few developer years.
Torque. Crystal Space 3D. There's more of 'em to. Personally, I licensed Torque. It cost me a whopping $100 for the license and souce code. If (and only if) the game starts to hit big (in excess of $500k in business for the company, or the publisher I deal with) then I have to move to the 'commercial' licens
Re:No such thing - small devs. lack very little :- (Score:2)
I notice this is an "if", call us when your game makes the 500,000 in gross. 500k/10 people/1 year is only 50k per year for one year. I am grossly unimpressed and
Re:The two things that small developers lack... (Score:1)
Where the hell do you think the "founders" of the original game companies got their start? In college? A lot were indy. Go figure.
What is the most "fab" game on the Internet right now? Lemme check...ah...CS? Made by Valve right? No, a small group of "Indy" developers! Just cause it started out a modern-looking, "freeware" mod to HL doesn't count it out. There are other ways to do contribute new
Re:The two things that small developers lack... (Score:1)
Valve got their salaries at the time from a corporation known as "Sierra Online". And when a corp pays your salary, guess who makes decisions.
It's a rarity that a corp will make the right ones for us gamers when better ones for its pocket that throw us gamers in the dirt are available.
>> Most games on the market today and in the near future are mostly hyp
Re:The two things that small developers lack... (Score:2, Informative)
Desert Combat and EOD vs BF1942.
Zy-El mod vs. Diablo 2
A lot of NWN Persistant world servers vs. NWN
CS, DOD, FA vs HL
A bunch of good UT2003 mods vs UT2003
Action Quake2 vs Quake 2
Tac Ops, Strike Force vs. UT
And a whole lot of others......
Of Course We'll Survive (Score:4, Interesting)
I work for Irrational Games [irrationalgames.com], developers of System Shock 2 and Freedom Force. We are currently working on a number of titles including Freedom Force vs. the Third Reich and Tribes: Vengeance, and have an office in Boston (USA) and Canberra (Australia).
We've grown and prospered over 5 years, and all of us look forward to making great games that people enjoy. We also enjoy the freedom of making decisions that affect what the game will be, rather than being told how we should make the game.
In addition, I am a judge for the Independent Games Festival [igf.com], where 112 independent teams of game developers have submitted their independent games that they have funded and developed on their own to be judged and presented at GDC 2004.
While there is a lot of recent setbacks for independent developers, especially in the UK, the people who want to make their voices heard independently will continue to do so, reguardless of their financial situation. Independent games will continue to be made, and those voices will continue to be heard.
Re:Of Course We'll Survive (Score:2)
Anyway, thanks for a great sequel. Thanks for breaking the "all superhero games either suck or get cancelled" curse
Games for programmers (Score:4, Interesting)
TQworld's game "tranquility" (Score:5, Interesting)
We publish only one title, the offbeat (and often misunderstood) 3D game 'tranquility'.
Next January will mark our third year. Granted, our game didn't have the 'hit' impact that we
had hoped for when we were in development, but we've enjoyed a steady growth
in players. We're still in the black, mainly due to keeping expenses low and by not having
profits siphoned off by publishers, distributors and investors.
Another reason why we're still around is due to the design work within the game and it's
support system during the development phase. Because we use a client server model
for tranquility, we never have had any problem with piracy. We also offer so much of the
game for free that there hasn't been a big incentive for players to circumvent our system.
We keep scoring and game progress on our servers but all game play resides on the user's
machine. If they want to give out account information to others it's fine with us, it only affects
the user's score. We also only distribute the game online. We've tried working with publishers
but because of our unique un-cheatable commerce model, publishers can't run the show.
That seems to turn them off so we've never been able to find a publisher that can deal with us.
We also aren't greedy when it comes to profit. We give away lots of free accounts. Why not?
