The Rise of The Indie Developer

Gamasutra has up a feature on The Rise of the Auteur & the Return of Indie Development. The article's argument is that the explosion of gaming into mainstream consciousness is opening up niche market opportunities. From the article: "As the overall market of game players increases, the subset of people interested in indie development will naturally increase. Have an interest in indie artists in any medium usually takes more effort (finding new artists via word of mouth or niche communities) and so most people are not interested in putting forth that effort. The formulaic nature of most game development will slowly help spur some of these new players to look for new sources of game experiences."

The mainstream won't buy it.

[KDR_11k]

It's not exactly called the mainstream because it has a tendency to search every nook and cranny for the niche stuff. You need ads and retail presence if you want to reach those people and want to sell to more of them than just confused mothers who think it'll make a nice gift for their son.

Also, those new gamers don't long for innovation yet, they aren't as jaded and see no reason to divert from the hollywood-style market with big flashy graphics and mediocre gameplay. Going the indy route won't gurantee good games and I doubt they'd buy another indy game if they encounter a bad game first.

Who said they had to buy it?

[RootsLINUX]

I work on an indie game in my (not so copious) free time. It's open-source and 100% free (as in freedom, and in beer). I do it mostly because I enjoy doing it and it lets me learn many new things. I also consider it my gift back to the OSS community, which has already given me so much.

Of course since I have zero budget and very little time on my hands, it's not going to be a flashy game that will compete with the likes of WoW or something. Rather, it's something reminsic of the SNES-era RPGs, which were

Re:Who said they had to buy it?

[AuMatar]

Being like an SNES RPG is not a bad thing. I had a hell of a lot more fun on FF 2 and 3 (US) and Chrono trigger than I do with the modern ones like NWN, FFX, Morrowind, etc. If its far enogh along to have some releases, care to post a link?

Re:Who said they had to buy it?

[RootsLINUX]

I don't think it's a bad thing that the game is old-school either, but I think the newer generation of gamers won't be able to appreciate it as much, since they're eyes are fixated on games with purrrty graphics. Actually the game is modeled after FFVI (FF3 US), but has enough features that make the game unique in its own right. Unfortunately it's still deep in development. I wish it wasn't, but its really hard for me to find time when I work full-time and go to grad school, and the rest of the people worki

Tools and Technology

[American AC in Paris]

For me, it's that the tools and technology have become sufficiently advanced that one can make a good, complex two-dimensional game with higher-level languages and far less bit twiddling than used to be necessary. Today's typical entry-level desktop machine is way more than powerful enough to run a reasonably well-designed 2D game. Today's tools distill complex blitting, transformation, and collision routines into single function calls. Today's operating systems virtually eliminate the need to futz around at the hardware level for all but the most demanding games. Thus, an indie developer doesn't need to devote his or her time to learning and executing all the arcane bits of optimization that the cutting-edge studios need. You don't, for example, need to worry about floating-point operations slowing down your system the way you did just ten years ago. You don't, for example, need to worry about rotating sprites, or writing pixel-perfect collision routines--that's all taken care of nowadays.

Gamemaking tools are simply getting better. Computers are able to do more in less time. Today's gamemaker gets to spend a lot less time slogging through proprietary hardware APIs, interrupts and assembly code and a lot more time actually building the game. That's what counts the most.

Re:Tools and Technology

[Fastball]

Counterpoint: the gaming industry has revolved around hardware, polygon count, etc. and neglected elements of fun and play for too long. A good story, character development, fresh ideas and settings.

Yes, tools are vastly better, but they amount to zero if the game isn't fun.

Re:Tools and Technology

[American AC in Paris]

...but that's exactly the point I'm making--the tools have progressed to the point where indie developers can focus on making the games fun instead of hacking their way through all the old technological thickets of old. Better tools means lifting one of the most prohibitive and useless barriers into game making--technological expertise.

Ten years ago, a well-designed game concept + decent coding skills = nothing. Today, a well-designed game concept + decent coding skills = game.

