What Was the Greatest Age For Indie Games? 92
jonyami writes: "Indie games have existed for as long as there's been something to play and something to play it on. From the humble Apple II to modern PCs, Xbox Live Arcade and the Kickstarter revolution, just what was the greatest age for indie games? A new article takes a look at the various eras, the top indie games and the future — which one do you reckon is on top?"
I'd say "right now". And it's getting better. (Score:5, Insightful)
Never before has it been so easy to actually earn money with indie game development.
And things might be getting even better.
Re:I'd say "right now". And it's getting better. (Score:5, Interesting)
And even with all the digital distribution options out there, there are new all-powerful middlemen controlling what has a chance of real success - Steam, Humble, Apple (featured content), etc
Personally, I loved the 90s, when the technology was really exciting and evolving fast. The indie boom of the late 2000s was cool too, but now we seem to be facing oversaturation and race-to-the-bottom pricing (even beyond mobile).
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For the rule of thumb is to support cross platform when it is easy to do so.
Having forks for each platform can kill your business if you need to put in updates or add new features.
Linux also has a lot of different distributions where there are different sets of "Standard" settings, which sometimes will cause issues, if you say get it to work in Ubuntu and the person who bought your product has Slackware.
Re:I'd say "right now". And it's getting better. (Score:5, Interesting)
"make money" as in become rock star rich? yes, and That is a good thing. Sorry to burst people's bubbles but programming and game development is not the lottery, you dont get a big payout.
Make money as in cover your costs and turn a modest profit? that is more reasonable, and if these Indie people are going into business without a business plan and fully researching the market as well as costs and other financials as well as research as to their lower price to sell at as well as what price that will not scare people away from their game.
If you are an indie company and think you ca get $60 for your game you are insane, $16.00 to $29.00 for a professional quality game (as in better than the buggy untested crap from bioware) is easily achieved as can be seen by the success of a lot of indie games out there.
But if a developer thinks they will get rich or start living the 6 digit income levels? They need to stop now and work on something else, as they have zero clue as what it's like to sell software let alone games.
Re:I'd say "right now". And it's getting better. (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I think that game programming is like the lottery. Notch basically won the lottery with Minecraft. There's nothing particularly amazing about the game, but for some reason, it caught on, and now he's rich. It's hard to pin down what makes one game sell millions, while other games struggle to sell in the thousands.
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Re:I'd say "right now". And it's getting better. (Score:4, Interesting)
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Minecraft fills a much neglected niche. While everyone was chasing the popular paradigms, Minecraft came in, borrowed from a half-there game and took it into a realm of creative construction not provided by the much-more rigid on-rails environment of the mainstream games. Doors open, walls can be destroyed. Death is a PITA and doesn't just take you back to the previous checkpoint.
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To me, Minecraft is a very dull game. Mining out raw materials, and combining them to make tools and then manufactured goods, in order that you have shelter before nightfall and don't starve. And all played in a randomly generated, rather than designed environment.
Dull, dull, dull.
Where Minecraft seems to have become popular is as a toy. A construction set somewhat like a virtual lego set. And that does indeed seem to be a happy accident.
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"make money" as in become rock star rich? yes, and That is a good thing. Sorry to burst people's bubbles but programming and game development is not the lottery, you dont get a big payout.
The guy who invented Wordfeud - real one-man shop stopped looking at his bank account when it increased with more than 100k NOK = almost $20k USD/day, last year he turned a 25 MNOK = $4-5 million USD profit. Of course he's one in a million but the exceptions are there.
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History disagrees with the sentiment that it was easier to "make money" as an indie in the 1980s, or 1990s than today....
In the 1980s the distribution channels were being established which meant either you scored a deal with a bricks and mortar retail store, such as Sears, Babbages or Toy's R Us, or you ziplock bagged your PC game and tried to sell them at swap meets and computer stores.
In the 1990s there were more direct retailers and amalgamations of bricks and mortar stores occurred. The shareware model
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I miss the arcade in the late 70s first 80s. The whole assortment of electronic games, pinball, mechanical games, mechanical-electronic hybrids... If it reopened as a museum it would blow kid's minds.