It's just a miniscule load on the servers and it's well worth it just to make somebody happy
to play our game. We also haven't been greedy when it comes to updates. Once somebody
pays for the game, they can run it on as many machines as they want. We've got a version
for Windows, OSX and Mac OS9 and they can run any or all of them. We also never charge
for updates. Somebody told me once that you should worry about the customers you have,
not the ones you don't that aren't paying you. We liked that approach and so we've ended
up using that commerce model. Granted, it's not the money maker model that Apple or
Microsoft uses, but when you sell a game called tranquility we want to keep our customers
as stress free as possible. Like the Golden rule, we treat them like we would like to be treated.
Another part of the game (that people never see) is the support structure that we built in at the
same time as the game itself. The servers let us know who's buying, who's playing, where
they are at in the game, what kind of hardware, who's visiting the web site and who is asking
for support. It's tied in with the game itself so once we brought everything up a few years ago,
it's almost self-supporting. This means that we can be responsive to users that need assistance,
we can quickly see the result of special promotions or potential compatibility problems with
new releases or new OS releases on the platforms we support, without having to hire a staff to
keep our customers happy. Although this was experimental and somewhat radical at the time,
because we were not beholden to investors and shareholders at the time, we could take whatever
steps were necessary at the time to build things the right way. It took 1 year for two developers
to build both the game and the support system and we released it when it was ready and hit the
ground running on day one.
Finally there's the game itself. Yeah, we know it's weird [tqworld.com]
and certainly not for everyone, but that's a large part of it's charm.
tranquility started out as a simple demo game that I wrote for the SGI boxes, especially the
Indigo ten years ago. I would get fan mail every so often asking for updates etc. so we knew
we had something interesting to use as a foundation. After kicking around ideas, when Apple
announced plans for OS X, it looked like there was a consistent enough target to write for, with
an eclectic enough audience that might enjoy the alternative experience that tra
Re:TQworld's game "tranquility" (Score:2)
P.S. I have a plug [slashdot.org] to make for my game too.
Mobile Gaming (Score:2)
Independent Game development: difficult, not bleak (Score:1)
Two examples come to mind. (1) The Combat Mission series and (2) Norm Koger games.
The Combat Mission games have been hailed as the best wargames ever developed, and even some of the best PC games developed period. It's a truly amazing achievement, considering that Combat Mission was started in a garage by two or three guys, and that the only place to g
Re:Independent Game development: difficult, not bl (Score:1)
The trick is... (Score:2)
If small time developers wanna break into the
Just part of the cycle. (Score:1)
Sure they can (Score:1)
Business structure (Score:1)
Gamers in general (and developers) I think focus on building what they think is "fun" rather than counterbalan
The game industry (Score:1)
The problem is that games are "Big Business" now. Really big business. In the old days, people went into the industry because they either liked playing games, or liked making them. Now that t
different definition of success (Score:2)
But with massive corporation behind games nowadays with their huge marketing budgets and dis
DIfferent territories (Score:1)
Like in any industry, it's the small developers that will take the biggest risks. Simultaneously, they also get the biggest rewards, perhaps not financially but from an "advancement in development" standpoint. The games have to attack with new ideas and excellent design; they do not have a mature strategy or infrastructure to back up anything less.
It's interesting to note that all the big compani
It is. (Score:1)
It is.
Being myself a small-time game developer (programmer), we're having a big trouble here to find a publisher and finally publish the game - lots of requirements, most of them asking to change the whole idea of the game - how it will look like, the plot and gameplay. Usually, making the game worse with these changes.
Publishers don't want to take risks of releasing the game they don't know what impact it'll do, while there aren't any s
What about Looking Glass Studios? (Score:1)
A Note On National Context (Score:1)
I think it should be mentioned that this (very short) opinion piece is focusing on Indy game developers in the UK. The title of the Slash story leaves that out.
I'm sure things are somewhat different in the US or other parts of the world. What I couldn't tell you is exactly how they're different. However, there are enough cultural and economic variations between countries for me to say that there is some differences.
What would be truly interesting to see is how the Indy development approach differs f
Yes, they can (Score:1)