Re:Tools and Technology

[Fastball]

You're right. I misread your post, sorry. Mod this dude up, folks.

Oakland Baseball Simworld

[sbszen]

I agree. One example of "niche" technology I think you all should try is the Oakland Baseball Simworld. You can play a kind of e-learning game based on running the Oakland A's over the next 15 years. It's at http://www.sbs-world.com/ [sbs-world.com] ... It was created in an programing language developed by Forio Business Simulations. Yes, computers are able to do more in less time. There are far more resources available to web programers.

It's not really that bad

[alvinrod]

There's been a lot of doom and gloom about the industry lately bemoaning the lack of innovation and indie development. While the outlook today is bleak, the only constant in this industry is change, so it's not likely to stay that way forever.

I think this is true with almost anything now days. People have some sort of nogistalgic impression of the past that makes it seem so much better than the present. Add that into the fact that people just like to bitch and complain, and you've got the above comment applied to anything.

There will always be something new and innovative out there. I'm willing to bet there's a lot of stuff that people don't even pick up on. Additionally, we have to remember that during the last decade a lot of new genres sprung to life. Of course games like Doom were going to be innovative. Nothing like them had really existed before. Someone could make a game that simulates growing mold and it would be somewhat innovative (we already have sim games of all types) but would the market really want to buy a product like this? If you want to blame anyone for the lack of innovation, blame consumers that keep buying the same rehashed stuff over and over again.

There're still plenty of frontiers out there for games to explore. The Nintendo DS, for example, is something that really hasn't been done before. There are also a lot of genres out there that need refinement before we can move on. 3D platformers could, in general, stand to have better cameras that offer tighter gameplay. Occasionally, innovation happens within a genre. Look at the Madden series. It went from playing a season with your favorite team to having an owner mode where you can set the price of hotdogs in your stadium.

Innovation is happening all the time, but when the market fails to support innovation, it goes away. Given the cost of producing a game on a console it's a lot harder for indie developers with radical ideas to get into the game. That's why you see a lot of nifty little games come out for computers or made in flash. These are a lot easier for a small timer to make given their limited finances.

The biggest issue indie game devs will face...

[Blackwulf]

...Is the government. Thanks to the other news that's been duped on Slashdot 8439284923 times in the past week, there is speculation that the government will attempt to make game ratings manditory and overseen by the federal government. If your game isn't rated, they want to make it illegal to sell.

Right now, getting your game rated by the ESRB costs more than the budgets of most indie games because of all of the material you must send to them. It will probably get even more stricter now thanks to the r

Re:The biggest issue indie game devs will face...

[greasyguide]

Yeah I agree...I think the indie market needs to stick to homebrew PC games and keep it on a lew profile. The GTA: San Andres nightmare for Rockstar has already cost them a lot of money so I doubt if any indie game development companies could even get a game out there now. Hilary Clinton ain't playin with the game industry and she can shut a lot of stuff down.

Indie?

[myukew]

Who would call himself 'indie'?? My dog's name was Indie!

Indy is finally stepping out of the shadows

[Pyrowolf]

With indy games like Gish [chroniclogic.com] getting rave reviews [gametunnel.com], proof that the indy scene is more than tetris, breakout, and R-type clones.

The indy scene really is about the people who are ok plunking down $20 for a game that they can just pick up and play for 20 minutes, isn't overly involving, and can be put back down. People ranging from your Mom playing Zuma [popcap.com], to your kids playing Chuzzle [raptisoft.com], to Dad playing Jets 'n Guns [rakeingrass.com]

I like Indy games, especially for my young daughter, that I know are fun and entertaining, innexpens

what about the male characters?

[spir0]

I want to play a fat, balding, ugly old git; not some slim, sexy, buff guy who I will never ever be in real life.

Hey, the perfect game for me is one where you get to play Ron Jeremy!

I think this woman needs to get a dictionary and understand the meaning of 'fantasy.'

then, right after doing that, she needs someone to teach her what the phrase 'sex sells' means.

How many people would buy games where you play a fat lesbo?