But then, the kids would return home, look at the freshly-acquired-with-parents'-blood PS4 and think: "meh", so maybe those things are better forgotten.
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Absolutely! Shadowrun Returns, Kerbal Space program, etc... The indie games scene is starting to overtake the "AAA" games in quality and enjoyment.
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MineCraft
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I don't know about that one. I've been playing Minecraft for some time (since about 1.2.5, I think) and precious little has come out of Mojang that has improved it much. They finally fixed the lava flow problem, and occasionally add something cool (Redstone update in 1.5.0, e.g.), but I think that without the extremely rich mod community, which has little to thank the Devs for, Minecraft would have foundered a long time ago.
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A suggestion: Grab one of the launchers. I use the Technic launcher most of the time. You can play any of the "official" modpacks with a click, or add the "unofficial" community packs right into it with minimal effort, and you don't have to worry about scummy click through sites, etc...
That's the only real issue I have with some of the MC mod community: way too in love with adfly, and way to possessive of "their" code which, in most cases, could be shutdown by Mojang in a minute if they decided to go full s
Re:I'd say "right now". And it's getting better. (Score:4, Informative)
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Bastion (developed by an indie team, published by a big name)
Bastion was a pretty good game, but I think that calling it "indie" is stretching the term to uselessness. You get all the belt-tightening quality of an indie team, plus all the obnoxious customer hostility of a big-time publisher?
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Braid
Limbo
Lone survivor
Hotline Miami
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AI War, Monaco, Limbo, Machinarium, Botanicula, Giana Sisters, Spelunky, Sword of the Stars: The Pit, Hotline Miami, Organ Trail, Defense Grid, Terraria
Really, it is the golden age of indie games.
Re:I'd say "right now". And it's getting better. (Score:5, Insightful)
You must be young. Almost all indy titles today are shovelware using asset stores for their code, art and sounds. Games are being thrown together by everyone with a view of creation lots of titles hoping one is a hit
I used to scour BBS on my 14.4 modem looking for indy games to download, so I think I'm old enough to tell you to stop looking at the past with rose-tinted glasses. There was an indy PC game movement in the 80's and 90's that created some great things but there was plenty of forgettable shovelware too, you just forgot about that (go figure). Those old games also recycled plenty of their own code, art, and sounds. Also, 80's/90's indy developers were almost completely shut out of the console markets, but not so today. 80's/90's indy developers were also much more limited by the technology available, and not just graphics, but also the interface was mostly limited to keyboard/mouse and maybe a joystick. Today's indy developers has so much more available to them to use creatively. Graphics is obvious, but also things like Wii-Mote, Kinect, mobile phone capabilities (cameras, GPS, etc.), and new VR tech. Then you've got Kickstarter, digital distribution, and flexible pricing to get indy developer ideas/projects off the ground. Yeah there are going to be plenty of indy game turds, but there always have been.
As a gamer I'd say the same (Score:2)
I can still play most of the indie games of yesteryear, and there's more new ones coming out all the time. More and more of them are free to play, or are included for a song with a humble bundle.
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I agree - now is probably amongst the most fertile time for indie developers. There are tons of platforms to choose from, even ones that were previously hostile to indie development are fairly open now.
It used to be you could only do it on the PC. But Apple opened it up on mobile (previously it was
1990s (Score:3)
Doom was "Indie". Command and Conquer was "Indie". Hell, compared to the modern AAA teams large enough to fill a city church, Super Mario World was "Indie".
The difference between 1 guy in a bedroom making an ephemeral App, and 10-20 people in an office a timeless classic does not give the right to the former to be lauded as either innovative, avant-garde, or somehow good for the industry. Contemporary "Indie" developers are just as much of a cancer on modern gaming as AAA kilo-teams.
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Next year (Score:1)
(Roberts was the mastermind behind the "Wing Commander" series.)
Industry alumni (Score:2)
Star Citizen is a prime example of the difference between industry alumni and what others might call "true indie" developers.* Apparently to succeed in indie games, you have to first move away and work for an established company. In the case of Chris Roberts, this involved relocating near Origin Systems and climbing its ranks.
* I'm aware that "true indie" invites comparisons to the "no true Scotsman" fallacy. But what's a better term for someone who builds a reputation without having relocated to work fo
1982 (Score:1)
Easy Access or Money? (Score:1)
For "Easy access to the market" I'd say it was the 8-bit era, since all you had to have was an 8-bit computer, record your software on a tape and go to any tape printing facility with your "master".
For money I'd say it was the early iOS era, since Apple made nearly as easy and open as the 8-bit era to access iOS, and the market was not as fully crammed of competition as it has become later.
The 90's were already too difficult, hardware was a rapidly moving target (if you came from Amiga or the Atari ST i
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For "Easy access to the market" I'd say it was the 8-bit era, since all you had to have was an 8-bit computer, record your software on a tape and go to any tape printing facility with your "master".
That was fine prior to 1986. But then Nintendo introduced the NES that quickly displaced 8-bit home computers and ushered in decades of console industry policies against small developers.
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go to any tape printing facility with your "master".
Often not even that. I was familiar with one of the well known UK 8-bit games publishers, and they had a box converting one DIN plug into 10, such that with 10 standard cassette recorders they could produce 10 game tapes from one SAVE command.
80's and right now (Score:3)
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I wouldn't say right now, though I'd definitely agree with the 80s. Back then, indie games (I'm reminded of the awesome Ghostbusters game on my C64 - Activision was still a little indie studio in '84) were about on par with what you could expect from the market as a whole.
Not really the case today. Even the "great" indie games of today (Fez, Bastion, etc..) are generations behind in gameplay.
IMO, they just seem great because the AAA scene of today is utterly fucked.
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Activision was still a little indie studio in '84
Activision? Indie in 1984? No fucking way. They were already a big name then thanks to all their 2600 titles.
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They had a big library, but they didn't have the kind of clout back then. It was pretty much the opposite of the current situation: the first party devs were the ones with all the juice who liked to borg up developers.
What does indie mean? (Score:2)
I've been around, playing games at least, since the early 1980s. If by indie you mean `1 or 2 or 3 people making a living from writing and selling their games with more or less complete independence from bean counters and trend-mongers` then the answer has to be around then, up to around 1994 or so when powerful consoles took off, and the visual side of things was treated as more important (3d, video fmv, cd audio)...basically when it was seen that there was a lot of money to be made appealing to non-trad
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You're definitely right. We're starting to see a resurgence in creativity. App stores and easy access to engines is surely part of that.
my misspent youth (Score:2)
I'd say my greatest age for indie games was 23. I hadn't started grad school yet and was working part-tme as a bartender and playing in a band, so I had lots of time on my hands for playing indie games.
Timeline (Score:2)
Apparently in this timeline, the world went from the Apple II to PCs, with nothing in between.
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And when did people actually start playing real games on the PC?
In between, you had all kinds of home computers. Commodores, Ataris, Spectrums, a million things besides. That is where most of the action always was. The PC was very later to this party.
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Not at all. PCs were just not capable of displaying properly animated games until quite a while after they were launched. They were far behind the capabilities of other home computers at the time for anything but business uses.
No sprites, no scrolling (Score:2)
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Amiga games started disappearing from the shelves and being replaced by PC games around 1990 (about the time of Monkey Island II).
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I don't know what we read the same article:
When Atari brought about the 1983 video game crash with its terrible business management, it left a void which would be filled by bedroom coders working on platforms which weren't originally intended to run games. Armed with micro computers of the period – such as the Apple II, Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum – these wide-eyed youngsters created some of the most daring and original titles the industry has ever seen; there were no rules, so they wrote them. These are just a few of them:
The 1980s – The Bedroom Era"
Then in the next "The 1990s – Shareware Takes Over", which really wasn't quite 1990, but early 90's. The article claims there was a gap in indy development with the NES and Sega, and it wasn't until "real games" came to the PC.
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And the article is dead wrong there. There was plenty of very independent development on the Amiga and Atari ST, for instance, long before PCs finally got graphics hardware that didn't suck terribly.
Skipped over the mod scene (Score:3)
Early 90s shareware was very different from late 90s and early 2000s mods. A bunch of eventually AAA titles and studios spawned out of mods for existing games. Things like Counter Strike, Team Fortress, the original DOTA. I'd put that in a completely different Era from the console scene and the shareware scene.
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But it wasn't just Valve. TF was a Quake 1 mod. DOTA was a warcraft 3 mod. I also remember playing Urban Terror on Quake 3. Also tons of Neverwinter Nights mods. But yeah, Halflife mods were really influential. We had Counterstrike, Natural Selection, Day of Defeat.
As a gamer or as a developper ? (Score:2)
Now is the time, seize the day... (Score:5, Informative)
What constitutes indie is one questions (and AAA is even harder to come to a consensus, even among my work peers) but that said...
As a child of the 80's, who adamantly played video games (e.g., Apple ][, arcade, 2600, NES, etc...) and got into professional game development over 10 years ago (I work for a AAA studio and my have my own gig for nights/weekends) I'd agree with those who say now, 2014, is the best time for indie game development.
Powerful engines and Middleware tools are accessible with licenses that fit indie budgets (e.g., Unity3d, Unreal4, etc...) as well as a swatch of free software for development. (e.g. Phaser: http://phaser.io/ [phaser.io] Blender http://www.blender.org/ [blender.org] Love https://love2d.org/ [love2d.org] Flixel http://flixel.org/ [flixel.org] Haxe http://haxe.org/ [haxe.org] )
The internet, as-is, provides indies with a way for
- distance-collaboration (Skype, E-mail, Groups, etc...)
- community building (Twitter, CMSs, Facebook, etc...)
- fundraising (IndieGogo, Kickstarter, HumbleBundle, Paypal, custom web-based donation system, etc...)
- advertising (game communities, news outlets, etc...)
Organizations, such as the International Game Developer's Association (IGDA, http://igda.org/ [igda.org] ) and events like the Global Game Jam, PAX (IndieMegabooth), and MAGFest also contribute to the community of indie game developers.
It is a great time to be an indie game developer in terms of accessibility and ability to achieve a sustainable income.
49 (Score:2)
Can't post. Playing Dota 2 in a coffee shop
late 80s into the 90s (Score:4, Insightful)
Say what you will about all the access devs have now, but it was that time when things were greatest.
People were still experimenting. Not just with concepts but core mechanics. Interfaces, everything. It was the wild west.
People weren't yet dumbing things down to make them more "Accessible", when you got a game there wasn't going to be another one in 5 minutes. The internet wasn't everywhere. People still had slow connections when it came around. You read magazines, hunted for games and traded with friends.
The early days were really the best for the entirety of computing. Sure, things are flashy, we have such powerful machines now. Those were the days of great games and great indie games.
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tl;dr: Accessibility has always been a concern and, there is more innovation happening today than 30 years ago.
I also miss the (video game) days of my youth; learning about games from friends, or by going to an arcade and seeing what new machine was front and center...later making ANSII ads for BBS's so I could obtain a high enough credentials to get access to their warez section and learn about the latest games.
That said, I chock my emotions of those days as nostalgia and recognize an indie in the 80's/90'
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when you got a game there wasn't going to be another one in 5 minutes.
When you could fit a dozen games on a C60, there often, literally was. :)
"Game as Art" (Score:1)
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Osmos? That was a fascinating game based on fluid dynamics and orbits.
nethack (Score:3)
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I thought hack was much better than nethack.
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I feel like the Unreal Engine did it (Score:2)
At least, it was the turning point. It was a great engine, with decent (albeit buggy) tools. As it grew, and modders became more and more ambitious, you began to see some really unique full games (originally called "TCs" or "Total Conversions").
I remember the old shareware stores (Score:2)
The Stone Age (Score:2)
Plenty of rocks, sticks and pebbles for everyone's game.
Before there was Indie (Score:2)
The best age was before there were even "indie" games and no one had invented the silly word. All developers then were independent of each other and there were no mega game corporations. Even EA used to be "indie".
Seriously, if someone asks a question on slashdot it would help if they define what the terms mean, such as what "indie" means with implications that it is better in creativity but lacking in resources or other political baggage.